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DISQUISITIONS AND NOTES
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THE GOSPELS.
MATTHEW
BY
JOHN H
BOSTON:
AMERICAN UNITARIAN ASSOCIATION,
42 Chauncy Street.
1872.
^^i
5-7^'
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Entered according to Act of C9ngre8S, in the year 1860, by
WALKER, WISE, & CO.,
in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts.
CAMBRIDGE*.
PRESS OP JOHN WILSON AND SON.
>-^ OP THK
university!
PREFACE
The object of this work Is to assist in the interpretation of the
Gospels. It does not seek to go beyond the authority of Jesus.
It does not undertake to show what the Evangelists ought to have
said, and to force their language into accordance with it. If in
any case it may seem to go beyond them, it has been only to
meet the honest sceptic of our day on his own ground, and show
either that he has misinterpreted the words and acts of Christ, or
that those words and acts are in accordance with the great prin-
ciples of reason, which reach alike through the realms of physical
and moral being. The one all-sufficient answer to the unbelief
of our age is still the same that Jesus addressed to the Sadducees,
who represented the refined and philosophical scepticism of his
day : " Ye do err, not knowing the Scriptures, nor the power of
God." A true understanding of the Scriptures, with the insight
which is gained from them in the light of the highest philosophy
into the ways and works and character of God, is the most effec-
tual remedy for scepticism, whether it be a disease going on
through moral infidelity to intellectual unbelief, or an honest
antagonism to doctrines which falsely call themselves Christian or
Evangelical.
The best antidote to scepticism and to a narrow religious dog-
matism, is the same. Both believers and unbelievers read too
much abotit the Gospels in the works of their favorite guides, and
study the Gospels themselves too little. We have never known
a diligent and thorough study of the New Testament to end
either in bigotry or unbelief. There is a truthfulness breathing
through Its writings which cannot but affect the ingenuous mind
that puts itself freely and constantly into communication with
iv PREFACE.
them, and there is a freedom, a breadth of moral purpose, a
largeness of thought, a catholicity of sentiment, about them,
which must give something of its own generous and liberal spirit
to those who place themselves habitually and unreservedly within
their influence.
In preparing this work I have sought to avail myself of such
helps as have been furnished by the scholarship of past ages ; to
take advantage of the improved methods of investigation which
have been recently adopted, and to borrow liberally from the
varied stores of information which have been gained through the
enterprise, the laborious researches, the intellectual culture, and
the conscientious love of truth for which many of the Biblical
scholars of our day have been so honorably distinguished. For
example, the text which is here followed in all the variations
which are of consequence enough to warrant a departure from
the reading in our Common English Version, is Tischendorfs
Stereotype Edition of the New Testament, published in 1850.
This work, which, we believe, stands higher than any other
edition of the New Testament in the estimation of those most
competent to judge, was prepared by a careful comparison of all
the most ancient manuscripts of the New Testament to which the
editor could gain access. Many years were spent upon it, and
no labor or expense was spared which promised any useful
results. In regard to the Geography of the Holy Land, and the
topography of Jerusalem and its environs, so important in order
to a correct understanding and a vivid perception of many
incidents in our Saviour's life, almost everything that we know
with clearness and certainty has been gained since Dr. Robinson
began his Biblical Researches in Palestine, less than thirty years
ago. Within less than forty years, since Winer first published
his " Grammar of the New Testament Diction" in 1822, a revo-
lution hardly less remarkable has taken place in this department
of Biblical knowledge, and commentators have been called back
from their freaks of utter lawlessness to the orderly rules and
principles of grammatical construction. It is a matter of regret,
that, in the only English version that we have of Winer's Gram-
mar, the text, without any notice of the alterations being given,
has been tampered with and changed by the translator for doc-
trinal reasons. But the promptness with which this act has been
exposed and rebuked in this country, not only by the Christian
PREFACE. V
Examiner, but by the Bibliotheca Sacra, is a cheering evidence
of the candor as well as vigilance which guards the integrity of
sacred learning. Indeed, within the lifetime of the present gen-
eration, a more generous spirit has been infused into these
studies. They have been taken out from the darkened cell of
monkish or sectarian exclusiveness, into the light of the world's
advancing intelligence. Critical works, like those of Stanley,
Jowett, Trench, and Alford, Schleiermacher, Olshausen, De
Wette, Winer, and Meyer, Stuart, Norton, Noyes, Palfrey, Fur-
ness, Hackett, and Nichols, show that the finest artistic taste and
moral sensibilities, the severest inductions of logic, the nicest dis-
criminations of philological science, the most scholarly attainments
and accomplishments, together with habits of profound and origi-
nal thought, may be worthily employed in throwing light on the
sacred writings, and in bringing out the great and momentous
truths which they contain. This branch of learning is, therefore,
indicating its liberal tendencies, and beginning once more to gain
a hearing from classes of men who formerly looked upon it with
indifference or contempt. A thorough knowledge of the Gospels
is found to enrich the mind and enlarge the heart. While the
most effective means of controlling a congregation, in or out of the
church, — the arts of rhetoric, and the attractive but superficial
attainments which go to furnish the intellectual wardrobe of a
popular preacher, — tend towards bigotry and conceit, the study
of the Bible, the habit of throwing one's self into the heart of one
after another of its great subjects, with the intellectual helps
which are essential to it, can hardly fail to quicken the intellect,
refine the moral sentiments, and make one's sympathies wider
and more generous. The study of the Gospels, pursued in such
a spirit, must at least conduce to humility, and that is closely allied
to charity. I think that we may see some evidence of this liber-
alizing tendency in theological seminaries, where the greatest
attention is paid to Biblical studies, as well as in the tone of
works, like the Bibliotheca Sacra, which treat such subjects most
thoroughly. Ecclesiastical history, dogmatic theology, the spec-
ulative doctrines of metaphysics and of morals, may be enlisted
in the service of a party ; but the Gospels more than anything
else refuse to be confined within a sect, to serve its exclusive pur-
poses, or to do its work.
This volume was begun more than five years ago, at the sugges-
1*
VI PREFACE.
tion of the Rev. Henry A. Miles, D. D., to meet what was sup-
posed to be a want in this department of religious instruction.
In its plan it differs materially from Livermore's Commentary,
leaving more room for the extended discussion of subjects, and
following each verse of the text less closely in its remarks. If I
could be sure that in my Notes I have made as faithful and
intelligent a use of the materials accessible to scholars now, as
Mr. Livermore did of those which were within his reach in the
preparation of his work twenty years ago, I should give it to the
public with comparatively few misgivings. If this volume should
be favorably received, it will probably be followed by another on
the three remaining Gospels, though this forms a complete work in
itself. Nearly all the difficult questions which are likely to come
up in Mark and Luke have been already considered. But the Gos-
pel of John will require an extended preparation, and, in many
respects, a distinct and original mode of treatment. In the mean
time, and as a most important part of the same series with this, our
readers will be glad to learn that a volume on the other books of
the New Testament may be expected from the Rev. A. P. Pea-
body, D. D.
J. H. M.
Milton, February 14, 1860.
CONTENTS
FAOB
Introduction 11
The Gospel according to Matthew 31
CHAPTER I.
The Lineage or Grenealogy of Jesus 33
Miraculous Conception 35
Prediction of Christ's Birth 39
CHAPTER II.
Visit of the Wise Men, or Magi 45
Murder of the Children in Bethlehem 50
Quotations from the Prophets 52
CHAPTER III.
John the Baptist 60
CHAPTER IV.
The Temptation in the Wilderness 70
Makes his Home in Capernaum 78
The Call of Simon Peter and Andrew his Brother, and of John
and his Brother James 79
CHAPTER V.
Introduction to the Sermon on the Mount ..... 85
The Beatitudes 87
Fulfilling the Law and the Prophets 88
CHAPTER VI.
General Design 101
Lord's Prayer 102
Perfect Trust in God 107
Viil CONTENTS.
-^
CHAPTER VII.
Analysis 117
CHAPTER VIII.
Gospel View of Miracles 126
Healing the Leper 135
Healing the Centurion's Servant 141
Bearing our Infirmities 143
Let the Dead bury their Dead 147
Stilling the Tempest 148
Angelic Existences and Agencies 152
Evil and Disorderly Spirits 157
CHAPTER IX.
Christ's Way of viewing Death 174
CHAPTER X.
Directions to the Apostles 183
The Coming of the Son of Man 186
Further Directions to the Apostles 188
Life or Soul 191
Different Degrees of Reward 193
CHAPTER XI.
John the Baptist and his Message 201
Great Privileges unimproved visited by a heavier Condemnation 207
Christ's Thankfulness, and his Call to the Heavy Laden . 208
CHAPTER XII.
Christ's View of the Sabbath 216
Hatred of the Pharisees against Jesus 219
Casting out Satan by Satan 219
The Unpardonable Sin 222
Further Remarks of Jesus . 223
Jesus and his Mother 224
CHAPTER XIII.
Parables 232
The Parable of the Sower 237
Teaching in Parables . . . . . . . . 238
The Tares and the Wheat 240
The Wicked One 245
CONTENTS. ix
CHAPTER XIV.
Herod Antipas 260
Feeding the Five Thousand 264
Jesus walking on the Water 266
CHAPTER XV.
Jesus and the Jewish Traditions 273
Fulfilment of Prophecy 274
Tl^ Syro-Phoenician Woman . . . . . , . 278
Feeding the Four Thousand 279
CHAPTER XVI.
A Sign from Heaven 288
On this Rock I build my Church 289
The Keys of the Kingdom of Heaven 290
The Humiliation and Sufferings of the Messiah . . . 292
CHAPTER XVII.
The Transfiguration . . • 305
The Coming of Elijah 312
The Tribute-Money and the Fish 313
CHAPTER XVIII.
The Primitive Church of Christ 320
CHAPTER XIX.
The Christian Law of Divorce 332
Christ Blessing the Children 335
The Young Man who came to Jesus 336
Hard for the Rich to enter Christ's liingdom . . . 338
Gaining by Renouncing 340
CHAPTER XX.
The Laborers in the Vineyard 348
CHAPTER XXI.
Reckoning of Time 361
Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem 364
CHAPTER XXII.
The Wedding Feast 376
Paying Tribute to Cagsar 377
The Resurrection from the Dead 379
The Two Great Commandments . . . . . . • 381
Christ the Son of David 382
X CONTENTS.
CHAPTER XXIII.
Christ's Denunciation of the Pharisees 391
The Cumulative Guilt of a Nation 394
CHAPTER XXIV.
Our Saviour's Gift of Prophecy 401
The Coining of the. Son of Man in Judgment to the Jews . 407
The Coming of the Son of Man in Judgment to All . . .418
Conclusion 422
CHAPTER XXV.
Purpose of these Parables 432
Parable of the Virgins 432
Parable of the Talents 434
Parable of the Sheep and the Goats 434
The Greneral Kesurrection and Day of Judgment . . . 437
CHAPTER XXVI.
The Supper at Bethany. — Judas 444
The Last Supper 445
Warning Peter . 449
The Agony of Gethsemane 450
The Apprehension of Jesus 458
Jesus taken before the High-Priest 460
Peter's Denial 461
CHAPTER XXVII.
Preliminary Trial of Jesus before the Sanhedrim . . . 479
Repentance and Death of Judas 480
Jesus before Pilate ......... 481
The Crucifixion 7 483
Precautions against his Resurrection 488
CHAPTER XXVIII.
The Gospel Narratives of the Resurrection .... 503
The Different Accounts not Contradictory .... 505
The Different Times of his Appearance .... 508
Each Account Independent of the Rest 511
The Resurrection of Jesus 512
The Formula of Baptism 515
Concluding Remarks : . 519
Index 537
INTEODUCTION.
HOW TO STUDY THE GOSPELS.
We are more and more convinced that the Gospel of
Christ is to be the great source of moral and rehgious in-
struction and improvement to the world. The writings of
the New Testament stand apart from all others. No works
of man's genius pretend to an equal fellowship with them.
They rea(;h now, as they always have done, above the high-
est thought and experience of our race. As the sky rises
as far above us when we are on the loftiest mountain as
in the lowest valley, so they rise as far above the ideas and
civilization of the world now, as they did in the days of
Tiberius and Nero. There can hardly be a more convinc-
ing proof of their Divine authority than this ; we mean, in
the words of a profound and original thinker, Dr. Nichols,
" the Gospel's sun-like solitude in the moral firmament.
The vast space around it is clear of all light but its own.'*
And this suggests a most important principle of interpre-
tation. As these writings rise above all others, and shine
in a vast space " clear of all light but their own," so it must
be in that light, more than by any helps drawn from inferior
sources, that we are to learn and to apply their truths. It is
wonderful how our Saviour imbued with the universality
of his own mind every transient incident and word into
which his thought or life passed, so that it has become, like
himself, to us " the same yesterday, to-day, and forever.'*
12 INTRODUCTION.
" The grass which to-day is and to-morrow is cast into the
oven," " the sower " who " went forth to sow," " the fields "
*' white already to harvest," " the light and gladness of the
marriage feast " contrasted with " the outer darkness " where
" shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth," the " grain of
mustard-seed," the children at their sports in the market-
place, " I was thirsty and ye gave me no drink," his taking
little children into his arms, his inspection of the tribute-
money, are, by means of the virtue which went into them
from him, taken up from the sphere of limited and tran-
sient expressions or incidents, and stand out forever as em-
blems of universal and undying truths. He who could
thus imbue the most ephemeral forms of speech with an
imperishable life, and who could place a slight act of
grateful reverence, or a casual conversation with a sinful
woman by the side of a well, among the memorable events
in the world's history, must have been charged with life and
power beyond all others. And his language, passing from
its earthly uses into a medium for the communication of
divine and heavenly truths, and of an influence more sub-
tile and life-giving than any truths in their naked presenta-
tion to the intellect, can borrow little from subsidiary illustra-
tions and analogies. We have only to open our souls to it,
as we do our eyes to the light, and it will come in. If we
give ourselves up to it, we shall not be left in darkness or in
doubt. It speaks with its own authority, and explains and
enforces its own decisions. Often when we try to explain
it, we shall only turn the attention away from it, or darken
and obscure it by our words of inferior wisdom. A great
part of our Saviour's language, and most of the lessons
taught by his life, are of this character. He is the one
Mediator between God and man, and it is worse than vain
for us to interpose ourselves as his interpreters.
This is one of the reasons why all commentaries are read
with a sense of disappointment. They are expected to
throw new light on the great essential teachings of Christ ;
INTRODUCTION. 13
aiid that is what no commentators can ever do. They
might as well hope to throw new light upon the sun. Happy
are they if they can to some extent remove from his teach-
ings the obscurations which men have thrown over them.
They are expected to give new efficacy to the " virtue " that
goes out from them ; and that they can never do. We may
hope to clear up some of the obscurities which obsolete cus-
toms, or modes of speech foreign to our habits of thought,
have caused. We may analyze our Saviour's discourses,
and show the underlying principles by which the different
parts are united. We may bring together expressions, such
as " the kingdom of Heaven," " the coming of the Son of
man," " the end of the world," which with slight modifica-
tions are scattered through the accounts of his ministry, and,
by a careful comparison of the different conditions and cir-
cumstances under which they were used, may detect the dif-
ferences of meaning which were put upon them, and the
central idea which gives a unity to these different meanings.
We may free some of the fresh and beautiful expressions of
Scripture from their subjection to the canting phraseology
of a formal piety, and some of its sublime enunciations
of truth from their cruel bondage to the " decrees " of meta-
physical speculations or ecclesiastical councils. We may
compare the different narratives of the same events, and by
combining them into one may harmonize what to the super-
ficial reader seem to be contradictions. We may bring out
the relations of time and space to the Gospel narratives, and
thus make the acts and words of Jesus more consistent with
one another, and more real to the reader. Above all, we
may come back to the simple and natural methods of in-
quiry which are employed in the interpretation of all other
writings. What Bacon and Newton, and other great philoso-
phers, have done for the study of the mind of God in the
book of nature, by breaking loose from arbitrary and un-
natural methods of investigation, and applying the most
direct and simple processes, is what the ablest religious
2
14 INTRODUCTION.
thinkers and scholars must do, and to some extent are doing,
for the study of the mind of God in the volume of that other
book, in which he would reveal himself to us with greater
fulness and a more affecting power. As what Bacon and
Newton did most of all was to call men back to nature it-
self, as it exists in the world around us, so what we have to
do most of all is to call men back to the Gospel itself, as it
lies before us, dimly prefigured in the Old Testament, and
embodied in the New.
There are two things essential in order to a right under-
standing of the Gospels; — 1. A fitting preparation of heart;
and, 2. A mind free from all preconceived opinions which
may bias or mislead us in our investigations. The first is a
moral and spiritual preparation ; the second is that, but it is
also and mainly an intellectual preparation.
1. There is the fitting preparation of heart This is what
our Saviour meant by the faith, which he always regarded
as essential to salvation. It was not an intellectual belief
such as men have made it since, but a disposition of heart,
a readiness to receive and to obey him in whatever he might
teach or command. With this faith in the heart showing
itself by obedience and fidelity in the life, our Christian con-
sciousness will be enlarged, and we shall take in more and
more of the truth. All that is most essential in the Gospels
may be received. Its holiest precepts will direct us in our
lives ; its richest promises will be fulfilling themselves in
our experience. Its great words of comfort and of power,
which lie beyond the reach of criticism or commentary, will
take up their abode in us, and become to us spirit and life.
It is through this preparation of heart that the family Bible
gains such a hold on the affections, instils into the soul its
divinest influences, guides us in our duties, and teaches us
how to turn sorrow and weariness and pain, and even sin
itself, into the means of deliverance and triumph. Thus it
is that Jesus introduces himself to us as our Teacher and
Saviour. The Holy Spirit enters our souls, and renews
INTRODUCTION. 15
them with a perpetual influx of life. And God reveals him-
self to us in whatever is great or beautiful in nature, in the
dear and sacred relations which bind us to one another, and
in all the gracious and merciful, though to us often mys-
terious and painful orderings of his providence. This use
of the Bible — its daily and familiar companionship, its
confidential communications to us in our retired moments
— is worth jnore than all its more elaborate and learned
lessons.
2. But there is also to be a preparation of the intellect,
and in order to this, first of all, we must allow no precon-
ceived opinions to stand in the way of a perfectly free and
fair investigation. We must remember that, as students of
the New Testament, one is our Master, even Christ, and that
as no want of faith can be an excuse for setting aside any-
thing that he has taught, so neither should any precon-
ceived opinions of ours, or creeds drawn up and estab-
lished by human authority, stand as a barrier between his
words and us. If our views are not broad enough to take
in any doctrine that he has taught, then we must make
them broad- enough. There is a freedom, a greatness, not
merely an elevation but a breadth of thought, in his instruc-
tions, strangely in contrast with the narrow and enslaving
opinions which metaphysical divines have elaborated " in
order to satisfy the demand of unity in the Christian con-
sciousness and in the activity of the dialectic reason," or
which ambitious rulers in the Church have established as an
engine of administrative authority. Christ has set our feet
in a large place, and our allegiance to him requires that, in
the study of his words and life, we should jealously assert
and exercise the liberty wherewith he has made us free.
A mournful spectacle, in this respect, has been presented
by the Christian world. Advantage is taken of the new
convert, in the most impressible moment of life, when he has
no time or heart to examine for himself, when he is rejoicing
in the advent of new hopes and a new experience, and his
16 INTRODUCTION.
whole nature is fluent with emotion, — advantage is taken of
him, in the unsuspecting confidence of his first enthusiasm,
to impose upon him the sectarian stamp which is to fix his
theological opinions, and be henceforth a bar, on the right
hand and the left, in all his Biblical and theological investi-
gations. Assuming those opinions to be true, he must study
the Scriptures, not as a disciple of Jesus, but as the partisan
of a sect. The word of God is in bondage. 'It can teach
only what a human creed allows it to teach. In this re-
spect, the Church of Rome, if it has a wider despotism than
all the rest, is more consistent with itself. It does not pro-
fess to leave the people free to read for themselves. It
claims for itself the right and the authority to be the sole
interpreter of the Scriptures. But in most of the Protes-
tant denominations, while there is professedly the greatest
reverence for the Scriptures and the rights of the individual
reason and conscience, no man is allowed to study the Scrip-
tures freely under the guidance of his own reason and con-
science. If he finds in them doctrines not in accordance
with " the standards " or " articles " of his church, he is
called to account If he continues so to read the Scriptures,
and see those doctrines there, he is excommunicated, and
shut out from the ordinances of his religion. — A generous
and catholic faith, which would leave the Bible open to
all, that they may read it as they do the book of nature,
in perfect freedom, accountable only to God, — this faith
in Christ and his instructions rather than in man and his
traditions ; — if the Son of man should come now, would
he find it on the earth?
Yet none the less is it our duty so to learn and so to
speak. In all branches of the Church we hear generous
voices from men seeking a larger liberty for others, and
using it themselves. Some, like Henry Ward Beecher,
without any great amount of learning or any remarkable
fitness for critical studies, take up the great truths of the
Gospel into their capacious souls, and speak them out with
INTRODUCTION. 17
a power that breaks through sectarian restraints and finds
an earnest response from thronging multitudes. Others, like
Dr. Bushnell, with a riper scholarship, finer powers of anal-
ysis, and the same hearty devotion to Christ, not as he lies
bound up corpse-like in church creeds, but as he reveals
himself through the writings of Evangelists and Apostles,
and to the Christian consciousness of each individual soul,
are preaching a more generous and living Gospel. Others
again, like Jowett and Stanley and Williams and Archbishop
Whately, from the great centres of religious intelligence to
our Anglo-Saxon race, from Oxford and Cambridge and the
metropolis of Ireland, are using a larger liberty, and in works
of Biblical criticism or religious inquiry are giving to the
world examples of a freer thought, and a more faithful
exposition of writings, which rise above and pass beyond the
limitations of scholastic theologians and sectarian creeds, as
the heavens, which shine on all, rise above and stretch
beyond every earthly distinction of individual proprietorship
or national domain. It is a comfort to be able to quote lan-
guage like this from a sermon preached before the Univer-
sity of Oxford by the author of the Life of Dr. Arnold:
" The true creed of the Church, the true Gospel of Christ,
is to be found, not in proportion as it coincides with the
watchwords or the dilemmas of modern controversy, but
rather in proportion as it rises above them, and cuts across
them The very peculiarity, the very proof of the
divinity of his doctrine, was that they could not square it
with any of their existing systems And it is both a
confirmation and illustration of this character of Evangelical
doctrine, that, if we look into some of the earthly repre-
sentations of it which have met with most universal ac-
ceptance, they also share in this freedom from the bonds in
which the world is anxious to confine us." (Stanley's Can-
terbury Sermons, pp. 113-115.) There is a healthful ring
in these words, which is full of encouragement and hope.
Not only are we, in the study of the Gospels, to beware
2* B
18 INTRODUCTION,
of every human authority that would interpose itself be-
tween them and us, but we must also take heed to our-
selves. We may be as much enslaved to our own way
of viewing things, or to the personal feelings by which
we ai*e led in one direction or another, as to the estab-
lished creed of a church. Whatever the motive, we must
be careful not to twist and torture our Saviour's words
to bring them into harmony with our ideas. A single
example will illustrate what we mean. A writer, speaking
of Christ in his mediatorial humiliation, says (Huntington's
"Christian Believing and Living," p. 364): "Voluntarily, to
this end,, and for the time, things which only the Father
knoweth are veiled from the Son, and he says (in language
which we have only to suppose put into the mouth of any
other being to find it in fact a proof of his divinity), ' My
Father is greater than I.' " By the divinity of Christ the
writer has just explained that he means his equality with
the Father. To say then, that his declaration, " My Father
is greater than I," is in fact a proof of his divinity, that is, a
proof that his Father is not greater than he, is flatly to con-
tradict the Saviour. To assert that we have only to sup-
pose this language " put into the mouth of any other being
to find it in fact a proof of his divinity," is to assert that in
our opinion the language of Jesus, in its simple and ob-
vious meaning, is so extravagant that we can accept it only
in a sense directly opposite to what it says. Is this honor-
ing Christ ? St. John (1 John iii. 20) uses a form of ex-
pression precisely like this of Jesus, " God is greater than
our heart." Is his language therefore a proof of his or of
our divinity? In Job xxxiii. 12 we find it asserted, with no
appearance of impiety or extravagance, " that God is great-
er than man." We are not arguing, or speaking even by
implication, against the doctrine in support of which this
delaration of our Saviour is so distorted from its plain and
natural meaning. We quote the passage simply as an illus-
tration of what seems to us a vicious, arbitrary, and most
INTRODUCTION. 19
dangerous method of interpretation. Our reverence for
Christ is shocked by such a way of dealing with his words.
We solemnly believe that, except from a perversion of the
moral sentiments, there is no greater bar in the way of a
true understanding and application of the Gospels, than this
habit of forcing them into conlbrmity with our preconceived
ideas. We must remember that they are to guide us, and
not we them. If our capacity for Divine truth is to be the
measure of what we receive, it must not be, even in our
own minds, the measure of what Christ has taught, so that
all his teachings must be forced into conformity with it.
We must not let the limitations of our human thought turn
aside from its only direct and natural meaning any clear and
explicit statement of his. If we find ourselves tempted to
do this, we may be sure that there is something wrong, not
in his instructions, but in our opinions. We are, then, with
all humility before him, to re-examine our opinions, and see
if we cannot readjust them in such a way as to make them
harmonize with the text. A less violent wrench than that
which is here applied to the words of Christ would probably
bring our views into accordance with his words. But if our
opinions are fixed as one of the immutable terms in this
controversy, then let us remember that so plain a declara-
tion of his cannot be altered for our accommodation ; and,
without attempting to make it mean precisely the opposite
of what it says, as plainly as language can say anything, let
us leave the two — his assertion and our opinion — con-
fronting one another, and acknowledge that it requires a
higher wisdom than ours to bring them into harmony. But,
after all, as a matter of interpretation not less than of
Christian faith, our human inference is more likely to
be wrong than the words of Christ. The opinion of over-
whelming majorities in his Church can have no weight
against his decisive and unqualified declaration. We, —
all men, — the doctrine " which always, everywhere, and
by all men" has been maintained, if any such contro-
20 INTRODUCTION.
verted doctrine can be found, — may be wrong, but he
CANNOT.
We must then be on our guard against this forced method
of interpretation, which has prevailed in past centuries
almost as extensively as forced methods of interpreting the
phenomena of nature before the time of Bacon and Galileo,
and which has its influence still, though the ablest Christian
scholars and thinkers are protesting against it more and
more. It has its influence just where it will be most widely
disseminated and most fatal. It enters into the apparently
superficial, but nevertheless powerful and lasting, means of
religious education for the young. The creed is taught
first, and then the Bible in conformity with the creed. In
some churches, at the end of every chapter that is read, and
of every Psalm that is rehearsed, a doxology, w^hich is ia
fact a creed in miniature, is repeated, as if the words of
Scripture could not be trusted without it. How much
more in harmony with nature and with truth, as well as
with Christ's method of teaching, is that suggested by the
generous and manly Robertson in a Confirmation Lec-
ture. " Let the child's religion," he says, (Sermons, 1st
Series, pp. 73, 74,) " be expansive, — capable of expan-
sion, — as little systematic as possible ; let it lie upon the
heart like the light, loose soil, which can be broken through
as the heart bursts into fuller life. If it be trodden down
hard and stiff in formularies, it is more than probable that
the whole must be burst through, and broken violently and
thrown off altogether, when the soul requires room to germi-
nate. And in this way, my young brethren, I have tried to
deal with you. Not in creeds, nor even in the stiffness of
the catechism, has truth been put before you. Rather has
it been trusted to the impulses of the heart ; on which, we
believe, God works more efficaciously than we can do. A
few simple truths : and then these have been left to work,
and germinate, and swell. Baptism reveals to you this truth
for the heart, that God is your Father, and that Christ ha3
INTRODUCTION. 21
encouraged you to live as your Father's children. It has
revealed that name which Jacob knew not, — Love. Con-
firmation has told you another truth, that of self-dedication to
Him. Heaven is the service of God. The highest blessed-
ness of life is powers and self consecrated to His will. These
are the germs of truth : but it would have been miserable
self-delusion, and most pernicious teaching, to have aimed at
exhausting truth, or systematizing it. We are jealous of
over-systematic teaching. God's love to you, — the sacrifice
of your lives to God, — but the meaning of that ? Oh ! a long,
long life will not exhaust the meaning, — the name of God.
Feel him more and more, — all else is but empty words."
In all our studies, and especially in all our religious teach-
ings, we must leave room for growth, and be more earnest
to implant the principles of righteous living, and a reverence
for the truth as it is in Jesus, than to prove any doctrines on
which the Christian world is divided to be true. And if at
any time, we are to hold our dogmatic theology in abeyance,
it is when we are engaged in interpreting for ourselves, or
teaching to others, the words and the acts of Christ.
Perhaps the forced methods of interpretation have for no
single purpose been carried to a more unwarrantable extent
than in the attempts which have been made to produce a
literal conformity between different accounts of the same
event by the different New Testament writers, so as not to
violate the doctrine of a plenary verbal inspiration. But
now that doctrine is no longer held to be respectable among
enlightened Biblical critics and scholars. Dr. Cureton, the
learned Canon of Westminster, in the preface to his " Syriac
Gospels," p. Ixxxix., speaks of " the verbal inspiration of the
Gospels " as " a theory long since abandoned by all scholars
and critics, which, indeed, could only be maintained by those
who are entirely ignorant of the way in which the New
Testament has been transmitted to our own times, and which,
22 INTRODUCTION.
if persisted in, must involve very serious objections against
these inspired writings, and tend to infidelity." Alford, in
the Prolegomena to his learned and valuable Commentary
on the New Testament, thus speaks of the theory of verbal
inspiration : " Much might be said of the a priori unworthi-
ness of such a theory as applied to a Gospel whose character
is the freedom of the spirit, not the bondage of the letter ;
but it belongs more to my present work to try it by applying
it to the Gospels as we have them. And I do not hesitate
to say, that being thus applied, its effect will be to destroy
altogether the credibility of our Evangelists The
fact is, that this theory uniformly gives way before intel-
ligent study of the Scriptures themselves ; and is only held,
consistently and thoroughly, by those who have never un-
dertaken that study."
But the same violence which has been employed in for-
cmg the language of the Gospels into harmony with a creed
or an unnatural theory of inspiration, has also been used to
force their statements into accordance with some favorite
theory of the writer. Thus Paulus has endeavored to ex-
plain the miracles of Christ in accordance with a theory
which excludes all miraculous influences, and according to
which neither the ruler s daughter nor Lazarus was actu-
ally dead. The great value of Dr. Furness's charming
writings on the Gospels is, we think, in some cases, seri-
ously impaired by the restraint that is put upon him, and
which he imposes upon the accounts of the Evangelists,
in consequence of his favorite theory in regard to the man-
ner in which miracles must be wrought.
The same unnatural perversion of the language of the
Gospels has been effected by sceptics and unbelievers,
who exercise as much ingenuity in forcing the accounts
of the different Evangelists into a contradiction, as the old
commentators did in forcing them away from it. They find
it easier thus to discredit the authority of the sacred writ-
ings altogether, than to explain them away in such a manner
INTRODUCTION. 23
as to confirm their naturalistic theories. The critical writings
of Strauss and Baur are of this sort. They begin with
theories about the Gospels, to which the Gospels themselves
are forced to submit. There is no question in regard to the
learning, the ability, or the^ consummate generalship of the
men who lead the movement from within against the authority
of the Gospels. And they have been of immense service in
calling the attention of sensible and educated men to the
Gospels, and inducing them to examine them for themselves,
not through the perverse optics of these framers of theories,
but with their own calm and unbiassed judgment. This of
itself is a great gain. All that is needed in order to estab-
lish the truthfulness of the Gospels is that they should be
thus examined.
And here we cannot too earnestly urge the great body
of intelligent men and women to refuse to take any one's
theory about the Gospels without first studying, not specious
writings in support of it, but the Gospels themselves. Let
them test every assumption of the theorist by a careful
reference to the record, and not admit this or that assertion
in regard to what is found in them, until they see it there
with their own eyes. The study of the Gospels is a simple
thing. The knowledge which has a direct and important
bearing on the most important subjects in them is contained
within a small compass. The comparison of one narrative
with another, in order to satisfy ourselves in regard to their
true relations, is easily effected by a little care, and the ap-
plication of a reasonable amount of intelligence. Tliere is
a vast deal of humbug in the pretensions of our modern
neologists. The cloud of words thrown round their theories,
like the cloud of mysticism which enveloped the old doctrines
of the Church in its pretensions to an infallible inspiration
and authority, has only to be tried in the light of reason and
common sense by the truthful words of the Evangelists, and
it will vanish away.
Extraordinary pretensions, however, have always, for a
24 INTRODUCTION.
geason, an influence altogether disproportionate to the real
power that is in them. A sceptical thought is easily lodged
in the mind. Delicate and sensitive natures, who wish to
Relieve, are afraid to examine, lest the foundations of their
faith should sink under them. 8trohg-minded, efficient men,
who ought to study into these things, and thus satisfy them-
selves, as they easily might, are deterred from so doing by a
secret misgiving lest the grounds of their faith should not
bear investigation. Some retreat into the straiter sects,
from a less to a more rigid form of Congregationalism, from
Congregationalism to Episcopacy, from Episcopacy to the
Church of Rome, or directly, for extremes meet on the other
side, from the Absolutism of Rationalism to the Absolutism
of Romanism. There is everywhere, even in the Roman
Catholic communion itself, a sentiment of unrest, coming
from an inward unbelief, which men try to cover up and
hide from themselves by stricter articles of faith, by more
imposing forms of worship, by Church authorities, instead
of healing it by letting in upon it the simple truths of the
Gospel, as examined in the light of reason, and tested by
conscientious and faithful lives. But change of position is
not change of heart. The inward unrest, the hidden un-
belief, which durst not trust God's truth unless guarded by
human defences, clings to them still. These make-believe
methods of finding a religious faith, and with it health and
peace of mind, answer no good end. The sudden and un-
natural marriages which are sometimes sought in the des-
peration of disappointed aiFections are seldom blessed.
There is a hidden element of falsehood, or self-deception,
at the centre of them all.
If we have doubts, we must meet them fairly and honestly
for ourselves. If they are practical doubts, relating to the
essentials of Christianity, the efficacy of prayer, the presence
and the power of God in the soul, the mediatorial office of
Christ between God and, men, we must read the Gospels
for practical guidance, and, seeking to give ourselves up
INTRODUCTION. 25
entirely to their instructions by prayer, by humility of heart,
by a warmer charity towards others, by more faithful and
obedient lives, with the help which God will certainly give
to us if we seek it thus, in our renovated affections, and the
deeper, purer life of the soul, we shall find the faith, and
with it the inward tranquillity and repose, which we crave.
That is, we shall find enough of them to serve as a foretaste
and pledge of the perfect love and peace which shall be
fulfilled to us only in the kingdom of Heaven. And this
is all that has been gained by the greatest saints, — by
Madame Guyon and Fenelon, Archbishop Leighton and Bax-
ter, Charles Wesley and Channing and William Croswell,
as we see when we are admitted to a knowledge of their
interior lives. " The perfect," we once heard Dr. Channing
say, " is what we must always seek, but never hope to
gain." If, on the other hand, our doubts are of an intel-
lectual character, we must meet them fairly on intellectual
grounds, and not push them aside for others, whether sceptics
or bigots, philosophers or Christian believers, to do our
work for us. It is better to read the Gospels ourselves, not
through the creed of a church or a philosophical dogma, but
with our own eyes and minds, such as God has made them,
and judge of 'them by the principles of reason and common
sense. If they give way under the examination, let us meet
the facts of the case like brave and honest men, and not like
children, who blind their eyes from fear of seeing a gliost.
But they will not give way. They only ask to be tried on
their own merits. The reason why they seem to us so un-
substantial is, that we do not rest our weight upon them.
They are like the bridge across the St. Lawrence at Mon-
treal, which sensitively vibrates to the slightest breeze, and
therefore the timid traveller may fear to trust himself upon
it ; but ten thousand tons of human beings and costly mer-
chandise resting upon it, only show how firm and strong it is.
The more severely we test the Gospels, the more securely
shall we find ourselves sustained by them. " Come, and see,
3
26 INTRODUCTIOK.
and know for yourselves," is their appeal to us. Only let
us examine them as they are in themselves, giving ourselves
up to their great thoughts, opening our souls to the holy
spirit which is proceeding from them, and the divine life
which is embodied in them, and which by an eternal genera-
tion is born from them into the heart and life of our race.
If we have doubts or fears, let us search the Scriptures till
we are satisfied in regard to them. We have never known
a man to have his faith shakeivby a thorough and impartial
investigation of the New Testament ; but thousands have in
this way had it confirmed and established.
It does not require any great amount of learning to study
the Gospels intelligently. The deepest thought and the
widest amplitude of knowledge may find room for exercise,
if we undertake to explore them in all their fulness, and in
all the curious details connected with them. We may lose
ourselves amid the wonders and mysteries of the Divine
nature, if we undertake to fathom them in our speculations.
But a clear mind, faithfully applying itself to the study of
the Gospels in a truthful spirit, is all that is required in
order to gain from them the knowledge that is most valuable
to us. An acquaintance with ancient customs, with oriental
productions, modes of living, and forms of speech, may give
us a more precise idea of what is meant in some cases. But
even then, except in a very few instances, the essential truth
is not affected. It may be pleasant to us, and may gratify
a reasonable curiosity, to know precisely what were the lilies
of the field and the fowls of the air to which our Saviour
called attention, as emblems and proofs of the paternal
providence of God, — to know that it was the fruit of the
carob-tree, "with a hard, dark outside, and a dull sweet
taste,'* and not husks, which the Prodigal longed to eat as
he fed it enviously to the swine, while he was perishing
with hunger, — to know how the houses were constructed so
that the paralytic might be taken up by an outside staircase
to the flat roof, and let down through it on his bed into
INTRODUCTION. 27
the inner room or open court, where Jesus sat surrounded
by a throng of people. But the lesson taught, in each one of
these cases, to our minds and hearts, is wholly independent
of such knowledge. And there is danger lest, in seeking
for the adventitious information, we should have our interest
absorbed in that which was intended only as an illustration,
and drawn away from the vital truth which it was employed
to convey.
The geography of Palestine is intimately connected with
our Saviour's ministry. As we follow him back and forth,
from place to place, on the map, events start up before us,
distinct and alive, each one with its own individuality upon
it. Almost any person may learn enough of the geography
of Palestine for this purpose. In getting a clear view of
his life, and in comparing the different Evangelists with one
another, it will be a great help to connect each event with
the spot where it occurred, and thus make it real to us. It
will give the Gospels a firmer hold on our minds, and free
us from the indistinct and dreamy notions with which we
regard them, and through which they are so easily turned
into myths. We are thus enabled to feel and handle them,
and see that they are not bodiless apparitions, but substantial
facts. But we may study the geography of Palestine so as
to know all about the various localities in their relation to
the Gospels, and yet be all the while so absorbed in the
geography itself as to have no perception of the moral influ-
ences which have made those places holy and immortal in
the affections of mankind. Much of our Sunday-school
teaching, we fear, is of this sort.
One difficulty in the way of our studying the Gospels
arises from the fact that we are so familiar with them that
their words pass through our minds without making any im-
pression. This diflRculty may be obviated by reading them
in some foreign language, or, if we cannot do that, in some
translation diflferent from our common version. Norton's or
Campbell's translation, or even Sawyer's, notwithstanding
28 INTRODUCTION.
the severe criticisms which it has called out, will sometimes
reveal to us a sentiment or a thought which had escaped us
in our daily reading. We have endeavored in this work
to assist the student by analyzing in some cases, e. g., in
the Sermon on the Mount, our Saviour's discourses, and thus
bringing out the depth, the affluence, the comprehensiveness
find completeness of the thought. After such an analysis we
may come back to the familiar language with new interest ;
And while we see in it a deeper and richer meaning than
before, we may find in the old words an aroma of Christian
sentiment which had escaped in the process of analyzing the
thought, and which can be embodied in no other words but
those around which the religious associations of our own
lifetime, and of centuries before, have been gathering.
We would ask the attention of those who have a taste for
such investigations, and particularly, if it may be done with-
out presumption, the attention of men of a legal training, to
the narratives which we have constructed from the different
Evangelists, of the events connected with the last days of
our Saviour's life, and the morning of the Resurrection. No
external evidence has ever produced such undoubting con-
fidence in our mind as the way in which these four distinct
narratives, now approaching and now diverging from one
another, — now almost united in one, and now apparently
inconsistent with each other, — keep on, each one in its inde-
pendent course, while all combine to set forth the same great
facts with no real inconsistency even in their minutest details.
We would particularly ask that the accounts of the denials
by Peter, the trial of Jesus, and the events on the morning
of the Resurrection, may be subjected to the severest test of
a judicial investigation, by the aid of a topographical plan
of Jerusalem and its vicinity, and of a Jewish palace, with
a careful attention to the precise words of the original Greek
(disregarded in our English version), by which the writers
denote the different parts of a palace, — the house itself, the
inner court or hall, the gateway or entrance to the court, and
INTRODUCTION. 29
the tessellated pavement in front of the palace, on which
Pilate erected the judgment-seat, from which he unwillingly
pronounced the sentence of death on the Saviour of the
world. Those who may be inclined to follow out this inter-
esting and conclusive method of inquiry under the guidance
of a powerful, discriminating, and appreciative mind, are
referred to the very able work entitled " Hours with the
Evangelists," by I. Nichols, D. D. " The more," says Da
Costa, " we examine the Gospels in detail, as with a mi-
croscope, the more diversities will multiply under our eyes ;
but the more also shall we find these diversities consistent,
and so consistent that they constitute in each of the four
Gospels a particular and distinctive character. And when
once we have found this special character of each Gospel,
we have also found the way to bring all these real diversities
and apparent contradictions into one final and harmonious
unity."
But after all, even in an intellectual point of view, the
most effective method of studying the Gospels is with a
direct application of their precepts to the duties and cir-
cumstances of life. The philosophy of our day is experi-
mental. Its truths and their value in each case are tested
by experiment under the guidance of known facts. So the
precepts of Christ, both in regard to their truthfulness and
their value, are to be tested by being applied and carried
out in practice. The great interior principles of faith and
love must be tried in our hearts ; and they must be carried
out in our fidelity to the precepts and commands by which
our external lives are to be regulated. In this way, the
intellectual study of the Gospels, which often turns aside
into eccentric vagaries or degenerates into lifeless and heart-
less speculations, is tested by our own experiences, and the
truths which it places before us as abstractions are filled out
with the warmth and enthusiasm which are essential to them,
and without which we can no more see them as they are,
than we can understand the beauty of the flowering fields
3*
30 INTRODUCTION.
as they are in June, from the dried specimens in the hands
of a botanist, or the diagrams in his book. There is a spir-
itual life flowing through every part of the Gospels, which
have been created as living organisms, and not put together
as pieces of mechanism ; and when in our own souls we
have experienced that inward life, we see it in them and
them in it. Every word that our Saviour spoke, every act
that he did, has an organic completeness in itself, and is
endowed with the power of perpetuating its own life in the
lives of others. Every portion of the Gospels has this
essential vitality, a living and perpetual witness, to the soul
which receives it, of the source from which it came. Cut oft
any one precept, and it grows out again from the parent
stock. You cannot make it dead, so long as you test its
vitality in your own soul.
The separation of the intellectual study of the Gospels
from the life in which their truths live and bloom, is a sad
necessity, if it be a necessity, in the scientific education of
theological students. It leads them, like the wandering spirit
of old, into dry and desolate places, and opens before them
the dreariest visions of holiness and faith. He who studies
our Saviour's precepts about prayer, and never prays, can
have, even intellectually, but a meagre idea of the subject.
He who studies the great law of pre-eminence among liis
disciples (Matt. xx. 26) will make poor work with the doc-
trine until he has sought to realize it in himself, not only by
an outw^ard show of obedience, but an inward subjection of
his whole nature to its spirit. It is only by the union of study
and practice that the highest ends of religious teaching can
be gained. Then the marriage between the intellect and
the heart will be completed, and from it will be born a
life of faith and holiness and charity, which will grow up as
the true and worthy offspring of such a union.
THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ST. MATTHEW.
It does not enter Into the design of this work to determine the
authenticity or genuineness of the Gospels. We take that for
granted, referring those who may wish to examine the matter
thoroughly to Mr. Norton's " Genuineness of the Gospels " for
the external evidence, and to Dr. Nichols's " Hours with the
Evangelists" for the internal evidence. We suppose the Gospel
of St. Matthew to have been written by him in the language
which was then spoken in Palestine and which is usually called
the Aramasan or Aramaic, and to have been afterwards translated
into Greek, either by the Apostle himself or by some other com-
petent person. In the year 1842 a copy of the greater part of
the Gospel of St. MatthcAv in the Syriac language was obtained
by Archdeacon Tattam from a Syrian monastery in the valley of
the Natron Lakes, which was published in 1858 by William Cure-
ton, D. D., Canon of Westminster, &c., which is regarded by the
very learned editor as among the oldest manuscript copies of
the Gospel now known, and respecting which he does not hesitate
to express his belief, that " it has, to a great extent, retained the
identical terms and expressions which the Apostle himself em-
ployed ; and that we have here, in our Lord's discourses, to a
great extent, the very same words as the Divine Author of our
holy religion himself uttered in proclaiming the glad tidings of
salvation in the Hebrew dialect to those who were listening to
him, and through them to all the world." (Cureton's Syriac
Gospels, Pref , p. xciii.) The precise time when the Gospel was
written is uncertain. "Were we," says Davidson (Introduc-
tion to the New Testament, p. 136), "to express an opinion,
we should be incHned to adopt A. D. 41, 42, or 43 as the most
32 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ST. MATTHEW.
probable." " The place where the Gospel was written is uni-
formly said to have been Judaea." Davidson supposes it to have
been written in Hebrew, and that the Greek version " must have
been made before the close of the first century ; probably before
the appearance of the Gospel of John." It is one of the tradi-
tions respecting it, and it bears internal evidence to the same
effect, that it was written particularly for the Jews. We see
marks of this intention, especially in tlie first chapters; but
throughout the Gospel there is evidently a peculiar adaptation to
the JcAvish mind, particularly when speaking of events as neces-
sary in order to the fulfilment of the prophecies, and in the pains
which are taken to set forth the new religion as a fulfilment,
while the traditions of the Pharisees were only a perversion and
abuse, of the Law and the Prophets.
MATTHEW.
CHAPTER I.
1-17. — The Lineage or Genealogy of Jesus.
The Gospel of Matthew bears internal evidence of having
been written by a Jew, and with particular reference to his
own countrymen. We see marks of this design especially
in the first chapters, which open the whole subject from a
Jewish point of view, and in a manner particularly adapted
to the feelings and habits of thought then existing among the
Jews. The writer is not, as has been charged against him,
imbued with their prejudices and their erroneous ideas re-
specting the Messiah. But he has been educated as a Jew,
and in sympathy with the Jewish mind. If he has also been
introduced into a higher realm of spiritual life and thought,
he is able to enter, as no one but a person born and brought
up in a Jewish atmosphere could, into the views and feelings
of his countrymen. By his appreciation of their state of
mind, and his sympathy with them in their religious expec-
tations, he is able to gain a hearing from them, while he
turns in the direction of their strongest expectations, and
shows how the prophetic writings find their fulfilment in
Jesus. His quotations and allusions, his local and historical
references, his mode of presenting what they would regard
as objectionable subjects, his forms of expression and meth-
ods of appeal through their early religious associations, are
34: MATTHEW I. 1-17.
all adapted to the Jewish mind, and fitted to lead them,
without any needless shock to their prejudices, into a recog-
nition of Jesus as the Messiah.
We have an instance of this in the opening words of the
Gospel, " The lineage of Jesus Christ, son of David, son of
Abraham." The terni " son of David " seems to have been
one held in the highest reverence among the Jews, even if
it were not used, as it probably was, like the word Messiah,
to designate "him who was to come," their great "deliverer"
and "redeemer." By the use of this term, therefore, Mat-
thew at the beginning appeals to a national expectation,
which he still encourages when, in a genealogy, probably
copied from public registers whose authority was recognized
by tlie Jews of his day, he traces step by step the descent
of Jesus from their most powerful monarch, and through
him from their most illustrious ancestor. The prejudice
which otherwise might have led them to put aside with
contempt the claims of a poor young man from Galilee, is
thus removed at the very outset. Though Jesus of Naza-
reth was despised and rejected of men, yet he was descended
from a race of kings and patriarchs. We can scarcely con-
ceive how this dry catalogue of hard words should rouse
the national enthusiasm of a Jew by its roll of mighty
names, and awaken his respect for one whose advent into
the world had been prepared through such a line of an-
cestors.
In order that it should have any weight with the Jews,
this table of names must have been copied from family
registers which they recognized as authentic. Whatever
view, therefore, we may take of the inspiration of the writer,
our confidence in his accuracy cannot be affected by any
omissions or mistakes that may be pointed out in the list
of names. It is not on his authority as that of an inspired
writer, but on their authority as records preserved and
accepted by the Jews, that Matthew presents them to his
countrymen. If he had been inspired to correct every
MATTHEW I. 18-25. 35
mistake and supply every omission, every alteration that
he made would serve only to destroy their authority with
those for whom he was writing, and to excite their preju-
dices against him. This view of the matter takes away
altogether the force of objections to the accuracy of the
Gospels, which are drawn from apparent discrepancies be-
tween the genealogy here and that in Luke iii. 23-38.
^e have only to suppose them to be, as they unquestion-
ably are, copies of different records, which had been kept
in different places, and which varied from one another,
either through want of exactness in the records, or in con-
sequence of the different methods by which the line of an-
cestors was brought down from a common originak Tlie
labored attempts, therefore, to reconcile these two lists of
names with each other, or with records found in the Old
Testament, however interesting they may be to ingenious
scholars, can have no important bearing on the trustworthi-
ness of the Gospels.
18-25. — Miraculous Conceptiox.
The account of the birth of Jesus which is given here
and in the second chapter of Luke, has been a stumbling-
block to many sincere minds, and is rejected as in itself
incredible by some who accept as authentic the other evan-
gelical accounts of miracles. But is there anything in the
nature of things incredible in what is here recorded ? The
great naturalists of our day recognize a succession of creative
epochs, when higher types of physical life were introduced.
The different orders of animals which have appeared from
time to time were not slowly evolved by a process of de-
velopment from lower orders previously existing, but one
after another they have been introduced by separate and
original acts of creation. Now, as the physical advance-?
ment of the world has thus been marked by distinct crea-
tive epochs, might we not expect something of the same
1
36 MATTHEW I. 18-25.
kind in its spiritual advancement ? " But how is it possible/'
we are asked, "that such an event as that recorded here
and in the second chapter of Luke could take place?"
How is it possible, we ask in reply, that a new order of
animals should be introduced, or the first man created?
We cannot understand these things, and our ignorance
should make us slow in setting limits, not only to what
is possible, but to what is probable, in the exercise of God's
almighty and creative power. Within certain spheres of
creative action, where facts enough are ascertained to de-
termine what is the established order of development and
progress, as, for example, in the sciences of natural history,
chemistry, and astronomy, we may draw our inferences
with a good degree of certainty, and foretell what is to be
from our knowledge of what has been. But even here we
are not competent to decide beforehand when a new crea-
tive epoch shall supervene upon the existing order of things
in time to come, as it has in time past, or whether it shall
come at all. Our knowledge does not reach far enough, —
we have not ascertained facts enough, or with a sufficient
degree of exactness, — to comprehend these widely separat-
ed and therefore apparently extraordinary interpositions, or
to reconcile them with what we know of the laws of nature.
There was a time when the motion of comets was supposed
to be wholly eccentric, and inconsistent with the laws of
planetary motion. It only required a wider and more pre-
cise knowledge of facts to reduce them all to the same law.
So, unquestionably, it is in regard to the widely separated
creative epochs in the physical universe.
And have we not a right to infer, at least as not im-
possible or in itself extremely improbable, something of the
same kind in regard to those apparently anomalous inter-
ventions by which a higher spiritual life has from time
to time been brought into the world ? Is it the part of a
true philosophy to deny the alleged fact, because we can-
not see far enough to reconcile it with our preconceived and
MATTHEW I. 18-25. 37
limited ideas of nature and the natural order of events ?
In regard to the miraculous conception of Jesus by an
immediate creative act of the divine spirit, may we not
regard it as analogous to those creative epochs when new
orders of plants or animals are first introduced ? As to the
vulgar objection, that it involves an act which is in itself
impossible, or at least utterly incredible, we may allow it
to have some weight with us, when those who urge it show
wherein the birth of a soul into the world by the immediate
act of God, as here related, is in itself more impossible, or
more utterly inexplicable to us, than the ordinary process
by which a plant, an animal, or a human being is produced.
The precise means by which life is perpetuated is just as
much a mystery to us as the means by which it was origi-
nally introduced with the first plant, or man, or with Jesus,
who stands at the head of a new and spiritual creation.
This much may be urged from their own stand-point
against the conclusions of those who, on scientific grounds,
reject this whole class of facts as lying outside of the order
of nature. There are others, who believe in the Christian
miracles, but reject the* account of the miraculous conception
as something plainly unnatural and improbable. Among
these, perhaps at the head of this class of writers, is Dr.
Furness, in the views which he has taken of this matter
in the fresh, original, and beautiful works which he has pub-
lished on Jesus of Nazareth. He lays great emphasis on
the naturalness of the Christian miracles, — the ease with
which they were evidently performed by Jesus in the
natural exercise of his own faculties. But why were they
so easy to him, unless because of the extraordinary powers
with which he was endowed ? He came to introduce a new
epoch of spiritual life ; and, that it might be in conformity
with the order of nature, must it not have been by a new
act of creation ? He who stood at the head of this new
era, by the natural exercise of his own powers uttering
thoughts and doing deeds man never had done before, must
4
38 MATTHEW I. 18-25.
have been endowed as man never had been before. And
could these extraordinary endowments liave been bestowed
upon him in any way more in accordance with the order of
nature than by the method here indicated, i. e. by a new
act of creative power ?
When speaking of nature as containing within itself all
the powers and agencies of the universe, we must not con-
fine ourselves to the limited operations which take j^lace
within our ordinary experience, but must leave room for
those great secular interpositions which are equally a part
of the divine system of nature, and which, at widely dis-
tant intervals in the fulness of time, bring in new orders
of beings and new eras of life. Immeasurably the greatest
religious epoch since the creation of man was that which
was introduced by Jesus. When we speak of it merely
as of a new revelation, we fail utterly to express either its
character or its greatness. Matthew and Luke, in their ac-
count of the conception of Jesus by an immediate act of
God's creative spirit ; the introduction to the Gospel of John
respecting the word made Jlesh ; the language of Paul, as,
e. g. in Col. i. 15-20, where he speaks of Christ as the
first-born of every creature, and, not the revealer alone
jof divine truth, but the creator of new worlds of spiritual
life and power, — are in this way brought into harmony
with one another, with the account of his miracles, and with
the otherwise extraordinary language which he applied to
himself. The Gospel account of the conception of Jesus
comes as the fitting and natural introduction into the world
of a divine life, which, growing up under the laws of our
mortal and human condition, should, as a new creation,
stand at the head of a new era in man's history. Here,
at its beginning on the earth, is a fountain high and large
enough to fill all the streams of action, thought, and life
which flow through the Gospel narratives. The knowl-
edge, holiness, and power of Jesus, so far transcending^ all
that man had known or been or done, are only on the same
MATTHEW I. 22, 23. 39
high level as his birth. The beginning is needed, in order
to account for that which follows. Without it, the miracles,
and still more the terms in which Jesus constantly spoke
of himself, would seem to us unnatural and monstrous.
We accept, then, the account of the miraculous conception,
not only because it is an undisputed part of the Gospel
narratives, but because something of the kind is required
by the higher and broader analogies of nature, and in order
to the completeness of the Gospels themselves.
22, 23. — Prediction of Christ's Birth.
The account of the miraculous conception of Jesus by
a virgin would undoubtedly appear harsh and offensive to
the Jewish mind. To soften this impression, the writer
introduces from one of the most honored among the Jew-
ish prophets language which so exactly describes the case
before them that the whole matter presents itself as a fulfil-
ment of the ancient prediction. The passage quoted from
Isaiah vii. 14 is taken from the Septuagint version, where
the word irapdeuos, virgin^ is used instead of a literal transla-
tion of the less decisive Hebrew word, which means damsel,
or a young and unmarried woman. This particular word,
in the connection in which it is here given, is just the one
to meet the Jewish feeling caused by the account of the
birth of Jesus, and meet it all the more effectively because
the purpose for which the passage is introduced is not
stated. It is as if the writer, seeing how his Jewish read-
ers were likely to be affected by an account so extraor-
dinary, had said, " Here we may apply the words of the
prophet, ' A virgin shall conceive and bear a son,' " — thus,
in the very language of their sacred writings, describing
that feature in the birth of Jesus which must have been
most offensive to them. We are to regard the quotation
as primarily brought forward less for the purpose of arguing
from a prophecy fulfilled, than to soften their prejudices by
40 MATTHEW I. 22, 23.
the literal application to the objectionable features of the
case before them of language which they held sacred.
Is the passage here quoted from Isaiah a prediction of
the Messiah? To answer this question we must examine
it in its original connection. There we find that Syria
and Samaria have combined against Ahaz, king of Judah,
who is greatly terrified and discouraged. The prophet an-
nounces, as a sign to Ahaz, that a woman then unmarried
shall bear a son, and call his name Immanuel (God-with-
us, in token of God's presence), and before the child shall
be old enough to know good from evil, the land whose two
kings so terrified Ahaz should be desolate. This, as any
one who reads the whole chapter (Noyes's Translation)
must see, is the only application required or suggested by
the lanpruage.
May it not, however, in accordance with the divine in-
tention, be taken up out of its original surroundings, and
as a prophetic declaration find its highest and truest fulfil-
ment in some remote and entirely different class of events ?
" Often," says Bengel, " predictions are quoted in the New
Testament which the original hearers were undoubtedly re-
quired by the divine purpose to apply to events then taking
place. But the same divine purpose, looking farther on,
so framed the language that it might fit more exactly the
times of the Messiah, and this divine purpose, the Apostles
teach, we are readily to accept." "The difficulty," says
Olshausen, (Commentary on Gospels, Matthew i. 22, 23,)
" can be removed by our acknowledging in the Old Testa-
ment prophecies a twofold reference to a present lower
subject and to a future higher one. With this suppo-
sition, we can everywhere adhere to the immediate, simple,
grammatical sense of the words, and still recognize the
quotations of the New Testament as prophecies in the full
sense. And it belongs to the peculiar adjustment and
arrangement of the Scripture, that the life and substance
of the Old Testament were intended as a mirror of the
MATTHEW I. 41
New Testament life, and that in the person of Christ par-
ticularly, as the representative of the New Testament, all
the rays of the Old Testament ideas are concentrated as
in their focus."
We may admit the general principle here stated. The
only objection to applying it in the case before us is the
want of sufficient evidence that this particular passage was
intended, either by the prophet or the evangelist, to be
so understood. On reading carefully the whole passage
in Isaiah, from the beginning of the seventh chapter to the
eighth verse of the ninth chapter in Dr. Noyes's Transla-
tion, we cannot free ourselves from the impression, that
though the seventh chapter standing by itself might indi-
cate no allusion to the Messiah, yet the extraordinary pas-
sage beginning with the last verse of the eighth and reach-
ing through the first seven verses of the ninth chapter can
hardly be understood in any other way than as pointing
on to the times of the Messiah ; and if so, as giving some
countenance to those who interpret vii. 14 as in a secondary
sense applying to the same distant event. For the opposite
view, see Dr. Palfrey's able, ingenious, and elaborate work
on " The Relation between Judaism and Christianity."
NOTES.
The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of Da-
2 vid, the son of Abraham. Abraham begat Isaac ; and
Isaac begat Jacob ; and Jacob begat Judas and his brethren.
1. Jesus Christ] In the body truthfulness in the writers of the
of the Gospel, where Jesus is spoken New Testament. the sou
of as present and actins:, he is never of David] i. e. the true Messiah,
called by his official title, Chn'sf, the " For by no more common or more
Messiah, or the anointed, though he is proper name did the Jewish nation
constantly so called in the Acts and point out the Messiah, than by the
the Epistles. This is one of the son of David. See Matt. xii. 23,
slight but unmistakable marks of xxi. 9, xxii. 42 ; Luke xviii. 38 ;
4*
42 MATTHEW I.
And Judas begat Phares and Zara of Thamar. And Phares 3
begat Esroni ; and Esrom begat Aram ; and Aram begat 4
Aminadab ; and Aminadab begat Naasson ; and Naasson begat
Sahnon ; and Sahnon begat Booz of Raehab. And Booz be- 5
gat Obed of Ruth. And Obed begat Jesse ; and Jesse begat 6
David the king. And David the king begat Solomon of her
that had been the wife of Urias. And Solomon begat Roboam ; 7
and Roboam begat Abia ; and Abia begat Asa ; and Asa be- s
gat Josaphat; and Josaphat begat Joram; and Joram begat
Ozias ; and Ozias begat Joatham ; and Joatham begat Achaz ; 9
and Aehaz begat Ezekias ; and Ezekias begat Manasses ; and 10
Manasses begat Amon ; and Anion begat Josias; and Josias 11
begat Jechonias and his brethren, about the time they were
carried away to Babylon. — And after they were brought to 12
Babylon, Jechonias begat Salathiel ; and Salathiel begat Zoro-
babel ; and Zorobabel begat Abiud ; and Abiud begat Elia- 13
kirn ; and Eliakim begat Azor ; and Azor begat Sadoc ; and u
Sadoc begat Achim ; and Achim begat Eliud ; and Eliud be- 15
gat Eleazar ; and Eleazar begat INIatthan ; and Matthan begat
Jacob ; and Jacob begat Joseph the husband of Mary, of 16
whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ. So all the 17
generations from Abraham to David are fourteen generations ;
and from David until the carrying away into Babylon are four- ,
teen generations ; and from the carrying away into Babylon
unto Christ are fourteen generations.
Now the birth of Jesus Christ Avas on this wise ; when as his I8
mother Mary was espoused to Joseph, before they came to-
gether, she was found with child of the Holy Ghost. Then 19
Joseph her husband, being a just man, and not willing to make
and everywhere in the Tahiindic Manasseh, Sec. 17. from
writers." Lightfoot. 8. and Abraham to David are four-
Joram begat Ozias] Ozias was teen generations] Only thirteen
not the son of Joram, but there are here given. One name may have
were three kings between them, — slipped out of the account; but, as
Ahaziah,.Joash, and Amaziah. In Lightfoot states, literal exactness in
the Syriac version edited by Dr. numbers was not regarded by the
Cureton, these names are supplied. Jews. 19. Then Joseph
In these genealogical tables it was her husband] It Avas the cus-
not unusual to omit several genera- torn among the Jews for a man
tions, and to reckon the legal grand- to be betrothed to a woman some
son or great-grandson as if he were time before he actually took her
a son. Ozias is the Greek name from her father's house to live Avith
for Uzziah, as Achaz is for Ahaz, her as his wife. During this inter-
Ezekias for Hezekiah, Manasses for val she was cousidered his wife,
MATTHEW I.
43
her a public example, was minded to put lier away privily.
20 But while he thouglit on these things, behold, the angel of the
Lord appeared unto him in a dream, saying : Joseph, thou son
of David, fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife ; for that
21 which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost. And she shall
bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his name JESUS ; for he
22 shall save his people from their sins. (Now all this was done,
that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the
and was legally liable for any mis-
conduct, the same as if they hud
actually come together in marriage.
If Joseph, therefore, had instituted
proceedings against ^lary for con-
jngal infidelity, the legal penalty,
a disgraceful divorce or perhaps
death, would have been exacted.
The woi-d ti-anslated just, Stfcatoy,
does not bear the meaning vierciful,
which is sometimes put upon it. A
paraphrase closer to the original
would be : " But Joseph, her hus-
band, though a just man, [and there-
fore unable to countenance Avhat
seemed to him a violation of the
law,] yet not wishing to expose her
[to unnecessary shame or sufler-
iiig], had made up his mind to put
her away privately ; " not, however,
withont a writing of divorce, as
that would have been unlawful.
For the law of divorce, see Dent,
xxii. 23, xxiv. 1. 20. in a
dream] This mode of divine com-
munication, i. e. through a dream,
is mentioned nowhere in the New
Testament but here and in the next
chapter, unless we regard tlie dream
of Pilate's wife, xxvii. 19, as of the
same character. 21. and
thou shalt call his name Jesus]
i. e. Saviouu, — in Hebrew, the
same name as Joshna. for
he shall save his people from
their sins] The trne character
o( his salvation, namely, salvation
from sin rather than from its penal-
ties, is here distinctly set forth.
his people] not the Jews alone, but
all who accept him as their Sav-
ionr. 22. that it might
be fumiled, &c.] lua, that. " It
is impossible," says Al ford, "to in-
terpret Iva in any other sense than
' in order that.' The words ' all this
was done,' and the uniform usage
of the New Testament, in which
iva is never used except in this
sense, forbid any other." We are
surprised at so unqualified a state-
ment. Winer, the ablest writer on
the Grammar of the New Testa-
ment, though he insists on design
as the primary and almost uniform
meaning of the word, is yet obliged
to allow that there are cases (e. g.
John i. 27, iv. 34, vi. 7, xv. 8, xvi. 7 ;
Matt, xviii. 6; Luke xi. 50, xvii. 2,
&c.) where ''the original import of
the particle of design entirely dis-
appears." Winer, xliv. 8, c. (Mas-
son's Tr., Am. ed. p. 354). Sophocles,
in his learned work, " A Glossary ot
Later and Byzantine Greek," Intro-
duct., § 95, says : " In later and By-
zantine Greek, iva often denotes a
result; that is, it has the force of
cotrre, that, so that, so as." And
this he proves by many examples.
Purpose or design is not then neces-
sarily implied by the word i.va. On
tlie contrary, it is also used to de-
note result as well as purpose ; e. g.
Luke ix. 45 : " But they understood
not this saying, and it was hid from
them, that (iva, so that] they per-
ceived it not." This passage, we
think, furni.shes the key to the pas-
sage here, and to the same form of
expression, Matt. ii. 15, iv. 14, xxi.
4, xxvii. 35. In every one of these
instances, so that is a better trans-
lation of tva than iti order that. It
is equally in conformity with the
grammatical usage of the Greek.
word, and evidently better describes
the use that is made of the prophe-
cies. The Evangelist does not mean
to say, these events occurred in
order thai the words of the prophet
44
MATTEIEW I.
prophet, saying: "Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and 2a
shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanu-
el;" which, being interpreted, is, God with us.) Then Joseph, 24
being raised from sleep, did as the angel of the Lord had bid-
den him ; and took unto him his wife, and knew her not till 25
she had brought forth her first-born son; and he called his
name Jesus.
might be fulfilled," but " they
occurred in such a manner thjit
as a resiiir the words of the proph-
et were fulfilled in them." 22.
might be fulfilled] nXrjpcoBf).
What is meant hy fiufilledf The
literal meaning of this word isJiUed,
or filed out. Thus Matt. v. 17:
" Think not that I come to destroy
the law or the prophets : I come not
to destroy, but to fulfil;" i. e. I
come to carry out to its complete
and spiritual fulfilment the law
whose burdensome forms, once a
help, are now a hindrance to the
work for which it was given. To
fulfil, in this case, is not, therefore,
a literal fulfilment, — for in the lit-
eral sense of the words, Jesus did
come to destroy the law ; but it was
to fulfil the law in a different and
higher sense than had previously
been thought of. The same, we
suppose, is also true in regard to
the prophets. Not always in a
literal sense, but in their deepest
and highest meaning, in the divine
truth and life, the spiritual re-
demption and deliverance towards
which they were pointing, their
words are fulfilled in Jesus. So,
in other Avays, in an inferior sense,
even one which though literal may
never have occurred to them, spe-
cific words which they used may
have been fulfilled in particular in-
cidents connected with his life, i. e.
may be used to describe them, as
in the passage before us. See also
Notes on ii. 5, 15, 17, 23 ; xxi.
4. For a fuller exposition of the
subject of Prophecv, see xxiv.
28. Behold, a Tirgiu]
The first clause of this sentence is
the emphatic one. The name £m-
vianuel^ which is found nowhere else
in the New Testament, was not giv-
en to Jesus. He was not so named
by his parents. He never assumed
the name himself, and was never so
called by his disciples. It was di-
rected to be given to a child men-
tioned in Is. vii. 14, who was to be
born in the reign of Ahaz, and who
was to be to him a sign that God
was with him. " The mere use of
such a name." says Dr. Barnes,
" would not prove that he had a di-
vine nature," especially, we might
add, Avheu there is no evidence that
he ever bore the name. It does,
however, unquestionably describe
the mission of our Saviour, in whom
God was with us, manifesting him-
self in the flesh, and reconciling the
world to himself. The Jews were
in the habit of giving significant ti-
tles to their great men. Thus the
original name of Joshua was OiOiea
or Saviour, and Moses, Num. xiii. 16,
called him Jehosliun, wliich means
the salvation of God. FJi mean< Afij
God; Klijah. My God Jthovah ; Eli-
sha, God the Saviour. 25. her
first-borii son] Tischendorf, in
confonnity with the reading in some
of the best manuscripts, leaves out
the word frst-born ; but Alford re-
tains it, with the )-emark that the
omission " was evidently made from
superstitious veneration for Ma-
ry." The perpetual virginity of
the mother of Jesus, as held by
the Roman Catholic Church, is not
implied or intimated here by either
reading.
MATTHEW II. 1-12. 45
CHAPTER II.
1-12. — Visit of the Wisp: Men, or Magi.
The remarkable event in this chapter, at least that which
gives the greatest trouble to those who would understand
in all its bearings every particular connected with the Gos-
pel narratives, is the visit of the Magi, or wise men, under
the guidance of a star, or some extraordinary luminous
appearance in the heavens. A vast deal of learning has
been expended upon the subject without coming to any
satisfactory results. It has never been definitely ascer-
tained who these wise men M^ere, or what was the precise
appearance in the heavens that brought them to Bethlehem.
All that can be learned is, that there was at that time a
widely extended expectation in the East of the birth, in
that part of the world, of some one who was to have an
extraordinary influence on human affairs. Jews, in their
various national misfortunes, and the migrations consequent
upon them, had mingled as permanent residents with the
people beyond their eastern borders. They had undoubt-
edly carried with them their religious notions, and par-
ticularly the prophetic expectations of the Messiah, which
had entered so deeply into the heart of the nation. Their
ablest and wisest men would naturally be brought into
connection with the corresponding classes whom they might
meet in foreign lands, and in the interchange of ideas with
one another whatever was most remarkable in the science
or religious systems of either would become the common
property of all. Thus there may have been in those Eastern
regions men of devout and earnest hearts, waiting anxiously
46 MATTHEW II. 1-15?.
for some new manifestation from Heaven, and for pomp
new and higher agency to go forth amid the confused and
otherwise hopeless affairs of the world. When the fulness
of time had come, a sign was given to them. As, to the
shepherds at Bethlehem, who as Jews were accustomed to
the idea of angelic ministrations, a vision of angels an-
nounced the birth of the Messiah, so to the Magi, who
were accustomed to look to the heavenly bodies for por-
tents of earthly changes, a star or other brilliant light in
heaven was given as an indication of the great event for
which they had been waiting. Probably they had already
fixed on Juda3a, and of course on Jerusalem, the capital of
Judaea, as the scene of the long-expected events. The
often quoted passages from the Roman historians, Suetonius
and Tacitus, both refer to Judaia as tlie place from which,
according to expectations generally prevalent in the East,
a man was destined, about that time, to come and obtain
the empire of the world. Pliny not improbably had refer-
ence to something of the same kind in calling Jerusalem
(H. N., 1. 5, c. 15) "by far the most illustrious city, not
only of Judaea, but of the East," since in outward splendor
it was greatly inferior to other Eastern cities. The place,
therefore, was fixed and known. When the unusual ap-
pearance in the sky was seen, which the wise men ac-
cepted as a signal to announce the birth of the expected
deliverer, they knew at once to what place it would lead
them. Carrying the gifts which, with their Eastern ideas
and habits, they regarded as most worthy to be offered on
such a visit, they hastened to Jerusalem, and made known
the object of their journey.
The inhabitants of Jerusalem were deeply moved by the
report of their coming. The hoary-headed monarch, whose
long reign of cruelty and blood was soon to find a fitting
termination in the horrible and loathsome disease which
closed his miserable life, had, of course, his cruel suspicions
excited by any reference at that time to the birth of a
MATTHEW II. 1-12. 47
king. Only a short time before, more than six thousand
of the Pharisees (Josephus, Ant. 17. 2. 4) had refused tlie
oath of allegiance to him, and foretold " how God had de-
creed that his government should ceaSe, and his posterity
be deprived of it." He put to death their leading men ;
but, sitting on a throne to which as a foreigner he could
have no rightful claim, the Idumtean Herod was not the
man to forget their predictions, or anything else that might
stand in the way of his regal power and its continuance
in his family. But it would not do to let his fears be
known. Cloaking, therefore, his murderous intention under
an affectation of reverence for the predicted Messiah, he
called together the chief priests and the scribes, who as
teachers of the law were most thoroughly versed in the
sacred writings, and asked them where the Christ, or the
Messiah, was to be bom.
The inquest which he made, and the manner in which
it was received and answered, prove how general and how
strong among the Jews the expectations of the Messiah
were. The leading minds of the nation evidently felt
themselves to be on the eve of the extraordinary series
of events which had been foretold by their prophets centu-
ries before, and which had always been kept up in the
expectations of the people.
Having learned the particular place of the Messiah's
birth, the wise men set out for Bethlehem. While on their
r
way, they were gladdened exceedingly by seeing again the
star which they had seen while in the East, and which
now showed itself in such a direction that it seemed to
be leading them forward, till on their reaching the place
it appeared to stand over the spot where the young child
was. The expression, "to stand over a place," in its ap-
plication to a heavenly body, was not foreign to ancient
modes of speech. Josephus, in enumerating the portents
which went before the destruction of Jerusalem, speaks
of a comet which "stood over the city," in precisely the
same form of words that is here applied to the star.
48 MATTHEW II. 1-12.
Bethlehem was a small town six or seven miles south
of Jerusalem, but endeared to the Jewish heart by many
precious historical associations. Within its limits, on the
way to Jerusalem, Rachel, the favorite wife of Jacob, had
died and was buried. There was the scene of most of
the affecting events recorded in the beautiful pastoral of
Ruth. There was the residence of Jesse, and there the
genius and the devotions of David had been called out
while tending his father's flocks amid its hills. There, by
the consecrating oil of the aged Samuel he had been set
apart for the kingly office. And there, five hundred years
later, according to Jewish traditions, but we know not on
what authority, was the birthplace of Zerubbabel, who led
back the captive Jews from Babylon, and rebuilt their
temple.
Bethlehem abounds in high hills, from which the Dead
Sea, and the mountains beyond its eastern shore, are visi-
ble. Some have supposed that the star which attracted
the wise men in the East was the luminous appearance
(the glory of the Lord shining round about them) which
the shepherds, Luke ii. 9, saw on the night of the nativity,
and which from those lofty hills might have been seen
far to the eastward. But this will not account for the
star which the Magi saw on reaching Bethlehem. Some
have supposed that it was a comet; others, and Trench
among them, have thought that it was a peculiar star,
like that which shone out suddenly in Cassiopeia, Novem-
ber 11, 1572, and which, after surpassing in apparent size
all the fixed stars, and even the planet Jupiter, being
sometimes distinctly seen at midday, gradually decreased,
till, sixteen months after it was first seen, it seemed to
go out entirely, and no traces of it have been discov-
ered since. This star was observed and reported by
Tycho Brahe, the most illustrious astronomical observer of
his day. Another star, yet more remarkable, appeared in
1604, at the same time with, and in the immediate neigh-
MATTHEW II. 1-12. 49
borhood of, a remarkable conjunction of the planets Saturn,
Jupiter, and Mars, — " such a conjunction," says Trench, (in
his " Star of the Wise Men," p. 32,) "as, occurring at rarest
intervals, must yet have occurred as regarded the first two
planets in 747, and all three in 748 A. U. C. ; in years,
that is, either of them very likely to have been, and one
of which most probably w^as, the true Annus Domini."
But these speculations, though they may possibly point
to a true solution of the phenomena in question, do not
seem to us of much consequence. With the birth of Christ
we are introduced into a sphere of higher than material
agencies. From the first inception of his earthly being, in
the overshadowing power and spirit of the Most High, to
the time when he " was taken up " from his disciples, " and
a cloud received him out of their sight," Jesus was at-
tended by powers which come not usually within the cog-
nizance of the senses, and of which our natural philoso-
phy, limited as it is by the observation of physical facts
through the senses, can render no adequate account. They
belong to a province of divine agencies into which we
have not been permitted to enter far enough to be able
to speak with any certainty of the conditions or the ex-
tent of their influence on human affairs or the material
universe. When once we are brought, as we are by the
life of Jesus, into the realm of miraculous manifestations,
it is idle to attempt to explain them by principles drawn
from the narrow and unwieldy phenomena of physical sci-
ence.
The anniversary of the wise men offering their gifts to
the infant Jesus has been celebrated in most Christian
churches as the Epiphany, or manifestation of Christ to
the Gentiles. The wise men are regarded by the Roman
Catholic Church as kings who came from different parts
of India, and to them has been applied the language of
the seventy-second Psalm, " The kings of Sheba and Seba
shall offer gifts," " and to him shall be given of the gold
5 D
50 MATTHEW II. 16 -IS.
of Sheba." Each of the gifts also has its mystical signifi-
cation, — the gold, a royal offering, indicating his kingly
office, the frankincense denoting his heavenly origin, and
the myrrh (in about a hundred pounds of myrrh and aloes
his body afterwards was laid, John xix. 39) prefiguring
his death. These are fanciful interpretations, but probably
they come nearer to the reverential feeling which they
were employed to express, than any meaning that we can
arrive at through the researches of natural history. In
all ages of the world, especially in those Eastern regions,
the devout and lowly in heart have delighted in offering
up whatever was most beautiful and jirecious, as a token
of inward reverence and affection. In this way gold and
gems and precious gums and ointments became invested
with hallowed associations, and spoke to the soul w^ith a
grace and charm that we in our cold climate can poorly
comprehend. A Judas might count the pecuniary cost of
such gifts, and wdse men in our day, whose wisdom is
wholly absorbed in estimating their outward value, may
exclaim about the w^aste in matters of sentiment. But the
Saviour has recognized in such gifts a deeper and holier
worth than any merely pecuniary value, even though it
were to be expended upon the poor.
16-18. — Murder of the Children in Bethlehem.
The account of the murder of the innocents has been
set aside as unhistorical, because it is mentioned by no
other historian, and because it has been thought to be
a crime too foolish and too atrocious even for the crafty
and cruel Herod. But the craftiest men are often taken
in their own craftiness. Their roundabout, underhanded,
complicated plans for the accomplishment of what might
l)e done so much more easily by some direct means, often
fail of their purpose, and in the result appear like folly.
" Any one," says Trench, " who is acquainted with, and
MATTHEW n. 16 - 18. 51
calls to mind, the cruel precautions of Eastern monarchs,
in times past and present, in regard of possible competi-
tors for their throne, often makirig an entire desolation,
even of their own kindred round them, will see in this
what many an Eastern monarch would have done, — what
certainly a Ilerod would not have shrunk from doing."
His jealousy, which had been excited by the errand of the
wise men, was changed to rage when he found that they
had eluded, and, as he proudly considered it, "mocked"
him. He determined therefore, in his wrath, to secure
the destruction which he had designed for one of the chil-
dren of Bethlehem by a summary act of vengeance on all.
This was entirely in keeping with all that Ave know of
Herod. " The man," says Trench, " who could put his
wife and three of his own sons to death, who made a soli-
tude round him by the slaughter of so many of his friends,
who could kill, under semblance of sport, as he did, the
youthful high-priest, Aristobulus ; who, when he was him-
self dying by horrible and loathsome diseases, so far from
being softened, or owning the hand of God, which every
one else saw therein, could devise such a devilish wicked-
ness as that narrated by Josephus, to secure weeping and
lamentation at his death,* would have had little scruple
in conceiving or carrying out an iniquity such as the sacred
historian lays here to his charge." Nor would the crime
be one of so remarkable a character that historians like
Tacitus or Josephus would be unlikely to omit it in their
* According to Josephus, Antiq., Lib. XVTI. c. 6, s. 6-8, " It troubled him
greatly to anticipate the joy which there would be among the Jews at
his death; and with the purpose of turning this joy into weeping, he got
together from every city the chief personages of the land, whom he shut
up in the Hippodrome of Jericho, where he lay dying. He then obtained
a promise from his sister Salome and her husband, that, the instant he
expired, these all should be slain, so that, although none wept and la-
mented him, thei'e should yet be abundant weeping and lamentation at
his death. His intentions were not better fulfilled than thos* of tyrants
after their deaths commonly are."
52 MATTHEW II. 6, 15.
imperfect catalogue of his crimes. The act was one of
no pohtical importance. The number of children mur-
dered has been greatly exaggerated in the popular mind.
" From two years old, and under," in the Jewish mode
of reckoning, probably means, downward from those who
have entered on their second year, or, as w^e should say,
under one year old. In a small place like Bethlehem
they could hardly have numbered more than ten or fifteen,
and these might have been put out of the way without
any public commotion by the practised and accomplished
ajrents of a tvrant like Ilerod.
QUOTATIOXS FROM THE PrOPHKTS.
G. The references to the Old Testament in this chapter are
worthy of notice. The quotation here from Micah a-. 2
is given, not merely as an important historical fact in its
relation to the inquiries of Ilerod, but as showing that
the great Jewish council, or Sanhedrim 'at Jerusalem, com-
posed of the chief priests and the men most learned in
the law, had fixed on Bethlehem, where Jesus had just
been born, as the birthplace of the Messiah. The ancient
prophet, therefore, as interpreted by the highest relig-
ious authority recognized among the Jews, accorded w^ith
the writer as to the place of the Messiah's birth. This
must at the outset have had great weight with those whose
favorable attention Matthew wished jiarticularly to gain.
It is not his opinion of the application of the prophecy
that is given, but the deliberately expressed opinion of
those whom they looked up to as their authorized teachers
in such matters. See John vii. 42.
15. The second quotation, " OiU of Egypt have I called
my Son" Hos. xi. 1, is given as one of the coincidences
in language and in fact wdiich could not but strike those
who regarded both as sacred, and who thus through their
reliscious associations would be led on in the narrative
MATTHEW II. 17, 18. 53
with less violent antipathies. Whether Israel, (whom God
here calls his son,) coming up out of Egypt to receive and to
perpetuate the knowledge of the true God through the laws
and institutions appointed by him, was or was not held forth
by the prophet as a type of that greater Son of God now
coming from Egypt, who was to exercise a yet migh.tier
influence in the advancement of God's kingdom through
the earth, is of little consequence, so far as the writer's
purpose or the pertinency of the quotation is concerned. .
17, 18. The third quotation is from Jeremiah xxxi. 15.
Jerusalem had been taken and destroyed by Nebuzaradan.
The Jewish nobles had been slain, and after the sons of
the king, Zedekiah, had been murdered in his sight, his
own eyes were put out. The people were gathered together
in chains at Ramah, a city of Ephraim, probably about six
miles northward from Jerusalem, whence they were to be-
gin their wearisome and sorrowful journey towards Babylon,
the land of their long captivity. The prophet Jeremiah,
who had been one of the captives, and who is now pre-
dicting the joyful return of his people from their bondage,
contrasts their future gladness with the feelings of that
dismal day when they were taking their departure from
Ramah with such lamentation and bitter weeping, that it
seemed as if Rachel, the wife of their common ancestor,
were there, as a mother, weeping for her cliildren, and re-
fusing to be comforted because they were not. This strik-
ing and beautiful figure the Evangelist has transferred to
Bethlehem, to represent the lamentation, weeping, and great
mourning caused by the murder of the children. The
image of Rachel rising from her tomb and weeping there
is rendered more appropriate by the fact that her grave
was near Bethlehem, in the midst of those who had been
sacrificed by that barbarous act of cruelty. Whether Jere-
miah used language which, besides describing the sorrows
at Ramah and the joyful return of the Jews from Babylon,
pointed on in prophetic vision to the sorrows of Bethlehem,
' 5*
54 MATTHEW II. 23.
and the more joyful deliverance which should thence ensue,
is not clearly announced, though the chapter, taken as a
whole, seems to abound in words expressive of a grandeur
and magnificence too rich and vast to find their entire ful-
filment in the restoration of the Jews from Babylon. There
is nothing distinctly said in the Gospel beyond the appli-
cation of the passage to the mourning at Bethlehem ; but
if the Jews regarded it as being in some sense one of
their Messianic prophecies, the few words quoted might
carry their minds unconsciously on, from the parallel be-
tween the sorrows at Ramah and at Bethlehem, to the
higher coincidence between the joys of the deliverance
from the captivity at Babylon and the grander deliverance
for which they were looking forward to the Messiah. The
force of such allusions comes through the fine but power-
ful associations which cannot be expressed in words, far
more than through any direct or logical appeal to the un-
derstanding.
Dr. W. M. Tliomson, in his work on Palestine, says (Vol.
II. p. 503) in regard to this quotation : " The poetic accom-
modation of Jeremiah was natural and beautiful. Of course
it is accommodation. The prophet himself had no thought
of Herod and the slaughter of the infants." That is, in
his opinion (and the facts of the case, as far as known,
certainly go to sustain him in it), the language of Jere-
miah is here quoted, not as a prediction of this event,
but merely as furnishing words which describe the sharp-
ness of the sorrow caused by Herod's cruelty.
23. The fourth apparent quotation from the Old Testa-
ment is of a different kind. "That it might be fulfilled
which was spoken by the prophets, ' He shall be called
a Nazarene.' " No such passage is to be found in the Old
Testament. Dr. Palfrey supposes that the reference is to
Judges xiii. 5, " He shall be a Nazarite." Tischendorf
makes the reference to Isaiah xi. 1, where the word
translated Branch is in Hebrew Netser or Nazer. But
MATTHEW II. 55
the term Nazarene was one of contempt and disgrace, as
the place, and everything belonging to it, John i. 46, were
despised among the Jews. When, therefore, St. Matthew
speaks of Jesus as dwelling in Nazareth, and of course
bearing the despised name of Nazarene, he would soften
the prejudice thus awakened, by intimating, though in ob-
scure terms, that even thus he was fulfilling in himself
M^hat had been spoken by the prophets of the Messiah, as
one despised and rejected of men. The form of speech,
" by the prophets," is unlike that which occurs anywhere
else in the Gospels when a quotation is made from a par-
ticular writer, and of itself Avould seem to imply that an
idea expressed by different prophets, rather than the spe-
cific language of any one writer, was M'hat was referred
to as fulfilled in Jesus, when he was called by that mean
and offensive name. This is the interpretation given by
Kuinoel, Olshausen, Trench, and others, and seems to us
more natural than any other. But we are too far re-
moved from the times and habits of the writer, and those
for whom he wrote, to speak with certainty of allusions
which appealed so dehcately to their finer sensibilities
through the associations growing out of their religious
culture
NOTES.
Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judaea, in the days
of Herod the king, behold, there came wise men from the east
2 to Jerusalem, saying, Where is he that is born King of the
1. Herod the king] " Herod the days after he had put to death his
Great, son of Antipater, an Idumajan son Antipater, in the seventieth year
by an Arabian mother, made king 'of his age and the thirty-eighth of
of Judgea on occasion of his having his reign, and the 750th' year of
fled to Rome, being driven from his Rome. The events here related
tetrarchy by the pretender Antigo- took place a short time before his
nus, and confirmed in his office by death." Alford. 2. Where
Augustus Caesar after the battle of is he that is born King of the
Actium. He died miserably, five Jews?] " There had prevailed in
56
MATTHEW II.
Jews ? for we have seen his star in the east, and are come to
worship him. ^\Tien Herod the king had heard these things,
he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him ; and when he
had gathered all the chief priests and scribes of the people
together, he demanded of them where Christ should be born.
And they said unto him, In Bethlehem of Judaia ; for thus it
is written by the prophet : " And thou, Bethlehem, in the land
of Juda, art not the least among the princes of Juda ; for
out of thee shall come a Governor, that shall rule my people
Israel." Then Herod, when he had privily called the wise
men, inquired of them diligently what time the star appeared,
and he sent them to Bethlehem, and said : Gro and search dili-
gently for the young child ; and when ye have found him,
bring me word again, that I may come and worship him also.
AVhen they had heard the king, they departed. And, lo, the
all the East an ancient and con-
stant expectation that, according to
the fates, men coming from ' Judjva
should rule the world,' rerum pofi-
rentur.^'' Suetonius, Vesp. c. 4.
" Many had been persuaded that it
was contained in the ancient writ-
ings of the priests, that the East
should prevail, and that men com-
ing from Judoea should rule the
world." Tacitus, Hist. V. 13.
to worship him] " To do
homage to him in the Eastern fash-
ion of prostration." Alford.
2. Some readers may be interested
in the following statement, which is
borrowed from astronomical calcu-
lations, by Alford : — "In the vear
of Rome 747, on the 20th of jVIay,
there was a conjunction of Jupiter
and Saturn in the twentieth degree
of the constellation Pisces, close to
the first point of Aries, which was
tire part of the heavens noted in as-
trological science as that in which
the signs denoted the greatest and
most noble events. On the 27th of
October, in the same year, another
conjunction of the same planets took
place, in- the sixteenth degree of
risces; and on the 12th of Novem-
ber a third, in the fifteenth degree
of the same sign. On these last two
occasions the planets were so near,
that an ordinary eye would regard
them as one star of surpassing
brightness. Supposing the magi to
have seen the^?-s< of these conjunc-
tions, they saw it actually ' in the
east ; ' for on the 20th of May it
would rise shortly before the sun.
If they then took their journey, and
arrived at Jenisalem in a little more
than five months, (the journey from
Babylon took Ezra four months, see
Ezra vii. 9,) if they performed the
route from Jerusalem to Bethlehem
in the evening, as is implied, the No-
vember conjunction in the fifteenth
degree of Pisces would be before
them in the direction of Bethlehem,
coming to the meridian about eight
o'clock, P. M. These circumstan-
ces would seem to fonu a remarka-
ble coincidence with the historj'- in
our text." 4. And when
he [Herod] had gathered all the
chief priests and scribes of the
people together] This was prob-
ablv a- meeting of the Jewish San-
hedrim, which consisted of seventy-
one members, and was at that time
the highest religious tribunal known
among the Jews, being composed of
priests, Levites, and Israelites. The
scribes were the teachers and inter-
preters of the law. 6. And
thou, Bethlehem] This free ver-
sion of Micah v. 2 is given as the
report or answer of the Sanhedrim
MATTHEW II. Ok
star, which they saw in the east, went before them, till it came
10 and stood over where the young child was. When they saw
u the star, they rejoiced with exceeding great joy ; and when
they were come into the house, they saw the young child with
Mary his mother, and fell down, and worshipped him ; and
Avhen they had opened their treasures, they presented unto
1:2 him gifts, gold and frankincense and myrrh. And being-
warned of God in a dream that the}^ should not return to
Herod, they departed into their own country another way.
1.3 And when they Avere departed, behold, the angel of the Lord
appeareth to Joseph in a dream, saying : Arise, and take the
young child and his mother, and flee into Egypt, and be thou
there until I bring thee word ; for Herod will seek the }'oung
14 child to destroy him. When he arose, he took the young child
15 and his mother b}' night, and departed into Egypt ; and was
there until the death of Herod ; that it might be fulfilled which
was spoken of the Lord by the prophet, saying : " Out of
16 Egypt have I called my Son." Then Herod, when he saAV
that he was mocked of the wise men, was exceeding wroth ;
and sent forth and slew all the children that were in Bethle-
hem, and in all the coasts thereof, from two years old and
under, according to the time which he had diligently inquired
17 of the wise men. Tlien was fidfilled that which was spoken by
18 Jeremy the prophet, saying: "In Rama was there a voice
heard, lamentation, and weeping, and great mourning ; Rachel
weeping for her children, and would not be comforted, because
19 they are not." But when Herod was dead, behold, an angel
20 of the Lord appeareth in a dream to Joseph in Egypt, saying :
Arise, and take the young child and his mother, and go into
the land of Israel ; for they are dead which sought the young
21 child's life. And he arose, and took the young child and his
2-2 mother, and came into the land of Israel. But when he heard
to Herod. 9. the star] " If ular language is so universally in-
it is to be understood as standing accurate, and the Scriptures so
over the house, and thus indicating generally use popular language, it
to the magi the position of the ob- is surely not the letter, but the*
ject of their search, the whole inci- spirit ot the narrative with which
dent must be regarded as miracu- we are concerned." Alford.
lous. But this is not necessarily 14. and departed into
implied, even if the words of the Egypt] where, at no very great
text be literally understood; and in distance from Jerusalem, and with-
a matter like astronomy, where pop- in a Roman province, he would be
58
MATTHEW IT.
that Archelaus did reign in Judaea, in the room of his father
Herod, he was afraid to go thither ; notwithstanding, being
warned of God in a dream, he turned aside into the parts of
Galilee. And he came and dwelt in a city called Kazareth ; 23
safely beyond Herod's jurisdiction.
'22. Archelaus] succeed-
ed his father, and at first claimed
to be a king; but he never hud the
title of king conferred upon him by
the Roman Emperor, hi the ninth
year of his government he was re-
moved from otTice. 23. And
he came and dwelt in a city
called Nazareth] Had Ave only
this Gospel, we should certainly
infer that Joseph and Marj'- had
previously lived in Bethlehem, and
now Avent into Galilee to reside as
in a strange place, Avhile Luke (ii. 4,
39) speaks of them as coming up
from Nazareth to Bethlehem imme-
diately before the birth of Jesus,
and returning again to Nazareth, ap-
parently Avithout any delay after
the rites of purification had been
performed, Avhicli, according to the
hiAV, Avould be forty days after his
birth. How is this account of
Luke's to be reconciled Avith ;Mat-
theAv's account of the flight into
I'gypt, Avhich covered the Avhole
time betAveen the birth of Jesus and
the death of Herod ? It is impossi-
ble to determine hoAv long a time
that was, because it cannot be de-
termined Avith certaintv in Avhat
year Jesus Avas bom. But on any
hypothesis it is difficult to recon-
cile the accounts of the tAvo EA'an-
gelists. The magi could hardly
have reached Bethlehem before the
purification in the temple; for the
remarkable circumstances connect-
ed Avith that event (Luke ii. 22-39)
must in that case haA-e attracted the
noAv aAvakened and jealous atten-
tion of Herod. Both the visit of the
magi and the residence in Egypt
then probably occun-ed after the
'purification and before the return
to Nazareth. But if Luke had been
aAvare of these events, Avould he
have omitted all notice of them?
Does his account, " And Avlien they
had perfonned all things according
to the laAv of the Lord, they re-
turned into Galilee, to their own city,
Nazareth," leave room for the in-
tervening residence in Egypt? The
subject will be more fully discussed
Avhen Ave come to treat of the Gos-
pel of Luke. In the mean time, it is
Avell to remember, that, in these A-ery
brief and rapid sketches of CA-ents
in our Saviour's life, there must,
from the very character of the nar-
rative, be abrupt transitions from
one event to others which occurred
at a wholly diflTerent time, and un-
der entirely diflTerent circumstances.
The Gospel of I\IattheAv or Luke is
not much longer than a eulogA' on
some eminent man. One EA'ange-
list, in his brief sketch, haAing his
mind particularly interested in one
class offactscoimectedAvith the birth
of Jesus, might speak of the visit of
the magi, the cruelty of Herod, and
the consequent flight to Egypt, while
another might select a Av'holly dif-
ferent class of facts, and speak of
the annunciation, the journey from
Nazareth to Bethlehem, the vision
seen by the shepherds, the circum-
cision,'the purification, and the sub-
sequent removal back to Nazareth,
without giving any gi-ound to infer
that either Avas ignorant of what
the other has recorded, or that be-
cause one has related one class of
CA'cnts, therefore the other class of
events, which pin-ports to have oc-
curred at nearly the same time, coidd
not liaA-e taken place. Both the
P>angelists together fail to relate
a hundredth part of the inciden's
Avhich interested those then living
in Palestine Avithin tAvo years of the
birth of Jesus. Nothing is more un-
safe than to infer a contradiction
from a AA'ant of coincidence in two
such narratiA'es ; for in each of them,
from a gi-eat abundance of facts and
sayings, — so many, says John, that
the world could not contain them if
they should all be AA'ritten, — the
writer makes such selections as may
best suit his purpose, and uses them,
MATTHEW II.
59
that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophets,
He shall be called a Nazarene.
generally without indicating the
precise time to which they relate.
We shall find, as we go on, that it
will not do to take any one of the
Gospels as a precise chronological
statement of events ; still less as an
account intended to embrace aU the
facts belonging to any one period of
our Saviour's hfe. As respects tha
birth of Jesus, Mark and John say
nothing; Matthew relates one series
of events intimately connected, and
Luke another, while both, except-
ing a single incident, Luke ii. 41 -
52, pass over the whole period of his
childhood and youth till he was
about thirty years of age.
60 MATTHEW III.
CHAPTER III.
JoHX THE Baptist.
There was, as we have already seen, among the Jews, a
general but mdefinite expectation of the Messiah, which had
only been strengthened by their national vicissitudes and
misfortunes. While they were scattered through distant
lands, mingling with other nations, and in some measure
adopting their philosophical ideas, the particular form which
Ihis expectation assumed varied with the place of their
sojourn and their individual habits of thought. " Each
region," says Milman, "each rank, each sect: the Baby-
lonian, the Egj'ptian, the Palestinian, the Samaritan ; the
Pharisee, the lawyer, the zealot, arrayed the Messiah in
those attributes which suited his own temperament." Some
one was needed in Judaea to give consistency to these vary-
ing expectations, and especially to give them new intensity
and power by announcing as already at hand that kingdom
of God to which they had been pointing forward through so
many centuries. This was the office assigned to the Bap-
tist. He was not a follower of Christ, but only the herald
to announce his coming. It was not given to him as it was
to the disciples of Jesus, (Matt. xiii. 11,) "to know the
mysteries of the kingdom of Heaven," but " the least in the
kingdom of God," (Luke vii. 28,) i. e. the humblest Chris-
tian, was declared by Jesus to be " greater than he." We
must, therefore, be careful not to ascribe to him ideas which
could be entertained only by those who had learned them
from the Messiah himself.
He had been brought up among the mountains of Judaea,
MATTHEW III. 61
about as far to the south as Jesus was to the north from
Jerusalem. His habits of life were probably those of a
religious recluse, with a conviction borne in upon him that
he had been born and set apart for some great and holy
purpose. Like the mighty prophet Elijah of old, he was
rude in dress, simple in diet, and severe in speech, dwelling
in religious thought and prayer amid the solitudes of nature.
When the time had at length arrived, he came down from
the mountains to the valley of the Jordan. He announced
the approaching kingdom of Heaven in terms of startling
decision and severity. He warned men to flee from the
wrath that was impending over the ungodly, and to prepare
themselves, by change of heart and newness of life, to meet
the Messiah at his coming. Crowds from all quarters gath-
ered round him. Even Pharisees and Sadducees came to
witness his baptism. He sees their national delusion in
supposing that, because they are descended from Abraham,
they must therefore be admitted into the Messiah's kingdom.
This new kingdom, he tells them, is not thus easily to be
entered. " Ye generation of vipers, who hath warned you
to flee from the coming wrath ? Bring forth then fruit
worthy of repentance, and do not think to say, ' We have
Abraham for our father.' From these stones [that are
lying round us] God can raise up children, or successors, to
Abraham." And then, to impress them with a sense of
the urgency of the occasion, as if not a moment were to be
lost, he exclaims, with vehement and terrible earnestness,
that the axe even now is lying at the root of the tree, and
every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is cut [chopped]
down and cast into the fire. "I, indeed," he continues,
"baptize you with water unto repentance," receiving none
to my baptism but those who repent, and confess their sins ;
" but here is coming one mightier than I, who will subject
you to a more searching ordeal, baptizing you, not in water
alone, but in the holy spirit [wind] and fire," " for," he
says, continuing the same thought still under the imagery
6
62 MATTHEW III.
of wind and fire, " with his winnowing instrument in his
hand, he will clear up his threshing-floor, gathering the
wheat into his storehouse and burning the chafF with un-
quenchable fire."
Some have supposed that John here, by these different
kinds of baptism, describes the different degrees of spiritual
attainment in his disciples and those of the Messiah. " Bap-
tism with M^ater," says Olshausen, " implies repentance, and
purification from sin ; baptism with the spirit refers to the
inward cleansing in faith, (the Holy Spirit being conceived
of as the regenerating principle,) and, lastly, baptism with
fire expresses the glorification of the regenerated higher
life into its own peculiar nature." But these ideas, however
familiar they may be to us, belong, in the higher develop-
ment of our Christian experience, to a plane of spiritual life
and thought which we have reason to suppose that John,
who was only the herald or forerunner of Christ, had never
reached. As the humblest disciple of Jesus, he " who is
least in the kingdom of God," knows more of its interior life
and economy than he who was not only " a propliQt, but
more than a prophet,*' under the old dispensation, it would
be a serious anachronism to assign to John, at that time, so
profound a knowledge of the religion of Jesus. The same
remark applies also, though with less force, to the interpre-
tations by which the baptism of the Holy Ghost and of fire
are referred to the tongues of flame on the day of Pentecost
(Acts ii. 3, compared M'ith Acts i. 5, xix. 2, 3). For this
would be to ascribe to the Baptist, before the ministry of Je-
sus had begun, a degree of knowledge which the disciples of
Jesus did not have till some time after its close. So also the
explanation of the baptism of fire by a reference to the
" much tribulation " of Acts xiv. 22, and " the fire " (1 Cor.
iii. 13) which " shall try every man's work, of what sort it
is,'* implies in John a sort of knowledge which we have no
reason to suppose that he possessed. Besides, any one of
these interpretations interferes ' with the straightforward,
direct, and vehement earnestness of his speech.
MATTHEW III. G3
Why did Jesus come, to be baptized by John? The
question is one which we cannot fully and confidently
answer. But as John had been raised up to announce
the immediate coming of the Messiah, and by his preach-
ing had excited such an expectation in the minds of thou-
sands, the object of all this movement on the part of the
Baptist M'ould be lost to the cause, unless his predictions
should in some way be connected with Jesus. Jesus, there-
fore, in the fulness of time, came to John at the Jordan.
Whether they had previously had any personal acquaint-
ance with each other is not quite certain. Though their
mothers were related, the two families lived in the opposite
extremities of Palestine, and probably their only oppor-
tunities of meeting would be in Jerusalem, at the great
religious festivals. The extraordinary circumstances at-
tending their birth would naturally draw their parents to-
gether. The probability, therefore, is that they had had some
personal knowledge of each other, and that the expression
of the Baptist (John i. 33), "I knew him not," means that
he did not till then know him as the Messiah. But
in order that the testimony of John should have its due
weight with the people, it was important that it should
come from him, not as a personal friend and companion
of Jesus, but as an independent witness and prophet of
God.
John, therefore, was brought up under the old dispensa-
tion, having only a slight personal acquaintance with Jesus,
and came forth, as he was moved by the spirit of God, to
herald the coming of that kingdom in which the law and
the prophets alike were to find their fulfilment. Like
Moses, he was to lead the people out of their ancient
bondage through the wilderness to the very borders of
the promised kingdom, seeing it near, pointing it out to
his followers, indicating and setting apart their future and
greater leader, but himself, for wise and weighty reasons,
not permitted to enter within its borders. As he was the
64 MATTHEW III.
last, and in some respects the greatest of the prophets
belonging to the ancient dispensation, Jesus, an ho submitted
to all the requirements of that dispensation, came to re-
ceive from him its solemn sanctions, and it has been thouofht
in the very place where Joshua, or Jesus (for the names
are the same) led the tribes of Israel on dry ground
through the Jordan, there he went down to its baptismal
waters, and in his own person consecrated forever the
rite which through all coming ages should stand as the
sign, if not the seal of admission into his kingdom. As
he went up from the water, and stood (Luke iii. 21) pray-
ing, his countenance we may suppose radiant with the
emotions of the hour, behold, the heavens were opened
to him, and he perceived the spirit of God, pure and
peaceful as a dove (the sacred bird of Syria) descend-
ing, and (John i. 32) resting upon him ; and behold, a
voice from the heavens saying, 'This is my son, the
beloved, in whom I am well pleased."
When John saw Jesus, he was awed by liim as in
the presence of a superior being, and shrunk from ad-
ministering to him tlie rite of baptism. He felt his own
inferiority. The "former things" to which he belonged
were now to be fulfilled by passing away, through a species
of dissolution, into the higher kingdom which is to be in-
augurated. With the modest humility which becomes a
true servant of God, he submits to the request of Christ,
and in so doing receives from heaven the proof that the
Messiah has come. He sees, that, like the star which
hiis been the harbinger of a fairer day, he must decrease,
(John iii. 30,) while the Sun of Righteousness which he
has announced as rising upon the world must increase
in brightness and power. In that new kingdom no office
was assigned to him. It was appointed in the counsels
of Infinite Wisdom that he should stand apart as the ap-
pointed herald, but not be a follower of the Messiah.
From that day the ministry of John was in fact ended.
MATTHEW III. 65
" For this purpose," he said, (John i. 31,) " am I come
baptizing with water, that he should be made manifest
in Israel," and in proportion as he is made known must
the Baptist retire before him. "I am," he said, (John i.
23,) " the voice of one crying in tlie wilderness," and now
that voice having waked the solitudes of Jud«a, and turned
the expectations of the nation towards the Messiah, re-
cedes again into silence. There is something very touch-
ing and very beautiful in the readiness with wliich this
great man, so honored and reverenced among all the people
as a prophet of God, humbled himself before Jesus from
the first moment of his appearance. And, in all the cir-
cumstances of our Saviour's coming, in the blended dignity
and humility which marked his personal deportment, and
the tokens of divine love and approbation which came
down to him from heaven, we see how befitting the work
which had been given him to do was this his first entrance
on the field of his labors.
NOTES.
In those days came John the Baptist, preaching in the wilder-
2 ness of Judasa, and saying : Repent ye, for the kingdom of
1. Ill those days] An indefinite eral proclamation, somewhat in the
expression nearly corresponding to style of Isaiah's exhortation, to all
our at length, or in the course of the inhabitants to assemble along
time. lu this case it refers to what the proposed route, and prepare the
took place nearly thirty years after way before him. The same was
the events spoken of in the para- done in 1845 on a grand scale, w.hen
graph next preceding it. In Ex- the present Sultan visited Brusa.
odus ii. 11 it is used as a form of The stones were gathered out, crook-
introduction to events which oc- ed places straightened, and rough
curred forty years after those de- ones made level and smooth." The
scribed in the previous sentence. Land and the Book, Thomson, IT.
preaching] proclaim- 106. Sometimes they sent forward
ing as a herald who goes before to heralds to announce their approach,
aiuiounce the coming of a king, and to require the people to make
" When Ibrahim Pasha proposed to this preparation for their coming,
visit certain places in Lebanon, the in the Aviiderness]
emeers and sheiks sent forth a gen- not strictly a desert, but compara-
6* B
66
MATTHEW III.
heaTen is at hand. For this is he that was spoken of by the
prophet Esaias, saying, "The voice of one crying in the wil-
derness, prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths
straight." And the same John had his raiment of camel's
hair, and a leathern girdle about his loins ; and his meat was
lively an uninhabited region round
the Jordan. 2. Repent
ye] The Greek word literally re-
fers to a change of mind or thought,
und implies a change so deep that it
reaches the very fountain of thought,
and therefore touches the inmost
motives which give their shape and
coloring to the life. Dr. Campbell
and ^Ir. Norton translate it, Reform ;
but this to most minds conveys the
impression of an external change
rather than of one which, beginning
in the soul, works outward through
the conduct, till mind and heart and
life alike are transformed. The word
Repent, is confined too exclusively to
the inward feeling of soitow, which
is only the beginning of the change
that is required. 2. the
kingdom of heaven] literally,
the kingdom of the heavens, — a fonn
of expression used only by Matthew,
the other Evangelists using the term
kingdom of God. Some stress has
been laid, and perhaps not without
reason, on this expression as indi-
cating a plurality of heavens, corre-
sponding to the "many mansions in
his Father's house "which Jesus
speaks of (John xiv. 2), and adapted
to the sons of God in the different
stages of their spiritual progress.
The idea of the kingdom of Heaven
or kingdom of God as synonymous
with the Messiah's kingdom was
probably familiar to the Jews, bor-
rowed, perhaps, from passao;es like
Daniel ii. 44. It is used in the New
Testament with different shades of
meaning to indicate the Messiah's
kingdom: 1. as an inward principle
of life in the soul (the kingdom of
God is within you, Luke xvii. 21);
2. as a divine power extending
through the world and changing
its whole character (a little leaven
which leaveneth the whole mass,
Matt. xii. 33); 3. as an organized
polity, like a net cast into the sea,
Matt. xiii. 47, 48, and taking into
itself the good and the bad till they
shall at length be separated in the
end of the world ; 4. as the ^Messiah's
kingdom when it shall take the place
of the Jewish dispensation after the
destruction of Jerusalem, Luke ix.
27; or, 5. as it shall appear in its
consummation amid the brighter
glories of a higher Avorld, when the
Son of man shall sit on the throne
of his glory. Matt. xxv. 31, when it
shall be fulfilled in the kingdom of
God, Luke xxii. 16, or wheii through
much tribulation wo shall enter tTie
kingdom of God, Acts xiv. 22.
These different meanings melt in-
sensibly into one another. We have
no reason to suppose that John the
Baptist understood the expression
at all in its higher signification, but
only as indicating an outward, visi-
ble kingdom, founded on the prin-
ciples of righteousness, but exercis-
ing an earthly authority and power.
3. For this is he
that was spoken of by the
prophet Esaias] The quotation
is from the Septuagint. The whole
passage should be read (Isaiah xl.)
in order to understand the eflTect
intended by the introduction of a
few of the words here. The Bap-
tist, in John i. 23, describes himself
by these same words. 4. his
raiment of camel's hair, and a
leathern girdle about his loins]
The Jews expected Elijah as the
forerunner of the ^lessiah, and this
description corresponds to that of
Elijah in 2 Kings i. 8, " He [Elijah]
was an hairy man, and girt with a
girdle of leather about his loins."
Elijah was intimately associated in
the Jewish mind with the Messiah
as his forerunner, aud Jesus himself
xvii. 10 - 13, distinctly declares that
this expected Elijah' is none other
than John the Baptist. The proph-
ecy which probably gave rise to the
MATTHEW ni.
67
6 locusts and wild honey. Then went out to him Jerusalem,
6 and all Judasa, and all the region round about Jordan ; and
7 were baptized of him in Jordan, confessing their sins. But
when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees come to his
baptism, he said unto them: O generation of vipers, who hath
8 warned you to flee from the wrath to come ? Bring forth
expectation is a remarkable one,
and, from its place at the very end
of the Jewish Scriptures, Malachi
iv. 5, 6, must have attracted par-
ticular attention: "Behold, I will
send you Elijah the prophet before
the coming of the great and dreadful
day of the Lord, and he shall turn
the heart of the fathers to the chil-
dren, and tlie heart of the children
to their fathers, lest I come and smite
the earth with a curse." This de-
scribes the influence of John in
preaching his doctrine of repent-
ance, and thus preparing the hearts
of the people, pai-ents and children,
for the coming of Christ. and
his meat Avas locusts and Avild
honey] Locusts, fn-st boiled and
then dried in the sun, and carried
like parched corn in bags, are still
sometimes used as an article of food
by the Bedouin on the frontiers of
Syria. The insects were grasshop-
pers, and not locusts, and should be
so read wherever the word occurs
in the Bible. Jaeger. The wild
honey was not, as some have thought,
a vegetable pi-oduct exuding from
trees, but honey made by wild bees.
" Wild honey,'' says Thomson, " is
still gathered'^in large quantities from
trees in the Avildeniess, and from
rocks in the Avadies, just where the
Baptist sojourned, and where he
came preaching the baptism of re-
pentance." 6. And
Avere baptized of him in Jor-
dan] " When man Avere admitted
as proselytes, three rites were per-
formed, — circumcision, baptism,
and oblation ; when women, two, —
baptism and oblation. The whole
families of proselytes, including in-
fants, were baptized." Alford.
*' Baptism, symbolical or ceremonial
washing, such as the Mosaic law
prescribed as a sign of moral reno-
vation, and connected Avith the sac-
rificial types of expiation. It was
from these familiar and significant
ablutions that John's baptism was
deriA^ed, and not ft-om the practice
of baptizing proselytes, the antiqui-
ty of Avhicli as a distinct rite is dis-
puted." Alexander on Mark. " It
AA^as in itself," says Stanley, " no
ncAV ceremony. Ablutions, in the
East, have always been more or less
a part of religious Avorship, easily
performed and ahvays welcome.
Every synagogue, if possible, was
by the side of a stream or spring;
every mosque, still, requii'es a foun-
tain or basin for lustrations in its
court." r. Phar:se3S
and Sadducees] Josephus repre-
sents these two sects as originating
about one hundred and fifty years
before Christ. They overlaid the
laAV and the prophets by their tra-
ditions, and, like all sects Avho trust
to forms and traditions, they neg-
lected the spirit of their religion, and
became remarkable for their super-
stition and hypocrisy. They had
great influence, as their represent-
atives in aU ages haA-e among their
OAvn people, and, like their succes-
sors now, were the most malignant
enemies of Jesus, as he appeared in
the simplicity of his instructions
and the purity of his life. The Sad-
ducees, who were supposed to be
so called fi-om a Hebrew word,
meaning righteousness, rejected all
tradition, and, though it was not
originally one of their distinguishing
features," yet in our Saviour's time
they denied the reality of a future
life. By confining themselves to a
bare, literal, moral conformity to
the laAv of Moses, they lost all spirit-
ual life, and with it all belief in
spiritual influences or spiritual be-
ings. They are the type of the car-
nal unbelief which preA'ails among
the philosophical classes, and those
68
MATTHEW UI.
therefore fruits meet for repentance, and think not to say with- 9
in yourselves, We have Abraham to our father ; for I say un-
to you, that God is able of these stones to raise up children
unto Abraham. And now also the axe is laid unto the root of lo
the trees ; therefore every tree which bringeth not forth good
fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire. I indeed baptize u
you with water, unto repentance ; but he that cometh after
me is mightier than I, whose shoes I am not worthy to bear ;
he shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost, and with fire.
Whose fan is in his hand, and he will thoroughly purge his 12
floor ; and gather his wheat into the garner, but he Avill burn
up the chaff with unquenchable fire.
Then cometh Jesus from Galilee to Jordan, unto John, to be .13
whose thoughts are " bound up in
a materialistic prosperity."
11. The Holy Ghost] The word
translated Ghost or Spirit means
also air or wind, and the comparison
is between Avater with which John
baptized and the more searching
elements wind and fire, by wliich
the Messiah should try his follow-
ers. Whose shoes,
&c.] In the Talmud it is said,
*' Every office a servant will do for
his master, a scholar should perform
for his teacher, except loosing his
sandal thong." Milman's Historvof
Christianity, Book I. Chap. 3. the
office lower than that of a disciple
to the Messiah, which the Baptist
speaks of as still too high for him, is
used to indicate, not only his rever-
ence for that exalted being, but also
his consciousness of the remarkable
fact, that, in the purposes of the
Almighty, it was not appointed for
him to hold even the lowest place
in the new kingdom which he had
announced. According to Lightfoot,
it was the token of a slave having
become his master's property, to
loose his shoe, to tie the same, or to
carry the necessary articles for him '
to the bath. ' and Avith
lire] " The double symbolic refer-
ence of fire, elsewhere found, e. g.
;Mark ix. 49, as purifying the good
and consuming the evil, is hardly to
be pressed into the interpretation of
^re iu this verse, the prophecy here
being solely of that higher and more
perfect bajptism to which that of
John was a mere introduction."
A 1 ford. 12. Whose
fan] the winnowing shovel with
which the grain Avhen thrashed was
tossed into the air so as to separate
the chaff" from tlie wheat.
he will thoroughly purge his
floor] The threshing-floor may
sometimes have been a large, flat
rock, but usually it was a level spot
of earth trodden or rolled smooth
and hard. The gi'ain was beaten
out by flails, or trodden out by
oxen. 13. to Jordan]
" It was the one river of Palestine,
— sacred in its recollections, — abiui-
dant iu its waters; and yet, at the
same time, the river, not of cities,
but of the wilderness, — the scene
of the preaching of those who dwelt
not in king's palaces, nor wore soft
clothing. On the banks of the rush-
ing stream the multitudes gathered,
— the priests and scribes from Jeru-
salem, down the pass of Adummin;
the publicans from Jericho on the
south, and the Lake of Gennesareth
on the north; the soldiers on their
Avay from Damascus to Petra,
through the Ghor, in the war with
the Arab chief Hareth, the peasants
from Galilee, with One from Naza-
reth, through the opening of the
plain of Esdraelon. The tall ' reeds '
or canes in the jungle waved,
' shaken by the wind ' ; the pebbles
MATTHEW III.
G9
14 baptized of him. But John forbade him, saying: I have need
15 to be baptized of thee, and eomest thou to me ? And Jesus
answering said unto him, Suffer it to be so now ; for thus it
becometh us to fulfil all rigliteousness. Then he suffered him.
16 And Jesus, when he was baptized, went up straightway out of
the water ; and, lo, the heavens were opened unto him, and he
saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove, and lighting up-
17 on him. And, lo, a voice from heaven, saying. This is my
beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.
of the bare clay hills lay around, to
Avhich the Baptist pointed as capa-
ble of being transformed into ' the
children of Abraham ' ; at their feet
nished the refreshing stream of
the never-failing river. There be-
gan that sacred rite, which has
since spread throughout the -world,
through the vast baptistries of the
southern and Oriental churches,
gradually dwindling to the little
fonts of the north and west; the
plunges beneath the water dimin-
ishing to the few drops which, by
a wise exercise of Christian free-
dom, are now in most churches the
sole representative of the fiill stream
of the Descending River." Stanley.
to be baptized of
him] We know too little of the
significance of this rite at that time
among the Jews, and especially as
it was administered by John, to un-
derstand why Jesus should liimself
have observed it. In addition to
what we have suggested in our gen-
eral remarks on the subject, it may
also be true, as Alford saj-s, that he
did it " as bearing the hifirmities
and caiTying the sorrows of man-
kind, and thus beginnhig here the
triple baptism of water, fire, and
blood, two parts of which were now
accomplished, and of the third of
which he himself speaks, Luke xii.
&0, and the beloved Apostle, 1 John
V. 8, where spirit stands for fre.'''
Great stress is laid on the manner
in which Jesus Avas baptize<l, wheth-
er it was by immersion, effusion, or
sprinkling. The corninr/ uj) out of
the water seems to imply that he
went down into the water, where he
was either immersed, or had water
poured upon him while he stood in
the river near its bank. We have
no certain knowledge on the sub-
ject. If it had been important we
probably should have had it. But
why should his precise mode of
baptism be of consequence any more
than the particular garment which
he then wore ? If it is essential to
baptism that we should enter the
water precisely a^ he did, why is it
not essential to the Lord's Supper
that in partaking of it we should
reclhie upon a couch as he did? It
is foreign to the whole tone of his
instructions to lay any stress on the
external and incidental adjuncts of
a form. 15. Sulier it to
be so now] Let it be so for the
present, just now. It is fitting that
Ave both of us shovild fulfil all'right-
eousness, i. e. all requiremeiits of
the law. For the present, therefore,
permit me as the fulfiller of the law
to receive this rite Avhile you as its
agent administer it. 16.
and he saw the Spirit of God
descending like a dove] This
may have been a mental vision,
open to the spiritual perceptions of
Jesus and of the Baptist, John i. 32,
or it may have been the actual bod-
ily shape of a dove appearing to
tliem as symbolical of the pure and
peaceful spirit of God and of him who
that day was first publicly set apart
for his gi'eat and sacred work. We
should translate the verse as follows :
And the moment that Jesus, being
baptized, was gone up out of the
Avater, lo, the heavens Avere opened
to him, and he saAV the spirit of God,
descending like a dove, coming upon
him.
70 MATTHEW IV. 1-11.
CHAPTER lY.
1-11. — The Temptation in the Wilderness.
We suppose that very few able scholars of our day
regard the account of the Temptation as an account of
events which actually took place according to the letter of
the narrative. Some — Schleiermacher, for example — look
upon it as a parable by which Jesus would impress most
important lessons on the minds of his disciples. "Three
leading maxims of Christ," he says, in his Critical Essay
on the Gospel of St. Luke, "for himself and for those
who were invested by him with extraordinary powers for
the promotion of his kingdom, are therein expressed : the
first, to perform no miracle for his own advantage, even
under the most pressing circumstances ; the second, never
to undertake, in the hope of extraordinary Divine aid,
anything which, like the dropping from the pinnacle of
the temple, as it does not lie in the natural course of
things, would be merely prodigious ; lastly, never, though
the greatest immediate advantage were by that means
attainable, to enter into fellowship with the wicked, and
still less into a state of dependence upon them ; and
Christ could not express himself more strongly against
the opposite mode of conduct than by ascribing it to Satan.
In such a sense, then, Christ delivered this parable
to his disciples."
These undoubtedly are in part the lessons taught by
the temptation in the wilderness. But it is doing violence
to the language and spirit of the narrative to interpret
it as applying in no way to the inward personal expe-
MATTHEW IV. 1-11. 71
rience of Jesus. Jesus, "conceived of the Holy Spirit,"
had nevertheless been subjected to the mental as well as
physical conditions of our human nature, and, instead of
attaining at once, by reason of his divine origin, to "all
the fulness of God," grew not only " iii stature," but "in
wisdom, -and in favor with God and man." This sense
of intimate union with God must have grown up in him
with the unfolding conscIou:;ness of inward life and power,
and have been dependent in some measure on the influ-
ences which usually affect our human sensibilities. In
taking upon himself our infirmities, he was of course sub-
ject in some degree to our fluctuations of feeling, and
exposed, as we find in his history, to periods of unusual
elevation or depression of spirit. Though living "in the
bosom of the Father/' " not alone because the Father was
with him," yet there were times when, under the pressure
of severe mental or bodily anguish, his sense of oneness
with God was for the moment disturbed or lost, and he
prayed in agony of spirit that the cup might pass from
him, or, as if wholly deserted, uttered his cry of com-
plete desolation upon the cross.
At the time of his baptism Jesus seems to have been
lifted up into a state of unusual spiritual exaltation, and
being (Luke iv. 1) full of the Holy Spirit, he was led
away, as by a divine impulse, — " led up of the Spirit," —
into the solitary and mountainous regions about Jericho,
and there gave himself to the thoughts suitable to his nature
and condition, and to the great and solemn work on which
he was now to enter. Mark describes the savage features
of the country by saying that Jesus was there "with the
wild beasts." He remained forty days. So Moses was
in the mountain (Ex. xxxiv. 28) "forty days and forty
nights," and "he did neither eat bread nor drink wine,"
and Elijah (1 Kings xix. 8) went in the strength of what
he had eaten " forty days and forty nights unto Iloreb, the
mount of God." It is impossible to say how long without
72 MATTHEW lY. 1-11.
any natural or supernatural sustenance the body may con-
tinue, while the mind is withdrawn from outward interests
and wholly absorbed in matters pertaining to its own sphere
and life. By such an absorption of mind, the body may
be thrown out of its normal condition, and as, in some ex-
traordinary cases of swooning, may remain in what would
seem almost a temporary suspension of the animal func-
tions. However this may be, Jesus was in the wilderness
forty days, either wholly without food, or with only such
scant and insufficient nutriment as the mountain solitudes
might offer, without thought or care on his part. The
soul, abstracted from the body and material things, dwelt
apart in a world of its own. But at last, the body, over-
come by its long privations and the strain to which its
finer organs had been subjected, sunk down, and the mind
was called away from its own meditations and emotions
to sympathize with the pangs of bodily suffering. Tlie
soul which had been lifted up to such heights of spiritual
insight, and burdened with such a weight of duty and of
glory, was now brought down to a keen and painful sense
of earthly weakness, and the first thought that occurred
to him was to employ the miraculous powers with which
he had been gifled as the Son of God to turn the stones
around him into loaves. From whatever source the thought
may have come, it was probably entertained in that half-
unconscious state, which we sometimes experience when
the mind is so occupied with other matters that we me-
chanically assent to what is proposed for our physical
comfort or relief There was nothing of itself sinful in
the act suggested. But when the attention of Jesus was
awakened, he saw whither the suggestion tended, and that,
in employing his miraculous powers to satisfy his personal
wants, he should stoop from his perfect disinterestedness,
and spend on a low and selfish object gifts bestowed on
him for the highest good of all. No craving of hunger
should make him forget the higher wants of his nature.
MATTHEW IV. 1-11. 73
" Not by bread alone " lie replies, in language borrowed
from the great lawgiver of Israel (Deut. viii. 3), "but by
every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God, doth
man live."
Having thus appealed from the exactions of hunger to
the sources of a higher life in God, he is next tried by
a suggestion of an entirely different character. He knew
how gross and earthly were the expectations of the Messiah
which prevailed among his countrymen, and how impossi-
ble it would be to overcome their prejudices, change all
their ideas and habits of thought, by the life of humilia-
tion and sorrow which he was to lead among them. Why
shall he not seek to reach their heai-ts in some other way ?
Instead of shocking their most dearly cherished hopes, and
repelling them forever from his kingdom, why shall he not
enforce upon them the terms of his great mission by some
public and extraordinary display of his miraculous endow-
ments, and so overcome them with wonder and astonish-
ment that they will hail him at once as the deliverer who
had for so many centuries been foretold by prophets and
longed for by patriarchs and kings ? In thought, he is borne
to tlie summit of a lofty wing of the temple, while hun-
dreds of thousands are gathered there at one of the great
national festivals. As they are gazing upward towards
him he is tempted to ask why he shall not cast himself
down, knowing that as the Son of God he will be upborne
by his angels and permitted to come to no harm? Thus
he would show his confidence in God, and at the same
time inaugurate his kingdom on the earth under the most
favorable circumstances. The thought evidently had power
to move and disturb him. But instantly he detects the
dark design which lies concealed under this specious pro-
posal. He sees that, instead of showing confidence in
God by this vain and presumptuous display of his powers,
he would only be tempting his providen6e. As the tempta-
tion was enforced by words taken from the Psalms, so he
7
74 MATTHEW IV. 1-11.
replies in language taken also from the Scriptures (Deut.
vi. 16), "Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God."
In the first temptation, the motive, tlie desire to appease,
his hunger, was innocent, but the object was unworthy the
intervention of his miraculous powers. In the second temp-
tation, the object, the speedy estabhshment of his kingdom,
was worthy, but the motive which lay concealed under it, the
love of immediate distinction, coupled with an unwillingness
to wait God's time, was wrong. There yet remains another
form in which the temptation may come. The question
which might be supposed to be uppermost in the mind of
Jesus was, how he might most effectually accomplish his
work. The great changes which had been wrought, even
in the religious ideas and institutions of mankind, had been
accompanied, if not actually brought about and impressed on
the common mind, by great pohtical and social revolutions.
It was so that Moses, placed in the exercise of his mirac-
ulous powers at the head of the Jewish people, led them out
of Egypt, and established a higher worship and a more be-
neficent law. Why then may not Jesus, in establishing a
still purer faith and worship, enlist on his side the powers
of this world through the universal dominion to which he
may attain by the exercise of his marvellous endowments ?
It was no dream of earthly ambition, no vulgar thought of
royal or imperial magnificence, that could be permitted even to
approach the mind of Jesus, still less to throw a momentary
shadow over it, or awaken one disturbing emotion or desire.
But by placing himself at the head of the nations, at that
grand crisis of human affairs, might he not more speedily
and more effectually establish the kingdom of God among
men than through the ignominious path of weakness, sorrow,
humiliation, and death ? May he not in this way save his
followers from the mortification and sorrows to which they
must be exposed ? For a moment the thought came over
him. But then, how shall such power over the nations be
gained ? How secure the earthly throne through which his
MATTHEW IV. 1-11. 75
heavenly kingdom is to be advanced ? There is but one
reply. Only by falling down and worshipping the prince of
this world, only by submitting to its spirit and maxims, only
by stooping to such considerations and measures as may
influence worldly minds, can he bring the powers of the
world under him. The cross, which he has seen looming
up in the divine majesty of humiliation and suffering at the
very entrance into his kingdom, must be lowered before
the ensigns of earthly greatness. The crown of righteous-
ness, which shines with no earthly splendors and for no mor-
tal eyes, must grow dim and pale before the dazzling glories
of an earthly diadem. Those great words hereafter to be
uttered, and to carry terror into the hearts of kings, " My
kingdom is not of this world," the sublime and perfect trust,
which in the very hour and power of darkness would not
call in even the legions of obedient angels to enforce his
authority or defend him from wrong, must give way to the
appeal to human prejudices and passions, to the marshalling
of hosts and the bloody caparisons of war, that so the Prince
of Peace may establish his reign of peace upon the earth.
The thought is one abhorrent to every principle of his na-
ture and his religion. The motive appealed to was high and
pure ; the end was the very one for which he was born into
the world ; but the means were bad. Instantly the disguise
of the tempter is torn off, and his dark purposes are un-
masked. " If only thou wilt fall down and worship me."
He repels alike the temptation and the tempter with an
energy of expression which shows how much he had been
disturbed by the thought, and how vehemently he abhors
and detests the blasphemous condition which had been so
artfully concealed within it. " Get thee hence, Satan ; for
it is written [Deut. vi. 13], Thou shalt worship the Lord thy
God, and him only shalt thou serve." It is remarkable, that
the only other instance in which our Saviour used this ener-
getic expression of abhorrence occurred when, in reply to
his prediction of the sufferings and shameful death which
76 MATTHEW IV. 1-11.
awaited him, Peter (Matt. xvi. 23) began to rebuke him in
words which impUed that the Messiah coukl not thus meanly
and ignobly die. This was the one suggestion of evil, veil-
ing itself in garments of light, which he met with the sharp-
est exhibition of sensibiHty and impatience.
Here the Devil left him, as St. Luke says, " for a season,"
and " behold, angels came and ministered unto him." There
is nothing in either of the Evangelists to imply that the
tempter came in bodily shape, or tiiatsuch a presence was rec-
ognized in any other way than by the nature of the sug-
gestions that were made. Whether there really is a prince
of darkness, a malignant and mighty spirit, who had access
to the mind of Jesus, with power to instil into it thoughts of
evil under the guise of holiness and faith, is a question that we
shall consider more fully hereafter. See xiii. 24-30. We
know, however, too little of the unseen world of spiritual ex-
istences, and especially of the dark background of evil which
lies behind all actual sin, to be able to speak with confidence
on such a subject. How far that invisible realm of life may
be peopled by spiritual beings good and bad, how far, if at
all, the two orders of spiritual beings may be allowed to in-
termingle and carry on their various works, what limitations
are assigned to their free action, and how the kingdoms of
light and darkness may be arrayed one against the other,
are questions which we cannot specifically answer. An evil
man separated from the body is an evil spirit. There is
then, so far as we can see, no more reason why evil spirits
should not exist than that evil men should not. " There is
nothing," says Mr. Norton, (Translation of the Gospels, Vol.
II. pp. 61, 62,) " in the idea of daemons being allowed to
affect the minds and bodies of men irreconcilable with any-
thing we see in the moral government of God. There is no
l)roof a priori against such agency." It narrows down the
world in which Jesus moved, far more than reason gives us
any warrant for doing, to cut him off from connection with
all existences, except God on the one hand, and man with
MATTHEW IV. 1-11. 77
the laws and forces of the material universe on the other.
We cannot say how iiir the work of redemption in which he
was engaged allied to itself the sympathy and employed the
assistance and fellowship of angels, such as here came and
ministered to him, or of holy men in their spiritual estate,
such as Moses and Elijah who talked with him on the moun-
tain of Transfiguration. Neither can we say how far his
mighty work of redemption may have reached down through
realms of spiritual darkness, and arrayed against him the
active mahgnity of evil spirits as well as of wicked men. With-
out the recognition of such existences both above and below,
passages in his life, such as the temptation, the transfigura-
tion, the agony, the cry upon the cross, to which the won-
dering and trusting instincts of his followers have turned in
all ages, lose much of their sublime moral significance, and
their mysterious spiritual power. The victory which he
gained in the wilderness was over something more than a
passing thought of evil, which of itself could have had no
power to shake his firm and sinless mind. It was the first
of that series of struggles and victories through which he was
to overthrow the very empire of darkness, and " destroy him
that had the power of death."
While we thus view the temptation as one which actually
occurred to Jesus in the suggestion of thoughts which for the
time disturbed and agitated his spirit, we may see in it an
epitome of the heaviest temptations that can assail his dis-
ciples, and of the way in which they should be overcome.
There are the temptations of desire, — the love of enjoyment,
the love of admiration, and the love of power, not presenting
themselves to us in their coarse and selfish colors, as self-indul-
gence, vanity, and ambition, but clothing themselves in hues
borrowed from heaven, and insinuating them'^elves into our
hearts by false appeals to high and generous and holy ends.
There is no sin in laboring to satisfy our bodily wants ; but
to concentrate our highest and best gifts on this work is to
lose sight of the more essential truth, that we are to live not
7*
78 MATTIIEAV IV. 12-16.
by bread alone, but by all the influences and teachings of
God. In that way the soul wiU be impoverished by the low
and narrow acts to which it is devoted. On the other hand,
in a high and religious act, throwing ourselves as favored ones
of heaven on the special providence of God, that through the
wonder thus excited we may gain over advocates to his
cause, we may be led by hidden motives of personal vanity
unconsciously to tempt and provoke that Providence whose
leadings we ought to wait for and obey. Or while both the
end and the motive are right, in our impatient zeal to ad-
vance what we believe to be the cause of righteousness and
God, we may be tempted to stoop to unsanctified means, and
to consent for the time to worship even the Devil in his
disguise, if only he, with the powers which have been com-
mitted to him, will help us on in our work.
12-16. — Makes his Home in Capernaum.
From the way in which the narrative goes on, we should
suppose that the events recorded in the twelfth and follow-
ing verses succeeded immediately to the Temptation. But
from the first five chapters of John, we find that a considera-
ble period of time and some important acts here intervened.
Jesus, immediately after the Temptation, had come to John
the Baptist, who on seeing him pronounced to his followers
the remarkable words, " Behold the lamb of God, which
taketli away the sin of the world." Jesus then returned
to Galilee where his first miracle was performed, and after-
wards came up to Jerusalem to the Passover. It was
probably while he was at Jerusalem that he heard of
John's imprisonment, which led him to hasten his return
to Galilee. On his way back to Galilee he had the con-
versation with the woman of Samaria, which is related in
the fourth chapter of John. He now left Nazareth and
took up his abode at Capernaum, which was near the
northwest corner of the Sea of Galilee, though, its pre-
MATTHEW IV. 17-22. 79
else locality is not known with eertainty. The quotation
from the Old Testament is part of the remarkable passage
already alluded to in the first chapter of Matthew, and
might well be employed by the writer to call the atten-
tion of his Jewish readers to the extraordinary events
which he is about to record as in some sense a fulfilment
of the hardly less extraordinary prediction. Isa. viii. 22 ;
ix. 1 - 7.
17-22. — The Call of Simon Peter and Andrew his
Brother, and of John and his Brother James.
The readiness with which this call was obeyed would
indicate some previous knowledge of Jesus on their part,
such as we find (John i. 35-42) that they actually had.
The expectations excited by John the Baptist were kept
intensely alive by Jesus, though he had not yet publicly
declared himself to be the Messiah. His proclamation
(iv. 17) is the same as that of the Baptist : " Repent ; for
the kingdom of heaven is at hand." But while he used
and continued to use words familiar to the Jews as de-
scribing an earthly kingdom, he took them up, as he did
so many other Jewish phrases, into a higher plane of
thought, and gradually invested them with a higher mean-
ing and a purer spirit. He did not institute a new re-
ligious language ; but by a change of heart and life and
thought through the great truths which he proclaimed, he
would fill out old and familiar expressions M'ith new ideas,
and make them glow with the new light which he had
thrown into them.
23 - 25. The nature of the diseases which are here speci-
fied, and the character of his miracles, will be more prop-
erly considered in the specific cases as they occur hereafter.
80
MATTHEW IV.
NOTES.
Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilderness, to
be tempted of the devil. And when he had fasted forty days
and forty nights, he was afterward an hungered. And when
the tempter came to him, he said : If thou be the Son of God,
command that these stones be made bread. But he answered
and said, It is written, "Man shall not live by bread alone.
1. Led up of the Spirit] Luke
says : " And Jesus, being full of the
Holy Ghost, returned from Jordan,
and was led by the Sph'it into the
■wilderness;" i. e. Jesus, filled with
the spirit of God, and therefore de-
siring a season of solitude, was led
up into the wilderness, where he
might give himself up entirelv to
the thoughts and emotions which
pressed upon him, and rapt him as
It were in an ecstasy so absorbing
that for the time all consideration
of earthly things, even of his own
bodily wants, was forgotten.
the wilderness] Probably the
wild and mountainous region above
Jericho, Avhich. from the forty days,
is called Quarantaria. Others sup-
pose it to have been the Arabian des-
ert of Sinai, where Moses and Elijah
each fasted forty days. We do not
think that Jesus attached any im-
portance to such coincidences iu
time or place. His teachings and
his life belong to a higher sphere of
thought. to be tempted]
Ja order, or so as to be tempted;
the result put as if it had been the
design. He was so filled with the
spirit of God, that he sought for
liimself a solitaiy place where he
miglit give himself up entirely to
Him, and there, after his physical
energies had become entirely ex-
hausted, was a reaction in his mind.
of the devil] For this
word see Dis. here and XHI., and
Note xiii. 39. 2. fasted
forty days and forty ni§^hts]
In regard to the Oriental use or
language in our day, Thomson, I.
132, says : " You may take this as
a general canon of interpretation,
that any amount much less than
usual means 'nothing' in their dia-
lect; and if you understand more by
it, you are misled. In fact, their
ordinary fasting is only abstaining
from certain kinds of food, not from
all, nor does the word convey any
other idea to them." It may, how-
ever, be taken here in its stricter
meaning. Luke says, iv. 2, " And
iu those days he did eat nothing."
3. And when the
tempter came to him] He wtis
hungry, and in his hunger the tempt-
er came to him. Oppressed with
hunger, his mind reverted to the
words spoken at his baptism, " This
is my beloved son ; " and the thought
was suggested to him, " If thou art
really the Son of God, turn these
stones into bread, and relieve tliy
necessities." But immediately ho
replies to the suggestion, from what-
ever source it may have come ;
4. It is written, Man shall
not live by bread alone] " Even
in bread man lives not by bread only,
for is not the life more than meat ?
Is not the word, the will, the power
of God in everything; so that we do
not inhale our verj^ breath from the
air [alone], but from the breath of
God ? In the deepest meaning
of the essential and only truth, all
ihiuffs in the world, after their kind,
are only variously embodied words
of the Creator, inasmuch as by his
mighty word alone they are upheld
in being What is man ? Not
the body with its earthly, animal
soul, but the triie and proper man,
that is, the living spirit which came
forth from God, which only lives in
and by the spirit of God, which con-
aiATTIIEW IV.
81
but by every word that proceedetb out of the mouth of God."
5 Then the devil takcth him up into the holy city, and setteth
6 him on a pinnacle of the temple ; and saith unto him, If thou
be the Son of God, cast thyself down ; for it is written, " lie
shall give his angels charge concerning thee ; and in their
hands they shall bear thee up, lest at any time thou dash thy
7 foot against a stone." Jesus said unto him: It is written again,
8 " Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God." Again, the devil
taketh him up into an exceeding high mountain, and showeth
him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them, and
9 saith unto him. All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt
10 fall down and worship me. Then saith Jesus unto him : Get
thee hence, Satan ; for it is written, " Thou shalt worship the
tinually goes forth as word for the
preservation of the creatm-c ,
But this leads us fiu-ther and fur-
ther ; and ' not alone ' vindicates again
the true life of man in God, against
such as in their error cleave to any
institution of tlie means of life, as if
it was not God alone in them that
gave them efficacy. As a general
rule the word of"^ God, externally
written and preached, is given for
the food of the inner man ; but inas-
much as the living woi'd of God in
the word is the true word, thou
mayest, if it be his will, without
Scripture and preaching, live by
his spirit; without intercourse with
brethren be connected with the
Church; even without the physical
bread of the sacrament, receive,
nevertheless, the heavenly bread.
Every manna given by God in the
creaturely form is a witness that
points beyond itself to the imme-
diate outgoing of God's life for the
life of man." Stier. 5.
pinnacle of the temple] Trre-
pvyiov^ wing, " spoken of the high-
est point of the temple buildings,
probably the elevation of the middle
portion of the triple portico or colon-
nade along the southern wall, which
at its eastern end impended over
the valley of Kidron ; so that if from
its roof one attempted to look down
into the gulf below, his eyes became
dark and dizzy before they could
penetrate the immense depth; Jos.
Ant. XY. 11. 5. The actual height
above the bottom of the valley was
probably not less than three hun-
dred and ten feet." Robinson.
7. " Wherein consists
the tempting of God on the part of
man? It is the complete opposite
of the seeking in faith, of the wait-
ing upon God in the obedience and
confidence of trust, a self-willed
demand of the mighty help of God;
and consequently unbelief, disobe-
dience, and distrust are its inner-
most principles Every sin in
its iiniermost principle is, properly
speaking, a tempting and challeng-
ing of God; since he who should
obey tests the Almighty whether
the way of his own self-will shall
not pr'osper. But then, particularly,
when the unbelief and disobedience
of self-will presses forward in what
is false presumption, though seem-
ingly only a firm confidence in
promised assistance, as if God nmst
and should hearken to it; this is
the marked aggravation of sin, to
which Satan here allures." Stier.
10. Get thee hence,
Satan] The term Satan may here
be applied to the evil suggestion, as
it is in xvi. 23. and him only]
Dent. vi. 13; x. 20. The quotation,
like most of tlie quotations in Mat-
thew, is from the Septnagint, and not
from the Hebrew, where the word
meaning only is not to be found.
11. Then the devil leaveth
82
MATTHEW IV.
Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve." Then the devil ii
leaveth him ; and, behold, angels came and ministered unto
him.
Now when Jesus had heard that John was cast into prison, \-2
he departed into Galilee. And leaving Nazareth, he came n
and dwelt in Capernaum, which is upon the sea-coast, in the
borders of Zabulon and Nephthalim ; that it might be fulfilled 14
him, and, behold, angels came
and ministered unto him] The
presence of the evil spirit and the
ministry of the angels rest here on
the same authority. But we must
not confound our popular idea of
the devil with that of the Evange-
list. Still less are we to confound
with it the philosophical idea bor-
rowed from the East, which makes
the prince of darkness the almost
equal antagonist of God. .Whatever
else they may teach on this sub-
ject, the Gospels lend no counte-
nance to any such doctrine as this.
The most that can be legitimately
inferred from them is, that there are
evil spirits, and one at their head,
" the devil and his angels," xxiv.
41, who, within certain limits al-
lowed by God, may have the power
of suggesting evil thoughts. There
is nothing in this chapter to show
that Satan appeared in bodily form
or to the outward eye, even if we
snppose the language to mean that
he was personally present. All that
is implied, even on that supposition,
is, that Satan, seeing our Saviour's
helpless condition, —
"111 wast thou shrouded then, patient
Sonof God!" —
took advantage of his weariness,
exhaustion, and consequent de-
pression, and suggested to him the
thoughts here recorded, as if they
had been the spontaneous sug-
gestions of his own mind. There is
nothing which proves it to have been
the writer's intention to say that he
transported Jesus bodily to the tem-
ple and mountain. The most that
can be infen-ed is, that he took him
away in thought or in spirit, pre-
senting to him these objects and
suggestions so vividly that the Avholc
transaction seemed as if it had ac-
tually passed before him. " The
temptation of Jesus," says Olshau-
sen, " stands as one of those decisive
events, such as are met with in a
lower degree in common life also,
and which, by the determination
that we take in them, give a direc-
tion to the whole after-life. The
Saviour here appears as standing
between the two worlds of light and
darkness. As the hostile powers
fled, heavenly powers surrounded
him, and joined in celebrating the
victory of good." " Since," he con-
tinues', " the temptation of Jesus
took place in the depth of his in-
ward life without witnesses, we must
regard the nan-ation of Jesus as the
only source of infonnation and tes-
timony to its reality." 13.
And' leaving Nazareth, he
came and dwelt in Caperna-
um] " Nazareth, Kefr, Kenna,
Kana, and all the regions adja-
cent, where our Lord lived, and
where he commenced his ministry,
and by his miracles 'manifested
forth his glory,' were within the
limits of Zebulon; but Capernaum,
Chorazin, and Bethsaida were in
Naphtali. It was this latter tribe
that was ' by the way of the sea be-
yond Jordan', Galilee of the Gentiles.'
"Zebulon did not touch the sea at any
point, but the territories of these two
tribes met at the northeast corner of
the Biittauf, not far from Kana, and
within these two tribes thus united
our Lord passed nearly the whole of
his wonderful life." Thomson, IL
122, 123. 14, 15. which
was spoken by Esaias] The
passage here following is a free
quotation from Isa. ix. 1, 2. Dr.
Noj'cs's translation from the He-
brew is as follows: —
MATTHEW IV. 83
15 which was spoken by Esalas the prophet, saying : " The land
of Zabulon, and the land of Nephthalim, by the way of the
16 sea, beyond Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles, the people which
sat in darkness saw great light ; and to them which sat in the
17 region and shadow of death light is sprung up." From
that time Jesus began to preach, and to say : llepent ; for the
kingdom of heaven is at hand.
18 And Jesus, walking by the Sea of Galilee, saw two brethren,
Simon called Peter, and Andrew his brother, casting a net
19 into the sea ; for they were fishers. And he saitli unto them :
20 Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men. And they
21 straightway left their nets, and followed him. And going on
from thence, he saw other two brethren, James the son of Zeb-
edee, and John his brother, in a ship with Zebedee their father,
22 mending their nets ; and he called them. And they imme-
diately left the ship and their father, and followed him.
23 And Jesus went about all Galilee, teaching in their syna-
gogues, and preach?\ig the gospel of the kingdom, and healing
all manner of sickness and all manner of disease among the
24 people. And his fame went throughout all Syria ; and they
brought unto him all sick people, that were taken with divers
diseases and torments, and those which were possessed with
1 " But the darkness shall not remain 7 " His domain shall be great.
where now is distress ; And peace without end shall rest
Of old he brought the land of Zebulon Upon the throne of David and his
and the land of Nephtali into con- kingdom,
tempt ; He shall fix and establish it
In future times shall he bring the land Through justice and equity,
of the sea, bevond the Jordan, the Henceforth and forever."
circle of the Gentiles, into honor. y, . j.^c ,. , at. j. i.t.
It IS difficult to suppose that this
2 " The people that walk in darkness language was intended to express
be:iold a great light ; nothing more than the temporal
They who dwell in the land of death- prosperity of the land under any
'!^:^^\ ,;„.. ..;„,.. one of its kings. 23. in their
synagogues] " Synagogues arc
Upon them a light shineth.
5 " For the greaves of the warrior armed not mentioned till after the captivi-
for the conflict, tv. See Jos. Ant., XIX. 6. 3 ; De Bel.
Andthe war-gariuents rolled in blood, J^^}.^ yH^ 3, 3, Jn the time of Jesus
they were spread all over Palestine,
as well as among the dispersed Jews ;
For to ua a child is born, in Jerusalem there are said to have
To us a son is given, _ been four hundred and eighty of
Shall be burned ; yea, they shall be
food for the fire
And the_governu,ent shall be upon his them." Olshausen. The officeVs of
AndTe shall be called ^he synagogue appear to have been,
AVonderful, counsellor, mighty poten- —1- ^^e ruler of the synagogue,
tate ; Luke viii. 49; xiii. 14, who had the
Everlasting father, prince of peace. care of public order, and the arrange-
84
MATTHEW IV.
devils, and those which were lunatic, and those that had the
palsy ; and he healed them. And there followed him great 25
multitudes of people from Galilee, and from Decapolis, and
from Jerusalem, and from Judaea, and from beyond Jordan.
ment of the service ; 2. the elders,
■who with the ruler formed a sort of
council; 3. the substitute or an^el
of the assembly, — legntus or angelus
eccltSMje, — who was the reader of
prayers, &c. ; 4. the vTrqpirrjs, or
chapel clerk, to prepare the books
for reading, to sweep, &c. There
were seats, the first row of which
appear to have been coveted, Matt,
xxiii. 6; a pulpit for the reader,
lamps, and a chest for keeping the
sacred book." From this account it
is easy to see how the Christian
Church, with its service, grew out
of the Jewish synagogue.
MATTilLW V-. 85
CHAPTETl Y.
Introduction to the Sekmon on the Mount.
The precise order of events is not observed by St.
Matthew. He does not distinctly point out the time when
the Sermon on the Mount was given. After a passage,
iv. 23 - 25, which, in its general terms applying to Christ's
manner of life and the extent of territory which he visited,
may cover no small part of his ministry in Galilee, this
particular discourse is specified; but, except what might
be inferred from the part of the narrative in which it
occurs, no reference is made to the time when it was given.
It is very much as if the writer had said, Jesus went for
a considerable period of time through an extensive region,
performing miraculous cures and attended by great multi-
tudes of people. On one occasion, when he saw an immense
concourse of people who had come from Galilee and De-
capolis, from Jerusalem and Judaia, and from beyond the
Jordan, he went up into a mountain. Luke vi. 12-18, on
the other hand, indicates the time and the circumstances.
It was just after Jesus had chosen his twelve disciples.
He had retired into a mountain to spend the night in
prayer. And in the morning, having set apart his twelve
disciples, he came down to a level spot on the mountain,
and there, when great multitudes had come to him, and
he had healed their sick, " he lifted up his eyes on his dis-
ciples," and, addressing himself particularly to them, uttered
these words. The fact of his speaking particularly to his
disciples must be borne in mind, in order to understand
the extent and bearing of some of the directions. Though
containing principles applicable to all his followers in all
86 MATTHEW V.
ages, they were primarily addressed to the Apostles, and
have some specific rules which apply particularly to them
and to those who may be situated as they were.
Jesus had as yet made no public proclamation of the
character of his kingdom. Tlie multitudes were gathering
round him in eager expectation of the time when he would
raise the standard under which they should march on to
victory and universal dominion. They thought only of
an outward, visible kingdom, whose throne should be estab-
lished by overthrowing existing governments, and placing
the Jewish people, under their divine leader, at the head
of all the nations of the earth. The visions of warlike
conquest, of earthly glory and power, Avhich had attended
them through so many centuries, sweetening the cup of
present sorrow, defeat, and captivity with the hope of
future triumph over all tlieir enemies, were now about
to be realized. The long-expected Messiah had made
his advent at last. Thousands were thronging about him,
anxiously awaiting from him the signal for their national
deliverance. Under circumstances of extraordinary solem-
nity he was now about to inaugurate his kingdom. The
excitement is intense and overpowering.
The terms used by the Evangelists Matthew and Luke
would seem, as Tholuck and Olshausen say, to indicate the
peculiar solemnity of the occasion. " He lifted up his
eyes on his disciples," as if aware that the great crisis
in man's liistory had come, and that he was now about to
proclaim for the first time a kingdom such as never before
had been established on earth. The expression, " having
opened his mouth," implies a previous silence, in which
the impatient expectations of the people were painfully
suppressed. At last he opened his mouth, and what are
the words which come to them ? They are ready for deeds
of violence. They would take up arms to throw off the
Roman yoke. They have come to receive the benedic-
tion of their great deliverer before enlisting under his
MATTHEW V. 3 - 16. 87
banner for the wars in which he is to lead them on to
what the prophet Daniel had described when he said,
vii. 14, "There was given him dominion and glory an^l
a kingdom, that all people, nations, and languages should
serve him : his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which
shall not pass away, and his kingdom, that which shall
not be destroyed."
3-16. — The Beatitudes.
But all these expectations, all their hopes of external
dominion and glory, are thrown down and destroyed for-
ever by the first words that fall from the lips of him to
whom they had looked as their Messiah. His benedic-
tions are not for the mighty men of war, for those who
make their way to positions of wealth and power, and who
are honored among men. But, " Blessed are the i:)oor in
spirit ; Blessed are they that mourn ; Blessed are they
who hunger and thirst after righteousness; Blessed are
the meek; Blessed are the merciful, the pure in heart,
the peacemakers." And, as if this were not enough to
crush all the worldly hopes with which they had come
to him, he still more pointedly adds, " Blessed are ye
when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall
say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake."
Here, in his j^rophetic mind, seeing as already present
the spiritual victories which are to be gained through ob-
loquy, persecution, and death, he breaks out, for the moment,
into a lyric strain of exultation such as we find only on two
or three other occasions in his life. He calls on his follow-
ers to rejoice, and be exceeding glad. He sees in them
even now the grand conservative element of society, the
salt of the earth, which, amid the general corruption and
decay, shall save the world from death. Amid the almost
universal darkness they are to be the light of the world, —
a light so shining before men that they, seeing their good
works, shall glorify their Father who is in heaven.
88 MATTHKW V. 17-48.
And from that day to this how true have these words of
Jesus been in their apphcation to those who have done most
for the advancement of his kingdom ! " Holy men,'* says
Mr. Norton, Tracts on Christianity, p. 144, "have suffered
and died to procure for us the privileges which we enjoy.
They have followed in the track of pure splendor,
in which their great Master ascended to heaven
There is something very solemn and sublime in the feeling
produced by considering how differently these men have
been estimated by their contemporaries, from the manner in
which they are regarded by God. "We perceive the appeal
which lies from the ignorance, the folly, and the iniquity of
man to the throne of Eternal Justice. A storm of calumny
and reviling pursued them through life, and continued, when
they could no longer feel it, to beat upon their graves. But
it is no matter. They have gone where all who have suf-
fered, and all who have triumphed, in the same noble cause,
receive their reward ; but where the wreath of the martyr is
more glorious than that of the conqueror." This triumph
through death, this crown of martyrdom more joyful and
glorious than all the insignia of earthly greatness or success,
was first announced by Jesus Christ in the Sermon on the
INIount, and held up by him as the last and highest of the
Beatitudes.
17-48. — Fulfilling the Law and the Prophets.
But this mode of teaching looks like an attempt to do
away with the old dispensation, or to make it of no account.
Such a purpose would prejudice against him, not Pharisees
alone, but even the humble-minded and devout Jews who
have been waiting for his coming. He therefore declares
that he has not come to destroy, but to fulfil, the law and the
prophets. " Till heaven and earth shall pass away, not one
jot or one tittle \_jot, the least letter in the Hebrew alphabet,
and tittle^ a t^^light mark or corner of a letter], not the small-
MATTHEW V. 17-48. 89
est letter or stroke, shall pa?s away from llic law, till all be
fulfilled." But he did destroy the ceremonial law of Moses.
In what sense then did he come to fulfil it ? In that sense,
we may reply, in which it was intended from the beginning
that it should be fulfilled. It came from God. It embodied
its holy principles and its prophetic life in outward ceremo-
nies adapted to a rude and idolatrous age. It spoke to the
coarse, dull minds it met, through such a language as they
could understand, of symbols, types, and sacrificial obser-
vances. It went on from age to age, with judges and proph-
ets, unfolding its deeper meaning with the advancing intel-
ligence of the nation, writing out its expanding history of
obedience and disobedience with their swiftly following retri-
butions, in the progress of the race, pouring out its devo-
tions in hymns and psalms and spiritual songs, giving utter-
ance to its hopes in prophecies wliich flashed on with their
sublime anticipations through distant centuries, till at length
all law and history, hymn and prophecy, should be taken
up into the life towards which they had always been pointing,
and find their fulfilment in the spiritual religion, the hingdom
of God, which Jesus came to establish on earth, and which in
its saintly fellowship reaches up from earth to heaven. Thus,
the law, according to its sacred and original design, was
not destroyed but fulfilled, when in the fulness of time it left
behind its now wearisome and ineffectual forms, and took up
its sinless abode in Jesus Christ, condensing its instructions
into his words, appealing to men through him as a divine
life, and concentrating into his death the infinite treasures of
divine love, mercy, and forgiveness, which had been poorly
symbolized to the burdened heart of man by the ark of the
covenant, the mercy-seat, and the sacrifices, in the wilder-
ness or the temple, through so many centuries.
Jesus fulfds the law and the prophets first, of all by tak-
ing up and condensing into his own words the life-giving
spirit which pervaded them. Thus, as Cyprian long ago
remarked, he has sometimes given one or two precepts, e. g.
90 MATTHEW V. 17-48.
Matt. vii. 12, or xxii. 37-40, on whicli, as he said, "hang
all the law and the prophets." In this way he shows in the
Sermon on the Mount how the law and the prophets are to be
fulfilled, not by a literal, heartless, and formal observance ;
for unless their " righteousness," i. e. in this connection, their
obedience to the law, should be something more than that of
the Scribes who taught and the Pharisees who formally ob-
served its precepts, they could not enter into the kingdom of
the heavens.
Then, by a few illustrations which go to the very root of
the matter, in a manner more masterly than anything else
in the range of legal or metaphysical analysis, he seizes on
the principle which underlies the form and gives its mean-
ing to the enactment, and shows how the law, defeated often
and made of none effect by an obedience which is confined
to a literal observance of its precepts, is really to be fulfilled
only by obedience to its spirit and intention.
The law, 21, forbids the act of murder. But do they
therefore keep the law in its purest intention who observe
this precept and yet cherish an angry, contemptuous, or
malicious spirit, which is in itself the soul and essence of
murder ?
The law, 27, forbids adultery, and so far has respect to
our human weakness and hardness of heart, xix. 8, as to
allow the separation of man and wife, provided that certain
legal forms are observed. But the true intention of the law,
which looks to chastity as belonging to the soul as well as to
the body, goes beyond the outward act. It would pluck out
the eye that tempts to sin, cut off the offending hand, and
allow nothing but death, or that violation of the great and
essential law of conjugal fidelity which is in itself a dissolu-
tion of the marriage tie, to interfere with the permanency of
that relation, which, as an Apostle has said, Eph. v. 32, "is
a great mystery," which enters the inmost springs of social
and domestic purity, and touches at its source the fountain
of life to every child that comes into the world.
MATTHEW V. 17-48. 91
Tlie law, 33, forbids perjury. But obedience to this neg-
ative precept does not answer the intention of the law, which
finds its fulfilment only in such a state of inward integrity
and reverence for God and the truth, that a man's word will
be as sacred as an oath ; and consequently oaths themselves
in the dealing of Christians with one another will be super-
fluous, and therefore, according to the spirit of the third
commandment, profane. Especially will this principle cut
off those foolish forms of oaths then common among the
Jews, which were made for evasion and dishonesty, and
which, as Jesus declared in another place (Matt, xxiii. 16-
22), are sacrilegious and profane. "If," says Philo Judaius,
" a man must swear, and is so inclined, let him add, if he
pleases, not indeed the highest name of all, and the most im-
portant cause of all things, but the earth, the sun, the stars,
the heaven, the universal world," &c., &c., (Bohn's Philo
Juda^us, III. p. 256,) so as to evade the third command-
ment. There does not seem to be any reference here, in
our Saviour's words, to judicial oaths.
The law, 38, allows retaliation, " an eye for an eye, and a
tooth for a tooth." But he who has been wronged is not
hound thus to avenge himself. The highest intention of the
law, the princij^le of justice which by the injured party is
to be blended with mercy, finds its fulfilment, not in a literal
observance of the precept and the revengeful spirit thus
cherished, but in that state of mind which would rather suf-
fer evil than inflict violence in return, and submit even to
an unreasonable demand rather than forcibly to resist it.
While the principle here involved is to be of universal ap-
plication, the specific directions were undoubtedly intended
particularly for the disciples. Nor even by them, as Jesus
showed in his own conduct, John xviii. 23, when smitten on
the face, were they to be literally observed.
The pure intention of the law, 43, which, in commanding
to love our neighbor, would seem also to command us to
hate our enemies, is fulfilled only in such an extension of the
92 MATTHEW V. 17-48.
literal precept as may embrace all mankind, and lead us to
love even our enemies, and pray for those who persecute
and wrong us, that so we may strive to be perfect even as
our Father in heaven is perfect, who causeth his sun to shine
and his rains to descend on the evil and the good.
This train of thought runs through the whole Sermon on
the Mount. Therd is no repeal of the old law, but a more
thorough application and universal extension of its prin-
ciples. If it left many of its forms and specific rules behind,
it was only that it might be fulfilled, according to its original
and divine intention, by being taken up into a higher realm,
and, as a spiritual power and influence, establishing its king-
dom in the heart, and reaching the fountains of thought and
life. The Jewish altar and temple must be overthrown.
The smoke of the morning and evening sacrifice shall no
longer rise from Mount Moriah. The Jews shall be dis-
persed through all the nations, and the Mosaic observances,
as living institutions, be swept away from the earth. But
till heaven and earth pass away, not one iota of the law in
its essential characteristics shall pass away, till all its pur-
po-ies are fulfilled. It came from God. It is the source of
all true order and harmony in civil communities, and in the
souls of men. It would lead by its divine precepts and its
divine life through all the constraints and oppositions and
changes of our mortal condition to the attainment of peace
and harmony and spiritual joy. This law of God Jesus
found stifled beneath endless traditions and restraints, like
Lazarus in his tomb. He called it into life. He loosed it
from its grave-clothes, and sent it forth a free, beneficent, and
living spirit, with words of holy benediction, forgiveness,
life, and peace to weary, sorrowing, and sinful hearts, who
were sitting in darkness, and waiting for the kingdom of
God. And in whatever age the Pharisees among Christian
sects have sought by their traditionary doctrines or forms
to bind and bury it, and to build up in its place a system of
ceremonial observances and articles of faith which lead to
MATTHEW V.
93
superstition and hypocrisy, the simple words and acts of
Jesus, the Gosjoels in their simphcity and power, and es-
pecially tliis great Sermon on the Mount, are always the
most terrible as they are tlie most effectual protest against
them.
NOTES.
And seeing tlic multitudes, he went up into a mountain ; and
2 when he was set, his discii)les came unto him. And he opened
3 his mouth, and taught them, saying : Blessed are the poor in
4 spirit , for theirs is the kingdom of Heaven. Blessed are they
1. a mountain] This is sup-
posed to be a mouiitiiiii known as
Keerun Hattin, the Horns of Hattin ;
but there is no certainty in regard
to it. The i)lace most probably was
on the west side of the Lake of
Gahlee. 2. In regard to
the disappointment caused to all
the Jewish prepossessions and am-
bitious hopes by these Beatitudes,
Dr. Palfrey says : " 1 think we may
see that Jesus designed to break the
force of the blow, by hinting that the
view which he was presenting was
not without warrant fi*om those same
Old Testament Scriptures which it
seemed to oppose. To this end not
a little of the phraseology employed
by him on this occasion appears to
have been assumed." Among the
instances which he gives, compare
Matt. V. 3 Avith Ps. li. 17 ; Isa. Ixvi. 2,
V. 4, with Ps. cxxvi. 5; Isa. Ixi. 2, v.
5, with Ps. xxxvii. 11, v. 6, with Ps.
xvii. 1.5, V. 7, with Ps. xxxvii. 25,
26, xli. 1. 3. Blessed
are the poor in spirit] Not the
])Oor in this world's goods, though
the idea is founded on a reference
to them, but they who so feel their
spu-itual wants a* to long for the
riches of God's spiritual kingdom;
for theirs, m a peculiar sense, is
the kingdom of God. It is not im-
probable, as has been suggested, that
"our Lord may have had a refer-
ence to the poor and subjugated
Jewish people around him, once
members of the theocracy, and now
expectants of the Messiah's tempo-
ral kingdom, and, from their condi-
tion and hopes, taken occasion to
preach to them the deeper spiritual
truth." 4. This verse
carries on the same idea, and gives
its benediction, not only to thejjoor,
but to those who have' such a con-
sciousness of spiritual loneliness that
they mourn as in a state of bereave-
ment, "for they shall be comfort-
ed." To them the Comforter shall
come. The solitude in Avhich they
mourn shall be filled by Him whose
absence they lament. And as the
poor and sorrowing, in opposition
to the proud and self-satisfied, are
blessed, so also, 5, are the meek, in
opposition to the wilful and violent;
for they (Ps. xxxvii. 11) shall inherit
the earth, or the land. The expi'es-
sion " to inherit the land" originally
applied to the promised land, be-
came at length a common term to
denote the full enjoyment of the Di-
vine blessing. As the poor in spirit
shall enjoy the kingdom of God
spiritually present in their souls, so
the meek, in the renunciation of wil-
fulness and violence, shall enjoy it
also in its outward gifts. Meekness
94 MATTHEW V.
that mourn ; for they shall be comforted. Blessed arc the s
meek ; for they shall inherit the earth. Blessed are they 6
which do hunger and thirst after righteousness ; for they shall
be filled. Blessed are the merciful ; for they shall obtain 1
mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart ; for they shall see a
God. Blessed are the peacemakers ; for they shall be called 9
the children of God. Blessed are they which are persecuted lo
for righteousness' sake ; for theirs is the kingdom of Heaven.
Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, ii
and shall say all manner of evil against you, falsely, for my
sake. Rejoice, and be exceeding glad ; for great is your re- 12
ward in heaven; for so persecuted they the prophets which
were before you. Ye are the salt of the earth. But if the is
salt have lost his savor, wherewith shall it be salted ? It is
thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out, and to be trod-
den under foot of men. Ye are the light of the world. A u
city that is set on an hill cannot be hid ; neither do men light la
a candle, and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick ; and
it giveth light unto all that are in the house. Let your light 16
so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and
glorify your Father which is in heaven. Think not that I 17
is a quality of mind which disarms not only good for nothing, but it
opposition, admits us to the confi- actually destroys all fertility where-
deiice and att'ections of others, and ever it Is thrown. "It is cast out"
thus, enabling us to enjoy whatever and " trodden under foot; " so trou-
is most to be desired in the inter- blesome is this coniipted salt, that
course of life, leads us truly to in- it is carefully swept up, carried
herit the land. The expression forth, and thrown into the street,
reaches on also to the period when There is no place about the house,
the violent shall be put down, and yard, or garden where it can be
the meek prevail and triumph. tolerated." And so, our Saviour
11. for my sake] " Wliere says, it is with those who, being
selfishness prevails, there cannot be teachers and preachers of righteous-
such suffering as bestows happiness, ness, lose their zeal and fall away
But where suffering is incuired for from the ftiith. 16. So] As
the fiiith's sake, and isbonie in faith, the city on a hill, as the candle on
it pei-fects the inward life, and a candlestick, so, i. e. in like man-
awakens the desire for eternitv." ner, let vour light shine. 17.
Olshausen. 13. if the to fulfil] One of the Fathers corn-
salt] If yoit, the very salt of the pares the law to a sketch, which
earth, should lose youl* virtue, how the painter does not destrov, but
can the deficiency be made up? fills out. It means to comjAete or
" It is a well-known fact that the carry oiit. So, xxiii. 32, " Fill ye
salt of this country [Palestine], up [fulfil] then the measure of your
when m contact Avith the ground, fathers," i. e. complete the work
or exposed to rain and sun, does which thev have begun. So here,
become insipid and useless. It is to fulfil the law and the prophets is
MATTHEW V.
95
am come to destroy the law or the prophets ; I am not come to
18 destroy, but to fulfil. For verily I say unto you, till heaven
and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from
19 the law, till all be fulfilled. Whosoever therefore shall break
one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he
shall be called the least in the kingdom of Heaven ; but whoso-
ever shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in
20 the kingdom of Heaven. For I say unto you, that, except your
righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the Scribes and
Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of Heaven.
21 Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, " Thou
shalt not kill ; and whosoever shall kill shall be in danger of
22 the judgment." But I say unto you, that whosoever is angry
with his brother, without a cause, shall be in danger of the
to complete their work, — to carry
out and finish their design, — though
such a fulfihnent or completion
should be accomplished by leaving
their temporary provisions behind,
and absorbing their essential life
and truth into the higher dispensa-
tion for Avhich they were intended
to prepare the way, and by which
they are apparently superseded.
20. ' Scribes] " Persons devoted to
the work of reading and expound-
ing the law, whose office seems first
to have become frequent after the
return from Babylon. They gener-
ally appear in tfie New Testament
in 'connection with the Pharisees;
but it appears from Acts xxiii. 9
that there were Scribes attached
to the other sects also. In Matt,
xxi. 15 they appear with the o'lief
priests; but it is in the temple
whei-e they acted as a sort of police.
Their authority, as ex-
pounders of the law, is recognized
by our Lord, himself. Matt. xxii. 1,
2'; their adherence to the oral tradi-
tionary exposition proved. Matt. xv.
1 ; the respect in which they were
held by the people shown, Luke xx.
46 ; their existence indicated, not
only in Jerusalem, but also in Gali-
lee,' Luke V. 17 ; and in Rome, Jose-
phus, Ant. XVIIL 3. 5." Alford.
22. without a cause] is omitted
by Tischendorf, and is undoubtedly
an interpolation. There are three
degrees of guilt here indicated: 1.
anger against a brother ; 2. anger
venting itself in a terai of contempt,
Raca, thou vain, empty one ; 3. anger,
using a still more bitter term of re-
proach, /x&jpf, either a Greek word
signifying " thou fool," or a Hebrew
word signifying "rebel," and the
very word for uttering which Moses
and Aaron were debarred from en-
tering the land of promise; Hear
71020, ye rebels, Num. xx. 10. The
punishment due to each of these
three degrees of guilt is gi*aduated,
— 1. by " the judgment,-'' or local and
inferioV court; 2. by " </je council,^''
or Sanhedrim, the highest legal
Jewish tribunal ; and 3. and severest
of all, by " the Gehenna of jire^''
" the end of the malefiictor, whose
corpse, thrown into the valley of
Hinnom, was devoured by the
worm, or the flame." Gelxenna,
the valley of Hinnom, or Tophet,
mnning down from the west on the
southern border of Jerusalem to
the valley of Jehoshaphat. It has
been supposed that the allusion
here is to the offal from the city,
which was thrown out into this
valley to be consumed by fire. But
Dr. Robinson says that there is no
evidence of such fires having been
kept up in the valley. " Here," he
says, " the ancient Israelites estab-
96 MATTHEW V.
judgment ; and whosoever shall say to his brother, Raea, shall
be in danger of the council ; but whosoever shall say, Thou
fool, shall be in danger of hell fire. Therefore if thou bring 23
thy gift to the altar, and there rememberest that thy brother
hath aught against thee ; leave there thy gift before the altar, 24
and go thy way ; first be reconciled to thy brother, and then
, come and offer thy gifl. Agree with tliine adversary quickly, 25
whiles thou art in the way with him ; lest at any time the ad-
versary deliver thee to the judge, and the judge deliver thee
to the officer, and thou be cast into prison. Verily I say unto 26
thee, thou shalt by no means come out thence, till thou hast
paid the uttermost farthing. Ye have heard that it was said 27
by them of old time, " Thou shalt not commit adultery."
But I say unto you, that whosoever looketh on a woman to lust 28
after her hath committed adultery with her already in liis heart.
And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from 29
thee ; for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members
should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into
hell. And if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off, and cast it 30
from thee ; for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members
should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into
hell. It hath been said, "Whosoever shall put away his wife, 3i
let him give her a writing of divorcement." But I say unto 32
you, that whosoever shall put away his wife, saving for the
cause of fornication, causeth her to conmiit adultery ; and who-
lished the idolatrous worship of Mo- before the case is brought before a
loch, to whom they burned infants public tribunal. This is the literal
in sacrifice. 2 Kings xxiii. 10; Jer. sense: it involves another and higli-
vii. 31. It was apparently in allu- er meaning; the way of all the earth,
^ion to this detested and abominable through^ which we are journeying
fire that the later Jews employed to the judgments of eternity, 'and
the name of this valley (Gehenna) the word '^quickly'' alluding'to the
to denote the place of future punish- swiftness of the passage, and the
ment, or the fires of Tartarus." shortness of life. 29, 30. If
23. " It is not what complaints we thy right eye, if thy
have against others that we are to right hand, offend thee] i. e.
consider at such a time, but Avhat tempt thee to sin. We are to de-
they have against us ; not what stroy the first buddings of evil de-
ground we have given for complaint, sire* though it should be by the sacri-
but what complaints they, as matter fice of wliat is most dea/and u^'cful
of fact, make against us." Alford. to us. There must be no dallying
25. thine adA'^ersary] or parleying: with the temptations of
he to whom thou ha«t given offence, passion. Whatever the sacrifice, Ave
Whiles thou art in the must turn away at the very begin-
way with him] to the judge, i. e. ning. He who hesitates is lost.
MATTHEW V.
97
soever shall marry her that is divorced committeth adultery.
33 Again, ye have heard that it hath been said by them of old
time, " Thou shalt not forswear thyself, but shalt perform unto
34 the Lord thine oaths." But I say unto you. Swear not all ;
35 neither by heaven, for it is God's throne ; nor by the earth, for
it is his footstool ; neither by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the
36 great King ; neither shalt thou swear by thy head, because
37 thou canst not make one hair white or black. But let your
communication be. Yea, yea ; Nay, nay ; for whatsoever is
32. causeth her to commit
adultery] How so ? By putting
her away for any other caixse than
the one herein specified, the man
declares the whole previous mar-
riage to have been unlawful, impure,
and adulterous, and thus makes her
guilty of adultery. Any other rea-
son for divorce than the one speci-
fied, Avhich is in itself a dissolution
of marriage, would invalidate the
whole previous man-iage, and prove
the parties living under its sanction
to have been in that very act guilty
of adultery. We do not find the
difficulty by which most commen-
tators, from St. Augustine down-
Avards, are embarrass'ed in their in-
terpretation of this passage. The
man who unjustly repudiates his
wife, does not oblige her to marry
again, and therefore does not, in
that way, cause her to commit
adultery. And yet this is what is
usually regarded"^ as the trae inter-
pretation. And whosoever
shall marry her that is di-
vorced, committeth adultery.]
The only person who, according to
our Saviour, is properly and really
divorced, is she who has been guil-
ty of fornication, and he who mar-
ries her thereby incurs the guilt of
adultery. The intention of this,
and of the other passage in which
Jesus speaks of divorce (see xix, 8,
9), is to render the marriage I'elation
as indissoluble as possible, — 1. by
forbidding divorce except for a single
cause; and, 2. by forbidding the
woman who is thus put away, and
the man who puts away his wife
for any other cause than that, to
marry "again. But how is it with
one who, through the criminal con-
duct of the other party, is divorced ?
There is no authority given for such
an one to marry again, though it
is not specifically forbidden. The
Roman Church forbids such mar-
riages ; the Greek and Protestant
churches allow them. The spirit,
if not the letter, of our Saviour's
instructions would seem to dis-
countenance them. 33, 35.
" Men had learned to think that, if
only God's name were avoided,
there was no irreverence in the fre-
quent oaths, by heaven, by the earth,
by Jeinisalemj by their own heads,
and these brought in on the slight-
est need, or on no need at all; just
as now-a-days the same lingering
half-respect fbr the Holy Name will
often cause men, who would not be
wholly profane, to substitute for
that name sounds that nearly re-
semble, but are not exactly it, or
the name, it may be, of some hea-
then deity." Trench. This whole
matter of blasphemously trifling
and evasive oaths is again power-
fully brought forward in Ch. xxiii.
16-22; and that passage may be
taken as the best commentary on
this : " Ye say, whosoever shall
swear by the temple, it is nothing;"
but, in fact, " whoso shall swear by
the temple, sweareth by it, and by
Him that dwelleth therein. Ana
he that shall swear by heaven,
sweareth by the throne of God, and
by Him that sitteth thereon." 36.
Thou must not, then, swear even by
thine own head; for it is not thine
own : thou canst not change one
hair white or black. It, also, is the
" creature of God, whose destinies
98
MATTHEW V.
more than these cometh of evil. Ye have heard that it liath sa
been said, " An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth." But I 39
say unto you, that ye resist not evil ; but whosoever shall smite
thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also ; and if any 40
man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him
have thy cloak also ; and whosoever shall compel thee to go a 4i
mile, go with him twain. Give to him that asketh thee ; and 42
and changes are in God's hand; so
that every oath is an appeal to
God." 37. cometh of
evil] Among true men more is
not needed, and whatever more
than a simple affinnation is re-
quired by men is because of the
wickedness among them. Among
you, in your dealings with one an-
other, this necessity ought not to
exist. 38. an eye for an
eye] This rule, Ex. xxi. 24, as St.
Augustine has said, was not in-
tended as an incitement, but as a
limit to private revenge; not as a
command stimulating men to do so
much, but as a command forbid-
ding them to exact more. The
command, however, in its original
connection, is to the wrong-doer,
"Then thou shalt give life for life;
eye for eye." 39. That
ye resist not evil] toj novrjpco^
the evil or wicked mun, who is
doing you a Avrong. It is better to
submit to a wrong-doer than to re-
tort bv violence. The literal turn-
ing of the left cheek, of course, is
not intended. When Jesus, John
xviii. 22, 23, was thus smitten, he
made no violent resistance, but,
without turning the other cheek,
mildly remonstrated against the
wrong. His example is the best
possible commentary on his Avords.
40. sue thee at the
law] From personal violence,
Jestis comes to a case of legal op-
pression, and applies the same
principle there. Rather than re-
sist the legal decision, which com-
mands him to give up his coat, an
inner and less costly garment, as a
pledge for what he is charged with
owing, the Christian is even to give
up his cloak, the outer and more
valuable gannent, which, according
to the law, Ex. xxii. 26, could not
legally be kept over night, because
it was used as a coverlet by the
poor at night. 41. Avho-
soever shall comiiel] " This
language is taken from a Persian
custom. A courier travelling on
the king's business could law-
fully impress into his service men,
horses, ships, boats, or any vehicle,
to accelerate his journey. The
same custom prevailed under the
Roman governors or Tetrarchs."
Livermore. The Jews complained
of this practice, on the part of the
Romans, as a heavy grievance. Jos.
Ant., XIII. 2. 3. «' We learn, from
coins and inscriptions, that the cou-
riers in the service of the Roman
government had the privilege of
travelling through the provinces
free of expense, and of calling on
the villagers to forward their car-
riages and baggage to the next
town. Under a clespotic govern-
ment this became a cruel grievance.
Ever}- Roman of high rank claimed
the same privilege ; the horses were
unyoked from the plough to be har-
nessed to the rich man's carriage.
It was the most galling injustice
which the provinces sixffered. We
have an inscription on the frontier
town of Egypt and Nubia, mention-
ing its petition for a redress of this
grievance ; and a coin of Nerva's
reign records its abolition in Italy.
Our Lord could give no stronger
exhortation to patient humility
than by advising his SjTian hear-
ers, instead of resenting the demand
for one stage's ' vehiculation,' to go
willingly a second time." Eclectic
Rcview."^ 42. Give to him
that asketh] The same spirit of
kindness and submission, which is
to be exercised toward the enemy
MATTHEW V.
99
43 from him that would borrow of thee turn not thou away. Ye
have heard that it hath been said, " Thou shalt love thy neigh-
44 bor, and hate thine enemy." But I say unto you, love your
enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate
you, and pray for them which despitefully use you and perse-
45 cute you ; that ye may be the children of your Father which is
in heaven ; for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the
46 good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust. For if
ye love them which love you, what reward have ye ? do not
47 even the publicans the same ? And if ye salute your brethren
only, what do ye more than others ? do not even the publicans
who subjects us to personal vio-
lence, and toward an unjust antago-
nist in the law, is to be extended to
our neighbor in the less imperious
and pressing claims that are made
upon us. Ihe command, Avhich is
not to be understood literallv, but
like those before it, as a liebi-ew
form of comparison, is this: Rather
err on the side of charity than on
the side of pradence. This method
of interpretation is entirely in ac-
cordance with what is customary in
Oriental, and indeed in our own
forms of speech. When a father
says to a credixlous child, " My
son, believe nothing that you hear
reported," his meaning is plain
enough. He would guard his child
against the extreme to which he
sees him exposed, by expressing
very strongly his preference for
the opposite extreme, where the
danger to him is so much less. The
commands here are of this sort.
Jesus does not command us to ex-
ercise no discretion in complying
with the requests of others. ^But
in opposition to one extreme, he
sets before us the other as that
towards which we ought rather to
incline. It would be a perversion
of his meaning to give to every one
whatever he might ask, — a sword
to the madman, money to the in-
temperate or the impostor. " Ours
should be a higher and deeper
charity, flowing from those inner
springs of love which are the
sources of outward actions, some-
times widely divergent, whence
may arise both the timely conces-
sion and the timely refusal."
45. for he maketh his sun] A
similar expression is quoted from
Seneca by Meyer: "If you imitate
the gods, give benefits even to the
ungrateful ; for the sun rises even
for the wicked, and seas are open to
pirates." 46. the publicans]
Tax-gatherers. This race of men,
so frequently mentioned as the ob-
jects of hatred an'd contempt among
the Jews, and coupled with sinners,
were not properly the publicans,
who were wealthv Romans, of the
rank of knights, farming the reve-
nues of the provinces ; but their un-
derlings, heathens or renegade Jews,
who usually exacted with reckless-
ness and cruelty." Alford.
47. publicans] Gentiles. Tischen-
dorf. 48. Be ye there-
fore] •' Wherefore ye shall be per-
fect." The future for the impera-
tive, as in the Ten Commandments.
" In Greek authors," says Winer,
xliii. 5. c, " this mode of expres.
sion is considered softer than the
imperative." perfect] Not
partial and one-sided in your aims,
but whole, entire, complete. Be not
one-sided, like the publicans, who
love only those that love them ; nor
like the Gentiles, who salute only
those who salute them; but be ye
perfect, even as your Father in
heaven is perfect. Let no aim less
comprehensive than this satisfy
you. As to the technical doctrine
m
MATTHEW V.
«so ? Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in 48
heaven is perfect.
about perfection in this life, it can
be lield only by those whose stand-
ard of perfection is very low and
incomplete. There is no passage in
the Bible more opposed to such a
doctrine than this, in the compre-
hensive aim which it sets before
us, to keep us always active and
always humble, " asserting as it
does, that likeness to God in inward
purity, love, and holiness must be
the continual aim and end of the
Christian in all the departments of
his moral life." This may be con-
sidered as the sublime conclusion
of the second part of the Sermon,
the first part ending with the six-
teenth verse.
MATTHEW VI, 101
CHAPTER YI.
General Design.
In the preceding chapter, Jesus has spoken of the higher
fulfihnent of the law of " righteousness " which he demanded
in the relation of man to man through obedience to its
principles, especially in those points where it had been
impeded in its operation and curtailed in its require-
ments by the low intellectual, moral, and spiritual con-
dition of the people. He now shows how this same " right-
eousness," vi. 1, (for "righteousness," not "alms," is the
word in the best editions of the New Testament,) is to be
fulfilled in the duties which were regarded as more imme-
diately connecting man with God.
Here, as in the previous chapter, v. 17-20, he first,
1, states the general principle, and then, as he had done
before, goes on to illustrate it by examples, which, in lan-
guage that a child may understand, exhaust this whole
branch of the subject. In your alms, which were justly
regarded as religious duties, (" He that hath pity for the
poor, lendeth unto the Lord," Prov. xix. 17; "They
cannot recompense thee, but thou shalt be recompensed
at the resurrection of the just," Luke xiv. 14,) in your
prayers and fastings, Jesus says, in substance, you must
take heed, lest, looking to the praise of man for your re-
ward, you shall fail of being approved by God. Alms-
giving, prayer, and fasting should be dear to you, not
as securing the favor of man, but as solemn privileges
to be used and duties to be performed in the sight of
God, and from motives M'hich He who is unseen, 6, "in
secret," will approve and reward.
9*
102 MATTHEW VI. 7-15.
7-15. — Lord's Prayer.
Under the head of prayer without ostentation or vain
and foohsh repetition, Jesus gave his disciples an example
of the sort qf prayer which he would have them use. Not
that exactly these words were always to be employed
by them. The same prayer, as preserved by St. Luke,
is not in precisely the same words as here, and in the re-
corded devotions of Christ and the Apostles there is no
evidence that this or any other liturgical form made a
part of the service. Yet it was undoubtedly intended by
him to serve through all ages as a guide and help to
his followers in their devotions. For in it he has con-
densed into a few simple words all that we should most
earnestly ask of God in prayer.
" Whatever from the beginning," says Stier, " since men
first, on account of sin and evil, lifted their hearts and hands
to heaven, has been in their minds to ask, is here reduced,
in the simplicity of the new and everlasting covenant, the
last utterance of God to us in his Son, to one word, which
will remain man's last utterance also to God, until heaven
and earth are divided no more. All the cries which go
up from man's breast upon earth to heaven, meet here
in their fundamental notes; and are gathered into words
which are as simple and plain for babes as they are
deep and inscrutable for the wise, as transparent for the
weakest understanding of any truly praying spirit as they
are full of mysterious meaning for the mightiest and last
struggles of the spirit into the kingdom and glory of
God."
We may pray in secret ; but it is no solitary or unsocial
act in which we are engaged. By the word " Our" we
are bound to one another more closely as we kneel to
offer up our supplications not for ourselves alone, but for
all with whom we are connected as children of a com-
mon Father. " We do not," says Cyprian, in his com-
MATTHEW VI. 7-15. 103
mentary or homily on the Lord's Prayer, "pray each
one for himself alone ; for we do not say, ' My Father who
art in heaven,' or, * Give me this day my daily bread,' &c.
He who is the God of peace, and the author of unity and
concord, would have us pray each one for all." Prayer
thus becomes a bond of union, not only with God, but with
one another among all his people. Our affections are drawn
out more earnestly towards our brethren, and we feel that
we are all one community of souls, bound together by
common sympathies and wants as we lift up our hearts
in prayer to Him, whom we thus address as the common
Father of us all.
While the expression " Our Father^'' gives warmth and
strength to this feeling of fellowship and brotherhood to-
wards man, it unites us to God in the closest and most
endearing relation. Bringing him down to us as our
Father, and binding us to him by all the tender and
powerful associations connected with that name, it adds
the expression, '"'■who art in heaven^^ to lift us up into
that purer realm with all the fond hopes and affections
that cling trustingly and lovingly to him.
Being thus lifted up with Him into his heavenly king-
dom, as children with their Father, we ask that his name,
here put for Himself, the infinite source of all holiness,
may be hallowed, — held sacred and holy by all his chil-
dren, — that thrpugh his holiness perpetually renewing itself
in our hearts by the progress of the divine life in the soul
and throughout the world his name may be honored and
revered as holy.
But it is not so now. Here is a world of sin and dis-
order, where injustice and cruelty and evil passions so
widely prevail, and human governments and laws have
not the power, and oftentimes have not the disposition,
to restrain them and root them out. We ask therefore
that God's kingdom may come^ that in its outward, visible
authority, with all its spiritual agencies and powers, it
104 MATTHEW VI. 7-15.
may come down from heaven and be established on the
earth ; that everywhere, in each soul and throughout all
the world, its supreme authority may be recognized and
its commands obeyed, and men give to it the allegiance
which is due from loyal and obedient subjects to the di-
vine kingdom which is placed over them.
But the kingdom of God — this reign of laws and gov-
ernment — does not sufficiently endear itself to us. It does
not satisfy the heart. Even in the exercise of God's au-
thority and the advancement of his kingdom, we long for
a more intimate personal relation than any which can ex-
ist between the laws or the ruling institutions of an em-
pire and its subjects. By the petition, " Thy will he done
in earth as it is in heaven^* God is brought into this per-
sonal relation with us. He is not an Almighty monarch,
however righteous, enforcing laws however just, without any
regard to the individual wants and personal feelings of
his subjects. His personal will, as that of a Father, is
brought into a thoughtful, compassionate, all-subduing con-
nection with the souls of his children. Not merely do
we say, "Thy purposes be accomplished in those great
events, which, ordered by thine infinite wisdom, reach
through kingdoms, worlds, or ages for their fulfilment, and
before which we would bow down in awe and submission ; '*
but, " May thy will, in all the minute and affecting inci-
dents of life, enter into our hearts, control every thought
and emotion there, and bring us into a cheerful, loving,
childlike obedience to thee. May thy will, visiting us
as a personal presence, and commending itself to all our
dearest hopes and affections, be done among us on earth
as it is among the angels of heaven, those prompt and
willing messengers of his goodness, who delight to "do
his commandments, hearkening unto the voice of his word."
" Here," says Claudius, " I picture to myself heaven and
the holy angels who do his will with joy, and no sorrow
touches them, and they know not what to do for love
MATTHEW VI. 7-15. 105
and blessedness; and then I think, if it were only so
here on earth!"
It is a great thing to pray that God's will may be
done. This prayer was uttered by our Saviour in agony
of soul, and we know not how deeply God in his answer to
it may strike into the very heart of what is dearest to us.
The petition certainly means that we should give up every
unjust or unholy object of ambition or gain that we pos-
sess or desire to possess, and that we should strive to
remove every little resentment and unworthy feeling, every
darling habit and propensity which may in any way inter-
fere with our moral and religious Avell-being. It may be
also that in praying that his will may be done, we are
asking him to take from us some of our dearest earthly
friends or possession's ; since the loss of these may be
needed, in order that his will may be done in our hearts
as it is among his angels in heaven. If we think of
these things, and condense them all into this petition with
perfect submissiveness of soul, not only as we kneel by
a dying friend or child, but in our usual morning and
evening prayers when all things are fair and bright around
us, there will be no lack of feeling in our devotions, and
our prayers will have a holy and uplifting influence on
our lives.
" But he who knoweth our frame, and remembereth that
we are dust," will condescend to our lowest wants. From
these lofty subjects of contemplation and of prayer, the name,
the kingdom, and the will of God, our Saviour lets us come
down to a sense of our human wants, and teaches us to pray
for " our daily bread." Thus, our daily food, asked and
received from God, may become a daily motive for inter-
course with Him, and a daily source of thankfulness and de-
votion. The more we learn to connect the thought of God
with even the smallest of his gifts, the more constantly will
the sense of his goodness and our obligation to him be kept
alive in our hearts. But while we ask for our bodily food,
.106 \.TTHEW VI. 7-15.
our daily bread, in which words are included all our earthly
wants, these same words may remind us of the bread from
heaven, the spiritual food, which we also need and ask to
have supplied to us day by day.
Not only are we dependent creatures, resting on God's
daily bounty for our support, but as erring, sinful beings we
turn to him in penitence, and ask to be forgiven, even as we
forgive those who have sinned against us. There has
always been danger lest religion should be separated from
morality, and men's prayers to God stand apart from their
sympathies with one another. But the most difficult and
most affecting duty to others is woven into our daily prayer,
and made the only condition on which we are permitted so
much as to ask that God will forgive us our sins. And to
bind this condition still more forcibly upon us, the Saviour
adds as a comment to the prayer : " For if ye forgive men
their trespasses, your Heavenly Father will also forgive you;
but if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your
Father forgive your trespasses." We have no right to ask
God's forgiveness, except so far as we are ready to forgive
those who have injured us.
Not only have we sinned in times past, but as we call to
mind our transgressions, we feel anew and more keenly the
sense of our own liability to sin ; and we pray therefore with
renewed earnestness that our Father, in his great mercy, will
so order events as not to lead us into temptation. Full of
contrition for our former offences, with a sense of weakness
aggravated by our consciousness of guilt, we turn, as help-
less, erring children to their father, with the further, heart-
felt petition, " And lead us not into temptation, but deliver
us from evil." From evil, first and most of all,/rom sin,
with the moumfid train of griefs and pains which follow
after it as its natural attendants. But in this petition we
pray also to be delivered from every form of evil. " Here,"
says the author who has just been quoted from Dr. Hedge's
Prose-Writers of Germany, "I still think of temptations, and
MATTHEW VI. 16-34. 107
that man is so easily seduced and may stray from the
strait path. But at the same time I think of all the trou-
bles of life, of consumption and old age, of the pains of child-
birth, of gangrene and insanity, and the thousand-fold misery
and heart-sorrow that is in the world, and that plagues and
tortures poor mortals, and there is none to help. And you
will find, if tears have not come before, they will be sure to
come here." And from this vast accumulation and variety
of evils we pray God to deliver us, and rest in the certain
assurance and conviction that he will hear and answer our
prayer.
Every element of devotion is here ; — praise, confession,
supplication, ascription, even without the last clause. There
is no want of our spiritual or mortal nature which is not
recognized and provided for. "The true Christian," says
Luther, " prays an everlasting Lord's Prayer." What else
indeed can he pray, either in act or word or thought ? To
pray the Lord's Prayer is not merely littering the words.
It is lifting the soul up, that it may be touched with love
and reverence by the hallowed name of our Father who is
in heaven. It is striving to bring heart and life into accord-
ance with all that is divine, so as to realize the true union
between human effort and the Divine will. To pray the
Lord's Prayer in spirit and in truth is to live it all out as in
God's presence and with his aid. This co-working of man
with God, this union of earnest effort and earnest prayer, is
the life of all that is best within us.
16-34. — Perfect Trust in God.
Having thus lifted up the souls of his hearers into com-
munion with God, Jesus carries them along on this high
plane of thought, and continues to show how the "right-
eousness" of the first verse is still to be fulfilled by motives
which look to God, and not to man. In their fasting, which
he does not enjoin as a duty, he directs them so to de-
108 MATTHEW VI. 16-34.
mean themselTes as not to attract the notice of men, but
appear to their Father in heaven as fasting, — hungering
and thirsting (v. 6) for his righteousness. But the love
of praise is not the only influence that may come in to
destroy our singleness of purpose, and weigh down our
heavenly affections by its sordid and unworthy motives.
The love of earthly gain must be overcome by the love
that follows the richer treasures which we lay up for our-
selves in heaven. For where the treasure is there the
heart also will be ; and if the mind is once corrupted by
these inferior passions, it is as if the eye of the soul were
diseased and clouded, so that the truth of God is shut
out or perverted, and the very light that is in us tumed
into darkness. And if the light within thee be dark-
ness, how great, the Saviour exclaims, "will the darkness
be ! " We can then, he adds, 24, safely owe no double
allegiance to God and the world. If one master is loved
and obeyed, the other will be hated, or at least neglected
and despised.
But Jesus goes deeper than this into the secret motives
of the heart. The same spirit which leads to avarice in
the accumulation of wealth, may, by undue anxiety about
the provisions necessary for our daily wants, interfere
with the purity of our religious motives, and the sim-
plicity of love and faith with which we are to look to
God for our support, and to receive our food and raiment
day by day as from his hands. Nothing can exceed the
poetic beaifty of this passage (25 - 34), the logical force of
its reasoning, or the calm and sublime convictions of re-
ligious trust in which it rests. Are not the life, — the
soul, — and the body, which God has freely created and
bestowed, more than food or raiment ? As he has pro-
vided these greater gifts, can ye not trust him in those
which •» are the least? "Look at the birds of heaven;"
[which may have been flying near them ;] " for they sow
not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns ; and yet
MATTHEW VI. 16-34. 109
jour Heavenly Father feedeth them." Observe the ex-
quisite tenderness in the mode of expression ; — not their
God or their Father, but your Heavenly Father. '' And
are not you for more to him than they ? " While the reason-
ing proves. the assertion to the understanding with logical
power, these words bring it home with endearing emphasis
to the lieart. Tliere is then no cause for anxiety ; but if
there were, of what use could it be ? With all his anxiety,
who among you could add one cubit to his life? "And
as to raiment, why should you be anxious ? " They were
in the open field, and the flowers probably were near them.
" Consider the lilies of the field, how they are growing :
they toil not, they spin not; but I say unto you, that not
Solomon in all his glory was arrayed like one of these."
And if God so clothe these perishing things, — the grass
of the field which flourishes to-day only that it may be
consumed to-morrow, — will he not much more clothe you,
ye distrustful ones? Do not put yourselves on a level
with the unbelieving Gentiles, who are anxious about these
things. And then he adds, in words which bring the pater-
nal providence of God tenderly and warmly home to them,
even in the smallest matters, " Your Heavenly Father know-
eth that you have need of all these things. But seek ye
first his righteousness and his kingdom, and all these
things will be given to you in addition." " Wherefore,"
— for all these reasons, especially as they are summed up
in the last sentence, — "be not anxious about the morrow;
for," — in addition to the reasons already given — " the
morrow, like to-day, Avill have, and will make provision
for its own trials." Live faithfully amid the duties of
to-day, with a perfect trust in your Heavenly Father for
all that lies beyond ; for by so doing you will best pre-
pare yourselves for the duties and the trials of to-morrow.
The evils of to-morrow will be provided for, and will be
enough in thempclves when to-morrow comes, without being
forestalled now, and adding their weight to the already
10
110 MATTHEW VI. 16-34.
sufficient burdens of to-day. The meaning of the passage,
which closes the third division of the Sermon on the Mount,
is, That we are to live as God's children in the present,
giving ourselves up entirely to the duties which he as-
signs to us, with that perfect trust in him which leaves
no room for anxiety in regard to the perishing things
of time which we may need in the future.
It is impossible to describe the new life and meaning
which these w^ords about the birds and flowers throw into
nature, whose creatures, perpetually fed and clothed by
God, are objects of his care and proofs of his active, all-
pervading presence, as they are the symbols of 4iis good-
ness. The doctrine implies all that is valuable in panthe-
ism, the all-pervading, efficient presence of God, while
over the universe thus pervaded and sustained it throws
the kind, intelligent providence of a personal God, and
the thoughtful, benignant love of our Heavenly Father.
While our Saviour would here withdraw us entirely
from earthly anxiety, creating in the soul a love and
faith which cast out fear and distrust, there is nothing
of Asceticism or Stoicism in his instructions. He rec-
ognizes the evils of life. He does not ignore or despise
its good things. Our Heavenly Father knows that we have
need of them. And because he knows our need of them,
and will provide for it, we are to place them where they
belong, as wholly subordinate to the heavenly treasures,
and, without anxiety or care for them, seek first his right-
eousness and his kingdom.
MATTHEW VI.
Ill
NOTES.
Take heed that ye do not your alms before men, to be seen
of them ; otherwise ye have no reward of your Father which
2 is in heaven. Therefore when thou doest thine alms, do not
sound a trumpet before thee, as the hypocrites do in the syna-
gogues and in the streets, that they may have glory of men.
3 Yerily I say unto you, they have their reward. But when
thou doest alms, let not thy left hand know what thy right
4 hand doeth ; that thine alms may be in secret ; and thy Father,
which seeth in secret, himself shall reward thee openly.
5 And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites
are ; for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in
the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men.
6 Verily I say unto you, they have their reward. But thou,
when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast
1. Your alms] Your righteous-
ness, diKaioavurjv., not eXerjfioavurjv,
is undoubtedly the true reading;
and it is to be taken here in the
same sense as in v, 20, where it is
used by Jesus to show the sort of
fulfihnent of tlie law which he came
to enforce. 2. do not
sound a trumpet] There is no
good reason to suppose that this
custom literally prevailed, though
one of the Fathers mentions it as a
tradition in his day, " that the hyp-
ocrites call the beggars together by
the sound of the trumpet." But
Lightfoot, in his comment on this
passage, says: "I have not found,
although I 'have sought for it much
and seriously, even the least mention
of a trumpet in almsgiving."
they have their reward] Have
reward enough, — what they sought
and bargained for, namely, the praise
of man, and also, what they did not
seek or bargain for, the disappro-
bation of God. 3. let not
thy left hand] Do it without any
regard to what others may say or
think, in such pei-fect simplicity of
heart, that not even the left hand
may know of the charity which the
right hand is bestowing. Perhaps the
fact that the alms-box in Jewish
synagogues stood on the right hand
of the passage into the house added
to the force of the expression.
4. in secret] Unseen. open-
ly] This word is omitted in the
best editions of the Greek text, both
here and in vv. 6 and 18.
6. enter into thy closet] This
is not necessarily to be taken liter-
ally. We may,\as St. Chrysostom
has said, shut our closet doors, and
yet leave the doors of the mind open
to thoughts inconsistent with our
devotions. The ostentation of the
thing is what is condemned. He
who anywhere, though it be in a
public place, retires within the clos-
et of his own mind, and there prays
to God in the secrecy and simplicity
of his soul, obeys this injunction of
our Lord; while it is violated by
him who willingly allows it to be
understood that he often shuts him-
self up in his closet for secret prayer.
The secret prayer that is talked
about to others is no longer secret.
Li this particular the race of Phari-
sees is not yet extinct. There is
a time and a place for our public
devotions. But above all, in the
secrecy of our own souls, by acts
too sacred for man to see or to hear
about, we are to keep up the habit,
112
MATTHEW VI.
shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret ; and thy
Father, which seeth in secret, shall reward thee openly. But 7
when ye pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do ; for
they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking.
Be not ye therefore like unto them ; for your Father knoweth 9
what things ye have need of, before ye ask him. After this 9
manner therefore pray ye : Our Father, which art in heaven,
hallowed be thy name ; thy kingdom come ; thy will be done, lo
not merely of daily, but of constant
communion with Ciod, and thus keep
alive the spirit of devotion within
us. While Jesus here enjoins secret
prayer, he does not forbid social or
public prayer, in which he is known
to have engaged more than once,
lyiatt. xi. 25, 26; John xi. 41, xvii.
1-26. 7. vain repeti-
tions] Do not babble, or make un-
meaning repetitions in your prayers.
" What is forbidden in this verse,"
says Alford, " is, not much pniying,
for our Lord himself passed whole
nights in prayer; nor praying in the
same words, 'for this he did in the
very intensity of his agony at Geth-
semane; but the making number
and length a point of observance^ and
imagining that pmyer will be heard,
not ijecause it is the genuine expres-
sion of the desire of faith, but be-
cause it is of such a length, has been
such a number of times repeated.
The repetitions of Pater Nosters and
Ave Marias in the Romish Church,
as practised by them, are in direct
violation of this precept."
9. After this manner] " We may
place our little children's hands to-
rether, and teach them, say ye.
Well for every one for whom this is
early done; it is not too soon as
early as the child can cry. My
father and my mother, and lift up
his eyes to heaven as a child of
humanity. How perfect is the
simplicitv of this beginning of all
prayer, descending to the root and
principle, already naturally present
in the heart, of all sense of love and
trust for gift and help Fur-
ther, what an inexhaustible mean-
ing is there in the conjunction, in
this first glance towards heaven, of
the Father-name which is inborn
and sweet to every child of man,
with the universal compass of all
things and the hosts of the universe.
He whose are all the heavens, and
not thy own earth merely, is the
Father, is thy Father." Stier. " In
the Lord's Prayer, w^hicli is prayer
in its most perfect form, we are
taxight to acknowledge the Lord as
the sole object of our worship; to
revere his name or attributes; to
desire at heart the restoration of his
kingdom within us, and throughout
the world; to resign our wills to his
will in all his dispensations and in
every act of his providence, till earth
shall become as heaven within us;
till the external form of oiu- actions
be one with the internal spirit which
rules them, and the whole earth may
be brought to the worship of the
Lord in the harmony and peace of
heaven." Arbouin.
9. thy name] '* De Wette ob-
serves: 'God's name is not merelv
his appellation, which we speak with
the mouth, but also and principally
the idea which we attach to it, his
Being, as far as it is confessed, re-
vealed, or known.' ' The name ' of
God in Scripture is used to signify
that revelation of himself which he
lias made to men, which is all tlnit
we know of him; into the depths of
his being, as it is, no man can pene-
trate." Alford. 10. as
it is in heaven] "As in the
courses of sun and stars, so amon^
the morning stars and sons of God,
Job xxxviii. 7, there is the festal
service of those who, active in rest,
shout for joy in their ranks of bless-
edness, ^o' should it be upon earth:
vast is the meaning which carries
the promise in this prayer far above
all the stir and tumult of humanity,
MATTHEW VI.
Hi
11 in earth as it is in heaven ; give us this day our daily bread ;
12 and forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors ; and lead
13 us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil ; for thine is
the kingdojn, and the power, and the glory, forever. Amen.
14 For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your Heavenly Father
15 will also forgive you ; but if ye forgive not men their tres-
passes, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.
16 Moreover, when ye fast, be not, as the hypocrites, of a sad
countenance ; for they disfigure their faces, that they may ap-
pear unto men to fast. Verily I say unto you, they have their
17 reward. But thou, when thou fastest, anoint thine head, and
inviting and urging all the children
of God to restless wrestling in pray-
ing and receiving, and fervor in do-
ing his will." Stier.
11. our daily bread] eTnovaiov.
A great deal of learning has been
expended on this word, but Avith no
more satisfactory result than that
in our English version. Its root
may be two words, which mean on-
caminff, referring to the day now
coining on, and well enough trans-
lated by our ' daily.' But the most
satisfactory analysis of the Avord is
that adopted by most of the Greek
Fathers, 6 eirl ovma fjfxcov, what is
needed for our subsistence. By the
word brend is meant everything that
is required for our sxipport, — all the
needful things of time. This un-
doubtedly is the primary meaning
of the petition ; but it may also ex-
tend itself so as to include the higher
nutriment, — those things which are
requisite and necessary as well for
the soul as the body.
13. and lead us not into temp-
tation] Tliere is a sense, and that
a profound one, in which all actions
and events proceed from God. With
this comprehensive view of the Di-
vine agency reaching through all
things, these words mean, ' so order
all events connected with us, and
so assist us in the government of
our own thoughts, that we may not
be led into temptation.' The two
clauses of the petition must be ta-
ken together : ' lead us not into
temptation, but [on the contrary]
deliver us from evil.' The first
10*
clause, growing out of our con-
sciousness of weakness and expos-
ure, gives force to the second.
Feeling keenly our liability to evil,
we ask Avith more intense earnest-
ness that God will dellA'-er us. It is
said, James i. 13, ' God cannot be
tempted Avith evil, neither tempteth
he any man.' But this which im-
plies direct personal solicitation to
sin, is not inconsistent Avith the fact
that, in the vast and manifold order-
ings of God's providence, he should
sometimes give rise to contingencies
which lead men into teinptation, so
that, Avith philosophical strictness of
speech, he may be said to lead men
into temptation. But that is an in-
cidental result, gi'OAving out of com-
plicated caitses intended for other
purposes, and therefore allowed by
God; but not designed by him for
the purpose of tempting us. The
substance of the Avhole matter is
stated by St. Paul, 1 Cor. x. 13;
' but God is faithful, Avho Avill not
suffer you to be tempted above that
ye are able ; but will with the tempta-
tion also make a way to escape that ye
may be able to bear it.
For thine is the kingdom, and
the power, and the giory, for-
ever. Amen.] There is no trace
of this ascription in early times,
in any family of manuscripts, or
in any exposition. It is excellent
in itself; but Ave have no reason to
suppose that it originally formed any
part of the Lord's Prayer.
17. anoint thine head] i. e. do
as you are in the habit of doing;
let there be nothing unusual ia
lU
MATTHEW VI.
wash thy face ; that thou appear not unto men to fast, but unto is
thy Father which is in secret ; and thy Father, which seeth in
secret, shall reward thee openly. Lay not up for your- 19
selves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt,
and where thieves break through and steal ; but lay up for 20
yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust
doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor
steal. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be 21
also. The light of the body is the eye. If therefore thine 22
eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light ; but if 23
thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness. If
therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is
that darkness ! No man can serve two masters; 'for either he 24
will hate the one, and love the other ; or else he will hold to
your appearance to attract atten-
tion. Tlie disfiguring of the face,
in v. 16, refers to the habit of cover-
ing the face with ashes, or leaving
it unwashed and neglected in times
of fasting. 19. treasures
upon earth] No small part of
the " treasures " in the East con-
sisted of sumptuous and magnificent
garments. " I had," says Bartolo-
mo, " put my effects into a chest,
and opening it afterwards, I dis-
covered an innumerable multitude
of termites (or ants). They had
perforated my linen in a thousand
places, and gnawed my books, my
girdle, my amice, and"^ my shoes."
rust] /3pcoo-is, — a more
general term than rust: anything
that corrodes, that eats into and con-
sumes what is valuable. break
through] Prof. Hackett, speaking
of the unsubstantial character of
many of the houses in the East,
built as they are of small stones and
clay, says that " the labor of digging
through' such walls cannot be diffi-
cult. Those who wished to plunder
a house would be apt to select a
place where the partition was ap-
parently thin, and then stealthily
remove the stones or clay, so as to
open a passage. In some parts
of our English version ' breaking
through ' should be changed to
• digging through.' " Illustrations
of Scripture, p. 95. 22.
singrle] clear^ with no foreign sub-
stance to obstruct the passage of the
light through it. The eye, i. e. the
medium through which the light
passes, is put for the light itself, as
in our common speech we use the
word cup to express the wine which
is contained in it. As the pure,
clear eye is the medium through
which the light finds its way into
the body, and fills it with light, so
the conscience, when it is clear of
every foreign influence, lets the
light of God's truth into the soul.
But if, 23, thine eye be evil, i. e.
the opposite of clear, no light can
enter, and the whole body is full of
darkness. And if the "very light
that is in you be darkness, how
great must the dakkness be !
Man's lower nature is enlightened,
spiritualized, and sanctified by the
spiritual light which comes into it
through the eye of the soul ; but if
that light, through the perversion
of the eye, be darkness, now great
must the darkness of the sensuous
life be. There are none so mourn-
fully dark as they who, claiming to
be Christians, thus distort, pervert,
and tui'n into darkness the very
light of God's truth. How many
professed teachers of righteousness,
their intellectual and spiritual per-
ceptions clouded by their own pre-
conceived opinions,' refuse to receive
the Gospel in its simplicity, and
MATTHEW VI.
115
the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and
25 Mammon. Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for
your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink ; nor yet
for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than
26 meat, and the body than raiment ? Behold the fowls of the
air, for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into
barns ; yet your Heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not
27 much better than they ? Which of you by taking thought can
28 add one cubit unto his stature ? And why take ye thought for
raiment ? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow ;
spend all their ingenuity and
strength in turning its light into
darkness! 24. Mammon]
According to Augustine this was a
Carthaginian name for lucre or
gain. The researches of scholars
have thrown no further li^ht upon
it. 25. Take no thought]
This word, /xtpi/xmre, from a root
implying division, admirably ex-
presses the divided and distracted
state of mind which is here con-
demned as directly opposed to the
entire consecration of the whole
man to God, with perfect trust in
him. The transition is a natural
one from the single eye of v. 22, to
the divided allegiance of v. 24, and
from that to the distracted, anxious
state of mind which is produced
when the simple, tmsting devotion
of the soul to God is disturbed by
too fond a regard for lower things:
"This 'take no thought' is cer-
tainly an inadequate translation, in
our present English, of the Greek
original. The words seem to ex-
clude and to condemn that just for-
■ward-looking care which belongs to
man, and differences him from the
beasts, which live only in the pres-
ent; and most English critics have
lamented the inadvertence of our
authorized version, which, in bid-
ding us 'take no thought' for the
necessaries of life, prescribes to us
Avhat is impracticable in itself, and
would be a breach of Christian
duty, even were it possible. But
there is no ' inadvertence ' here.
When our translation was made,
'take no thought' was a perfectly
correct rendering of the original.
' Thought ' was theh constantly
used as an eqviivalent to anxiety
or solicitous care ; as let us witness
this passage from Bacon : ' Harris,
an alderman in London. Avas put to
trouble, and died with thmiylit and
anxiety before his business came to
an end.' Or, still better, this from
erne of the ' Somers Tracts' (its
date is that of the reign of Queen
Elizabeth): 'In five hundred years,
only two queens have died in child-
birth; Queen Catherine Parr died
rather of thou(jhV A better exam-
ple than either of these is that oc-
cmring in Shakespeare's ' Julius
CiEsar,' (' tahe ihouyht and die for
Caesar ' ) Avhere ' to take thought '
is to take a matter so seriously to
heart that death ensues." Trench.
for your life] "^^xh a
word which has no equivalent in our
language, and is translated life,
in this place, ii. 20, x. 39, xvi. 25,
and XX. 28, but is rendered soul, xi.
29, xii. 18, xvi. 26, xxii. 37, and
xxvi. 38. It means the vital, sen-
tient principle which constitutes
our identity, and which may be
thought of in its relation to our
physical nature, as our physical,
nidrt-al life, or in its relation \o our
spiritual nature, as the soul. See x.
39, xvi. 25, 26. 27. one cubit
unto his stature] The primary
meaning of the word here rendered
stnture is age, which is the more
forcible tenii of the two. Who, by
anxiety, can add a cubit to his tei-m
of life'? 28. the lilies of
the field] We cannot tell pre-
cisely what flowers these were.
" But if, as is probable, the name
116
MATTHEW VI.
they toil not, neither do they spin ; and yet I say unto you 29
that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of
these. Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which 30
to-day is, and to-morrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much
more clothe you, O ye of little faith ? Therefore take no 31
thought, saying. What shall we eat, or what shall we drink,
or wherewithal shall we be clothed ? (For after all these 32
things do the Gentiles seek ;) for your Heavenly Father know-
eth that ye have need of all these things. But seek ye first 33
the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these
things shall be added unto you. Take therefore no thought 34
for the morrow ; for the morrow shall take thought for the
things of itself Suflicient unto the day is the evil thereof.
may include the numerous flowers
of the tulip or amaryllis kind, which
appear in the early summer, or the
autumn of Palestine, the expression
becomes more natural, — the red
and golden hue fitly suggesting
the comparison with the proverbial
gorgeousness of the robes of Solo-
mon." " Whatever was the special
flower designated by the lily of the
field, the rest of the passage indi-
cates that it was of the gorgeous
hues which might be compared to
the robes of the great king."
Stanley. " As the beauty of the
flower is unfolded by the divine
Creator-Spirit from witiiin, from
the laws and capacities of its own
individual life, so must all true
adornment of man be luifolded
from within by the same Almighty
Spirit." Alford. 30. cast
into the oven] The slight an-
nual plants, which are called gi-ass,
are still used for fuel in the East.
The oven is a sort of earthen pot
(the mouth downward, and taper-
ing towards the top) in which a fire
is kindled that heats it easily, and
the bread, rolled out thin, is spread
over the outside surface and quickly-
baked. 33. the kingdom
of God, and his righteousness]
Tischendorf has it : " But seek ye
first his righteousness and his king-
dom," which reading is sustained
by the best manuscripts, and indi-
cates the true order in which we
are to seek, first, the righteousness,
and then, through that, the kingdom
of God. " By the kingdom of God,"
says Swedenborg, " in its universal
sense, is meant the universal heav-
en; in a sense less universal, the
tnie Church of the Lord; and in a
particular sense, every particular
person of a true faith, or who is
regenerated by the life of foith ;
wherefore, such a person is also
called heaven, because heaven is
in him; and likewise the kingdom
of God, because the kingdom of
God is in him, as the Lord him-
self teacheth in Luke xvii. 20, 21,"
34. for the morrow]
For to-morrow will have cares and
troubles enough of its own, just as
to-day has. It has no claims to ex-
emption from evil more than to-day,
and therefore we are not to increase
the burdens of to-day by uselessly
forestalling the troubles 'of to-mor-
row. Do what we can, it will have
trials enough of its own. Leave it,
therefore, as you do whatever else
is unavoidable, submissively aud
trustingly in the hands of God.
MATTHEW VII. 117
CHAPTER YII.
Analysis.
Most readers are accustomed to regard the Sermon
on the Mount as made up of disconnected maxims and
precepts. But on a critical examination, nothing perhaps
strikes us more than the intimate relation of the parts,
bound together as they all are, and making one orderly
and consistent whole. After the benedictions in the fifth
chapter, Jesus shows how the law is to be more strictly
observed by obedience to the spirit rather than the letter.
In the sixth chapter, he shows how improper motives
may vitiate our religious acts, darken the light that is in
us, break up our allegiance to God, and disturb our faith.
The seventh chapter, after a few specific rules particularly
applicable to the disciples, but involving principles of con-
duct which can never be out of season, closes with con-
siderations of momentous interest and importance in their
application to those who would be his followers in all
coming times.
First, 1-5, he warns those who are going forth to re-
generate and reform the world, that they must beware
of cherishing a censorious temper or habit of mind, and
especially be careful to have their own souls pure before
they should dare to arraign the conduct of others or ex-
hort them to cast out their sins; lest like hypocrites they
should condemn in others faults which they themselves
cherish in more aggravated forms. Only purity in their
own hearts and lives will enable them to aid others in
putting away their sins. Still, 6, they are to exercise
their discretion in regard to others, and not waste their
118 MATTHEW VII.
time and precious gifts on those who will listen only to
what appeals to their impure, coarse, and sensual appe-
tites. Lest, however, they should be discouraged by such
persons, they are exhorted, 7-10, to look to One who
will always hear, and never refuse to assist them. Ask,
seek, knock, express the different degrees of earnestness
in prayer, which will not be in vain. Tlierefore, 11-12,
since God, even more than an earthly father, will give
good things to them that ask him, they are in some meas-
ure to imitate his beneficence, and do to others as they
would have others do to them. For here, in doing thus
to others with a constant and prayerful reference to God,
is the fulfilment of all that has been enjoined by the law,
or taught by the prophets. See xxii. 40.
The question is sometimes asked, how far the Golden
Rule is original in this place. Similar precepts have been
quoted from other writers, but no one which has the same
fulness of meaning as this. In Tobit iv. 15, we read,
" Do to no man that which thou hatest." Kuinoel quotes
from the Talmud a similar precept, " Do not to another
that which is hateful to yourself." Seneca, Ep. 94, says,
"Expect from another the same that you do to him."
Each of these, and indeed all of them combined fail to
come up to the precept of Jesus. At best, they cover
only the negative and least important side of the great
rule of disinterested and active beneficence which he has
laid down. But independently of the precise meaning
of the precept standing by itself, he has infused into it
a religious power which takes it up out of the region
of moral precepts and endows it with his own spiritual
life. The warm religious atmosphere which is thrown
around his instructions gives them a new vitality. Take,
e. g. the first of the beatitudes, "Blessed are the poor
in spirit ; for theirs is the kingdom of Heaven." Here is
a precept relating to a disposition or habit of mind, and,
as far as the ethical rule is concerned, it might be trans-
MATTHEW VII. 119
lated, Cultivate a lowly, unambitious spirit. "Who does
not see that the words of religious benediction and joy in
which it is here imbedded lift it up out of the sphere of
prudential or ethical rules, animate it with a religious
life, and press it upon us with the holy and beneficent
sanctions of a divine authority ? It is so with all our
Saviour's moral instructions. They are never presented
as naked precepts. The spiritual life which enters into
them, and the religious sanctions which are thrown around
them, and which mould them into conformity wdth the
will of God, bring them to us, not as formal rules, but as
spirit and life. They do not stand outside as stern moni-
tors to remind us of our duties and enforce obedience ;
they enter our hearts as vitalizing influences. They quicken
our affections, subdue us to themselves, and lead to obe-
dience as the spontaneous act of souls thus prepared. In
this way, the Golden Rule, urged from a religious motive
on hearts already touched, by a sense of God's infinite
condescension and kindness, is filled out with a divine
life, which gives it inspiration and power.
But it is no easy work to which the followers of Jesus
are called. They are to strive, Luke xiii. 24, — dycovlCea-de,
struggle, as in a crowd and a contest, — on account of the
multitudes that are pressing into the broad way that leads
to destruction, and the narrow, afflictive way that leads to
life. Especially they must beware of the false teachers,
who would come as prophets to deceive them, and who
could be known only by their works. Here he warns
his followers against the danger of ostentatious and heart-
less professions.
"Not every one that saith unto me. Lord, Lord, shall
enter into the kingdom of the heavens, but he that doeth
the will of my Father who is in the heavens." In that
kingdom, and in the great day of its consummation to each
individual soul, when the secret thoughts and acts of men
are revealed, to the astonishment of themselves most of all,
120 MATTHEW VII.
^hen shall they who have lived in outward formalities and
professions cling still to their old protestations, and endeavor
by them to shut out the new and dreadful revelations that
are breaking in upon them. "Then will I confess unto
them, I never knew you; depart from me, ye that work
unlawfulness " duofxiav, i. e. ' ye violators of the law. ' We
should note the force of this word which in this connection
shows what he means by the violation of the law which he
came to fulfil. They who, instead of doing the will of God,
trust to their professions of honor and respect for him, are
'the violators of the law whom he drives away from his
presence.
How grand and awful these words, in which Jesus as
the representative of the divine justice announces the rejec-
tion of those who, honoring him with their lips, had yet
refused to submit themselves to the will and the law of God.
But these words of terrible warning to one class of
offenders are not sufficient. Referring back to his whole
discourse, in which all that is significant and vital in the
law has been condensed and set forth, by images borrowed
from that land of mountain-torrents, and sudden, violent, and
destructive floods, he tells them that he who hears and does
these words of his, is like a wise man who built his house
upon a rock, and rain and floods and winds fell upon it in
vain, for it was founded on a rock. But he who hears and
does them not, is like a foolish man who built his house on
the sand, and rain and floods and winds beat violently
against it, and it fell in a ruin great and terrible in propor-
tion to the expectations and hopes which he had been
building on that precarious and deceitful foundation.
Here is the solemn and appalling close of the greatest,
the most comprehensive and most important discourse ever
spoken to man. The multitudes were filled with astonish-
ment at his instructions. The extraordinary ascendency of
Jesus over them is shown by the fact, that, though he had
so utterly disappointed them in all their most deeply cher-
MATTHEW VIT. 121
islied expectations, they nevertheless recognized his author-
ity, and were astonished at the power with which he spoke.
It has been questioned by critics whether the words here
brought together were actually spoken at one time. It has
been suggested that Matthew may have put together as one
discourse words spoken on different occasions. But those
who have carefully followed us in our analysis will, we
think, come to a different conclusion. The intimate connec-
tion of the parts ; the orderly whole which they make ;
the touching and beautiful introduction ; the body of the
sermon freighted with profound and various instructions, yet
all bearing upon the same subject, viz. the fulfilment of the
law in its highest and most comprehensive sense; — the
solemn and almost overpowering close; are to us an un-
answerable proof that the whole was spoken on one occasion
and as one discourse, though there may have been a pause
here and there to mark the succession of topics.
NOTES.
2 Judge not, that ye be not judged. For with what judg-
ment ye judge ye shall be judged ; and with what measure ye
3 mete it shall be measured to you again. And why beholdest
thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not
1, 2. A general law of retribution tence of allegiance to the truth,
is here announced. As we give, so " It has been made known to me,"
shall we receive. "Justice," says says Swedenborg, "by much ex-
Tholuck, " is elastic ; the unjust perience, that persons of every relig-
blow I inflict upon another recoils ion are saved, if so be, by a life of
upon myself." He who is kind, charity, they have received the re-
merciful, and gentle to others, will mains'of good and of apparent truth,
disarm them of their severity, and The life of charity consists in man's
make them kind, merciful, and gen- thinking well of others, and desiring
tie to him. Especiallv are we to good to others, and receiving joy
remember this in the jud-^rments we in himself at the salvation of others ;
pass on those who differ from us whereas they have not the life of
in their religious views, w*here we charity who are not willing that
sometimes indulge our personal or any should be saved but such as
sectarian animosities under the pre- believe as they themselves do, and
11
122
MATTHEW VII.
the beam that is in thine own eye ? or how wilt thou say to thy 4
brother. Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye ; and, be-
hold, a beam is in thine own eye ? Thou hypocrite, first cast 5
out the beam out of thine own eye ; and then shalt thou see
clearly to cast out the mote out of, thy brother's eye.
Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your 6
especially if they are indignant that
it should be otherwise." 3, 4.
Only the eye that is single can see
clearly. The faults which offend
us most in others are often those
of which we are guilty ourselves.
The proud man is most annoyed by
the pride of others, and the quickest
to see it. The offences which we sus-
pect in others are often only faults
of character or of temper projected
from our own minds, and having no
substantial existence except in our-
selves, the mote
the beam] From quotations given
by Lightfoot, this would appear to
have been a proverbial form of ex-
pression among the Jews.
5. to cast out the mote out of
thy brothel's eye] Before, 3, it
was only looking, or staring at the
mote in the brother's eye; but now,
with clear sight, and a charitable
intent, we help him to put it away.
The lesson taught in these five
verses is a rebuke to the fault-
finding, satirical spirit, in which
the Pharisees and hypocrites of all
times delight to indulge. One of
tlie few legends respecting Jesus,
which are not utterly worthless, is
to the same effect, and, as told by
Mrs. Jameson, is nearly as follows :
"Jesus arrived one evening at the
gates of a certain city, and he sent
his disciples forward to prepare
supper, while he himself, intent on
doing good, walked through the
streets into the market-place. And
he saw at the corner of the market
some people gathered together look-
ing at an object on the ground; and
he drew near to see what it might
be. It was a dead dog with a halter
roimd its neck, by which it ap-
peared to have beendragged through
the dirt; and a viler, a more abject,
a more unclean thing never met the
eye of man. And those who stood
by looked on with abhorrence, and
gave vent to strong expressions of
dis^st. And Jesus heard them,
and, looking down compassionately
on the dead creature, he said, ' Pearls
are not equal to the whiteness of his
teeth.' Then the people turned to-
wards him with amazement, and
said among themselves, ' Who is
this? This must be Jesus of Naz-
areth, for only he could find some-
thing to pity and approve even in a
dead dog ; ' and, being ashamed,
they bowed their heads before him
and went each on his way."
6. dogs] Dogs (Phil. iii. 2 ; Rev.
xxii. 15) stand as a type of the
shameless, passionate, and profane,
while swine were abhorred as im-
pure, sensual, and obscene. This
passage, Dr. Barnes says, " gives a
beautiful instance of the introverted
parallelism." In Hebrew poetry,
one member of a sentence generally
answers to another, expressing tlie
same thing with some slight modi-
fication:
"• The heavens declare the glory of God ;
And the iinnament showeth his handy
work." — Ps. xix. 1.
" Create in uie a clean heart, God ;
And renew a right spirit within me."
— Ps.li 10.
In these examples, as is usually
the case, the parallelism is between
the first clause and the second.
Sometimes, where there are four
clauses, it is between the first and
third, and the second and fourth, as
in the following:
" On her house-tops.
And to the open streets,
Every one howleth,
Descendeth with weeping."
isa. XV. 3.
Sometimes, but rarely, the first
and fourth, and the second and
third correspond. In Matt. xii. 22,
MATTHEW VII.
123
pearls before swinc ; lest they trample them under their feet,
7 and turn again and rend you. Ask, and it shall be given
you ; seek, and ye shall find ; knock, and it shall be opened unto
8 you. For every one that asketh receiveth ; and he that seek-
9 eth findeth ; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened. Or
what man is there of you, whom if his son ask bread, will he
10 give him a stone V or if he ask a fish, will he give him a ser-
11 pent ? If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto
your children, how much more shall your Father which is in
12 heaven give good things to them that ask him ? Therefore all
things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye
even so to them ; for this is the law and the prophets.
\3 Enter ye in at the strait gate ; for wide is the gate, and broad
is the way, that leadeth to destruction ; and many there be
u which go in thereat. Because strait is the gate, and narrow is
the forms of expression correspond
in this way. He Iiealed linn, inso-
much that
" The blind
And dumb
Both spake
And saw."
So in the passage before us :
" Give not that which is holy unto dogs,
Neither cast ye your pearls before
swine,
Lest they [the swine] trample them
under their feet.
And [the dogs] turn again and rend
you."
7, 8. Ask, seek, knockl
Usually supposed to refer to ditler-
ent degrees of earnestness in prayer.
The following, from Clowes's notes
on this passage, may possibly sug-
gest a better interpretation : " 1 o
ask has relation to the desire of
heavenly good in the will, to seek
has relation to the desire of heav-
enly truth in the imderstanding, and
to knock has relation to the joint
effect of such desire in opening com-
mmiication with the Lord and his
kingdom. In like manner, in the
succeeding verse, 8, to receive has
relation to the appropriation and
possession of heavenly good, Xo find
has relation to the appropriation and
possession of heavenly truth, and to
nave it opened has relation to the
communication therebyeflfectedwith
the Lord's kingdom and the Lord
himself." The limitation to the
promise is in James iv. 3.
11. If ye then, being evil] " i. e.
in comparison with God." Alford.
13. The gate is put before
the way, and refei-s to that decisive
exercise of will by which we enter
on a Christian course, and the nar-
row Avay indicates the perseverance
which is also needed in order that
we may enter into life.
14. Because strait] Strait means
narrow, and tlie word ti'auslated nnr-
row has a more intense signification.
It is from the same root — to squeeze,
bruise, crush — as the word rendered
^^tribulation''' (Acts xiv. 22), " We
must through much tribulation en-
ter into the kingdom of God," and
without doubt has here something
of the same meaning. It was a way
so narrow as to be afflictive. There
is almost always a contrast between
the narrowness, the straits, the trib-
ulation, through which the Christian
must pass in the eyes of the world,
and the spiritual freedom and joy in
which he walks. life] In
the New Testament death is often
regarded as the offspring of sin
{.lames i. 15), and life as the effect
or consequence of holiness. The
term death, therefore, often stands
for sin and its sori'owful conse-
Qucnces, as h/e is made to stand
ror holiness and its blissful results.
124
MATTHEW VII.
the way, which leadeth unto life ; and few there be that find It.
Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's 15
clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves. Ye shall 16
know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns,
or figs of thistles V Even so every good tree bringeth forth n
good fruit ; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit. A 18
good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt
tree bring forth good fruit. Every tree, that bringeth not forth 19
good fruit, is hewn down and cast into the fire. Wherefore 20
by their fruits ye shall know them. Not every one that saith 21
unto me. Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of Heaven ;
but he that doeth the Avill of my Father which is in heaven.
Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not 22
will say to me in that day]
Here is one of those indefinite ex-
pressions, which, like life, death,
Kingdom of Heaven, outer darkness,
&c., have a more powerful eflect
on the imagination and the heart
than any precise terms could ever
have, even if it were possible to
apply them to this class of subjects.
They draw us into the realm of in-
finite being. Its vast background
of light or darkness is thrown
around them. They cannot be de-
fined because they are employed in
relation to matters which have no
bounds, and which in our present
state of existence, we can but im-
perfectly compi-ehend. In " that
day," when the Son of Man shall
come (John xiv. 20) ; in '• that day "
when the crown of righteousness
shall be given to him who has
fought a good ffght and finished his
course (2 Tim. iv. 8); in "the day
when God shall judge the secrets of
men by Jesus Christ" (Rom. ii. 16);
in "the day of judgment" (Matt,
xi. 24), when " it shall be more toler-
able for the land of Sodom than for
thee," — in " that day " only those
who do the will of God shall be al-
lowed to enter into the kingdom of
Heaven. Wien " that day " shall be,
or what precisely shall be the sign
of its coming, is wisely hidden from
us. But it has been fully revealed
to us by what means we shall best
prepare to meet it. " Blessed is that
servant whom his Lord, when he
cometh, shall find so doing." See
Absolute life is absolute holiness
and blessedness. This is the com-
mon, though not the only use of the
word C^Tj, which is here translated
hfe. It refers to the life of the soul,
a principle of divine life with its at-
tendant blessedness and peace, and
hardly more than two or three times,
as Luke xvi. 25 and James iv. 14,
to the life of the bodv. See Trench's
Synonymes of the New Testament.
16. by their fruits] Sol-
emnly repeated at v. 20. " The fruit
is that which a man, like a tree, puts
forth, from the good or evil dispo-
sition which pervades the whole of
his inward being. Learning, com-
piled from every quarter, and com-
bined with language, does not con-
stitute fruit; which consists of all
that which the teacher puts forth
from his heart, in his language and
conduct, as something flowing from
his inner being." Bengel.
of thorns] " Although their berries
resemble grapes, as the heads of
thistles do figs." Bengel.
17. Every good (dyaBov) tree
hringeth forth good (koXovs)
fruit.] There is a peculiar fitness
of adaption in the use of these two
epithets, which is lost in our version.
The tree is good, the fruit which it
bears is not only good, but beautiful.
A good and faithful Hfe brings forth
its good and beautiful fruits, not
only in good deeds, but in the knowl-
edge to which it leads of w^hat is
true and fair. 22. Many
MATTHEW
prophesied in thy name, and in thy nar
23 and in thy name done many wonderful
will I profess unto them, I never knew you ; depart' irom me,
24 ye that work iniquity. Therefore whosoever heareth these
sayings of mine, and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise
25 man, which built his house upon a rock ; and the rain de-
scended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat
upon that house ; and it fell not , for it was founded upon a
26 rock. And every one that heareth these sayings of mine, and
doeth them not, shall be likened unto a foolish man, which
27 built his house upon the sand ; and the rain descended, and
the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house ;
and it fell ; and great was the fall of it.
28 And it came to pass, when Jesus had ended these sayings,
29 the people were astonished at his doctrine. For he taught
them as one having authority, and not as the scribes.
XXV. 31 - 46. 23. I never
knew you] Never recognized them
as his disciples. For all their loud
professions and words of honor and
reverence to him, he knows them
not. Only those who receive his
truth into their hearts and show it
forth in righteous living are recog-
nized as his. With what sublime
and majestic authority are these
words uttered ! No king or prophet
could ever have used such language
without an almost insane presump-
tion. 24. whosoever
heareth these sayings of mine]
To hear the Avoras of Jesus implies
something more than to perceive
them with the outward ear. When
on the mountain of Transfiguration,
the words, " This is my beloved Son,
in whom I am well pleased, hear ye
him," were spoken, the command
implied that the disciples should
hear with loving and believing
hearts, that they should bring them-
selves so into sympathy with him, or
rather into such an attitude of lov-
ing submission before him, that his
words should find a welcome in
their minds. When Mary, sitting
at his feet, heard his word (Luke
X. 39), it was with reverential affec-
tion that she received his instnxc-
tious. And this loving reverence
11#
for Christ is still needed in order
that we may truly hear his words.
upon a rock] The living
i-ock. Is there not here an allusion
to Christ himself as the foundation ?
The expression was one famiUar to
the Jews in rehition to the Messiah :
" Behold, I lay in Zion for a foun-
dation a stone, a tried stone, a pre-
cious coi-ner-stone, a sure founda-
tion " (Isa. xxviii. 16). " He founds
his hou?e on a rock," says Alford,
" who, hearing the words of Ciu'ist,
brings his heai-t and life into ac-
cordance with his expressed will,
and is thus by faith in union with
him founded on him. Whereas he
who merely hears his words, but
does them not, has never dug down
to the rock, nor become luiited with
it, nor has any stabilitv in the hour
of trial." 25, 27. and beat
upon that house] In verse 25,
the Greek word irpoa-iivfaav means
to fall upon; in 27, TTpoaeKoyfrav
means to strike or dash against.
The two words are wisely chosen
to describe the diflerent effects pi-o-
duced by the same temptations on
diflerent' persons; falling upon the
good to purify and confirm them,
but da shin ff violently on others so as
e itirely to' overthrow in them every
principle of faith and love.
126 MATTHEW VIII. MIRACLES.
CHAPTEE YIII.
Gospel View of Miracles.
In this and the next four chapters we have detailed
accounts of our Saviour's actions, and particularly of his
miracles. There lie in some minds objections so strong
against miracles, and the assaults on the credibility of the
Gospel narratives have rested so much on these objec-
tions, that it may be well here to look carefully into the
subject.
What is a miracle ? Not a violation or suspension of
the laws of nature. "If," says Olshausen, Vol. I. p. 236,
" we start from the Scriptural view of the abiding pres-
ence of God in the world, the laws of nature do not admit
of being conceived of as mechanical arrangements, which
would have to be altered by interpositions from without ;
but they have the character of being based, as a -whole,
in God's nature. All phenomena, therefore, which are
not explicable from the known or unknown laws of the
development of earthly life ought not for that reason to
be looked upon as violations of law and suspensions of
the laws of nature ; rather, they are themselves compre-
hended under a higher general law, for what is Divine is
truly according to law. That which is not Divine is against
nature ; the real miracle is natural, but in a higher sense.
It is true, the cause of the miracle must not be sought
within the sphere of created things ; the cause of it exists
rather in the immediate act of God."
A miracle, then, is not a violation of the laws of nature.
MATTHEW VIII. MIRACLES. 127
It is not an effect without an adequate cause, but in a
miraculous act the usual course of physical events is
changed, the usual succession of physical causes and effects
is stayed, by the intervention of a higher power. When
a man I'aises his hand, the law of gravitation is not sus-
pended in its action upon the hand ; but its influence
is resisted and overcome by the higher power which in-
tervenes through an act of the will. If, as may be the
fact in some cases of animal magnetism, a man is able,
by a simple act of the will, to raise not only his own
arm but the arms of another, in opposition to the law
of gravitation, there would be no violation or suspension
of that law. He would merely overcome its resistance
in this particular case by the intervention of another and
superior power. So if, by a yet more effective exercise
of the will, he could stay the progress of disease, quicken
again the stagnant current of life in the veins, or bring
back to the physical organs the functions of a suspended
vitality, it might all be, so far as we can know, in harmony
with the laws of nature, and in conformity with what is
everywhere recognized as an established fact or law ;
viz. that where two influences or forces come into collision,
the weaker must yield to the stronger. Now, according to
the Gospel narratives, Christ was endowed with powers
through which he was able to cleanse the leper of his foul
disease, quench the fever in its fiery progress, calm the
winds, restore the maniac to his right mind, and expel
demons, by an exercise of the will to him as easy and
as natural as that by which we raise an arm, or with
a word silence the noise of playful children. There are
no thaumaturgical displays, such as we always find with
professed wonder-workers. There are no marks of violent
effort. He never, in performing a miracle seems to go
out from his usual and normal condition. So far as his-
methods of action are concerned, there is nothing to sepa-
rate these from his other works.
128 MATTHEW VIII. MIRACLES.
In conformity with this supposition, there is a peculiar
fitness in the term which Jesus usually applied to his
miraculous acts. In the Gospels there are four different
words applied to miracles, 1. prodigies or wonders, Ttpara;
2. powers or mighty works, dvvafias ; 3. signs, crrjfxfla ; and,
4. works, (fryci. The only instance in which the word rcpara,
corresponding to our word miracles, is applied to miracu-
lous acts by Jesus is where he speaks of them (Matthew
xxiv. 24; Mark xiii. 22) as performed by false prophets,
with whom they must indeed have been prodigies or
wonders, and (John iv. 48, " Except ye gee signs and won-
ders, ye will not believe,") where he gpeaks of them as
they appear to those who, not believing in him, could
regard them only as prodigies. The similar word, wonder-
ful things, 6avfid(Tia, occurs but once (Matthew xxi. 15), and
there when mention is made of the acts of Jesus as they
appeared to the chief priests and scribes who did not be-
lieve in him. Jesus himself never used either of these
words as properly describing what he had done. It is
to be regretted that the distinction which is so carefully
observed in the original should not have been retained
in the translation, and especially that the word miracle,
in which the idea of something wonderful etymologically
predominates, should not have been confined, as it is in
the original Gospels, to the few cases where such a mean-
ing was specially applicable. This would have cut off at
once the whole class of objections which arise from the
habit of viewing these acts as something monstrous and
unnatural. " The very word Miracle," says Mr. Emerson,
in his Divinity College Address, p. 12, "as pronounced by
Christian churches, gives a false impression ; it is Monster.
It is not one with the blowing clover and the falling rain."
But this "false impression" is not authorized by any lan-
guage of Christ, or any name or view of miracle which
has been used by the Evangelists.
Usually, Jesus places his miracles among his other acts
MATTHEW VIII. MIRACLES. 129
without any word to distinguish them from the rest, as in
his message to John the Baptist (Matthew xi. o), or where
he alludes to them by a single word, he calls them simply his
deeds or works ipya. To him, if we may judge from his
language, they were neither wonders nor acts requiring an
extraordinary exertion of power, nor signs, but simply
actions performed in the natural exercise of his faculties,
lie seldom refers to them at all. And when he does refer to
them, except on two or three occasions when the state of
mind in those to whom or of whom he was speaking required
him to hold them up in the light in which they appeared to
others, he speaks of them merely as his tvorks. He never
calls them signs, except that twice (Matthew xii. 39, xvi. 4;
Luke xi. 29) he alludes to his death and resurrection as a
sign like that of the prophet Jonah, and once (John vi. 26)
he says that the multitudes seek him not because they saw
the signs, aijfieia, but because they ate of the loaves and
were filled. Nor does he speak of them as powers or
mighty acts, except Matthew xi. 21, 23, and Luke x. 13,
when upbraiding the faithless cities in which most of them
had been wrought. Ten times in the Gospel of John (v. 20,
36; vii. 21; x. 25, 37, 38; xiv. 10, 11, 12; xv. 24) he
speaks of them, but always with the single exception already
noticed (vi. 26) the same term, works, is used.
This use of language is significant in many ways. 1. It
gives an indication of the construction which our Saviour
himself put upon these extraordinary acts. They were such
as man had never done before (John xv. 24), but still they
were only his works, not wonders, monsters, or prodigies,
which by the very name would indicate a violation of the
laws of nature. 2. If Jesus had been an impostor, seeking
to impose on men by the display of such marvellous powers,
he would have been inclined to make the most of them as
signs and wonders, and to refer to them constantly as such.
3. If^ on the other hand, as Strauss and others suppose,
Jesus, a pure and gifted teacher of sublime moral and relig-
130 MATTHEW VIII. MIRACLES.
ious truths, never performed such miraculous acts as are
ascribed to him in the Gospel, but they gradually, as myths
or legends, grew up round his life in the minds of those
who came after him, and thus became at length a part of
his personal history, then they who put the Gospels into
their present shape, whether they invented these stories
themselves, or honestly received them as traditions from
an earlier age, must always have viewed them as wonders
and prodigies, and spoken of them as such, whether refer-
ring to them in their own assumed character as evangelists
or in the person of Jesus. From their point of view they
could not have regarded them, nor could they have con-
ceived of Jesus as regarding them, in the easy, natural, and
subordinate relation which they now hold to him. No one
but him who had himself lived within the sphere of powers
adequate to such works, and to whom they were only his fit-
ting and appropriate acts, could teach men to regard them
in such a hght, or stand as the original model for such
a conception. And writers who had not been conversant
with such a being, or known these to be the real facts of
the case, could never so represent him and them, and pre-
serve throughout on such a scale the grand but harmonious
proportions of his divine thought, life, and acts. Especially
would this have been impossible on the mythical hypoth-
esis, which implies that the writers must have wrought
their accounts of miraculous events into the life of Jesus
from a conviction, on their part, of the superior dignity and
importance of those events, and from a desire through them
to make the strongest possible impression on the minds of
others.
Avj/a/xfts, powers^ is applied to miracles seven times in
Matthew, four times in Mark, twice in Luke, and not at aU
in John ; arifxelov, sign, twice in Matthew (xii. 39 ; xvi. 4),
twice in Mark (xvi. 17, 20), twice in Luke (xi. 29 ; xxiii.
8), and fourteen times in John ; epyov, twelve times in John,
but not at all in any other Gospel, and in John, in every
MATTHEW VIII. — MIRACLES. 131
instance but one, it is used by Jesus himself. The dramatic
propriety in the use of these words by Jesus is remarkable.
The name wonders is given to miracles from their effect;
powers, from their cause ; signs, from their purpose. Works,
the only word literally describing them as they are, is the
one used by Jesus.
To him, living in the bosom of the Father, by whom all
power had been given to him, there was nothing wonderful
or extraordinary in the fact that he should still the tempest
or raise the dead. From the deeper spiritual insight which
he possessed, and the higher spiritual powers which he had
come into the world to exercise and to impart, he regarded
the power of working miracles as among the inferior gifts,
not only of himself, but of his disciples (Luke x. 20), and
declared that they who believed in him (John xiv. 12)
should [in the exercise of their spiritual endowments] per-
form even greater works than those which he had done.
And if he had actually lived in the conscious exercise of
such powers, looking out on the world of matter and of
spirit, as with the eye of God, from the central point of life
and thought, and so impressing himself on the minds of his
followers, he would stand betore them as the great reality
which they were to describe. The ascendency w^hich he
would have over them would bring their minds into har-
mony with his. His modes of thought would become theirs.
The miracles which at first awakened their astonishment,
and seemed to stand out as prodigies, would at length,
through his higher influences and instructions, gradually
subside into a subordinate place, and there, in concert with
his diviner words and acts, give their modest testimony to
his authority.
Here we are enabled to show the peculiar office of the
miracles of Jesus in testifying to tlie truth of his religion.
1. They served then, as they have in all ages since, to
attract the attention of those whose spiritual natures were
not yet sufficiently unfolded to see the moral beauty of
132 MATTHEW VIII. MIPwACLES.
his life or to feel the spiritual power of his instructions.
2. He referred to them (John v. 36; x. 25; xiv. 11) as
a proof of the divine authority with which he spoke. Stand-
ing bj themselves, they could furnish no such proof. Tliey
might excite our wonder, but they could not gain our con-
fidence. We should painfully feel the want of a moral
basis for their support, and therefore would find it hard
to free ourselves from a suspicion of fraud. But the
spotless purity which marked the conduct of Jesus, the
moral grandeur of his instructions, and the whole tendency
and bearing of his ministry, give a perfect assurance that
he could not have meant to deceive when he appealed
as he did to his miracles. And the fact that they were
actually performed would take away all suspicion of his
having been imposed upon himself. When he announced
the doctrine of man's immortality, for example, as if it
were a fact known to him through spiritual powers of
vision more than human, we should feel that, however lofty
his genius and pure his life, he might be deceived. The
habit of dwelling so earnestly and exclusively on sub-
jects of this kind might lead him into a state of ecstasy,
in which the conceptions of his own mind would be mis-
taken for objective realities, or facts. But when he who
announces such a doctrine stands by the grave of one
who has been dead three days, and at his voice the dead
man comes forth alive, this work, the effect of more than
human powers of action, prepares us to receive the doc-
trine which professes to come from more than human
powers of spiritual perception. He cannot be mistaken
as to the miraculous fact which he places before us ; and
this takes away all reasonable suspicion of self-delusion
or mistake in regard to the doctrine. The more than
human powers of action which the miracle has put beyond
question must, when taken in connection with the purity
of his life, oblige us to recognize the more than human
powers of spiritual perception which he claims to possess,
MATTHEW VIII. MIRACLES. 133
and to receive on his authority the doctrines which he
announces as revealed to liim in the exercise of those
powers. Restoring a dead man to hfe by an effort of the
will is in itself no evidence of our immortality ; but it is
evidence of superhuman powers of action on the part of
him who has performed it, and, as such, taken in con-
nection with a life of 2)erfect purity, constrains us to ad-
mit his claims to superhuman powers in other directions.
Man could not have done such deeds without assistance
from some power or agency mightier than his own. Jesus
says (Luke xi. 20) it was by the finger of God that he
cast out devils, and (John xiv. 10) that it was the Father
dwelling in him who did the works. The nature of the
doctrines to be confirmed and of the kingdom to be estab-
lished by them shows, as he justly reasoned (Luke xi. 17)
that they could not have been wrought by any Satanic
agency. They must then have been wrought by a power
(Matthew xi. 27, xxviii. 18) specially derived from God,
and in attestation of his authority as a teacher from God.
In this way the miracles confirm, beyond all possibility
of doubt or suspicion, the divine authority with which
he spoke, — an authority which without them could not
have been so firmly established on any just principles of
reasoning, or by any other agencies that were likely to
act so powerfully on the human mind or heart.
3. There is a sense of harmony and completeness which
the miracles are needed to fill out and sustain, in our con-
ception of Christ. Without the superhuman endowments
implied by them, words such as we find on almost every
page of the Gospels w^ould seem to us almost like blas-
phemy. When he says (John vi. 41), "I am the bread
which came down from heaven," or (John xi. 25), "I am
the resurrection and the life," or (Matthew xi. 28), " Come
unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will
give you rest," the words seem to proceed from the depths
of a profound humility. They are the natural utterance
12
134 MATTHEW VIII. MIRACLES.
of a being divinely endowed, and condescending with in-
expressible dignity and tenderness to our weaknesses and
sorrows. If they had been spoken by a man of the most
exalted piety and genius, by Milton or Fenelon, or by
the greatest among the prophets or apostles, by Moses or
Elijah, by Peter, John, or Paul, they would fall harshly
upon us. As spoken by Jesus, they awaken a sense of
harmony and repose. They are in character with all that
he did and was. But if the divine endowments through
which his miracles were wrought should be taken from
him, and he should be to us in this respect like other
men, the words to which we turn now for comfort and
support, and which draw us so affectingly and reverently
to him, would be emptied of their indwelUng life and
power. They would no longer come to us as the pledges
of Grod's mercy and his presence among men, but would
mock our dearest affections and our hopes.
When, after announcing on the Mount truths such as
man had never uttered, speaking with an authority which
awed and subdued those who heard him, though by those
very words he was breaking up and disappointing all
the ideas and expectations of the Messiah which had
been cherished for centuries in the heart of the nation, —
when from the utterance of divine truths such as these
he came down and commanded the leper to be cleansed
or the centurion's son to be healed, he was only exercising
in another direction the same divine power that he had
already manifested in words which stand a perpetual sign
and proof of his more than mortal endowments. The
whole bearing of Christ, as he appears in the Gospels,
is simple and consistent with itself. It everywhere testi-
fies to his identity. Whosoever recognizes the miracles,
and enters into their meaning, is prepared to receive his
instructions. He who understands his words most thorough-
ly, and who enters most deeply into his spirit, will find him-
self admitted there within " the hidings of a power " wholly
MATTHEW VIII. 1-4. 135
adequate to the performance of any deeds which are re-
corded as his. For he who with a divine autliority uttered
truths kept secret from the foundation of the world, and
who in his life so far transcended the loftiest ideals of
virtue and holiness that ever dawned upon the soul, was
only acting in perfect consistency with himself when he
did works "which none other man" had ever done.
1-4. — Healing the Leper.
When Jesus came down from the mountain — it prob-
ably was not till the morning after the sermon — he was
still followed by vast numbers of people. Among others a
leper, one full of leprosy (Luke v. 12), cut off by his unclean
disease from familiar intercourse with others, hanging upon
the skirts of the crowd, and having perhaps heard the kind
words of Jesus to them that are afflicted, watched his oppor-
tunity, and, as soon as he could reach him without com-
ing into immediate contact with the crowd, approached
him, and, with the mark of respect usually paid by an infe-
rior to a superior, throwing himself before him, said, " Sir,
if thou wilt, thou canst make me clean." And Jesus, stretch-
ing out his hand, touched him, and said, " I will ; be thou
clean." And immediately his leprosy was cleansed. There
is nothing, it will be observed, in the manner of the narra-
tive to distinguish this from any other act of Jesus, or to
indicate any unusual exertion or exercise of power on his
part. He charged the man to say nothing about it to any
one, but to go show himself to the priest, and ofter the gift
which Moses had commanded for a testimony to them.
The reason for enjoining silence may have been to secure
from the priest a certificate of the cure before his jealousy
was excited by a knowledge of the manner in which it had
been effected. The certificate once obtained would be a
testimony unto them — whether " them " refers to the priests
or the people, or, as it well may, to both — that the mirac-
136 MATTHEW VTTI. 1-4.
ulous cure had actually been wrought. The caution may
have been given because Jesus foresaw the danger either to
the man's person or character to which he would be exposed
by the notoriety that must follow such a disclosure, or, as
would seem from Mark i. 45, Jesus wished himself to avoid
the notoriety and the increasing crowds which were likely
to be caused by the report of such a miracle, and which,
according to Mark, were such as to oblige him to withdraw
into unfrequented and desert places. One or all of these
reasons may have influenced Jesus, and he may also, as
Ambrose has said, have wished to set to his disciples an
example of the unostentatious way in which they were to
exercise their miraculous powers.
It has been supposed that leprosy was set apart by the
Jewish law from all other diseases as in a peculiar sense the
emblem of sin. All diseases in some way and degree imme-
diately or remotely come from sin or a violation of God's
law. But this, as the most fearful and revolting form of
disease, was selected from all the rest, and held up as a
proof of the Divine displeasure, and to excite the religious
horror of men against all sin and uncleanness. The cases
of Miriam (Numbers xii. 10-15), Gehazi (2 Kings v. 27),
and Uzziah (2 Chronicles xxvi. 16-21) served to connect
it in a forcible manner with the direct inflictions of Divine
justice. " The Jews themselves," says Trench on Miracles,
p. 177, "termed it 'the finger of God,' and emphatically,
' the stroke.' They said that it attacked first a man's house,
and, if he did not turn, his clothing ; and then, if he persisted
in sin, himself: a fine symbol, whether the fact was so or
not, of the manner in which God's judgments, if men refuse
to listen to them, reach ever nearer to the centre of their
life." Even the Persians, according to Herodotus, Lib. I.
cap. 138, cut off the leper from intercourse with other men
as if he were suffering for some peculiar offence against
their divinity.
The disease assumed different forms, and the marks by
MATTHEW VIII. 1-4. 137
which the different kinds are distinguished are pointed
out with great minuteness in the thirteenth and fourteenth
chapters of Leviticus. Sometimes it covered the whole body-
as with shining scales of snow, and when these flakes were
rubbed off the flesh appeared raw and inflamed underneath.
Sometimes it did not seriously aflect the general health,
and sometimes the whole system wasted away, toes and feet,
fingers and arms falling off joint by joint. " The best au-
thors of the present day, who have had an opportunity of
observing the disease," says Dr. Kitto, " do not consider it
to be contagious." But when the Crusades threw hundreds
of thousands of Europeans into Asia, the seat of this plague,
it spread like an epidemic over all Europe, and in France
alone there were no less than two thousand leper-houses set
apart for its victims, who were viewed with a sort of relig-
ious horror, " looked upon," says Calvin, " as already dead,"
and clothed in shrouds while the masses for the dead were
said for them.
In Palestine these miserable beings are now confined to
a spot near Jerusalem, and to Nablous which occupies the
site of the ancient Shechem. A little south of Jerusalem,
" and hard by the city gate," says Williams, Holy City, Vol.
I. Sup. p. 24, " are the Lepers' Huts. They are allowed to
intermarry, and thus propagate this loathsome malady which
is hereditary. And a most pitiable sight it is to see the
poor wretches, laid at the entrance of the gates of the city,
asking alms of the passengers, with outstretched hands or
stumps, in various stages of decay, under the influence of
this devouring disease, for which, I believe, no effectual
remedy is known. I saw no case of that whiteness, which
is mentioned in Scripture as the symptom of this disorder ;
but I own that my eyes shrunk with horror from the con-
templation of such misery, and I avoided contact with them
as I would with one plague-stricken." "The children,"
says Dr. Robinson, Vol. I. p. 359, "are said to be healthy
until puberty or later ; when the disease makes its appear*
12*
138 MATTHEW VIII. 1-4.
ance in a finger, on the nose, or in some like part of the
body, and gradually increases so long as the victim survives.
They are said often to live to the age of forty or fifty years."
These probably are afflicted by that variety of the dis-
ease which is called Elephantiasis. But in whatever form
we regard it, and whether it was contagious or not, we
see enough in it that was terrible and revolting to justify
Moses in setting it apart by itself, and in making it, if
any disease were to be used for that purpose, an emblem
of the unclean, revolting, and deadly nature of sin, creep-
inof in from the extremities to the centre of life. The
leper, says Trench, " was himself a dreadful parable of
death. It is evident that Moses intended that he should
be so contemplated by all the ordinances which he gave
concerning him. The leper was to bear about the em-
blems of death (Lev. xiii. 45), the rent garments, that
is, mourning garments, he mourning for himself as for
one dead ; the head bare, as they were wont to have
it who were in communion with the dead (Num. vi. 9 ;
Ezek. xxiv. 17), and the lip covered (Ezek. xxiv. 17).
In the restoration, too, of a leper, exactly the same instru-
ments of cleansing were in use — the cedar-wood, the hyssop,
and the scarlet — as were used for the cleansing of one de-
filed through a dead body, or aught pertaining to death,
and which were never in use upon any other occasion.
(Compare Num. xix. 6, 13, 18 with Lev. xiv. 4-7).
•' The leper was as one dead, and as such was to be put
out of the camp (Lev. xiii. 46 ; Num. v. 2 — 4 ; 2 Kings
vii. 3), or afterwards out of the city; and we find this
law to have been so strictly enforced, that even the sister
of Moses might not be exempted from it (Num. xii. 14, 15),
and kings themselves, Uzziah (2 Chron. xxvi. 21) and
Azariah (2 Kings xv. 5), must submit to it."
The eminent Jewish writer, Philo Judaeus, whose Plato-
nizing habits of thought, however, allow little weight to his
authority in matters of this kind, whenever he refers to the
MATTHEW VIII. 1-4. 139
Mosaic accounts of leprosy speaks of them (Unchangeable-
ness of God, xxvii., xxviii.) as describing the taint of sin in
the soul ; and there is little doubt that the disease was re-
garded by the Jews as in a peculiar manner caused by
the Divine displeasure in punishment for sin, and to be
healed, not by the skill of man, but by the immediate
act of God. When Jesus, therefore, healed the leper,
he, in their eyes, not merely cured liim of his disease,
but cleansed him from his sin. Evidently this idea of
cleansing him in the sight of the law is that which is
uppermost in the mind of Matthew, who is writing for
Jewish readers ; while Mark and Luke, writing for those
who might not understand the full force of the Jewish
expression to cleanse, add that " the leprosy departed
from him."
This view of the disorder, and of the light in which it
was regarded by the Jews, will enable us to understand
something of the feeling with which the wretched man who
believed himself smitten of God, and cut off by a moral
taint as w^ell as by a most loathsome and terrible dis-
ease from the companionship of man, threw himself before
Jesus, and looked up to him with that suppHcating ex-
pression of confidence, " Lord, if thou wilt, thou canst
make me clean." It may enable us to see how Jesus,
when he touched him, and said, " I will ; be thou clean,"
must have appeared to the Jews as standing in the place
of God, and as by the finger of God removing, not only
a foul disease, but at the same time and by the same
act the moral taint which was connected with it as cause
with effect. And it may also enable us to see in this
what is characteristic of all his miracles, that the moral
influences are inseparably connected with the physical
power which he put forth, so that when " himself took,"
V. 17, "our infirmities and bare our sicknesses," he also,
in a deeper sense, as our version of the passage in Isaiah
has it (Isa. liii. 4), " hath borne our griefs and carried our
140 MATTHEW VIII. 1-4.
sorrows," or even, according to the Septuagint version, " bears
our sins, and is afflicted in our behalf."
In its primary meaning, the expression, " be thou clean,"
or "his leprosy was cleansed," refers to the law. He
was clean who was pronounced to be so by the priest.
There was therefore a special propriety in using the word
cleanse in connection with the command to go to a priest.
But in its secondary meaning, which was undoubtedly
uppermost in the mind both of Jesus and of the sufferer,
it referred to the removal, not of a legal restraint, but of
the disease itself. Whether Jesus at the same time had
reference to the moral cleansing from sin, the renovation
of soul as well as of body, cannot with certainty be in-
ferred from anything that is related by either of the Evan-
gelists, though, if the view above given of leprosy being
set apart in the Mosaic law as a visible type and ex-
pression of sin and its consequences be true, it is probable
that this idea was also included in the words of Jesus.
This passing from things sensible to things spiritual and
the reverse, without changing the language, or changing
the language without a corresponding change in the thought,
is very common with Jesus, and is often the occasion of
perplexity to those commentators who would determine
in each case precisely what was his meaning. Familiar
instances will occur to every diligent student of the Gos-
pels. Indeed it is characteristic of all figurative language,
especially when that language, suggested by immediate
objects or events, is charged with a new meaning, and
made to contain and perpetuate thoughts of wide applica-
tion and extent. " The light of the body is the eye."
"Whosever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to
him the other also." " Destroy this temple, and in three
days I will raise it up." "Lift up your eyes and look on
the fields ; for they are white already to harvest." Here
are examples in which familiar images stand before us
as representatives of an outward and material, or of an
inward and spiritual fact.
MATTHEW VIII. 5-13. 141
.5_13. — Healing the Centurion's Servant.
Jesus had now come into Capernaum, which might be
regarded as his home, though, as he says, v. 20, he had
no home of his own. He only accepted the hospitality
that was oflfered him. The centurion who met him as
he entered the city was not (Luke vii. 1 - 10) a Jew,
though from his kindness in helping the Jews to build
a synagogue he probably was a behever in their relig-
ion. From his acquaintance with heathen forms of worship
and of faith, in which he had doubtless been educated, and
which could hardly have been effaced from his mind, the
idea of spiritual beings occupying different subordinate
positions, and ready, as the inferior heathen gods were
supposed to be, to do the bidding of their superiors, must
have been familiar to him. It is difficult to determine
precisely what idea he, from his peculiar religious associa-
tions and habits of thought, may have had of Jesus. He
evidently regarded him as one endowed with more than
human attributes, whom he felt himself unworthy to have
under his roof, but who might command his agents, as
inferior spirits, to* remove the disease from his servant.
All that he asks is that Jesus will only say the word,
for then he is sure that his servant will be healed. Since
even he, in his subordinate position as a man under author-
ity, had soldiers under him who would go and come and
do as he commanded them, it must be that Jesus could
by a word send his unseen agents to do whatever he
might command. It was this perfect confidence, connected
as it was with his sense of personal unworthiness, that
called out from Jesus the strong language of commen-
dation which he used. Such faith, — such a readiness to
believe and trust in him, — he had not found, no, not in
all Israel.
And in this humble-minded believer, who is not of the
seed of Abraham, he sees a type of the thousands, from
142 MATTHEW VIII. 5-13.
the Gentile nations, who shall crowd into his kingdom,
and be accepted as his friends. From the east ancl the
west, from the north and the south (Luke xiii. 29), they
shall come to the feast, and recline at the table with
Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, in the kingdom of Heaven,
while the sons of the kingdom who reject his offers will
be cast out into the outer darkness.
The allusion is to a great feast held in the evening,
where the worthy guests are admitted to partake of its
joys, while they who come without the fitting qualifications
are turned out from the pleasant light and festivity within
the banqueting-hall, into the darkness of night, which pre-"
vails without.
The image, viewed in the light of Oriental usage, is an
exceedingly striking one, and is often repeated by our
Saviour under different forms. They who believed them-
selves the exclusive sons of the kingdom, entitled above
all others to its honors and its joys, in the day of its
festal triumph and rejoicing, when their king, the long-
expected Messiah, should be seated on his throne and
invite the faithful to partake of his feast, should see him
whom they had rejected exalted over all, and those whom
they had despised as outcasts called in to take their honored
places with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, while they
themselves should be thrust out from the light and splendor
and festivity of the banquet-hall to the outside darkness that
was pressing upon them, and the shame, sorrow, indigna-
tion, and contempt which awaited thejn there. No image
could be more full of meaning or of terror to the Jews,
than to be not only excluded from the great company
of illustrious men, — patriarchs and prophets and kings, —
whom they professed to reverence ; but to be cast out
into darkness and despair at the very hour when those
whom they had despised as outcasts from the kingdom
should be brought in to the royal banquet.
Jesus then spoke the word, and the centurion's servant,
MATTHEW VIII. 14-17. 143
whom he had never seen, was healed at that very hour.
Here, again, we see how intimately the exercise of his
miraculous power was connected with the high religious
purposes of his mission. Not merely was that power
put forth to relieve the sufferings of a painiul disease
and to reward the kind-hearted master by restoring to
him the dying servant to whom he was fondly attached,
but it was so put forth as to confirm his religious faith,
and give the weight of his authority to the sublime in-
structions by which it was accompanied,* and which reached
through temporal disease and death to the festive light
of spiritual joy and the outer darkness, which lie in realms
beyond.
14-17. — Bearing our Infirmities.
After healing the leper and the centurion's servant, Jesus
healed Peter's mother-in-law, at the house (Mark i. 29)
which was owned by Simon [Peter] and Andrew. Jcf^us
evidently (Mark i. 33, 35) spent the night there, and it
may have been his usual place of abode while in Caper-
naum. He probably arrived there in the morning, and
according to the custom of the place had remained un-
occupied through the hottest part of the day. Towards
night, when the heat had so far abated that the sick
could be taken abroad without exposure to its severity,
many feeble and suffering persons, especially those who
were called demoniacs, were brought to him, and the whole
city was gathered together in the court by the door, to
witness the cures that he -wrought. As the evening shad-
ows began to fall, and those afflicted with various fevers
and violent madness we^e borne to him, he took away
their diseases, and thus, in the view of the writer, fulfilled
in himself the remarkable words of the prophet (Isaiah
liii. 4). Matthew translates the words literally from the
Hebrew, " Himself took our infirmities, and bare our sick-
144 MATTHEW VIII. 14-17.
nesses." But in our translation of Isaiah liii. 4, it reads,
" Surely he hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows."
In the Septuagint it is rendered, " He bears our sins and
is pained in our behalf," from which undoubtedly is bor-
rowed (Heb. ix. 28), " Christ was once offered to bear
the sins of many," and (1 Pet. ii. 24), " Who his own self
bare our sins in his own body on the tree."
But which of these meanings is the true one, or may
we accept them all ? Throughout the Scriptures, as in-
deed in all the writings (particularly those of an imagina-
tive character) which affect us most deeply, words primarily
expressing ideas connected with matter and our physical
condition or sensations, extend their influence into the
region of mental or moral and religious ideas. The differ-
ent shades of meaning melt insensibly into one another,
or the words are placed in such relations that we may
with almost equal propriety regard them as standing for
ideas belonging to any one, or to all, of these classes.
The passage just quoted is an instance of this. In its
primary and literal signification (Lowth, Noyes, Barnes,
&c.) it undoubtedly applies to bodily sufferings (infirmi-
ties and sicknesses), and therefore furnishes Matthew from
the Messianic prophecies with a striking illustration of the
cures which he had just described as performed by Jesus.
But these same words (infirmities and sicknesses), in their
secondary meaning, pass over into the region of mental
affections, and, as expressing the disorders and sufferings
of the mind, are properly translated, as in our common
version, griefs and sorrows. Again, the same words may
with equal propriety be taken in their relation to the
moral nature, and then, as expressing moral disorders and
the sufferings consequent upon them, they may be ren-
dered, as in the Septuagint, by words which mean sins
and sorrows: "He bears our sins, and endures sorrows
in our behalf."
The interpretation given by Matthew, which is un-
MATTHEW VHI. 14-17. 145
questionably the true, as it is the literal one, in its applica-
tion to the scene before him, is important as showing in
what sense the Apostle, writing after the resurrection of
Jesus, understood him to have taken upon himself our
infirmities and our sicknesses. When he healed the sick
and took away from them their diseases, then, so far as
bodily infirmities and sicknesses were concerned, the words
of the prophet were fulfilled. If therefore the infirmities
and sicknesses which the prophet speaks of should have
a deeper meaning and refer also to diseases which afllict
the soul, i. e. to our sins and the sorrows which proceed
from them, we are authorized by the Apostle's example
to infer that Jesus takes them upon himself in the same
way in which he takes our bodily diseases, and that, as
in healing our bodily infirmities and removing our sick-
nesses from us, "himself bare" them, so in heahng the
diseases of the soul and removing our sins from us, he
in like manner bears thepi in his own body and takes
them upon himself. In this last expression, however, from
Peter, as also in Hebrews ix. 28, the view which impressed
Matthew so strongly is intensified by the great and ad-
ditional thought of the crucifixion.
But while the passage admits of these three different
meanings without doing violence to its language, can we
suppose that such language was used by the prophet in
order that we might deduce from it any one or all of
these different meanings ? There is nothing in the con-
text to decide this question, and, in the absence of any
such aid, the literal interpretation is the most natural, and
therefore the one to be preferred in a translation. But
is there, considered by itself, any absurdity or any violent
improbability, in the supposition that language may in-
tentionally be so used as to express a fact, which, accord-
ing to our state of mind and the light in which we view
it, may be taken either in its physical, its mental, or its
spiritual bearings and relations, especially in writings so
13
146 MATTHEW VIII. 14-17.
intensely imaginative as those of the Hebrew prophets,
or in words made to bear such unaccustomed and hitherto
unknown burdens of thought and life as those which Je-
sus was obliged to employ?
From the beginning to the end of his mission Christ
was obliged to impose upon words meanings which they
had never borne before, and which, however familiar they
may be to us, were perpetually misunderstood and stumbled
over, not only by the Jews, but by his own immediate dis-
ciples. The expression kingdom of Heaven was used by
him in a sense entirely different from that in which they
understood it. And yet there must have been some com-
mon point of intelligence, or the expression could not
have been used as a medium of communication between
his mind and theirs ; it could only have misled them,
or been to them as a strange tongue. That common
point was the Messiah's kingdom. Both he and they
used the words kingdom of Heaven to express that idea.
But while he meant that they should understand it in
that sense till they were capable of something better, and
used the expression, knowing that they would so apply
it, how infinitely above their conceptions was the thought
which to his mind radiated from those words and threw
its divine glories around them, and which by and by
should open on their minds to enlarge and spiritualize
their gross, earthly conceptions. There is then in this
case, understood and intended by Christ, a double mean-
ing, — one, the primary meaning, adapted to their' present
condition, making a lodgement in their minds ; and the other,
a higher spiritual meaning which should unfold itself from
the germ lodged there with the higher spiritual develop-
ment of their natures. In this way may not material
images, borrowed from an earthly kingdom, have been
employed by the ancient prophets to familiarize the minds
of the people with conceptions as pure as they could un-
derstand, and thus keep alive the heart and expectation
MATTHEW VIII. 18-22. 147
of the nation through the long and desolate days of their
preparation, till at last, in a higher spiritual light, and witb
a purer type of character, they see in those words a mean'
ing which they had never dreamed of before ? The sub'
jeet is mentioned here only to call the reader's attention
to it, but will be recurred to hereafter more than once.
18-22. — Let the Dead bury their Dead.
A somewhat similar use of language occurs almost imme-'
diately in the narrative before us. Jesus, oppressed by
the multitudes, had commanded his disciples to prepare to
pass over the lake, when a scribe, i. e. a teacher of the
law, and therefore a man of some consequence, offered to
follow him whithersoever he might go. Jesus, perhaps
seeing that motives of worldly ambition may have influ-
enced him, announced to him his own homeless condition.
Then another person came and asked to be excused from
following him till he had gone and buried his father.
Jesus replied, " Follow me, and leave the dead to bury
their own dead." The first dead is used in a spiritual
sense, of those who, having no interest in Christ, are spirit-
ually dead. The second part of the sentence takes up
the word in the literal and bodily sense in which it has
just been used. Thus there is a passing from one mean-
ing to another, and a commingling of different meanings
of the same word within the limits of a very short, and,
in its grammatical construction, a very simple, sentence.
The probability is, that the disciple, wishing to make his
filial duty an excuse for not immediately following Christ,
of whose success or divine mission he may have had
doubts, and therefore asking to be permitted to tarry at
home till he had buried his father, i. e. till his father
had died, found his secret motives laid bare and his tempo-
rizing policy rebuked, by Christ's suddenly turning upon
him in its higher and more awful application, the very
148 MATTHEW VIII. 23-27.
word which he had used. " Suffer me first to lury my
father." No, "Leave the dead to bury their own dead,**
" but go thou (Luke ix. 60) and preach the kingdom of
God." It is impossible to bring out the whole force that
is compressed into these few words. It was as if he had
said : " If you are really my disciple, you have received
a higher life, and it is your part to go forth with the
words of eternal life, causing the dead to live, and not
linger here by your earthly home, waiting till your father
dies, in order that you may perform the rites of sepulture
for him. It is a higher duty to save the living than
to bury the dead." The condensed force and pungency
of the command, which rings with such power even in
the ears of those who cannot analyze it, is lost in every
attempt to explain it by amplification. The force con-
sists very much in the sudden retort of the word hary,
the rapid change from a literal to a figurative meaning,
and the blending of both in one with such a compressed
energy of utterance.
It is not probable that the father was already dead ;
for the burial usually took place in the evening after the
decease. But if he were dead, the words of Jesus will
express all the more earnestly the uncompromising urgency
of the call.
23-27. — Stilling the Tempest.
The Lake or Sea of Galilee, of Tiberias, or of Genes-
areth, is about fourteen statute miles long, and in its
widest part about seven miles wide. Except on the north-
western side, about Capernaum and northward, where the
ascent is a gradual one, and reaches to a height of from
300 to 500 feet, the hills on its borders rise steep, but
seldom precipitous, till they attain to an elevation of 800 or
1,000 feet above the lake. Beyond the hills on the north,
the snowy summit of Mount Hermon rises 10,000 feet
MATTHEW VIII. 23-27. 149
or more above the level of the sea. The impression made by
the lake and the surrounding scenery is differently described
by different writers. Dr. Robinson says that the attrac-
tion lies more in the associations than in the scenery.
" The hills," he says, Vol. III. p. 253, " are rounded and
tame, with little of the picturesque in their form; they
are decked by no shrubs or forests Whoever looks
here for the magnificence of the Swiss lakes, or the softer
beauty of those of England and the United States, will
be disappointed." Again, at p. 312, he says, "The form
of its basin is not unlike an oval ; but the regular and
almost unbroken heights which enclose it bear no com-
parison, as to vivid and powerful effect, with the wild and
stern magnificence around the caldron of the Dead Sea."
Prof. Hackett, on the other hand, says, p. 318, " For
myself, I cannot hesitate to say that the appearance of
the lake, reposing so quietly in its deep bed, the ft-ame-
work of hills which encase it on almost every side, the
steep precipices coming down in some cases so boldly to
the shore, the cloudless sky above, having its every hue
and variation reflected back from the watery mirror be-
neath, formed in my eye a combination of landscape beauty
equal, to say the least, to any other which it has been my
privilege to see in any land."
It was one of the sudden gusts which sweep down
through mountain gorges that threatened to destroy the
little vessel in which Jesus and his disciples, with a few
others, were crossing the lake from the northwestern to-
wards the southeastern shore. It was in the evening (Mark
iv. 35, 36), after he had sent the multitude away, and
probably at a later period in the ministry of Jesus than
its place in the narrative of Matthew would indicate. Jesus
entered the boat just " as he was" without any prepara-
tion for the journey ; and being doubtless fatigued by the
exhausting labors of the day, he had fallen asleep at the
stern, lying on a pillow (Mark v. 38), or rather a " seat
13*
150 MATTHEW VIII. 23-27.
cover," which was probably (Smith's Dis. on the Gos-
pels, p. 287) "a sheep-skin with the fleece, which when
rolled up served as a pillow." A sudden '' squall of wind,"
Tia'tXayJA dvifiov, (Luke viii. 23,) came down upon the lake.
There was a violent commotion in the sea, 24, " the waves
beating into the vessel," (Mark iv. 37,) so that it was
hidden by them, and filling with water. The danger was
imminent and instant. The disciples came, one of them
crying out, " Lord, save us, we perish ; " another, " Rabbi,
carest thou not that we perish?" (Mark iv. 38;) and an-
other, with yet more emphatic urgency, " Master, master,
we perish." (Luke viii. 24.) He, though suddenly awak-
ened, mildly expostulated with his disciples, "Why are
ye fearful, O ye of little faith ? " Then he arose, and, re-
buking the winds and the sea, — "the wind and the raging
of the water," (Luke viii. 24.) — he said, "Peace, be still,"
and immediately there was a great calm.
Some modern writers have endeavored to throw dis-
credit upon the narrative by denying that these storms
on the lake are dangerous, and even Dr. Robinson has
said, that in our day they are neither frequent nor severe.
But Mr. Bartlett, in his " Footsteps of our Lord and his
Apostles," thus describes a storm which he witnessed there
on one occasion after sunset : " As it grew darker, the
breeze increased to a gale, the lake became a sheet of
foam, and the white-headed breakers dashed proudly on
the rugged beach." If such storms were unusual, they
would on that account be all the more terrific when they
did come, and this circumstance would account for the
extreme terror of the disciples.
We cannot help quoting here, slightly transposed, a few
sentences from a discourse by a friend whose pure mind
and spiritual insight, united with earnest and untiring
habits of study, would have done much for Biblical learn-
ing if his life had been spared. "This incident in the
Saviour's life," says Rev. George F. Simmons in his Ser-
MATTHEW VIII. 23-27. 151
mon on Christ in the Storm, "lies, like the mirror of the
lake on which it transpired, amidst the solemnities and
eventfulness of the Gospel history. It lies by itself, form-
ing a little picture of bounded outline. Though a mere
glimpse, — as it were a stream of sunlight upon distant
water, that comes out for a moment, and is over, — yet it
impressed itself upon all the reporters ; for each of the
Gospels has given it, with but slight circumstances of
difference. Tlie imperturbable calmness of the great lead-
er's mind makes the scene itself as placid as a summer's
day. It raises in us a momentary commotion, and then
quiets us with the stillness of his heaven-fast mind. The
fear of the disciples was by no means unreasonable, so
far as the circumstances were concerned. But in the
midst of it all, we see the man Jesus, whose name is
to become a heavenly name to all the world, and who
first is to go through such a cruel martyrdom, sunk in
the unconsciousness of natural slumber. Neither respon-
sibility nor the unquiet lake disturbed him. While the
water was still, much might have occurred to him as to
the danger of losing an opportunity of exhortation and
teaching. But he knew that Divine Providence needed
not that means should be pressed beyond their natural
measure. A lesson • for all whose care allows them no
rest. The bed is hard ; the wmd is bleak ; the waves
dash over the little craft. But Jesus sleeps on. We
see there the child of innocence and nature. We see
there the child of labor and simplicity. Heaven is to
him what the sky and air are to the natural man. His
sleep therefore has this double side. It is the sleep of
nature and the repose of holiness. All sweet affections,
all good desires, the deep calm of prayer, the prophetic
vision of piety, both natural and heavenly graces, — are
garnered up in that heart which now lives only in holy
dreams, — that steadfast will taking rest from the watch-
ful guidance of the magnificent powers intrusted to it.
152 MATTHEW VIII. 32-38.
Too soon that sleep will be disturbed. Too soon they
who now call to him will not be able to watch with him
one little hour. Rest, holy child! Saviour and Guide
of the innocent, rest! It is well for us to covet that
capacity for sweet and perfect sleep. We should aim
at that tranquilhty which care shall not disturb; at that
sweetness of a trustful disposition which anxiety shall not
embitter."
32-38. — Angelic Existences and Agencies.
The subject here introduced brings us into one of the
most obscure departments of theological and metaphysical
discussion. The region of pure intelligence, and the prov-
ince of physical laws and forces, have been explored with
great care, and many mature and satisfactory results have
been reached. In both these departments we have well-
established facts as a scientific basis for further investiga-
tions, even if we' have not arrived at any thoroughly
digested and perfected system of philosophy. But the
border region, in which mind and matter are connected
and acting on one another, is particularly ditficult of ex-
ploration, as is the whole realm of being between man
and God. How the mind is here united with a physical
organization, how it acts upon the nerves and brain, or
is acted upon by them, so as to gain through them a knowl-
edge of material things, are questions of great interest,
but involved in much obscurity. Whether, under abnor-
mal conditions, particularly when the finer parts of our
physical organization are unusually excited by disease or
powerful mental emotions, the sensibilities may be so quick-
ened as to lay open to the mind new avenues of informa-
tion, or new senses may be awakened, are questions which
belong to a still more delicate and difficult produce of
inquiry. Allowing these preternatural sensibilities, or, as
they seem to us, these new senses, to exist in some extraor-
MATTHEW VIII. 32-38. 153
dinary instances, and that through them knowledge may-
be gained of what is passing in the minds of others or
what is going on in distant places, have we any reason
to suppose that here is anything more than an extraor-
dinary quickening of the perceptive faculties, and through
that the recognition and employment of some new phys-
ical agent? Or are we to suppose that, as our spirits
act through our physical organizations, and in ways here-
tofore unknown make impressions on other minds, or under
certain conditions are admitted to a knowledge of what
they think or believe, so also we may be brought into
coimection with spirits divested of their material forms,
and receive communications or impressions from them ?
Can we, especially in certain extremely delicate or dis-
ordered states of the nerves, lay ourselves open to these
spirits, or put ourselves under their influence, so that we, as
passive instruments or mediums, may be swayed and moved
by them, consciously or unconsciously uttering their words,
thrilled by their emotions, imparting their thoughts?
These questions, which in all ages have more or less
exercised the minds of men, have been pressed upon us
under new names and forms by the still unsatisfactory ex-
perience and experiments of the last quarter of a century.
There are two ways of looking at the universe.
1. According to one, we recognize the existence of God
and men, and the world of material laws and forces. Know-
ing them, we know all that it is worth our while to know.
We have only to worship God, to be just and true to our
fellow-men, to study and obey the laws of nature. All
beyond this we reject as fanciful and unreal, and there-
fore unworthy the attention of a strong, enlightened, and
philosophical mind.
2. On the other hand, while admitting these facts as
containing what it is most essential for us to know, we
may believe in the existence and agency of intervening
spirits between man and God. We know that the earth
154 MATTHEW VIII. 32-38.
is intimately connected with all the heavenly bodies, seen
or unseen, bound by the same laws, acted upon by influ-
ences from them, and that it would be left in utter dark-
ness and desolation if they should be withdrawn. These
bodies, reaching through the infinite realms of space, are
but parts of one vast and orderly system of worlds, mutually
dependent one upon another, as all depend on Him who is
the Creator and Governor of all. Now, as the earth is
thus united in fellowship with all the heavenly constella-
tions, and is affected by every motion in their distant
spheres, may it not be that we also, as spiritual and
intelligent beings, are in like manner connected with a
vast community of spirits, rising in well-ordered ranks one
above another, all bound together by the same laws, sympa-
thizing with one another, worshipping the same Father, and
seeking to accomplish his ends ? As in all that we know
of his works here we see his designs carried on by his
ministers and agents, — the sun diffusing his light, the earth
bringing forth his plants, the lightnings his messengers,
and man employed to accomplish his ends, — so, beyond
what our eyes can see, may not his higher purposes still
be carried on by intervening agents, by the ministry of
angels, and the watchfulness and care of attendant spirits ?
As the severest rules of mathematical reasoning lead to
the conclusion that the most distant star is aflfected by
every motion on the earth, might we not, from the analo-
gies of the physical universe, be led to infer that there
is a living sympathy between the highest order of spiritual
beings and their brethren of kindred nature who are
passing through the infancy of their being upon the earth ?
When Jesus speaks (Matthew xviii. 10) of the intimate re-
lation between his Father in heaven and the angels of little
children, and when he speaks (Luke xv. 10) of the joy
there is in the presence of the angels of God over one
sinner that repenteth, he implies nothing inconsistent with
reason, but by those few words lights up the realms of
MATTHEW VIII. 32-38. 155
spiritual being, and reveals to us relations which the
analogies of nature might suggest as existing between
us and God's unseen ministering spirits. The fact that
they are invisible furnishes no presumption against their
existence ; for some of the most important agents in nature,
as electricity or magnetism, were, in their constant and
essential operation, so hidden from the cognizance of man,
that for thousands of years he had no knowledge of their
existence.
The doctrine then of the existence of intelligent beings,
intermediate between man and God, employed by their
Creator and ours in carrying out his purposes, and sustain-
ing important relations to us, is one not unreasonable in
itself, though it belongs to a class of facts which lie beyond
the cognizance of our perceptive faculties.
Which of the views given above is most in accordance
with the language of the New Testament ? The question
is one of interpretation. In the first chapter of Matthew we
twice meet the expression angel of the Lord, and the word
angel occurs three times (once, v. 9, with a peculiar ex-
planation) in the last chapter of the Apocalypse. Through-
out the Gospels the existence of angels is constantly recog-
nized, and it evidently enters into the religious consciousness
of nearly every writer in the New Testament. An angel
(Luke i. 13, 31) foretold the coming of John the Baptist
and of the Messiah ; an angel (Luke ii. 9, 13) announced the
birth of Jesus, and a multitude of the heavenly host joined
in the song of gladness which welcomed that event. After
the Temptation in the Wilderness angels came and minis-
tered to Jesus. In the mountain of transfiguration (Luke
ix. 30, 31) Moses and Elijah appeared in glory talking
to him of his departure which he was about to accom-
plish at Jerusalem. In the agony of the garden (Luke
xxii. 43) there appeared unto him an angel from heaven,
strengthening him. According to Matthew and John, angels
at the sepulchre announced his resurrection, while, evi-
156 MATTHEW VIII. 32-38-
dently referring to the same thing, Mark speaks of a
young man at the sepulchre clothed in a long white robe,
and Luke, of two men in shining garments. At the as-
cension, while the disciples were looking steadfastly to-
wards heaven, two men stood near them, in white raiment
(Acts i. 10), and as beings from another world spoke to
them.
In accordance with these accounts were the teachings
of Jesus. "We learn from our Lord's discourses," says
Archbishop Newcome, in his Observations on our Lord,
Chap. I. Sec. 6, " that the heavenly angels are a numerous
host (Matthew xxvi. 53), that they are raised above the
imperfect condition of humanity (Matthew xxii. 30), and
are holy (Matthew xxv. 31 ; Mark viii. 38), glorious (Luke
ix. 26), and immortal (Luke xx. 36) beings; that they
are acquainted (Matthew xxiv. 36 ; Mark xiii. 32) with
many of God's counsels, though not with all, that they
are occasionally ministering spirits to mankind, both in
this life (Matthew xviii. 10) and the next (Luke xvi. 22) ;
that at the last day our Lord will come to judgment, and
all the holy angels with him (Matthew xxv. 31), and
that in their presence he will confess those (Luke xii. 8, 9)
who boldly confess him before men, and deny those who
timidly deny him."
It is impossible to explain these expressions away as
figurative on any just grounds of interpretation. The
language both of Jesus and of the Evangelists is often
specific and minute ; it is used, not merely in passages of
an imaginative and poetical character, but in the plainest
historical details,* and is applied under circumstances which
admit of no other construction. Where there is no specific
and formal reference to tliem, their existence is sometimes
implied by undesigned and spontaneous allusions which
show how the thought of them entered into the reUgioiis
conceptions, and made a part of what is called the re-
liijrious consciousness of Jesus and the Evansrelists.
MATTHEW VIII. 28-34. 157
28-34. — Evil and Disorderly Spirits.
But what shall we say of the existence and agency
of other spirits than those of an angelic character ? The
subject has already been opened in the chapter on the
Temptation in the Wilderness. To deny the existence
of evil spirits is not to destroy the kingdom of evil. So
long as sin actually exists in the world, and evil spirits
are allowed to dwell as wicked men in human bodies,
and under the limitations and restraints of our nature, the
moral objection to the existence of evil or disorderly spirits
under other forms is wholly without force. The objection
lies against sin itself and its fatal influences. But as sin
does exist and prevail, why may it not show itself in other
modes of being as well as in that with which we are familiar "i
By denying the existence of the devil, we, as Goethe says,
" get rid of the wicked one, but the wicked ones remain."
Besides, what becomes of all the wicked men who are
constantly going from this present mode of life to another ?
We cannot suppose the bare act of dying, or changing
the form of life, to work an essential change of character,
and transform them from sin to holiness. If they exist
at all, they exist, at least for a time, as evil spirits. Are
they then permitted to go at large for a season ? As in
this world good and bad grow up together, and are open to
influences whether of good or of evil from one another,
as a bad man often is permitted to have access to inno-
cent minds and to corrupt their virtue, may it not also
be, as Swedenborg has supposed, in those modes of being
which lie next beyond us, that the good and the bad are
for a season allowed to live, to be employed in their
different spheres, and, within the rules and limits estab-
lished by the all-wise Creator and Ruler of all, to labor
for the establishment of their kingdom, and to hold out
its influences to those who are still upon the earth, that
they may receive or reject them ? May there not be a
14
158 MATTHEW VIII. 2S - 34.
kingdom of evil as well as a kingdom of righteousness
having its seat beyond us, but, within the conditions and
limitations assigned by God, reaching down its poisonous
influences into the sphere of our human interests and re-
lations ?
The great and terrible fact that sin with its baleful
influences does exist cannot be denied. Its enticements
and seductions, its pestilence that walketh in darkness,
and its destruction that wasteth at noonday, meet us at
every turn. The world groans under a sense of the degra-
dation and misery and sorrows which it inflicts. Where
is its source ? In the soul of man or in the world beyond ?
Is there a kingdom of darkness, — the devil and his angels,
as there is a kingdom of light, — the Son of Man and the
holy angels with him? When Christ came to save the
world from sin, did he have to contend only with wicked
men, their passions and crimes, and to infuse into men's
minds the elements of a diviner life ? Or did he have
to contend with and overthrow a kingdom of darkness,
lying beyond this world, and yet intimately associated with
it, sending out its emissaries of wrong with every form of
temptation to take advantage of the weaknesses of our
nature and lead us into sin ? Did the Prince of Dark-
ness with his agents, recognizing Jesus as one who had
come to destroy their kingdom, meet him in the wilder-
ness, follow him through his ministry, incite Judas to betray
him, and throw every obstruction that they could in his
j^ath? By the reference which Jesus so often makes to
Satan, his kingdom, and his messengers; in the terrible
depth of his anguish at Gethsemane and his cry of desola-
tion upon the cross ; are we to recognize merely the ex-
istence of sin in its impersonal influence and authority,
seated deeply in the heart of the race, and incorporated
into all its institutions and habits ; or are we also to rec-
ognize a Prince of Darkness with his attendant and obe-
dient subjects constituting a kingdom of iniquity, and per-
MATTHEW VIII. 28-34. 159
mitted for a season, in the wise providence of God, to
range at large through the world ?
In this supposition we are always to remember that
wicked ones are not omnipotent because they are spirit-
ual, and that, as wicked men here, so wicked spirits there,
must be limited by the laws of God, and by the very
conditions of their being, in the sphere and mode of their
operations. . The moral freedom of man, which God him-
self respects in all his dealings with him for his salva-
tion, he will unquestionably constrain wicked spirits to
respect and leave untouched in all their efforts to injure
and destroy him. Whatever Jesus may have taught in
regard to the agency of evil spirits, the whole force of
his instructions goes to show, that, if we only are on our
guard, they can have no influence over us for evil.
The question of the existence and agency of evil spirits,
like that of good spirits, is not one embarrassed by any
physical impossibility or moral improbability. It is simply
a question of fact, which lies open to evidence, and is to
be treated by commentators on the New Testament as
a question of interpretation. What then is taught by Jesus
on this subject ? In the account of the Temptation, which
must have been derived from him, he speaks of Satan as
a personal being. The wicked one (Matthew xiii. 19)^
Satan (Mark iv. 15), and the devil (Luke viii. 12), are
used as equivalent terms. Jesus (John viii. 44) tells the
Jews that they are of their father the devil, and (Matthew
xii. 26) he speaks of Satan as establishing a kingdom in
opposition to the kingdom of God. He speaks (John
xiv. 30) of the prince of this world, who hath nothing
in him, who (John xvi. 11) is judged, and (John xii. 31)
shall be cast out. He says (Luke x. 17, 18), "I beheld
Satan as lightning fall from heaven," and (Matthew xxv. 41)
he speaks of the " everlasting fire, prepared for the devil
and his angels."
It is possible that this may be figurative language, used
160 MATTHEW VIII. 28-34.
to express in vivid terms the power of evil. But in read
ing the Gospels, and the whole of the New Testament
with care, seeking, without any prepossessions on our part,
to enter into the conception of Christ and his disciples
on this subject, we should hardly fail to infer that, to
their minds, Satan and his angels were personal beings,
acting in opposition to them, and exercising a dominion
which it was Christ's office to overthrow. The language
of the New Testament, its direct expressions and indirect
allusions, harmonize more readily with this than with any
other hypothesis. For further considerations, see chapter
xiii. 39.
There is still another class of beings referred to in
language which is to be taken either literally or figura-
tively. As there are the Son of Man and the holy angels
with him, and the devil and his angels, so there are
demons, baifiovia or fiat/xovfs, and demoniacs, or persons sup-
posed to be possessed by demons. The word Devil, see
Whately on "Good and Evil Spirits," pp. 57, 80, is a
proper name, always in the singular number. Wherever
the word devils occurs in the New Testament it should
read demons, that being the word in the original. It is
unfortunate that in our version these beings are called
(Jevils. They were considered by the Jews to be dis-
orderly, mischievous, and, as they are sometimes called
(Matthew x. 1, xii. 43, Mark iii. 11, 30, &c.), unclean
spirits. The idea seems to have been, that they were
wandering about the earth, seeking, as the language of
Jesus (Matthew xii. 43 - 45) suggests, a dwelling-place in
some human being, whose will they might control, and
whose mental and physical organs they might succeed in
subordinating to their own uses.
Two different views of this subject have been taken.
On the one side, it has been maintained, that demoniacs
were persons affected by nervous diseases of different
kinds, especially when those diseases were so severe as
MATTHEW VIII. 28-34. 161
to unsettle the powers of reason and of self-control. In
short, they were either subject to fits, or belonged to that
large class of sufferers who now find a home, and often,
from physical and moral treatment combined, a cure, in
our hospitals for the insane.
The other view is, that while the demoniacs were un-
questionably diseased, suffering particularly from those ner-
vous affections which are induced by sensual indulgence,
and through which the whole system, physical, mental,
and moral, is disordered and deranged, they were actually
besieged and taken possession of by these mischievous
spirits, who were wandering about in quest of a dweiling-
place. The spirits, taking advantage of the utter dis-
harmony in their natures, enter through the rents that
have been made, usurp the place which their own wills
have held so unsteadily, and exercise over them in body
and mind a control more or less entire according to the
degree of disorder and incapacity that they find. These
unhappy victims of demoniacal influence are not repre-
sented as adepts in sin. They are npt wholly given over
to what is evil. They are rather imbecile, or without
self-control, given over perhaps to habits of sensual in-
dulgence, and the disorders growing out of it, with a per-
ception, as the Gadarene had, of their unhappiness, but
waging a feeble war against temptation, and making a
feeble and therefore ineffectual resistance to the tyrannous
power which has taken possession of them, and which
substitutes his will and at times his consciousness in the
place of theirs. He inflames their passions, arms them,
as paroxysms of insanity sometimes arm men now, with
an almost preternatural strength, drives them into unfre-
quented and desolate places, weans them from the compan-
ionship of man, fills them with delusions and evil thoughts,
or forces them to isolate themselves in the midst of their
friends by refusing to see or to speak.
In support of the opinion that these cases as described
162 MATTHEW VIII. 28-34.
in the New Testament are only cases of insanity and
other severe diseases, particularly nervous affections, it is
said, — 1. That language similar to that which is applied
to these cases in the New Testament was applied by
classical writers of Greece (Xenophon, Mem. I. 9 ; Aristoph.
Plut. II. 3, 38) to sick persons who were to be cured by
medical prescriptions. 2. That the symptoms, as they are
brought out in the narratives, are such as truly describe
those classes of diseases. 3. That the Evangelists apply
the same language to sick, melancholy, and insane per-
sons; e. g. (John X. 20), "He hath a demon, and is
mad." 4. That as the Jews were accustomed to attribute
all effects proceeding from unknown causes to invisible
personal agents, they attributed these mysterious diseases
particularly to demons, and Jesus and his disciples, in
speaking of them as they did, only used the popular lan-
guage by which those diseases were generally designated,
just as we use the words lunatic (moonstruck), sunrise,
and sunset, without any regard to their literal and erroneous
meaning. 5. The demoniacs are the only insane persons
whom Jesus is said in the Gospels to have cured, which
is very remarkable, if the two words, demoniacs and in-
sane, do not describe the same class of sufferers. 6. If
these were really cases of demoniacal possession, how
happens it that they were so numerous then, and so en-
tirely unknown now?
On the other side it is said, — 1. That as these cases
were usually attended by disease, the medical prescrip-
tions were not out of place ; and, 2. Of course the symp-
toms would, for the most part, be such as would characterize
the disease, whatever it might be. 3. That in the ex-
pression (John X. 20), " He has a demon, and is mad,"
there is no more reason to consider the second clause
an explanation of the first than in the expression, " He
has a fever, and is delirious." Considering how general
and unqualified the belief in demoniacal influences was
MATTHEW VIII. 28-34. 1G3
among the Jews, there can be no doubt that they in
their anger against Jesus did intend to describe him as
one possessed by an evil spirit, and therefore raving, when
he spoke to them in language so utterly beyond their
comprehension. 4. Though Jesus often used the popular
language without stopping to explain the errors involved
in it, yet he applies this language to demoniacs in ways
and under circumstances hardly consistent with his per-
fect veracity, if he knew that they were only cases of
insanity. Let any one read carefully the whole passage
(Luke xi. 14 — 26), and ask whether on such a supposition
this language is quite consistent with our ideas of perfect
truthfulness. Even if the first part of the passage should
be regarded as an argumentum ad hominem^ reasoning
with the Jews on their own ground, as it might be, it
is impossible so to understand the last three verses, where
he describes the unclean, spirit, after he is gone out of a
man, as wandering through deserts, in search of a resting-
place, and finding none. Not only in public, but in private
conversations with his disciples, Jesus uses similar lan-
guage. In private directions to them, he says (Matthew
X. 8), not "heal demoniacs," but "cast out demons," and
(xvii. 21) when they come to him confidentially for in-
structions in regard to a case of this kind over which
they had no power, he says, " This kind goeth not out
but by prayer and fasting," — language which must have
confirmed them in the belief that it was a case of de-
moniacal possession, and which it is very diflficult to recon-
cile with his veracity unless he so regarded it. 5. To the
question why demoniacs were so common then, and so
unknown now, the reply is, that, in the moral as in the
physical world, particular periods are marked by the preva-
lence of particular forms of evil. Why was the plague
of Athens, of Florence, or of London a disease so fatal
once, and so unknown now ? " In looking over the past
history of the world, with reference to this kind of phe-
164: MATTHEW VIII. 28-34.
nomena," says an able Swedenborgian writer, Hayden on
Spiritualism, p. 43, " we shall find that they have been
exceedingly active in periods preceding great changes in
the religious state of the world, and have been the fore-
runners of events that have powerfully affected the minds
of men on a variety of subjects, especially in regard to
their religious sentiments." If such beings do exist around
us, we should expect them to show their power mosc of
all in a time of moral disorder and chaos like that which
preceded our Saviour's coming, and be excited by the
fiercest desire to extend their power over men at the
time when he was about to put down these disorderly
agents, and establish the kingdom of Heaven. " If," says
Trench, on The Miracles, p. 134, "there was anything
that marked the period of our Lord's coming in the flesh,
and that immediately succeeding, it was the wreck and
confusion of men's spiritual life which was then, the sense
of utter disharmony, with the tendency to rush
with a frantic eagerness into sensual enjoyments as the
refuge from despairing thoughts It was exactly
the crisis for such soul maladies as these, in which the
spiritual and the bodily should be thus strangely inter-
linked, and it is nothing wonderful that they should have
abounded at that time ; for the predominance of certain
spiritual maladies at certain epochs of the world's history
which were specially fitted for their generation, with their
gradual decline and disappearance in others less congenial
to them, is a fact itself admitting no manner of question.'*
"We must not," says Neander, "Life of Jesus," p. 146,
" take the spirit of an age of materialism or rationalism
as a rule for judging of all phenomena of the yj/vxfi
[soul] which veils within itself the Injimte, which is
capable of such manifold excitement, and whose various
powers are alternately dormant and active, — now one pre-
vailing, and now another." If it was one important part
of the mission of Christ to overthrow here the dominion of
MATTHEW Vm. 28-34. 165
evil spirits, and to break up their dangerous intercourse
with man, this alone will account for the fact that such
moral disorders as demoniacal possessions should no longer
be found. 6. Such expressions as (Mark i. 34) are hardly
consistent with any other conception on the part of the
writer than that of an actual possession by demons ; Jesus
" did not suffer the demons to speak, because they knew him.^"
The argument is not decisive on either side. Each per-
son will be likely to adopt that view which accords best
with his opinions in regard to the existence and influence
of spirits. If we believe in the ministry of angels, — that
the spirits of the departed may still linger for a season
near their accustomed abodes and friends, — if we believe
that "this world of ours stands not isolated, not rounded
and complete in itself, but in living relation with two
worlds," a higher and a lower, — that we are not only to
welcome every impression from the world above, but to
keep the gate of the soul closed against influences from
the world below, — we shall find no difliculty in admitting,
that at that momentous crisis when the moral faculties
of the race were so dislocated and disordered, evil and
unruly spirits may have had an extraordinary sway, and
that just at the time when their kingdom was about to
receive a blow which must prove fatal in the end, they
may have been excited to put forth unusual efforts in
order to fortify and extend their authority.
This view of the case seems to us upon the whole best
to harmonize the different terms used in the New Testa-
ment, both those directly connected with demoniacal pos-
sessions, and those which refer in different relations to
the connection between this and other worlds. We have
very little doubt that this was the belief of the Evan-
gelists themselves. Whether it was entertained by Jesus
is not so certain. The whole subject is an obscure one. It
can be known to us only through a divine revelation.
From its very nature, and our acknowledged ignorance
166 MATTHEW VIII. 28-34.
of such matters, we must expect to find in it things which
we cannot fully comprehend.
We shall endeavor to explain the narrative before us,
28-34, in accordance with each of these views. On the
first supposition we may say that the symptoms, as they
are minutely described in Luke viii. 26-37, and more
vividly still in Mark v. 1-17, are those of extreme in-
sanity. The fierce and habitual violence, the almost pre-
ternatural strength, the shrinking from the society of men,
living naked among the sepulchres and in the mountains,
the savage outcries, and fierce tearing of his flesh with
stones, are symptoms of the most violent insanity. So is
his double consciousness, speaking now in his own person,
as when he came and threw himself down before Jesus,
and then, in the violence of the struggle which ensued
when Jesus commanded the unclean spirit to come out of
him, speaking in the person of the spirit, and afterwards
in his still more violent ravings identifying himself with
an army of demons by whom he supposes himself to be
possessed. These are the wild, rapid, inconsistent starts
of a madman. The whole narrative, so natural and life-
like, bears indisputable marks of truth. Even the transfer
of the disease to the swine is as easily accounted for on
this supposition as on any. Perhaps there is no one
feature of the case which may not be thus explained, ex-
cept his recognition of Jesus as the Son of the Most High
God, and his fallihg down in reverence before him. It
is possible, but very. improbable, that in his fierce and iso-
lated condition he should have heard reports to produce
such an impression on his mind.
We will now explain it on the other theory. We will
suppose that, in addition to the insanity which had been
brought upon himself and aggravated in all its symptoms
by habits of sensual indulgence and the attendant disorders
of his inward life, he was actually possessed by a demon
whom he, having once admitted, has no longer the power
MATTHEW VIII. 28-34. 167
to expel. This evil spirit has taken possession of his
faculties, fills out his consciousness, excites in him tlie
fiercest enmities and passions, drives him away from the
abodes of men, and subordinates his nature to his own
mischievous and disorderly will. Tiiere may be moments
of awakening consciousness, when the despotic tyranny
is relaxed, and the poor man returns to himself and feels
his misery. Such a moment may have come, when the
spirit, recognizing with awe the presence of Jesus, was
thrown off his guard, and the man, thus made aware
of the character of Christ and seizing at once on the
hope of deliverance, ran and threw himself at his feet.
But immediately the spirit regained his control, the frenzy
returned upon his victim, and believing himself now to be
the demon by whom he was possessed, the act of homage
by which- he had thrown himself down in the hope of re-
lief was turned into a fierce cry of rage and despair.
" What hast thou to do with me, Jesus, thou Son of the
Most High God. Hast thou come hither to torment me
before the time ? I adjure thee by God, torment me not.'*
For Jesus had commanded the unclean spirit to come
out of the man. Then, as if to call him to himself, Jesus
asked him his name. But the power that had dominion
over him was not then relaxed, and, as if he were a whole
army of demons, he said, " Legion is my name." And
still, under the same control, in the person of the demons
whom he supposes himself to be and whose words he
speaks, he besought Jesus that he would not (Mark v. 10)
send them away out of the place, or command them (Luke
viii. 31) to go out into the abyss, but allow them to ente^
a vast herd of swine that was feeding in the distance
(Matthew viii. 30) there on the mountain near the sea
(Mark v. 11). The request is not refused. The swine,
seized with a sudden fury, rush headlong down the precis
pice into the sea, and perish in the waters.
The whole account, on this supposition, is perfectly natu^
168 MATTHEW VIII. 28-34.
ral and consistent. It places before us in terrible colors
the features of that disjointed and discordant life which
must belong to a human being subjected to such a for-
eign control before his whole nature is consciously and
voluntarily surrendered to what is evil.
There are one or two remarkable expressions here
which, on this supposition, may throw a little light on a
dark and difficult subject. " What hast thou to do with
us (Matthew viii. 29), Jesus, thou Son of God?" indicates
their knowledge of Christ as of a superior being who
has authority over them. But how could the maniac have
known him by this title ? The second clause of the same
sentence, " Hast thou come to torment us before the time ? "
would seem to indicate that they knew that they could
be allowed to range at liberty only for a season. The
same fact is also indicated yet more strongly by their
beseeching Jesus (Luke viii. 31) that he would not com-
mand them to go out into the deep, the abyss, which
word, wherever it is used in the New Testament, refers
to the abode of the dead (Romans x. 7) or the abode of
wicked spirits (Rev. ix. 1, 2, 11 ; xi. 7 ; xvii. 8 ; xx. 1, 3).
The same idea is probably implied in the request of the
demons (Mark v. 10), that Jesus would not send them
out of the place. The inference is that these spirits, who
were perhaps, as Swedenborg asserts, the souls of de-
parted men, were allowed to linger for a time about the
earth before they entered the abyss.
It ought to be added that this is the strongest case to
be found in the Gospels, on the side of actual demon-
iacal possession.
MATTHEW VIII. IGT
NOTES.
When lie was come down from the mountain, great multi-
2 tudes followed him. And, behold, there came a leper and
worshipped him, saying. Lord, if thou wilt, thou canst make
3 me clean. And Jesus put forth his hand, and touched him,
saying, I will ; be thou clean. And immediately his leprosy
4 was cleansed. And Jesus saith unto him. See thou tell no
man ; but go thy way, show thyself to the priest, and offer the
gift that Moses commanded, for a testimony unto them.
5 And when Jesus was entered into Capernaum, there came
6 unto him a centurion, beseeching him, and saying. Lord, my
servant lieth at home sick of the palsy, grievously torment-
7 ed. And Jesus saith unto him, I will come and heal him.
8 The centurion answered and said : Lord, I am not worthy that
thou shouldest come under my roof; but speak the word only,
9 and my servant shall be healed. For I am a man under author-
ity, having soldiers under me ; and I say to this man. Go, and
he goeth ; and to another. Come, and he cometh ; and to my
10 servant, Do this, and he doeth it. When Jesus heard it, he
marvelled, and said to them that followed, A^'erily I say unto
11 you, I have not found so great faith, no, not in Israel. And I
say unto you, that many shall come from the east and west,
and shall sit down with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, in
5. there came unto him a 8 and 9. It is not unusual to repre-
centurion] In the Roman army sent a man as domg himself what he
for a long time each legion contained does through others. 6. l.ordJ
sixty centuries, and each centuria, A term by which, according to Gro-
as t^o nnrnft imnlipc; wns snnnnspd tius and Kuiiioel, the Jews were
the name implies, was supposed
to consist of a hundred men. The accustomed to address even stran-
commander of one of these com- sers. It was also a term which,
panics was called a centurion, and like our Str might be used m the
according to Polybius (VI. 24), he most respectful salutations.
was usually remarkable less for his »• my servaiitl Literally, « viy
daring valor than for his calmness %i" or ''my son;'' but in Luke
and sagacity. He sat as a judge in it is explained as servant, 8ov\ov.
minor oflences, and was, of course, 10. faith] The first use
in a province like Galilee, a man of this word in the Gospels, though
of considerable distinction and im- the corresponding adjective is found
portance. According to Luke (vii. (vi. 30). The noun here, as is sug-
1-10), the centurion sent elders of gested by the adjective there, and
the Jews to Jesus, and did not him- viii. 26, means t7'ust, conjidence, and
self meet him, till Jesus had come implies a believing, trusting heart,
near his house, when he spoke to 11. and shall sit down
him substantially as here in verses with] shall rtclina with. At their
15
*170 MATTHEW Vm.
the kingdom of Heaven. But the children of the kingdom shall 12
be cast out into outer darkness ; there shall be weeping and
gnashing of teeth. And Jesus said unto the centurion, Go 13
thy way, and as thou hast believed, so be it done unto thee.
And his servant was healed in the selfsame hour.
And when Jesus was come into Peter's house, he saw his 14
wife's mother laid, and sick of a fever. And he touched her 15
hand, and the fever left her ; and she arose and ministered
unto them. When the even was come, they brought unto 16
him many that were possessed with devils ; and he cast out the
spirits with his word, and healed all that were sick ; that it 17
might be fulfilled which was spoken by Esaias the prophet,
saying, " Himself took our infirmities, and bare our sick-
Now when Jesus saw great multitudes about him, he gave is
commandment to depart unto the other side. And a certain 19
scribe came, and said unto him, Master, I will follow thee
whithersoever thou goest. And Jesus saith unto him. The 20
foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests ; but the
Son of Man hath not where to lay his head. And another of 21
meals the Jews, in common with second evening beginning with the
other Oriental people, reclined on setting sun. The hour of evening
couches. 12. there shall sacrifice and prayer was the ninth
be weeping] T/iei'e shall be the hour, or about three o'clock. See
weeping; "a remarkable article Robinson's Lexicon. 19. a
used emphatically," " as though certain scribe] one scribe. Few
that were the ti*ue ideal of sorrow, of that class came to Jesus with a
the normal standard of suffering, disposition to receive and follow
the archetypal reality of agony." him. He probably saw the mis-
" In this life, grief is not yet really taken motive, or 'the infirmity of
grief." Bengel. 12. gnash- purpose with which this scribe had
ing of teeth] " from impatience come; and knowing that such fol-
and bitterest remorse. Self-love in- lowers could only weaken his cause,
dulged on earth will then be trans- gave him such sin answer as would
formed into self-hate; nor will the reveal him to himself, and lead him
sufferer be ever able to depart from voluntarily to go away, though he
himself." " Another exposition is, may, like 'the young man (xix. 22),
the soft will weep, the stern will have gone away disappointed and
rage." Bengel. This whole im- sorrowful. 20. the Son
ageryisfrom the marriage feast, — a of Man] Dr. Palfrev supposes
favorite similitude with our Lord,— that Jesus used this plu-ase " as con-
lamps and torches within, the dark- taining a reference to a fonn of
ness of night without. conception and of speech derived
16. tlieeven] The Jews reckoned from (or at least according with)
two evenings, the first evening a passage in the Book of Daniel
beginning with the declining sun, (vii. 13, 14), where it is said, 'I saw
or about three o'clock, P. M. ; the in the night visions, and behold, one
MATTHEW VIII.
171
his disciples said unto liim, Lord, suffer me first to go and
22 bury my father. But Jesus said unto him, Follow me, and
let the dead bury their dead.
23 And when he was entered into a ship, his disciples followed
24 him. And, behold, there arose a great tempest in the sea, in-
somuch that the ship was covered with the waves ; but he was
25 asleep. And his disciples came to him, and awoke him, say-
26 ing. Lord, save us, we perish. And he saith unto them. Why
are ye fearful, O ye of little faith ? Then he arose, and re-
buked the winds and the sea ; and there was a great calm.
27 But the men marvelled, saying. What manner of man is this,
that even the winds and the sea obey him ?
28 And when he was come on the other side, into the country
of the Gergesenes, there met him two possessed with devils,
like a [or the'] son of man came
with the clouds of heaven,' &c. In
these words, the subject in-tlie wri-
ter's contemplation Avas the coming
of the Messiah to establish the king-
dom of Heaven. Occurring in a
passage of such brilliancy, the
phrase Son of Man, though by no
means sufficiently specific iu its
meaning to be restricted into a des-
ignation of the Messiah, yet was
likely to take a place among those
titles which might properly be ap-
plied to him." — Relation "between
Judaism and Christianity, pp. 66,
67. 22. let the dead bury
their dead] It may be, as Bengel
suggests, that this is meant to im-
ply that even the most imperative
offices of life — such as the burying
of the dead — should be left to be
performed by others, since the com-
mand to follow him was too imme-
diately urgent and imperative to be
put aside on anv such grounds.
" But go, thou, and preach the king-
dom of God; that is, arouse those
who are dead; being called to this,
leave burying to others, who, alas !
do it naturally enough, as long as
they themselves are as dead as their
dead." " Ye are called, as the
living, to diffuse life; leave every-
thing else as bury ing- work to the
dead." Stier. * 23. into a
ship] The size of the ship or boat
may be inferred from the size of
the lake. There is great weight in
a remark of Bengel, which might
be carried out more fully than in
his words: "Jesus had a moving
school (scfiolam ambulantem) ; and
in that school his disciples were
instructed much more solidly than
if they had dwelt under the roof of
a single college, Avithout any anxiety
or temptation.'" 26. ani
rebuked the winds] hushed them,
or commanded them to be silent.
The word rebuke, e7riTtnd(o, is not
used to express displeasure or
anger, but as a command to
cease from what one is already
doing or saying. " And he charged
[rebuked, eTrtrtyxr/o-ei/] them not
to make him known." (xii. 16.)
28. the Gergesenes]
In Tischendorf, Gadarenes. In Luke
it is Gadarenes, but according to
Tischendorf, Gerasenes. It is diffi-
cult to decide among these different
readings. If Um Keis occupies the
same spot as the ancient Gadara —
and of that there seems to be little
doubt — Gadara could not have been
the scene of this miracle; for it is,
according to Thomson, " about three
hours," i. e. about seven or eight
miles, " to the south of the extreme
shoi-e of the lake in that direction."
But Gersa or Chersa, says Thom-
son, Vol. II. pp. 35, 36, " is within
172
MATTHEW VIII.
coming out of the tombs, exceeding fierce, so that no man
might pass by that way. And, behold, they cried out, saying, 29
AVhat have we to do with thee, Jesus, thou Son of God ? Art
thou come hither to torment us before the time ? And there 3ff
was a good way off' from them an herd of many swine feeding.
a few rods of the shore, and an im-
mense mountain rises directly above
it, in which are ancient tombs, out
of some of which the two men pos-
sessed of the devils may have issued
to meet Jesus. The lake is so near
the base of the mountaii? that the
swine, i-ushing madly down it, could
not stop, but Avould be hurried on
into the water and drowned. The
place is one which our Lord would
be likely to visit, having Capernaum
in full view to the north, and Galilee
' over against it,' as Luke says it
was (Luke viii. 26). The name,
hoAvever, pronounced by the Beda-
win Arabs, is so similar to Gergesa,
that to all my inquiries for this
place they invariably said it Avas '
at Chersa, and they insisted that
they were identical, and I agree
with them in this opinion."
two possessed with devils]
Mark and Luke speak of only one,
and represent him as so wild and
ungovernable, that he dwelt with-
out clothing among the tombs, driv-
en by the demon into desert places,
(Luke viii. 29), continuing day and
night among the sepulchres and on
the mountains, crying out and cut-
ting himself with stones (^lark v.
5), so fierce that chains and fetters
had been broken by him, and no
man was able to subdue him. Yet
when he saw Jesus coming, while
he was yet afar otf (Mark v. 6), he
ran and prostrated himself before
him, and shrieked out the words,
" What hast thou to do with me,
Jesus, thou Son of the Most High
God? Art thou come hither to tor-
ment us before the tuue V I adjure
thee by God, torment me not."
Matthew (xx. 30) speaks of two
blind men, where Mark and Luke
mention but one. In each case their
attention may have been confined to
the more conspicuous of the two a3
the one on whom our Saviour's
poAver was most decisively exer-
cised. Matthew, from his office as
a publican or tax-gatherer, would
be likely to be more precise in the
use of numbers, and therefore to
mention both, even though the par-
ticulars of the account which the
other Evangelists have preserved
actually applied only to one.
30. a good way off] fxaKpav,
far from them. Mark and Luke
say, €<ei» " There, on the mountain."
There is no inconsistency. They
were there, in Hie distance, on the
mountain. This miracle, which has
more the air of a legend than any
other in the Gospels except the tak-
ing of money from the mouth of a
fish (xvii. 27), is nevertheless re-
markably lifelike and natural in
its details, especially as they are
given by Mark and Luke. With
the exception of his destruction of
the fig-tree (xxi. 19), it is the only
miracle of Jesus that was not wholly
beneficent in its effects. But the
very destruction of property, as in a
sim'ilar case ( Acts xvi. 16-19), may
have been to show how much more
valuable and sacred is a human soxil
than any amount of gain. It may
have been intended as a rebuke to
those who, if Jews, were keeping
swine in violation of the law. It
may, in some way unknown to us,
have been necessary, in order to
eff"ect the cure and' make it per-
manent. Or still more probably, it
may have been intended, by the
very considerable magnitude of the
loss, to attract the attention of the
community, as the cure of the ma-
niac alone'could not do, and prepare
them to receive the Gospel at some
future day. For such a loss would
produce a lasting impression on
their sordid minds; and evidently
the people in the vicinity were
moved Avith aAve and dread by this
more than by any other of his mir-
MATTHEW VIII.
173
31 So the devils besought him, saying, If thou cast us out, suffer
32 us to go away into the herd of swine. And he said unto them,
Go. And when they were come out, they went into the herd
of swine. And, behold, the whole herd of swine ran violently
down a steep place into the sea, and perished in the waters.
33 And they that kept them fled, and went their ways into the
city, and told everything, and what was befallen to the pos-
34 sessed of the devils. And, behold, the whole city came out to
meet Jesus ; and when they saw him, they besought him that
he would depart out of their coasts.
acles. As to any injustice to the
owners, it was " iGrod Avho inflicted
this loss; and, viewed in this light,
all inquiry respecting the particular
cause why it was inflicted, and all
discussion of its reason or justice
in reference to the owner, are as
much out of place as they would
be concerning a fire, or a shipwreck,
or an earthquake." Norton's "In-
ternal Evidences of the Genuineness
of the Gospels," p. 282. That the
miracle was intended to produce a
very strong impression is a sugges-
tion countenanced by the fact that
Jesus directed the man (Luke viii.
39) to go home and declare what
great things God had done for him.
The leper, v. 4, liad been command-
ed to tell no one. But this was on
the opposite side of the lake, where
Jesus had not the same need of
privacy as on the western side. As
he was immediately to leave tlie
place, and seldom if ever to visit it
again, he may have been desirous
of doing wliat he might to extend
the knowledge of his mission in that
region.
15*
174 MATTHEW IX. 18-26.
CHAPTER IX.
18-26. — Christ's Way of viewing Death.
The explanation of these miracles will belong more prop-
erly to Mark v. 22 - 43. A single expression will here be
noticed (24), " The maiden is not dead, but sleeping." 01s-
hausen supposes that Jesus intended by these words to say
that she really was not dead, but only " in a deep trance."
We think the expression is rather to be regarded as in-
dicating the view which Jesus took of death. To him
who looked through the shadowy envelopments of mortal-
ity, and saw in its higher experience the ongoings of
the life here begun, death could not appear as it did to
others ; and, except when he was specially obliged, as
in John xi. 14, and Matthew xvi. 28, to adapt him-
self to their understanding, he would naturally apply to
it forms of speech different from those which were then
in use. Here is one of those forms, borrowed possibly
from the Old Testament (Deut. xxxi. 16 ; 2 JKings xx. 21).
But the limited expression there, " He slept with Ms
fathers,'' is taken without any such qualification, and the
act of sleep is held up as the peaceful and fitting emblem
of death. " Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep." The
expression fixed itself among his followers. " Many bodies
of saints who had fallen asleep arose." (Matthew xxvii. 52.)
"And having said this, he fell asleep." (Acts vii. 60.)
" Of whom the greater part remain to this day, but some
have fallen asleep." (1 Cor. xv. 6.) " They who have
fallen asleep in Christ." (1 Cor. xv. 18.) This softened
mode of expression, entering the Christian consciousness,
has changed the whole aspect of the grave. The pall
of death is but a veil of slumber thrown over the mortal
MATTHEW IX. 18-26. 175
form of those who, having lived in Christ, have now
fallen asleep in him. How in harmony is all this with
the character of Jesus ! He to whom the issues out of
this life into a higher realm were as real and visible
as its ordinary transactions here, could hardly accept as
truthful accounts of death the terms which were employed
by men on whom the shadows of the tomb fell with their
deep and hopeless mystery. Sometimes he is obliged to
adapt himself to the comprehension of others. But usually
he speaks of death in other ways. It is a sleep. It is
rendering back a. gift (Matthew x. 39 ; Luke xvii. 33 ;
John xii. 25), that it may be safely preserved, or the
laying down of a possession (John x. 17), that it may
be taken again. It is the coming of the Son of Man.
(Matthew xxv. 13, 31.) It is the harvest at the end of
the world (Matthew xiii. 39), where the reapers are the
angels. " The beggar died (Luke xvi. 22), and was car-
ried by the angels into Abraham's bosom." " Father, into
thy hands I commend my spirit" (Luke xxiii. 46.) Tliere
is nothing constrained in his language. The whole sub-
ject is transfigured by it ; but it flows so easily from his
own higher point of view, that we hardly see what power
there is in his words, unless our attention is particularly
called to them. lie does not formally announce the Con-
tinuance of our being beyond this world, but rather takes it
for granted. The doctrine enters into all his conceptions
of life, makes up a part of his daily consciousness, and
shows itself spontaneously in his words and acts. " God
is not the God of the dead, but of the living." So, not
Moses and Elias alone, but Abraham and Isaac and
Jacob, the maiden here, and his friend Lazarus at Bethany,
together with the faithful of all times, were still among
the living inhabitants of a living world. Death, in his
view, belonged to the soul as a consequence of sin, and
not to the body. As life with him means spiritual life,
so death (a word he seldom uses) means spiritual death.
176
MATTHEW IX.
NOTES.
And he entered into a ship, and passed over, and came into
his own city. And, behold, they brought to him a man sick of 2
the palsy, lying on a bed. And Jesus, seeing their faith, said
unto the sick of the palsy, Son, be of good cheer ; thy sins
be foro'iven thee. And, behold certain of the scribes said 3
1. This verse belongs properly to
the preceding narrative, and should
be placed at the end of the eighth
chapter. his own city]
Capernaum. 2 Jesus see-
ing their faith] Matthew speaks
of their faith. Mark (ii. 2-4) and
Luke (v. 18-19) explain how they
showed theu' faith by the extraor-
dinary exertions they made to bring
the sick man through the roof. The
crowd was such tliat they could not
enter the door. They carried him
up, therefore, by an outside stair-
way to the roof, and " unroofing the
root [ovei-] where he was," tliey
"having broken it up, let him
down." " Tlie horizontal aperture
m the flat roof had necessarily a
secondary roof or porch over it, to
keep out the x-ain. The apei-ture
may be compared to the cabin
hatchway of a ship, and the porch
to the companion. The main roof
is covered with cement, but, if my
memory serves me right, the sec-
ondary roof is not unfrequently
sloping, and covered with tiles. It
is fitted to allow persons in an up-
riglit position to enter ; but we can
easily conceive that it might not be
fitted to admit of a person recum-
bent on a couch without removing
the porch." Smith's Diss, on Gos-
pels, p. 272. thy sins he
forgiven thee] Jesus, seeing their
faith, and probably seeing at the
same time the anxiety and excite-
ment of the young man, in order to
remove his agitation and prepare
the way for his cure, addressed him-
self first to his mental condition,
and with great tenderness said to
him, '• Son, be of good cheer; thy
sins are forgiven." There was in
the Jewish mind an intimate con-
nection between sin and disease, as
between cause and eflTect. " Who
forgiveth all thine iniquities: who
healeth all thy diseases." (Ps. ciii.
3.) " Who did sin, this man or his
parents, that he was bom blind? "
(John ix 2.) In the case before us,
it is most likely that the disease, or
Erostration of the nervous system,
ad been brought on by vicious ir-
regularities and excesses, and that,
from a consciousness of this, the
young man in approaching a being
of such reputed holiness as Jesus,
may have been so disturbed and
overcome with a sense of guilt as to
need the comforting assurance of
sins forgiven even more than of
bodily health restored.
3. certain of the Scrihes said]
The form of expression gave ofienco
to the Scribes of the neighborhood
who were present. " Wlio," they
ask among themselves (Luke v. 21),
" can forgive sins but God alone? "
Jesus does not assent to the truth
of what they say, that God, who
acts by his agents so often in the
moral administration of the uni-
verse, may not have bestowed on
some other being than himself the
authority to forgive sins, and remit
the penalty which they bring; but
in a word, ivOvuficrOe, which ap-
plies both to the thought and the
emotions occasioned by it, asked,
why they were cherishing evil
thoughts and emotions in their
hearts? " ¥oy which," he con-
tinues, pressing the point home to
them, " is the easier to say (not to do),
' Thy sins have been forgiven thee,'
or 'Arise and walk'?" But, that
they may know, tlxat (not God alone,
MATTHEW IX.
177
4 within themselves, This man blasphemeth. And Jesus, know-
ing their thoughts, said, Wherefore think ye evil in your
6 hearts ? For whether is easier, to say, Thy sins be forgiv-
6 en thee ? or to say, Arise, and walk ? But that ye may know
that the Son of INIan hath power on earth to forgive sins (then
saith he to the sick of the palsy), Arise, take up thy bed, and
7 go unto thine house. And he arose, and departed to his house.
8 But when the multitude saw it, they marvelled, and glorified
God, which had given such power unto men.
9 And as Jesus passed forth from thence, he saw a man, named
Matthew, sitting at the receipt of custom ; and he saith unto
10 him, Follow me. And he arose, and followed him. And it
bvit) " the Son of Man on earth
hath authority to forgive sins," he
commands the young man to take
up his bed and go home. The out-
ward miracle of healing which they
had thus seen, and which therefore
he plainly had the power to do, was
to be to them an evidence of his au-
thority to forgive sins; though the
forgiveness of sins was something
which they could not see. " By these
visible tides of God's grace, I will
give you to know in what direction
the gVeat under-currents of His love
are setting, and that both are obedi-
ent to my word." Trench. It may be
that the' two expressions, " Thy sins
are forgiven^'''' and " Thy distcise is
heated,'''' were synonymous in the
mind of Him who saw in the disease
the effect and punishment of sin;
and in its removal the withdrawal
of the penalty, and consequently the
forgiveness of the sin. This pas-
sage has been forced into a contro-
versial position which it will not
sustain. The reasoning of the
Scribes, that God alone can for-
give sins, has been taken on (heir
assertion, notwithstanding the point-
ed rebuke which they received
from Jesus. Whatever may be
meant by the authority to forgive
sins which Christ here claims for
himself, it was not confined to him-
self. He ascribes the same author-
ity to his disciples in the same
words (in the Gi'eek) that are here
used to express the forgiveness of
sins, with the addition of a still
sti'onger clause, " Whosesoever sins
ye forgive, they are forgiven to
them, and whosesoever ye retain
they are retained." (John xx. 23.)
Whether, in either case, the act
implies anything more than the au-
thority to declare that forgiveness
is granted is not shown by anything
connected with either of the pas-
sages before us. 9. at the
receipt of custom] The place
for collecting taxes. And
he arose and followed him]
The readiness with which the call
of Jesus is obeyed by Matthew in-
timates, if it does not positively im-
ply, a previous acquaintance, as it
dicl in the calling of Peter and An-
drew, John and James (iv. 18. 22).
In the conciseness of the Gospel
narratives the facts actually re-
corded are not always sufficient to
explain the causes and motives
which led to them, or the relation
in which they stand to one another.
Often something must be under-
stood beyond what is told. The
reader will also observe here the
modesty with which the writer
speaks of himself, especially in re-
gard to the feast (v. 10). "'A great
feast" (Luke v. 29) which Matthew
gave to Jesus in his own house.
His associates, many tax-gatherers,
and sinners as the "^Pharisees con-
sidered them, were present. The
Pharisees probably were not there
personally to partake of the feast.
They would not pollute themselves
by eating in so promiscuous a com-
17S
MATTHEW IX.
came to pass, as Jesus sat at meat in the house, behold, many
publicans and sinners came and sat down with him and his dis-
ciples. And when the Pharisees saw it, they said unto his 1/
disciples, AVhy eateth your Master with publicans and sin-
ners V But when Jesus heard that, he said unto them, They n
that be whole need not a physician, but they that are sick.
But go ye and learn what that meaneth, " I will have mercy, 13
and not sacrifice." For I am not come to call the righteous,
but sinners, to repentance.
papy. Their censorious remarks
must have been made after the feast.
"Why," they ask (v 11), "does
your master eat with publicans and
sinners?" "Because," Jesus in
substance repHes (12, 13), "these
are the very men to whom I have
been sent. As the physician is
needed, not by the healtiiy, but the
sick, so am I come to save, not the
righteous, but the sinful." No lan-
guage can be plainer than this. He
does not say that these persons ai*e
sinful above others, or that the
Pharisees are truly righteous. He
answers the Pharisees on their own
supposition, taking the subject as it
lies in their minds. It is as if he
had said : " Suppose things are as
you think ; suppose that these per-
sons are the sinners, and you the
righteous ones ; that is the very rea-
son why I, as the physician of souls,
should go to them rather than to
you." It is one of the cases in
wliich the language of Jesus applies
in many ways. 1. It announces
the general tnith that those who are
already righteous do not need a
Saviour. This, as a general propo-
sition, is equally true, whether there
are any such persons actually liv-
ing or not. 2. As directed to the
Pharisees, it takes them on their
own ground, and gives them from
their own point of view a reason,
the validity of which they must ad-
mit, why 'he should seek out the
sinful and abandoned. 3. But be-
yond this, Avith a keener edge and
a more pungent personal applica-
tion, he turns the same words
against them, and lays bare the
emptmess of their pretensions to
righteousness, by pressing upon
them the language of a prophet
(Hosea vi 6) whose authority they
could not reject, and who, by the
words, " I win have mercy, anci not
sacrifice," unmasks them to them-
selves, and rebukes their unforgiv-
ing and imcharitable judgments.
At the same time that Hosea is
made to expose and condemn the
Pharisees, he also shows the char-
acter and office of Jesus, who mer-
cifully came, not to call the righte-
ous, but sinners. 13. I will
have mercy, and not sacrifice]
The Hebrew form of comparison,
instead of " I will have mercy rather
than sacrifice," — the spirit indi-
cated by sacrifice, which was only a
form, rather than the form without
the spirit. the righteous]
This word, bUaios, it Ims been said,
is used to express an outside, for-
mal, or self-righteousness. We can
find no such use of it. It is an epi-
thet for what is right in the sight
of God. " Prophets and righteous
men desired to see my day." (Matt,
xiii. 17. ) " Then shall the right-
eous shine forth as the sun." (xiii.
43.) " Then shall the righteous
answer him." (xxv. 37.) " '1 he just
[righteous] shall live by faith."
(Rom/i. 17) "For scarcely for a
righteous man will one die : though
for a good man perhaps one even
dares to die. But God commended
his love towards us, in that while we
were yet sinners Christ died for us,"
(Rom." v. 7, 8.) Here righteous and
good, as synonymous terms on the
one hand,' are contrasted with sin-
ners on the other to re-
pentance] is omitted by Tischen-
MATTHEAV IX.
179
14 Then came to him the disciples of John, saying, Why do
15 we and the Pharisees fast oft, but thy disciples fast not ? And
Jesus said unto them, Can the children of the bride-chamber
mourn, as long as the bridegroom is with them V But the days
will come, when the bridegroom shall be taken from them, and
16 then shall they fast. No man putteth a piece of new cloth
unto an old garment ; for that which is put in to fill it up tak-
17 eth from the garment, and the rent is made worse. Neither do
men put new wine into old bottles; else the bottles break, and
dorf, and the sense is gx-eatly im-
proved by the omission.
14. Then] Not necessarily at that
very time (though it may have been
so), but about that time, the dis-
ciples of John, who had not then
risen far enough above the old dis-
j)ensation to comprehend the new,
in its true character, came to ask
Avhy he did not fast as they and the
Pharisees did? 15. chil-
dren of the bride -chamber]
Not ordinary guests, but tiie })ar-
ticular friends of tlie bridegroom,
Avho go to fetch the bride from her
father's house to the bride-chamber,
or who go with the bridegroom to
the house where the festival is pre-
pared and the bride is to be found.
John the Baptist had already pub-
licly spoken of Jesus (John ill. 29)
as the " bridegroom." This gives
f)ecullar force to the illustration
lere used by Jesus In his reply to
John's disciples. " How," he asks,
" shall the very sons of the bride-
chamber, during the days of the
marriage festivities, while the l)ride-
groom is with them, fast?" It
would be a forced, unnatural, and
unseemly act. But the days will
come when the bridegroom shall be
taken from them, and then, in their
loneliness and sorrow, they will
have no heart for feasting, but will
fast. The meaning is, that fasting
is not to be a forced, external ob-
servance at stated times, whatever
the condition of a man's soul, but
that when he feels his de-oyitlon
and sinfulness, then he will m )urn,
and, in the true sense of the word,
fast. " Fasting should be the goiiu-
ine offspring of inward and spiritual
sorrow, of the sense of the absence
of the bridegroom in the soul, — not
the forced and stated fasts of the
" old covenant now passed away."
" It is remarkable how uniformly a
strict attention to artificial and
prescribed fasts accompanies a
hankering after the hybrid cere-
monial system of Rome." Alford.
16. Then, following out the same
thought with illustrations, — the
garments and the wine, — borrowed
still from the wedding feast, he asks
John's disciples, how It is possible
to patch up an old, worn-out, cere-
monial system with something new
and stronger, but still of the same
sort, of the same outside, super-
ficial, ceremonial character? By
patching this piece of strong, un-
fuUed, badly-matched cloth on the
old and rotten garment you do not
remedy the defect, but, on account
of the strain that is put upon it, yoii
enlarge the rent, and by the con-
trast make tlie poverty of the old
garment appear even worse than
it did before. 17, new
Avine into old bottles] And
not only can you not preserve the old
ceremonial obsei-vances by patch-
ing new rites and ceremonies upon
them, but you cannot preserve them
by infusing new life into them. The
old bottles, made of skin, smeared
perhaps on the inside with pitch,
growing stltf and weak and brittle
as they grow old, are not fit to hold
the new wine in its state of vehe-
ment fermentation. No more is the
new religion, with its restless and
boundless activities, coming as a
new life into the world, to be com-
pressed Avithin the old and now de-
180
MATTHEW IX.
the wine runneth out, and the bottles perish ; but they put new
wine into new bottles, and both are preserved.
While he spake these things unto them, behold, there came 13
a certain ruler and worshipped him, saying, My daughter is
even now dead ; but come and lay thy hand upon her, and she
shall live. And Jesus arose and foUoAved him, and so did his 19
disciples. And, behold, a woman, which was diseased with 20
an issue of blood twelve years, came behind him, and touched
the hem of his garment. For she said within herself, If I may 21
but touch his garment, I shall be whole. But Jesus turned him 22
about, and when he saw her, he said. Daughter, be of good
comfort ; thy faith hath made thee whole. And the woman
was made whole from that hour. And when Jesus came 23
into the ruler's house, and saw the minstrels, and the people
making a noise, he said unto them, Give place ; for the maid 24
bilitated forms ; for so it would burst
them asunder. The forms Avould
perish, and with them the religion
which had sought shelter, expres-
sion, and the means of activity and
influence in them. The new faith
must assume the now and elastic
fonns adapted to the living energies
with which it is endowed; and then
both will be preserved. 18.
My daughter is even now dead]
Not, as some commentators say, is
just dying ; but she is Just dead ;
aprt eTfXevTTjaev, by this time she
is dead. 23. the min-
strels and the people making^
a noise] " During my stay in
•Terusalem," savs Professor Hackett,
"111. of Scrip.," p. 113, "I fre-
quently heard a singular cry issu-
ing from the houses in the neigh-
borhood of the place where I lodged,
or from tho-^e on the streets through
Avhich I passed I ascer-
tained, at length, that this peculiar
cry was, no doubt, in most instances,
the signal of the death of some per-
son in the house from which it was
heard. It is customaiy, Avhen a
member of the family is about to
die, for the friends* to assemble
around him, and watch the ebbing
away of life, so as to remark the
Erecise moment when he breathes
is last; upon which they set up
instantly a united outcry, attended
with weeping, and often with beat-
ing upon the breast, and tearing out
the hair of the head. How exactly,
at the miiment of the Saviour's ar-
rival, did the house of Jairus cor-
respond with the condition of one,
at the present time, in which a,
death has just taken place ! It re-
sounded with the same boisterous
expression of grief for which tiie
natives of the East are still noted.
The lamentation must have com-
menced, also, at the instant of the
child's decease; for when Jesus ar-
rived he found the mourners already
present and singing the death-like
dirge. (See Mark v. 22, &c.) The
account discloses another mark of
accuracy which may be worth point-
ing out. Matthew speaks of 'min-
strels ' as taking part in the tumult.
The use of instnunents of music
at such times is not universal, but
depends on the circumstances of the
family. It involves some expense,
whicii cannot always be afforded.
Mr. Lane mentions that it is chiefly
at the funerals of the rich, among
the Egyjitians, that musicians are
employed to contribute their part
to the mournful celebration. The
' minstrels,' therefore, appear very
properly in this particular history.
Jairus, ' the father of the damsel
MATTHEW IX.
181
is not dead, but sleepeth. And they laughed him to scorn.
25 But when the people were put forth, he went in, and took her
26 by the hand ; and the maid arose. And the fame hereof
went abroad into all that land.
27 And when Jesus departed thence, two blind men followed
him, crying, and saying, Thou son of David, have mercy on
28 us. And when he was come into the house, the blind men
came to him, and Jesus saith unto them. Believe ye that I am
29 able to do this '? They said unto him. Yea, Lord. Then
touched he their eyes, saying. According to your faith be it
30 unto you. And their eyes were opened. And Jesus straitly
31 charged them, saying, See that no man know it. But they,
when they were departed, spread abroad his fame in all that
country.
32 As they went put, behold, they brought to him a dumb man,
33 possessed with a devil. And when the devil was cast out, the
dumb spake. And the multitudes marvelled, saying, It was
34 never so seen in Israel. But the Pharisees said, he casteth out
devils through the prince of the devils.
whom Christ restored to life, since
he was a ruler of the synagogue,
must have been a person of some
rank among his countrymen."
24. And they lauglied him to
scorn] A most vivid contnist, —
these hired mourners scornfully
laughing at him who had interrupt-
ed their noisy demonstrations of
grief ; and Jesus, with serene be-
nignity, going in, taken the little
maiden by the hand, and calling to
her to arise from the sleep of death.
27. Thou son of David]
It is a little remarkable that this ex-
pression should be used in each of
the three cases of healing the blind
which are mentioned by Matthew
(xii. 23; XX. 30). have
mercy on us] A confession of
misery and a cry for mercy, which
has become a part of the^ solemn
and affecting litany for all suffer-
ing and penitent souls. E\ir](Tov,
eleeison, has been tx-ansplanted by
music and poetry into the devotions
of all languages. ( See Longfellow's
16
Blind Bartimeus. 30. Jesus
charged them on pain of his dis-
pleasure, saying, " See that no man
know it." Why the prohibition
here, when he had already com-
manded the Gadarene demoniac
(Mark v. 19) to go home to his
friends and tell them how great
things the Lord had done for them ?
That was on the east side, near the
farther end of the lake, m a remote
place which Jesus never probably
visited except at that time. The
report there of what he had done
could therefore cause him no incon-
venience. Besides the different
characters of the men may have
been such that the Gadarene would
advance his cause, and the others
bring discredit upon it, by being its
advocates. The conduct of the two
men, who when they had received
their sight did the opposite of what
he had strictly commanded them,
shows that they were not men to
be depended upon. 34.
prince of the devils] (See xii.
182
MATTHEW IX.
in their synagogues, and preaching the gospel of the kingdom,
and healing every sickness and every disease among the peo-
ple. But when he saw the multitudes, he was moved with 36
compassion on them, because they fainted, and were scattered
abroad, as sheep having no shepherd. Then saith he unto his 37
disciples, The harvest truly is plenteous, but the laborers are
few. Pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he will 38
send forth laborers into his harvest.
24). 35. and healing
every sickness] Every kind of
sickness and disease.
36. fainted] Tischendorf substi-
tutes for this word another which is
still more significant, eaKvXfievoi,
warned, harassed, torn in pieces,
distracted, for want of true and com-
petent guides. How touching a
picture do these verses (35 - 38) give
of the extent of onr Saviour's labors
and the intensity of his sympathy
for the multitudes Avhom he saw
worried and scattered abroad like
sheep without a shepherd! The
harvest truly is plenteous, but the
laborers are Yew, &c. No one takes
these words in a literal sense; and
no one can fail to recognize some-
thing of their exquisite beauty in
our English version, which admira-
bly preserves, not only the meaning,
but almost exactly tli« musical
rhythm of the Greek. With such
a command from Him, how can we
help praying the Lord of the harvest
tliat he will send forth laborers into
his harvest'?
MATTHEW X. 5-15. 183
CHAPTER X.
5 - 22. — Directions to the Apostles.
Jesus here gives his disciples specific directions for their
conduct during the present journey ; though even these
directions are marked by a wisdom which belongs to all
times.
5-15. He directs them to confine their ministry to the
lost sheep of the house of Israel. This was not owing
to a Jewish prejudice on the part of Jesus. The disciples
were now entirely inexperienced. They were not yet
educated and prepared to go forth to evangelize the world.
They must not yet go out beyond the reach of their Mas-
ter. The object now, as Chrysostom suggests, was not
so much to make converts, though that also was a part
of his plan, as to train and exercise and educate the
disciples within the narrow limits of Palestine, as in a
school, that, when the time should come, they might be
prepared for the larger work that was before them. Be-
sides, it was important to have a nucleus somewhere. And
where could it be so well as among the people, who, during
so many centuries under Moses and the prophets, and more
recently from the preaching of John the Baptist, had been
in training for the dispensation which was now at hand?
The disciples were to go forth not to proclaim Jesus as
the Messiah. The time for that had not yet come. They
were to complete the work which John had begun, of
preparing the popular mind for his advent, by proclaim-
ing as his heralds or preachers that the kingdom of the
heavens was at hand. And they were to give weight
to their message by the miracles which they wrought in
the name of their Master.
184 MATTHEW X. 16-20.
They are to receive nothing for the cures they may
effect. As the gift, 8, is one freely bestowed on them,
so are they to exercise it without reward. But as they go
forth thus endowed with power from on high, so, 9, 10,
they are not to burden themselves with any provisions
for their journey. No money, no wallet (scrip), no extra
garments or shoes or staves are to be purchased so as
to encumber them in their movements. Nor were they,
on entering a village, to go about from house to house.
Where, 10, they found one worthy and willing to receive
them, with him they were to stay till their ministry in
that village was ended. They, 12, 13, were not to be
unmindful of the courtesies due to those who should re-
ceive them. If the house were worthy, their peaceful
salutation would rest upon it; and if the house were not
worthy, no harm would be done ; the blessing which
they had bestowed upon it would return in peace to their
own bosom. They were not to waste their time and
gifts on those, 14, who would not receive them; but by
the symbolic act of shaking the very dust from their feet
were to show that they regarded them as heathen and
aliens. But a heavy retribution would fall on the city
which should reject them. Not even Sodom and Gomorrah,
which had refused to listen to Lot and Abraham, had been
given over to so terrible a destruction in their day of retri-
bution, as at length, in its day of judgment and condem-
nation, would fall on that city.
16-20. In the 16th verse, it has been thought, Jesus
rises from specific directions for the present journey to
considerations which apply to them and those who shall
come after them in future ministrations. " Behold / send
you," — the / emphatic, as if to inspire and strengthen
them by the thought who it is that sends them forth
as lambs in the midst of wolves. He dwells upon the
dangers that lie before them, and points out distinctly
what they are, partly to put them on their guard and
MATTHEW X. 16-20. 185
make .them feel how circumspect and unofFencling they
must be, and partly, that, when the trials should come,
they, remembering how he had foretold them, should not
be cast down and disheartened by them. "Beware of
men," he says, "for they will deliver you up, or betray
you to councils, or Jewish courts of justice in provincial
towns, and they will scourge you in their synagogues, and ye
shall be brought before governors (the Roman pro-consuls,
like Pilate) and kings (tetrarchs or viceroys, ruling as
kings under the Roman government, like Philip and Herod)
for a testimony or witness [fxaprvpiov) to (not against) them
and the nations or Gentiles," as they were in their time,
and as Christian martyrs in all subsequent times have
been.
But here, lest from these warnings they should carry
their prudence and precautions too far, he, v. 19, reminds
them of the opposite dangers, and tells them to make
no anxious preparation as to how or what they should
say when arraigned. It is as if he had said, " Be wise
and unoffending. Go forth in thoughtful simplicity and
faith, as my disciples, as the agents and messengers of
God. And then, when perils come, better than any labored
forethought or preparation of yours, it shall be given you
in that very hour what ye shall speak." " A new spirit,"
says Mr. Norton, " was to be breathed into them. God
would elevate their souls, and would inform their minds
with religious truth With this confidence, this
knowledge of the truth, and this moral elevation, what
they should speak would always be given them ; the spirit
of their Father would speak in them." "It is to be ob-
served," says Alford, "that, in the great work of God
in the world, human individuality sinks down and vanishes,
and God alone, his Christ, his Spirit, is the great worker."
Does not the promise apply to all times, and does it not
rebuke the unbelief and hesitating fidelity of those who,
in seeking to advance the highest interests of man, trust
16*
186 MATTHEW X. 21, 22.
only to their own wisdom and strength ? And does not
this vanishing away of the human individuality in Christ,
by his entire surrender of himself to the Divine will, show
in what sense he and his Father were one?
21, 22. Having thus confirmed their faith, Jesus places
before them a yet darker picture of impending dangers.
Members of the same household shall be divided in deadly
hostility against one another. And not only in your own
homes, he goes on to say, but everywhere, ye shall be
hated of all men on my account. But he who endureth
to the end shall be saved. He who endureth as the
early martyrs Stephen and James did, to- the end of life,
shall be saved. In this sense it applies to the faithful
of all times and places. But as in the previous verses
especial notice is given of the domestic feuds which should
precede the destruction of Jerusalem, dividing the inmates
of the same household in mortal enmity against one an-
other, and turning the common hatred of the Jews with
peculiar fierceness against the Christians, " the end " here
in its primary application probably denotes the end of
the Jewish polity, which may be said to have terminated
with the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus, the Roman
general, A. D. 70. For at that time the political existence
of the Jews was blotted out, and their national religious
observances, " the sacrifice and the oblation " ( Daniel ix.
27) ceased. In this sense the deliverance here announced,
V. 22, refers to the freedom which the Christians should
then enjoy from the persecutions to which they had been
so cruelly subjected by the Jews, and of which some in-
stances are given in the Book of Acts.
23. — The Coming of the Son of Man.
" Till the Son of Man come." This expression probably
means the same here as "the end" in the previous verse.
" Till his religion is established and fully confirmed," says
MATTHEW X. 23. 187
Mr. Norton. The words are used by Jesus and the Evan-
gehsts with entirely different meanings at different times.
Matthew (xi. 1 9, " The Son of Man came eating and
drinking,") speaks of him in the ministry in which he was
then engaged. So (xviii. 11), "For the Son of Man is
come to save that which was lost." On the other hand,
in xvi. 27, xxiv. 30, xxv. 31, When the Son of Man
shall come " in the glory oif his Father with his angels,"
" in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory,"
" in his glory, and all the holy angels with him," the
expression evidently reaches on to some future, and, in
one case (xvi. 27, 28), not far distant event. For it is
there distinctly and emphatically asserted by Jesus, that
there were those then standing by him who should not
taste of death till they had seen him coming in his king-
dom. What is meant by this coming which was then
so near at hand ? Primarily it meant the establishment
of Christ's religion consequent upon the removal of the
Jewish polity at the destruction of Jerusalem. But may
it not also be, that he used language which, while fore-
shadowing the establishment of his religion on earth, should
also, under the most solemn figures of speech, set forth
the more thorough and decisive establishment of its princi-
ples in their retributive application to every soul that goes
out from its mortality to meet him in his glory ? " Through-
out this discourse," says Alford, " and the great prophecy
in chap, xxiv., we find the first Apostolic period used
as a type of the whole ages of the Church, — and the
vengeance on Jerusalem, — which historically put an end
to the old dispensation, and was in its place with refer-
ence to that order of things, the coming of the Son of
Man, as a type of the final coming of the Lord. These
two subjects accompany and interpenetrate one another
in a manner wholly inexplicable to those who are un-
accustomed to the wide import of Scripture prophecy,
which speaks very generally, not so much of events them-
188 MATTHEW X. 24-38.
selves, points of time, — as of processions of events, all rang-
ing under one great description. Thus in the present case
there is certainly direct reference to the destruction of
Jerusalem ; the " end " directly spoken of is that event,
and the " shall be saved " the preservation provided by
the warning afterwards given in chap. xxiv. 15-18. And
the next verse directly refers to the journeys of the Apos-
tles over the actual cities of Israel, territorial, or where
Jews were located. But as certainly do all these ex-
pressions look onwards to the great final coming of the
Lord, the " end " of all prophecy ; as certainly the " shall
be saved " here bears its full Scripture meaning, of ever-
lasting salvation ; and the endurance to the end is the
finished course of the Christian, and the precept in the
next verse is to apply to the conduct of Christians of all
ages with reference to persecution, and the announce-
ment that hardly will the Gospel have been fully preached
to all nations (or, to all the Jewish station, i. e. effectually)
when the Son of Man shall come. It is most important
to keep in mind the great prophetic parallels, which run
through our Lord's discourses, and are sometimes sepa-
rately, sometimes simultaneously, presented to us by him.'*
24-38. — Further Directions to the Apostles.
If the most contemptuous of names, v. 25, is given to
the lord of the house, how much more will it be given
to those who, as his inferiors, belong to his house. The
scholar must be satisfied if he is treated as well as his
teacher ; the servant, if he is treated as well as his master ;
But fear them not, v. 26. The time of darkness cannot
last. The real condition of things, and with it the nature
of your mission and of the truths you teach, will be brought
to light. " Why," says Chrysostom in his paraphrase, " do
ye grieve ? Because they call you impostors and deceivers ?
Wait a little, and all men will declare you saviours and
MATTHEW X. 24-38. 189
benefactors of the world." Proclaim, then, in the light
and from the house-tops what I have told you in our
obscurity and in secret. Fear not them who can kill only
the body, and have no power over the soul, but rather
fear him who is able to destroy both soul and body in Gehen-
na. We can see no reason to believe, with some modern
critics, as Olshausen and Stier, that Satan or Beelzebub
is the one whom the disciples are directed to fear. It is
not Satan, but God alone, who has the power which is
here held up as the cause of dread. Yet not alone by
images like this of his power to destroy body and soul
alike is their reverence for him to be strengthened. Calling
their attention to the little birds around them, of which
two were sold for an assarion, or half a cent, Jesus tells
them that not even one of these should fall upon the ground
unnoticed by their Father. [The sparrows, according to
a recent traveller, Hackett, p. 86, are still numerous in
Palestine, and are sometimes sold for food.] Why then
shall they who are of so much more value than many spar-
rows, and the hairs of whose head are all numbered, —
why shall they distrust the Providential care of God,
or fear what man can do to them ? In v. 32, by a con-
nection so natural that it is hardly noticed, Jesus rises
from actions here to their consequences in higher worlds ;
and, in order to confirm his disciples in their fidelity to
him, he emphatically declares that they who confess or
deny him before men, will be confessed or denied by him
before his Father in the heavens.
Still he wishes them (34-39) to understand fully what
their trials and their sacrifices here must be. " I come, not
to send peace, but a sword." Here, as in other passages
of Scripture, the consequences of an action are mentioned
as if they were the intended results. In Exodus iv. 21
God says of Pharaoh, "I will harden his heart, that he
shall not let the people go," i. e. the effect of all these
fearful exhibitions of the Divine power will be only to
190 MATTHEW X. 24-38.
harden his heart and confirm him in his wicked purposes.
In 1 Kings xxii. 19-23, God is represented as putting
a lying spirit into the mouth of the king's prophets ; i. e.
as they were all wicked and deceitful men, he allowed
them to be deceived and misled by the lying spirit which
they sought. So in the passage before us, one of the
consequences of Christ's coming is put as if it were a
part at least of his design in coming into the w^orld to
effect it. The connection is this. Notwithstanding that
God suffers not a sparrow to fall unnoticed, and every
one of you who confess me on earth shall be recog-
nized and accepted by me in heaven, still, you are not
to expect that I shall quiet at once the warring elements
of the world. On the contrary, I shall introduce a new
cause of hostility, and thus send, not peace, but a sword,
setting a man at variance against his father, and the
daughter against her mother. This is the inevitable re-
sult. The bitterest hostility of their friends wiU be roused
against the disciples because of their allegiance to him.
And here, 37, is to be a new test of their fidelity. In
the contests which are to come up they must decide which
they will choose, him or their friends ; and he that loveth
father or mother, son or daughter, more than him, and
who, besides that, is not wiUing even to take up his cross
and follow him, giving up friends and life for his sake,
is not worthy of him. That is, they must be ready to
give up and to endure everything in his service.
This was the primary idea, and probably the only one
that impressed the disciples at the time. But the cross
was not a Jewish instrument of punishment, and there-
fore would not naturally suggest to the Jewish mind the
imagery by which it would describe the extreme degra-
dation and sufferings of a cruel and infamous death. It
is probable that Jesus employed this then unusual form
of expression, not only to convey the idea of the per-
sonal sacrifices which his followers must make for his
MATTHEW X. 39. 191
sake, but also to familiarize their minds beforehand with
the terrible images of torture and death which he was to
meet. Here, as in other places (Matthew xvi. 24, John
iii. 14, viii. 28, xii. 32), though they did not fully under-
stand him at the time, the cross threw its darkening shadow
before them, and he was thus preparing their minds, un-
consciously to themselves, that when he had been crucified,
and had risen from the dead, these words, which at first
had awakened only vague and unintelligible forebodings,
should stand out in their prophetic character, as pointing
all to the same result.
39. — Life or Soul.
He who findeth, i. e. who seeketh to find, his life, shall
lose it; and he who loseth, i. e. who is willing to lose it,
shall find it. Here is another instance, in which Jesus,
whose soul was full of thoughts which the earthly language
that he spoke had no terms to express, used the same word
to express very different meanings. At least the Evange-
lists so represent him. The word "^vxt), which is here
rendered life, like nvevfia, and the Latin words anima and
spiritus, as well as the corresponding Hebrew words B^3.3.
and nn, means primarily breath or air. It is used in the
New Testament : 1. For the animal life, common to beasts
and men (Matthew ii. 20, vi. 25, xx, 28). 2. It stands
for the rational as well as sensitive, animating principle, —
a something, it has been thought, between the animal and
spiritual principle of life. ' " The first man Adam was made
a living soul," psyche, in contradistinction to the second
Adam, who was a life-making spirit, pneuma. 3. It is
used as nearly synonymous with our word soul. " Thou
wilt not leave my soul in Hades." (Acts ii. 27.) "I saw
under the altar the souls of them that were slain for*"the
word of God." (Rev. vi. 9 ; see also Rev. xx. 4 ; 1 Peter
iv. 19 ; Matt. x. 29.) It naturally bears all these meanings ;
192 MATTHEW X. 39.
for strictly speaking, the word yjrvxrj stands for the vital, sen-
tient principle in which our consciousness resides, and with
it our sense of personal identity. It is that which con-
stitutes a man's self, and might better be translated by the
word self than by any other single word in our language.
It is the sentient, conscious principle which pervades our
whole being, animal, intellectual, and spiritual, and which
may be considered in its relation to either one, or to all, of
these departments of our nature. It may, therefore, refer
to our physical, our intellectual, or our spiritual life. In
V. 29 of this chapter Jesus uses it as we do the word soul^
as something distinct from our physical life. In v. 39, he
passes from one meaning to the other ; and the better trans-
lation would be : He who findeth, or (John xii. 25) loveth
himself, shall be lost, and he who loseth himself shall be
saved. That is : He who is bound up in himself shall
perish ; but he who, in his devotion to me, is willingly ex-
posing himself to death, as if (John xii. 25) he hated himself,
shall live. The expression goes deeper than is intimated in
our common version. There may be a selfish regard to our
souls and spiritual interests, as well as to our earthly life and
bodily interests. The Saviour's words are directed against
every form of selfishness and self-seeking, whether in rela-
tion to body or soul, to this world or the world to come.
Whosoever seeketh first himself, though it be his own soul,
shall perish ; and he who is willing to cast away everything,
even his care for his own soul, in his devotion to me, shall
be saved. He who is saving his soul in this selfish way
shall lose it ; and he who is losing his soul, in this unselfish
devotedness to me, shall save it. At the same time the con-
nection with the cross of v. 38 implies that there is a
reference here to the loss of life, in our sense of the word
life ; and so there is a passing from the lower to the higher
meaning of the word, from the mortal to the immortal life,
and the verse may be thus paraphrased, " Whosoever seeks
first of all his life (an earthly one), shall lose it (as an im-
MATTHEW X. 40-42. 193
mortal inheritance) ; and he who (in his supreme devotion
to higher things) is ready to cast his Hfe (his earthly life)
away, shall find it (as an immortal inheritance).
This practice of so using language that it shall reach
from its primary and narrow meaning, spiritually up into
higher realms of life, or prophetically on to more distant
scenes and events, is one of the greatest difficulties in the
way of the commentator, who would give a precise and
definite meaning, and only one, to every expression that
he meets. The charm, as well as much of the power that
lies in the words of Jesus, consists in the fact that they
open before us worlds of thought and being into which we
may enter, but which are too full to be emptied of all their
treasures, and too vast to be bounded by any exact defini-
tions of ours.
40-42. — Different Degrees of Reward.
And while men may thus save or lose their souls, there
are diiferent degrees of recompense, and not the smallest
act shall be permitted to go unrewarded. To receive
the Apostles is, of course, not merely to give them a
hospitable reception, kindly supplying them with food and
shelter ; it is to receive them with their instructions into
the heart and life. In so doing men receive Christ, who
is represented by them, and whose life-giving doctrines
they teach ; nay, they receive God himself. The reward
would depend on the kind of reception that was given.
He who is far enough advanced in the Jewish religion
to recognize and welcome a prophet or righteous man
as such, because he is a prophet or a righteous man, shall
receive the reward of a prophet or righteous man. In
receiving him as a prophet, he is made partaker of the
prophet's thought and life, and of course will share the
prophet's reward. But he who has enough of the spirit
of Christ to receive a little child as his disciple or repre-
17
194 MATTHEW X.
sentative, shall in no wise lose a disciple's reward, for
in so doing he is receiving the spirit and the life of
Jesus into himself. Perhaps there were children present.
The term "little ones" is apphed by Jesus to children
(xviii. 2-6). Or it may be, as Mr. Norton and others
suppose, that by "little ones" Jesus means his own in-
experienced disciples ; as if he had said, " whosoever shall
give a cup of cold water to one of these, my children," &c.
In either case the fundamental meaning is the same. There
is a climax from the prophet, who, though a special messen-
ger of God, Avas sometimes meagre in spiritual attainments,
through the just man in his legal righteousness to the
disciple in whom, as coming from Christ, is the fulness
of a diviner life and through it of a larger reward. " Many
a benevolent, pious Jew," says Olshausen, "might receive
the Apostles as prophets or righteous men, because, from
his point of view, he could not recognize anything higher
in them ; but he who was able to recognize in the messen-
gers of Christ that specifically new thing which they brought,
and who, from love to it, would receive them, received, the
full blessing from Him." The prominent idea in these
sentences relates to the different kinds and dejjrees of re-
ward which men shall receive according to their different
attainments in the Jewish or the Christian life.
NOTES.
And when he had called unto him his twelve disciples, he
gave them power against unclean spirits, to cast them out, and
to heal all manner of sickness, and all manner of disease.
1-4. We have four different cata- ferent accounts may be easily com-
logues of the Apostles, viz.: Matt, pared, we subjoin the foUoAving
X. 9-4; Mark iii. 16-19; Luke vi. table: —
14-16; Acts i. 13. That the dif-
MATTHEW X.
195
2 Now the names of the twelve apostles are these : the first,
Simon, who is called Peter, and Andrew his brother ; James
3 the son of Zebedee, and John his brother ; Philip and Bar-
tholomew ; Thomas, and Matthew the pubhcan ; James the
son of Ali)heus, and Lebbeus, whose surname was Thaddeus ;
4 Simon the Canaanite, and Judas Iseariot, who also betrayed
MATTHEW.
MARK.
LUK£.
ACTS.
Simon
Andrew
James
John
Peter
James
John
Andrew
Simon
Andrew
James
John
Peter
James
John
Andrew
Philip
Bartholomew
Thomas
Matthew
Philip
Bartholomew
Matthew
Thomas
Philip
Bartholomew
Matthew
Thomas
Philip
Thomas
Bartholomew
Matthew
James of Alpheus James of Alphcus
Lehbeus Thaddeus
Si:iion Cananaios Simon Cananaios
J udas Iscai-iot Judas Iseariot
In all tliese catalopn^es the names
may naturally be divided into three
classes. In" the first two classes
the names in the different accounts
are t!ie same; and in tlie third class
there is no difl'erence of statement
in regard to the first name and
the last. Simon Cananaios is only
the Hebrew name corresponding to
Simon Zelotes, in Greek. Probably
before being called by Jesus, he was
a member of the sect called Zealots,
who, according to Josephus (B.J. 4.
3. 9; ib. 4. 6. T-4; ib. 4. 6. 3; and 7.
8. 1 ), were guilty of the greatest
excesses and crimes a short time
before the destruction of Jerusalem.
The only name about which there
is anv difficulty is that of Lebbeus,
or Thaddeus, or Judas [the son or
brother] of James. " Thaddeus,"
says Lightfoot, " is a warping of
the name 'Judas,' that this apostle
might be the better distinguished
from Iseariot." Like Elijah and
Elias, they were only different forms
of the same name. In John xiv. 22
we find a "Judas," not "Iseariot,"
among the Apostles. Lebbeus and
Thaddeus have been supposed to
mean the same thing; but, accord-
ing to De Wette and Alford, this
view is not sustained by the ety-
mology of the words. 'I'he proba-
bility is that Lebbeus was a sur-
James of Alpheus James of Alpheus
Simon Zelotes Simon Zelotes
Judas of James Judas of James
Judas Iseariot
name, borrowed possibly, as Light-
foot conjectures, from his place of
residence, and given to him, as the
name Iseariot was given to the other
Judas, from his place of residence,
to distinguish them from one an-
other. " Whose surname was Thad-
deus," the reading of our common
version is marked as doubtful by
Griesbach, and omitted by Tischen-
dorf. If we knew nothing about
Simon's name, beyond Avhat we find
here, we should think there was a
contradiction in the accounts, Mark,
and the author of the Acts saying
Peter, where Matthew and Luke' say
Simon. Simon Peter, and Andrew
his brother, sons of Jonas, and John
the son of Zebedee, with James his
brother, were (Luke v. 10) partners
in the fishing-trade, and, together
with Philip (John i. 44) belonged to
P)ethsaida. This James is the one put
to death by Herod (Acts xii. 2). Bar-
tholomew is, Avith reason, supposed
to be the same as Nathaniel, who
is mentioned by John twice (i. 46;
xxi. 2) among the Apostles. He was
from Cana of Galilee. Withotxt any
good reason, it has been conjectured
that Philip and Bartholomew were
brothers ; and that Thomas and
Matthew were twin-brothers. The
humility of Matthew has been in-
ferred from his applying to himself
19G
MATTHEW X.
him. These twelve Jesus sent forth, and commanded them, b
saying, Go not into the way of the Gentiles, and into any city
of the Samaritans enter ye not. But go rather to the lost 6
sheep of the house of Israel. And, as ye go, preach, saying, 7
The kingdom of Heaven is at hand. Heal the sick, cleanse the 8
lepers, raise the dead, cast out devils ; freely ye have received,
freely give. Provide neither gold, nor silver, nor brass, in 8
your purses; nor scrip for your journey, neither two coats, 10
neither shoes, nor yet staves. For the workman is worthy of
his meat. And into whatsoever city or town ye shall enter, in- 11
quire who in it is worthy ; and there abide till ye go thence. And 12
licre the reproachful epithet " pub-
lican." James, the son of Alphaeus
(Alphaeus and Cleopas or Clopas,
being only different ways of turn-
ing the same Hebrew 'word into
Greek), presided over the church
at Jerusalem, and "from the aus-
tere sanctity of his character was
commonly called, both by Jews
and Christians, ".Tames the Just."
Mention is made (Matt. xiii. 55, and
Gal. i. 19) of James, a brother or
kinsman of Jesus. ( See note to xiii.
55.) If Judas of James is Judas
the brother of James, this suppo-
sition agrees with xiii. 55, where we
read of James and Judas as among
the brethren of Jesus ; and with
Jude 1, where Ave read of " Judas,
the servant of .Jesus Christ, ajid the
brotlier of James." 3. Mat>
thew, the publican] a collector of
taxes. Mattliew's humility is seen
in his applying to himself in his
catalogiae of the apostles the odious
name, which no other Evangelist
applies to him in this connection.
" On no point," says Milman, Hist.
Christ. B. I. c. IV.,*" were all orders
among the Jews so unanimous as in
their contempt and detestation of
the publicans. Strictly speaking,
the persons named in the Evange-
lists were not publicans. These
were men of property, not below the
equestrian order, who farmed the
public revenues. Those in question
[those mentioned in the Gospels]
Avere the agents of these contractors,
inen, often freed slaves, or of low
birth and station, and throughout
the Roman world proverbial for
their extortions ; and in Juda;a still
more hateful, as among the mani-
fest signs of subjugation to a foreign
dominion. The Jew who exercised
the function of a publican was, aa
it were, a traitor to the national in-
dependence." 5. Gentiles]
The nations, ^— those who are not
Jews. Samaritans]
Samaria lay between Galilee and
Judsea, and was inhabited by the
Samaritans, who Avere descended
from the ten tribes, and from people
of heathen nations Avho at different
times had been sent as colonists
Avith them. Their religion Avas
draAvn partly from the law of Moses,
and partly from pagan supersti-
tions» 9. Provide neither
gold] Provide is the emphatic
word. Take no pains to provide or
purchase anything for yoiur jour-
ney ; but go as you are, trusting in
God. Purses were girdles worn
about the Avaist, in Avhich money
Avas cai-ried. 10. scrip]
a Avallet usually of leather, in a\ Inch
shepherds and travellers carried pro-
visions, neither shoes]
" but be shod Avith sandals" (Mark
vi. 9). Lightfoot says that there
Avas a marked distinction betAveen
shoes and sandals, the former being
more like an article of luxury than
the latter. nor yet
staves] Do not take pains to pro-
vide them. Mark says Jesus com-
manded them to take nothing for
their journey, except a staff.
11. and there abide] With him
MATTHEW X. 197
13 when ye come into an house, salute it. And if the house be
worthy, let your peace come upon it ; but if it be not wor-
14 thy, let your peace return to you. And whosoever shall not
receive you, nor hear your words, when ye depart out of that
15 house or city, shake off the dust of your . feet. Verily I say
unto you, it shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and
Gomorrah in the day of judgment, than for that city.
16 Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves. Be
17 ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves. But
beware of men. For they will deliver you up to the councils,
18 and they will scourge you in their synagogues ; and ye shall
be brought before governors and kings for my sake, for a testi-
19 mony against them and the Gentiles. But when they deliver
}'ou up, take no thought how or what ye shall speak ; for it
20 shall be given you in that same hour what ye shall speak. For
it is not ye that speak, but the spirit of your Father which
21 speaketh in you. And the brother shall deliver up the brother
to death, and the father the child ; and the children shall rise
up against their parents, and cause them to be put to death ;
22 and ye shall be hated of all men for my name's sake. But he
who is worthy, and when ye come that they esteemed it heathenish,
into the house (not an house, as in profane, and impure. 16.
our translation), i. e. with him into harmless as doves] Not harm-
his house, salute it. Be courteous, less, but pure. The dove, an em-
Observe the customary forms of blem of the Holy Spirit, stands for
salutation. " A servant of the Lord Christian gentleness and puritv of
is truly courteous, for he has learned soul. Let your wisdom, of which
to be so in the high court of his you will have abundant need, never
king." 13. if the house degenerate into a selfish prudence
l»e worthy] Here house, passing or cunning ; but let it be united
from its meaning in the previous with the purity of soul which in-
verse, is used as comprehending the eludes within itself singleness of
family who lived in it. purpose and the love " which seek-
let your peace rest upon it] eth not her own," and " which
pray for its good, and if it be un- thinketh no evil." 9. take
worthy the blessing that you ask no thought] give yourself no
for, it will return into your own anxiety about what you shall say.
bosom. Thus, if those for whom (See v1. 25.) 22. for niy
M'e pray do not allow our prayers name's sake] By the name of
for their good to be answered as it Jesus is meant the spirit, the quali-
regards them, still we shall not pray ties, and attriliutes belonging to
in vain. The peace we ask for him. To come together in his
them will come to us. name, is to come together in his
14. shake off the dust of your spirit; to ask anything in his name,
feet] The dust of heathen land is to ask it as in his stead or in his
defiled. By shaking off the dust of spirit; and to be hated for his
a city, tlifi disciples were to show name's sake, is to be hated on ac-
17*
198 MATTHEW X.
that endurctli to the end shall be saved. But when they per- 23
secute you in this city, flee ye into another. For verily I say
unto you, ye shall not have gone over the cities of Israel till
the Son of Man be come. The disciple is not above his mas- 24
ter, nor the servant above his lord. It is enough for the disci- 26
pie that he be as his master, and the servant as his lord. If
they have called the master of the house Beelzebub, how much
more shall they call them of his household ? Fear them not 26
therefore. For there is nothing covered, that shall not be
revealed ; and hid, that shall not be known. AVhat I tell you 27
in darkness, that speak ye in light ; and what ye hear in the
ear, that preach ye upon the house-tops. And fear not them 28
which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul ; but rath-
er fear Him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell-
Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing ? and one of them 29
shall not fall on the ground without your Father. But the 30
very hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear ye not there- 31
fore ; ye are of more value than many sparrows. AVhosoever 32
therefore shall confess me before men, him will I confess also
before my Father, which is in heaven. But whosoever shall 33
deny me before men, him will I also deny before my Father,
which is in heaven. Think not that I am come to send peace 34
count of the qualities which be- which was spoken in the ear."
longed to him. " It is to be observ- Lightfoot. the house*
ed," says Swedenborg, " that the tops] the flat roofs of the houses,
ancients, by the name of a thing, where tnunpets were sounded to at-
understood nothing but its essence; tract attention, and proclamations
and by seeing and calling by name, were made. 32. him will
they meant the knowledge of its I confess also] The emphatic I.
nature and quality." 23. Wliat personal dignity and authority
flee ye into another] not only, must lie under it, to sustain it in
as Mr. Norton suggests, that they such a connection! Who is this
may escape persecution, but t^iat that promises to recognize and ac-
they may carry on their work more knowledge us before the throne of
eflfectiially. 24, 25. The God, in the presence of his Father
different relations of Christ to the who is in the heavens ? Could any
Apostles, viz. the teacher to his prophet or righteous man,— Gideon
pupils, the master [lord] to his ser- or Barak, Abraham or Samuel. —
vants, and the lord or head of the promise thus to confess before God
house to his dependents; literally, those who had confessed him before
his domestics. 27. What men? Only the "one mediator
ye hear in the ear] " Allusion between God and man, the man
is here made to the manner of the Christ Jesus," (1 Tim. ii. 5) can
schools, where the doctor whispered stand in this relation between us
out of the chair into the ear of the and God. 34. not to
interpreter, and he with a loud voice send peace, but a sword] Not
repeated to the whole school that my wish, but ttic mevitable result
MATTHEW X.
199
35 on eartli ; I came not to send peace, but a sword. For I am
come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daugh-
ter against her mother, and the daughter-in-law against her
36 mother-in-law : and a man's foes shall be they of his own
37 household. He that loveth father or mother more than me is
not worthy of me ; and he that loveth son or daughter more
V.S than me is not worthy of me ; and he that taketh not his cross,
39 and foUoweth after me, is not worthy of me. He that findeth
his life shall lose it ; and he that loseth his Ufe for my sake
40 shall find it, lie that receiveth you receiveth me ; and he that
Tliink not tlmt you can escape the
trial. The throne of peace is to be
established in the midst of discord
and war. Love enters with its
divine message, its rebuke against
sin, its offers of mercy, but men
turn against it, and strife and wars
ensue. " What now follows," says
Stier, " down to ver. 39, form ' a
circle of ideas which,' as Winzen-
mann pays, 'ikv.t came from the
mind of ujortal, before Jesus.' It is
the subliming of all the prophetic
expectations concerning the king-
dom of God into the transcendent
and future and heavenly; in per-
fect correspondence Avith the true
sense of all prophecy, which never
could, however, till now be so clear-
ly apprelieniled and expressed. This
is a testimony which is effectually
thrown in the way of all who would
build up the kingdom of peace on
this side But, although
everything in his kingdom looks
forward to the beyond and the fu-
ture, to the finding of life, in respect
to all who shall be found worthy of
him, this heavenly kingdom (iocs
not give up the earth. Upon it, and
in hot conflict, must the heii-s of
everlasting peace secure and pre-
pare for their irdieritance." This is
an effectual answer to those timid
sentimentalists and prudent con-
servatives, who think more of peace
and present security than of right-
eousness and truth, which, however
mildly urged, awaken the anger and
deadly opposition of those whose
interests they would compromise,
and whose lives they rebuke.
88. that taketh not his cross]
This is the first mention that is
made of the cross, that great sym-
bol of Christian self-denial and self-
sacrifice and death, and through
death of victory. 'Die word nmst
have fallen with a strange chill on
the hearts of the disciples. All that
they could then understand by it
savored of humiliation and pain
and infamy. It was not till after
the resurrection of Christ that the
hallowed and triumphant associ-
ations, now connected with it, could
have power over them, or anv mean-
ing for them. 39. He that
findeth his life] " We have once
more "^vxt) in that deeper sense in
which we found it at v. 28, point-
ing from the life of the body to a
yet higher life. This striking decla-
ration contains, if both sayings are
taken literally, a perfect contradic-
tion ; consequently the findiny and
hslng must obviously, in the first
place, be understood in different
senses. In the second place, ^/'uX'7
also must be used in two opposite
senses. The ^vxh which is to be
killed, which must be cinicified, is
the sinful self-life of the old man,
which is truly death ; and this dead
life must be mortified and lost by
an internal, continual crucifixion
and self-denial (of which the taking
Tip of the external cross is only an
external expression), in order that
we may find the living life, — our
sanctified, glorified, and eternal life.
He who gives up, in the
fellowship of the cross of Christ,
200
MATTHEW X.
receiveth me receiveth him that sent me. He that receiveth 41
a prophet in the name of a prophet, shall receive a prophet's
reward ; and he that receiveth a righteous man, in the name
of a righteous man, shall receive a righteous man's reward.
And whosoever shall give to drink unto one of these little ones 42
a cup of cold water only, in the name of a disciple, verily I say
unto you, he shall in no wise lose his reward.
all that which must die and pass
away, has by such loss obtained the
gain of eternal blessedness." Stier.
42. verily I say unto
you] This impressive form of
affirmation comes in at the close
of each separate train of thought
in this discourse, viz. at verses 15,
23. and 42. In the Sermon on the
Mount, the peroration goes up and
finds its solemn climax in the great-
est and most terrible consequences
of unfaithfulness and sin ; here it
comes down and finds its affecting
anti-climax in the certain reward
of the smallest act of kindness per-
fonned in the spirit of a disciple to
any one of Christ's little ones.
MATTHEW XI. 201
CHAPTER XI.
John the Baptist and his Message.
Jesus continued in Galilee. John the Baptist had been
for some time imprisoned by Herod. This was Herod An-
tipas, the son of Herod the Great, who is mentioned in the
second chapter of Matthew. His father had once by will
named him as his successor in Judaea ; but he afterwards
changed his mind, and leaving his son Archelaus, king of
Judaea, appointed Herod to the inferior dignity of tetrarch or
viceroy of Galilee to the north, and of Perea which lies on
the east side of the Jordan. Herod Antipas was a cunning,
unscrupulous man. His usual place of residence was at
Tiberias, a name which, in honor of the Roman Emperor
Tiberius, he had given to a town on the southwestern bor-
der of the Lake of Galilee, probably somewhere from eiglit
to eleven miles south from Capernaum. In the other ex-
tremity of his kingdom, only a few miles eastwardly from the
place where the Jordan empties into the Dead Sea, he had
a castle called Machaerus, which had been enlarged and
fortified by his father, and in which, as appears, Herod
Antipas sometimes resided. In this castle, according to
Josephus (Ant. XVIII. 5. 2), John was imprisoned. He
had never quite comprehended the nature of the kingdom
of Heaven which he had announced as near at hand, nor
could he fully understand either the character or the office
of Jesus, to whom he pointed his disciples (John i. 29) as
" the Lamb of God that taketh away the sins of the world,"
and of whom he had afterwards said (John iii. 30), " he must
increase, but I must decrease." In this respect he was like
other prophets chosen for a specific purpose, who sometimes
202 MATTHEW XL
(Dan. xii. 8) had but an imperfect understanding of the
symbolical images which they saw, and the words they used.
Even to the seers themselves " the words were closed up and
sealed " for the time.
We sometimes attribute a sort of omniscience to men
raised up by God, and inspired only for a particular pur-
pose. And when a man has once been set apart in this way,
we are too apt to suppose that he must be entirely unlike
other men, and free from human infirmities and passions.
But even Moses, who was favored with a nearer and more
frequent access to God than any other of the prophets, had
his seasons of distrust (Ex. iii. iv.), of unrestrained passion
(Ex. xxxii. 19), and unbelief (Num. xx. 12). Elijah, the
greatest of the prophets who came after him, showed him-
self to be of like passions with other men, and (1 Kings xix.
4- 10) had his time of almost angry impatience, despond-
ency, and doubt. In this they were only subject as men to
the laws of our physical and mental constitution. The more
they were raised above themselves in their moments of re-
ligious exaltation, the more severe would the reaction be
likely to be, and the greater the depression that followed.
John the Baptist, who in his public ministry had been fol-
lowed by thousands to whom he had been devoting himself
with all the zeal and energy of his earnest and powerful
nature, proclaiming the near approach of the long-expected
kingdom of Heaven, and having the head of that kingdom
pointed out to him by a voice from heaven, was now cut off
from his public labors, and shut up in a prison far away from
the scene of Christ's ministry. He had been urging the
necessity of immediate repentance as a preparation for the
immediate coming of the kingdom of God. He waits in
awe and expectation, but the silence is not broken by the
sound of its coming. What can be the meaning of this
delay ? The energies of his active and powerful nature are
thrown in upon themselves. He is moved by strong and
violent emotions. He broods over the unpromising eondi-
MATTHEW XI. 203
tion of things, and is disturbed by the tardy development of
the Divine plans. He becomes impatient and distrustful.
'' Can it be," he may have asked himself amid the many
thoughts that rushed upon his mind, " that there is any mis-
take in this matter ? " The slightest doubt is too painful to
be borne, when the whole thing can so easily be set at rest
by one word from Jesus himself. The impatient doubt could
hardly have gone further than this. His faith in Jesus
could not have been seriously disturbed, or he would not
have sent his followers to ask him the question which he put.
He would have sent them rather to see for themselves, and
to inquire of others. But tired of the delay, brooding over
the possibilities of mistake, with apprehensions and forebod-
ings which bear some proportion to the grandeur of his
previous anticipations, in his forced inactivity and confine-
ment, he sends two of his disciples across the whole length
of the province, to ask Jesus whether he is really the one
who was to come, or whether they were to look for another?
In these few words, John intimated his impatience of delay,
his secret misgivings, and his desire that Jesus would adopt
some more decided and effective course. The whole pro-
ceeding on the part of John is perfectly natural, and in no
way inconsistent with the assurance which had been mirac-
ulously given to him in regard to the office and person of
the Messiah. Such alternations of feeling, and such convul-
sive movements of the mind, leading them for the moment
to question the reality of their most cherished convictions,
and even of what their eyes have seen, belong to men of his
temperament, even where, as in the case of Martin Luther,
there is the strongest faith and the most courageous and de-
termined energy of will.
How admirable the course which Jesus took to satisfy
John, and how in its calmness does it show his infinite supe-
riority, and the easy, majestic ascendency which he had over
men ! Merely to declare in words that he was the Messiah
would not have satisfied the prisoner in his present state of
204 MATTHEW XI.
mind. " Why then," he might have asked, " if he is the
Messiah, does he so long delay ? " Nor had the time yet
come for Jesus publicly to announce himself as the Messiah.
He knew that whenever that announcement was made, his
earthly ministry must be brought speedily to an end, and,
therefore, in the presence of John's disciples, in that same
hour (Luke vii. 21) he performed many and various kinds
of miracles ; and, having thus impressed them with a convic-
tion of more than earthly authority and power, he directed
them to go back and tell their master what they had seen
and heard, — how the blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are
cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, and the poor
have the good tidings proclaimed to them, — in this message
using just enough of the old prophetic language (Isaiah
XXXV. 5, 6, xlii. 7, Ixi. 1) to give, in the mind of John, ad-
ditional significance and solemnity to his message. Then he
added, in words of mild rebuke and encouragement, coupling
a benediction with his reproof, "And blessed is he who
shall not be oiFended in me," — who does not allow himself
to be disturbed, or to lose his faith in me, because, in my
divinely appointed work, I am not pursuing precisely the
course which he had expected. No reply could have been
better fitted to the state of John's mind, which was impatient
because it was so earnest, — disappointed and doubting be-
cause it had believed and expected so much.
Then, 7-14, turning to the multitude, Jesus made this
an occasion of admonition and instruction to them. At the
same time he would renew their respect for John, which
might have been lessened by the doubts into which he would
appear, from his questions, to have been betrayed. There is
nothing which the multitudes bear with less patience than
any seeming vacillation, or want of steadfastness in their
great men. « What went ye out into the wilderness to see ? "
Did ye go out expecting to find one who would bend to your
changing wishes, as a reed to the wind ; or one who would
gratify your voluptuous tastes, like courtiers who are in
MATTHEW XI. 205
kings' houses, with their soft, effeminate garments ? Or did
you go into that solitary place to find a prophet ? Yea, I
say unto you, and more than a prophet. He is one who has
been foretold by prophets as the herald who should be raised
up to announce the new dispensation, and to prepare the way
for its coming. Among those born of women no greater
man than he has ever been raised up. And yet, he adds,
with solemn emphasis, calling their attention to the higher
kingdom which is now to be established, the least in the
kingdom of Heaven is greater than he. That higher kingdom
is of such transcendent dignity and power, that its lowest
subject shall be greater than he who stood foremost in the
old dispensation. Possibly Jesus may have had in his mind
the Roman empire, whose citizens were greater, and bore
with them the ensigns of a mightier power, than kings of
other nations. But what does he mean in saying that the
least of his own disciples is greater than John the Baptist ?
He means that the humblest of those who really belong to
his kingdom are made the partakers of a diviner life, and
better understand the nature of his kingdom, and the ele-
ments of a true spiritual greatness, than even the greatest
of those who had gone before. "They are greater," says
Lightfoot, "in respect of clear and distinct knowledge in
judging of the nature and quality of the kingdom of Heaven."
The knowledge of a divine life unfolded in the Sermon on
the Mount, and set before the humblest of his followers in
the words, the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, is be-
yond all that the prophets and righteous men of old were
able to attain to. They indeed, 13, — i. e. the law and the
prophets until John, — only predicted the coming of the
heavenly kingdom, — only pointed on to it in the remote
and distant future. John, in this respect greater and more
favored than they, proclaimed it as already at hand, and
from his time (the idea is drawn from a besieged city) men
are forcing their way into it, and taking it as by violence.
In these words Jesus alludes to the crowds who, first attracted
18
206 MATTHEW XI. 15-19.
by John's preaching, were now, from their misapprehension
of his kingdom, pressing round him, and seeking as it were
to force their vvaj in. "And this," he adds, 14, "if ye will
only receive it," i. e. not take the language literally, but
understand it as it should be understood, is Elijah, whose
coming (see note xvii. 10) before the Messiah was generally
looked for among the Jews,
15-19. The comparison here in our common version
is rendered obscure. The children who say to their com-
panions, " We have piped to you, and ye have not danced ;
mourned to you, and ye have not lamented," are sometimes
thought to represent John and Jesus, while the others,
who were so unreasonable as to respond to them neither
in their merriment nor their mourning, represent those
who condemned both the Saviour and his forerunner. The
objection to this is, that it is precisely the opposite of what
Jesus says: It — this generation — "ishke children sitting
in the market-places, and saying," &c., &c. On the other
hand, it is difficult to see how the unbelieving Jews were
represented by the children, who complained that their
companions would sympathize with them neither in their
make-believe mirth nor their lamentation. Luke (vii. 32)
says, "They were saying to one another," &c., &c. And
Tischendorf adopts a similar expression as the correct read-
ing in Matthew. The true interpretation is thus made
easy. To what shall I compare this generation? It is
like a crowd of children in some public place, seeking
amusement, and able to agree upon nothing, but chiding
one another as hard to please, and by their mutual re-
proaches only adding to the general confusion and dis-
content. Such a capricious, dissatisfied, complaining race
is this generation, who complain of John as a half-crazed
demoniac because of his austere and ascetic life; and yet
when Jesus came eating and drinking as others did, re-
ject and stigmatize him as self-indulgent and intemperate,
the companion of the low and the abandoned. But, he
MATTHEW XI. 20-24. 207
continues, 19, whatever these may say or do, wisdom is
justified, i. e. is recognized and honored, by those wlio
in spirit are really her children. Whatever the outward
form under which she may come, however she may be
despised and rejected among men, they who are her chil-
dren, whose hearts are open to her influence, will hear
her voice, and hold her in honor. To them she needs
no word of commendation or defence, whether she come
under the severe guise of John, the preacher in the wilder-
ness, or in the more divinely attractive life and teachings
of the Son of man.
20 - 24. — Great Privileges unimproved visited by a
HEAVIER Condemnation.
These words were probably spoken after a pause. Tlie
word "then" with which they are introduced rather in-
timates that some time, minutes or days, had intervened.
The idea is the same as in Matthew x. 15. In propor-
tion to our privileges are our responsibilities; and the
greater the opportunities that we cast aside or neglect,
the heavier the condemnation that must fall upon us "in
the day of judgment," i. e. as Mr. Norton translates it,
"when sentence is passed." As to the cities Tyre and
Sidon, they had, many centuries before our Saviour, been
among the most opulent and enterprising cities in the
world. At the present time, and for centuries past, they
have been places of no importance, and remain in a com-
paratively desolate and ruinous condition. But in the time
of Jesus they were populous and flourishing cities, and con-
tinued so for generations afterwards. Why then are they
mentioned, in connection with Sodom, as examples of a
Divine retribution ? They were noted, even among heathen
nations, for the profligacy, licentiousness, and degrading
superstitions to which they were given over. The force
of the comparison lies in this. It is as if Jesus had said,
208 MATTHEW XI. 25-30.
"You know how utterly degraded and abandoned these
cities are, to what lewd, debasing superstitions they have
bound themselves, and how hopeless their moral and re-
ligious condition is. And yet, notwithstanding all this,
I declare unto you, that if the mighty works which
have been done here had been done long ago in Tyre
and Sidon, they would have repented in dust and
ashes, and even Sodom, if it had witnessed such works
of divine goodness and power, would have remained to
this day. And thou Capernaum, which art exalted to
heaven, which art above all others in privileges, shalt be
brought down to hell, — to Hades, i. e. to the abode of
the dead, to utter destruction. It was the strongest lan-
guage that could be framed to express the privileges
which Christ was offering, and the heavy condemnation
and sorrow which must fall on those who reject them.
As a matter of fact, the words of Jesus have been fulfilled
in regard to the places themselves. Tyre and Sidon,
though in a ruinous and degraded condition at the end
of the last century and the beginning of this, are now
more prosperous, and have never been so utterly blotted
out from the knowledge and memory of man as Chorazin
and Bethsaida, of which no trace can be found by the
most careful researches. Nor have modern travellers been
able to fix with any degree of certainty on the site of
Capernaum, which was favored above all other cities during
our Saviour's ministry as the place of his residence.
25 - 30. — Christ's Thankfulness, and his Call to the
Heavy Laden.
According to Luke (x. 17-21), who in this case marks
the time more particularly than Matthew, these words were
spoken after the return of the seventy disciples. They had
come back with joy on account of the miracles which they
had performed. Li this their first success Jesus sees the
MATTHEW XI. 25-30. 209
token of the ultimate triumph over the powers of dark-
ness. " And he said unto them, I beheld Satan as light-
ning fall from heaven." Yet he warns them not to rejoice
in their miraculous powers, but rather that their names
are written in heaven. Then, at the thought of the way
in which these simple, unlearned men, these babes in
knowledge, have received and proclaimed his truth, he
breaks out into the sublime exclamation of thanksgiving
which is here recorded by Matthew. Though his instruc-
tions were hidden from men whose wisdom is only the
blinding prudence of this world, and though he may have
been pained to find his offers rejected by them, and to
foresee the sorrows which they who would not hear him
must bring upon themselves, he nevertheless bows in thank-
fuhiess : " Even so, Father, for so it seemed good in thy
sight." He turns with a perfect trust to the infinite and
holy Father, and rests in his will with gratitude and joy.
He stops in no lower sphere. He asks not and he ex-
plains not how the hiding of these things from the wise
and prudent, to their overthrow and destruction, though
they were revealed unto babes, should be a reason for
rejoicing ; but he goes to the good pleasure of his Father
in heaven as the centre of all that he could wish. The
benignant will of God was so entirely his will, — that central
Fountain of life and joy so filled to overflowing his own
soul, that whatever might come was to him a source of
thankfulness, because it came from Him. " Even so, Father,
for so it seemed good in thy sight." And, as an additional
cause for gratitude, he goes on to say, " All things are
delivered or taught unto me by the Father. "Everything
has been given to me by the Father." Though man can-
not understand me, the Father does ; and so, though men
do not understand the Father, yet I and they to whom
I shall reveal Him, do understand him. Then, in the
fulness of the Divine wisdom, power, and love which had
been given to him, he uttered, 28-30, the words of in-
18*
210 MATTHEW XI.
vitation, and the promise of relief and rest, which, from
that day to this, have fallen with such infinite tenderness
on laboring and burdened souls. No commentary can add
to or bring out their meaning. They pour out their sweet-
ness, with ever-increasing freshness and power, into the souls
of those who accept his offer, and who, giving themselves
up entirely to him, take his yoke upon them, and learn
of him in meekness and lowliness of heart.
NOTES.
And it came to pass, when Jesus had made an end of com-
manding his twelve disciples, he departed thence, to teach and
to preach in their cities.
Now when John had heard in the prison the works of Christ, 2
he sent two of his disciples, and said unto him, Art thou he that 3
should come, or do we look for another ? Jesus answered and 4
said unto them, Go and show John again those things which
ye do hear and see ; the blind receive their sight, and the lame 5
walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are
raised up, and the poor have the gospel preached to them ;
and blessed is he, whosoever shall not be offended in me. 6
2. the works of Christ] of are not recorded. Tlie Gospels can
tlie Christ or Messiah. This is the hardly be regarded as coiitaiiniig
only instance, except in the first more than samples of the different
verse of the first chapter, where sorts of works which he performed.
Matthew in his own narrative ap- We must not, therefore, be surprised
plies this name to Jesus. It proba- that single acts, such as raising the
bly is used here as particularly ap- widow's son at Nain (Luke vii. 11 -
propriate, in consequence of John's' 15), and the raising of Lazarus (John
state of mind in regard to Jesus as xi. 1-46), should be mentioned onlv
the Messiah. In that case it har- by one writer. . 6. offended^]
monizes with the view we have The root from which this expression
taken of John, and the object of his comes in Greek means a trap or
message. 5. the dead snare, and thence a stumbling-block.
are raised up] Matthew has spe- Whatever might trip one up or
cified only one case (ix. 24, 25) of cause him to stumble. Blessed is
raising a person from the dead. The he who is not offended in me, i. e.
expression here implies more, and who finds nothing in mv course
should remind us of the multitude which may serve as a stumbling-
of his extraordinary acts which block or impediment iu the way of
MATTHEW XI.
211
7 And, as they departed, Jesus began to say unto the multitudes
couceruiug John : What went ye out into the wilderness to
8 see ? a reed shaken with the T^rind ? But what went ye out for
to see V a man clothed in soft raiment '? Behold, they that wear
9 soft clothing arc in kings' houses. But what went ye out for to
see ? a prophet ? Yea, I say unto you, and more than a prophet.
10 For this is he of whom it is written, " Behold, I send my mes-
senger before thy face, which shall prepare thy way before
11 thee." Verily I say unto you, among them that are born of
women there hath not risen a greater than John the Baptist ;
notwithstanding, he that is least in the kingdom of Heaven is
12 greater than he. And from the days of John the Baptist until
now, the kinsrdom of Heaven suffereth violence, and the violent
his faith in me. " When persecu-
tion and tribulation arise because
of the word, immediately he is
oftended (Matt. xiii. 21), i. e. he
finds an impediment or stumbling-
block in the way of his fidelity to
Christ. So xiii. 57, xv. 12, xvii. 27.
Lest we should offend them, i. e.
put a stumbling-block in their way.
10. Behold, I send
my messenger before thy face]
This is taken, with a slight altera-
tion, from Malachi iii. 1 : *' Behold I
will send my messenger, and he shall
prepare the way before me; and the
Lord [not Jehovah], whom ye seek,
shall suddenly come to his temple."
John, therefore, is represented as
the forerunner of the Lord, or the
Messiah, The word here translated
" the Lord," says Dr. Noyes, " when
used without the article, is every-
where applied to human beings in
the Old Testament. And though
with the article, which it has here,
it denotes the Sapreme Being as
the Lord of all the earth, when no
other use of the article can be as-
signed except to denote the Supreme
Being; yet in this verse the article
may be used merely to denote that
particular lord who was an object
of expectation and desire."
11. Among them that are
born of women] Possibly this
expression is used, as Oldshausen
asserts, by way of contrast to those
who are born of God in the higher
and Christian sense. 12.
the kingdom of Heaven su&
fereth violence] This is one of
the obscure and dithcult passages, on
which very different constructions
have been put. We have given one
in our general remarks above, p. 205;
but are by no means sure tliat the
following is not a more satisfactory
explanation. The verb may be con-
sidered in the passive voice, and
translated is forced, or sufferttJi
violence ; or it may be taken as in
the middle voice, and translated,
forces itself, or makes its oicn way
by force. Mr. Norton renders it,
" until now the kingdom of Heaven
is forcing its way." Stier adopts the
same interpretation. " The king-
dom of Heaven," he says, " pro-
claims itself loudly and openly,
breaking in with violence; the poor
are compelled (Luke xiv. 23) to
enter in ; those who oppose it are
constrained to take offence. In
short, all things proceed urgently
with it; it goes with 'mighty move-
ment and impulse ' (as braseke
preaches), it works effectually ui)ou
all spirits in both directions, and on
all sides. The first [clause of the
sentence] speaks of that mighty
excitement which the breaking in
of the kingdom of Heaven in itself
occasions ; the second points out
inferentially the result. Its con-
straining power does violence to
all ; but it excites at the same time,
212
MATTHEW XI.
take it by force. For all the prophets and the law prophesied, 13
until John. And if ye will receive it, this is Elias, which u
was for to come. He that hath ears to hear, let him hear. 15
But whcreunto shall I liken this generation ? It is like unto 16
children sitting in the markets, and calling unto their fel-
lows, and saying, We have piped unto you, and ye have not n
danced ; we have mourned unto you, and ye have not lament-
ed. For John came neither eating nor drinking ; and they 18
say, He hath a devil. The Son of Man came eating and 19
in the case of many, obstinate op-
position. He who will not submit
to it must be offended and resist,
and he who yields to it must press
and struggle through this offence.
Thus the kingdom of Heaven does
and suffers violence, both in its two-
fold influence: it exerts a mighty
power itself, and a mighty power
must be put forth towards it, wheth-
er it be of faith or of unbelief."
15. He that hath ears]
A solemn call of attention to what
has been said. 16. It is
like unto children] According
to Tischendorf 's reading, this should
be translated, " It is like children
sitting in the markets, who, calling
to one another, say," &c.
17. We have piped] Hired mu-
sicians were employed at weddings
and at funerals (ix. 23). The chil-.
dren are represented as imitating
in their sports these hired minstrels ;
and in their vehement recrimina-
tions crying out against one another,
they only add to the general con-
fusion and inconsistency. This gen-
eration reject at one time the Bap-
tist, because of his ascetic habits ;
and at another time the Son of
Man, because of his free and liberal
course of life, and add to the gen-
eral confusion and to their own in-
consistency by their divisions among
themselves, accusing one another;
one party exclaiming, " You refuse
to have this," and the other retort-
ing, " You refuse to have that," like
noisy, unreasonable children, who
are crying out against each other;
one party exclaiming, " We have
given you merry music, and yon
have not danced," and the other
party replying in anger, " We have
given you funeral music, and you
have not lamented ; " so that in'the
disturbance both strains alike — the
merry and the mournful — are re-
jected. The picture is given to the
life; and the comparison is a most
interesting one, showing as it does
how our Saviour, with the weight
of his great mission upon him,
entered into the amusements of
boys, as he did with a deeper sym-
pathy into the disposition and tem-
per of babes. 18. He hath
a devil] a demon. The .Jews be-
lieved insanity to be caused by evil
spirits, or demons. To say that a
man has a demon might with them
mean either that he was a wicked
man, given over to an evil spirit, or
that he was a maniac, or not im-
probably, as in this case, a union of.
the twol *' Thou hast a devil, and
art crazy " (John x. 20); — the first
expression representing the cause,
and the second the effect.
19. is justified] This word oc-
curs in the Gospels six times, and
always with the same meaning, viz.
in the active voice, to cause to
be recognized as just or approved.
" By thy words thou shalt be justi-
fied," i. e. approved, or recognized
as just. (xii. 37.) " The people
justified God," i. e. approved
of what he had done, or declared
him to be just. ( Luke vii. 29. ) " He,
wishing to justify himself," i. e.
to cause himself *to be recognized
as just. (Luke x. 29.) "Ye are
they who justify yourselves before
men," i, e. would cause men to
recognize you as just. (Luke xvi.
15.) " This man went down to
MATTHEW XI.
213
drinking, and they say, Behold, a man gluttonous and a wine-
bibber, a friend of publicans and sinners. But Wisdom is jus-
20 tified of her children. Then began he to upbraid the cities
wherein most of his mighty \Vorks were done, because they
21 repented not : Woe unto thee, Chorazin ! woe unto thee, Beth-
saida ! for if the mighty works which were done in you had
been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long
his house justified," i. e. approved
by God, recognized by him as
right. (Luke xviii. 14.)
21. Tyre and Sidon] It has been
usual with travellers to point out the
literal fulfilment of ancient pi-oph-
ecies (Isa. xxiii. 1 - 15 ; Ezek. xxvi.
xxviii.) in regard to these places.
We quote a few passages on this
subject from Stanley's " Sinai and
Palestine " : " There is one point
of view in which this whole coast
is specially remarkable. ' A mourn-
ful and solitary silence now prevails
along the shore which once re-
sounded -with, the Avorld's debate.'
This sentence, with which Gibbon
solemnly closes his chapter on the
Crusades, well sums up the general
impression still left by the six days'
ride from Beyroot to Ascalon; and
•it is no matter of surprise that in
this impression travellers have felt
a response to the strains in which
Isaiah and Ezekiel foretold the des-
olation of Tyre and Sidon. In one
sense, and that the highest, this feel-
ing is just. The PhaMiician power
which the prophets denounced has
entirely perished ; even whilst ' the
world's debate ' of the middle ages
gave a new animation to these
shores, the brilliant Tyre of Alex-
ander and Barbarossa 'had no real
connection with the Tyre of Hiram ;
and perhaps no greater stretch of
imagination in ancient histoiy is
reqiiired than to conceive how the
two small towns of Tyre and Sidon,
as they now exist, could have been
the parent cities of Carthage and
Cadiz, the traders with Spain 'and
Britain, the wonders of the East for
luxury and magnificence. So total
a destruction, for all political pur-
poses, of the two great commercial
states of the ancient world has
been frequently held up to com-
mercial states in the modern world,
as showing the precarious tenure
by which purely mercantile great-
ness is held ; and in this respect the
prophecies of the Hebrew seers were
a real revelation of the coming for-
tunes of the world, the more re-
markable because experience had
not yet justified such a result. Biit
to narrow the scope of these sub-
lime visions to the actual buildings
and sites of the cities is as unwar-
ranted by facts as it is mistaken in
idea. Sidon has probably never
ceased to be a populous, and, on the
whole, a flourishing town; small,
indeed, as compared with its ancient
grandeur, but never desolate, or
without some poi'tion of its old
traffic ; and still encompassed round
and round with the lines of its red
silk manufacture. Tyre may per-
haps have been in a state of ruin
shortly after the Chaldasan, and sub-
sequently after the Greek conquest
of Syria. But it has always been
speedily rebuilt The period
during which it sunk to the lowest
ebb was during the last years of
the past and the first years of the
present century ; and the compara-
tive desolation which it then ex-
hibited no doubt presented some of
the imagery on which so much
stress has been laid, in order to con-
vey the impression of its being a
desolate rock, only used for the dry-
ing of fishermen's nets. But as this
was not the case before that period,
and is certainly not the case now,
it is idle to seek for the fulfilment of
the ancient prediction within those
limits ; and the ruin of the empire
of Tyre, combined with the reviA'al
and continuance of the town of
Tyre, is thus a striking instance of
214
MATTHEW XI.
ago In sackcloth and ashes. But I say unto you, it shall be 22
more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon, at the day of judgment,
than for you. And thou, Capernaum, which art exalted unto 23
heaven, shalt be brought down to hell ; for if the mighty works
which have been done in thee had been done in Sodom, it
would have remained until this day. But I say unto you, that 24
it shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom, in the day of
Judgment, than for thee. At that time Jesus answered and 25
said, I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, be-
cause thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent,
and hast revealed them unto babes. Even so, Father, for so 26
the moral and poetical, as distinct
from the literal and prosaic, accom-
plisliment of the Prophetical Scrip-
ture?." pp. 266, 267. 23.
And thou, Capernaum ] *' It
would almost seem," says Stanley,
pp. 376, 377, '' as if the' Avoe pro-
nounced against Capernaum had
been literally fulfilled, as if the
doom of the cities of the southern
sea had been visited upon those of
the north, as if it hacf been more
tolerable for the land of Sodom, in
the day of its earthly judgment,
than for Capernaum. It has indeed
been more tolerable in one sense;
for the name, and perhaps even the
remains, of Sodom are still to be
found on the shores of the Dead
Sea, whil^ that of Capernaum has,
on the Lake of Genesareth, been
utterly lost Still, it would
be contrary to the general spirit of
prophecy, whether in the Old or
New Testament, to press this argu-
ment too far. The woe, here as
elsewhere, was doubtless spoken,
not against the walls and houses of
these villages, but against those
who dwelt within them; and, as a
matter of fact, it would appear that
they [the walls and houses] did
sui-vive the terrible curse for many
generations." 23. to hell] to
Hades. The abode of the dead, —
not like Gehenna, — a place of tor-
ture for the wicked alone. The ex-
pression, shall be brought daicn to hell,
means, shall be utterly destroyed.
25. and hast revealed them
unto babes] Pure and childlike
persons, — those who in singleness
of heart, without prejudices or pre-
possessions of their own, receive the
words of Jesus. The worldly pru-
dence of the wise blinds them to
truths which require the entire sur-
render of themselves to Christ. The
philosophical wise men have their
minds too much circumscribed by
their speculations to take in spiritual
truths like those taught by Jesus,
which transcend the bounds* of their
reasoning, and take them into higher
and broader worlds of intelligence.
Distinct from these are the babes,
to whom the kingdom of God is re-
vealed, and to whom in all ages of
the world the Saviour's words apply.
But in his exclamation of thanks-
giving, he probably had more im-
mediately in his mind at the time
the seventy who had just returned
rejoicing from their first evange-
lizing mission. " These unlearned,
sincere, and childlike men, who," to
use the language of a friend, '' had
no previously cherished system to
support, — no abundant treasury of
Avords, whicli they were liable, con-
sciously or unconsciously, to sub-
stitute 'for the very words' of Jesus ;
no habits of abstract reasoning
which might lead them to state the
results of "reasoning for the facts of
observation, — had been present at
the giving of sight to the blind and
hearing to the deaf. They had seen
the lame freed from their' infirmity,
the sick healed, the dead raised,
and those possessed of evil spirits
restored to sanity and self-control
MATTHEW XI.
215
27 it seemed good in thy sight. All things are delivered unto me
of my Father ; and no man knoweth the Son but the Father ;
neither knoweth any man the Father, save the Son, and he to
28 whomsoever the Son will reveal him. Come unto me all ye
29 that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take
my yoke upon you, and learn of me ; for I am meek and lowly
30 in heart ; and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke
is easy, and my burden is light.
by His word. They continually had
wondered at the ' gracious ' words
which proceeded out of his mouth.
They were full of expectation and
reverence and admiration and of
love. And they had gone ont tell-
ing just what they had seen and
heard, just as, at the time, it had
impressed their receptive minds and
moved their hearts. The name of
their Master was continually upon
their tongues, and, by the power of
the Spirit of Jesus, their whole being
became, for the time, merged in
his; they were one with him, and,
in his name, they had performed his
works. Now they were full of j'oy,
and said, ' Lord, even the devils are
subject to us, through thy name.'
And Jesus himself rejoiced in spirit,
thankfully acknowledging the wis-
dom which had led, not the lettered
and logical, not pre-occupied and
trained minds, not the Pharisee or
Sadducee, but the fishermen of
Galilee, — the Seventy, and such as
thev, — to be at first his followers
and witnesses to receive the true im-
pression of Him, and to give it un-
changed to others, — that the world
might have transmitted to it, not a
plan, a philosophy and abstract sys-
tem, but a whole, concrete Gospel
of salvation." 27. All
thiiiifs are delivered unto me
of my Father] " I have been
instructed in all by my Father."
Norton. " My Father hath impart-
ed everything to me." Campbell.
" All things appertaining to my
office are delivered to me of my
Father." Whitby. Of these trans-
lations Campbell's is the most ex-
act, the word " imparted " bearing
the double meaning, delivered and
taught, which belongs to the original
irapfhoOr}. and no man
knoweth the Son but the Fa-
ther] The blindness of most com-
mentators to the explicit assertion
of Jesus here is very remarkable.
There is no more distinct, unequivo-
cal, and unqualified assertion in the
New Testament. And yet, in di-
rect opposition to it, creeds have
been fonned, defining the meta-
physical nature of Christ, and en-
forcing their distinctions on a sub-
ject which Jesus expressly declares
that no man understands, as the
only condition of church-member-
ship in this world or of salvation
in the world to come. It would be
difficult to find a more audacious
and presumptuous violation of the
words of Jesus than the Athana-
sian Creed, with its thrice repeated
curses against those who do not re-
ceive its doctrines. Jestis here de-
clares, that, while the Son • reveals
the Father, his own nature is not
known except by the Father. He
reflects the image of God, as the
perfect mirror reflects the sky so
entirely that it remains itself un-
seen. 29. lowly in heart]
" This expression describes the
humility of the Redeemer, as in
entire accordance with the bent of
his holy will, and originating in the
very depth of his heart ; hence hu-
mility appears in Him as the cheer-
ful result of free choice." Olshau-
sen. Poverty of spirit comes from
a sense of want; lowliness of heart
arises from a cheerful, unquestion-
ing, and almost unconscious sub-
mission to the will of God ; or rather
it comes from so living in the pres-
ence of God, that his love reaches
into the soul, and calls out its
powers in harmony with his will.
216 MATTHEW XII. 1-14.
CHAPTER XII.
1-14. — Christ's View of the Sabbath.
It is exceedingly difficult to get from the Gospels a
clear idea of the order of events, or the length of time
that elapsed between different events. The expression,
"then," or "at that time," which recurs frequently in
Matthew, does not, as in our language, indicate that what
is now to be related belongs to the same occasion with
that which has gone immediately before, but rather, that it
belongs to a different time and occasion. It is merely a
transition clause, nearly equivalent to the phrase, " and
it came to pass," or " about that time." " It came to
pass in those days" (Matthew iii. 1) applies to an event
which took place after an interval of thirty years.
1-8. According to a humane provision of the Mosaic
law (Deut. xxiii. 25), those who were passing through
a neighbor's field were allowed to pluck the ears of grain
with their hand, though not to use a sickle. Dr. Robinson
says, that when near Hebron, passing by the fields of
ripening wheat, "We had here a beautiful illustration of
Scripture. Our Arabs *were an hungered,' and going
into the fields, they * plucked the ears of corn, and did
eat, rubbing them in their hands.' On being questioned,
they said this was an old custom, and no one would speak
against it." The offence of the disciples consisted, not in
taking the grain, but in doing it on the Sabbath. " He
that reaps on the Sabbath," says a Jewish authority quoted
by Lightfoot, "though never so little, is guilty. And to
pluck the ears of com is a kind of reaping; and who-
soever plucks anything from the springing of his own
MATTHEW XII. 9-14. 217
fruit is guilty, under the name of a reaper." It was to
sweep away all sophistries of this kind, and to re-establish
the substance and spirit of the law in the place of the
trifling and superstitious observances which had grown
out of it, that Jesus, in this instance, replies to the fault-
finders by facts, which they as Jews must admit to be
right, and then (verse 8, Mark ii. 27) lays down the true
principle by which all ceremonial rites and institutions
are to be interpreted. 1. Necessity knows no laws of this
kind, and cannot be bound by their authority. Have ye
not read, he asks, how David (1 Sam. xxi. 6) and those
who were with him, when driven by hunger, took bread,
which by the law (Ex. xxix. 33) only the priests were
allowed to eat? 2. Where the worship of God requires
the violation of the Sabbath, the lesser should yield to
the greater. The form must give way, that the sub-
stance may be retained. " Have ye not read in the law,"
(Num. xxviii. 9, 10,) he says, addressing them still as
Jews, " that on the Sabbath days the priests in the temple
profane the temple, and are guiltless ? And I say unto
you, that something greater than the temple is here." He
then (Mark ii. 27) lays down the great principle by which
all these rites are to be determined. " The Sabbath was
made for man, and not man for the Sabbath. Wherever,
therefore, it interferes with man's highest good, its severity
must be relaxed. " If," he adds, " ye had recognized the
meaning and the authority of the divine precept," (Hosea
vi. 6,) * Mercy is more to me than sacrifice,' ye would not,
as you are now doing, condemn the innocent." The Son of
Man has power to regulate the observance even of the
Sabbath-day.
9-14. On another occasion (another Sabbath, Luke
vi. 9) he, under the general principle already quoted from
Mark, brought up a third case, not wholly distinct per-
haps from the first, in which the letter of the law is to
be relaxed, and its spirit observed by works of charity
19
218 MATTHEW XII. 9-14.
and mercy. There was present in the synagogue a man
whose right hand was withered. The Pharisees were
eagerly watching, with the hope that they might catch
him violating the law. They ask him, therefore, whether
it is allowable to perform cures on the Sabbath ! Jesus,
knowing "their thoughts (Luke vi. 8), asked the man to
rise up and stand in the midst, which he did. Then, in
reply to their question, he asked, which of the two is
allowable on the Sabbath, to do good or to do evil, to
save life or to kill ? If any one among you have one
sheep, and it fall into a pit on the Sabbath, will he not
lay hold on it and lift it out ? But is not a man of far
more consequence than a sheep ? So that it is lawful
to do well on the Sabbath. They, unable to answer him,
were silent. And Jesus, having looked round on them
with anger, being grieved at the hardness of their hearts
(Mark iii. 5), directed the man to stretch forth his hand.
And he stretched it forth; and it was restored whole as
the other. The principle on which Jesus here reasoned
is, that it is a sin to neglect the opportunity to do a
good deed, and therefore works of mercy must not be
neglected even on the Sabbath. He has thus clearly
taught, 1. that a man's own necessities, 2. that the offices
of public worship, and 3. that works of charity, may justify
what would otherwise be a violation of the Sabbath,
Jesus is recorded to have performed cures on the Sab-
bath at seven different times ; — the cure of the demoniac
(Mark i. 21) ; of Peter's wife's mother (Mark i. 29) ; of
the impotent man (John v. 9) ; of the man bom blind
(John ix. 14) ; of the woman with a spirit of infirmity
(Luke xiii. 10-17) ; of the man who had a dropsy (Luke
xiv. 1) ; besides th^ one related above. Unquestionably
one object which he had in performing so many miracles
on the Sabbath, was to do away the narrow superstitious
formalities in which that merciful institution had become
incrusted, and by which its beneficent design was per-,
verted or impaired and destroyed.
MATTHEW XII. 14-37. 219
14-37. — Hatred of the Pharisees against Jesus.
14-21. Here is the first allusion to any conspiracy
against his life by the enemies of Jesus. It was evident
that he was producing a decided and powerful impression
on the minds of the people, and that he carefully abstained
from any violation of the law, yet his principles of inter-
pretation, and the feelings with which he regarded its
observances, were diametrically opposite to theirs. In this
case, feeling the pungency of his rebuke, and unable to
say a word in reply to his reasoning, the Scribes and
Pharisees were (Luke vi. 11) inflamed with rage, and
took counsel (Mark iii. 6) with the Herodians, who were
probably the adherents of Herod, and rather political than
religious partisans, how they might destroy him. Jesus,
knowing their designs, withdrew to the Sea of Galilee,
where immense multitudes gathered round him from all
the neighboring country, — from Jerusalem, from Idumea
and beyond the Jordan on the east, and from Tyre and
Sidon on the west. This would only increase the appre-
hensions and malice of his enemies. Jesus did all that
he could consistently with the great purpose of his ministry
to avoid notoriety. He severely charged those on whom
his healing miracles were wrought not to make him known.
22-37. — Casting out Satan by Satan.
About this time, when the popular mind was wrought
up to a high pitch of expectation and excitement, there
was brought to Jesus a demoniac, blind and dumb, whom
he healed, so that the blind and dumb both spake and
saw. There is nothing mentioned that would indicate in-
sanity, nor is it possible to discover what the symptoms
were that marked the case as one of demoniacal posses-
sion. It seems, however, to have been regarded as an
extraordinary case, and the cure caused an unusual sensa-
220 MATTHEW XII. 22-37*
tion of astonishment among the multitudes, who ask if this
is not the Son of David, i. e. the Messiah ? Such a sugges-
tion could not be endured by the Pharisees. In the ex-
tremity of their malignant jealousy and scorn, hardening
themselves against the holiness of his life and the merciful
character of his acts, they contemptuously reply, that he
does not cast out demons except by Beelzebub, the prince
of demons. He, knowing all that was passing in their
minds, overthrew their taunt by reasoning which they
from their point of view could not answer, and then, 31, 32,
exposed their unpardonable wickedness in the severest
sentence that ever fell from his lips.
The 21st verse is one of some difficulty. " If I by
Beelzebub cast out demons, by whom do your children,
i. e. your disciples, cast them out? wherefore they shall
be your judges." There is no doubt that there were
at that time men who practised among the Jews the pre-
tended art of expelling demons. Josephus, Antiq., VIII.
2. 5, appeals to an extraordinary proof of this fact which
one of these exorcists had given before Vespasian in the
presence of a part of the Roman army. There was a
belief among the Jews that these men actually expelled
demons by their art, and it was from this their point
of view that Jesus addressed his argument to the Phari-
sees. If I, in my cures, which shake to its very centre
the dominion of Satan, am in league with him, by whom
do your disciples perform their cures? Let them answer
the question, and be your judges. Jesus was doing nothing
more than they were pretending to do. Why then should
he be adjudged as guilty of a greater crime ?
But does not he, in using such language, countenance
the belief that they had the power to cast out demons ?
This brings up a very interesting and important subject
of inquiry. How far could a being with the more than
human endowments and knowledge which Jesus possessed,
looking through men's thoughts, and the shadows around
MATTHEW Xn. 22-37. -221
them, be among the Jews, and converse freely with them,
without suffering their false ideas and conceptions to pass
uncorrected ? Parents are every day pursuing this course
with their children, knowing that it would be a vain
thing to try to correct them in regard to many false ideas
which tiiey are not yet able to understand, but which they
will outgrow in the natural progress of their minds. It
is not by specific corrections now, but by the gradual
unfolding and enlightenment of their minds, that they are
to be set free from these mistaken notions. So Christ
came, not to correct specific errors, one by one, but to
bring into the world those great elements of moral and
religious life and thought, which, as they are received
and applied, may lift men up above their errors, and set
them free from their mistaken ideas. In order to gain
access to them, he must meet them as they are, and reason
with them from premises which they believe to be true.
By seeking to correct their established convictions and
habits of thought in regard to common and comparatively
unimportant matters, he would rouse their prejudices, and
close their minds against him in his more important influ-
ences and instructions. Their errors, therefore, he some-
times uses as illustrations or arguments by which to intro-
duce into their minds truths which, once lodged there, and
acting through their lives, shall at length set them free,
and drive out the very errors by which they gained ad-
mittance. It is evident that this must essentially modify
the form of any revelation from God to men, in its adap-
tation to the existing wants and limitations of their nature.
The reasoning of this whole discourse proceeds in this
way. It meets the Pharisees on their own ground, with-
out one word to show whether that ground be tenable or
not. In this way, he brings before them the momentous
truth which it is his purpose to declare. If the very
centre of Satan's kingdom is shaken by these works of
mine, and if, as I have shown from your own point of
19*
222 MATTHEW XII. 31, 32.
view, I have done these works, not by the aid of Beelze-
bub, but, 28, by the spirit, and Luke xi. 20, the finger
of God, then in this overthrow of the powers of darkness
you may be sure that the kingdom of God has come
upon you unawares. For how can the house of the strong
man, thoroughly armed and on his guard (Luke xi. 21), be
entered, unless a stronger than he overcome, and disarm,
and bind him? But, in this warfare, he continues, he
who is not with me is against me. " Wherefore," he says,
31, 32, referring to the whole course of reasoning by which
he has proved that these are the works of God against
which they have set themselves, — " wherefore, though every
sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven to men, yet blasphemy
against the Holy Spirit shall not be forgiven to men,
either in this world [atSw, — ceon'] or the world
to come."
31, 32. — The Unpardonable Sin.
What is the sin thus fearfully and hopelessly condemned ?
All enlightened modern commentators, we believe, agree
that "it is not one particular act of sin which is here
condemned, but a state of sin, and that a wilful, deter-
mined opposition" to what is highest and holiest. He
who speaks against the Son of Man may do it ignorantly,
or through traditional prejudices, or from a sudden im-
pulse, and may repent and be forgiven. "But he," to
use the words of the Greek father Euthymius, " who, seeing
my Divine works which God alone can perform, ascribes
them to Beelzebub as you now do, and so blasphemes
against the Holy Spirit, or the Divinity itself (for he now
calls it the Holy Spirit), — he, plainly determined and fixed
on what is evil, and knowingly insulting God, sins with-
out excuse, and shall not be forgiven." His sin is not
one of impulse, ignorance, or weakness. But he has gone
on knowingly sinning and hardening himself against the
Holy Spirit, maligning its influences, and attributing them
MATTHEW XII. 38-50. - 223
to a diabolical agency, till he has reached such a degree
of hardihood in wickedness that he is beyond all hope
of repentance or amendment, and therefore beyond all hope
of forgiveness. The settled frame of his mind is so wil-
fully and knowingly turned against God in his plainest
and holiest influences and teachings, that he has made re-
pentance, and through it reformation, an impossibility to
him, whether in this world [^ceon^ or the world to -come.
Jesus then turns again to their blasphemous charge
against the Holy Spirit, in ascribing actions such as they
had witnessed to the Prince of demons. Do at least, he
says, be consistent with yourselves. Allow either that the
tree and fruit are both good, or that they are both bad
together. The tree is known by its fruit. But, 34, how,
on this principle, can we expect anything good from you,
since, as is the heart, so must the words be. So true
is this law of our nature, so is even the careless, idle
word imbued with the spirit, and so does it indicate the
disposition, from which it comes, that, " I say unto you,
for every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give
account in the day of judgment." The careless, idle words
which men utter are perhaps the truest index to their
character.
38-50. — Further Remarks of Jesus.
38-40. On another occasion the Scribes and Pharisees,
in a captious, unbelieving spirit, asked of him a sign.
He knew their motives, and declared to them that no
sign should be given except that of the prophet Jonah,
as foreshadowing his own death. It is remarkable, as
Dr. Furness has said, that whenever a sign was asked
of Jesus, he invariably referred to his death, " as the
greatest sign that he could possibly give of his truth."
(John vi. 30, 51.) The reference to the book of Jonah
proves nothing conclusively respecting the view that Jesus
224 MATTHEW XII. 46-50.
might have of it, whether as an historical narrative, or an
instructive allegory, framed like some of his own parables,
to set forth important lessons of truth and duty.
He then, 41 - 45, as he had done twice before in different
connections, spoke of the way in which the generation must
be condemned by those who had gone before, if they
should slight the greater privileges which were granted
to them. And finally he likens them to a demoniac who
is for a time apparently cured, but with a relapse of
his malady is in a far worse condition than before. The
picture, which is in accordance with the prevalent ideas
of the Jews, is full of life and interest The unclean
spirit, cast out of its comfortable abode, wanders, 43, into
dry, i. e. desert, uncultivated, and desolate places, seeking
rest, and finding none. And at last, tired of this he
joins to himself seven other spirits worse than himself,
and finding his old abode empty, swept, and furnished,
they enter in and dwell there. So with this genera-
tion. However the Jews may have been freed for a
time by their afflictions from their old idolatries, yet the
old spirit and others far worse had returned, and now
their last end (xxiii. 45) is worse than all that had gone
before. The same remarks apply to an individual, re-
formed for a season, and then relapsing into his old sins,
with others still worse added to them.
46-50. — Jesus akd his Mother.
Any impression that we might get here of apparent
harshness in the conduct of Jesus towards his mother
will be removed by attending to all the circumstances.
Not only was the house where he sat full of people, but
probably, as in another case (Mark ii. 2) the way of
approach to the door was crowded, so that those who
were out could not get at him (Luke viii. 19) on account
of the multitude. While he was in the midst of his
MATTHEW Xn. 46-50. 225
weighty and impressive discourse, word was passed in to
him (Luke viii. 20) that his mother and brethren were
without desiring to speak to him. Immediately he turned
this incident into an occasion of teaching the higher spirit-
ual relationships which he had come to establish, and asked,
" Who is my mother, and who are my brethren ? " Then
looking round about on those who were sitting around
him (Mark iii. 34) he stretched forth his hand towards his
disciples, and said, " Behold my mother and my brethr^sn.
For whosoever shall do the will of my Father who is
in heaven, he is my brother, and sister, and mother."
We learn from John vii. 5, that his brethren did not
believe in him, and Mark, iii. 21, tells us that when his
friends or relatives heard how he was situated and what
he was doing, they went out to lay hold on him ; for
they said, "He is beside himself." They evidently at
that time did not at all understand him. It is more
difficult to enter into the feelings of his mother. His
past history and his character, as it showed itself to her
in the intimate relations of life, must, we infer from the
few glimpses that are given to us (Luke ii. 41-52, John
ii. 1-12) have been such as to fill ber with wonder and
expectation. She pondered these things in her heart. But,
as a human being, she doubtless had her alternations of
feeling. She knew not how his work should be accom-
plished or what it was. When her relatives and possibly
even her own sons declared that he was beside him-
self, her maternal feeUngs must have been touched, -and,
without sympathizing with them in their unbelief, she may
have been painfully moved by vague apprehensions of
impending danger, and hopes of coming greatness, so that
she went with them to ease her anxieties by seeing him,
and perhaps to persuade him to withdraw himself for a
season from the perils that were gathering round him.
If such were her feelings, nothing could do more to as-
suage her fears, awaken her reverence, and re-establish
22G MATTHEW XII.
her faith, than the words here uttered, which in their
calm dignity lifted him above all earthly interests and
relationships.
NOTES.
At that time Jesus went on the sabbath- day through the
corn; and his disciples were an hungered, and began to pluck
the ears of corn, and to eat. But when the Pharisees saw it, 2
they said unto him. Behold thy disciples do that which is not
lawful to do upon the sabbath-day. But he said unto them, 3
Have ye not read what David did, when he was an hungered,
and they that were with him ? how he entered into the house 4
of God, and did eat the shew-bread, which was not lawful for
him to eat, neither for them which were with him, but only for
the priests? Or have ye not read in the law, how that on the 6
sabbath-days the priests in the temple profane the sabbath, and
are blameless ? But I say unto you, that in this place is one 6
greater than the temple. But if ye had known what this mean- 7
eth, "I will have mercy and not sacrifice," ye would not
have condemned the guiltless. For the Son of man is Lord 8
even of the sabbath-day.
2. when the Pharisees saw Strictly speaking, there was no
it] They must have been follow- house of God at tnat time, but only
ing him through the fields in that a tent in which the Ark of the
hj-pocritical spirit of ceremonial Covenant was kept. But, as in Ex.
observance that would be ready to xxiii. 19, the tent was sometimes
measure his steps after him, and called the house of God.
find it out, if he should walk one which is not lawful for him
yard beyond the prescribed length to eat] Ex. xxix. 33. For the
of a sabbath-day's journey. This s/ieMJ-Ayeoc?, see Leviticus xxiv. 5-8.
whole chapter, 'down to the 46th From this reference and verse 8, as
verse, is taken up in showing this well as from a Jewish authority
trait of the Pharisees, and the terri- cited by Lightfoot, it is rendered
ble severity with which it was re- probable that David went there
buked by Jesus. 3. Have either on -the sabbath, or just as
ye not read] " At that very the sabbath was going out, which
time of year Leviticus was being would make his example still more
read on sabbaths, the book in which pertinent in this case. 8.
there occur so many precepts as to for the Son of man] " Why is
sacrifices which were required to be Christ called the Son of man, but
performed, even on the sabbath." just because he represents humanity
BengeL 4. house of God] as a whole, — because, as a second
MATTHEW XII.
227
9 And wlien he was departed thence, he went into their syna-
10 gogue. And, behold, there was a man which had his hand
withered. And they asked him saying, Is it lawful to heal on
11 the sabbath-days ? that they might accuse him. And he said
unto them, AVhat man shall there be among you that shall
have one sheep, and if it fall into a pit on the sabbath-day,
12 will he not lay hold on it, and lift it out ? How much then is
. a man better than a sheep ! Wherefore it is lawful to do well
13 on the sabbath-days. Then saith he to the man, Stretch forth
thine hand. And he stretched it forth ; and it was restored
14 whole, like as the other. Then the Pharisees went out, and
held a council against him, how they might destroy him.
15 But when Jesus knew it, he withdrew himself from thence ;
and great multitudes followed him ; and he healed them all,
16 and charged them that they should not make him known ;
17 that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Esaias the
18 prophet, saying : " Behold my servant, whom I have chosen,
my beloved, in whom my soul is well pleased ; I will put my
spirit upon him, and he shall show judgment to the Gentiles.
Adam, he bears in himself and sets
up a new humanity? This is the
key to the whole statement, ac-
coriling to which, in the first phice,
Mark ii. 27, as the words stand,
contain a truth as profound as it
is simple. So, in the Talmud, R.
Jonathan says, Uterally, ' The sab-
bath is in your own hands, not you
in its hands, for it is said: The sab-
bath is for you.' (Ex. xvi. 29; Ezek.
XX. 12.) It is, according to God's
design, an ordinance and institution
of mercy for the good of man, ap-
pointed, in the first instance, for
rest and refreshment (Deut. v. 14;
Ex. xxiii. 12); and then further for
blessing and sanctification." Stier.
11. and lift it out]
" Our Lord evidently asks this as a
thing allowed and done at the time
■when he spoke ; but subsequently
(perhaps, suggests Stier, on account
of these words of Christ) it was
forbidden in the Gemara ; and only
permitted to lay planks for the beast
to come out.'''' Alford. 15.
and greAt multitudes] The pop-
ulousness of Galilee at that time,
compared with what it is at present,
was very great. According to Jose-
phus, it had more than 200 cities,
the least of which contained 15,000
inhabitants; and the whole province
contained more than 3,000,000 of
people. According to Strabo, Gali-
lee was full of p]gyptians, Arabians,
and Phoenicians. (Lib. XVI.) See
Milman's Hist. Christianitv, L 4.
18-20. " This quotation,"
says Dr. Palfrey, " from the proph-
ecy of Isaiah (xlii.1-4) accordj; pre-
cisely with neither the Hebrew nor
the Septuagint." The Hebrew is
thus translated by Dr. Noyes:
" Behold ray serrant, whom I uphold,
My chosen,in whom my soul delighteth;
I have put my ppirit upon him ;
He sh.all give laws to the nations.
He shall not cry aloud, nor raise a
clamor,
Nor cause his voice to be heard in the
street.
The bruised reed he shall not break,
And the glimmering flax he shall not
quench ;
He shall give laws according to truth.
He shall not fail, nor become weary,
Until he shall have established laws in
the earth,
And distant nations shall wait for his
instruction."
228 MATTHEW XII.
He shall not strive, nor cry, neither shall any man hear his 19
voice in the streets ; a bruised reed shall he not break, and 20
smoking flax shall he not quench ; till he send forth judgment
unto victory. And in his name shall the Gentiles trust." 21
Then was brought unto him one possessed with a devil, blind 22
and dumb ; and he healed him, insomuch that the blind and
dumb both spake and saw. And all the people were amazed, 23
and said. Is not this the son of David ? But when the Phari- 24
sees heard it, they said. This fellow doth not cast out devils,
but by Beelzebub, the prince of the devils. And Jesus knew 26
their thoughts, and said unto them, Every kingdom divided
against itself is brought to desolation ; and every city or house
divided against itself shall not stand. And if Satan cast out 26
Satan, he is divided against himself; how shall then his king-
dom stand ? And if I by Beelzebub cast out devils, by whom 27
do your children cast them out ? Therefore they shall be your
judges. But if I cast out devils by the spirit of God, then the 28
kingdom of God is come unto you. Or else, how can one enter 29
into a strong man's house, and spoil his goods, except he first
bind the strong man ; and then he will spoil his house. He 30
that is not with me is against me ; and he that gathereth not
with me, scattereth abroad. ^Vhei-efore I say unto you, all 3i
manner of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men ; but
the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost shall not be forgiven
' 20. a bruised reed ^he Philistines (2 Kings i. 2). The
smoking flax] introduced here to Jews applied it to the prince of
show the merciful and compas- devils, as the most contemptuous of
sionate nature of Jesus in his deal- a'l names. 25. their
ing Avith the broken-hearted and the thoughts] their thoughts, imagi-
contrite. Lightfoot, however, savs: nations, and feelings; i. e. he knew
" He shall not make so great a noise the secret motives from which thev
as is made from the breaking of a spoke, when they charged him with
reed now already bruised and half doing his beneficent and divine
broken, or from the hissing of smok- works with a diabolical design, and
ing flax only, when water is thrown hy the aid of the prince of devils,
upon it." 23. Is not this The Greek word, iv6vfxr](T€is, is
the son of David ?] A name much stronger and more comj)re-
which evidently among the Jews hensive than the English Avord
was applied to the Messiah (ix. 27; thoughts, including as it does the
XV. 22; xxi. 9; and especiallv xxii. emotions and purposes connected
42). 24. Beelzebul] (for with the thoughts. 28. is
such is the established reading here, come unto you] Wesley, who
as well as x. 25) means Lord of avowedly copied from Bengel, ex-
mire, or Lord of place, as Beekebub plains the passage: " The kingdom
does Lord of flies. It was the name of God is come upon you — una-
of a God worshipped, at Ekron, by wares, before you expected: so the
MATTHEW XII.
229
bi imto men. And whosoever speaketh a word against the Son
of man, it shall be forgiven him; but whosoever speaketh
against the Holy Ghost, it shall not be forgiven him, neither in
33 this world, neither in the world to come. Either make the
tree good, and his fruit good ; or else make the tree corrupt,
34 and his fruit corrupt ; for the tree is known by his fruit. O
generation of vipers, how can ye, being evil, speak good
word implies." 32. speak-
eth against the Holy Gliost]
" This probably rcfers to the Divine
nature of Christ, — the power by
wlilch he wrought his miracles.
There is no evidence that it refers
to the third person of the Trinity."
Barnes. " It was blasphemy against
the Spirit of God to ascribe acts
which bore the manifest impress of
the Divine Goodness in their essen-
tially beneficent character to any
otheT source but the Father of
Mercies." Milman. " Against the
Holy Ghost means against the most
direct and conclusive testimony by
which the person is entirely
convinced, and consequently sins
with the most complete knowledge
and will ; and this is the idea most
essentially belonging to the unpar-
donable sui It is committed
when the man knows, with entire
the wisdom " which God ordained
to our glory before the worlds^'''' i. e.
the seons, ages, or dispensations.
These passages imply in the past a
succession of aeons, ages, or dispen-
sations. Jesus speaks more than
once (xiii. 39, 40, 49) of " the end
of the world ; " more exactly, the
winding up or consummation of the
a;on, the age, or dispensation then
existing. In Heb. ix. 26 we read,
" in the end of the world," literally,
at "the completion," or "consum-
mation of the ages." As the word
aeon, in its application to the past
and present condition of things im-
plies only a limited duration of
time, the natural inference is that
in its application to the future con-
dition of things, it does not neces-
sarily involve the idea of endless
dui-ation. As the word is applied
to the past in the plural number.
conviction, what he is doing and thus denotes a succession of-
It is distinguished from every other aeons in the past, so when applied
pardonable sin of man by this, that to the future in the plural number
in it there is not even a minimum (Eph. ii. 7, " in the aions, or ages
of Satanic deceit practised upon the which are to come,") it in like man-
understanding, or compulsion of ner denotes a succession of aeons,
any nature, or by any creature These aeons thus extend from the
upon the will; but the purely evil past into the future, each one at its
is willed, spoken, and done instead completion giving way to that which
of the known and rejected good, the jg to succeed, and each, whether in
lie as such instead of the bias- the past or the future, being only
phemed truth." Stier. one in the succession of ages.
in this world, neither in the When, therefore, we read in the
world to come] The word altbv passage before us of a sin which
((non), which is here translated
woi'ld, can be rendered by no cor-
responding ord in our language.
It means a period of time, an age,
or a dispensation. In 2 Tim. i. 9
we read, " before the world began,"
more exactlv, " before the worlds
began," and still more literally,
"before the times of the worlds,"
ages, (jeons. lu 1 Cor. ii. 7 we read of xxv. 46.
20
shall be forgiven neither in this
world ({Bon) nor the world (aion) to
come, we find in the language noth-
ing that necessarily involves the
idea of eternity, since the age to
come may, like each of those which
have gone before, at length fulfil its
Eurpose, and give place to a yet
igher dispensation beyond. See
230 MATTHEW XII.
thin<TS ? for out of the abundance of the heart the moutli
speaketh. A good man, out of the good treasure of the heart, 35
bringeth forth good things ; and an evil man, out of the evil
treasure, bringeth forth evil things. But I say unto you, ihat 36
every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account
thereof in the day of judgment. For by thy words thou shalt 37
be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned.
Then certain of the Scribes and of the Pharisees answered 38
saying. Master, we would see a sign from thee. But he an- 39
swered and said unto them, An evU and adulterous generation
seeketh after a sign ; and there shall no sign be given to it,
but the sign of the prophet Jonas. For as Jonas was three 40
days and three nights in the whale's belly, so shall the Son of
man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.
The men of Nineveh shall rise in judgment with this genera- 4i
tion, and shall condemn it; because they repented at the
preaching of Jonas ; and, behold, a greater than Jonas is here.
The queen of the south shall rise up in the judgment with this 42
generation, and shall condemn it ; for she came from the utter-
most parts of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon ; and,
behold, a greater than Solomon is here. When the un- 43
clean spirit is gone out of a man, he walketh through dry
36, every idle word] at last the measure of iniquity is
There is no autliority for giving any full, aiid hopeless ruin ensues. For
worse meaning to the adjective, the same thouglit more fully carried
The idle word may be a wicked, out, see xxiii. 35. 43*. When
or it may be a good, word. To give the unclean spirit is gone out
account does not necessarily imply of a man] Man, the individual,
condemnation. The meaning is, stands here for the Jewish nation,
that for everything we say, down who are represented as being then
even to our idle words, we are to sevenfold Avorse than ever before,
be held responsible, when in the day The connection Avith the previous
of reckoning the account of our sentences is unbroken. You wicked
lives shall be rendered up. men seeking a sign, shall find none
40. three days and three nights] except the sign of the propliet
By the Hebrew reckoning, the day Jonah ; and even that, while it
when the account begins, and that foreshadows my death, shall like-
when it ends, are included in the wise testify to your condemnation,
number of days. •' A day and a as will also the Queen of the South,
night," says a Jewish tradition, But what better could be expected ?
" make an onah, and a part of an When the unclean spirit is gone out
onah is as the whole." 41. of a man, and the man fails to for-
with this generation] Here is tify himself bv religious thoughts
an indication of the cumulative and faithful deeds, and remains
nature of sin in a community, and empty, and thus prepared for the
of the judgments visited upon it return of what is evil, then that
from generation to generation, till spirit, with seven others worse than
MATTHEW XII. 231
44 places, seeking rest, and findeth none. Then he saith, I will
return into my house, from whence I came out. And when he
45 is come, he findeth it empty, swept, and garnished. Then
goeth he, and taketh with himself seven other spirits, more
wicked than himself, and they enter in and dwell there ; and
the last state of that man is worse than the first. Even so shall
it be also unto this wicked generation.
46 While he yet talked to the people, behold, his mother and
47 his brethren stood without, desiring to speak with him. Then
one said unto him. Behold, thy mother and thy brethren stand
48 without, desiring to speak with thee. But he answered and
said unto him that told him, Who is my mother ? and who are
49 my brethren ? And he stretched forth his hand toward his dis-
60 ciples, and said, Behold, my mother, and my brethren. For
whosoever shall do the will of my Father, which is in heaven,
the same is my brother, and sister, and mother.
itself, shall enter in and dwell xi. 31 ), to denote a near relative, as,
there. So shall it be with this evil e. g. a nephew or cousin, and even
generation, as compared with the to denote a friend. It has been
generations which have gone before, supposed that the word is so used
47. thy brethren] The here ; but its connection Avith the
word brother is still used in the word mother would imply that it
East, as it was in the days of Abra- is used iu its stricter sense. See
ham (Gen. xiv. 16, compared with xiii. 55.
232 MATTHEW XIII. PARABLES.
CHAPTER XIII.
Parables.
The fountain of life within flows forth into outward
acts, and those outward acts are an emblem of the mind
from which they come. So in nature, whatever we see
proceeds from a fountain of life within, and is an emblem
and token of the divine source from which it proceeds.
Everything in nature, therefore, is an expression of the
Divine Mind, and has its message or its influence from
Him for us. The lightest forms of nature associate them-
selves with our deepest feelings or our highest thoughts,
and the more entirely we are bom into the realm of
spiritual things, that is, the more alive our spiritual per-
ceptions are, the more shall we be able to see the tokens
and to feel the influences of the Divine Mind in our in-
tercourse with nature. To him who looks through the
visible forms to the great spiritual realities which they
would express, every object around us, every change in
nature, as an expression of the Divine Mind, is the out-
shadowing or the foreshadowing of something higher than
itself. This great fact finds its way more or less into
our common speech. The morning or evening of the day
leads us spontaneously to think of the morning and even-
ing of life. When we see the sun go down, and as it
departs light up the western heavens with a richness and
glory which the day' has never known, we can hardly
help thinking of the good man's hfe, which when with-
drawn from our sight throws around the whole place
where he dwelt, in gracious and touching remembrances,
affections, vktues, and prayers more beautiful and holy
MATTHEW XIII. — PARABLES. 233
than when he was bodily present with us. So the flower,
the fruit, the leaf is each suggestive to us of thoughts
and emotions which lie in a higher plane of life. Thus it
was that Jesus saw all outward objects and events in their
higher relations, and made use of them to express the higher
facts which they bodied forth to his mind. No one can
understand his language who receives it merely in its
literal acceptation ; " for the letter kiUeth, but the spirit
giveth life " (2 Cor. iii. 6). We have only to open the
Gospels to see how in his use of speech material things
are made to lift us up into the realm of spiritual being.
When he says, " Ye are the salt of the earth,'* he speaks
in no literal sense. When he speaks of light and dark-
ness, it is the light and darkness of the soul. When he
speaks of hell fire, he speaks of it, not in its material, but
its spiritual sense, as an emblem of the anguish into which
the souls of the wicked shall be cast, unless they repent
and are converted. So when he says, "Whoso eateth
my flesh and drinketh my blood hath eternal life," it is
in the higher and spiritual sense that these expressions
are used. The devout heart catches this inner meaning
of the Saviour's words, and finds them, as he has said,
becoming to him " spirit and life." He that would read
the Gospels in any other way loses all that is most holy
and divine. It is as if we should confine our eye to the
glass of the telescope, instead of looking through it to
the worlds of light which it reveals beyond.
These remarks are especially applicable to the chapter
before us, which has been called the chapter of parables.
The parables, like all figurative language and most of
our reasoning from analogy, derive their power from the
fact that material things, not only have certain established
relations among themselves, but also certain relations to
spiritual things, which they may help to illustrate, ex-
plain, and enforce. The connection is not one arbitrarily
assumed by man, but has its foundation in the constitu-
20*
234 MATTHEW XIII. PARABLES.
tion of the universe and of the human mind. The analogies
which reach from one department of thought to another,
from things material to things intellectual or spiritual, have
impressed themselves on all languages, and perhaps most
decidedly on those which have been used to express the
highest spiritual ideas. The simplest mind catches these
resemblances, and delights in the higher meanings which
are bodied forth in the most common forms of speech.
The image borrowed from some familiar object of sense,
and standing as the representative of some higher truth,
fixes itself in the mind, and acts upon it through the
imagination with a power which more literal terms could
not have. The greatest poets, the profoundest reasoners,
and the common language of mankind alike abound in
examples of this kind. Shakespeare, for instance, may be
taken to show how, in the highest poetry, images drawn
from material things or common life shadow forth to the
heart a deeper, higher, or more affecting meaning.
" The immortal part needs a physician." — Henry IV.
" The benediction of these covering heavens
Fall on your heads like dew." — Cymbdine.
" Death lies on her, like an untimely frost
Upon the sweetest flower of all the field." — Romeo and Juliet.
No literal terms of description could convey to the mind
the ideas here suggested with such exquisite beauty and
tenderness. The Scriptures abound in expressions of this
sort, which introduce into the mind some image easily com-
prehended, that fills the whole soul with sentiments and
emotions suggested by it. Take expressions like these:
" The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not
saved." (Jer. viii. 20.) « The night is far spent, the day is
at hand." (Rom. xiii. 12.) « Abide with us ; for it is toward
evening, and the day is far spent." (Luke xxiv. 29.) "I
am the good Shepherd, and know my sheep, and am known
of mine : and I lay down my life for the sheep." (John x.
U, 15.) « Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me .
MATTHEW XIII. PARABLES. 235
and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy,
and my burden is light." (Matt. xi. 29, 30.) We see at
once how the simple facts, which are presented in the words,
spontaneously awaken other ideas ; and the images, so fa-
miliar to us in nature, carry us on to thoughts which lie
wholly beyond them. And not merely are other thoughts
suggested, but sentiments and emotions, which we can hardly
define, are awakened by the words, and lift us up into a
higher sphere.
" It is not merely," says Trench in the introduction to his
Notes on the Parables, " that these analogies assist to make
the truth intelligible, or, if intelligible before, present it more
vividly to the mind, which is all that some will allow them.
Their power lies deeper than this, in the harmony uncon-
sciously felt by all men, and by deeper minds continually
recognized and plainly perceived, between the natural and
spiritual worlds, so that analogies from the first are felt to be
something more than illustrations, happily but yet arbitra-
rily chosen. They are arguments, and may be alleged as
witnesses ; the world of nature being throughout a witness
for the world of spirit, proceeding from the same head, grow-
ing out of the same root, and being constituted for that very
end. All lovers of truth readily acknowledge these myste-
rious harmonies, and the force of arguments derived from
them."
All just reasoning from analogy depends on the recogni-
tion of a unity of purpose running through all the works of
God, and making them all, as parts of one great plan, point
upward to the same results. The outward system of things
stands forth to the mind as the representative of higher
powers than address themselves to the senses. " The heavens
declare the glory of God." (Ps. xix.) ".The invisible things
of Him, even his eternal power and godhead, are clearly
seen from the creation of the world being understood by
the things that are made." (Rom. i. 20.) « All things here,"
says TertuUian, " are witnesses of a resurrection ; all things
236 MATTHEW XIII. PARABLES.
in nature are prophetic outlines of Divine operations, God
not merely speaking parables, but doing them." Not only in
processes of reasoning, but in the finer and more important
processes by which the imagination is quickened and the
affections reached, we are constantly drawn up from what is
material and temporal to what is spiritual and eternal.
Works like those of Dante and Milton borrow their marvel-
lous power from this fact. Bunyan's " Pilgrim's Progress,"
and Baxter's " Saint's Rest," delight the heart, and feed the
religious sentiments of generation after generation through
the mysterious but vital connections which bind what is seen
to what is unseen. This alone makes it possible to weave,
from scenes and incidents addressed to the eye, a narrative
which shall bring us into connection with a higher order of
beings and events. The language which has most deeply
moved the heart of the world, and especially that which acts
most powerfully on the masses, and at the same time on the
purest religious minds, partakes largely of this character.
The world is, not only a school-room, in which visible objects
serve as diagrams by which to prove the reality of spiritual
things ; but on every side are pictures addressing themselves
to the eye, through the eye to the imagination, and through
the imagination to the heart, awakening our spiritual sensi-
bilities, and educating our whole natures to a higher life.
We can hardly overestimate the influence in the religious
training of the world, which has been exercised in this
way by the pictures from nature, or from common life,
which have been used by Jesus to represent spiritual ideas,
excite religious emotions, or help us on in our religious ex-
perience.
The parables belong to this department of religious in-
struction. The value of a parable is not to be estimated by
the single truth which it is employed to set forth, however
great that truth may be. Its accoinpaniments, its indirect
and subtle influences, through the imagination, the new
meaning which it thus gives to nature or to life, the atmos-
MATTHEW XIII. 1-9,18.-23. 237
phere of spiritual beauty, joy, or reverence, in which it en-
folds the mind of the child, and by which it ministers to its
spiritual and immortal life, are to be taken into account as
adjuncts, apart from which the truth would be left compara-
tively without interest and without power. The parable of
The Sower who went forth to sow, of the Wheat and the
Tares, of the Ten Virgins, the Rich Man and Lazarus,
The Good Samaritan, and the Prodigal Son, are among the
most impressive and influential agencies in our religious
education.
As to the rules of interpretation, too much stress must
not be laid on the details in judging of their relation to the
main truth. Their office is rather, by completing the picture,
to act on the imagination, to touch the feelings, and subdue
the mind to the tone which is needed in order that it may
receive the truth. This is a most important office. In the
Prodigal Son, for instance, the little details which go to fill
out the picture of want and wretchedness are what give its
affecting pathos to the story. And the fact that they per-
form this essential office should put us on our guard against
trying to force all the minute particulars into our interpreta-
tion. A parable is not an allegory.
1-9, .18-23. The Parable of the Sower.
It is not improbable that as Jesus, from the boat in which
he sat, looked up along the sweep of the hills that converged
downward to the lake, he may have seen a sower actually
going forth to sow, and pointing to him, or directing the eyes
of the multitude towards him for a moment, he may have
drawn his instruction from what was actually passing before
them. It is also possible that the opening words, "Be-
hold, a sower went forth to sow,"* were made more touch-
ingly impressive to the devout Jews by calling to mind the
affecting language of Psahn cxxvi. : " They that sow in
tears shall reap in joy. He that goeth forth and weepeth,
238 MATTHEW XIII. 10-23.
bearing precious seed, shall, doubtless, come again with re-
joicing, bringing his sheaves with him." It may also, there
by the waters of the lake, have connected itself with the
promise in Isaiah xxxii. 20 : " Blessed are ye that sow be-
side all waters." Stanley, in his Sinai and Palestine, pp.
42 - 48, speaks of a field in the plain of Genesareth, where
all the conditions involved in this parable were fulfilled ; —
the cornfield running down to the lake, the trodden pathway
through it, the rich soil, the rocky ground protruding into it
here and there, large bushes of thorns springing up in it,
and countless birds of all kinds.
The object of the parable is to show the different states of
mind, on account of which different persons hear the same
truth with such widely different results. There is the
hardened mind, which, hearing the word but not understand-
ing it, does not take it in at all, but leaves it on the surface
to be carried away at once by the slightest temptation, the
first suggestion of the wicked one. There is the shallow
mind, quick and transient in its emotions, receiving it with
a momentary warmth of joy which causes it quickly to
spring up, but the plani having no depth of character in
which to take root, in the first heats of opposition or perse-
cution wilts away. There is the rich, strong mind, already
preoccupied by other things, which receives it with them.
But they, the cares of the world, the deceitful allurements
of riches, the pleasures of fife, and, as Mark says, the pas-
sionate desires for other things, strangle it, and though it
struggles along with them, it brings no fruit to perfection.
Then there are the good and honest minds which, in pro-
portion to their strength, bring forth fruit, a hundred, sixty,
or thirty fold.
10-23. — Teaching in Parables.
This conversation, see Mark iv. 10, took place privately
afterwards, and is introduced here parenthetically by the
MATTHEW XIII. 10-23. 239
writer as in the proper place for the explanations which it
gives. After Jesus had withdrawn from the multitudes, and
the disciples seeing that he had not been understood, asked
him why he spoke to the multitudes in parables ? " Because,"
he replied, " while to you [whose spiritual perceptions are
awakened] the hitherto undeclared mysteries of the king-
dom of heaven are revealed, yet (Mark iv. 11) to them
who are without," i. e. who are not my disciples, "all things
are in parables," i. e. are not plain, but veiled and hidden.
It made no difference, therefore, to them whether he spoke
in parables or not. They would not in any case understand
him. But if, in the plainest terms, he should declare the
truths which were embodied in these parables, they would
misapprehend entirely the nature of his kingdom, and some
of them would violently oppose him, while others with equal
violence, as in John vi. 15, would endeavor to force him to
become their king. In order to avoid this, and at the same
time to impart encouragement and instruction to those who in
lowliness and simplicity of heart were waiting for his king-
dom, he adopted a method of teaching, which, while it
taught nothing to those whose views and characters were
all wrong, gave the needed help to those who were ready to
receive it. Under this kind of instruction, it was peculiarly
true, 12, that to him who had, i. e. who had the teachable
spirit, it was given, i. e. was given to understand the words
of Christ, and from him who had not this spirit was taken
away even that which he had, viz. the sort of understand-
ing which he might have had, if plain instructions had been
given. Thus it was strictly true that Jesus spoke to them
in parables, ^^ because they did not," or, as in Mark iv. 12,
and Luke viii. 10, " in order that they might not," under-
stand, while they saw and heard him. If they had caught
the only meaning respecting his kingdom which they were
capable of receiving from the plainest instructions, it would
probably have led to violence and the premature close of
his ministry. The parables were as letters in cipher, intel-
240 MATTHEW XIII. 24-30.
ligible to his friends, but without meaning to those who did
not belong to him.
24-30. — Thk Tares and the Wheat.
The parable of the sower speaks of the different results
produced by the same seed according to the different states
of mind in those who receive it. This parable of the tares
and wheat is to illustrate the different effects produced
by different sorts of seed. If we interpret the parable
and its explanation, 38, 39, literally, we find that good
men proceed from seed sown by the Son of Man, and bad
men from seed sown by the Devil. But the words are
not to be construed so strictly. As, in the parable of
the sower, the seed was identified with the man in whom
it grew up, so here the man is identified with the seed
which essentially modified his whole nature. The tares
are a bastard sort of wheat, or a mischievous plant, not
easily distinguished from good wheat in the early stages
of its growth. Both therefore for a time must be per-
mitted to grow up together, since the bad cannot be
rooted up without injury to the good. But when they
have reached their maturity, and their entirely different
characters are manifest, a separation is made. The good
wheat is preserved, the bad consumed.
The doctrine of the existence of moral evil and the
delay in its punishment is here compressed into a single
sentence. The most labored and profound investigations
of philosophy have not been able to go farther, or to
throw even a clouded ray of additional light on this dark
and terrible problem. Those who are interested to know
how far this problem may be solved without the aid of
Christianity by a very able, thoughtful, and devout man,
would do well to read, in Plutarch's Morals, his fine essay
" Concerning those whom God is slow to punish.** Amono*
other less weighty cpnsideratious which he illustrates with
MATTHEW XIII. 24-30. 241
pertinent examples, he says that punishment may be de-
layed in order to give those who commit great crimes
an opportunity to do what good they will. The man who
gains a kingdom by crime may then seek to make up
for his crime by using his power for good ends, and the
world would be the loser if he were cut off at once.
Or the offender's life may be spared, because his own
conscience, in the apprehensions and terrors which it holds
over him, may inflict a more dreadful punishment than
immediate death. Or if the punishment is deferred in
this world, it is only that it may hereafter be inflicted
with the greater severity, before its purpose is accom-
plished, and the man's sin and guilt purged away. Or
it may be in order to allow an opportunity for amend-
ment, which is shown by the example of a young man
who, after a dissolute, dishonest, and cruel course of life,
being stunned by a fall and while in a swoon seeing as
in another world how crimes are exposed, the souls of
the guilty turned inside out, and vengeance wreaked upon
them, he determined to reform his character, and lived
afterwards purely and uprightly. Jesus goes far deeper
than this into the very constitution and nature of things.
Without exposure and temptation to evil, we conclude
from his teachings, there can be no virtue. Bad deeds
and men cannot be extirpated now except by destroying
the good with them. Evil does exist. It cannot be rooted
out without rooting out also the virtues that are growing
with it, and which often in the early period of their
growth can hardly be distinguished from it. Nor can
bad men be destroyed at once without a fatal influence
on the good. But by and by, when their deeds and
characters have fully developed themselves, in the con-
summation to them of this earthly dispensation, that is,
in the end of the world to each of them, a separation
shall be made in accordance with the principles of a
righteous retribution. In these parables Jesus "gathers
21
242 MATTHEW XIII. 24-30.
up ages into one season of seed-time and of harvest."
So the end of the world, or the day of judgment to each
individual when his earthly course is ended, is set forth
by one majestic figure in which all the generations of
men are brought together to be separated according to
what they have done, 41, 42, and been, 48 - 50.
There are nowhere more sublime images of moral grand-
eur than are placed before us here. Earthly scenes that
impress themselves most powerfully on the imagination,
earthly thrones and kingdoms and the mightiest displays
of human authority shrink away. " The field is the world.
The harvest is the end of the world. The reapers are
the angels The Son of man shall send forth
his angels and he shall gather out of his kingdom all
those who cause others to sin, and all who work iniquity,
and shall cast them into a furnace of fire; there shall
be the wailing and gnashing of teeth. Then shall the
righteous shine forth as the sun, in the kingdom of, their
Father." The last sentence would probably come with
still greater force to the Jews from its bringing to their
minds a most impressive passage in one of their sublimest
prophets. " And they that be wise shall shine as the bright-
ness of the firmament ; and they that turn many to right-
eousness, as the stars for ever and ever." (Daniel xii. 3.)
To them at least, language like this used by the sacred
writers of old, and for generations educating the hearts
of the people to a deeper solemnity, became, when inter-
mingled with the speech of Jesus, more impressive than
words wholly unfamiUar to them could have been.
We do not like to discuss the duration of future punish-
ment in the presence of images such as are thrown around
the condition of the wicked hereafter. Jesus undoubtedly
intended to represent them as full of misery. But he
says nothing in this place, if he does anywhere, in re-
gard to the period of its continuance ; not one word to
show whether, like tares, the wicked themselves shall be
MATTHEW XIII. 24-30. 243
Utterly burned up, or whether the penal fires (taken of
course in a figurative sense) shall only consume and purge
away their sins, so that at last (as is intimated in 1 Cor.
XV. 24-28), after we know not how many years or ages,
they may be restored to life and peace, or whether they
are left there in endless sin and pain. He places before
us in the most impressive and terrible language the dread-
ful character and consequences of sin, that we may be
warned against it; and it is much wiser in us, — it shows
a deeper reverence for him, to use these expressions as
undefined but awful warnings for ourselves and others,
than by attempting to lessen or to aggravate their horrors
by any speculations of ours in regard to the precise method
of inflicting punishment, or the term of its duration. Why
can we not learn to respect the reserve of Jesus in re-
gard to such themes?
The field is the world according to our use of the
word. The harvest is the end of the world, the consum-
mation of the cBon, age, or dispensation, as applied to the
Jewish nation and to each individual soul. See Note.
In this great field of the world we are sowing seed, and
at the same time are ourselves growing up and ripening
for the harvest. Whatsoever we sow, that shall we also
reap. " For he that soweth to his flesh, shall of the flesh
reap corruption ; but he that soweth to the Spirit, shall
of the Spirit reap everlasting life." (Gal. vi. 8.) As in
the ripened fruit, every shower that fell upon it, every
hour of sunshine, every night that folded it round with
darkness, every ingredient in the soil beneath, entered
into its texture, and helped to make it what it is in the
time of harvest, so with us, every incident in life, the
passions we indulge, the actions we perform, the hopes
we cherish or reject, the privileges we improve or leave
unimproved, are entering into the texture of our souls,
and preparing us, or leaving us unprepared, for the harvest.
Nothing that has entered into our life's experience shall
244 MATTHEW XIII. 24-30.
be lost. Our riches and honors, our pleasant homes and
comfortable situations, except in their influence on the
soul, shall pass from us. But every kind deed that we
have done, every pang of contrition, every earnest effort
in behalf of what is good, every prayer that we have
uttered from the heart, every longing after hohness, every
unselfish affection that we have cherished and obeyed,
every sorrow that has helped to w^ean us from the world
or draw us towards God, every pain or disappointment
patiently or meekly borne, — every one of these, in the
influences which it is having upon us, shall be gathered
in, the only treasures we can carry with us, when our harvest,
which is the end of the world to each one of us, shall
come. And the harvest must be whenever the Son of
man shall send forth his reapers, the angels, to gather
us in. The little child that without one questioning thought
or fear resigns itself into their hands, though but an open-
ing bud, is gathered into the harvest of its Lord. The
young girl who, through some mysterious sympathy with
them or some strange monition to the soul, seems to hear
the sound of their coming from afar, and without appre-
hension or surprise composes herself for the solemn change,
and with encouraging farewells and a perfect trust leaves
all that she loves on earth, goes already ripe for the
harvest. The aged servant, of Christ who has long been
waiting for his Master's call, departs from us at last as
one prepared and ripened for the kingdom of Heaven.
He has finished his labors ; he has had his trials. He has
been opposed and maligned, he has been praised and
honored by man ; but he has done justly, loved mercy,
and walked humbly with his God. Nothing that he has
once gained in his religious progress is lost. His principles
confirmed by a life of scrupulous fidelity; his mind ex-
panded and enriched by a conscientious search aft.er truth ;
his affections chastened and mellowed by disappointments
and sorrows ; his faith strengthened by every varying ex-
MATTHEW XIII. 24-30. 245
perience of life and carried into every department of ac-
tivity and thought ; — all growing up and ripening here under
the clouds or sunshine of God's love, are gathered in when
the revolving years have completed their circuit, and to
him the end of the world, — the fulfilment and consummation
of the age, — has come. And the wicked too ! — ; There is
no more sublime or beautiful or awful picture than this
of the world as a field, and the end of the world as
the harvest, in which for joy or sorrow we all of us shall
be gathered in.
The Wicked Oxe.
But how are we here to interpret " the wicked one,"
" the enemy," " the devil " and " the angels " ? As already
stated, we are not to press the adjuncts of a parable too
literally. They are to be considered as the surrounding
scenery fitted to make an impression on the mind through
the imagination, and thus prepare it to receive the truth
which is taught. When Jesus speaks of a merchantman
finding one pearl of great price, and selling all that he
has in order to purchase that, we do not suppose that
he asserts this as a fact which had actually taken place.
He holds it up as a picture to illustrate an important
truth ; and this it does equally well, whether he regarded
it as a veritable fact or as an imaginary incident. Some
of the parables may have been suggested by passing
events ; but the particulars he undoubtedly supplied and
arranged in such a way as might most effectually accom-
plish his purpose, as a teacher of divine truth. And this
is the case, whether he draws his illustrations from familiar
and well-known objects here, as the Sower and his Seed,
the Good Samaritan, and the Prodigal Son, or from objects
which lie beyond our personal cognizance, as the devil, the
angels, &c. For example, in the parable of the Rich Man
and Lazarus (Luke xvi. 19-31), as in the details be
21*
246 - MATTHEW XIII. 24-30.
longing to this world, the crumbs, the dogs, the sores,
we do not suppose that Jesus speaks of facts which actu-
ally took place in precisely the manner there represented ;
so in the details belonging to another world, the being
carried by the angels into Abraham's bosom, the con-
versation between the rich man and Lazarus, the gulf
and the flames, we do not suppose that Jesus intended to
set before us a representation of literal facts which actu-
ally took place. Are we to give a more strict and hteral
interpretation to the terms which are used here ?
It is impossible to draw a line which shall distinguish
precisely between what is literal and what is figurative,
what is a matter of fact and what is imaginative. The
two provinces are constantly interpenetrating one another,
in such a way as to set forth the central truth with the
greatest distinctness and power. A few considerations, how-
ever, may help us to a just interpretation.
In borrowing images from the outward world Jesus
never, so far as we know, draws them from fabulous
orders of being. The particular man, tares, wheat, pearl,
leaven, which he refers to, may be imagined or assumed
for the occasion ; but they all belong to species which
have an actual existence, and he never attributes to
them properties which they do not really possess. There
is eveiywhere this rigid conformity to the great essential
facts of nature. Have we not a right to infer that in
going beyond this world there will be the same adherence
to the great essential facts of existence ? As he never
here draws his illustrations from any species of plant, ani-
mal, or other being, which does not really exist, will he
speak to us of orders of beings there who have only a
fabulous existence? In going beyond this material world,
and placing before us agents of whom we cannot judge
from our personal knowledge, but whom he with his spirit-
ual powers of vision could recognize, would he be likely
to speak of beings wholly fabulous and imaginary as if
MATTHEW XIH. 24-30. 247
they really existed, or assign to them in their relation
to us very important offices which they do not hold ? We
may doubt whether the angels carried Lazarus and placed
him in Abraham's bosom. These are only incidental illus-
trations which answer the same purpose, whether they are
literally true or not. But, in the face of what Jesus says
there and here, can we doubt that there are such beings
as angels, and that they, as God's ministers, hold important
relations to us ? So, when he speaks of the evil one, the
enemy, the devil, Satan, we may doubt as to the special
agency assigned to such a being in any particular case;
but are we at liberty to say that the very idea of such
a personage is drawn from a wholly fabulous and imaginary
order of beings ? When Jesus speaks, 42, of casting the
wicked into a furnace of fire, we are not obliged to take
it as a literal fact. It may be, and probably is, only a
terrific image borrowed from what is most dreadful in
this world to describe the intolerable anguish of the guilty
in the world to come. The illustration, however, is drawn,
not from a fabulous source, but from something which has
a substantial basis of reality. Nor can it be shown that
in a single instance Jesus has in any of his instructions
assumed the existence of anything which belonged to a
fabulous class of beings. What right, then, have we to
suppose that the moment he goes beyond the reach of
our faculties and the limits of this world, he violates the
proprieties of truth which he always observes where we
have the .power to judge, and sets before us orders of
beings which have no existence, as if they really existed,
and sustained some important relations to us ?
Another consideration is entitled to some weight ; though
it ought not to be pressed so far as it is by some of our
ablest modern commentators. The language here, 19, 39,
41, is taken, not from the parables, but from the explanation
which Jesus gave of two of his parables. When, therefore,
he says, " He who sows the good seed is the Son of
248 MATTHEW XIII. 24-30.
man," and "he who sows the tares is the devil," by what
principle of interpretation are we justified in accepting one
chiuse of the sentence as true, and rejecting the other
as merely an accommodation to the false ideas and preju-
dices of the Jews? His language asserts, as distinctly
as language can, the existence and agency of an evil
spirit. It does this while explaining the meaning of a
parable, in a private and confidential conversation with
his disciples.
We must not, however, insist on a literal application
of his words in all their particulars even here. In verses
19 and 20, we see in a similar explanation how figurative
and literal expressions are blended together. The in-
sufficiency of a language unused to the expression of ab-
stract ideas required a liberal and constant use of figurative
terms. Truths relating to the unseen spiritual world must
be set forth by such images as can be received h\ those
who are addressed. The most exact terms that can be
used even now to give an idea of spiritual beings and
agencies are doubtless only such clouded images of divine
truth as we are able to receive, seeing them, according
to St. Paul (1 Cor. xiii. 12), not face to face, but " darkly,
as by the reflection of a mirror." When Jesus says, that
he will send forth his angels to gather together those
who have been stumbling-blocks in the way of others and
those who work iniquity, and cast them into a furnace
of fire where there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth,
we are to consider these as terms which set before us,
in language as exact and intelligible as any that could be
used, the momentous fact of a future retribution. The images
must, from the nature of the case, be borrowed from what
is known and experienced in this world. Earthly facts
and conceptions are made to set forth " darkly "the higher
facts belonging to our spiritual natures when they shall
be transferred to a spiritual world. 8till, if the angels
and the devU have no personal existence, or no personal
MATTHEW Xlir. 24-30. 249
agency in bringing about the results here placed before
u.>, is it easy to suppose that Jesus would have used such
language merely by way of accommodating himself to the
prejudices and false conceptions of the Jews ? In meeting
the Greeks wlio are spoken of in John xii. 20, could he
have taught them, by conceptions drawn from iheir my-
thology, and going necessarily to confirm them in their
erroneous habits of belief? Could he have spoken to them
of Centaurs, of Rhadamanthus, of Jupiter and Pan, as he
does to the Jews, of Satan, and the angels ?
It is said that the idea of Satan, or, as Dr. Palfrey calls
it, " the mythology of an evil spirit (answering to the Oriental
Ahrimmi)^ Lectures on the Jewish Scriptures, Vol. IV. p.
21, was learned by the Jews from the Chaldaeans during their
seventy years captivity in Babylon. This is possible. The
word Satan with this signification occurs but two or three
times in the Old Testament, viz. 1 Chron. xxi. 1, Zech.
iii. 1, 2, and perhaps in the first and second chapters of
Job. Before the time of Christ, the doctrine (of which
hardly a trace is to be found in the Old Testament) per-
vaded the philosophy and religious conceptions of the Jews.
But may it not be, that, in the providential training of the
Jews for the reception of higher religious ideas, the notions
of diabolical as well as of angelic agencies, which grew up
round the sublime Theism that became more and more
the established faith of the nation, may have performed
an important work in preparing them for the idea of a
great Christian commonwealth, the kingdom of God, or
of the heavens ? To them, at the time of our Saviour's
comino-, the invisible realms were peopled with hving beings,
acting as God's agents, or in opposition to his wilL Tlie
contest between good and evil was not confined to this
visible world of theirs. Through their long and varied
experience, these ideas were added to the Theism taught
by Moses, and had become incorporated among their estab-
lished religious conceptions and convictions. They held
250 MATTHEW Xlll. 24-30.
no small or unimportant place in their religious culture.
If thej were false, Jesus might have left them, as he
did most of the prevailing sins and errors without specific
notice, to vanish away and perish, before the higher con-
ceptions of truth and duty which he came to reveal. But
if they were false, and as false pernicious also, could he,
not merely in his reasoning with the Jews, but in his
private instructions to his disciples, from the temptation
in the wilderness to his last solemn conversation with
them the evening before his crucifixion (Luke xxii. 31,
John xiv. 30, xvi. 11), have used language which must
have confirmed them in the belief that those false ideas
and conceptions were true ? He has left no word which
condemns or calls them in question. On the other hand,
they harmonize with all that he has taught us respecting
the unseen world, and God's methods of action there as
here through intervening agents.
It is sometimes suggested, that Jesus may have shared
the opinions of his age in regard to this subject, and so
have been mistaken in his views. We know that he
emphatically disclaimed for himself (Mark xiii. 32) the
gift of omniscience. But in regard to any doctrine which
he has taught, we have no disposition to go behind or to
question his authority. To us his word, clearly announced
and understood, is evidence and authority enough. Those
who are interested in this subject are particularly requested
to read the note to verse 39 of this chapter, and to remem-
ber that, even though such a being or such beings as a devil
or devils exist, our popular or even our philosophical notions
respecting them are not therefore to be assumed as true or
as reasonable.
MATTHEW XIII. 251
NOTE S.
The same day went Jesus out of the house, and sat by the
9 sea-side ; and great multitudes were gathered together unto
him, so that he went into a sliip, and sat ; and the whole multi-
3 tude stood on the shore. And he spake many things unto them
4 in parables, saying : Behold, a sower went forth to sow. And
when he sowed, some seeds fell by the way-side ; and the fowls
6 came and devoured them up. Some fell upon stony places,
where they had not much earth ; and forthwith they sprung
6 up, because they had no deepness of earth ; and when the
sun was up, they were scorched; and because they had no
7 root, they withered away. And some fell among thorns ; and
8 the thorns sprung up, and choked them. But other fell into
good ground ; and brought forth fruit, some an hundred-fold,
9 some sixty-fold, some thirty-fold. Who hath ears to hear, let
10 him hear. And the disciples came, and said unto him,
11 Why speakest thou unto them in parables ? He answered and
said unto them : Because it is given unto you to know the
mysteries of the kingdom of Heaven; but to them it is not
12 given. For whosoever hath, to him shall be given, and he
2. a ship] or rather a boat adapt- of Heaven, in the church abound-
ed in its form and dimensions to the ing in Christian virtues and graces,
size of the lalce, and the purposes in the community where Christian
for which it was used. ideas and affections are bringing
and. sat] while the multitude stood, forth their pure and peaceable and
" So was the manner of the nation, beautiful fruits, that the truths of
that the masters, when they read our religion are to be seen. Their
their lectures, sat, and the scholars whole character and influence can
stood." Lightfoot. 3. Be- be recognized only in that world
hold, a sower went forth to where all the harvest matured and
sow] The litei-al translation is perfected is gathered in.
more picturesque, and brings the 11. mysteries of the kingdom
whole scene more vividly before us, of Heaven] the system of Divine
" Bthold, the sower went forth to sow.'''' counsels, doctrines, and ordinances.
There is a profound truth conveyed which, as above man's powers of
under this image of sowing seed, discovery, was revealed through
The truths which Jesus taught were Jesus Christ. The word mystery,
not dead and unproductive ; but " when used in the New Testament
seeds endowed with an inward vi- respecting any doctrine or tnith,
tality, and to be undei'stood and ap- means one Avhich has been secret or
predated only in the living plants unknown, but is now revealed. It
and luxuriant harvests into which never denotes one which is obscure
they should grow up when. received or mysterious, because partially in-
into good and honest hearts. It is comprehensible," Norton.
in the soul ripened for the kingdom 12. whosoever hath] In propor-
252 MATTHEW XIII.
shall have more abundance ; but whosoever hath not, from him
shall be taken away even that he hath. Therefore speak I to 13
them in parables, because they seeing see not, and hearing
they hear not, neither do tliey understand. And in them is 14
fulfilled the prophecy of Esaias, which saith: " By hearing ye
shall hear, and shall not understand ; and seeing ye shall see,
and shall not perceive. For this people's heart is waxed gross, is
and their ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes they have
closed, lest at any tune they should see with their eyes, and
hear with their ears, and should understand with their heart,
and should be converted, and I should heal them." But blessed 16
are yoiu* eyes, for they see; and your ears, for they hear.
For verily I say unto you, that many prophets and righteous 17
men have desired to see those things which ye see, and have
not seen them ; and to hear those things which ye hear, and
have not heard them. Hear ye therefore the parable of the I8
sower. When any one heareth the word of the kingdom, and 19
understandeth it not, then cometh the wicked one, and catcheth
away that which was sown in his heart ; this is he which re-
ceived seed by the way-side. But he that received the seed 20
into stony places, the same is he that heareth the wonl, and
anon with joy receiveth it; yet hath he not root in himself, 21
but dureth for a while ; for when tribulation or persecution
tion to a man's spiritual suscepti- Apostles. A great spiritual fact,
bility and his fidelity will be what like that Avhich is here announced
he gains from the teachings and in the blinding and hardening effect
life of Jesus. 14. in theih of sin, reaches forward with its pro-
is fulfilled] " In them is filled phetic warning to all times, and is
up," or re-fulfilled, " the prophecy fulfilled in the religious experience
of Isaiah," i, e. what the prophet of all who belong to the class which
said (Isa. vi. 9, 10) of the blind- it points out. In verses 14 and 15, is
ing effect, in his day, of disobedi- ascribed to the perverse and unbe-
ence and practical infidelity, finds lieving Jews, in the language of tlie
its fulfilment, and is equally tme prophet, the etfect of such'wicked-
now. John, xii. 38-40, applies the ness as theirs, which was to dull
same words on another occasion, their religious sensibilities, " This
and many years afterwards, Paul people's heart is waxed gross." — to
(Acts xxviii. 25-27) applied them cloud their spiritual perceptions,—
with great emphasis to the unbeliev- " their ears are dull of hearing, and
ing Jews in Rome. In these diff"er- their eves thev have closed," — so
ent applications of the same pro- tliat thev could not at anv time —
phetic words as being fulfilled in " lest at anv time thev should " —
different people, at different times, see and understand their true con-
and under different circumstances, dition, and turn in penitence— " be
we have an intimation of one of the converted " — to God, and be hen led
ways in which the ancient prophe- bv him. 20. stony placpsl
cies were applied by Jesus and the Rather, rocky ground, — a little
MATTHEW XIII. 253
22 ariseth because of the word, by and by he is offended. He
also that received seed among the thorns is he that heareth the
word, and the care of this world, and the deceitfulness of riches,
23 choke the word, and he becometh unfruitful. But he that re-
ceived seed into the good ground is he that heareth the word,
and understandeth it; which also beareth fruit, and bringeth
forth, some an hundred-fold, some sixty, some thirty.
24 Another parable put he forth unto them, saying : The kingdom
of heaven is likened unto a man which sowed good seed in his
25 field. But while men slept, his enemy came, and sowed tares
26 among the wheat ; and went his way. But when the blade
was sprung up, and brought forth fruit, then appeared the
a7 tares also. So the servants of the householder came and said
unto him. Sir, didst not thou sow good seed in thy field ? from
28 whence then hath it tares ? He said unto them, An enemy
hath done this. The servants said unto him. Wilt thou then
29 that we go and gather them up ? But he said. Nay ; lest
while ye gather up the tares, ye root up also the wheat with
30 them: Let both grow together until the harvest ; and in the
time of harvest I will say to the reapers. Gather ye together
first the tares, and bind them in bundles, to burn them; but
earth scattered on the large rocks is represented, 31, 32, as a
which lie beneath. 23. he spreading out its branches, and fur-
that heareth the word, and nishing shelter to those who seek it.
understandeth it 1 contrasted with Next it is represented, 33, as an in-
hini, V. 19, who heareth and under- fluence, reaching through the man,
standeth not. 24. The king- or the world, subduing and assimilat-
dom of Heaven] Literally, the ing all things to itself. Then it ap-
kingdom of the heavens, as if to de- pears, 44, as a hidden treasure, to
note different spheres of life, one be- set forth its exceeding preciousness,
yond another, and all pervaded by as a pearl of great price, to indicate
the spirit of God. The widely differ- at once its costliness and its beauty ;
ent applications of the term' in this and finally, 47, 48, as a net drawing
chapter show how comprehensive good and bad alike into its folds,
and how various was the thought out of the sea of time to the shores
which Jesus set forth, and how rich of eternity, that they may there be
and full of meaning his language separated according to what they
Avas. Having ascertained precisely are. 25 - 40. tares] a
what his words mean in one case, species of darnel or bastard wheat,
we are not therefore at libertv to fix which, according to St. Jerome, who
on that as their onlv interpretation lived in Palestine, was till the ear
whenever we mav meet them. The was formed, so much hke the good
kin^^dom of Heaven is here first rep- wheat that it could not, without
resented, 24-29, 38-43, as a king- much difficulty, be distinguished
dom embracing, not those alone who from it. His enemy "^sowed [the
continue good, but also those who i\e](\] over agnin " [fTrfOTretpfi/J
are corrupted by evil influences. It ^jth tares, the force of the origi-
22
254: MATTHEW xiir.
gather the wheat Into my barn. Another parable put he 3i
forth unto them saying : The kingdom of Heaven is like to a
grain of mustard seed, which a man took and sowed in his field.
Which indeed is the least of all seeds ; but when it is grown, 33
it is the greatest among herbs, and becometh a tree, so that
the birds of the air come and lodge in the branches thereof,
Another parable spake he unto them: The kingdom of 33
Heaven is like unto leaven, which a woman took, and hid in
three measures of meal, till the whole was leavened. All 34
tliese things spake Jesus unto the multitude in parables, and
without a parable spake he not unto them ; that it might be 35
fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet, saying: "I will
open my mouth in parables; I will utter things which have
been kept secret from the foundation of the world."
Then Jesus sent the multitude away, and went into the 36
house. And his disciples came unto him, sa^-ing, Declare unto
us the parable of the tares of the field. He answered and said 37
unto them, He that soweth the good seed is the Son of man;
the field is the world; the good seed are the cliildren of 38
the kingdom ; but the tares are the children of the wicked
nal word is impaired in our ver- t^^^ smallest beginnings, spreads out
sion. The man, v. 24, sowed; his Jts branches for those who might
enemy sowed over again, or upon seek a shelter within them,
what had ah-eady been sown. 33. leaven] The leaven shows its
32. so that the birds power of imparting its own proper-
of the air come and lodge in ties to those who receive it, and
its branches] Rackets, '' llhis- assimilating them till thev partake
trations of Scripture," p. 124, speaks ?f its own nature. " Another strik-
of this plant, which he found in i"o point of comparison," says Al-
blossom, full grown, in some cases foi'd, " is the fact that leaven, as
six, seven, and nine feet high. "But "^ed ordinarily, is a piece of the
still," he says, " the branches or leavened loaf put amongst the
stems of the branches were not very dough, just as the kingdom of
large, or, apparently, very strong, heaven is the renewal of humanity-
Can the birds,' I said to mvself, by the righteous Man Christ Jesus."
rest upon them?' 'At 38. the field is the
fnilT/i!"''''"^ ; • • •/ ^"^ '^^^'^^ world] AfoV/zoy, the world this out-
fhroth ?hTair ' ^itf T^' ^'^''' ''''''^ u.liverse or world, according to
Z7n tr^^aXS^rt?^' ^^- --t is" Ihrena^ of the'woHd]
eyCto^:Sf<^;Ks!;S:fS ^^.;. ^^??^«"^ --^ ^^ "-^
richest music." The mustard-seed i- ^^ " ^^ <^'>«, — an age
and the plant growing from it iilus- ?l O'spensation, — referring, not to
trate the self-developincr power bv outward universe, but in this
which the religion of Jesus from ^''^'^,® »"«1^1^>"?C our earthly discipline
ucsub, iiom and experience. The harvest is the
MATTHEW XIII.
255
39 one ; the enemy that sowed them is the devil ; the harvest is
40 the end of the world ; and the reapers are the angels. As,
consummation of the ceo«, the age,
or dispensation in which we now
live, and our consequent entrance
on another, and (with the faithful)
higher age or dispensation. Aicoi/,
as applied to tlie Jews, includes
everything relating to their condi-
tion and experience under the Mo-
saic dispensation, and the consum-
mation of the (EO?i, — the end of the
world, — to them was the overthrow
of the Jewish polity at the destruc-
tion of Jeinxsalem in the year 70,
and the consequent advent of a new
ceon, — the coming of the Son of
man, — in the establishment of the
Christian religion, which was the
fulfilment or consummation of the
Jewish dispensation. But in its
wider application, as in the passage
before us, ceon refers to our whole
earthly dispensation and experience,
and includes everything that may
act upon us in this life. The con-
summation of the ceon, or end of the
world, means the consummation of
our earthly life, whether for good or
for evil. But on leaving this ceon,
we enter into another, and the ad-
jective, aloiviosi or ceonian, which
is translated eternal and everlasting
(Matt. XXV. 46), is borrowed from
this next ceon, and is applied to
qualities and conditions, which,
whether for weal or woe, shall be-
long to us in that more advanced
stage of our existence. ^'Kiei^al
life " is the blessedness which be-
longs to that condition of our being,
and which, in its elementary prin-
ciples, as Jesus has said (John vi.
47), may begin within us now; and
eternal (not everlasting, for the
idea of time is not included in the
word), — " eternal punishment " is
the soiTOw and anguish which shall
belong to those who enter unpre-
pared into that more advanced ceon
or stage of existence, and which, in
its elementary principles, may begin
within us now. See p. 229. 39. the
enemy that sowed them is the
devil] We must be careful not to
press this matter too far. The ex-
istence of evil spirits, and especially
of one pre-eminent among them as
the wicked one, the devil, or Satan, is
not to be held to by us as among the
facts which Jesus lias unquestion-
ably taught. Our view of the sub-
ject has been stated in Chapters IV.
and VIII. We have no doubt that
the Evangelists believed in such ex-
istences and agencies. From a
careful study of the language of
Jesus, we incline to think that he
also believed in them. But a close
and critical examination of all that
he has said on the subject has satis-
fied us, 1. That he did not directly
teach the existence and agency
of such beings; and, 2. That, in
almost every case where he speaks
of the devil or Satan, his words are
certainly to be taken in a figurative
sense. The word Satan is used six-
teen times in the Gospels ; but, ex-
cept in the passages given below,
viz. 1, 4, and 7, whei-e it is used as
synonymous with devil, it occurs
oidy on five different occasions.
1. Matt. xii. 26: "If Satan cast
out Satan," Avhere Jesus is arguing
with the Jews from their own point
of view. 2. Matt. xvi. 23 : '' Get
thee behind me, Satan," words ad-
dressed to Peter. 3. Luke x. 18 : "I
beheld Satan as lightning fall from
heaven," language evidently figura-
tive. 4. Luke xiii. 16: " Whom
Satan hath bound, lo ! these eighteen
years," language personifying the
cause of disease as Satan. 5. Luke
xxii. 31: " Behold, Satan hath
sought for you, that he may sift
you as wheat." The principles of
spiritual evil may be personified
hei-e as that of physical evil in the
previous passage. In every one of
these cases the expression may be
construed as a striking and natural
figure of speech withoiit necessarily
implying the personal existence of
an evil spirit. The word devil,
did^oXos, not demon, occurs in the
Gospels on seven different occasions :
1. In the account of the Tempta-
tion. 2. Matt. xiii. 39: "Theene-
256
MATTHEW XIII.
therefore, the tares are gathered and burned in the fire, so
shall it be in the end of this world. The Son of man shall 41
mv that sowed them is the devil."
S.^Matt. XXV. 41: "Into everlasting
fire, prepared for the devil and his
angels." 4. Luke viii. 12 : " Then
cometh the devil and taketh away
the word out of their hearts," par-
allel to Matt. xiii. 19, where the ex-
pression " the wicked one " is used,
and to Mark iv. 15, where the word
" Satan" is used. -5. John vi. 70:
" Have not I chosen you twelve, and
one of you is a devil?" 6. John
viii. 44: " Ye are of your fother, the
devil." 7. John xiii. 2 : " The devil
having put it into the heart of Judas
Iscariot to betray him." In verse
27 of the same 'chapter, it. reads,
" And after the sop, Satan entered
into him."
The first and seventh of these
instances may be set aside as the
language of the Evangelists, and not
of Jesus. The seventh may be in-
terpreted figuratively ; and as to the
first, we refer to our comments on
the account of the Temptation in
Chapter IV.
The fifth case, " Have I not
chosen you twelve, and one of you
is a devil? " is certainly figurative,
and gives a decisive intimation of
the Avay in which the word may
have been used by Jesus. It is prob-
able that this expression refer-
ring to Judas may have led to the
use of the same term by St. John,
when speaking of Judas in the sev-
enth instance.
The sixth case is as follows : " Ye
are of your father, the devil, and the
lusts of your father ye wish to do.
He was a mixrderer from the begin-
ning, and stood not in the truth;
because there is no tmth in him.
When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh
of his own ; for he is a liar, and the
father of it." The natural and ob-
vious interpretation, at first sight,
of this rather extended description
of the devil, would be a litei-al one
applying to a personal being actu-
ally existing and answering to this
cliaracter ; but on a closer inspec-
tion of the passage, we see that the
word father cannot be used in a
literal, but only in a spiritual sense;
and does not this almost require, in
order to the harmony and complete-
ness of the meaning, that the rest
of the passage should likewise be
taken, not in its literal, but in its
spiritual sense ? Is not the extended
description given to show in what
sense Jesus used the word, devil,
viz. as the impersonation of wicked-
ness ? — Ye are of your father the
devil, that spirit of wickedness,
■which prompted to the first mur-
der, which is the very essence and
parent of what is false ; and on ac-
count of your affinity with it, ye
believe me not, because I tell you
the tiiith. As he had a little while
before refeiTcd to Judas as a devil
(John vi. 70), because of his wick-
edness, so he may here call the Jews
the children of the devil, because of
their affinity with what is evil. As
in the one' case, the word devil as
the personification of wickedness is
applied to a bad man, why may it
not in the other case be used in the
same way as the personification of
evil, especially of murder and false-
hood, to describe the spirit and tem-
per of the Jews who were seeking
his life and refusing to receive the
truth? Does not this better adapt
itself to the inw;ard and profound
thought of Jesusj than the interpre-
tation which requires him here to
speak literally of a personal devil
in his direct and personal relation to
them? Even if Jesus had believed
in such a being, would not this figu-
rative and spiritual application of
the terra be more natural and moi-e
in accordance with his usual mode
of speech?
In the fourth case, " Then cometh
the devil, and taketh the word out
of their hearts," or, as it is in Matt,
xiii. 19: " Then cometh the Avicked
one and catcheth away that which
is sown in his heart," the whole
sentence is figurative, and this word
is plainly used to personify the evil
influences which remove from shal-
low minds the truths which they
gladly receive in a moment of re-
MATTHEW XIII.
257
send forth lils angels, and they shall gather out of his kingdom
42 all things that offend, and them which do iniquity, and shall
cast them into a furnace of fire ; there shall be wailing and
43 gnashing of teeth. Then shall the righteous shine forth, as
the sun, in the kingdom of their Father. Who hath ears to
44 hear, let him hear. Again the kingdom of Heaven is like
unto treasure hid in a field, the which, when a man hath found,
he liideth, and for joy thereof goeth and selleth all that he
45 hath, and buyeth that field. Again the kingdom of Heav-
46 en is like unto a merchant-man, seeking goodly pearls ; who,
llgious excitement, but which they
do not understand.
Tliei'e remain now only two pas-
sages to be considered. "One is tlie
awful declaration, " Depart from
me, ye cursed, into everlasting
fire, prepared for the devil and
his angels." The other is the pas-
sage before us, " The enemy that
sowed them is the devil." It may
be, that Jesus meant nothing more
in either case than the impersonation
of evil. The accompanying lan-
guage in both instances is intensely
figurative. It is difficult to distin-
guish between the main point of his
instructions and the images under
which it was conveyed. But the
presumption to our mind is, that in
using language such as this, he
does iraplv the actual, personal ex-
istence o^ such beings as are sug-
gested by the words, " the devil and
his angels." He has never directly
taught the existence of such beings.
Every passage in which they are
spoken of may be interpreted figur-
atively, without any violent wrench
to the language. Still, the impres-
sion left upon us is that Jesus did
believe in a vast background of evil
beyond what we can see, — an em-
pire of darkness where evil spirits
live, from which evil influences
have been permitted to enter, even
into this world, and whose power ho
came to overthrow. Tlie result of
this whole investigation, which Ave
have carefully gone through many
times, as a matter of Scriptural
interpretation, has been to leave us
very decidedly with the impression
that Jesus did believe in evil spirits,
22*
and the disastrous influence which
they might exercise over men who
allowed themselves to be acted
upon by them. But we find very
little evidence that he believed in
Satan or the devil as a real, per-
sonal being, who ruled over the
realm of evil spirits, as a king over
his subjects. It does not seem
entirely certain to us; but we think
the most natural and satisfactory
explanation of his language, on
the principles of a just and exact
interpretation, is to be found in
the supposition that he alluded to
Satan or the devil as the personifica-
tion of wickedness, and in that sense
called him the Prince of Devils, and
spoke of him and his angels, as he
called him the father of the mur-
derous and lying Jews, and spoke of
him as the prince of this world.
(John xii. 31, xiv. 30, xvi. 11.)
Evil spirits were his angels and
subjects, just as wicked men were
his children, in a figurative, and not
a literal sense. 44. treas-
ure hid in a field] The king-
dom of Heaven, i. e. the I'eligion of
Jesus, is like a hidden treasure,
which a man, while employed ou
other things, discovers, and with
joy secures for himself. His hid-
ing it, while he went to purchase
the field, is one of the adjuncts,
which, though indicating the great
value of what had been found, is
not to be construed as having any
direct bearing on the main object
of the parable. 45, 46. As a
contrast to the man who happened
to find the treasure is the merchant-.
man who, while seeking for beauti*
258
MATTHEW XIII.
when he had found one pearl of great price, went and sold all
that he had, and bought it. Again the kingdom of Heaven 47
is like unto a net, that was east into the sea, and gathered of
every kind ; which, when it was full, they drew to shore, and 4a
sat down and gathered the good into vessels, but cast the bad
away. So shall it be at the end of the world. The angels 49
shall come forth, and sever the wicked from among the just,
and shall cast them into the furnace of fire ; there shall be so
wailing and gnashing of teeth. Jesus saith unto them, 6i
Have ye understood all these things ? They say unto him, ♦
Yea, Lord. Then said he unto them. Therefore every scribe, 62
which is instructed unto the kingdom of Heaven, is like unto a
man that is an householder, which bringeth forth out of his
treasure things new and old. And it came to pass, that, 53
when Jesus had finished these parables, he departed thence.
And when he was come into his own country, he taught 64
them in their synagogue, insomuch that they were astonished,
and said. Whence hath this man this wisdom, and these mighty
works ? Is not this the carpenter's son ? Is not his mother 55
called Mary ? and his brethren, James, and Joses, and Simon,
ful pearls, found one very costly,
and went and sold all that he had
in order to purchase it.
52. Therefore] For this reason,
i. e. taking into account the new
truths and hopes and life which
have been here set forth, every
Scribe, who is instnicted in my
religion, being already learned in
the law, is like a householder who
brings out from his treasury things
both new and old. It was cus-
tomary in the East to preserve in
houses costly garments and other
articles for many generations; and
this perhaps is what more particu-
larly suggested the comparison.
53 - 58. He went into his own
country, i. e. to Nazareth. For a ful-
ler account of what occurred there,
see Luke iv. 16 - 24. Though
Jesus had astonished them by his
wisdom and his mighty works, still
tliey found a stumbling-block to
their belief in the fact, that his
father, the cai-penter, and his breth-
ren or kinsmen, were known to
them as ordinary men. Jesus, see-
ing that they were not in a state of
mind to be benefited by it, refused
to perform (Luke iv. 24-27) many
miracles among them. Their un-
belief, 58, does not refer so much to
the fact that they did not, as that
they would not, believe. It indi-
cates a spirit of unbelief which set
itself against him, and would not
be convinced by anything that he
might do. " Is not this," they asked
contemptuously, " the carpenter's
son ? Is not' his mother called
Mary? and his brethren, James, and
Joses, and Simon, and Judas? And
his sisters, are they not all with us ?"
55. aiid his brethren!
Wlio were the brethren of Jesus ?
This has been, among commen-
tators, one of the difficult questions,
and the ablest among them have
given different answers. The breth-
ren of Jesixs are spoken of on six
different occasions, viz. Matt. xii.
46, and parallel passages in Mark
and Luke; the present passage and
its parallel, Mark vi. 3; John ii. 12;
vii. 3, 5, 10; Acts i. 14; 1 Cor. ix. 5.
MATTHEW XIII.
259
66 and Judas ? and his sisters, are they not all with us ? whence
67 then hath this man all these things ? And they were offended
in him. But Jesus said unto them, A prophet is not without
58 honor, save in his own country, and in his own house. And he
did not many mighty works there, because of their unbelief.
Mr. Norton, in his note on this pas-
sage, supposes that " the brethren "
or "kinsmen" of Jesus, — for the
original allows either interpreta-
tion, — were the sons of Alpheus
(the same name in Hebrew as Clopas
or Cleopas), whose wife Mary is
said (John xi». 25) to be the sister
or kinswoman of Mary the Mother
of Jesus. In Matt, xxvii. 56, Mark
XV. 40, she is said to be the mother
of James and Joses, i, e. Joseph.
Luke, in his catalogue of the Apos-
tles (Luke vi. 16; Acts i. 13), men-
tions Judas of James, i. e. the son
or brother of James. Thus we
have applied to the sons either of
Alpheus, or of his wife Mary, three
of the names, which are here ap-
plied to the brethren of Jesus, viz.
James and Joses and Judas. Would
these three names be likely to be
repeated in two different branches
of the same family ? Is it not more
reasonable to suppose that these
brethren of Jesns, as they are called,
were the sons of Alpheus (Cleopas)
and Mary, of whom at least two,
James and Judas, and possibly, as
Mr. Norton supposes, a third, Simon,
were among the Apostles ? The re-
ply is: 1. That the names were
among the most comiuon Jewish
names, and might be repeated in
two diflferent branches of the same
family. We are acquainted with
three different branches of a family
in each of which may be found the
names William, James, and John. 2.
The brethren of Jesus spoken of in
John vii. 5, following John ii. 12 ; vii.
3, did not at that time believe on him,
and therefore they could not have
been among the Apostles. 3. Where-
ever they are mentioned in the New
Testament, except in the seventh
chapter of John, and 1 Cor. ix. 5,
they are mentioned in connection
with Mary, the Mother of Jesus.
P'or these reasons, we suppose that
the brethren of Jesus were the sons
of Joseph, though they may not have
been the sons of Mary. James, the
son of Alpheus, was probably the
James whom St. Paul speaks of
(Gal. i. 19) as "the brother of the
Lord." Nor is it improbable that
James and Judas, sons of Alpheus,
are " the brethren of the Lord,"
whom he refers to, 1 Cor. ix. 5, as
among the Apostles.
2 GO MATTHEW XIV. 1 - 12.
CHAPTER XIY.
Herod Antipas.
1-12. Op Herod Antipas some account has already been
given in chap. xi. Contemporary records, to those who care .
to enter into such horrible details, furnish examples enough to
show that the beheading of John, with the revolting circum-
stances attending it, was no extraordinary instance of cruelty
in those times. Lardner, Part I. Bk. I. Chap. I. Herod seems
to have been a weak and crafty, —r- for the two qualities
often go together, — rather than an able and cruel man, as
his father, Herod the Great, whom we find in the second
chapter of Matthew, had been. When he was on a visit
to his half-brother, Philip, a private citizen, and not to be
confounded with Philip, the Tetrach of Ituraea and Tracho-
nitis, mentioned in Luke iii. 1, he became enamored of his
brother's wife, Herodias, whom he persuaded to leave her
husband, and to marry him. This act was a violation of the
Jewish law, and called down on Herod a severe rebuke
from the stern preacher in the wilderness, who thus
incurred her lasting displeasure. She was a bold, bad,
unscrupulous woman. " Josephus," says Dr. Lardner, " has
represented Herodias as a woman full of ambition and envy,
as having a mighty influence on Herod, and able to
persuade him to things he was not of himself at all inclined
to." It is therefore entirely in character with all that we
know of her, that in her anger against John, she should, as
we read (Mark vi. 19), seek to destroy him, and that she
should have recourse to indirect means for revenjrinfj her-
self, when she had failed in other ways to accomplish her
purpose. It was undoubtedly by her direction, that her
MATTHEW XIV. 1-12. • 2G1
daughter Salome, at a feast on the birthday of Herod, when
he was probably heated with wine, won his favor by dancing
before him, and gained from him a promise, given with an
oath, that he would grant any favor that she might ask of him,
even (Mark vi. 23) to the half of his kingdom. She went
to her mother, and being instructed by her, came back
immediately with earnest haste, and said, " I desire that thou
give me forthwith on a dish the head of John the Baptist."
This extreme haste probably arose from a fear lest the king,
after the excitement of the hour was over, should relent,
or refuse to grant her request. See Robinson's Calmet, art.
Antipas. The evident reluctance of Herod, even then, to
comply with her demand confirms this view of the case.
An executioner was sent immediately, and the head of John
was brought to the -girl, who carried it to her mother.
John, as we have seen in chapter xi. was imprisoned near
the Dead Sea. The narrative of the Evangelists, partic-
ularly that of Mark, indicates that he was not far off from
the festive party, who must therefore have been in that part
of Herod's dominions which was most distant from Galilee.
Herod had thus beheaded John from a false sentiment of
honor, and grievously against his will, for he feared him,
(Mark vi. 20,) " knowing that he was a righteous and holy
man ; " and, though he desired to put him to death, he feared
the people, for they accounted John as a prophet. The
circumstances attendant on the life of John, his uncompro-
mising attitude as a prophet of God, the reverence in which
he was held, and the strange ascendency which such men
sometimes gain over the imagination of the worldly minded
and corrupt, may have wrought with peculiar force on
Herod, and roused his superstitious apprehensions. So that
when he heard of Jesus and his extraordinary acts, and the
sensation that he was producing in his dominions, he may
have been (Luke ix. 7) sorely perplexed, and have broken
out in the words which were spoken, half in rage and half
in fear, " John have I beheaded ; but who is this ? " And
2G2 , MATTHEW XIV. 1-12.
in order to allay his apprehensions, to satisfy himself
whether the reports that he heard were true, and also, as
we might infer from the words and conduct of Jesus (Luke
xiii. 31, 32), to get him into his power, he sought to see
him. At another time his words, as in the passage before
us, took a different turn ; and, as Mr. Norton in his note on
Matt. xiv. 1-12, suggests, may be regarded as the excited,
fif^urative language of an angry man ; as if he had said :
"John have I beheaded. But what have I gained by it?
Here we have him, the same thing over again, raised from
the dead, and therefore showing forth these powerful works."
Herod, it has been said, was a Sadducee, and as such
(Matt. xxii. 23, Acts xxiii. 8) believed in "no resurrec-
tion, neither angel nor spirit." We find no evidence that he
was a Sadducee. But even if he were so, it would not
have secured him from all dread of the supernatural, under
the circumstances in which he was placed. The annals of
superstition are marked by no greater absurdities than
those which are drawn from the most unbelieving times.
Nor have any men, when under the pressure of extraordi-
nary circumstances of emotion, shown themselves more the
victims of an unreasonable credulity than those who have
prided themselves most on their philosophical unbelief.
Herod, more than half a Jew, with the superstitious ideas
of his nation hanging over his mind, driven by the more
powerful will of a woman into crimes at which his own
nature revoltedj on hearing from all quarters accounts of
sick men healed, demoniacs exorcised, and the dead raised
to life, may, in spite of his hardness and unbelief, have been
so disturbed and conscience-smitten as in amazement and
terror, to utter the language attributed to him in the Gospels.
In Shakespeare's Macbeth we have, drawn by a master's
hand, the inconsistencies, absurdities, and horrors which
mark the speech and conduct of a man, betrayed like Herod
into crimes which he could never have committed unless im-
pelled by the overpowering ambition of an artful, merciless,
MATTHEW XIV. 1-12. 263
unscrupulous woman. The perplexities which oppressed
the mind of Herod, and drew from him the exclamation,
" It is John whom I beheaded ; he has been raised from the
dead, and by him these mighty works are wrought," may
have been not unlike those which wrenched from the terri-
fied Macbeth at the appearance of Banquo whom he had
murdered: — the words, —
" The times have been,
That, when the brains were out, the man would die.
And there an end: but now, they rise again,
With twenty mortal murders on their crowns,
And push us from our stools."
The great misdeeds and consequent misfortunes of Herod's
life, his repudiating of his wife, the daughter of Aretas,
king of Petraea, and his disastrous defeat by that monarch,
his murder of John the Baptist, his attempt to supplant the
influence of his wife's brother Herod Agrippa with the
Roman emperor, Caligula, and to secure for himself the title
of king, and his consequent banishment, first to Gaul, A. D.
39, and thence to Spain where he died, were caused by the
instigations of the jealous, unprincipled, ambitious woman,
with whom he was united by an adulterous and incestuous
marriage.
Herod is referred to again on two occasions. The Phari-
sees (Luke xiii. 31, 32) tell Jesus to depart; for Herod is
seeking his life. The reply of Jesus, " Go ye and tell that
fox," &c. shows how well he understood his crafty charac-
ter. He appears again in the trial of Jesus. He was
(Luke xxiii. 8) exceedingly glad to see him, for he had long
desired it on account of the reports which he had heard of
him, and, besides, he now hoped to see him perform some
miracle. But when Jesus not only refused to do anything
to gratify his curiosity, but would not even reply to his
wordy questions, he gave way to the natural and cruel
levity of his character, and, by the most extravagant marks
of homage, subjected him to the heartless mockery and scoffs
2G4 MATTHEW XIV. 13-21.
of the soldiers. The Herod who appears in the thirteenth
chapter of Acts is Herod Agrippa I., grandson of Herod
the Great, and brother of Herodias.
13-21. — Feeding the Five Thousand.
After Jesus knew that Herod was making inquiries con-
cerning him, 13, as connected with 1 and 2, he crossed over
the lake with his disciples to an uninhabited place, near the
city of Bethsaida, which was at the northeastern comer
of the lake, not far from the entrance of the Jordan. They
sought rest; "for there were many coming and going, and
they had not leisure even to eat." (Mark vi. 31.) Jesus
probably desired also to have a season of undisturbed inter-
course with his disciples. For this purpose he went up
into a mountain with them. But the people soon saw which
way he had gone. They ran together round the lake, and
some of them reached the spot even before Jesus had come
to the shore. He could not therefore long be left with his
disciples. They were flocking towards him from all the
neighboring villages. And when, on the mountain where
he was sitting with his disciples, he lifted up his eyes, he
saw an immense multitude coming towards him. He came
out to meet them, and, being moved with compassion for
them, he healed their sick, and taught them many things.
But seeing that in their haste they had come without their
customary supply of food, he asks Philip (John vi. 5) how
they are to be fed. Philip probably conferred with the
other disciples, and they advise Jesus to send the multitude
away, that they may purchase bread in the neighboring
fields and villages. " They need not go away," said Jesus.
" Give ye them to eat." " But w^e have nothing here," say
they, " except five loaves and two small fishes." And
these, according to John vi. 9, belonged to a lad who was
with them. Jesus directed the multitudes to be seated
on the green grass of which there was much there, in
MATTHEW XIV. 13-21. 2G5
companies, by hundreds and fifties. They sat down as
it were in garden plots, each company making a square
by itself. Jesus, having lifted up his eyes to heaven and
blessed the food, .caused it to be distributed among the
people, and they all, five thousand men, besides women
and children, ate as much as they desired, and twelve
baskets of fragments remained.
In the different accounts here, we have the characteris-
tics of the different Elvangelists. In Matthew there is the
plain statement of facts, with his pecuhar exactness as to
numbers, he being the only one who adds to the 5,000,
" besides women and children." Luke's is a clear his-
torical account. He mentions the name of the place, Beth-
saida. There were two cities of this name, one on the west
side, and the other where they now were, near the north-
eastern comer of the lake. Mark, on the other hand,
throws in those graphic details, which indicate an eye-
witness. " For there were many coming and going, and
they had not leisure even to eat." He speaks of many
finding out whither Jesus had gone, and "running to-
gether on foot," so that they reached the place before
him. He speaks of the green grass, and of the appear-
ance — like garden plots — of the separate groups, as the
multitude reclined at their meal. John's account also has
the marks of an eyewitness. He alone speaks of Jesus as
going up into a mountain and sitting there with his dis-
ciples, of his lifting up his eyes and seeing the great
multitude coming towards him, of the conversation with
Philip, of the lad with his five barley loaves, and two little
fishes." These graphic details and the parenthetical clause
— " now there was much grass in the place " — are charac-
teristic of one who was personally present. 22, 23. After
the miracle Jesus constrained his disciples to enter a vessel,
and go back to the other side before him. The language
indicates a reluctance to go on their part. Probably they
had become aware of the disposition in the multitude
23
2G6 MATTHEW XIV. 21-34.
(John vi. 14, lo) to take him by force and make him a
king, and, sympathizing with the movement, were unwilHng
to go away. For this very reason, in order to prevent
their becoming impHcated in any such movement, Jesus
may have obhged them to enter the vessel Then, having
dismissed the multitudes, he went up into the mountain
alone to pray. When the night came on he was there,
apart from the confused excitement of the crowds and
their ambitious schemes in his behalf, the silent heavens
bending over him, and the mountain solitudes around.
These retired seasons of meditation and prayer were pecu-
liarly grateful to him. " It seems to me that no one can
remember how the Holy One found strength and peace
in prayer, and ever again doubt that we need it. Judas
did not pray. Herod did not feel the need of it. Pilate
felt no need of it. The worldly and the cruel did not
pray. But the Holy One, alone on the mountain, by the
grave of Lazarus, at his own last hour, felt the need
of prayer; and so long as the record of that example
remains, we have an unanswerable evidence of the neces-
sity of prayer." — E. Peabody, D. D.
Jesus walking ox the Water.
21-34. While Jesus was alone on the mountain, in the
gray twilight of the dawn, as it broke faintly into the dark-
ness of the night, Jesus saw the disciples tossed about by
the waves, and struggling with their oars to make some
headway against the opposing wind. At about the fourth
watch of the night, which extended from three to six
o'clock, he went towards them, walking on the water.
As they saw him approaching, they screamed aloud with
fear, thinking it a spirit, or an apparition. A word from
him calmed their apprehensions. Peter with the vehe-
mence and the sudden revulsion of feeling which he showed
on other occasions more than once, asked that he mi^ht
MATTHEW XIV. 2G7
walk to him on the waters, and then, in the violence of
the wind his courage failing him, and he beginning to sink,
he cried to Jesus for help. When they had come into the
vessel, the wind ceased. This miracle evidently produced
on those who were there (Mark vi. 51, 52) a stronger im-
pression of amazement and wonder, than that which they had
witnessed the day before with unmoved and hardened hearts.
Their sense of personal danger from the storm, the terrors
of the night heightened by what they feared at the time as
a phantasm or apparition from another world, had prepared
them to recognize with gratitude and wonder the power which
interposed to save them. They immediately came to the
land of Gennesaret, a rich and beautiful plain on the west
side of the lake, lying four or five miles north from Tiberias,
and probably a little to the south from Capernaum.
NOTES.
At that time Herod the tetrarch heard of the fame of Jesus,
2 and said unto his servants, This is John the Baptist ; he is
risen from the dead, and therefore mighty works do show forth
3 themselves in him. For Herod had laid hold on John, and
bound him, and put him in prison, for Herodias' sake, his
4 brother Philip's wife. For John said unto him, It is not law-
5 ful for thee to have her. And when he would have put him to
death, he feared the multitude, because they counted him as a
6 prophet. But when Herod's birthday was kept, the daughter of
7 Herodias danced before them, and pleased Herod ; whereupon
he promised with an oath to give her whatsoever she would
8 ask. And she. being before instructed of her mother, said,
9 Give me here John Baptist's head in a charger. And the king
was sorry ; nevertheless, for the oath's sake, and them which
10 sat with him at meat, he commanded it to be given her. And
11 he sent and beheaded John in the prison. And his head
10. and beheaded John in likely to be correct in this rrifltter
prison ] Josephus, who is less than"^ Matthew, assigns a different
268
MATTHEW XIV.
was brought In a charger, and given to the damsel ; and "she
brought it to her mother. And his disciples came and took up 12
the body, and buried it ; and went and told Jesus. When 13
Jesus heard of it, he departed thence by ship into a desert place
reason for the death of John from
that which is here given. His ac-
count of John is as follows ( Ant.
XVIII. 5. 2) : " Now some of the
Jews thonght that the destruction
of Herod's arnij came from God ;
and that very justly, as a punish-
ment of what he did against John,
who was called the Baptist. For
Herod slew him, who was a good
man, and commanded the Jews to
exercise virtue, both as to righteous-
ness towards one another, aud piety
towards God, and so to come >o
baptism. For that the washing
with water would be acceptable to
him, if they made use of it, not in
order to putting away, or the re-
mission of some sins only, but for
the p\irification of the body: sup-
posing still that the soul was thor-
oughly purified beforehand by right-
eousness. Now when many others
came in crowds about him — ^^for they
were greatly moved or pleased by
hearing his words — Herod, who fear-
ed lest the great influence John had
over the people might put it into his
power and inclination to raise a re-
bellion (for they seemed ready to
do anything he should advise),
thought it best, by putting him to
death, to prevent any mischief he
might cause, and not bring himself
into difficulties by sparing a man
who might make him repent of it
when it should be too late. Ac-
cordingly he was sent a prisoner, out
of Herod's suspicious temper, to
Machffirus, the castle I before men-
tioned, and was there put to death."
13. When Jesus heard of
it, he departed thence by ship
into a desert place] "The
news of John's execution," says
Mr. Norton, " probably produced" a
sudden excitement arnong the peo-
ple, and a feeling of strong resent-
ment, — for ' all believed John to
be a prophet,' — and might power-
fully tend to turn their attention
on Jesus, and direct their hopes to
him as their expected king. John's
disciples came to tell him of it, his
own Apostles collected about him,
and the multitude flocked to him.
From this excited nmltitude, eager
to force on him an office so foreign
from that which he was appointed
to sustain, our Lord was desirous of
withdrawing himself, till their pas-
sions should subside, and he should,
in consequence, be able with less
difficulty to repress their misdii*ect-
ed zeal. He probably wished also
to withdraw his disciples, who were
vexy likely to share in the popular
ferment. He therefore passed over
from Galilee to the other side of the
lake, into the dominions of Philip,
a part of the country where he ap-
pears to have spent*^ but little time
during his ministry. Here, how-
ever, a great number of persons
soon collected, whom he fed mirac-
ulously. The performance of this
miracle, with its effect on the mul-
titude, which our Lord must have
foreseen, may seem inconsistent
with the reasons that have uxst
been assigned for his leaving Gali-
lee. But it is to be observed, that,
while he repressed those feelings of
the multitude which arose from
fiilse expectations concerning the
Messiah, it was necessaiy for him,
at the same time, to give' the most
decisive proofs of his Divine au-
thority. As he but seldom visited
this part of the country, we may
suppose that it was his pui*pose to
perform a miracle so astonishing
and so public that it would make
a deep impression, and that the
knowledge of it would be spread
everywhere round about. Under
this aspect the miracle resembles
that of the cure of the demoniacs,
related in the eighth chapter of Mat-
thew, which was so remarkable in
its circumstances, and which was
likewise performed on the eastern
MATTHEW XIV.
269
apart ; and when the people had heard thereof, they followed
him on foot out of the cities.
14 And Jesus^went forth, and saw a great multitude ; and was
moved with compassion toward them, and he healed their sick.
15 And when it was evening, his disciples came to him, say-
shore of the lake." In the work of
educating the disciples as Apostles
and Evangelists, while it was im-
portant that they should at times be
sent out by themselves, and at times
be brought into connection with
large and excited multitudes of
men, it was also important that
tliev should sometimes be alone
with Jesus to receive his private
and confidential admonitions and
instructions, as well as to have the
spirit and habit of devotion estab-
lished in them. We must still re-
gard them as a peripatetic school,
going about with their master, and
preparing under him for the great
and responsible office which is soon
to devolve on them. 14.
And Jesus went forth] He had
probably been with his disciples in
some retired part of the mountain
from which he now came out. This
may not have been the same day as
thai on which he crossed the lake.
Mr. Norton supposes that one or
more days had intervened. The
nan-ative"^ in Mark vi. 33, 34, at first
sight would indicate that the multi-
tudes were fed on the same day that
Jesus arrived there. His account
is as follows : " And the people saw
them departing, and many knew
him, and ran afoot thither out of all
cities, and outwent them and came
together unto him. And Jesus
when he came out, saw much peo-
ple." According to the text in
Tischendorf 's edition, we must
read : " And many saw them de-
?)arting and knew them ; and on
bot from all the cities they ran
together thither, and came before
them. And when Jesus came out,"
&c. This may mean, that when
Jesus came out from the boat he
saw the multitudes, and then fed
them. But considering the circum-
stances of the case, and t'.ie rapid,
sketchy manner in which the
23*
Evangelists group events that were
separated in point of time, it is
more probable that Jesus had spent
some time there, perhaps a day or
more, healing and instnicting them,
but seeking also for himself and his
disciples seasons of retirement; and
that once, when he came out from
his retirement, and saw the people
who had been there so long, weary,
scattered, and hungry, — like sheep
without a shepherd, — his compas-
sion for them was excite(^ and he
fed them. There has been a differ-
ence of opinion in regard to the
place where the five thousand were
miraculously fed, and which Jesus
left to walk upon the lake. We
think, however, there can be no
longer any doubt that it was, as
we have placed it, at the northeast
comer of the lake, near Bethsaida,
afterwards called Julias, where
Philip, the tetrarch, resided at least
a portion of the time, and Avhere he
died and was buried in a costly
tomb. (See Robinson's Researches,
HI. p. 308.) John vi. 23 speaks of
other vessels coming that night from
Tiberias to the place where they
had eaten bi*ead. " The contrary
wind," says Stanley in his Geogra-
phy, p. 374, " which, blowing up
the lake from the southwest, would
prevent the boat from returning
to Capernaum, would also bring
' other boats ' from Tiberias, the
chief city on the south, to Julias,
the chier city on the north, and so
enable the multitudes, when the
storm had subsided, to cross at
once, without the long journey on
foot which they had made the
day before." This accords with
the account given by John vi. 22 -
24. 15. And when it
was evening] 23. and
•when the evening was come]
From these two verses it would
seem as if there were two evenings
270 MATTHEW XIV.
ing, This is a desert place, and the time is now past ; send the
multitude away, that they may go into the villages, and buy
themselves victuals. But Jesus said unto them. They need i<
not depart ; give ye them to eat. And they say unto him, We n
have here but five loaves and two fishes. He said, Bring is
them liither to me. And he commanded the multitude to sit 19
down on the grass, and took the five loaves and the two fishes,
and, looking up to heaven ; he blessed, and brake, and gave
the loaves to his disciples, and the disciples to the multitude.
And they did all eat, and were filled ; and they took up of 20
the fragments that remained twelve baskets full. And they 21
that had eaten were about five thousand men, beside women
and children.
And straightway Jesus constrained his disciples to get into a 22
ship, and to go before him unto the other side, while he sent
the multitudes away. And when he had sent the multitudes 23
away, he went up into a mountain apart to pray. And when
the evening was come, he was there alone. But the ship was 24
now in the midst of the sea, tossed with waves ; for the wind
was contrary. And in the fourth watch of the night, Jesus 25
went unto them, walking on the sea. And when the disciples 26
saw him walking on the sea, they were troubled, saying, It is
a spirit ; and they cried out for fear. But straightway Jesus 27
spake unto them saying, Be of good cheer, it is I; be not
afraid. And Peter answered him and said. Lord, if it be 28
thou, bid me come unto thee on the water. And he said,
that day. " This," says Trench on before us ; but the first seems to us
the Miracles, p. 224, '' was an ordi- the most satisfa<!tory. The words
nary way of speaking among the rendered " evening " or " even "
Jews, the first evening being very (Exod. xii.6, xxx. 8; Levit. xxiii. 5)
much our afternoon (compare Luke mean " between the evenings," or
ix. 12, where the evening of Mat- " between the twiliglits."
thew and Mark is described as the 20. twelve baskets full] Not
day beginning to decline ) ; the improbably these were the baskets
second evening being the twilight, in which the disciples carried their
or fro!n six o'clock to twilight." provisions. " The Jews," says Mr.
Lightfoot, on the other hand, a great Norton, " seem to have been, in some
authority in such matters, com- degree, distinguished by the use of
paring 15 with 23, says: " That such baskets." Juvenal, Sat. VI.
denotes the lateness of the dav ; 542, speaks of Jews at Rome, whose
this, the lateness of the night. So, " whole furniture is a basket and
'evening' in the Talmudists, signi- some hay." 28. bid me
fies not only the declining part of the come linto thee] " In tlie ques-
day, but [of] the night also." tionable little word 'me,' always
Either explanation meets the case questionable when it too hastily re-
MATTHEW XIV.
271
f29 Come. And when Peter was come down out of tlie ship, he
30 walked on the water, to go to Jesus. But when he saw the
wind boisterous, he was afraid ; and beginning to sink, he
31 cried, saying, Lord, save mc ! And immediately Jesus
stretched forth his hand, and caught him, and said unto him,
32 O thou of little faith, wherefore didst thou doubt ? And when
33 they were come into the ship, the wind ceased. Then they
that were in the ship came and worshipped him, saying. Of a
truth thou art the Son of God.
34 And when they were gone over, they came into the land of
{)lies to Christ's powerful /, ere it
las been specially asked and called,
lurks the secret "flaw in the great
faith, on account of which it must
soon again become very little. Had
Christ of himself called out : ' And
thou, Peter, come out to me,' he
certainly would not have sunk.
But, because he will outrun the
others in showing his faith, the real
Peter must show himself just as,
alas ! he still is, and give a warning
of the future denial of his Lord ;
falling back again as suddenly as he
had raised himself" Stier.
2U. And he said, Come] But
why did he allow him to come ?
Because the presuming and pre-
sumptuous disciple needed the les-
son, which he could not learn from
any words of Jesus so well as from
his own precipitate and humiliating
experience. And so it is that God
deals with us in his providence,
often allowing us to adventure on
our own rash and foolish schemes,
because onh' by failure and disaster,
through our own humiliating ex-
perience and exposure, can we
come to ourselves, and learn the
ti-ue and humble gauge of our own
powers. This is a great thing in
the training of children and the edu-
cation of the young, as well as in
the discipline of maturer life. Not
that system which is for the present
the safest for the child is mast to be
desired, but that which will best
call out all his powers, and by his
own experience teach him the truest
measure of himself. In this way
only will he attain a true Christian
modesty, which is always connected
with a nice adjustment of a man's
consciousness to all his faculties, so
that he will not presume on what
lies wholly beyond him, nor shrink
from what lies within his compass.
The fitting measure of our faith in
ourselves, and, as with Peter, of
our faith in God, can be gained
only in this way by exposures
which sometimes end in defeat and
humiliation. 30. to sink]
KaraTrovri^ea-Baij a stronger word
than to sink, — beginning to be
buritd in the sea. 31. And
Jesns stretched forth his hand,
and caught him] The calmness
of Jesus, and the ease and natural-
ness of the movement by which the
affrighted disciple was rescued, are
worthy of notice. There is nowhere
in our Saviour's life any indication
of surprise. He is never, even for
a moment, thrown off" his guard.
He does not seek an occasion for
the exercise of his wonderful gifts,
but accepts them Avhen they come.
One woman, of a despised race, at
the well of Jacob in Samaria (John
iv. 1-43), called forth a discourse
full of his richest and sublimest in-
stnictions; and here, the violence
of the storm and the terror of his
disciples, excite him to no un-
usual effort. " He reached out
his hand, and laid hold of him,
and said unto him, ' 0, thou of
little faith, wherefore didst thou
doubt? ' " 32. and wor-
shipped him] did homage to
him, saying, " Tinily tliou art
God's Son.'
272 MATTHEW XIV.
Gennesaret. And when the men of that place had knowledge 35
of him, they sent out into all that country round about ; and
brought unto him all that were diseased, and besought him that 36
they might only touch the hem of his garment ; and as many
as touched were made perfectly whole.
MATTHEW XV. 1-20. 273
CHAPTER XV.
1-20. — Jesus and the Jewish Traditions.
1-6. The Scribes and Moses. The Scribes and
Pharisees, who had come down from Jerusalem in order to
find some serious charge against Jesus, ask him why it is
that his disciples transgress the traditions of the elders as
they do by eating with unwashed hands. Jesus replies to
them in language of great severity, " Why do ye transgress
the commandment of God by your tradition ? For God
hath commanded, (Ex. xx. 12,) saying, Honor thy father
and thy mother; and (Ex. xxi. 17) He that curseth father
or mother shall be put to death. But ye teach. If a man
say to his father or mother, Whatever I have which might
benefit you is a gift to God, [and cannot therefore be used
for your benefit], he shall not honor his father or mother,
i. e. he shall even be exempt from the obligation to honor
and provide for them. And ye thus annul or render of none
effect the commandment of God by your tradition.'*
Lightfoot has shown that the Jewish Talmudists attached
greater weight to the Rabbinical traditions than to the law.
" The words of the scribes," say they, " are lovely, above
the words of the law ; for the words of the law are weighty
and light ; but the words of the scribes are all weighty."
Alford says, "The Jews attached more importance to the
traditionary exposition than to the Scripture text itself.
They compared the written word to water ; the traditionary
exposition to the wine which must be mingled with it. The
duty of washing before meat is not inculcated in the law,
but only in the traditions of the Scribes. So rigidly did
the Jews observe it, that Rabba Akiba, being imprisoned,
and having water scarcely sufficient to sustain life given
274 MATTHEW XV. 7, 8.
him, preferred dying of thirst to eating without washing
his hands."
It is customary among the Jews to cut themselves off
from the obligation of certain acts by consecrating their
property to God as a gift so far as those specific acts were
concerned. Their property might be used for anything else,
but not for those particular acts. For example, if a man
wished to free himself from the obligation to support his
parents, he might set aside his whole property as a gift to
God, so far as any advantage might accrue to them from it,
and, according to the traditions of the elders, he would then
have no right to use any part of it for the benefit of his
parents, though he might use it for any other purpose.
Thus they set at naught the law of God by their quibbling
traditions, and justified by their traditions those who did
not honor their father or their mother.
7, 8. — Fulfilment of Prophecy.
Jesus has confronted the Scribes by the authority of
Moses, their great lawgiver. He here shows how the
condemnation of one of their prophets falls on them : " Well
did Isaiah prophesy of you, when he said. This people
honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far fmm
me. But in vain do they worship me teaching for doc-
trine the commandments of men." Dr. Noyes's translation
of this passage (Isa. xxix. 13, 14) is as follows; —
"Since this people draweth near to me with their mouth,
And honoreth me with their lips,
While their heart is far from me,
And their Avorship of me is according to the commandments of men,
Therefore, behold, I will proceed to deal marvellously with this people;
Marvellously and wonderfully.
For the wisdom of their wise men shall perish,
And the prudence of the prudent shall be hid."
These words were undoubtedly applied by the prophet
to the men of his own day ; and we have no reason to
MATTHEW XV. 7, 8. 275
suppose that he had in his mind the thought of any
further appUcation. How then could Jesus say, "Well
did Isaiah prophesy concerning you when he said, This
people," &c. They not only contain a direct message to
the "Jews, who lived in the time of Isaiah ; but that message
is so put as to contain in itself a general truth which
is prophetic of the condition of all men, whenever and
wherever they may live, who seek to propitiate the favor
of God by their distant, outside, hypocritical worship.
See above, xiii. 14.
But does not this involve a double sense ? Is it right
to use the authority of the prophet in applying his words
to persons whom he could not have had in his mind at
the time he spoke ? This is what Jesus has done in the
passage before us. And, notwithstanding the dread many
persons have of attributing a double or rather a twofold
meaning of this kind to the language of Scripture, it is what
is constantly done with other language. Every expression
which, originally spoken solely with reference to a spe-
cific case, is so put as to involve a general truth, may
be used in this way. If the Scriptures more than all
other writings have been so applied, it is only because,
under the simplest forms of speech, and often with direct
reference to specific cases, they mor^ than all other writings
express the most profound and universal truth.
The Supreme Court of the United States may give a
decision which is of little consequence in its application
to the case immediately in hand. And that case is the
only one which is before the Court, and to which they
specifically apply their decision. But that decision may
involve considerations of momentous importance in cases
to which the principles there established by the authority
of the highest judicial tribunal of the land may hereafter
be applied. The language which is at first applied spe-
cifically only to a single case, nevertheless embraces with-
in its scope and within the intention of the Court, all
276 MATTHEW XV. 7, 8.
cases of the same character that may arise afterwards.
What is said of one is said of all, — that one case is a type
of all the rest, and the authority which decides it applies
with equal force to all the rest. So in the decisions of
the great Judge of all, as announced by his prophets,
the principles involved in the case to which they are spe-
cifically applied and the consequences flowing from those
principles, reach on with the weight of their divine au-
thority, and find their fulfilment in every analogous case
that may afterwards arise. Whatever may be said of
the doctrine of types, and the absurd extent to which
it has been carried, or of the interpretation sometimes
put on the prediction of specific events, many of the an-
cient prophecies stand forth as types or outshado wings
and foreshadowings of divine truths, which shall be per-
petually fulfilling themselves in the experience of all times.
The passage quoted here from Isaiah is one of this kind.
The predicted destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, imme-
diately fulfilled in the fatal retribution which fell on those
wicked cities, became, through that fulfilment, a type or
sign of the retribution which is in store for every corrupt
and ungodly people. The principle of retributive justice,
which is involved and announced in that case, holds true
always, and applies wi^h more or less force to every new
case that may arise.
Of this character are the instructions here given to the
Pharisees. The question immediately at issue between
them and Jesus relates to a matter which is in itself of
no sort of interest or importance now. But this specific
case of washing before meat is made to stand out as the
type or representative of all similar cases, and brings out
the great essential principles in such a way as to elucidate
the whole subject of a spiritual or formal worship, and
to furnish instruction in this matter for all times. Where
a sincere and vital religion is dying out, there is always
a disposition, with a numerous plass of men, to seek refuge
MATTHEW XV. 11-15. 277
in forms, and to put their consciences to sleep by multiply-
ing religious forms at the expense of the essential principles
of devout and holy living. This fatal tendency, belonging
alike to unenlightened and to the most luxurious times,
making void the law of God by human traditions and
observances, is here exposed and condemned. The heart
as the centre of the life is the one thing to be kept pure.
The . thoughts which proceed from that, and not the neglect
of outside forms, are what defile the man. Mr. Norton
has quoted from Philo Judaeus a passage very similar to
this. " Through the mouth, as Plato says, mortal things
enter, and imperishable things pass out. For food and
drink enter it, perishable nutriment of the perishable body ;
but words proceed from it, immortal laws of the immortiil
soul, by which the rational life is governed." — Philo, De
Mundi Opificio, 0pp. I. 29.
The fact that so plain a statement as that of Jesus, 11,
should appear to the disciples, 15, a parable or dark say-
ing which needed explanation, shows how dull their spirit-
ual perceptions were at that time, and how slow they were
to free themselves from the superstitious formalities of the
Jews. The same attitude of mind towards Jewish teachers
and observances is indicated by the vehemence with which
they put the question, 12, "Dost thod know how the Phari-
sees were offended by thy words ? " His reply is, " Every
plant which my Father hath not planted shall be rooted
up." As if he had said. The Pharisees are here the rec-
ognized and authoritative teachers of the law. Still, if
they teach anything not in accordance with the truth,
anything which my Father doth not approve and sustain,
it cannot stand, but will be rooted up as a plant which
he hath not planted. Give them up as your guides. They
are only blind leaders of the blind ; and no good, but mis-
chief only, can come of their instructions. Here, 15, Peter
asks an explanation of the parable, 11. It was not a
parable in one sense of the word ; but the disciples could
24
278 MATTHEW XV. 21-28.
not understand it. With an expression of sorrowful sur-
prise that they even yet should be unable to understand
words so simple, he explains his meaning in such a man-
ner as to do away forever, one would think, at least among
his followers, all superstitious regard for merely external
observances in matters of religion.
The Syro-Ph(enician Woman.
21-28. In order to escape from the crowds, with the
tumults and controversies connected with them, as well
as to prevent any premature and mistaken movement in
his behalf, he retired from the lake of Galilee towards
the northwest, to the vicinity of Tyre and Sidon. It is
a question among commentators whether he actually entered
their territory or remained still within the limits of Gali-
lee. He sought retirement. " He went (Mark vii. 24, 25)
into a house, and would have no man know it ; but he
could not be hid; for a woman, -whose daughter had an
unclean spirit heard of him," and came crying after him.
The desire to escape observation will account for the anx-
iety of the disciples to stop her cries. For in calling
after them she must necessarily attract attention. She
was a Grecian by descent, a Syro-Phoenician by birth,
and from her birthplace called, as she is here, a woman
of Canaan. At first Jesus paid no regard to her. His
object probably was to call out and strengthen her faith,
by subjecting it to trial. This is in accordance with the
whole discipline of life. He therefore, said within her
hearing, «I am sent only,** i. e. his personal ministry
was confined, « to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.'*
But instead of being discouraged, she threw herself at
his feet, and with affecting earnestness entreated him to
assist her. He replied to her, « It is not right to take
the children's bread and throw it to the little dogs."
"Yes, Lord," she exclaimed, "it is; for even the little
MATTHEW XV. 32-38. 279
dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their master's
table." The humble, trusting character of this speech
showed that nothing more was needed for her. " O woman,
great is thy faith. Be it to thee as thou wishest" And
her daughter was healed from that hour. "What was this
fiiith ? Not knowledge ; she had not that. Not a belief
in certain theological doctrines. It is certain that she
knew nothing of them. Her faith consisted in a readi-
ness to believe, — an humble, trusting attitude of mind and
heart, — " the tenderest susceptibility for what is heavenly."
As to the apparent severity of Jesus towards her, " It is,"
as Olshausen has said, " Christian experience alone which
opens our way to the right understanding of this
The restraining of his grace, the manifestation of a treat-
ment wholly different from what the woman may at first
have expected, acted as a check usually does on power
when it really exists, the whole inherent energy of her
living faith broke forth, and the Saviour suffered him-
self to be overcome by her Where faith is weak,
he anticipates and comes to meet it ; where faith is strong,
he holds himself far off in order that it may in itself be
carried to perfection."
Feeding toe Four Thousand.
32-38. It has been supposed by some modern writers,
as Schleiermacher, Neander, &c., that this account and
that in xiv. 14-21, are but different accounts of the same
transaction. The circumstances, it is said, the place, the
multitude, the compassion of Jesus, the perplexity of the
disciples as to what should be done, the sort of food at
hand, are substantially the same in the two accounts. But
these would be likely to be substantially the same if the
miracle had been repeated anywhere in that vicinity. The
only exception to what we should look for is in the perplex-
ity of the disciples. How could they, after witnessing the
280 MATTHEW XV. 32-38.
first miracle, be so much at a loss here ? The reply is,
that, though they had seen Jesus perform many miracles,
they had never, except in a single instance, known him
to use his miraculous power for such a purpose as that.
Why, then, should they expect it now ? Some of the cir-
cumstances are alike in the two cases, but others again
are different. In the first, there were 5,000 persons ; in the
second only 4,000. In the first, there were five loaves and
two fishes ; in the second, seven loaves and a few fishes.
In the first, it is not said how long the multitudes were
with Jesus ; in the second they were with him three days.
In the first, specific mention is made of a storm on the lake
and of Jesus walking on the w^ater; in the second he is
represented as crossing the lake in a vessel without any
such occurrence. In so concise an account of two similar
events we should hardly expect a greater variety in the
details, which certainly point to two distinct transactions.
Besides (xvi. 9, 10) Jesus explicitly refers to the two
miracles. It may also be added, that in the first account
the word translated baskets is Ko<f>ivovsy while here it is
o-TTvpidas, a long basket, which travellers sometimes used
as a bed when they pass the night in the open air,
and the same as that in which Saul was let down from
the wall (Acts ix. 25). The same distinction is observed
in our Saviour's reference to the two miracles, and in all
these cases the distinction is found in the Curetonian
Syriac Gospels. In the repetition of the miracle, there
is nothing improbable. When we consider what multi-
tudes thronged around the steps of Jesus, and that the
east side of the lake was a desert place, at a distance
from villages where food could be procured for such a
concourse of people, we can hardly think it strange, if
more than once towards the close of the day, he should
have had compassion on the weary multitudes, and fed
them by his miraculous power lest they should hunger
and faint by the way.
MATTHEW XV. 281
39. Having dismissed the multitude, Jesus went into
a vessel and passed to the vicinity of Magdala, or, as the
best copies have it, Magadan. Magdala is near the southeast
corner of the plain of Genesareth. For an interesting
and graphic description of this fertile and populous region,
see Stanley's Sinai and Palestine, pp. 3G6-37o. After
his account of what that country once was, he says, " Of
all the numerous towns and villages in what must have
been the most thickly peopled district of Palestine, one
only remains. A collection of a few hovels stands at
the southeastern corner of the plain, — its name hardly
altered from the ancient Magdala or Migdol, — so called,
probably, from a watch-tower, of which ruins appear to
remain, that guarded the entrance of the plain ; deriving
its whole celebrity from its being the birthplace of her,
through whom the name of ' Magdalen ' has been in-
corporated into the languages of the world. A large soli-
tary thorn-tree stands beside it. Its situation, otherwise
unmarked, is dignified by the high limestone rock which
overhangs it on the southwest, perforated with caves, re-
calling, by a curious, though doubtless unintentional coin-
cidence, the scene of Correggio's celebrated picture."
NOTES.
Then came to Jesus scribes and Pharisees, which were of
2 Jerusalem, saying, Why do thy disciples transgress the tra-
dition of the elders ? for they wash not their hands, when they
3 eat bread. But he answered and said unto them, Why do ye
1. which were of Jerusalem] ency he has now gained. 2.
The fact that Scribes and Pharisees for' they wash not tlieir hands
had come from Jerusalem to watch ivhen they eat bread] Not that
and oppose Jesus, shows incident- they did not liave clean hands, but
ally Avhat an impression he had that they did not wasli them. It
been making, and what an ascend- was a superstitious duty to wash
24*
282
MATTHEW XV.
also transgress the commandment of God, by your tradition ?
For God commanded, saying, " Honor thy father and moth-
er ; " and, " He that curseth father or mother, let him die the
death," But ye say, " Whosoever shall say to liis father or his
mother. It is a gift, by whatsoever thou mightest be profited by
me ; and honor not his father or his mother, he shall be free.
Thus have ye made the commandment of God of none effect
by your tradition. Ye hypocrites ! well did Esaias prophesy
their hands before eating bread,
whether they were clean or not, —
particularly before eating bread.
3. Observe the solemn
contrast between the command-
ment of God, and the tradition of
men, even though the tradition
was held to by the elders and
teachers. 4. Honor thy
father and mother] The stress
which Jesus lays on this great com-
mandment is remarkable. Its ob-
servance is to an extraordinarj' ex-
tent a criterion of the morals'^ of a
people. There is a saying among
the Chinese, " If a man show rev-
erence for his father and mother in
his house, why go farther to bum
spices V " Tliere is a place holy
enough for sacrifice and worship.
Where there is this reverence for
parents, the simplicity of the char-
acter and the freshness of the heart
are preserved. He who honors his
father and mother will honor God.
6. he shall be free]
These words, inserted by our trans-
lators, do not belong here. The
second clause of the sentence is the
apodosis to the first, which begins in
verse 5 : " Whosoever shall say to
his father or mother, ' Anything I
have which might be used for your
benefit is, so far as you are con-
cerned, set aside as a consecrated
gift [and therefore not to be em-
ployed for you],' he shall not honor
his father W his mother." Thus
setting aside all his property, so far
as 'relates to his parents, ' he has
freed himself from all obligation to
provide for them ; and, therefore,
rightly, so the Scribes taught, he
shall not be obliged to honor them.
" Whosoever shall say to his ftither
or mother, 'Let it be a [devoted]
fift in whatsoever thou mightest be
elped by me ' ; then let him not
honor his' father and mother at all."
Lightfoot. 7. Ye hypo-
critesl This is the first time that
Jesus airectly addresses the Scribes
and Pharisees by this term. Hith-
erto he has rather reproved them
by holdii>g up the principles of
righteousness which opposed and
overthrew all their superstitious
conventionalisms. But now, when
they put to him a question which
directly involves the principles that
separate him and them, he at first
states strongly the inconsistency
between their tradition and the
commandments of God, and then
directly charges them with the one
crime which vitiated all their relig-
ion, and which from that day to
this has been the characteristic of
their successors. When men sep-
arate the forms of religion from its
substance, and substitute man's tra-
ditions for the commandments of
God, however specious the pre-
tence, and however artfullv dis-
guised the processes by whicfi their
purpose is to be accomplished, they
are led by a superstitious spirft
through' dishonest methods into
hypocrisy, — that hideous crime
against 'man and God, on wliich
the heaviest deniinciations of our
Saviour fell. Every step away from
the simplicity of the truth, as it
stands revealed to us by God in
Christ, is a step in this direction.
It gives to human explanations,
glosses, institutions the authority
which belongs only to the com-
mandments of God.* It substitutes
human formulas of faith, and forms
of worship, with the idle ceremonies
growing out of them, for the wor-
MATTHEW XV. 283
8 of you, saying, " This people draweth nigh unto me with their
mouth, and honoreth me with tlieir lips ; but their heart is far
9 from me. But in vain do they worship me, teaching for doc-
10 trines the commandments of men." And he called the mul-
11 titude, and said unto them, Hear, and understand. Not that
which goeth into the mouth defileth a man ; but that which
1-2 Cometh out of the mouth, this defileth a man. Then came
his disciples, and said unto him, Knowest thou that the Phari-
1.3 sees were oifended, after they heard this saying ? But he an-
swered and said, Every plant which my heavenly Father hath
14 not planted, shall be rooted up. Let them alone ; they be blind
leaders of the blind. And if the blind lead the blind, both shall
15 fall into the ditch. Then answered Peter, and said unto him,
16 Declare unto us this parable. And Jesus said : Are ye also yet
17 without understanding ? Do not ye yet understand that what-
soever entereth in at the mouth goeth into the belly, and is cast
18 out into the draught ? But those things which proceed out of
the mouth come forth from the heart, and they defile the man.
19 For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts ; murders, adulte-
20 ries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies. These are
the things which defile a man ; but to eat with unwashen hands
defileth not a man.
21 Then Jesus went thence, and departed into the coasts of
ship and the morahty which Jesus the strong man, hardened into hy-
has taught, and thus renders the pQcrisy, knows how to avail liini-
law of God of none effect through self of the timid consciences of the
its superstitious and hypocritical weak, and how to turn to his own
traditions. So true in Vegard to ends the pliant, trusting faith of the
them is the language of Isaiah, that unsuspecting. 13. Every
their heart is alienated from God, plant] Not that which has grown
and their moral and spiritual per- naturally, but that which is planted
ceptions blunted. If the pure and and fostered by man, — the cmn-
devout, who are led away by these mnndments of men, which are taught
sui)tle processes from the simplicity for doctrines. 16. yet
of the Gospel, could only give up without understanding] What,
the human hindrances which offer still not able to understand so simple
themselves to them as helps, and a truth, — ye who have been with
sit at the feet of Jesus to learn of me so long? This conversation
him, and thus receive their religion with the disciples (12-20) was after
directly from him, rather than from he had entered into the house (Mark
the perverse and impure channels vii, 17), and when he was probalily
tlirough which it comes to them, with them alone. 20. which
how would the face of the world be defile the man] " In the very
changed ! But there is always this appellation of man is contained an
tendency and weakness in our hu- argument: for the spiritual nature,
man nature; this clinging to helps which is the superior part in man,
beyond what God has given; and is not reached by outward filth."
284
MATTHEW XV.
Tyre and SIdon. And, behold, a woman of Canaan came out 22
of the same coasts, and cried unto him, saying, Have mercy on
me, O Lord, thou son of David ; my daughter is grievously
vexed with a devil. But he answered her not a word. And 23
his disciples came and besought hun, saying, Send her away,
for she crieth after us. But he answered and said, I am not 24
sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel. Then 25
Bengel. 23. Send her
away] The disciples probably
meant to ask of Jesus that he
should grant her request, heal her
child, aiKl let her go. for she
crieth after us] They wished to
escape the attention and notoriety
which her cries were likely to at-
tract. " We may suppose," says
Bengel, " that the disciples feared
the judgment of men, and made
tlieir petition to our Lord, both for
their own sake, lest her crying
should produce annoyance, and for
the sake of the woman herself."
24. I am not sent
but unto the lost i$heep of the
house of Israel ] " Afitr (hose
flocks tohich have strayed away from,''^
&,c., seeking the scattered Israelites
in the regions of Tyre and Sidon,
Jesus confined his personal ministry
almost entirely to the Jews. In his
directions to the Apostles he com-
manded them (Matt. x. 5) not to go
into the way of the Gentiles, or into
any city of the Sanlaritans. Not, as
some have supposed, that his per-
sonal sympathies were bound in by
Jewish prejudices. His conversa-
tion with the woman of Samaria,
and his remaining at Sychar two
days, show the kindness of his feel-
ing towards them, and his readiness
to do them good. But the disciples,
who were slow to rise above their
Jewish prejudices, were not yet pre-
pared so as to be trusted wi'th peo-
ple or in places where their national
antipathies were likely to be ex-
cited. "Jesus," says "^Dr. Nichols,
" plainly intended to restrict his
labors, and those of his Apostles
also, during his own life, within the
limits of the Jewish nation. We
may not know his reasons, but one
naturally occurs. The Judaic ele-
ment was important to his church
at that period, in several respects.
Before Christianity had gained an
establishment in the world, it had
special occasion for those aids which
this element might afford it. One
aid was the remarkable attachment
of the Jew to his own Scriptures;
and to these Scriptures, especially
the Prophecies, Christianity appeal-
ed as one of its principal supports.
The Old Testament was the classic,
the rubric, the oracle, the glory of
the Hebrew. He counted its very
letters. It was to him the word of
God; and let him embrace a relig-
ion as being based upon this foun-
dation, and no superstition or phi-
losophy would occasion any peril to
his faith. We cannot overlook this
reason, why, in that system of nioral
harmonies which always character-
izes the Divine administration, the
Christian seed should have been
sown in a Jewish soil. The Gospel
was not left to stand alone on its
own simple moral claims, which
the world was so little prepared to
appreciate, — no, nor even on its
own miraculous testimonials. But
there was a religious culture in the
Jewish mind adapted to yield it a
powerful support, such as it could
derive from no other human source.
God was pleased to connect the two
systems of Judaism and Christian-
ity; and while the one was a school-
master to bring men to Christ, the
other was a completion and confir-
mation of its predecessor
The JcAvish convert to Christianity
felt an intensity of interest in his
new belief such as a Jew only could
feel. Accustomed to look upon his
own nation as the chosen sulSject of
a Divine administration, familiar
with special manifestations in its
MATTHEW XV.
285
26 came she and worshipped him, saying, Lord, help me ! But
he answered and said, It is not meet to take the children's
27 bread, and to cast it to dogs. And she said, Truth, Lord ;
yet the dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their master's
favor through all his ancestral his-
tory, he took up his adopted re-
ligion with a tnfrt and a zeal of
wliich no Gentile belief Avas capa-
ble, and which were so necessary to
bear it triumphantly over the sea
of prejudice and persecution upon
which it was then launched. Bless-
ings which ask no assistance from
circumstances are of rare occur-
rence in our world." Hours with
the Evangelists, Vol. I. pp. 390 -
393. 26. to dogs] little
dogs, a diminutive, which may have
been used somewhat as a term of
endearment, and which therefore
may have taken away something
from the appjirent harshness of our
Saviour's language in speaking
thus to a distressed mother respect-
ing her suffering child.
27. And she said, Truth, Lord ;
yet the dogs eat of the crumbs]
Our English version fails, we think,
to give the tnie meaning of this
passage. The exact translation is
as follows : " Yea, Lord ; for the
little dogs eat," &c. hi conformity
with the preek idiom, we are to
suppose an ellipsis or omission be-
fore the word yap, for, which must
be supplied in English, in order to
make the passage intelligible, and
may be given as follows : " Yea,
Lord [but do not deny me] ; for
even the little dogs," &c. Bengel,
whom even Winer regards as a great
authority in such matters, says :
" The particle ml [ yea ] partly
assents ; partly, as it were, places
on our Lord's tongue the assent to
her prayers, i. e. prays." She puts
such a construction on his words,
that while by the expression, ' Yea,
Lord,' she assents to them, she, at
the same time, turns aside the ap-
parent edge of their denial, and
draws from them encouragement to
continue her petition, which she
does in the most delicate way, by a
turn of expression (" Yea, Lord ;
for even the little dogs," &c.) which
implies a further entreaty on her
part, though it does not state it
in words. It is impossible to sup-
ply the ellipsis in English without
marring the exceeding fineness and
delicacy of the sentiment. The
modesty and reverence towards
Christ which are here implied, —
her humility in regard to any claims
Avhich she might have upon him, —
her ready assent to the apparently
disparaging terms in which he had
alluded to her and hei's, — her per-
fect faith in him, and the devoted
love for her child which, while it
could not accept any refusal, yet
pressed its claims with such a deli-
cate and reverential reserve towards
him from Avhom she kncAV that re-
lief might come, — give a peculiar
and aflfecting moral beauty to these
Avords, which evidently touched our
Saviour as indicating to him the
finest qualities of character. \n Dr.
Cureton's Syriac Gospels, a word is
added, which is found both in the
Peshito and the Jerusalem Syriac,
and which heightens the interest
and pathos of the passage : " She
saith to him. Yea, my Lord ; for
even the dogs eat of "^ the crumbs
which fall from their masters'
tables, and live.'''' The expression,
and live, in allusion to the sick child
for whose life she is pleading, is
one of those fine touches of nature
Avhich can hardly be counterfeited,
and Avhich bear in themselves de-
cisive marks of genuineness. The
whole narrative is Avorthy of study ;
this refined and delicate Avoman, as
her language shoAvs her to have
been, in her distress on account of
her daughter, and her efforts for her
relief, forgetting herself and every-
thing around her so entirely as to
folloAv after Jesus and his company
of men, Avith cries which Avere
bringing on them an unpleasant
amount of attention; her following
286
MATTHEW XV.
table. Then Jesus answered and said unto her, O woman, ^
great is thy faith ; be it unto thee even as thou wilt. And her
daughter was made whole from that very hour.
And Jesus departed from thence, and came nigh unto the 2fl
Sea of Galilee ; and went up into a mountain, and sat down
there. And great multitudes came unto him, having with 30
them those that were lame, blind, dumb, maimed, and many
others; and cast them down at Jesus's feet, and he healed
them ; insomuch that the multitude wondered, when they saw 31
the dumb to speak, the maimed to be whole, the lame to walk,
and the blind to see ; and they glorified the God of Israel.
Then Jesus called his disciples unto him, and said, I have 32
compassion on the multitude, because they continue with me
now three days, and have nothing to eat ; and I will not send
them away fasting, lest they faint in the way. And his disci- 33
pies say unto him. Whence should we have so much bread in
the wilderness, as to fill so great a multitude ? And Jesus 34
saith unto them, How many loaves have ye ? And they said,
Seven, and a few little fishes. And he commanded the multi- 36
tude to sit down on the ground. And he took the seven loaves 36
after him still, and beseeching him
to help her, though he answered her
not a word; the entreaty of the
disciples that he would send her
away, and his reply to them " that
he is not sent except to the lost
sheep of the house of Israel ; " — all
these things, instead of discouraging
her, only leading her to prostrate
herself before him, and calling out
from her a more affecting appeal
to him for help ; — every one of the
particulars is worthy of attention,
and may furnish an instructive
lesson. Such persistency in ask-
ing, and yet such submissiveness ;
such earnestness, and yet such rev-
erence and delicacy, are rarely com-
bined, and they furnish a beautiful
type of Christian character. We
see here as elsewhere how the mira-
cle is subordinated to its higher in-
fluences and teachings. 30.
And great multitudes] Jesus
returns to Galilee, and is encom-
passed again by multitudes of peo-
ple. To those who travel in that
region now, it is a matter of wonder
where such crowds could have come
from. But according to Josephus
(See Milman's Hist, of Christianity,
Bk. I. Chap. IV.) the whole province
of Galilee was at that time crowded
with flourishing towns and cities,
beyond almost any other region of
the world. According to his state-
ments, " the number of towns, and
the population of Galilee, in a dis-
trict of between fifty and sixty
miles in length, and between sixty
and seventy in breadth, was no
less than 204 cities and villages, the
least of which contained 15,000
souls." This would make, for the
whole province, a population of
more than three millions. There is
some reason, we think, to question
the exactness of the large numerical
statements which are found in
ancient writers ; btit after all rea-
sonable deductions have been made
from this account, there will still
remain a population sufficiently
dense to confirm the Gospel nar-
ratives in regard to the ease with
which large multitudes were col-
MATTHEW XV. 287
and the fishes, and gave thanks, and brake them, and gave to
37 his disciples, and the disciples to the multitude. And they did
all eat, and were filled ; and they took up of the broken meat
38 that was left seven baskets full. And they that did eat were
39 four thousand men, beside women and children. And he sent
away the multitude, and took ship, and came into the coasts of
Magdala.
lected in that region. 39. Magdalum, so some MSS., in Matt.
Ma§rdala] In Tischendorf s edi- xv. 39, turn Magdala into Maga-
tion, this is Magadan. "As Herodo- dan." Stanley. In the Curetouian
tus (II. 159) turns Megiddo hito Syriac Gospels it is Magadan.
288 MATTHEW XVI. 1-4.
CHAPTER XYI.
1-4. — A Sign from Heaven.
1-4. The Pharisees and Sadducees demand a sign from
heaven. They had witnessed his miracles, but wished for
something more. " In the Jewish superstition," says Alford,
" it was held that demons and false gods could give signs on
earth, but only the true God, signs from heaven." " And
thus we find that, immediately after the first miraculous feed-
ing, the same demand was made, (John vi. 30,) and an-
swered by the declaration of our Lord, that He was the true
bread from heaven." Reference to the same habit of the
Jewish mind is found in 1 Cor. i. 22, " The Jews demand
signs, and th'e Greeks seek for wisdom." It probably was
at the close of the day when the demand for a sign from
heaven was made of Jesus, and the sunset glow of the
heavens suggested his answer. For the Jews, according to
Lightfoot, were curious in observing the seasons, and in fore-
telling the state of the weather. They asked of him a sign
from heaven. He replies, looking probably to the western
sky, " It being now evening, ye say. It will be fair, for the
sky is red; and, in the morning, ye say, there will be a
storm, for the sky is red and lowering. Ye know how
to distinguish the aspects of the sky, and can ye not also un-
derstand the signs of the times." As if he had said : " It is
your business to understand things spiritual and divine.
You profess to be the moral and religious teachers of this
people. And here you are asking a sign from heaven.
But how is it that ye do not understand the signs which are
actually given ? You know how to foretell the state of the
MATTHEW XVI. 13-18. 289
weather from the aspect of the sky, and can ye not, in the
miracles wliich I have wrought, and the truths which I have
been teaching, and the new Hfe that I am awakening, see the
signs of the times ? Can ye not see in them the signs of a
new era, of a purer and higher kingdom to be estabhshed on
earth ? If your minds were open to spiritual, as your eyes
are to material things, you would see all around you mani-
fest indications of the changes that I am to introduce."
5-13. The noticeable fact here is the extreme slowness
of spiritual apprehension which is manifested by the disci-
ples, especially when their perplexity here about bread is
compared with the specific instructions on that point which
had just been given to them, (xv. 11,) and repeated with an
explanation, (xv. 17-20,) which could not be misunder-
stood.
13-18. — On this Rock I build my Church.
The above conversation took place on the vessel as they
were crossing the lake. They arrived at Bethsaida on the
northeast corner of the lake, and in passing from that city
to Caesarea Philippi, which lies far to the north, near
Mount Hermon, the remaining incidents recorded in this
chapter took place.
Who do men say that I the Son of man am ? They re-
ply, some say John the Baptist, some Elijah, and some Jer-
emiah, or one of the prophets. These different views pre-
vailing at that time show the vague, but at the same time
the active and wide-spread expectations of the time. The
reply of Peter, " Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living
God," is the first distinct declaration of faith on the part of
the disciples. Jesus excepts this one article of faith as con-
taining the true idea of his office, and the foundation of his
Church. " Blessed art thou, Simon, son of Jonah, because
flesh and blood hath not revealed this unto thee, but my Fa-
ther who is in the heavens. And I say unto thee that thou
25
290 MATTHEW XVI. 19.
art a rock (Peter means rock), and on this rock will I
build my Church, and the gates of death (Hades, not Ge-
henna) shall not prevail against it."
There are two explanations of this passage. According
to one, Peter is identified with the declaration which he has
just made, as the person hearing the word is identified with
what he hears (xiii. 20.) When Jesus therefore says,
« Thou art a rock, and on this rock will I build my Church,"
he means that this confession of faith in him as the Messiah,
the Son of the living God, is the foundation on which his
Church is to be built. According to the other explanation,
Peter himself, as the foremost of the disciples, and the first
to recognize from the teachings of Jesus this essential tinith,
is the stone or pillar on which his Church is to be built.
" He was," says Alford, " the first of those foundation-stones
(Eph. ii. 20, Rev. xxi. 14,) on which the living temple of
God was built : this building itself beginning on the day of
Pentecost by the laying of three thousand living stones on
this very foundation." For this sort of reference to the pil-
lars and stones of the spiritual building see 1 Peter ii. 4-6,
1 Tim. iii. 15, Gal. ii. 9, Eph. ii. 20, Rev. iii. 12.
19. — The Keys of the Kingdom of Heaven.
In verse 19 the figure is changed. "I give to thee the
keys of the kingdom of Heaven, and whatsoever thou shalt
bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatsoever
thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven." The
kingdom of Heaven is, 1. The religion of Jesus, with its
Divine influences, entering the individual soul, and establish-
ing its dominion over it. 2. "When it has entered different
souls and united them under its authority into a community,
it becomes an outward institution or kingdom, receiving or
rejecting men according to its influence over them individu-
ally. 3. But the kingdom of Heaven does not fulfil and
complete its work here on the earth. When those who have
MATTHEW XVI. 19. 291
submitted to its influence and authority here lay down the
burden of the flesh, the kingdom of Heaven is the name
applied to the more perfect and glorious condition of being
into which they then enter. Jesus uses the expression in
these three different ways. When therefore he says to Pe-
ter, " I will give to thee the keys of the kingdom of Heaven,"
he means, I will give to thee the truths by which my re-
ligion shall be unlocked and laid open to the souls of men,
t^o that it may act upon them as a spiritual power, and re-
ceive them into itself as an outward institution, or a divinely
organized community of souls. And more than this. So far,
its work is on the earth. But it is not confined to the earth.
AVhat is done here, in this lower sphere of the kingdom of
Heaven in accordance with its laws, applies with equal force
in its higher sphere, in the heavens, where those same laws
I)revail. Whatever is done in accordance with those laws
here is recognized as in accordance with them there above,
wherever that kingdom extends. Whatever is bound or
loosed in accordance with them here, has the sanction of
Heaven, and is bound or loosed there. They who, accept-
ing the offers of salvation, become members of the kingdom
of Heaven on earth, become by that act members of the
kingdom of Heaven above ; and they who by rejecting its
offers exclude themselves from it here, at the same tima
close its doors against them in the heavens. In this sense, ■
what is bound or loosed on earth is bound or loosed in
heaven. SV ^ jj
But how is it that Jesus uses this l^g«age in his address //
to Peter alone? It is addressed to him as the spokesman
or representative of the Apostles. As Olshausen has said,
"That which at verse 19 is spoken to St. Peter is at Matt,
xviii. 18, John xx. 23, addressed to all the Apostles. One
cannot therefore find in these words anything that is peculiar
to St. Peter ; he merely answers as the organ of the college
of Apostles, and Christ, acknowledging him as such, re-
plies to him, and speaks through him to them a//." " That
292 MATTHEW XVI. 21-28.
which is through St. Peter bestowed on the Apostles, was
ao-ain through the Apostles conferred on the whole Church."
" That the Apostles then, and their true successors in the
Spirit, turned with the word of truth towards one place, and
away from another, that they followed up their labors on one
man and not on another, m this consisted the binding and
loosing. The whole new spiritual community which the
Saviour seems to found took its rise from the Apostles and
their labors. No one became a Christian save through them,
and thus the Church through all time is built up in living
union with its origin. Christianity is no bare summary of
truths and reflections to which a man even in a state of iso-
lation might attain ; it is a life-stream which flows through
the human race, and its fountains must reach every separate
individual who is to be drawn within this circle of life. The
Gospel is identified and grown into union with the persons.
The explanation, therefore, of the passage which the Prot-
estant Church usually opposes to the view of the Catholics,
according to which the faith of Peter, and the confession of
that faith, is the rock, is entirely the correct one, — only the
faith itself and his confession of it must not be regarded as
apart from Peter himself personally."
21-28. — The Humiliatiox and Sufferings of the
Messiah.
21. Here commences a new era in the ministry of Jesus.
He now for the first time openly and plainly (Mark viii. 32)
announced to his disciples the sufferings and death and res-
urrection from the dead through which he was soon to pass.
They could not take in the idea. They remembered his
words, but it was not till after his resurrection that they un-
derstood what was meant by them. The words were indeed
so fearfully distinct, that at first they could not be misinter-
preted. Peter, adhering still to his mistaken ideas of the
Messiah and his kingdom, and unable to admit the possibil-
MATTHEW XVI. 21-28. 293
ity of such degradation and sufferings as have just been
foretold, in the ardent impetuosity which so often showed
itself in his conduct, laid hold on Jesus, and remonstrated
with him as one does with a friend in despondency. (See
"Whately, Good and Evil Spirits, p. 135.) " God be gra-
cious to thee. Lord ; this thing shall not be to thee." As if
he had said, " There is no ground for such gloomy appre-
hensions. This cannot be." It was an act of ignorant pre-
sumption for him to address Jesus in this way. The sugges-
tion evidently touched him most keenly. Turning to Peter,
and looking at the disciples (Mark viii. 33), he rebuked Pe-
ter, and said to him, " Get thee behind me, Satan ; thou art
a stumbling-block to me, because thou regardest not the
things of G.od, but the tilings of men."
Why does Jesus show such extreme sensitiveness ? He
had used the same expression once before (Matt. iv. 10), in
his last reply to the tempter in the wilderness. It has been
supposed that it is not applied to Peter so much as to the
evil spirit from whom the suggestion came. But the lan-
guage is very explicit. "Turning, he said to Peter, Get
thee behind me, Satan," thou tempter. Here, as in the
other case (iv. 10, see note there), where the same expres-
sion is used, there is something which indicates a peculiar
sensitiveness, as if Jesus entered enough into the feeling of
the disciple to be himself not wholly insensible to the temp-
tation which came here under its most insidious form. " Un-
questionably," says Olshausen, "the Saviour must be con-
ceived of as having maintained one continuous conflict with
temptations. The great periods of such temptations at the
commencement and termination of his ministry exhibit,
merely in a concentrated form, what ran through his whole
life. Here then, for the first time, there meets our view a
moment in which temptation assails him by holding forth
the possibility of escaping sufferings and death. It was all
the more concealed and dangerous that it came to him
through the lips of a dear disciple, who had just solemnly
25*
294 MATTHEW XVI. 21-28.
acknowledged his divine dignity. From the clear and pure
fountain of Christ's life no unholy thought could flow ; but
inasmuch as he was to be a conqueror victorious over sin,
it had to draw near, that in every form he might overthrow
it; and upon his human nature, which only by degrees
received within itself the whole fulness of the divine life,
sin, when it drew near, did make an impression." Instantly,
however, in this case, on feeling the power of the temptation,
he recognized the source from which it came, and by the
harsh word which he used in his reply to Peter, he laid open
to him the wicked agency or wrong principle and motive by
which the suggestion had been prompted.
Nor does he stop with the disclosure of what is wrong
in the disciple. He lays down, 24-28, more strongly,
and with words of more fearful and solemn interest, the
utter self-renunciation which would be required of his
followers. We have no language which comes up to the
full force of the idea here set forth. Utterly to deny and
renounce themselves, — to take up the cross, that appalling
instrument of degradation and torture and death, and fol-
low Him — is what he sets before them as their duty now.
But he rises into a region of thought which makes even
these sacrifices seem small. " For what," he asks, " shall
a man be profited, if he shall gain the whole world and
lose his own soul ? Or what shall a man give in exchange
for his soul ? For the Son of man shall come in the glory
of his Father with his angels ; and then shall he reward
every man according to his doing." Here we are lifted
up amid the retributions of another world. The sacrifices
made here, the obedience, in self-renunciation and holy
living, of those who follow him in his conflicts and humilia-
tion, will be rewarded by him, when in that higher world
he shall meet them with the ensigns of his greatness,
in the glory of his Father, and attended by his angels.
Then, v. 28, by one of those sudden transitions which
are so common with him, he comes down from the thouo-ht
MATTHEW XVI. 295
of his kingdom, in its glorious consummation with ran-
somed souls above, to the time of its establishment and
ascendency on earth, i. e. to the time when, with the
destruction of Jerusalem, the dispersion of the Jews, and
the overthrow of the whole Jewish polity, the sacrifice
and the oblation should cease, the old religion no longer
be recognized in the region where it had so long pre-
vailed, and the religion of Christ, the Son of man coming
in his kingdom, should take its place as the only true
worship among men.
NOTES.
The Pharisees also, with the Sadducees, came, and, tempt-
ing, desired him that he would show them a sign from heaven.
2 He answered and said unto them, When it is evening, ye say,
3 It will be fair weather; for the sky is red. And in the morn-
ing, It will be foul weather to-day; for the sky is red and
lowering. O ye hypocrites ! ye can discern the face of the
4 sky, but can ye not discern the signs of the times ? A wicked
and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign ; and there shall
no sign be given unto it, but the sign of the prophet Jonas.
And he left them and departed.
1. The Pharisees also, with shows how grieved our Saviour was.
the Sadduceas] The Pharisees " Groaning in his spirit, i. e. with a
overlaid the Law with their tradi- deep sigh, he says, * Why is this
tions, and thus made it of none generation seeking for a sign?'"
effect through their superstitious It was not anger, but grief, that
and hypocritical observances. (See tempered his indignation. 3.
XV. 1-20.) The Sadducees bv their O ye hypocrites] These words,
nnl)elief, retaining the letter of the or rather the one word hypocrites, is
law, but explainins it away in a omitted by Tischeudorf. The term
captious and sceptical spirit, ren- hypocrites is one which Jesus never
dered it of none effect. These hos- in any other case applied to the
tile serfs, however, could forget Sadducees; and it is not probable
their differences lon^^ enough to at- that it was so applied here. They
tack one whose simple, energetic, were rather an unbelieving than a
and lifp-<^ivlnfr tniths laid open self-righteous and hypocritical sect,
the emptiness^ of their pretensions. He applies the word to the Scribes
and overthrew alike the religious and Pharisees, but not to them,
reasonino-s of both. 2. 4. the sign of the
He aiiSAvered] Mark (viii. 12) prophet Jonas] (bee note to xu.
296 MATTHEW XVI.
And when his disciples were come to the other side, they had 5
forgotten to take bread. Then Jesus said unto them, Take 6
heed, and beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and of the
Sadducees. And they reasoned among themselves, saying, 7
It is because we have taken no bread. Which when Jesus 8
perceived, he said unto them, O ye of little faith, why reason
ye among yourselves, because ye have brought no bread ? Do 9
ye not yet understand, neither remember the five loaves of tlie
five thousand, and how many baskets ye took up ? neither the lo
seven loaves of the four thousand, and how many baskets ye
took up ? How is it that ye do not understand that I spake it n
not to you concerning bread, that ye should beware of the
leaven of the Pharisees and of the Sadducees ? Then under- i%
stood they how that he bade them not beware of the leaven
of bread, but of the doctrine of the Pharisees and of the Sad-
ducees.
When Jesus came into the coasts of Cajsarea Philippi, he is
asked his disciples, saying. Whom do men say that I, the Son
of man, am ? And they said, Some say that thou art John u
the Baptist ; some, Elias ; and others, Jeremias, or one of the
prophets. He saith unto them, But whom say ye that I am ? is
39.) If the account of the prophet then to wonder that he repeated
Jonah were, Uke the parable of the often the same thought hi nearly the
Good Samaritan or ot the Prodigal same words. If, therefore, we' find
Son, not a historical narrative, but in the different Evangelists nearly
a story invented for the purpose of the same instnictions given under
teaching the impossibility of fleeing different circumstances, we are not
from the requirements of God ; it to suppose that one or the other
would none the less serve as a sign of the writers has made a mistake,
of the Saviour's death and resur- but that Jesus, in confonnity with
rection from the dead. Some holy the wants of his hearers, repeated
man may have been inspired of his instructions again and again.
God to teach this great truth, in the 9, 10. baskets] In the
way in which it is there taught, as ninth verse it is cophini, and in
by a poem or a parable. The lesson the tenth spurides, entirely diflerent
is none the less true or important words. The same dist'inction is
because it is thus taught; nor does found in Mark. In Dr. Cureton's
Jesus, in alluding to it in the man- Syriac Gospels, the first word is
ner he does, express any opinion as translated baskets, the second pan-
to whether it is historical or not. niers. The distinction is important,
7. It is because we as indicating two different minu-les.
have taken no bread] How could 13. that I, the Son of
they have forgotten so soon what man] Observe how often Jesus
Jesus had told them ? (xv. 16-20.) uses this expression, as if to indi-
Their dulness in this case shows how cate his intimate relationship to our
they needed line upon line and pre- humanitv. The Son of man, who
cept upon precept. We are not stood with the Jews for the Mes-
MATTHEW XVI.
207
16 And Simon Peter answered and said, Thou art the Christ, the
17 Son of the living God. And Jesus answered and said unto him,
Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-jona; for flesh and blood hath not
18 revealed it unto thee, but my Father, which is in heaven. And
siah, though it was not a term exclu-
sively applied to him. 16.
Thou art the Christ, the Son
of the living God] Here is the
counterpart to our Saviour's own
expression. He was the Son of
God as he was the Son of man,
and thus the mediator between God
and man. Here is the first and
only Gospel creed respecting Jesus,
and it gained his earnest and em-
phatic appi-oval. Perhaps it is in
reference to this that St, John more
than once in his first Epistle uses
this expression : "Whosoever shall
confess that Jesus is the Son of
God, God dwelleth in him, and he
in God." " He that believeth in
the Son of God, hath the witness in
himself." " These things have I
written unto you that believe in the
name of the ' Son of God ; that ye
may know that ye have eternal
life, and that ye may believe in the
name of the Son of God." " Who
is he that overcometh the world,
but he that believeth that Jesus is
the Son of God ? " It had been
well for the peace and unity of the
Church, if the successors of the
Apostles had been as modest and as
truthful as they were in what they
required as articles of faith on this
great subject. There never can be
unity in the Church of Christ till
his professed followers consent to
come back to the simplicity and
power of his instructions as we find
them set forth and expounded in
the Gospels, and in the other writ-
ings of the New Testament. We
accept the words of Peter as in-
dorsed and approved by his Mas-
ter. They were heard from heaven
(" This is' my beloved Son," Matt,
iii. 17) as Jesus came up from
the baptismal waters of the Jordan,
and the heavens were opened to
him. They were repeated again
from heaven on the Mountain of
Transfiguration. (Matthew xvii. 5.)
They are dwelt upon with aifecting
earnestness by St. John, both in his
Gospel and his Epistles. At what
was perhaps originally the close of
his Gospel (John xx. 31) he says :
" But these are written, that' ve
might believe that Jesus is the
Christ, the Son of God; and that
believing ye might have life through
his name." Why can we not be
content with this? Why must we
go beneath it with any poor meta-
physical anah'sis of ours to deter-
mine precisely what is meant by
these great words, and impose our
definition on others as an article of
faith, without assent to which they
cannot be admitted into the Church
of Christ, but must, in the blasphe-
mous words of the Athanasian creed,
" without doubt perish everlast-
ingly." It is a pi"esumptuous and
awful thing for men to impose con-
ditions which Christ never imposed,
and to erect barriers which were
never authorized by him in the way
of admission to his Church.
17. Simon Bar-jona] Simon,
eon of Jonas. " It is exceedingly
probable that this is intended to
form a contrast to the foregoing
Jesus, Son of God. Simon denotes
here, as does Jesus, the human per-
sonality of the individual ; son of
Jonas is probably used here in a
figurative sense. Primarily it is
indeed a genealogical designation
(John i. 42, xxi. 16, 17 ); but as
Hebrew names generally are de-
scriptive, Christ here looks to the
import of the name. Perhaps he
referred it to Jona, a dove ; and in
that case this meaning would arise,
' Thou, Simon, art a child of the
Spirit (alluding to the Holy Spirit
under the svmbol of a dove) : God,
the Father' of Spirits (Heb. xii. 9),
hath revealed himself to thee.'
Where God reveals himself there is
formed a spiritual man." Olshau-
sen. flesh and blood]
No man, no merely human faculties,
have revealed this to you ; " only
298
MATTHEW XVI.
I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter ; and upon this rock I
will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail
against it. And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom 19
of Heaven ; and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be
bound in heaven ; and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall
be loosed in heaven. Then charged he his disciples, that they 20
the divine can teach us to know
the divine." 18. Thou art
Peter [a rock] ; and upon this
rock I will build my church]
From tiie earliest days of our relig-
ion, the Christian Church or com-
munity of believers has been repre-
sented' as a building. The Greek
word ecdesla, like its English syno-
nyme the church, means either the
community of worshippers, or the
place in which they meet for wor-
ship. The word svnagogue, in its
Greek form, is applied either to the
congregation or to the building in
which they assemble. The Greek
word iKKXrja-ia, or c/iwrcA, is seldom
used in the New Testament to de-
note a building set apart for relig-
ious purposes. The Christians at
that time had no such buildings.
But in one case at least the place of
worship is called the church (1 Tim.
iii. 15) : " in the house of God,
which is the church of the living
God." The Church itself, the com-
munity of believers, is constantly
represented as a building, and its
members are represented as living
stones of which it is built, or as
foundations or pillars on which it
rests. " Ye are God's building."
(1 Cor. iii. 9.) " Ye are the temple
of the living God." (2 Cor.vi. 16.)
" Ye also, as living stones, are built
up a spiritual house." (1 Peter ii,
5.) " And are built upon the
foundation of the Apostles and
prophets, Jesus Christ himself being
the chief corner-stone, in whom all
the building, fitly framed together,
groweth unto a holy temple in the
Lord." (Eph. ii. 20,21.) "And the
wall of the city had tAvelve founda-
tions, and in them the names of the
twelve Apostles of the Lamb."
(Rev. xxi. 14.) If we familiarize
ourselves with these forms of
speech, the words of Jesus in the
passage before us will be found
to harmonize with them easily,
and to express, though by a more
pointed and individual applica-
tion, no more than Paul meant
when he spoke of being " built on
the foundation of the Apostles and
prophets," or than the author of the
Ap.ocalypse meant when he spoke
of the Twelve Apostles as the
twelve foundations of the wall of
the new Jerusalem. the gates
of hell] gates of death, — the
power of the kingdom of death.
An Oriental form of speech still
used when we speak of the Turkish
power as "the Ottoman I'orte."
19. And I will give
unto thee the keys of the
kingdom of Heaven] " The
Jews familiarly used the terms 'to
bind ' and ' to loose ' metaphorically,
in the sense of ' to forbid ' and ' to
permit.' They used them concern-
ing the teachers of their Law, who
were supposed capable of explain-
ing its requirements, — what it for-
bade and what it pennitted. When
Jesus says, ' I will give you the
keys of the kingdom of Heaven,' his
meaning is, I will appoint you a min-
ister of my religion, to make known
to men the terms on which they
may enter the kingdom of Heaven.
"VVliat follows is an amplification of
this idea : — I appoint you a teacher
and expositor of my religion, to
declare to men its requirements,
what it forbids and permits ; and,
be assiired that what is thus forbid-
den and permitted by you is for-
bidden and permitted by God. It
is of the authority of Peter as a
minister of his religion that Jesus
speaks, and not of any power to be
exercised according to his discretion
as an individual." Norton.
MATTHEW XVI.
299
21 should tell no man that he was Jesus, the Christ. From
that time forth began Jesus to show unto his disciples, how
that he must go unto Jerusalem, and suffer many things of the
elders, and chief priests, and scribes, and be killed, and be
22 raised again the third day. Then Peter took him, and began
20. that they should tell no
man that he is the Christ ] The
disciples now received him as the
JMessiah ; but the thne had not yet
come when he was publicly to be
declared and recognized as such.
When that time should come, his
death would be near at hand.
21. From that time forth]
The altered tone of our Saviour's
communications to his disciple^,
''from that time fortii," is very-
observable. The confession of faitri
in him as the Messiah, which had
been made by Peter, seems to have
quickened his sympathy for them,
and to have increased his confidence
in them. A new era in his inter-
course with them had arrived.
Hitherto he has alluded mysteri-
ou-ily to his death. But now!^ as in
the strong language of Peter, they
liave expressed their belief in him as
the Christ, the Son of the living
God, he sees that the time has
come when he must teach them as
plainly as possible in i-egard to the
t;-ue nature of his mission. Thus
h3 speaks of his humiliation and
death here, and shows these things
ill connection with his exaltation in
the next chapter. He wished them
to understand what lay before him,
and so to understand it in its rela-
tion to a true spiritual greatness
that they might not be permanently
depressed and discouraged by it.
They receive his communications at
first' like men who have been stun-
ned by some dreadful, and, there-
fore, incredible disclosure. That
he, the Son of God, the long-ex-
pected Messiah, who was to over-
come and rule the world, should die
a violent and shameful death, was
something tO) astounding to be be-
lieved, or even understood. And
that further communication,
and be raised again on the
third day] which to us now throws
such a halo over the cross and the
tomb, was even more unintelligible to
them. After the Transfiguration, it is
said (Mark ix. 10), "And they kept
that saying with themselves, ques-
tioning with one another what the
rising from the dead should mean."
Again, in reference to the same
subject, it is said (Mark ix. 32), "But
they understood not that saying,
and were afraid to ask him." No
plainer language than his could be
used; but the idea itself, in its relation
to him, was one which theycolild
not take in; and it was not till after
his resurrection that his plainest in-
structions respecting his death could
be understood. The thought was
too strange and repulsive to be ac-
cepted by them. Their first feel-
ing, therefore, when the words were
urged and pressed upon them, was
one of astonishment and incredu-
lity. It seemed to them that their
]\Iaster, in a moment of depression
and discouragement, had given way
to unreasonable apprehensions and
forebodings. This supposition alone
explains the conduct and the lan-
gtiage of Peter. 22. And
Peter took him, and began to
rebuke him] For the moment,
Peter assumed the attitude of a
superior. Not in anger, but with a
condescension of sympathy, such as
a loving child may exercise towards
a suffering parent, or a faithful ser-
vant towards an unfortunate and i
discouraged master, he laid his
hand [soothingly] upon him, and
said, in opposition to the disheart-
ening words which Jesus had just
spoken, " God be gracious to you.
Lord: this shall not happen to you."
The word (iriTLfiatv, which is trans-
lated rebuke, does not involve the
idea of personal anger or of moral
disapprobation. Thus, Jesus " re-
buked the wind and the sea " (Matt,
viii. 26); i. e. he said to them,
300
MATTHEW XVI.
to rebuke him, saying, Be it far from thee, Lord ; this shall
not be unto thee. But he turned and said unto Peter, Get 23
thee behind me, Satan ; thou art an offence unto me ; for thou
savorest not the things that be of God, but those that be of
men. Then said Jesus unto his disciples, If any man will 24
come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and
"Peace, be still." (^lark iv. 39.)
The Avord is used to express an ear-
nest remonstrance against what one
is doing, or what he might be in-
clined to do. '^ And Jesus charged
(it is the same word) them not to
make him known" (Matt. xii. 16);
i. e. he remonstrated with thein
against what he saw was their wish
and purpose to make him known.
So Peter here remonstrated Avith
Jesus against (what seemed to
him) the desponding and humiliat-
ing A'iew Avhich he had just given
of his ministry. But he
turned and said unto Peter]
The language in Mark (viii. 33) is
more grapliic : " When he had
turned about, and looked on his
disciples, he rebuked Peter." He
fii-st looked at his disciples. He saAV
how they Avere affected by this act
of patronizing familiarity and re-
monstrance on the part of Peter,
and that they probably were all
moA'ed by the same lui worthy view
of his Avo'rds Avhich Peter had taken.
He may also himself haA^e sympa-
thized with them, so far as to feel a
momentary shudder at the thought
of that which afterwards, at its near
approach, brought upon him such
an agony of grief. And, therefore,
to regain instantly his ascendency
over them, and on the same instant
to shake off the thought Avhich had
come to him as the last and sharp-
est temptation in the Avilderness, he
uttered the strong Avords,
Get thee behind me, Satan]
The Avord sataii means adversary or
seducer, and is iindoubtedly applied
here to Peter, who for the' moment
had put himself in o[>position to his
Master, and Avould seduce and draw
him away from the path of humili-
ation and sorrow Avhich he had
chosen. for thou savor-
est not the things that be of
God, but the things that be
of men] savorest, to have (he miiul
and heart Jixed upon. Your mind
is fixed on things earthly and
human, not on those which are
heavenly and divine. Therefore,
you cannot take in the true mean-
ing of my Avords. We must remem-
ber, that" all this AA-hile the disciples
are as a school, exercised and dis-
ciplined under the various train-
ing of their Master. After this pri-
vate remonstrance Avith Peter, and
through him Avith his companions,
in order to make a still deeper im-
pression upon them, he call.ed the
people to him (Mark viii. 34), and
in their presence laid doAvn still
more strongly the doctrine of self-
denial and self-sacrifice, Avhich he
has already taught (Matt. x. 37-39)
Avith such distinctness and force.
24, 25. These two A'erses
are but carrving out, in its applica-
tion to all Ills foUoAvers, the great
idea which he was to exemplify in
his life and death, and Avhich he
has just noAv scA-erely remonstrated
Avith Peter for refusing to accept.
It is impossible for us to imdersfcxnd
hoAV appalling to the Jcavs this
image 01 the cross must haA'e been.
It Avas not their mode of punish-
ment. It .Avas introduced by the
Romans as an instrument of cruelty
and oppression, too shameful and
too dreadful to be used among their
own citizens, and to be inflicted ou
the lowest criminals and strangers.
" W^e can hardly feel," saA's Mr.
Norton, " the impression Avliich it
nmst have made upon those to
Avhom the hon-ible torture of cruci-
fixion, as inflicted upon the most
Avretched outcasts of society, Avas
not an imcommon spectacle." It
A\-as connected in their mind Avith
all that Avas hateful and unjust iu
a foreign domination : and nothing:
MATTHEW XVI.
301
25 follow me. For whosoever will save his life shall lose it ; and
26 whosoever will lose his life, for my sake, shall find it. For
what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and
could be more abhoiTent to all their
most cherished convictions than
that their Messiah, who was to
break every yoke and free them
from foreign rule, should himself be
subjected to this vilest and most
painful of deaths, and that he
should hold up this to his followers
as wliat they also must be ready to
endure in their devotion to him.
Nothing shows more powerfully the
Jersonal and moral ascendency of
esus over those around him, than
the fact that, with such images of
reward as this, he could still bind
them to him. 25. Whoso-
ever will save his life] We
have already (Matt. x. 39) com-
mented on this passage. The words
are repeated here with a slight
alteration, and . bearing with a
mighty pressure on what he has
already foretold respecting his own
fate. The meaning of the word
"^vxrj, Avhich is translated life here,
and soul in the next verse, is to be
borne in mind. There is in the
Greek, as also in the Syriac, a nice
distinction which is lost in our Eng-
lish version. " Whosoever may
wish [cai/ ^tXj;] to save his life
[ soul ] shall lose it ; and whosoever
will lose his life [ soul ] for my sake
shall find it." It is not, he who may
wish to lose his life for his sake : he
does not require that of us. He
only requires that Ave shall not
wish to save it at the expense of
what is better than life. He has
spoken of the cross. He now speaks
of the life which may be lost upon
it; but in the same sentence uses
the same word to designate the life
which makes that earthly, mortal
life of no account. 26.
For what is a man profited]
Literally, " What shall a man be
profited," «Scc. There are those Avho
translate psyche here by the word
life, because it is the same word
that is so rendered in the previous
verse. But this does not convey the
true meaning so well as our com-
mon version. We must think of
him Avho spoke, and who by his
spiritual perceptions reaching into
higher worlds, saw the soul saved
by that whick seemed to destroy it,
and lost b}-- that which to mortal
eyes seemed to save it. And when
the soul is lost everything is lost ;
for " what shall a man be profited
if he gain the whole world and lose
his own soul ? or what shall a man
give in exchange for his soul?"
There is no more impressive and
awful passage in the sacred writ-
ings, and few which are more per-
fectly rendered in our English ver-
sion. Verbal comments upon it are
poor and small. They who would
force it into a proof-text for the
doctrine of everlasting damnation,
and they who would explain it away
as referring to nothing beyond this
world, show themselves alike insen-
sible to its power. Its solemn and
dreadful appeal should come home
to every soul that is in danger of
wasting its immortal energies on
the things of time, or of giving to
them more of its affections than is
consistent with its highest good.
A very striking illustration of the
manner in which a man may ruin
his soul in this Avorld, and have no
suspicion of the work of death
which is going on within the fair
and prosperous exterior of his life,
is given by Archbishop AVhately in
his Annotations on Lord Bacon's
Essays. " Most persons," he says,
"know that every butterjly (the
Greek name for which, it is re-
markable, signifies the same also as
the smil^ — j)syche) comes from a
grub, or caterpillar ; in the lan-
guage of naturalists, called a lar-va.
The last name (which signifies
literallv a mask) was introduced by
Linnaeus, because the caterpillar
is a kind of outer covering, or dis-
fxise of the future butterfly within,
or it has been ascertamed by
302
MATTHEW XVI.
lose his own soul ? or what shall a man give in exchange for
his soul ? For the Son of man shall come in the glory of his 27
curious microscopic examination,
that a distinct butterfly, only unde-
veloped and not full grown, is con-
tained within the body of the cater-
pillar; that this latter has its own
organs of digestion, respiration, &c.,
suitable to its lai-va life, quite dis-
tinct from, and independent of, the
future butterfly which it encloses.
When the pi'oper period arrives, and
the life of the insect, in this its first
stage, is to close, it becomes what
is called a pupa, enclosed in a crys-
alis or cocoon (often composed of
silk, as is that of the silk- worm
which supplies us that important
article), and lies torpid for a time
within its natural coffin, from which
it issues, at the proper period, as a
perfect butterfly. But sometimes
this process is marred. Tjiere is a
numerous tribe of insects, well
known to naturalists, called' ich-
neumon-flies, which in their hirva
state are parasitical ; that is, in-
habit and feed on other larvae. The
ichneumon-fly, being provided with
a long, sharp'sting. which is in fact
an ovijHisUof (egg-layer), pierces
with this the body or a caterpillar
in several places, and deposits her
eggs, which are there hatched, and
feed as grubs (larvce) on the inward
parts of their victim. A most won-
derful circumstance connected with
this process is, that a caterpillar
that has been thus attacked goea
on feeding, and apparently thriving
quite as well, during the whole of
its larva-life, as those that have
escaped. For, by a wonderful pro-
vision of instinct, the ichneumon-
grubs within do not injure any of
the organs of the larva, but feed
only on the futui-e butterfly enclosed
within it. And consequently, it is
hardly possible to distinguish a
caterpillar which has these enemies
within it from those that are un-
touched. But when the period ar-
rives for the close of the larva-life,
the difference appears. You may
often observe the common cabbage
caterpillars retiring, to undergo
their change, to some sheltered
spot, — such as the walls of a sum-
mer-house ; and some of them —
those that have escaped the para-
sites (the other grubs which are
injured sometimes do the same)
— assuming the pupa-state, from
which they emerge, butterflies. Of
the unfortunate caterpillar that has
been preyed upon, nothing remains
but an empty skin. The hidden
butterfly has been secretly con-
sumed. Now is there not* some-
thing analogous to this wonderful
phenomenon in the condition of
some of our race? May not a man
have a kind of secret enemy with-
in his own bosom, destroying his
sou\, psy the, — though without in-
terfering with his well-being during
the present stage of his existence ;
and whose presence may never be
detected till the tinie arrives when
the last yrtai chanye should take
place?" 27. For the 8011
of man shall come] For this
world is not all. This mortal life
is nothing compared with that
which rises over it. It is worthy of
notice how every sentence here, in
verses 25, 26, 27, is introduced by
a for, each one taking us up yet
farther into the height of its siib-
lime argument. " If any one wif^hes
to come after me, let him deny him-
self, and take up his cross and fol-
low me;" "for he who wishes to
save his life shall lose it ; " and
then everything is gone, " /br what
shall a man be profited, if he gain
the whole world, and lose his own
soul? " ^'■For the Son of man shidl
come in the glory of his Father,
with his angels, and then shall he
reward every man according to
his works." ' What a contrast this
closing picture of the Son of man
coming in the glory of his Father,
with that in verse 21, of his sufler-
ing and dying at the hands of wick-
ed men ! ' How are we lifted up by
his words above all earthly con-
siderations of gain or loss, as we
see him rising through the same
path of humiliation and suflering
and death, which he assigns to his
followers, and coming witli his an-
gels to reward every man acco;ilr
MATTHEW XVI.
303
Father, with his angels ; and then he shall reward every man
28 according to his works. Verily I say unto you, there be some
ing to his works ! accord-
ing to his works ] Literally,
according to his duiny. Works, per-
haps, give us too superficial an idea
of the doing or working which begins
in the soul of a man, — his inmost
life, — and reaches out through all
his deeds. 28. there
be some standing here which
shall not taste of death, till]
Thus for every sentence in this dis-
course has been closely and logically
cbiniected with that which went be-
fore. We have been taken through
the scene of our probation here, to
that of our retribution hereafter.
But in this sentence there is a sud-
den, and apparently abrupt change
from one great subject to another.
These apparently violent transitions
are not uncommon in our Saviour's
discourses. But if we could place
ourselves at his point of vision, we
should see how natural and easy
the transition is. The central prin-
ciples of a great thought connect
together topics which, to a super-
ficial eye, seem to have no relation
to one another. In order to under-
stand the transition, we must not
only learn, but make ourselves fa-
miliar with, the different applica-
tions of the expression, the hingdoin
of Ifenven, and of the similar ex-
pression, the coming of the Son of
man. The kingdom of Heaven is
the religion of Jesus in the indi-
vidual soul, or in the community of
believers called the Church, — first
on earth, and then in the heavens.
When the kingdom of Heaven, or the
religion of Jesus, with its divine
truths and agencies, comes to any
one, and is received by him, it is to
him the coming of the Son of man
in his kingdom. When the religion
of Jesus, or the kingdom of God,
finds its more perfect consummation
in him on his leaving this world and
entering into a higher condition of
being, it is to him the coming of
the Son of man in the glory of his
Father with his angels, who are
then first revealed to his spiritual
perceptions. So the kingdom of
Heaven, or the religion of Jesus,
may be viewed, on a larger scale,
in its relation to the human family.
When it took the place of the old
Mosaic dispensation, as it did at the
destruction of Jerusalem and the
dispersion of the Jews, and was left
free to unfold its powers and estab-
lish itself in the earth, that was, in
a peculiar sense, the coming of the
Son of man in his kingdom, to the
earth. And when, through succes-
sive ages, the Avhole work of re-
demption is accomplished, and the
whole family of man are grouped
togetlier in thought, and placed
before the eye as finishing their
earthly course, and entering on a
fui'ther stage of existence, then, in
reference to them, the Son of man
is said to come in the glory of his
Father, and all the holy angels
with him. Whether bv his coming
we are to understand his personal
presence in these different ways, or
only that he should be present in
his religion, his spirit, and his teach-
ings, which should be, like his dis-
ciples, his repi-esentatives among
men, is not distinctly taught. We
believe that he meant to intimate
his actual and personal presence in
his religion and his Church with his
followers on earth and in Heaven.
We know too little of the power
which a spiritual being like Christ
may have of diffusing and extend-
ing' his personal and conscious pres-
ence, to oppose these views by ob-
jections of this sort, which carry
no reasonable weight w^ith them.
Now, if it be not presumptuous in
us so to speak, drawing our infer-
ences not from any data of ours,
but from the forms of expression
which he has used, we may sup-
pose that the mind of Jesus, equally
at home in all these developments
of his religion, or different forms of
his coming, connects them all to-
gether as parts of one great plan,
and passes easily from one to an-
other. In asking what a man could
304
MATTHEW XVI.
Standing here which shall not taste of death, till they see the
Son of man comino; in his kin<Tdom.
give in exchange for his soul, he
follows him beyond this mortal life,
and speaks of meeting him there to
reward him according to his works.
Then pausing a little, and thinking
of the time when the Jewish nation
shall be dispersed, their city and
altars overthrown, and his own re-
ligion take the place of the ancient
worship ; and seeing around him
some who shall outlive the bloody
changes by which his kingdom fs
thus to be established on the earth,
he, in verse 28, gives utterance to
this other thought, " Verily I say
unto you. There be some standing
here 'who shall not taste of death,
till they see the Son of man coming
[not in the glory of his Father with
his angels, but] in his kingdom."
This is the same coming of the Son
of man as that referred to in Matt.
X. 23. In these sudden transitions
from one theme to another, we must
remember that the Jlvangelists do
not give all the words that Jesus
spoke, but only the salient points,
often leaving the connecting and
explanatory clauses and events
wholly out of sight. The events
related in this chapter may have
extended through several 'weeks,
and must have occupied a number
of days.
MATTHEW XVII. 1-9. 305
CHAPTER XYII.
1-9. — The Trans figuration.
There has been much discussion in regard to the place
where this remarkable event occurred. Traditions reach-
ing back nearly to the middle of the fourth century have
fixed on Mount Tabor as the spot. It is thus referred
to before the end of the fourth century by Cyril of Jeru-
salem, and by St. Jerome who resided in Palestine. A
little more than two hundred years later, mention is made of
it by Antoninus. Martyr speaks of three churches erected on
Mount Tabor, corresponding to the three tabernacles which
Peter proposed to erect. But, as Dr. Robinson in his
Biblical Researches, Vol. III. pp. 220, 221, has shown,
from an early date, and down to the time of Josephus, the
summit of Mount Tabor was occupied by a fortified city.
It could not therefore have been the " high mountain "
here mentioned by the Evangelists. Dr. Robinson sup-
poses that the " Mount of Transfiguration is rather to be
sought somewhere around the northern part of the lake,
not very far from Ciesarea Philippi, where there are cer-
tainly mountains enough."
The last locality that has been mentioned in the Gospel
narrative, xvi. 13, is Ccesarea Philippi. Jesus had gone
up from Bethsaida at the northeast corner of the lake
to the village of Caesarea, which was at the eastern source
of the Jordan, and near the foot of Mount Hermon. Six
days after the conversation recorded as having taken place
in that locality, occurred the scene of the Transfiguration.
Those few days may have been spent by Jesus partly
in the villages instructing the people and healing their
sick, and partly in private and confidential intercourse
26*
306 MATTHEW XVII. 1-9.
with his disciples amid the solitudes of the mountains.
This was the extreme northern limit of his ministry. At
length, the time having now come when he must set his
face for the last time towards Jerusalem, wishing to make
on the minds of the leading disciples an impression which
could never be effaced, and seeking also, as he often did
before his heaviest trials, for the inward supports which
came from retirement and prayer, he took Peter and
James and John, and went up into a high mountain to
pray. May not this mountain have been Mount Hermon ?
Stanley, in his Sinai and Palestine, pp. 391, 392, says: "It
is impossible to look up from the plain to the towering
peaks of Hermon, almost the only mountain which de-
serves the name in Palestine, and one of whose ancient
titles was derived from this circumstance, and not be
struck with its appropriateness to the scene. That magnifi-
cent height — mingling with all the views of Northern
Palestine from Shechem upwards — though often alluded
to as the noi-thern barrier of the Holy Land, is connected
with no historical event in the Old or New Testament.
Yet this fact of its rising high above all the other hills
of Palestine, and of its setting the last limit to the wander-
ings of Him who was sent only to the lost sheep of the
house of Israel, falls in with the supposition which the
words inevitably force upon us. High up on its southern
slopes there must be many a point where the disciples
could be taken * apart by themselves.' Even the transient
comparison of the celestial splendor with the snow, where
alone it could be seen in Palestine, should not, perhaps,
be wholly overlooked. At any rate, the remote heights
above the sources of the Jordan witnessed the moment,
when, his work in his own peculiar sphere being ended,
he set his face for the last time ' to go up to Jerusalem.' "
But how are we to interpret tlie account of the Trans-
figuration itself? Dr. Furness entitles it, "The Dream
of Peter." In his History of Jesus, p. 155, he supposes
MATTHEW XVII. 1-9. 307
that Peter, after a time of great mental excitement, falling
asleep, "began to dream; and in the visions of his sleep,
his eyes having closed, perhaps, while fixed on the venerated
form of his Master, and his mind being filled with the idea
of the Messiah's glory, he still saw Jesus ; but now all
arrayed in robes of dazzling whiteness, in all that ex-
ternal gloiy associated with the person of the Messiah.
And there appeared also to Peter, in his dream, two
others, who, he thought, were Moses and Elias ; and they
conversed with Jesus about what was to take place, — that
mysterious decease at Jerusalem. While he was thus dream-
ing, a cloud came up, and it thundered ; and the sound,
startling the dreamer from his sleep, was instantly con-
nected, as is not uncommon in dreams, with an articulate
voice," &c., &c.
Dr. Palfrey regards it rather as a visionary repre-
sentation given for the encouragement of the disciples. In
his relation between Judaism and Christianity, pp. 92, 93,
he says : " It was fit that they should be instructed, and
reawakened by a glorious vision, presenting to them their
Master, not with the environments of regal pomp, but as
the equal associate of the venerated ancient teachers of
their faith. And such being the case, I understand further,
that the presence of Moses and Elijah was visionary, and
not real ; that it was not Moses and Elijah actually con-
versing with Jesus that the Apostles saw, but that a vision
of such a scene was presented to their view."
Neander, in his Life of Jesus, though he rather inclines
to regard the whole as an objective historical event, makes
a supposition which embraces the substance of these two
views. The disciples, he supposes, were deeply impressed
by the prayer of Jesus. " His countenance beamed with
radiance, and he appeared to them glorified and trans-
figured with celestial light. At last, worn out with fatigue,
they fell asleep ; and the impressions of the Saviour's prayer
and of their conversation with him were reflected in a vision
3*08 MATTHEW XVII. 1-9.
thus : Beside him, who was the end of the Law and the
Prophets, appeared Moses and Ellas in celestial splen-
dor ; for the glory that streamed forth from him was
reflected back upon the Law, and the Prophets foretold
the fate that awaited him at Jerusalem. In the mean
time they awoke, and, in a half-waking condition, saw
and heard what followed." "Still," he adds, "the diffi-
culty remains, that the phenomena, if simply psychological,
should have appeared to all the three Apostles precisely
in the same form. It is, perhaps, not improbable, that
the account came from the lips of Peter, who is the promi-
nent figure in the narrative."
The more carefully we examine the narratives of the
different Evangelists, the greater does the difficulty in the
way of these views appear. In the first place, the ac-
count is given by each of the three Evangelists with no
word to indicate that it is not a narrative of real events.
Jesus, with his three most intimate disciples, went up
into -a high mountain by themselves to pray. And while
praying he was transfigured before them. His counte-
nance was changed, shining as the sun, and his garments
were white as the light, or, as Mark says, "exceeding
white, like snow, so as no fuller on earth could whiten
them." And Luke speaks of their overpowering bright-
ness as of lightning flashes. And behold there were two
men talking with him, Moses and Elijah, who appeared
to them in glory, and who spake of his departure which
he was to accomplish at Jerusalem. Peter and those who
were with him had been — not were, as in our translation
— weighed down with sleep. But when they were fully
awake (Luke ix. 32) they saw his glory, and the two
men that were standing with him. And as they — the
two men — were departing from him, Peter, in his fear
not knowing what to say, said, " Lord, it is good for us
to be here ; let us make here three tabernacles, one for
thee, one for Moses, and one for Elijah." While he was
MATTHEW XVII. 1-9. 309
yet speaking, a shining cloud ; or, according to Griesbach's
reading, a cloud of light overshadowed them. They were
filled with awe as they entered it. And there came from
it a voice, saying, " This is my beloved Son, in whom
I am well pleased ; hear ye him." And when the dis-
ciples heard it, they fell upon their faces and were ex-
ceedingly afraid. Then Jesus came and touched them,
and said, " Rise, be not afraid," when they raised their
eyes, and saw Jesus alone. And as they were going
down from the mountain, Jesus charged them saying, " Tell
w^hat you have seen to no one, till the Son of man has risen
from the dead." "And they kept it to themselves (Mark
ix. 10), reasoning together what the rising from the dead was."
The particulars of the transaction are given with minute-
ness and precision. It could not have appeared to one
only, for " Peter and they who were with him " (Luke
ix. 32) saw his glory and the two men that were stand-
ing with him." "And when the disciples" (not one of
them) " heard," &c. they fell on their face. Nor could it
have been a dream ; for, apart from the improbability
of the same dream occurring to them all, Luke says ex-
pressly, that, though they had been heavy with sleep, they
now when fully awake saw his glory, &c. Neither could
it have been merely a vision ; for they not only saw Moses
and Elijah, but also heard what they said, and the sub-
ject of their conversation is reported to us : " They spake
of his departure," &c. What the disciples heard from the
cloud is also precisely reported. Besides, if the whole
matter had been only a dream, or a scene only subjec-
tively present to their minds, if " the presence of Moses
and Elias was visionary and not real," why should it
occupy the conspicuous and significant place it does in
three of the Gospels ? Still more, if " only a vision of
such a scene was presented to their view, how was it
possible that Jesus could attach so much importance to it
as he did in charging the disciples to tell no one of it
310 MATTHEW XVII. 1-9.
till after he had risen from the dead? Among the in-
cidental indications of truthfulness in the narratives them-
selves, are the words in Mark, — "they reasoned among
themselves what the rising from the dead should mean."
How natural that they should thus reason together, and
yet who, writing long after the event, and when the resur-
rection from the dead had become a common idea, could
have thought to mention it unless it were a fact ?
The only objection to receiving these accounts as faithful
historical narratives arises from the character of the facts
themselves. They do not fall within the sphere of our
common thought and experience. But one great object
of Christ's coming into the world was to enlarge the sphere
of our conceptions, to free us from the narrow, blinding,
and despotic dominion of the senses, and open to us a
glimpse at least of the great and spiritual realities by
which we are environed. The disciples could not be
reconciled to the idea of a suffering and crucified Messiah.
They were perplexed and filled with grief by what Jesus
had told them of his approaching death. Here for a
moment the chosen three were allowed, with their quick-
ened perceptions, to look through the veil, to see the
glorified forms of two persons who had passed from the
earth centuries before, and to hear them talk with Jesus
of his departure which he was about to accomplish at
Jerusalem. And although in their troubled and bewil-
dered apprehension they did not then understand fully
the import of what they saw and heard, yet afterwards
they remembered it with a new perception of its signifi-
cance, and recorded it for the instruction of those who
should come after them. (See John i. 14, 2 Peter i.
16-18.) For once, as an emblem to all times, of the
Divine glory in which he lived, the spirit of Jesus shone
through and irradiated its mortal covering, lighting up
his countenance till it was like the sun, and his very
garments were, like the lightning, of a dazzlmg bright-
MATTHEW XTII. 1-9. 811
ness, so as no fuller on earth could whiten them. In asso-
ciating with him Moses and Elijah in their glorified forms,
the Transfiguration furnishes a connecting link between
two worlds. By these visible images, of the departed it
helps us in our conceptions of a spiritual and immortal
condition, and enables us in our thought to people with
bright and living forms the otherwise void and shadowy
regions of the dead. Not only is Christ transfigured, and
Moses and Elijah made visible, but a whole world of
spiritual thought and life is revealed as filled, not merely
with the one infinite intelligence, but with the tender
sympathies and affections which drew those ancient bene-
factors of mankind to talk with Jesus when the time of
his heaviest sorrows was at hand.
The place which this event holds in the Gospel narra-
tive is not without its significance. Jesus had been speak-
ing of his approaching death and of the entire self-renuncia-
tion which he required of his followers. They could not
understand him. He led them away therefore by them-
selves. Leaving the populous places about Caesarea Philip-
pi, he probably took them into the mountain solitudes, and
during a period of six days was imparting to them there
instructions, of which no record has come down to us.
Then, as a teacher sometimes does with the most ad-
vanced of his class, he chose out three of his disciples
to impress on them a lesson which they alone were at
all prepared to receive. He leads them up into a high
mountain, and, while he is praying, his countenance glows
with a celestial radiance, spirits of just men made per-
fect stand by him, and a voice is heard speaking to them
from heaven. They did not fully understand it then, but
after his death and resurrection from the dead had laid
open to them its meaning, they publish their account of
it to enrich forever the minds of Christian believers.
*' The design of this miracle," says Mr. Norton, " appears
to have been, — 1. By a scene which should make the most
312 MATTHEW XVII. 10-13.
powerful impression on the senses and the imagination, —
a * sign from heaven ' such as the Pharisees had demanded,
— to produce in the miAds of the three leading Apostles
who were present with Jesus the strongest conviction of
his Divine mission, and to prepare them, as far as possible,
for the overwhelming disappointment of their cherished
hopes in his approaching death ; 2. To show them that
a close relation existed between himself and those earlier
messengers of God whom they held in peculiar reverence,
Moses, the founder, and Elijah, the restorer of their an-
cient religion, who had prepared the way for him who
* came not to annul the law and the prophets, but to per-
fect;' 3. To give the disciples direct and palpable evi-
dence of the reality of a future life."
10-13. — The Coming or Elijah.
" It would," says Lightfoot in his note on this passage,
"be an infinite task to produce all the passages out of
the Jewish writings, which one might, concerning the ex-
pected coming of Ehas." The following, given here in a
condensed form, is among the passages quoted by Light-
foot from the Jewish writers. " God shall restore the
soul of Elias, which ascended of old into heaven, into
a created body like to his former body, and shall send
him to Israel before the day of judgment, and he shall
admonish both the fathers and the children together, to
turn to God." It was the expectation of the Jews that
at the coming of the Messiah there should be a resurrec-
tion from the dead, and that Elias was to come before
the resurrection. When Jesus, therefore, tells the dis-
ciples to say nothing about what they had seen till he
had risen from the dead, they immediately in their minds
connect this rising from the dead with the expected resur-
rection, and ask. If this appearance of Elias is all, and we
are not permitted to speak of it till after the resurrection,
MATTHEW XVII. 24-27. 313
how is it that the Scribes saj that Elias must come first,
i. e. before the resurrection? Jesus replies, nearly in
the words of Mai. iv. 6, " Elias is coming, and will re-
store all things," or put all things in order. He merely
repeats this passage which the Jewish teachers were ac-
customed to use, to show, in reply to the disciples' ques-
tion, why Elijah was expected first. Then he goes on
in his own language to give his own view, which is,
that the prophecy is already accomplished, that Elias has
already come, and that the Jewish teachers who had made
such account of his coming did not recognize him while
he was with them, but did to him what they chose, and
that in like manner the Messiah, the Son of man, would
also suffer from them. " Then understood they that he
spake of John the Baptist." Luke (i. 17) shows in what
sense Elias was to come : " And he (John) shall go before
him in the spirit and power of Elias."
24-27. — The Tribute-Money and the Fish.
The tribute-money was not paid to the Roman govern-
ment, but for the Jewish and temple worship. (See Ex.
XXX. 13, 2 Kings xii. 4, 2 Chron. xxiv. 6, 9.) Jesus in
his conversation with Peter refers to his peculiar position
as the Son of God, so as to impress it on the minds of
his disciples. "It was necessary for him," says Mr.
Norton, *' to direct their thoughts to the fact of his and
their extraordinary relation to God, and the peculiarity
in his manner of doing it upon this occasion would tend
to make a deeper impression on their minds than a simple
declaration of the truth might have done."
We agree with Olshausen in considering this the most
difficult miracle in the Gospels. It, more than any other,
has an air of marvellousness about it such as we find
in later and apocryphal writings. But there is no reason
to question the genuineness of the passage. There is
27
314 MATTHEW XVII.
nothing derogatory to the Saviour's character in the per-
formance of such an act. The Gospels are intended to
meet the wants of all classes of minds, from the most
ignorant to those most advanced in intellectual and moral
culture. That which is needed to impress the ignorant
may seem to others trivial and unworthy of a Divine
author, while that which is the most striking evidence
of a Divine authority to him who has made the greatest
advances in spiritual improvement may be wholly without
meaning to his ignorant neighbor. This, under the cir-
cumstances of the case, may have been the most effectual
way of impressing important truths on the mind of Peter.
Peter had made an inconsiderate promise. May it not
be also that Jesus took that opportunity to show that even a
hasty promise, if it involved no act of injustice to others,
was in his sight so sacred that a miracle was to be per-
formed, rather than that a disciple of his should fail to
keep it? Bengel significantly says, "Men who are occu-
pied in worldly affairs most easily take offence at the
saints when money is in question."
NOTES.
And after six days Jesus taketh Peter, James, and John his
brother, and bringeth them up into a high mountain apart,
and was transfigured before them ; and his face did shine as 2
the sun, and his raiment was white as the light. And, behold, 3
there appeared unto them Moses and Elias, talking with him.
Then answered Peter, and said unto Jesus, Lord, it is good 4
for us to be here ; if thou wilt, let us make here three taber-
nacles; one for thee, and one for Moses, and one for EHas.
AVhile he yet spake, behold, a bright cloud overshadowed 5
them ; and, behold, a voice out of the cloud, which said, This
5. a voice out of the cloud] chap. iii. 17 ; secondlv, at this
"A voice came from heaven, first, central period ; thkdly, and lastly,
MATTHEW XVII.
315
is my beloved Son, In whom I am well pleased ; hear ye him.
6 And when the disciples heard it, they fell on their face, and
7 were sore afraid. And Jesus came and touched them, and
8 said, Arise, and be not afraid. And when they had lifted up
9 their eyes, they saw no man, save Jesus only. And as they
came down from the mountain, Jesus charged them, saying,
Tell the vision to no man, until the Son of man be risen again
10 from the dead. And his disciples asked him saying, Why
11 then say the scribes that Elias must first come ? And Jesus
answered and said unto them, Elias truly shall first come, and
12 restore all things ; but I say unto you, that Elias is come
already, and they knew him not, but have done unto him what-
a little before our Lord's Passion,
John xii. 28. After each of these
voices from heaven, fresh virtue
shone forth in Jesus, fresh ardor and
fresh sweetness in his discourses and
actions, fresh progress." Bengel.
9. the vision] " What
things thev had seen." Mark ix. 9.
11." Elias truly shall first
come, and restore all things]
But how did John tlie Baptist restore
all things f " Seniinaliter," says
Bengel, i. e. " he will sow the seed
of tliese things : he will initiate
them, as the preparation for what is
to follow." 12. but I say
unto you, that Elias is come
already] " With the preaching of
John the Baptist, as described by
the Jewish and Gospel writers, and
the history of the eventful era an-
nounced by him, is associated the
memorable" propliecy in Malachi :
' Behold, I Avill send my messenger,
and he sliall prepare the way before
me : and the Lord, whom ye seek,
shall suddenly come to his" temple,
and the messenger of the covenant,
whom ye delight in [or wish for] :
behold, he shall come, saith the
Lord of Hosts. But who iiwiy abide
the day of his coming? And who
shall stand when he appeai-eth ?
For he is like a refiner's fire, and
like fuller's soap ; and he shall sit
as a refiner and purifier of silver:
and he shall purify the sons of Levi,
ajid purge them as gold and silver,
that they may off'er unto the Lord
an offering in righteousness.' lu
his denunciations of divine retri-
bution, the prophet sets forth the
prominent sins of the times referred
to in his prediction, and it will be
perceived that they are principally
those which Christ especially no-
ticed in his reprobation of the de-
generate people of his day : ' I will
be a swift witness against the sorcer-
ers, and against the adulterers, and
against false swearers, and against
those that oppress the hireling in
his wages, the widow, and the father-
less, and that turn aside the stranger
from his right, and fear not me,
saith the Lord of Hosts.' These
words find a correspondence in
those bold and cutting rebukes in
which oiu' Lord exposed the profli-
gacy of his own times, and which
he "so pointedly directed against
adulterers, and those who betrayed
others into adultery by their false
doctrines of divorcement, — against
false swearers and those who en-
couraged false swearing by their
absurd distinctions between oaths,
— against those who wronged the
fatherless and the widow, and who
were the signal objects of his most
solemn denunciations.
" But perhaps no portion of the
prophecy exhibits more striking
coincidences Mith the events of
the Gospel age than the conclu-
sion : ' Behold, the day cometh
that shall burn as an oven ; and
all the proud, yea, and all that
do wickedly, shall be stubble ; and
the day that cometh shall burn
316
MATTHEW XVII.
soever they listed. Likewise shall also the Son of man suffer
of them. Then the disciples understood that he spake unto 13
them of John the Baptist.
And when they were come to the multitude, there came to 14
him a certain man, kneeling down to him, and saying, Lord, is
have mercy on my son ; for he is lunatic and sore vexed ; for
ofttimes he falleth into the fire, and oft into the water. And I 16
brou"-ht him to thy disciples, and they could not cure hun.
Then Jesus answered and said, O faithless and perverse gen- n
them up, saith the Lord of Hosts,
that it shall leave them neither root
nor branch. But unto you that fear
my name shall the Sun of Right-
eousness arise with healing in his
wings Behold, I will send
vou° Elijah the prophet, before the
coming of the great and dreadful
day of the Lord ; and he shall turn
the heart of the fathers to the chil-
dren, and the heart of the children
to their fathers, lest I come and
smite the earth with a curse; ' — or,
in other words, so as to prevent, if
possible, or take the appropriate
means to prevent, the infliction of
punishment on the land, — not earth,
as the original, not only here, but
often elsewhere also, is inappro-
priately rendered in the common
version of the Scriptures.
" When this prophecy was utter-
ed, the Jews had returned from that
long captivity in Babylon to which
the predictions of national judg-
ments in Ihe Old Testament so fre-
quently refer. But the spirit of
prophecy foresaw in the distant fu-
ture a still heavier judgment await-
ing them for their sins. Such a
calamity actually befell them in the
Gospel age, — a calamity far ex-
ceeding any they had ever before
experienced. Jloreover, not many
years anterior to this catastrophe, a
remarkable person, styling himself
a messenger from God, and who au-
thenticated his commission by mira-
cles, made his appearance in Judasa,
preaching everywhere a sublime
system of piety and virtue, severely
reproving the people for their im-
moralities, and denouncing the cor-
ruption of the priesthood. Thus
was it foretold. As his immediate
precursor, came also one who might
be tenned another Elijah, from the
strong resemblance he bore to that
stem and minatory prophet, assail-
ing the vices of the day with re-
markable zeal and boldness, and
endeavoring to persuade the .Jews to
a general reformation as the only
means of averting an impending
destruction Avhich would prove, he
observed, as ' an axe laid to the
roots oT" the trees.' A personage
every way resembling him had been
announced by the Messianic proph-
ets, and our Saviour declared that
John was the individual foretold.
" Does any one say that all this
is certainly quite remarkable, but
that still it is possible that John,
notwithstanding he was a just man,
and held in the highest reverence,
might have been misled by an ar-
dent imagination in supposing him-
self the Forerunner predicted ? One
thing is plain. The destruction of
Jerusalem shortly after his day
was no illusion of the imagination.
The catastrophe really took place,
whatever may be thought of its
being a fulfilment of the judgment
denounced by Malachi. It fol-
lowed the preaching of John, pre-
cisely as it had been predicted that
a tremendous calamity to Judaea
would follow the prcachin^^ of a
prophet whose description strikingly
answ-ers to that of the Baptist. And
as that terrible event which over-
threw and scattered the Jewish
nation, soon after the time of the
Forerunner, was no matter of fancy,
neither could any imagination have
foreseen it." Nichols's Hours with
MATTHEW XVII.
317
eration ! how long shall I be with you ? how long shall I suffer
18 you ? Bring him hither to me. And Jesus rebuked the devil,
and he departed out of him ; and the child was cured from
19 that very hour. Then came the disciples to Jesus apart,
20 and said, Why could not we cast him out ? And Jesus said
unto them, Because of your unbelief; for verily I say unto
you, if ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say
unto this mountain. Remove hence to yonder place, and it
shall remove ; and nothing shall be impossible unto you.
21 Howbeit this kind goeth not out, but by prayer and fasting.
22 And while they abode in Galilee, Jesus said unto them. The
23 Son of man shall be betrayed into the hands of men ; and they
shall kill him, and the third day he shall be raised again. And
they were exceeding sorry.
24 And when they were come to Capernaum, they that received
the Evangelists. Vol. I. pp. 270-
274. 14-21. The critical
notice of this miracle belongs more
properly to Mark ix. 14 - 29, where
the particulars are given more fully.
17. how long shall 'I
be with you ?] The following re-
mark of Bengel here may be true,
though it belongs to a province
in which Ave should be slow to
speculate. " He was in haste to
return to the Father ; yet he knew
that he could not effect his de-
{)arture luitil he had conducted
lis disciples into a state of faith.
Their slowness was painful to him."
Something of the same feeling is
shown in John xiv. 9 : " Have I
been so long time Avith you, and yet
hast thou not known me, Philip? "
how long shall I suffer
you ?] how long shall I put up, or
bear, with you ? The change from
the Mountain of Transfiguration to
this scene of misery and unbelief
was very great, and evidently a most
trying one to our Saviour. The
very susceptibilities by which he
was capable of being lifted up into
such a height of joy and glory
would make him feel more pain-
fully the contrast here. How natu-
ral 'is this outburst of holy impa-
tience, and yet how different from
the passionless level in Avhich a
writer of fictiou would be likely to
27*
cause so exalted a being as Jesus to
move ! This sudden expression of
feeling gives a most valuable insight
into the life of Jesus ; and while it
shows how strong his emotions
wei-e, it also shows that his strug-
gle against temptation Avas not con-
fined to the wilderness. " Only he
can speak thus," says Stier, " who,
as the Holy One among siiuiers, bore
the burden of all, and whose Avhole
life Avas in the innermost sense, from
the A'ery first, a profound svffering
through the feeling and enduring of
sin. Thus, accoi-ding to the Father's
counsel, it Avas necessary in this
Avord, Avhich Avas drawn' from the
usually closed depths of his heart,
immediately after the rcA-elation or
his glory, to manifest the glory also
of his human endurance, the pain
of divine love in his human nature,
Avhich Avas alike strongly suscepti-
ble of this on account of meekness
and purity. If we had not this
word, and that other in Luke xii. 50,
we should Avant the true, entire in-
sight into the self-denying, atoning
nature CA^en of his Avhole earthly
course in our flesh and blood. What
complainings, known only to the
Father, does this single expression,
Avhich he neither can nor will re-
strain, presuppose? " 21.
hut hy prayer and fasting] by
entire devotion to God, aaid self'
318
MATTHEW XVII.
tribute-money came to Peter, and said, Doth not your Master
25 pay tribute ? He saith, Yes. And when he was come into
the house, Jesus prevented him, saying, What thinkest thou,
renunciation. 24. tribute-
money] TO. 8i8paxfJ''(i, the two-
drachma, a sum paid annually by
the Jews of twenty years old and
upwards towards the Temple in
Jerusalem, Exod. xxx. 11-16 ; 2
Kings xii. 4 ; 2 Chron. xxiv. 6-9.
The original sum was half a shekel,
which was not a coin, but a certain
weight of silver. " In the time of
the Maccabees (1 Mace. xv. 6) the
Jews received the privilege, or
won the right, from the kings of
Syria of coining their own money,
and the shekels, half-shekels, and
qunr'er-shekels, now found in the
cabinets of collectors, are to be I'e-
ferred to this period. These grow-
ing scarce, and not being coined
any more, it became the custom to
estimate the temple dues as two-
drachms, a sum actually somewhat
la.-ger than tlie half-shekel, as those
who have compared together the
weights of the existing specimens
have found." As the produce of
the miracle was to pay for two per-
sons, the sum required was four
drachmas, or a whole shekel ; and
the statei', which is translated piece
of money, in verse 27, is just that
sum. Josephus (Ant. XV'lK. 9. 1)
speaks of this as an annual pay-
ment in his time ; and Philo, also,
" who tells us how conscientiously
and ungmdgingly it was paid by
tlie Jews of the Dispersion, as we'll
as by the Jews of Palestine, so that
in almost everv city there was a
sacred treasury 'for the collection of
these dues, some of which came
from cities bej^nd the limits of the
Roman empire." Doth
not your Master pay tribute?
" We may presume," savs Trench,
"that our Lord and Peter, with
others also, it is most probable, of
his disciples, were now returning to
Capernaum, which was ' his city,'
after one of his usual absences.
The Lord passed forward without
qiiostion, but the collectors detained
1 cter, who, having lingered a little
behin/1, was now following his Lord.
Chrysostom suggests that this ques-
tion [that of the collectors to Peter]
may be a rude and ill-mannered one :
' Does your Master count himself
exempt from the payment of the
ordinary dues? We know his free-
dom : does he mean to exercise it
here ? ' Yet, on the other hand, it
may have been, as I suppose it was,
the exact contrary. Having seen
or heard of the wonderful works
which Christ did, they may really
have been uncertain in what ligllt
to regard him, whether to claim
from him the money or not; and iu
this doubting and inquiring spirit,
they may have put the question to
Peter. This Theophylact suggests.
But, after all, we want that which
the history has not given, the tone in
which the question was put, to know
whether it was a rude one or the
contrary. To their demand Peter,
overhasty, as was so often the case,
at once replied that his Master
would pay the money. No doubt
zeal for his Master's honor made
him so quick to pledge his Lord; he
wjus confident that his piety would
make him prompt to everv payment
sanctioned and sanctified by'God's
Law. Yet at the same time there
was here, on the part of the apostle,
a failing to recognize the higher
dignity of his Lord: it was not in
this spirit that he had said a little
while before, ' Thou art the Christ,
the Son of the living God.' He un-
derstood not, or at least for the time
had lost sight of, his Lord's true po-
sition and dignity, that he was a Son
over his own house, not a servant
in another's house It was
not for Him who was ' greater than
the temple,' and himself the true
temple (John ii. 21), identical with
it according to its spiritual signifi-
cance, and in whom the Shekinah
glory dwelt, to pay dues for the sup-
port of that other temple built with
hands, which was now fast losing
its significance, since the true taber-
MATTHEW XVII.
319
Simon ? Of whom do the kings of the earth take custom or
tribute ? of their own children, or of strangers ? Peter saith
26 unto him, Of strangers. Jesus saith unto him, Then are the
27 children free. Notwithstanding, lest we should offend them,
go thou to the sea, and cast a hook, and take up the fish that
first Cometh up ; and when thou hast opened his mouth, thou
shalt find a piece of money ; that take, and give unto them, for
me and thee.
nacle was set up, which the Lord
had pitched, and not man. It is
then for tlie purpose of bringing
back Peter, and with him the other
disciples, to the tnie recognition of
himself, from which they had in
part fallen, that the Lord puts to him
the question which follows ; and
being engaged, through Peter's
hasty imprudence, to the render-
ing of the didrachm, which now he
could hardly recede from, yet did
it in the remarkable way of this
miracle Here, as so often
in the life of our Lord, the depth
of his poverty and humiliation is
lightened up by a gleam of his
glory. And thus, by the manner
of the payment, did he reassert
the ti-ue dignity of his person, which
else by the payment itself might
have been obscured and compro-
mised in the eyes of some, but
which it was of all importance for
the disciples that they should not
lose sight of, or forget. The miracle,
then, was to supply a real need, —
slight indeed as an outward need,
for the money could assuredly have
been in some other and more ordi-
nary way procured; but as an inner
need, most real ; in this, then, dif-
fering in its essence from the apoc-
ryphal miracles, which are con-
tinually mere sports and freaks of
power, having no ethical motive or
meaning whatever." Notes on the
Miracles. 25. custom or
tribute] a property-tax^ or a poll-
tax. 26. Then are the
children free] Referring to him-
self, according to Peter's confes-
sion, as the Son of God, and there-
fore not liable to pay money for the
support of worship in his Father's
temple. It is important to bear in
mind that this money was not paid
to the Roman government, but for
the temple service. 27.
for me and thee] As the tribute
here paid was for those twenty
years old and upwards, and as it
was paid only for Jesus and Peter,
Bengel infers that the other dis-
ciples had not then passed their
twentieth year. They were, proba-
bly, most of them very young men;
but notwithstanding "Bengel's sa-
gacity and learning in such matters,
we do not think there is any suffici-
ent reason to suppose that at that
time any of them, with perhaps the
exception of John, were less than
twenty years of age.
320 MATTHEW XVIII. 1-10.
CHAPTER XYIIT.
The Primitive Church of Christ.
We look upon this chapter as indicating, 1. (1-4.) The
terms of admission into the kingdom of Heaven, or the
Church of Christ; 2. (5-10.) The thoughtful tenderness
and solicitude with which his followers, or the members
of his Church, are to watch over the weak and inex-
perienced among them ; 3. (11 — 14.) The earnestness with
which they are to seek out and save the lost ; 4. (15-17.)
The manner in which, as members of his Church, we are to
deal with those of our brethren who injure us ; 5. (18-20.)
The power which is given to us as united together in
him and he in us; and 5. (21-35.) The forgiving and
forbearing spirit which we are to exercise towards our
brethren, however often they may sin against us. The
meaning of each passage is perhaps in itself plain enough ;
but it requires close attention and a careful analysis to
see how intimately the difFei'ent clauses are connected, and
how they all bear on the same subject.
1 - 10. First, there are the disciples with their minds
so blinded by schemes of personal ambition and their
obstinate Jewish prejudices, that they are hardly able to
understand the plainest teachings of their Master. Their
jealousy and pride had perhaps been excited by the par-
ticular favor which had been shown (xvii. 1) to Peter,
James, and John, and they were disputing by the way
as to which of them should hold the highest offices in
his kingdom. Jesus (Luke ix. 47), knowing the feeling
by which they were moved, asked them (Mark ix. 33),
after coming into the house, what they had been disputing
about by the way. They, obviously abashed by his ques-
MATTHEW XVIII. 1 - 10. 321
tion, at first made no reply. But afterwards, concealing
the invidiousness of their personal dispute under the gen-
eral form of their question, they asked Jesus who is greatest
in the kingdom of Heaven, i. e. in the community or king-
dom which he is about to establish on the earth? He
replied in such a way as not only to meet the specific
question, but the feeling out of which their dispute and
all similar disputes have arisen.
He called to him a child, and with this impressive
emblem before them, said, "Unless ye be converted and
become as little children" — fa? from being the greatest
. — " ye shall not enter into the kingdom of Heaven," — shall
not belong to my kingdom, or my church, at all. These
proud, ambitious thoughts and prejudices of yours must be
put aside. For he who like this little child makes himself of
no account, and has his mind and heart open with childlike
docility to every pure influence and teaching, — he is great-
est in the kingdom of Heaven. Tlien, rising from the lit-
eral to the figurative meaning of the word child, and carry-
ing the idea of self-renunciation or humility out into deeds of
active beneficence, he adds, whosoever shall receive one
such child, i. e. one weak and inexperienced disciple of mine
in my name, i. e. in my spirit, receiveth me, and, Luke
ix. 48, not only me, but Him who hath sent me. As the
rulers of a mighty empire throw their defences around
the least of their obedient subjects, and identify them-
selves with him if his rights are violated, so Christ identi-
fies himself with the most helpless and ignorant of his
disciples, and makes their cause his. And not only will
he who receives such an one in a spirit of childlike
humility and love, receive Christ, but, 6, he who shall
offend such an one, i. e. who shall be the means of
causing a weak brother to sin, shall be exposed to the
heaviest condemnation. He shall be cut off from the
community of believers. Sad it is for the world, 7, that
it should abound in temptations to sin ; but that, alas
522 MATTHEW XVIII. 1 - 10.
for them ! is no excuse for those who lead others astray.
And as there is no way to avoid being the cause of
temptation to others, except by cutting off whatever is
wrong in our own hves and hearts, therefore., 8, 9, if thy
hand or thine eye is causing thee to sin, cut it off, tear
it out, and cast it from thee. Then, in a still stronger
form, he repeats the admonition that they must not let
their pride and want of charity injure the weak and in-
experienced disciples, for, he adds, the angels who watch
over them are highly honored by my Father who is in
heaven, and, unworthy and lost though these feeble ones
may seem to you, it is for that very reason that the Son
of man has come to save them. And his coming to save
them is a further reason why you should be the more
careful and thoughtful for them. How does it seem to
you? Then, 12, 13, follows the pertinent and beautiful
parable of the shepherd on the mountains searching for
the one foolish sheep that had wandered away, as they
also — Ms disciples — must go out and search for the erring
and the lost. For in so doing, they will only be acting in
accordance with the will of God. Even so it is not the
will of your Father who is in heaven, that one of these
little ones — these frail and erring ones — should perish.
If then your brother sin against you, do what you can
to "gain" or win him back, — 1. By going to him and
setting the matter truthfully before him between you and
him alone, that his pride may not be excited by the pres-
ence of others, and that he may be touched by your
kindness ; 2. If he does not hear you alone, then take
two or three with you, that he may be moved by the
weight of their authority, and think more carefully of
what he has done ; but, 3. If he disregard them, refer
it to the church, and, if he refuse to listen to them, you
have done all that you can do, and are henceforth to re-
gard him as no longer a Christian brother. For an ex-
planation of V. 18, which is closely connected with this,
MATTHEW XVIII. 18-20. 323
see note to xvi. 19. The authority there given to St.
Peter is here assigned to all the Apostles, and also, we
think, to the Church in all ages, which of course over-
throws the papal claim of supremacy through St. Peter.
18 - 20. The condition of fulfilment for the promises
in verses 18 and 19 is given in 20. " For where two or
three are brought together in my name, i. e. in my spirit,
there am I in the midst of them, and whatsoever they,
thoroughly united in my spirit and in harmony with one
another, shall in accordance with that spirit bind or loose
on earth, it shall be bound or loosed in heaven, and what-
ever they shall ask, it shall be granted to them." The
perfect harmony with the spirit of Christ, i. e. in his name,
is the condition on which the action on earth shall be
ratified in heaven, and on which the prayer of the dis-
ciples on earth will be answered by their Father in heaven.
So in John xiv. 13, 14, and xvi. 25, 26, the same con-
dition, "in my name," is annexed.
Have we not here (17-20) Christ's idea of a church?
Where two or three are gathered together in his name,
and he is in the midst of them, is not that, in its simplest
form, a Christian Church ? The church spoken of in this
passage is, as Stier says, " the society, called together
in unity of faith and love, of those who believe on him,
who are united in his name ; a society in which is carried
out and exercised upon earth what is valid in heaven.
This is the simple, fundamental idea here clearly expressed."
The presence of Christ is, of course, a spiritual presence,
and the form of speech here and elsewhere (e. g. John
xiv. 23) would indicate that it is also a personal pres-
ence. Here then is a Christian Church — a community
of believers, though only two or three — coming together
in his name, united in his spirit, and he himself in the
midst of them, the medium to them of a divine life, which
flows in upon them, and by which they grow up in him,
« the one Mediator between God and men." Here is the
324 MATTHEW XVIII. 18-20.
seminal idea of a Christian Ciiurcli, and with this as a
centre, in accordance with the directions given in this
chapter, each separate community of believers, formed in
direct communion with Christ, has life in itself through
him, and is in itself through him a living organism, with
all the elements of Christian growth and life. And
wherever two or three of its members find themselves,
in the Providence of God, cut off by change of place or
other circumstances from the primitive community, they
also meeting together in the name of Christ may be united
with him as members of his body, and so long as they
live in accordance with his precepts they are truly a
church of Christ, owned, assisted, blessed by him, and grow-
ing up into him who is the head. What they shall bind
or loose in his name, i. e. in accordance with his spirit,
on earth, shall be bound or loosed in heaven, and what
they shall agree on earth to ask in accordance with his
spirit, it shall be done for them by their Father who is
in heaven. This is the primitive idea of the Church, —
and the only one which was given by Christ. Arch-
bishop Whately says, that " the churches founded by the
Apostles were all quite independent of each other, or of
any one central body." Out of this simple community
of Christian believers, united with one another in Christ,
and having such officers, or servants rather and ministers,
as might be required for the purposes of general conven-
ience, order, and edification, have grown up the monstrous
ecclesiastical assumptions and prerogatives, by which men,
under different names, but always in the spirit of arro-
gance and presumption that is here rebuked, have lord-
ed it over God'-s heritage. What can be more directly
in violation of the teachings of Jesus than the preroga-
tives and despotic authority which have been assumed
over his Church ? His language is : « Whosoever, there-
fore, shall humble himself as this little child, the same
is greatest in the kingdom of Heaven;" and the kingdom
MATTHEW XVIII. 21-35. 825
of Heaven in the question, verse 1, to which these words
are a reply, is the kingdom of Christ on earth, his Church
here on earth. In Luke xxii. 24-26 (with which com-
pare Matthew xx. 25-27) he uses still stronger lan-
guage. There was a strife among the disciples, which
of them should be accounted the greatest. And he said
unto them, " The kings of the Gentiles exercise lordship
over them ; and they that exercise authority upon them
are called Benefactors. But ye shall not be so: but he
that is greatest among you, let him be as the younger ;
and he that is chief as he that doth serve." The same
idea is again urged upon the disciples by Jesus in lan-
guage which looks as if it had been directly aimed at
the distinctions which have sprung up to feed a low,
earthly ambition in his Church. " Be not ye called Rabbi ;
for one is your Master [Schoolmaster], even Christ ; and
all ye are brethren. And call no man your father upon
the earth : for one is your Father, who is in heaven.
Neither be ye called masters : for one is your Master,
even Christ. But he that is greatest among you shall
be your servant." (Matthew xxiii. 7-11.) Of course these
terras are not to be taken literally ; but if they have any
purpose or meaning whatever, it is to condemn the spirit-
ual domination and pride which have been cherished and
exercised within the Church, and under the pretence of
sustaining its dignity and authority.
21 -35. As to the question put by Peter, and the reply
to it, it is not certain whether they made a part of this
same conversation or not. Even if they did not, the
Evangelist has evidently introduced them in this place
as bearing upon the subject which has just been under
consideration. The circumstances of the case, especially
the manner in which the question is put, would seem to
indicate that Peter was prompted to ask the question by
what had just been said. After the directions which Jesus
had given, 15-17, for dealing with an offending brother,
28
326 MATTHEW XVIII.
Peter asked for some specific rule. He wished to know
precisely how many times he is to forgive, and in mention-
ing seven as the number, he undoubtedly thinks that he
is carrying his forbearance to the farthest possible limit.
The reply of Jesus, " I say not unto you, until seven
times, but until seventy times seven," implies that there
are to be no limits of the kind which Peter has sug-
gested. And to illustrate and enforce the duty of for-
giving others from our need of the Divine forgiveness,
he added the parable of the unmerciful servant, which
shows in the most forcible manner that we cannot expect
God to forgive us unless we from our hearts forgive every
one his brother. It is the same doctrine implied in the
Lord's prayer (vi. 12), and more explicitly urged in the
remarks which follow it (vi. 14, 15).
NOTES.
At the same time came the disciples unto Jesus, saying.
Who is the greatest in the kingdom of Heaven ? And Jesus 2
called a little child unto him, and set him in the midst of them,
and said, Verily I say unto you, except ye be converted, and 3
become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom
of Heaven. Whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this 4
little child, the same is greatest in the kingdom of Heaven.
And whoso shall receive one such little child in my name, re- 5
ceiveth me. But whoso shall offend one of these little ones 6
which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone
were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the
1. At the same time] Liter- inoj is in the midst of the.open sea,
ally, at that haui\ but not thus to where there could be no possible
be tnken. It is nearly equivalent hope of escape. This mode of
to Then, or At thnt time. punishment was not practised by
6. a millstone] The forra the Jews, though it was in use
of expression here is very strong, among some other nations. It is
The millstone is of the heavy kind better for a man to be drowned now
turned by animals, and the drown- in the sea, than to live till he has
MATTHEW XVIII.
327
7 depth of the sea. Woe unto the world because of offences !
for it must needs be that offences come ; but woe to that man
8 by whom the offence cometh ! Wherefore, if thy hand or thy
foot offend thee, cut them off, and cast them from thee ; it is
better for thee to enter into life halt or maimed, rather than,
having two hands, or two feet, to be cast into everlasting fire.
9 And if thine, eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from
thee; it is better for thee to enter into Hfe with one eye,
rather than, having two eyes, to be cast into hell-fire.
10 Take heed that ye despise not one of these little ones ; for
I say unto you, that in heaven their angels do always behold
11 the face of my Father which is in heaven. For the Son of
12 man is come to save that wliich was lost. How think ye ?
if a man have an hundred sheep, and one of them be gone
astray, doth he not leave the ninety and nine, and goeth into
13 the mountains, and seeketh that which is gone astray ? And
if so be that he find it, verily I say unto you, he rejoiceth more
of that sheep than of the ninety and nine which went not astray.
14 Even so, it is not the will of your Father which is in heaven
caused these little ones to sin, and
then die. 8. if thy hand
or thy foot offend thee] What-
ever is to you a cause or occasion
of sin, though it be a hand, or foot,
or eye, cut it off, pluck it out, and
cast it from you. " Hand, foot,
eye," says Olshausen, " here appear
to be used by the Saviour to denote
mental powers and dispositions, and
he counsels their restraint, their
non-development, if a man find
himself, by their cultivation, with-
drawn from advancing the higliest
principle of life." " It is, however,
a more elevated thing to succeed in
learning how to cultivate even the
lower faculties in harmonv Avith
the higher life." lol their
angels] Behold the face, S^c. indi-
cates a place of honor and peculiar
favor. " This saying of our Lord,"
says Alford, " assures us that those
angels whose honor is high before
God are intrusted with the charge
of the humble and meek, — the
children in age and the children
in grace." " We speak to our
children," says Stier, " far too lit-
tle about their angels, and we our-
selves, as believers, do not think
enough of ours. The angels are in
heaven, and yet occupied at the
same time in service and business
on earth about their wards; for the
heaven is not closed in space over
the eartli, but is ever open to us in
everything which it sends. Where
the angels of God go and stand,
there also is heaven, and the face
of God, which they at all times,
without interruption from anvthing
else, behold." 12. he
not leave the ninety and nine,
and goeth into the mountains]
Luke XV. 4 says, '' in the wilder-
ness," " The combined description
of the pastures in the wilderness,
and on the mountains, can hardly
find any position in Palestine pre-
cisely applicable, except ' the moun-
tainous country ' or ' wilderness,'
so often called by these names, on
the east of the Jordan. The shep-
herd of this touching parable thus
becomes the successor of the wild
herdsmen of the trans^Iordanic
tribes who wandered far and wide
328
MATTHEW XVIII.
that one of these little ones should perish. Moreover, if 15
thy brother shall trespass against thee, go and tell him his fault
between thee and him alone ; if he shall hear thee, thou hast
gained thy brother. But if he will not hear thee, then take with 16
thee one or two more, that in the mouth of two or three wit-
nesses every word may be established. And if he shall neo-- 17
lect to hear them, tell it unto the church ; but if he neglect to
hear the church, let him be unto thee as an heathen man and a
over those free and open lillls, —
the last relics of the patriarchal
state of their ancestors." Stanley's
Sinai and Palestine, p. 416.
17. unto tlie church] This word,
eKK\r)<ria, is found nowhere in the
Gospels, except in this verse and
Matt. xvi. 18: " On this rock I will
build my church," — a remarkable
fact, when we consider how much
the Church has arrogated to itself,
so that the history of the Church is
considered s^Mionymous with the
history of Christia'nity. The grad-
ual ascendency of the Church and
its offices, — of an outward despotic
authority over the inward life and
precepts of our religion, — furnishes
one of the saddest exhibitions of
human ambition and depravity.
l"he word, as used by Jesus, was
undoubtedly intended' to express
what he meant by a community of
believers united in him, and endow-
ed by him with all the means of
grace which are needed for their
Christian life and advancement.
In the passage before us he refers
to one such community of believers
as complete in itself and as having
authority to deal with offenders!
In Matt. xvi. 18 he uses the word
Church to express in the abstract
the Avhole system of means and
powers and agencies bv which his
kingdom was to be established in
the world, resting, as thev all do,
on faith in him as the Christ, the
Son of the living God. The word
itself, says Trench, Svnonvmes of
the New Testament, pp. 17,' 18, " is
one of those words Avhose history
it is peculiarly interesting to watcli,
as they obtain a deeper meaning,
and receive a new consecration m
the Christian Church, which, even
while it did not invent, has vet as-
sumed them into its service, and
employed them in a far loftier sense
than any to which the world had ever
• put them before eKKXrjaiaj
as all know, was the lawful assem-
bly in a free Greek city of all those
possessed of the rights of citizen-
ship, for the transaction of public
affairs. That they were summoned
is expressed in the latter part of
the word ; that they were sum-
moned out of the whole population,
a select portion of it, including nei-
ther the populace, nor yet straiigers,
nor those who had forfeited their
civic rights, this is expressed in the
first. Both the calling, and the call-
ing out, are moments to be remem-
bered, when the word is assumed
into a higher Christian sense, for in
them the chief part of its peculiar
adaptation to its auguster uses lies.
It is interesting to observe how, on
one occasion in the New Testament,
the word returns to its earlier sig-
nificance." (Acts xix. 32, 39, 40.)
The meaning of the word ectlesh,
church, may derive some liglit
from the use', by our Saviour, of the
word eKXeKToi, the elect, or the
chosen, since the ecclesia was the
body of the eclectoi, the chosen.
" For many are called, but few are
chosen,'' eclectoi. (Matt. xxii. 14.)
" But for the sake of the elect
[eclectoi] those davs shall be short-
ened." (Matt. xxiv. 22.) " So as to
deceive, if possible, even the elect.''
(Matt. xxiv. 24.) In verse 31 of
the same chapter, " And they shall
gather together the elect' from
the four winds." "And he shall
avenge his elect." (Luke xviii. 7.)
" Let him save himself, if he be
the Christ, the chosen [the elect] of
MATTHEW XVIir.
329
18 publican. Yerlly I say unto you, Wkatsoevcr ye shall bind
on earth shall be bound in heaven ; and whatsoever ye shall
19 loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. Again, I say unto
you, that if two of you shall agree on earth as touching any-
thing that they shall ask, it shall be done for them of my Father
20 which is in heaven. For where two or three are gathered
together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.
God." (Luke xxiii. 35.) The
Church of Christ is the body or
community of the elect, of those
who are not only called, but called
out, i. e. chosen as true and faithful
believers. It includes the weak,
the inexperienced, and those who
nre easily led astray, and directs the
strong to watch over them ; to seek
them out when they wander away ;
to deal kindly but honestly with
them, when they do wrong; and to
forgive them w'henever they sin-
cerely and penitently ask to be
forgiven. Here is the Christian
Church, calling in those who are
without, and receiving those who,
by accepting the call, cause them-
selves to be effectually called, and
numbered among the 'elect. The
word church, in the New Testa-
ment, is almost ahvays applied to a
single body of believers, united in
one another and in Christ, and thus
forming a community by them-
selves, with all the privileges, ordi-
nances, and meons of grace essen-
tial to salvation, so that if every
other Church in the world should
be cut off, in this one would be left
the germ of all that Avould be*need-
ed to evangelize and convert the
world. The word church, in Matt,
xvi. 18. is used to express in the
abstract that system of powers and
agencies, human and divine, by
which the kingdom of Heaven, the
religion of Jesus, is to sustain, ex-
tend, and perpetuate itself in the
Avorld, so that the gates of death,
the poAvers of evil, shall not prevail
against it. It is also used, though
very rarely, and never by our
Saviour, or in the Gospels, to'desig-
nate the great body of the faith-
ful throughout the Avorld, who live
and believe in Christ, keeping the
commandments of God and the
28*
Faith of Jesus. In this sense the
word is used by St. Paul, e. g. Col.
i. 18, " And he is the head of the
body, the Church." 20. in
my name] Name denotes the per-
son, the being himself, or his spirit.
To assemble in the name of Jesus,
and pray in his name, presupposes
the life and the spirit of Jesus to be
already existing in those so meeting
together. "It is no isolated act,"
" but requires rather as a necessary
condition, that man should be under
the power of living Christian prin-
ciple." The influence of combined
and associated prayer, through the
sympathetic quickening of the relig-
ious nature is here implied.
there am I in the midst of
them] He is present by his spirit,
which they are thxxs clierishing in
their own hearts, and in his religion
which they are thus seeking to es-
tablish as the rule and law of their
lives. He also, we suppose, promises
to be himself personally present
with them. Such a promise does
not of itself prove him omnipresent.
We are too apt to infer that powers
more than human can belong only
to God. It is said that because
Jesus stilled the tempest, he must
therefore have been omnipotent :
that because he knew that Peter
would catch a fish with the piece of
money in his mouth, therefore he
was omniscient; and that because
he is personally present with all
those Avho come together in his
name, therefore he is omnipresent.
Such reasoning is altogether un-
authorized. Between the limita-
tions of man's fjiculties and the
omnipotence of God, there is room
for the exercise of powers which
lie beyond the reach of all that we
can know and distinctly conceive.
We cannot define the ranks of bor
330
MATTHEW XVIir.
Then came Peter to him, and said, Lord, how oft shall my 21
brother sin against me, and 1 forgive him ? till seven times ?
Jesus saith unto him, I say not unto thee, Until seven times, 22
but, Until seventy times seven. Therefore is the kingdom of 23
Heaven likened unto a certain king, which would take account
of his servants. And when he had begun to reckon, one was 24
brought unto him which owed him ten thousand talents. But 25
forasmuch as he had not to pay, his lord commanded him to be
sold, and his wife and children, and all that he had, and pay-
ment to be made. The servant therefore fell down and wor- 26
shipped him, saying, Lord; have patience with me, and I will
pay thee all. Then the Lord of that servant was moved with 27
compassion, and loosed him, and forgave him the debt. But 28
the same servant went out, and found one of his fellow-servants,
which owed him an hundred pence ; and he laid hands on him,
jand took him by the throat, saying. Pay me that thou owest.
ings and intelligences which may
range through the boundless fields
of existence between us and the
Supreme Mind. We cannot set
any precise limits to their powers.
Between the limitations of man's
presence, while he is in the body,
and the ubiquity of the Infinite
Spirit, the power of being personally
present in places distant from one
another at the same moment, may
be possessed in entirely different
degrees by different beings. A
man may be present to ten thousand
men at the same moment, acting
by his voice and gestures on every
one of the vast assembly. It may
well be, that spiritual lieings of a
higher order, not bound by a mate-
rial organization, may with their
clearer perceptions and finer powers
of action be present at the same
moment to millions of beings widely
separated from one another. It will
not do then to accept the reasoning
by which one class of Christians
argue that the promise here made
by Jesus to be personally present
with his disciples is an impossi-
bility; or that by which others ar-
gue, that because he is thus present
he must therefoi-e be omnipresent.
Bad reasoning is as much out of
place in a religious as in a scientific
investigation, and is as dangerous
in the interpretation of the words
of Divine Truth as in the limita-
tions which it would put on the
works of the Divine Mind.
24. ten thousand talents] The
largest sum that was spoken of, as
we sometimes say a thousand mil-
lions of dollars. According to 01s-
hausen, it could not be less than
$ 13,000,000.. " In the construction
of the tabernacle, twenty-nine tal-
ents of gold were used. (Exod.
xxxviii. 24.) David prepared for
the temple three thousand talents
of gold, and the princes five thou-
sand." According to Plutarch, it
was exactly this sum of 10,000
tnlents with which Darius sought
to buy off Alexander; and the pay-
ment of the same sum was imposed
by the Romans on Antiochus the
Great, after his defeat by them.
26. fell down and
worshipped him] A customary
act of respect from an inferior to
a superior. 28. an hundred
pence] less than a millionth part
of ten thousand talents, showing
the smallness of our brother's obli-
gation to us, compared with ours to
God. he laid hands on him.
MATTHEW XVIII.
331
29 And Ills fellow-servant fell down at his feet, and besought him,
30 saying, Have patience with me, and I will pay thee all. And
he would not ; but went and cast him into prison, till he should
31 pay the debt. So when his fellow-servants saw what was done,
they were very sorry ; and came and told unto their lord all
32 that was done. Then his lord, after that he had called him,
said unto him, O thou wicked servant, I forgave thee all that
33 debt, because thou desiredst me ; shouldst not thou also have
had compassion on thy fellow-servant, even as I had pity on
34 thee ? And his lord was wroth, and delivered him to the tor-
35 mentors, till he should pay all that was due unto him. So like-
wise shall my Heavenly Father do also unto you, if ye from
your hearts forgive not every one his brother their trespasses.
and took him by the throat]
more exuctlv and literally, he stiztd
and choked him. Pay me
that thou owest] Observe here
the haughty .mode of expression
which is so exactly in character
with the reckless and cruel servant.
He does not mention the triflhig
sum of one hundred pence, which
would lessen his consequence and
rebuke his pride, but shows his in-
solence wdiile he conceals the small-
ness of his claims, as some do the
poverty of their ideas, by a grand,
imperious, and generalizing form of
speech. If the sum due to him had
been ten thousand talents, he could
not have made a more lofty and
sounding demand. 29. fell
down at his leet, and besought
him] Not as in verse 2(3, fell
down and woi'shippedhXm.. The dif-
ferent degrees of homage customary
iu the two cases, according to the
dignity of the persons, is nicely
indicated by the language.
32. O thou wicked servant] His
cruelty to his fellow-servant was
more severely regarded than his
wasting his lord''s goods.
34. till he should pay all that
was due unto him] and as that
can never be done, the condition,
it has been said, amounts to a per-
petual imprisonment, and there-
fore proves the doctrine of etei-nal
punishment. The Roman Catholics,
on the contrary, and some Prot-
estant writers, e. g. Olshausen, in-
fer from it, that as the word until
implies that a limit is fixed, so
there is such a thing after death
as deliverance, in behalf of some.
It seems to us, however, unreason-
able to deduce any doctrine from
one of the minor adjuncts of a
parable.
332 MATTHEW XIX. 1-12.
CHAPTER XIX.
1-12. — The Christian Law of Divorce.
1, 2. Jesus now left Galilee for the last time. As
the Samaritans (Luke ix. 53) refused to receive him, he
turned eastward from the direct route to Jerusalem, and
crossing the Jordan entered the Peroea, a part of the
kingdom of Herod Antipas. Strictly speaking, Judaea did
not extend beyond the Jordan. But here, as Mr. Norton
remarks, it is " to be understood in its more extended
meaning, as equivalent to Palestine. The name Pera^a
is not used in the New Testament. The expression, Judcea
beyond the Jordan is, as Reland remarks, used by Josephus
in one instance to denote PeraBa." Antiq. XIL 4, 11.
3-6. The Pharisees come to try and perplex him by
their questions, and ask him if it is lawful for a man
to put away his wife for every cause. This, as De AVette
suggests, was a delicate subject to be discussed in the
dominions of Herod Antipas. See xiv. There was a
division of opinion among the Rabbins as to the construc-
tion to be put upon the Mosaic law of divorce in Deut.
xxiv. 1. The School of Hillel maintained from it that
when anything in his wife displeased a husband, "even
if she had only oversalted his soup," it would be a suffi-
cient reason for giving her up. Rabbi Schammai took
the expression in a more limited sense, as referring only
to what was scandalous and dishonorable. " In the words
for every cause^^ says Olshausen, "there is expressed that
exposition of the Mosaic law which agrees with the opinions
of Hillel's followers, and the question accordingly is so put
as to request his opinion on that view." Jesus, in his reply,
pays no regard to these disputes. He goes not only be-
MATTHEW XIX. 1-12. 333
hind them, but also behind the law of Moses, to the
fundamental reason on which the law of marriage and di-
vorce must rest. But he does this in a way not to offend
their Jewish prejudices. From the constitution of the sexes
as shown in the act of man's creation, Jesus declares, in
words sacred to the Jews (Gen. ii. 24) the priority and
sacredness of the marriage relation beyond all others. Not
by the law of Moses, but long before that, in the constitu-
tion of the sexes, by the very act of creation, God or-
dained the law which is to be binding in this relation,
and, " What God hath thus joined together, let not man
put asunder."
7, 8. But if this be so, they ask, " "Why did Moses com-
mand [permit, Mark x. 4] to give a writing of divorce-
ment, and put her away." In reply to this question, Jesus
again lays down one of those fundamental principles which
so widely distinguish his views of law from all others.
God in his dealings with man, he here intimates, must
adapt his specific laws and regulations to the necessities
of man's condition. Hence a succession of dispensations,
each adapted to the existing state of things, and preparing
the way for something better. Hence in many respects,
because of the hardness of men's hearts, because they on
account of their blunted moral sensibilities are able to
bear only so much, God allows and even enjoins at one
period of human progress that which is forbidden in a
more advanced stage of moral and religious culture. Even
Milton, in his Tetrachordon, allows the necessity of this
adaptation, though it is opposed to his general course of
argument. " For this hardness of heart," he says, " it
was that God suffered, not divorce only, but all that which
by civilians is termed the secondary law of nature and
of nations. He suffered his own people to waste and
spoil and slay by war, to lead captives, to be some masters,
some servants in his commonwealth; some to be
undeservedly rich, others to be undeservingly poor.
334 MATTHEW XIX. 1-12.
In the same manner, and for the same cause, he suffered
divorce as well as marriage, our imperfect and degenerate
condition of necessity requiring this law among the rest,
as a remedy against intolerable wrong and servitude above
the patience of man to bear." This graded principle of
adaptation to man's condition and capabilities in the laws
which are designed for his use even by the Divine wisdom,
must always be borne in mind by those who would study
the laws of Moses in the light of the highest philosophy.
Law is always given, as St. Paul says of the Jewish
law (Gal. iii. 19), because of transgressions ; and not that
which is perfect when judged by the rules of absolute
rectitude, but that which is the best that men are able
to bear at the time, is the law which is dictated by the
highest wisdom.
Considering the character of the Jews in the time of
Moses, the difficulty with which they were brought to
recognize the highest sentiments of religion and morals,
and especially the violence of their passions and their
tendency continually to lapse into idolatry and a low sen-
sualism, it is easy to see that some regard must have
been had to these things in the laws of marriage. In
many respects the Jews of that time were but a race
of semi-barbarous, half-emancipated slaves. Lightfoot in
his commentfiry on this passage has shown that, had it
not been for the permission of divorce and the legal forms
by which the rights of the wife were thus guarded, she
might have been summarily dismissed, or exposed to the
most harsh and cruel treatment, or even to death from
the violence of her husband.
8. Jesus here returns again to the fundamental principle
which existed before Moses, before Jacob or Abraham, and
according to that the law of God was and is, as he has
already declared (v. 32), that there shall be no divorce
except for the one crime which destroys the sacredness,
and is therefore in fact a dissolution, of the marriage re-
MATTHEW XIX. 13-15. 335
lation. The remarkable thing here again is the facility
with which Jesus, even in discussing rules of legislation
with the most bigoted adherents to the letter of the law,
goes behind specific rules, and rests his doctrine on the
substantial reality of things. " Christ taught, as the men
of his day remarked, on an authority very different from
that of the scribes. Not even on his own authority. He
did not claim that his words should be recognized because
he said them, but because they were true. ' If I say the
truth, why do ye not believe me ? ' " — F. W. Robertson.
10-12. The conversation which follows took place (Mark
X. 10) in the house, and was addressed jmrticularly to the
disciples. " If," say they, " the case of a man is so," i. e.
if the law and his hability under it are such, " it is better
for a man not to marry." To this remark of theirs Jesus
assents with particular reference, we may suppose, to the
hardships and persecutions which his followers must endure
in those times. Still, he adds, this rule of celibacy is not
one of universal application. None but those to whom
the power has been given, 11, are able to bear it; and
of those to whom it has been given, some, 12, are by
nature free from the passions which make a life of con-
tinence without marriage difficult to them, some by hard-
ships and privations are made so, while others from their
own high motivfes and convictions rise above. the control
of the passions, and cheerfully put aside all thought of
these domestic relations for the kingdom of Heaven's sake,
i. e. that they may give themselves entirely to the ad-
vancement of that kingdom.
Christ Blessing the Children.
13-15. The beautiful incident related here and Mark
X. 13-16, of Jesus, when he took little children into
his arms, and put his hands upon them, and blessed. them,
shows the relation which he looks on them as sustaining
336 MATTHEW XIX. 16-22.
towards himself. The disciples would have sent them
away as too young for his adoption. But with a degree
of displeasure which he seldom manifested, he commanded
them not to forbid, but to let the little ones come to him ;
for, said he, of such is the kingdom of Heaven. In saying
this, he used words which are not confined to those then
present, but which reach forward, indicating his relation
to all little children, and coming, a gracious invitation,
to all parents and guardians who would consecrate their
children to him by the waters of Christian baptism and
the processes of Christian culture. " All gifts of God,"
says Roos, " do not enter by the understanding into ' the
soul." "Not only," says Alford, in his notes on Mark
X. 14, "is Infant Baptism justified^ but it is the
NORMAL PATTERN OF ALL BAPTISM ; none cau enter
God's kingdom except cls an infant. In adult baptism
we strive to secure that state of simplicity and
childlikeness, which in the infant we have ready and un-
doubted to our hands."
The Young Man who came to Jesus.
16-22. The young man here, who was a ruler (Luke
xviii. 18), and who in his eagerness to see Jesus (Mark
X. 17) came running to him, and kneeled before him, was
probably an amiable, well-meaning young man, susceptible
of moral and religious impressions, who had carefully ob-
served the rules of a conventional morality, and who,
not finding in them the peace of mind which he sought,
came to Jesus with the expectation, as Mr. Norton has
said, that he "would enjoin, for instance, some unusual
austerity, some long-continued exercise of fasting and
prayer, or some peculiar vow, or some extraordinary alms-
giving, or some large gift to the treasury of the temple,
or some other definite act or course of conduct of a like
character, by the performance of which he might assure
MATTHEW XIX. 16-22. 337
himself of eternal life." He was probably sincere, and,
as he supposed, very much in earnest. The fact of his
using the expression eternal life, shows that he was not
wholly superficial in his ideas. Jesus in reply to his
question, by the words, "Why callest thou me good?"
or rather, " Why askest thou me respecting what is good ? "
"No one is good, but God alone" (Mark x. 18), turns his
attention first of all to the infinite Source of all goodness.
Then, as a practical test of his fidelity to God, he says
to him, If thou really desirest to enter into life, keep the
commandments. Which ? he asks in reply, and with sur-
prise, as if he had expected something more, and doubted
whether he had not misapprehended the answer. Jesus
specifies the moral precepts of the Decalogue. The young
'man, as if wondering and amazed at the easiness of the
terms, replies in a tone which shows how little he under-
stood what it was to observe the commandments in their
thorough and spiritual application, as Jesus had already
expounded them in his Sermon on the Mount. These,
he says, I have always kept. But is there not something
more still wanting? he asks, not with self-complacency,
but from a secret uneasiness, and a conviction that some-
thing is still wanting to secure his peace. Jesus, looking
upon him (Mark x. 21) with an expression of love as
he saw where his weakness lay, applied at once the test
which should reveal to him the fatal defect in his charac-
ter. Yes, one thing is wanting (Mark x. 21), and if thou
wouldst be perfect, go and sell whatsoever thou hast, and
give to the poor ; and thou shalt have treasure in heaven,
and come, take up the cross, and follow me. The sad-
ness and grief caused by these words prove that the young
man came to Jesus, as he believed, with an honest pur-
pose ; but they prove also that the one essential condition
of discipleship, the readiness to give up everything at the
call of duty and of God, was lacking, and that this one
want was undermining all his virtues. The one thing
29 u
338 MATTHEW XIX. 23-20.
which he lacked was not, that he did not sell all his goods
and give them to the poor, but that there was something
which he valued more than his allegiance to God. The
outward test revealed the inward want, and this inward
want, loving the things of God less than the things of
the world, was the fatal defect which Jesus in thus bring-
ing it to his knowledge would have him supply. " It is
not here commanded," says Clement of Alexandria, "as
some readily receive, to cast away our possessions and
separate ourselves from them ; but to drive out of the
soul its idea of riches, its diseased passion and longing
for them, the anxieties which are the thorns that choke
the seed of hfe." While the words of Jesus revealed the
young man to himself, they were also something more
than a test. They show what was a necessary condition
of discipleship in that day. What could a young man
do with his riches then as a follower of Jesus? Must
they not have been almost of necessity a fatal encum-
brance ? There is nothing to show that the condition was
to be a general one. As Lord Bacon has said, " But
sell not all thou hast, except thou come and follow me ;
that is, except thou have a vocation, wherein thou mayest
do as much geod, with little means, as with great." — Fur-
ness's Thoughts, &c., p. 167.
Hard for the Rich to enter Christ's Kingdom.
23-26. The words here are suggested by the young
man who went sorrowfully away from Jesus, because he
had great possessions, and therefore apply primarily to
those who are outwardly rich. Jesus looked on this young
man as the representative of a class, and saw in him how
difficult it was for those encumbered by wealth to give
themselves up entirely to him. For in those days it
was only by leaving all that they could become his follow-
ers, and thus enter the kingdom of Heaven. And at all
MATTHEW XIX. 23-26. 339
times, though not always perhaps to the same extent,
there are peculiar temptations and perils connected with
the enjoyment of great wealth, and however shining the ex-
amples cf humble, self-forgetting, and self-sacrificing fidelity
among the rich, the Saviour's words still apply, as a fear-
ful and needed admonition, to those who in the midst of
their earthly abundance are in danger of neglecting the
higher wants and interests of the soul. But the words
apply also with a more searching power to all, whether
rich or poor, who (Mark x. 24) trust in riches, i. e. whose
heart is in them. They are the opposite of the "poor"
(Luke vi. 20) and "the poor in spirit" (Matthew v. 3).
The words in their more extended meaning apply to a
state of mind. In the kingdom of God, every individual,
being merely a steward of God, and viewing himself as
such, has renounced all his possessions, and having con-
secrated them to God holds them subject to his disposal.
In this sense the beggar may be rich, cleaving to his bit
of a possession, and striving for more, wliile the possessor
of wealth, renouncing all, is poor. So in the dangerous
meaning of the word, a man without money may be rich,
when his heart is enamored of his own virtues, genius,
artistic tastes, intellectual attainments and capabilities, or
anything else which his self-love may appropriate as his
own. In respect to all such it may be said, that it is
easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than
for them to enter the kingdom of God. The proverb, as
verse 26 proves, indicates, not an impossibility, but a very
great difficulty. The amazement and consternation of the
disciples exhibited by the question. Who then shall be
saved? show how unprepared they were for principles of
conduct so severe. Jesus comforts them somewhat by the
assurance, that, though this is impossible with men, still
all things are possible with God.
340 MATTHEW XIX. 27-30.
27 - 29. — Gaining by Renouncing.
27-30. Peter's state of mind may have been one of
self-complacent confidence, when he recollects that he and
his fellow-disciples had given up everything, and asks what
is to be their reward ; what shall be to us ? Perhaps,
after recovering a little from the astonishment occasioned
by the severity of the doctrine just announced, which at
first had seemed to leave no room for hope to any one,
and recollecting what sacrifices he and his fellow-disciples
had made, his mind recurs to the command in verse 21,
and the promise there of treasure in heaven ; and in a
sudden burst of feeling, with too keen an eye to the re-
ward, he exclaims, Lo! we have left all and followed
thee ; how then shall it be with us ? or, what shall be
our poMion ? In order to understand the reply of Jesus,
we must transfer our thoughts into these Oriental forms
of speech, or translate them into our more literal and
prosaic dialect. In the regeneration may be joined with
either branch of the sentence, but belongs, we think, rather
to the second than the first. Yerily I say unto you,
that ye who have followed me, shall in the regeneration,
when the Son of man sits upon his throne, also sit on
twelve thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel ; i. e.
in the new order of things which shall prevail when my
rehgion is established, and I shall rule among men, then
shall ye also who have followed me now rule with me
as my representatives in the advancement of my king-
dom, i. e. of my. rehgion, through the world. He may
possibly allude here, as in xvi. 28, to the destruction of
Jerusalem, as the decisive moment when the old religion
shall be overthrown, and the new estabhshed in its place,
with a glance forward to yet higher scenes of kingly glory.
In verse 29, the thought is carried into the future world
with greater distinctness. All who have made sacrifices
on my account shall (Mark x. 30) receive an hundred-
MATTHEW XIX. 341
fold now in this time, houses, and brethren, and sisters,
and mothers, and children, and lands with persecutions,
and in the world to come, eternal life. But how can
they receive in brothers, sisters, and mothers, an hundred-
fold? We must look for a deeper meaning than that
which lies upon the surface. As a man abounding in
wealth is in the best and spiritual sense of the word poor,
if his heart is not bound up in his riches ; as in the bad
sense of the word he is rich who in the midst of his
poverty clings with all his heart to the little which he
has and lusts for more ; so do we in a still different sense,
really receive, not in proportion to what we outwardly
possess, but in proportion to what we are able to appro-
priate and enjoy. They therefore whose souls are born
into the higher life of the Gospel of Christ, shall, in
their renovated affections, desires, and powers of thought
and emotion, enjoy an hundred-fold more than before even
here in their houses, fields, and friends. To them alone
can it be said now in this present time, "All things are
yours" (1 Cor. iii. 21), while in the world to come they
shall inherit eternal life.
NOTES.
And it came to pass, that, when Jesus had finished these
sayings, he departed from Galilee, and came into the coasts of
9 Judaea, beyond Jordan. And great multitudes followed him ;
and he healed them there.
1. When Jesus had finished yond Jordan," which would allow
these sayings] These words in- though it does not oblige us ato
dicate a connection and complete- suppose that Jesus was employed
ness in what he had been saying in at that time on both sides of the
the previous chapter. Jordan. Jordan] the
into the coasts of Judaea, he- Jordan. Our translators evidently
yond Jordan] Mark (x. l)says, did not understand the use. of the
" Into the coasts of Judaia, and be- definite article in Greek. Accord-
29*
S42
MATTHEW XIX.
The Pharisees also came unto him, tempting him, and say- 3
ing unto him, Is it lawful for a man to put away his wife for
every cause ? And he answered and said unto them. Have 4
ye not read, that he, which made them at the beginning, made
them male and female ; and said, " For this cause shall a 5
man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife ; and
they twain shall be one flesh " ? Wherefore they are no more 6
twain, but one flesh. What, therefore, God hath joined to-
ing to Bengel and Winer^ the highest
authorities on this subject, " there
is scarcely an instance in the Scrip-
tures where the article is redun-
dant," and it is " utterly impossible
that the article should be omitted
where it is decidedly necessary, or
employed where it is quite super-
fluous." " Opos can never denote
the mountain, nor tu opos a moun-
tain.^' Yet this distinction is con-
stantly overlooked in our English
version. Often, as in the case here,
the omission of the article is of little
consequence; but usually it implies
something which adds to the life-
like character of the expression.
In Matt. V. 1, it is quite a different
thing to say, as it is in tho Greek,
" he went up into the mountain,"
from what it is to say, as in our
version, " he went up into a moun-
tain." " Ye call me the Master, and
the Lord; and ye say well," (John
xiii. 13,) is much more forcible and
graphic than with the omission of
the article as in our version. So
in Matt, xviii. 17, " Let him be to
thee as the (not a) heatlien man and
the publican; " in John iii. 10, "Art
thou tfie (not a) Master of Israel, and
knowest not these things;" Matt,
xxvi. 26, "And as they were eating,
Jesus took the bread," i. e. the bread
which had been specially provided
for the purpose, just as in the fol-
lowing verse he took ''the cup;"
John i. 21, "Art thou the Prophet?"
i. p. the prophet predicted by Moses
and expected as the Messiah, not
as in our version, 'Uhat prophet;"
Matt. i. 23, " Behold, the virgin shall
conceive," not a virgin; Matt. xii.
35, "r/ie (not a) good man, out of
tlie good treasure of the heart, bring-
eth forth good things; and the (not
an) evil man," &c.; Matt. xiii. 3,
"7%e (not a) sower went forth to
sow," i. e. the Son of man ; John
xiii. 5, " He poureth water into the
(not a) basin," that usually stood
there for use. These mattei*s are
not of great importance, but the
use of the article in the New Tes-
tament well deserves the attention
of the critical student.
3. for every cause] upon every
pretence. Josephus gives this sense
to the law, and owns that he di-
vorced his wife, " not being pleased
with her manners and behavior."
Antiq. IV. 5. And said]
And he said, i. e. Jesus said, using
the words to be found in Gen. ii.
24. and they twain
shall be one flesh] Here is de-
scribed the peculiarity of the mar-
riage relation, that which distin-
guishes it from all other relations
of interest or friendship. " Tliey
are two," says Stier, " and yet no
longer two: "this is, in the shortest
and profoundest expression, the
mysterv of marriage, the great mys-
tery whose further typical signifi-
cance the Apostle Paul opens to us
in Eph. V. 31, 32. The bodily fel-
lowship is not merely the basis of
marriage, but also that which is
alone essential to it, which may
indeed, and in a certain sense,
should be sweetened and glorified
by friendship of soul, being super-
added to it, but which subsists as
maiTiage apart from that." " This
bodily union," says Olshausen,
" when it is founded on an ante-
cedent combination of soul and
spirit, is the very summit and flower
of all union and communion, and
MATTHEW XIX. 6i3
7 gether, let no man put asunder. They say unto lilm, Why
did Moses, then, command to give a writing of divorcement
8 and to put her away ? He saith unto them, Moses, because
of the hardness of youf hearts, suffered you to put away your
9 wives ; but from the beginning it was not so. And I say unto
you, whosoever shall put away his wife, except it be for fornica-
tion, and shall marry another, committeth adultery ; and whoso
10 marrieth her which is put away doth commit adultery. His
disciples say unto him. If the case of the man be so with his
11 wife, it is not good to marry. But he said unto them, All men
12 cannot receive this saying, save they to whom it is given. For
there are some eunuchs, which were so born from their moth-
er's womb ; and there are some eunuchs, which were made
eunuchs of men ; and there be eunuchs, which have made
themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of Heaven's sake. He
that is able to receive it, let him receive it.
13 Then were there brought unto him little children, that he
should put his hands on them, and pray ; and the disciples re-
fer this very reason forms the con-
dition of the continuance of the
whole human race. It is owing to
the Iioly nature of this bodily union
that it is to be considered indisso-
luble, as one which man cannot,
and which only God can dissever."
9. And whoso mar-
rieth her Avhich is put away
doth commit adultery] The
point of this prohibition is brought
out by the way in which Josephus
expounds the Jewish law of divorce.
" He that desires to be divorced,"
he says, " for any cause whatso-
ever, (and many such causes happen
among men,) let him in writing give
assurance that he will never use her
as his wife any more; for by this
means she may be at liberty to
mam' another husband." This
temptation to be divorced in order
to marry again Jesus cuts off by his
severe prohibition. By every pos-
sible means he woulfl make the
marriage union inviolable and in-
dissoluble. By the finer affections
which he would cherish in human
hearts, by the purer morals flowing
out fi-orn righteous affections, by
more delicate and generous acts,
by the sanctities of heaven thrown
over the mai'riage tie and all the
domestic relations, he would make
a Christian home more sacred and
endearing in its relations than any
other home had ever been. In this
as in other things the world, even
the Christian world, though slowly
rising towards his idea, is still far be-
low it. Lawgivers still and perhaps
necessarily allow his precepts to be
violated on account of the hardness
of men's hearts and the low state of
morals among them.
12. He that is able to receive
it, let him receive it] Jesus
makes allowance for differences of
temperament and constitution. He
does not ask the same things of all.
Though he requires self-renuncia-
tion in all his followers, he does not
require that all shall show it by the
same acts. 13. And the
disciples rebuked them] Re-
buked not the children, but those
who were bringing them.
But the disciples] " The greater
part of whom," says Bengel, " ap-
pear to have been unmarried: and
unmarried men, unless they are
humble-minded, ai-e not so kind to
3M
MATTHEW XIX.
buked them. But Jesus said, Suffer little children, and for- I4
bid them not, to come unto me ; for of such is the kingdom
of Heaven. And he laid his hands on them, and departed is
thence.
And, behold, one came and said unto him, Good Master, i6
■what good thing shall I do, that I may have eternal life ? And it
he said unto him, Why callest thou me good ? there is none
good but one, that is, God. But if thou wilt enter into life,
keep the commandments. He saith unto him. Which ? Jesus is
said, " Thou shalt do no murder ; Thou shalt not commit
adultery ; Thou shalt not steal ; Thou • shalt not bear false
witness ; Honor thy father and thy mother ; " and, " Thou 19
shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." The young man saith unto 20
infants." 14. Suffer little
children] Suffer the little children,
— the little ones to come to me. Bet-
ter as in the original with the article.
Jesus has just been defending the
law of marriage. Here, as a branch
of the same subject, he is upholding
the claims of children, by rebuking
those who would keep them from
him, and by taking them into his
arms, laying his hands upon them,
and blessing them.
for of such is the kingdom of
Heaven] There is nothing more
beautiful m the New Testament
than the relation of Jesus to little
children and his sympathy with
them. What do words like these
teach in regard to them? If his
kingdom is made up of those who
are like them, what shall we say
of them, and of the doctrine of in-
nate depi-avity? That doctrine is
found in metaphysical systems of
divinity, but nowhere is it taught
or indicated by the words or the
acts of Jesus. An hereditary'- lia-
bility to sin, coming out with the
development of our natures, and
showing itself in times of tempta-
tion, we all of us may feel, and
should be constantly on our guard
against. " Not," says Riohter, " the
children must become as you, but
vice versa, you must become as the
children." " If we have to do with
men, then the rule is, Be no child;
trust, look to — whom? But if we
have to do with God, then it cannot
often enough be repeated : Be only
a child, — follow the call, trust to
the promise, take the gift, obey the
word, all as if thou didst let thyself
be lifted, carried, comforted, bless-
ed." Stier. 16. eternal
life] This expression occurs here
and in the corresponding passages
in Mark and Luke for the first time.
It is used at v. 29 of this chapter,
Luke xviii. 30, and only once again,
XXV. 46, in the first three Gospels.
It is difficult to ascertain the precise
meaning in which it is used by the
young man, though it undoubtedly
IS intended to denote a future state
of blessedness. 17. Why
callest thou me good ?] Accord-
ing to Tischendorf, the reading
should be. Why askest thou me re-
specting the good? One is good: but
if thou wishesi, <fc. This agrees with
the reading in the Curetonian Syriac
Gospels. One is good. One only is
good in the absolute sense of the
word, uniting in himself all perfec-
tions. The natural inference from
this language of Jesus, is that by it
he meant to disclaim for himself
this absolute goodness, which ex-
cludes, not only all sin, but the pos-
sibility of being tempted. ''For
God cannot be tempted with evil."
(James i. 13.) " Then was Jesus
led up of the spirit into the wilder-
ness to be tempted of the devil."
(Matt. iv. 1.) " For in that he him-
MATTHEW XIX.
345
him, All these things have I kept from my youth up ; what
21 lack I yet ? Jesus said unto him, If thou wilt be perfect, go
and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor ; and thou shalt
22 have treasure in heaven ; and come and follow me. But when
the young man heard that saying, he went away sorrowful ;
23 for he had great possessions. Then said Jesus unto his
disciples, Verily I say unto you, that a rich man shall hardly
24 enter into the kingdom of Heaven. And again I say unto you.
It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than
25 for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God. When his
disciples heard it, they were exceedingly amazed, saying,
26 Who then can be saved ? But Jesus beheld them, and said
unto them. With men this is impossible ; but with God all
27 things are possible. Then answered Peter, and said unto
liim. Behold, we have forsaken all and followed thee; what
28 shall we have therefore ? And Jesus said unto them, Verily
self hath suffered being tempted, he
is able to succor them that are
tempted." (Heb. ii. 18.)
20 from my youth up] These
words are omitted by Tischendorf
as not contained in the best manu-
scripts. The omission is an im-
provement in the passage. It is a
little harsh to write. The young
man, 6 veaviaKos — the youth —
said. All these have I kept from
my youth up, eic veorrjTos fiov.
21. ^o and sell that
thou hast] "It is a command,
not a counsel; necessary, not op-
tional ; but particular, not universal,
accommodated to the idiosyncrasy
of his soul, to whom it was ad-
dressed. For many followed Jesus
to whom he did not give this com-
mand. He may be perfect, who
still possesses wealth; he may give
all to the poor, who is very far from
perfection. Our Lord's words laid
ail obligation on the man who offer-
ed himself of his own accord, and
that so unreservedly. If the Lord
had said. Thou art rich, and art too
fond of thy riches, the young man
would have denied it ; wherefore,
instead of so doing, he demands
immediately a direct proof." Ben-
gel. 22. sorrowful] be-
cause he could not keep his great
possessions, and at the same time
follow Christ. These divided affec-
tions are always a source of anxiety
and sorrow. 23. hardlyj
loith difficulty. They are too mucn
taken up with present comforts to
think of better things; but if, as in
this case they think of them and
really desire to possess them, they
are too much attached to their
present comforts and possessions to
make the needed sacrifice.
24. easier for a camel] The
similar proverb of the elephant is
said to be familiar in the Koran
and the Talmud. " Perhaps thou
art one of those who can make an
elephant go through the eye of a
needle." The substitution Avhich
is sometimes proposed of KaniKov,
meaning a cable, for KafirjXou, a
camel, — camilon for camelon, — is
entirely without authority.
26.' with God all things are
possible] So Mark ix. 23, All
things are possible to him that be-
lieveth. 27. forsaken
all] " The all which the Apostles
had left was not in all cases con-
temptible. The sons of Zebedee had
hired servants (Mark i. 20), and Levi
(Matthew) could give a great feast in
3i6
MATTHEW XIX.
I say unto you, that ye which have followed me in the regenera-
tion, when the Son of man shall sit in the throne of his glory,
ye also shall sit upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes
of Israel. And every one that hath forsaken houses, or breth- 29
his house. But whatever it was, it
was their alV Alford. 28.
in the regeneration] As the king-
dom of Heaven is used to express the
condition of a Christian individual,
of the Christian commonwealth, and
of the redeemed above (xvi. 27, 28),
so regeneration, being born again,
refers to the act by which the indi-
vidual soul, or the Christian com-
munity, are bom into the kingdom
of Heaven. Among the Stoics this
word expressed the periodic reno-
vation of the earth when in the
spring it revived from its winter
death. Josephus (Antiq. XI. 3. 9)
speaks of the restoration of the Jews
after the Captivity as " the regain-
ing and regeneration of the coun-
try." The word is used only twice
in the New Testament. In Titus iii.
5, it plainly refers to the new birth
of the individual, when it is awak-
ened to the higher thought and life
of the Gospel. In the passage before
us it refers to the same newness of
life in its more extended influence
among men, whether on earth or in
heaven. " The first seat of the re-
generation is the soul of man ; but,
beginning there, and establishing its
centre there, it extends in ever wi-
dening circles." " Man is the pres-
ent subject of the regeneration,
and of the wondrous transforma-
tion which it implies; but in that
day it will have included within its
limits the whole world of which
man is the central figui'e ; and here
is the reconciliation of the two pas-
sages, in one of which it is spoken
of as pertaining to the single soul,
in the other to the whole redeemed
creation." Trench's Synonymes of
the New Testament. In the regen-
eration is certainly to be joined with
the second, and not, as in our Bibles,
with the first, clause of the sentence.
when the Son of man
shall sit in the throne of his
glory, ye also shall sit upon
twelve thrones, judging the
twelve tribes of Israel] The
religion of Jesus is the kingdom of
Heaven ; where it comes, the Son "of
man comes in his kingdom ; where
it prevails, as it does in the thorough
regeneration of the soul or of the
race, there he, as the head of the
new dispensation, is said to come
in his glory, to reign or to sit upon
the throne of his glory, and there,
he now declares, the Apostles shall
be associated with him, sitting on
twelve thrones, and thus under him
sharing the reffi^l influence and au-
thority which he is exercising over
the souls of men, whether iu this
world or the world to come. Dr.
Palfrey, in his Relation between
Judaism and Christianity, pp. 98, 99,
has well explained this passage:
" As, adopting the phraseology in
Daniel (vii. 13, 14), Jesus calls his
establishment in a moral dominion,
a sitting upon ' the throne of his
glory,' so he tells his Apostles, who
were to be the agents and repre-
sentatives of his spiritual adminis-
tration, that they too shall sit on
thrones. And the figure is still
further carried out. There were as
many Apostles as there had been
Jewish tribes; and this coincidence
is brought to view in the language
in which they are told that thev are
to have spiritual rule over God's
people. Tlie word judge here, as
often in Scripture (comp. 1 Sam.
viii. 5, Isa. xl. 23), means simply to
govern, to exercise sway; not to ad-
minister law, but to give, to promul-
gate it, which latter function be-
longed strictly to the Apostolic office.
The twelve Apostles together were
to give law to collective Israel.
Nothing is said of any such distri-
bution of power as that each Apos-
tle should have a tribe for his sep-
arate jurisdiction. One name of
Israel regarded collectively was the
twelve tribes, or the twelvt-irihed na-
tion. (Comp. Acts xxvi. 7.)" The
twelve tribes of Israel mean here the
MATTHEW XIX.
341
ren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or
lands, for my name's sake, shall receive an hundred-fold, and
30 shall inherit everlasting life. But many that are first shall
be last ; and the last shall be first.
people of God. When the Son of
man shall sit (active voice) on his
throne (genitive case), ye shall sit
(middle voice) oa twelve thrones
(accusative). Greek scholars who
are cm*ious about such things have
supposed that they saw in these nice
distinctions of language an intima-
tion of the different kinds or degrees
of power which Jesus and the A|X)s-
tles were respectively to exercise.
When the Son of man shall sit, the
active form expressing the act ab-
solutely, united with the genitive,
on his ylviious Uirone, as the case
denoting source or cause, the whole
expression may seem to represent
him as sitting independently on his
throne, while the middle voice with
something of a passive signification
and the accusative case, the case of
direct limitation, give in respect to
the Apostles the idea of a more lim-
ited and dependent authority. This
distinction is indicated by Stier and
Alford. But it will not"^ do to lay
any stress on these nice distinctions
of language, for such delicate shad-
ings of expression may be turned in
almost any direction by a fanciful
or ingenious mind. The distinction
here suggested may have been in
the writer's mind. But in Luke
xxii. 30, ye shall sit on thrones,
thrones is in the genitive, and in
Rev. iv. 2, where God is repre-
sented as sitting on his throne, sit-
ting is put in the middle voice,
and throne in the accusative case.
While the preposition remains the
same, the genitive, dative, and
accusative cases are used indis-
criminatelv (Rev. iv. 9, 10 ; v.
13; vi. 16 f vii. 10; xi. 16).
ye shall sit on twelve thrones]
Figures of speech in the oriental
languages are carried out more lui-
nutely than with us. Where we
should say, " 1 am exposed to death
among those who are like enraged
lions," David in a far more pictur-
esque and expressive way says:
" My soul is among lions : and I
lie even among them that are set
on fire, even the sons of men, whose
teeth are spear and arrows, and
their tongue a sharp sword." (Ps.
Ivii. 44.) No one thinks of con-
struing this literally. Where we
might describe the great and terri-
ble calamities impending over a na-
tion as a dark and tempestuous
night overwhelming the land and
shutting out the light of heaven,
our Saviour in accordance with
modes of expression natural to the
East, and perfectly well understood
as figurative, says : " Immediately
after the tribulation of those days
shall the sun be darkened, and the
moon shall not give her light, and
the stars shall fall from heaven, and
the powers of the heavens shall be
shaken." (Matt. xxiv. 29.) So in
the passage before us, where we
might say. In the new order of
things they shall be united with
him in his reign over the saints in
glory, Jesus, in language far more
impressive and august, but not lit-
eral, says, *' In the regeneration,
when tl'ie Son of man shall sit in
the tin-one of his glory, ye also shall
sit upon twelve tlu'ones, judging the
twelve tribes of Israel." In this
way he sets before them their fu-
ture condition of honor and great-
ness connected with the thought of
the more than regal influence which
they, as his representatives and
Apostles, are to exercise in advan-
cing and establishing his kingdom
among men, and thus ruling over
them.
348 MATTHEW XX. 1-16.
CHAPTER XX.
1-16. — The Laborers in the Vineyard.
1-16. This has seemed to us the most difficult of all the
parables. Its precise relation to what goes before it is ob-
scure, and it is quite impossible to show the precise bearing
of all the incidents, whatever explanation may be adopted.
It is much easier to overthrow any one of the many inter-
pretations which have been given, than to supply its place
by another which is altogether satisfactory. Some, accord-
ing to Trench, regarding the equal penny to all as the key
to the parable, say that the lesson here taught is the equal-
ity of rewards in the kingdom of Grod. Others make, not
the equal penny, but the successive hours at which the
laborers are called, the prominent lesson of the parable.
Some of these, as Origen and Hilary, suppose the different
hours apply to Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, and lastly to
the Apostles ; others, that they apply first to the Jews and
then to the Gentiles ; while others suppose that they apply
to the different periods of life at which the laborers enter on
the work of the Lord. Luther, as quoted by Stier, says,
"If we would interpret strictly, we must understand the
penny of the temporal good, and the favor of the house-
holder of the eternal good," and he sees quite clearly that
the murmuring laborers trot away with their penny and are
damned." Stier assents to this, and asserts that " the penny
is certainly a temporal good, different from eternal life, only
not of a mere outward and earthly nature," « the promise
(1 Tim. iv. 8) of the life that now is." Alford thinks the
salient point of the parable to be, that "the kingdom of God
MATTHEW XX. 1 - 16. 349
Is of grace, and not of debt ; that they who were called first
and have labored longest have no more claim upon God
than those who were called last." Its primary appHcation,
he thinks, is to the Apostles who had asked the question ;
and its secondary applications " to all those to whom such
a comparison of first or last called, will apply," nationally to
the Jews, individually to those whose call has been in early
life, as well as to those who are first in point of talents,
labor," &c. Mr. Livermore, in a few clear and truthful
words, gives the immediate application of the parable.
" Peter," he says, " had inquired respecting the rewards of
discipleship. The Saviour rephes, that the Apostles would
attain the highest honors, next to himself, and that all other
disciples would receive abundant rewards, both in this life,
and in that which is to come. But, he adds, do not suppose
that the earlier c#nverts under the Gospel dispensation will
on that account be any more meritorious, or better rewarded,
than those, who, being called later, manifest an equal fidel-
ity and zeal." "The first as to time and privileges, may
become inferior to the last, and the last become first."
In order to understand the parable, we must consider
carefully its surroundings and the relation in which it stands
to them. The words (xix. 30, and xx. 16) with which it
is introduced and ended are so closely connected with it,
that it plainly must be interpreted so as to be an illustration
of them. Peter (xix. 27) asks, "What shall we have?"
Jesus in the two following verses answers the question, and
then answers the state of mind which had prompted the
question, and which he evidently intended to rebuke. " Ye,
and all who have made such sacrifices for me, shall indeed
be rewarded. But while you seem to yourselves thus
worthy of honor and reward, it is well for you to remember
that many who are first shall be last, if in looking too much
to their reward they allow in themselves a wrong dispo-
sition and temper of mind." To illustrate this characteristic
of his kingdom, by which the first are often made last, and
30
850 MATTHEW XX. 1-16.
the last first, he relates a story of a householder, who in
the morning engaged laborers for a specific sum, and after-
wards at different hours of the day engaged also other
laborers to go into his vineyard without any agreement as
to the exact sum which they were to receive. When the
day was ended, the laborers were called together, and those
who came last received each one a penny, which was all
that had been promised to those who came first. The self-
ish feelings of those who had labored all the day were
excited ; they expected for themselves a larger reward than
had been agreed upon; and began to murmur because it
was not given to them. Because of the envious, complain-
ing spirit which they thus showed, they were rebuked and
sent away with their penny, while the master evidently
looked with more favor on those who had modestly received
his bounty. " So," Jesus adds, repeating emphatically under
a different form the expression with which the parable had
been introduced, — " so the last shall be first and the first
last." The outward distinctions which come from time,
birth, talent, or labors, and which are most apparent among
men, must in the reckoning at the end give way to the
higher distinctions which rest on the condition of the mind
and character ; so that often they who are first in time, office,
gifts, accomplishments, or even the length and apparent
usefulness of their labors, shall in the disclosures of that
hour be found worthy only of a subordinate place, while
others who were the least thought of here and who thought
the least of their own merits, shall then be found among
the. first.
But what construction is to be put upon the equal penny
which every one received ? It will not do to insist upon
pressing every minor circumstance of a parable into the
interpretation. But in this case the equality of the wages
is brought forward so prominently that it can hardly be
overlooked. All who were sent into the vineyard, were,
as faithful laborers, the representatives of those who, through
MATTHEW XX. 1-16. 351
the bounty of their Lord, shall alike receive the gift of
eternal life. But while eternal life is equally bestowed on
all, they who from their superior services had presumed on
a superior reward, have thus been cherishing a spirit, which,
though it may not exclude them from eternal life, will
nevertheless place them below those who in shorter and less
conspicuous services have been more meek and lowly in
heart.
The substance of the parable is this. "While all who
obey the call of their Master and labor faithfully in his vine-
yard shall equally receive the reward of eternal life, yet if
any by reason of their pre-eminent place or services here
presume to look down on others, and selfishly or proudly to
claim for themselves more than is given to others, they are
indulging a disposition and temper of mind which must at
length reverse the present order of precedency, and make
many who are first last, and last first. The great law of
our spiritual being, by which pride abases and humility
exalts, is here held up by the Saviour, and applied to the
Apostles as a warning against the self-seeking, self-compla-
cent spirit indicated by the question which Peter has asked
in their behalf. As Bengel has said, it is in respect to the
Apostles, not a prophecy, but a warning.
While the parable was directly given for the admonition
of the Apostles, who were evidently presuming too much on
their place next to the Saviour, and their labors and sacri-
fices, it after the manner of Jesus lays open a grand princi-
ple of spiritual advancement and decline which shall stand
forth a perpetual admonition to all who from their conspic-
uous position, endowments, or services are in danger of
cherishing the spirit which is here condemned. It apphes
to the Jews, who as a people prided themselves on account
of their superior privileges, and who by their pride cut
themselves off from the high place which they once held.
It applies as a warning to all who hold distinguished places
in the Church, or distinguished posts of Christian usefulness
352 MATTHEW XX. 1-16.
and honor, to those whose reputation for learning, ability,
or sanctity gives them a peculiar influence in the Christian
community, and to all who from their early calling, the
richness of their gifts, or the abundance and success of their
labors are tempted to think too highly of themselves, or to
despise others. "This parable," says Luther, "hits even
excellent people, nay, it terrifies the greatest saints, and
therefore Christ holds it up before the Apostles themselves."
"How many shining stars," says Ramback as quoted by
Stier, " have already been struck by the tail of the dragon,
and cast down by pride to the earth." Stier also borrows
from Herberger a story which, as he says, strikingly
portrays in an extreme light what Christ here mildly
represents in a softer light. A monk died, leaving a great
name for sanctity; a robber who had heard him preach
repented, ran to confess, but fell on the way and broke his
neck. A devout man saw both, wept at the death of the
saint, but rejoiced at that of the robber. Why so ? ' When
the monk died, the devil took him because of his pride;
when the robber broke his neck, angels received his peni-
lent soul.'"
A more pertinent illustration of the parable might be
given. Aran was a follower of Jesus the Crucified, and
a teacher of his truth in the early days of the Church.
He labored unsparingly, and saw the work of the Lord
prospering marvellously in his hands. Tiiousands of new
converts honored him as their spiritual father; his name
was pronounced with loving admiration in many and distant
lands, and pilgrims came from the remotest parts of the
earth, that they might profit by his counsels and the
sanctity of his life. But, unawares to himself, his heart
was beginning to be elated by the honor and success which
followed him in his labors. He rejoiced, not so much that
souls were redeemed from their sins, as that they were won
to Christ through the eloquence of his speech. And so it
happened, that while his labors and his zeal mcreased, and
MATTHEW XX. 1-16. 353
multitudes more than ever thronged around him, and
throughout the whole of Christendom he was regarded
with reverence and wonder, the lowliness and simplicity of
his own heart were leaving him, and even while he ex-
claimed, Non nobis, domine, " Not unto us, O Lord, not unto
us," pride and vainglory from underneath the very altar
on which they had been laid in sacrifice whispered to him
that the glory must indeed be given to God, but that few
among men had been privileged to do so much for the
advancement of his name and cause.
Near him was Garnan^ a simple disciple who honored
Aran as in the hands of God the instrument of his salvation
from the worship of idols, and who labored among the
menials of his household, — rejoicing if at any time he
could lead the trembling pilgrim within the reach of his
master's influence. His knowledge was the instinct of a
loving and faithful soul. H^e was thankful if he could
revive the drooping hopes of a fellow-servant or bestow a
cup of water on the fainting traveller, to refresh him after
the burden and the heat of his journey, — repeating while
he did it some comforting words of Jesus, or uttering some
prayer of faith as it came unbidden from his heart. Thus
day and night, in season and out of season, unnoticed by
the eye of man, he employs himself thinking only of his
Master and his Master's work, — praying in his simple way,
and thus keeping the well-spring of piety alive in his heart,
but never dreaming that he is doing anything for others,
and least of all that he is doing anything to help on that
great movement which is already causing the earth to
tremble at its coming, and by which the kingdoms of this
world shall become the kingdoms of our Lord, and his
Christ.
At length the day of persecution arrived. Aran wel-
comes its approach. Amid the admiration of thousands,
who greet him almost with plaudits as they witness the
alacrity with which he gives hhnself into the hands of his
30* w
854 MATTHEW XX.
persecutors, he goes bravely to the flames, praising and thank-
ing God for the strength which he has given him, that the
honors of such a life may not be tarnished nor its influence
weakened by a mean and cowardly death. Garnan also
is seized and bidden to make ready. No sympathizing or
admiring eyes are turned towards him. He thinks of the
Saviour who died for all, — of the saintly man whom it
has been his privilege to serve. He hardly remembers
to pray even for the salvation of his own soul. But he
prays for his friends, that they may serve God in their
lives, and glorify him in their death. He prays for lonely
and trembling ones, that their faith may be strengthened.
He prays for the kingdom of God, that it may come
throughout the world.
The flames encircle them, and at the same moment the
souls of both escape from their fiery shroud.
One is canonized in the church, and numbered among
the starry names which have power to stir men's souls
through all coming generations. The other, no man ex-
cept a few of his fellow-servants cared for or remembered,
and soon his name had utterly perished from all human
records. Beyond the veil, angels indeed received Aran
as one of the " many " who have been " called " into the
kingdom of God ; but Garnan they surround with brighter
gleams of joy as they bear him with songs of joy and place
him among the few whom their Lord has "chosen" to
lean upon his bosom. So the last shall be first, and the
first last
NOTES.
For the kingdom of Heaven is hke unto a man that is an
householder, which went out early in the morning to hire la-
1. For the kingdom of Heav. an householder] The comparl-
en is like unto a man that is son is not with the householder
MATTHEW XX.
355
2 borers into his vineyard. And when he had a^eed with the
laborers for a penny a day, he sent them into his vineyard.
3 And he went out about the third hour, and saw others standinnr
4 idle in the market-place, and said unto them, Go ye also into
the vineyard, and whatsoever is right I will give you. And
5 they went their way. Again he went out about the sixth and
6 ninth hour, and did likewise. And about the eleventh hour he
went out, and found others standing idle, and saith unto them,
7 Why stand ye here all the day idle ? They say unto him. Be-
cause no man hath hired us. He saith unto them. Go ye also
into the vineyard ; and whatsoever is right, that shall ye re-
8 ceive. So when even was come, the lord of the vineyard saith
unto his steward. Call the laborers, and give them their hire,
alone, but with the whole action of
the householder as related in the
parable. went out early in
the morning to hire laborers]
Morier, in his Second Journey
through Persia, p. 265, mentions
having noted in the market-place
at Ramadan, a custom like that
alluded to in the parable : " Here
we observed every morning before
the sun rose, that a numerous band
of peasants were collected with
spades in their hands, waiting to be
hired for the day to work in the
surrounding fields. This custom
struck me as a most happy illustra-
tion of our Saviour's parable, par-
ticularly when, passing by the same
place late in the day, we found
others standing idle, and remem-
bered his words, ' Why stand ye
here all the day idle?'" Trench.
his vineyard] " Vine-
yard is, since Isa. v. the similitude
Kept up by Chi-ist to denote God's
institution upon earth, his people,
his kingdom." Stier. 2.
a penny a day] The penny was
equal to about sixteen cents of our
coin. " He promises the due re-
ward, the denarius, which also in
Tacitus still appears as the usual
ample day's wage for working
soldiers. 'But if those who are
called at the very first begin dis-
trustfully to ask, How much am
I certain to get? then, indeed, it
is not good, and they are to be
warned of the unhappy end of such
a course." Stier. 3. about
the third hour] The third, sixth,
ninth, and eleventh hours corre-
spond to our 9 A.M., 12 M,, 3 p.m.,
and 5 p.m. " These would not, ex-
cept just at the equinoxes, be exactly
the hours; for the Jews, as well as
the Greeks and Romans, divided the
natural day, that between sunrise
and sunset, into twelve equal parts
(John xi. 9), which parts must of
course have been considerably
longer in summer than in wmter."
" Probably the day was also divided
into four' larger parts here indi-
cated, just as the Roman night
into four watches, and indeed the
Jewish no less." Trench.
7. because no man hath hired
us] It appears that all went as
soon as they were called. They,
therefore, are not blamed by tlie
Question, Why stand ye here all the
ay idle? ""8. So Avhen
even was come] In paying the
laborers at the close of the day,
a merciful provision of the Jewish
law was followed : " At his day
thou shalt give him his hire, neither
shall the sun go down upon it, for
he is poor, and setteth his heart
upon it." (Deut. xxiv. 15.) " The
wages of him that is hired shall not
abide with thee all night until the
morning." (Lev. xix. 13.) Job (yii.
2) implies a similar custom. The
evening of each day resembles the
evening of life, and' the reckoning
at the close of the day stands here
356
MATTHEW XX.
beginning from the last, unto the first. And when they came 9
that were hired about the eleventh hour, they received every
man a penny. But when the first came, they supposed that lo
they should have received more ; and they likewise received
every man a penny. And when they had received it, they ii
murmured against the good man of the house, saying. These 12
last have wrought but one hour, and thou hast made them equal
unto us, which have borne the burden and heat of the day.
But he answered one of them, and said, Friend, I do thee no 13
wrong ; didst not thou agree with me for a penny ? Take that
thine is, and go thy way ; I will give unto this last even as 14
unto thee. Is it not lawful for me to do what I will with mine I6
own ? Is thine eye evil, because I am good ? So the last 16
shall be first ; and the first, last. For many be called, but few
chosen.
And Jesus going up to Jerusalem, took the twelve disciples n
apart in the way, and said unto them. Behold, we go up to 18
Jerusalem ; and the Son of man shall be betrayed unto the
chief priests and unto the scribes; and they shall condemn
as a symbol of the reckoning at the
close of life. 12. and heat
of the day] tov Kavacova. The
word is used in the Septuagiut, Hos.
xiii. 15, for the dry, burning east
wind, so fatal to all vegetable life.
The word is found in the New Tes-
tament only here (Luke xii. 55),
and in James 1. 11, where it is ap-
propriately rendered " burning heaf^
13. Friend] " At first
sight a friendly word merely, as-
sumes a more solemn aspect when
we recollect that it is used in xxii.
12 to the guest who had not the
wedding garment, and in chapter
xxvi. 50 by our Lord to Judas."
Alford. 17. And
Jesus going up to Jerusalem]
Tlie incidents and conversations
which begin with chapter xix., and
which probably took place on the
east side of the Jordan, end with
the sixteenth verse of this chapter.
The expression going up to Jerusa-
lem refers to the remarkable as-
cent from the valley of tlie Jordan.
*' There is no such second gash,"
it is said, " on the surface of the
earth " as " the depression of the
Jordan valley." In a distance of
only about twenty miles from the
Dead Sea, which is 1,312 feet below
the Mediterranean, to Jenisalem,
which is 2,200 feet above it, is a
perpendicular ascent of more than
3,500 feet. How long Jesus had re-
mained in the valley of the Jordan,
on its eastern side, Ave have no
means of ascertaining, but probably
not more than a day or two. He had
set out from Galilee, to go directly
up to Jerusalem through Samaria ;
but when the Samaritans (Luke ix.
63) refused to receive him, he prob-
ably turned to the left, crossed the
Jordan, and came by a less direct
route through the Peraea.
18, unto the chief priests and
unto the scribes] The appella-
tion chief priests seems to have
been a common one at that time.
According to Bengel, it was the
especial province of the Scribes to
Icnow the written law, as it was of
the priests to decide and give sentence
in accordance with it. " Scribis]
quorum erat scientia; uti pontijicwra
MATTHEW XX.
357
19 him to death, and shall deliver him to the Gentiles, to mock,
and to scourge, and to crucify him ; and the third day he shall
rise again.
20 Then came to him the mother of Zebedee's children, with
her sons, worshipping him, and desiring a certain thing of him.
21 And he said unto her, What wilt thou ? She saith unto him.
Grant that these my two sons may sit, the one on thy right
22 hand, and the other on the left, in thy kingdom. But Jesus
answered and said. Ye know not what ye ask. Are ye able to
sententia." 19. and shall
deliver him to the Gentiles]
Observe in these two verses the
minuteness and exactness of the
prediction. " The Son of Man shall
be delivered to the chief priests and
scribes, and they shall condemn
him to death," as they did ; but
having no authority to execute the
sentence, " they shall deliver him
to the Gentiles," — to the Roman
governor and soldiers, — "to mock
and scourge and crucify him ; and
on the third day he shall be raised
up." Luke, who records this pre-
diction with some slight variations,
and whose language, even more
than that of Matthew, indicates the
solemnity and emphasis with which
our Lord spoke, and the amazement
of the disciples, adds (xviii. 34)
that they nevertheless did not un-
derstaml one word of what he had
said respecting his death and resur-
rection. They were so intently
fixed upon the thought that he was
now speedily to establish his king-
dom on earth, that they were utterly
blind to any other idea, and could
not receive it. This state of mind,
which is mentioned here only by
Luke, who does not relate the fol-
lowing incident, will account for the
otherwise improbable request which
is afterwards made by two of the
disciples (Mark x. 35), through
their mother. 20. the
mother of Zebedee's children]
the mother of Ztbedee's sons with her
soils. Salome (Matt, xxvii. 56 com-
pared with Mark xv. 40). " From
the adoration and discourse of this
woman, it is evident that she enter-
tained a high idea of our Lord's
majesty, but possessed very little
knowledge." " The flesh," says
Luther, in reference to this chapter,
" is always for becoming glorious
before it is crucified ; exalted before
it is humbled." desiring
a certain thing of him] asking
sojntthing which she does not specify
at first, as if she were a little diffi-
dent ab«ut making the request, and
half conscious that it ought not to
be made, and that a refusal was not
improbable or unjust. 21.
may sit, the one on thy right
hand, and the other on the left]
that they may occupy the highest
places in his kingdom, which she
and they believed was speedily to
appear. (Luke xix. 11.)
22. Ye know not what ye ask]
Jesus replies to them, not to her,
" Ye know not .what it is that ye
are asking." Some have supposed
that in this reply Jesus refers to the
position at his right hand and his
left when he should be upon the
cross. But he refers rather to the
utter incompatibility of their re-
quest with the spirit and nature of
his kingdom, and their entire igno-
rance of what, from the nature of
his kingdom, must be involved in
their request. Are ye able]
They, still ignorant of the whole
matter, and supposing that the ques-
tions of Jesus which involved so
much self-renunciation and suffer-
ing were some easy conditions on
which their request would be
granted reply hastily that they are
able. Yet even as Jews they ought
to have taken the words of Jesus
in a different and profounder sense.
" The plu-ase that goes before this,
358
MATTHEW XX.
drink of the cup that I shall drink of, and to be baptised with
the baptism that I am baptized with ? They say unto him,
We are able. And he saith unto them, Ye shall drink in- 23
deed of my cup ; and be baptized with the baptism that I am
baptized with; but to sit on my right hand, and on my left, is
not mine to give ; but it shall be given to them for whom it is
prepared of my Father. And when the ten heard it, they 24
were moved with indignation against the two brethren. But 25
Jesus called them unto him, and said, Ye know that the princes
of the Gentiles exercise dominion over them, and they that are
concerning the cup, is taken from
divers places of Scripture, wliere
sad and grievous things are com-
pared to draughts of a bitter cup."
*• So cruel a thing was the baptism
of the Jews, that not with-
out cause, partly by reason of the
burying, as I may call it, under
water, and partly by reason of the
cold, it used to simify the most
cruel kind of death." Lightfoot.
" To be overwhelmed with grief, to
be immersed in affliction, will be
found common in most hinguages."
Campbell. " Afflictions and calam-
ities in the sacred writings are often
compared to waves and billows by
which the suffering are over-
whelmed." Ps. Ixix. 1, 2; Isa. xliii.
2. Kuinoel. Being baptized into
the death of Christ L«, in its spiritual
sense, a fovorite figure with St.
Paul. (Rom. vi. 3, 4 ; Col. ii. 12.)
They say to him, " We are able.'"
" The one of these brethren was the
first of the apostles to be
baptized Avith the baptism of blood
(Acts xii. 1, 2); the other had the
longest experience among them of
a life of trouble and persecution."
Alford. 23. Ye shall
drink indeed of my cup] We
may suppose that Jesus made this
reply to them, that they should in-
deed share with him his sufferings
even to the baptism of death Avith
a solemnity of emphasis which
showed how much more meaning
he attached to the words than they
had done. but to sit on
my right hand, and on my
left, is not mine to give] As
the majesty of Jesus shines out
from his humility, so here his hu-
mility shows itself in his majesty.
Though by the words, to sit on my
i-iffht and ^on my left, he admits that
he holds a royal office in a more
than earthly kingdom, still he ac-
knowledges* one loftier and greater
than himself, without whose au-
thority and consent it was not for
him to appoint to the highest places
of honor and of power in his king-
dom. That " is not mine to give,
but [it is for those] for whom it has
been prepared by my Father."
it is prepared] the per-
fect tense is here used to describe
a future event in its relation to
another event still farther in the
future. but] aXX' ois.
*' The conjunction aXXa, when, as
in this place, it is not followed by a
verb, but by a noun or pronoun, is
generally to be understood as of the
same import with ei /mj;, unless, ex-
cept; otherwise the verb must bo
supplied as is done here in the
common version." Campbell. We
doubt whether aK\d is used in this
way like our but to mean unless or
except. The most natural transla-
tion of this passage, and that which
retains most exactly the Greek
idiom, is, " It is not mine to give,
but [is] for whomsoever it has been
prepared by my Father."
25. the princes of the Gentiles
exercise dominion over them]
" the rulers of the Gentiles [of the
nations] lord it [rule] over them,
and the great [the imperial] ones
exercise aiithority over them; " i. e.
over the rulers. Among the Gen-
MATTHEW XX.
859
26 great exercise authority upon them. But it shall not be so
among you; but whosoever will be g.eat among you, let him
27 be your minister; and whosoever will be chief among you,
28 let him be your servant ; even as the Son of man came not to
be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ran-
som for many.
29 And as they departed from Jericho, a great multitude fol-
30 lowed him. And, behold, two blind men, sitting by the way-
tiles there are different gi*ades of
authority, the inferior officers ruling
over the people, and at the same
time subject to the authority of
those higher than themselves.
26. But it shall not be so
among you] Not so shall it be
among you. With the Gentiles are
different gi-ades of official power
and authority. Not so shall it be
among you. But Avhosoever may
wish to be great among you, let him
be your servant; and, verse 27, who-
soever may wish to be first among
you, let him be your slave ;^^ i. e.
the greater the (distinction sought,
so much the humbler let the office
and the service be. The only test
of greatness with Christ is the hu-
mility and fidelity which are ready
to engage in the loAvest offices, and
without any thought of self to do
what can be done for the good of
others. This is the foundation of
Christian duty and distinction. It
is the great doctrine expressed in
the first of the beatitudes, implied
in almost every conversation of our
Saviour, repeated again and again
(x. 38, 39 ; xvi. 24-27), directly
enforced (xviii. 4), illustrated by the
parable at the beginning of this
chapter, and confirmed by his own
example at the last supper (John
xiii. 4-16), and by his death.
" Then it was, " says Dr. Furness,
" that Jesus, perceiving their am-
bition, gives them, — gives them! —
gives the world ! — that immortal
definition of true greatness, the
depth of whose meaning is yet to
be fathomed, and of which his life
is the only adequate illustration
which the world has yet seen."
" Of this whole passage in which
Jesus defines greatness, I think it
may be said, without exaggeration,
that, if it were the only saying of
his that had come down to us, and,
eA^en if it had been unaccompanied
by the splendid illustration of his
personal example, it would have
been recorded among the deathless
sayings of the world's best wisdom.
Truly he was a world-teacher, atid
the world's wisest may sit at his
feet, finding all their wisdom antici-
pated." 28. a ransom
for many] " As the synoptical
Gospels (with the exception of
Matt. xxvi. 28) do not contain any
other similar declaration in Christ's
own words, impartiality requires
from us the confession, that this
passage taken by itself cannot /jrore
the doctrine of^ Christ's vicarious
death, especially as the same ex-
pressions here used to describe it
may denote any kind of death in
way of sacrifice." Olshausen.
29. And as they departed
from Jericho] 30. And,
behold, two blind men] Ahit-
thew mentions two blind men, Mark
and Luke only one, probably the
one who made himself prominent:
" Bartimaeus, a blind man, the son
of Timaeus" (Mark x. 46). So
Matthew (viii. 28) speaks of two
demoniacs; Mark (v. 2), and Luke
(viii. 27) mention but one; probably
the one Avho was most remarkable,
and with whom the extraordinary
conversation took place. Li chap-
ter xxi. 5-7, Matthew mentions
both the ass and the colt ; Mark
only the colt on which our Lord
rode. Matthew, the tax-gatherer,
is usuallv more minute and precise
in regard to numbers. Where the
other Evangelists speak of 4,000 or
5,000, Matthew adds to those num-
360
MATTHEW XX.
sidfe, when they heard that Jesus passed by, cried out, saying,
Have mercy on us, O Lard, thou Son of David ! And the 3i
multitude rebuked them, because they should hold their peace.
But they cried the more, saying, Have mercy on us, O Lord,
thou Son of David ! And Jesus stood still, and called them, 32
and said, What will ye that I shall do unto you ? They say 33
unto him, Lord, that our eyes may be opened. So Jesus had 34
compassion on them, and touched their eyes ; and imimediately
their eyes received sight ; and they followed him.
bers, " besides women and children."
See Matt. xiv. 21 compared with
Mark vi. 44, Luke ix. 14, and John
vi. 10 ; and Matt. xv. 38 compared
with Mark viii. 9. But Matthew
and Mark speak of meeting tlie
blind men [man] as they were going
out from Jericho, Luke as they were
drawing nigh to Jericho. Attempts
have been made to reconcile the
two accounts, by rendering Luke's
expi-ession, iv t5> iyyi^civ avrbv
els 'Iepi;(a), " when he was drawing
nigh [Jerusalem] at Jericho," or
" while he was nigh to Jericho " [in
going out]. Both these interpreta-
tions are forced. The explanation
given by Bengelis less unreasona-
ble. He supposes that one of the
blind men, Bartimfeus, met Jesus
on his way into Jericlio, and that
while Jesus was dining, or rather
passing the night, with Zaccheus,
this man joined himself with an-
other blind man, and both sitting by
the side of the way through whicn
Jesus must pass, made their appeal
to him and were healgd by him, as
he was leaving Jericho. It may
have been so ; but even then there
is a discrepancy which is not re-
moved ; since Luke says that one
was healed when Jesus was ap-
proaching Jericho, and Matthew
says that both were healed when
he was leaving Jericho. It is better
to allow that in an unimportant
particular either one or two of the
Evangelists has made a mistake.
It is such a mistake as detracts
nothing from the authority of the
writer, or the tmstworthiness of the
narrative. These positive contra-
dictions in the dift'erent Evangelists,
when thoroughly examined, are
found to be very few, and relate to
insignificant matters. If we knew
all the details as they occurred, it
is possible that even here the ap-
parent discrepancy might be ex-
plained. We know the sympathy
that often exists between persons
suffering from the same infirmity.
It is possible that the blind man
whom Luke represents Jesus as
healing on his approach to Jericho,
may have gone in quest of two
others whom he had known, and
induced them to sit by the wayside
where they could call on Jesus as
he was leaving the city the next
morning. There is nothing im-
possible or very improbable in
such a supposition. But we think
any explanation of very little con-
sequence.
MATTHEW XXJ. 361
CHAPTER XXI.
Reckoning of Time.
There are few difficulties in this chapter except in the
chronological succession of events. Matthew is evidently
more careful to give the incidents and conversations than
to arrange them in their exact order. Indeed he hurries
through the transactions of the first four days, including
that on which he left Jericho, that he may give in full the
remarkable words uttered by Jesus on the last day that
he spent in the temple.
Six days before the Passover (John xii. 1) Jesus came
to Bethany. As the legal day of the Jews extended from
sunset to sunset, the arrival of Jesus at Bethany was
probably a little after sunset on Friday, i. e. just at the
beginning of the last day of the week, which was the Jewish
Sabbath. Carpenter, Harmony of the Gospels, p. 196,
and Greswell, Diss. Vol. III. p. 19, suppose the triumphal
entry into Jerusalem to have been on Monday. The
common opinion they say, " rests on no better authority
than that of prescription." We think that the probabilities
are not on their side. We know that the crucifixion took
place on Friday, and that the Passover was eaten by Jesus
and his disciples the evening before, which was the begin-
ning of Friday according to the Jewish mode of reckoning.
Jesus arrived at Bethany (John xii. 1) six days before
the Passover. The Paschal lamb was to be killed the
afternoon before it was eaten. " The festival of unleavened
bread began strictly with the Passover-meal." But it
was customary for the Jews "to cease from labor at or
before midday ; to put away all leaven out of their houses
before noon." Hence, in popular usage, the day before the
31
362 MATTHEW XXI.
Paschal supper came very naturally to be reckoned as
the beginning or first day of the festival, which, including
this day, continued eight days. See Robinson's Greek Har-
mony of the Gospels, pp. 211, 213. Thus the feast or festi-
val of the Passover, or the feast of unleavened bread, which
in its larger compass reached through more than a week,
may have been accounted to begin either with the day
when the lamb was killed, or the day following. In
strictness of speech, the festival began with the Paschal
supper. But Matthew (xxvi. 17) speaks of the day before
that as "the first day of unleavened bread," and Josephus
(Wars of the Jews, V. 3. 1 and Ant. XI. 4. 8) speaks of
it in the same way. Now " the feast of unleavened bread **
and " the feast of the Passover " were used as synonymous
terms to denote the same festival, and that festival may
have been regarded as beginning on either of the above-
mentioned days. Too little is known of the usage of
language in this respect by the Evangelists to enable us to
determine with certainty which of the two days is meant
by them as the day from which to reckon when mention
is made of the Passover (or feast of the Passover) by John
(xii. 1) and by Matthew (xxvi. 2), and of "the Passover
and the unleavened bread" by Mark (xiv. 1). If their
language is to be taken in its strictest sense, Jesus arrived
at Bethany on Sunday, and "two days before the Pass-
over" would be on Wednesday. If they followed what
Dr. Robinson calls the "popular usage," and reckoned
back from what Matthew calls " the first day of unleavened
bread," then each of those events falls a day earlier.
Carpenter and Robinson take the later date; Alford, in
accordance with the traditions of the Roman Catholic and
Episcopal church, assumes the earlier; and in this par-
ticular we accord with him, though, as it appears to us,
there is no weight of reason or authority which decidedly
preponderates either way.
Finding Jesus at Bethany on the eve of the Jewish
MATTHEW XXI. 363
Sabbath, that is, on Friday evening, we suppose that he
remained there through the Sabbath, and partook of the
supper which had been prepared for him, and at which
Mary anointed his feet with the pure and costly ointment.
(Matt. xxvi. 6-13; Mark xiv. 3-9; John xii. 1-8.)
The next day, which corresponds to our Sunday, he entered
Jerusalem. (Mark xi. 1 - 10.) Such a procession, with
its incidents and delays, must have taken up the greater
part of the day. Mark says that when he had gone into
the temple and looked round on everything there, it was
now evening, and he returned to Bethany with the twelve.
The next morning, Monday (Mark xi. 12-15), he came
back to Jerusalem, destroying the barren fig-tree as he
came, expelled the money-changers &c. in the temple,
and in the evening went out of the city. " And as they
passed by in the morning" (of course, the next morning,
or Tuesday), seeing the withered fig-tree as they came,
they entered Jerusalem again, and, after a day crowded
with conversations and events, Jesus (Mark xiii. 1, 3) went
from the temple to the Mount of Olives, where he uttered
the remarkable warnings and predictions which are re-
corded in the twenty-fourth and twenty-fifth chapters of
Matthew, and the corresponding chapters in Mark and
Luke. After this conversation, which must have extended
far into the evening (the beginning of Wednesday, or the
fourth day of the week), it was now (Matt. xxvi. 2 ; Mark
xiv. 1) '' two days " to " the feast of the Passover, and
of unleavened bread."
If this view is correct, we have no record of the manner
in which Wednesday was spent by Jesus. Probably he
was in the comparative retirement of Bethany or the Mount
of Olives, gaining strength for the severer trials and suffer-
ings before him.
364 MATTHEW XXI. 1-17.
1-17. Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem.
1-17. We are here brought within the last week of the
Saviour's life. Heretofore his usual practice has been
to avoid all publicity. But now, knowing that his hour
is at hand, he is evidently willing to make a more general
and public impression. He has probably spent the Sabbath
with Mary and Martha and Lazarus whom he loved at
Bethany, which lies secluded at the foot of the Mount of
Olives on the eastern side, and about fifteen furlongs (John
xi. 18), or a little less than two miles from Jerusalem.
While he was there, many of the Jews (John xii. 9, 11)
came out from the city, not only to see Jesus, but also
to see Lazarus whom he had raised from the dead. These
men, many of them doubtless strangers who had come up
to celebrate the great national festival, were probably very
much excited by what they heard and saw at Bethany,
and on their return to Jerusalem heightened the already
impatient expectations of others, and prepared to welcome
Jesus on his approach to the city the following day. Jesus
on Sunday morning left the house of his friends, and on
reaching that part of the Mount of Olives where Bethphage
and Bethany meet, he paused and sent forward two of
his disciples to procure an ass and her foal from the opposite
village. There is no evidence that any arrangement had
previously been made with the owner, nor is there anything
to show decisively that such an arrangement had not been
made. In either case it is most likely that the owner was
one of the friends of Jesus, who knew the disciples, and
therefore understood the reply which Jesus, 3, directed
them to make to him. The ass, and the foal whereon
never man sat, were brought, garments were placed upon
them, and Jesus sat upon them, i. e. on the garments.
These preparations must have caused a very considerable
delay, during which the multitudes were gathering round
him, rousing one another to a still higher pitch of enthu-
MATTHEW XXI. 1-17. 365
siasm, while some had spread their garments before him,
others were cutting branches from trees and spreading
them in the way. At the descent of the Mount of Olives
(Luke xix. 37-40), the whole multitude of the disciples
broke forth into acclamations of joy and praise. Some of
the Pharisees who were present asked him to rebuke his
disciples for using such language. But he replied, that
if these were silent, the very stones would cry out, — by
this hyperbolical expression intimating the sympathy which
even inanimate things have with the highest spiritual and
moral forces of the universe. Then, as he reached that
point on the southwestern slope of the Mount of Olives,
where the city with all the magnificence of its towers and
palaces and temple glittering in the noonday sun broke
upon his sight, his thoughts were turned on scenes and
events wholly different from those which met the eyes
and filled the wondering minds of his followers. Unmind-
ful of the shouts of gladness and triumph which filled the
air, he thought of the long catalogue of crimes, and the
approaching day of doom, when her enemies should com-
pass her about and keep her in on every side, and her
walls and her children alike should be overthrown and
destroyed. Beholding the city, "the mother and altar
of saints," he wept over it, saying, "If thou, even thou,
hadst only known, even yet in this thy day, the things
which belong to thy peace! but now they are hid from
thy eyes." The long succession of sins and crimes had
blinded them, and destroyed in them the sense of their
true condition, and prevented a knowledge of the sorrows
which must inevitably fall upon them.
10, 15-17. The whole city was moved at his coming,
and as he entered within the courts of the temple the
children took up the words of ancient prophecy which had
announced his approach, and sent up their welcoming
cries of Hosanna to the son of David. Jesus refused to
rebuke them at the request of the Chief Priests and
31*
366 . MATTHEW XXI.
Scribes. Having thus finished his triumphal entry, and
looked round on everything in the temple (Mark xi. 11),
it being now eventide he went out unto Bethany with the
twelve.
19-22. The withering of the fig-tree from its very roots
is given much more fully and exactly in Mark xi. 12-14,
20 - 26. Matthew mentions the different parts of the trans-
action as if they had all occurred at the same time.
NOTES.
And when they drew nigh unto Jerusalem, and were come to
Bethphage, unto the Mount of OHves, then sent Jesus two dis-
ciples, saying unto them. Go into the village over against you, 2
and straightway ye shall find an ass tied, and a colt with her ;
loose them, and bring them unto me. And if any man say aught 3
unto you, ye shall say, The Lord hath need of them ; and
straightway he will send them. All this was done, that it might 4
be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet, saying, " Tell 6
1. Bethphage] the house of figs, Lord hath need of them] "If
as Bethany is the house of dates, now the disciples should at First be
Its precise geographical position almost suspected of the intention to
has not heretofore been ascertained ; steal the aninnals, a single word is
but Barclay (City of the Great King, to satisfy the owner. It is by all
p. 65) thinks, for reasons which seem means implied in this, that these
to us satisfactory, that he has iden- people belonged to the number of
tified the spot on the southern spur those who believed on him, that
of the Mount of Olives, just before they at once understood Avho ' tlie
reaching the point from which Jeru- Lord' was, and without hesitation
salem is visible. Mark says, "When willingly served him The
they were drawing nigh to Jeru- need of' the Lord who has not even
salem, at Bethphage and Bethany an ass of his own for his festal pro-
by the Mount of Olives," i. e. at cession, presents a significant con-
the dividing line between Bethphage trast which the preachers on the
and Bethany. 2. Go into advent from the earliest times do
the village] There may have not fail to notice." Stier.
been some previous understanding 4. All this was done, that it
between Jesus and the owner of the might be fulfilled] This is Mat-
animals; but there is no word here thew's most common method of in-
to intimate such an arrangement, troducing passages from the Proph-
A miraculous knowledge on the ets. (See i. 22; ii. 15; iv. 14; xxi.
part of Jesus seems to be implied 4; xxvii. 35.) See also, with a
by the language of the Evangelists, slight variation in the introductory
3. ye shall say, The word,o7rci)s for tm, ii. 23; viii. 17;
MATTHEW XXI.
3G7
ye tKe daughter of Sion, Behold, thy King cometh unto thee,
meek, and sitting upon an ass, and a colt the foal of an ass.**
xii. 17; xiii. 35. In xxvi. 56 we
read, " All this was done that the
Scriptures (or writings) of the
prophets might be fulfilled." The
expression, tlmt^ in order that, is used
not so much to indicate a purpose
as a fact. Sometimes it is employed
merely to introduce a passage from
the sacred writings by way of ac-
commodation, perhaps to remove a
Jewish prejudice. " Out of Egypt
have I called my Son" (ii. 15);
" He shall be called a Nazarene "
(ii. 23), are examples of this sort.
The coincidence is verbal and inci-
dental, and forms no part of the
original meaning or purpose of the
writer. Jn order that it niiyht beful-
Jilled{see Notes, pp. 43, 44) does not
then involve the necessity of certain
specific acts in order to the fulfil-
ment of certain prophecies. It may
be used merely to point to an un-
designed and apparently incidental
coincidence, and never necessarily
implies that the act was done with
the express intention of fulfilling
the letter of the ancient writing.
But there is a deeper sense in which
the word fulfil is applied in the New
Testament to every part of the Jew-
ish dispensation, to its law, its his-
tory, and its prophecies. They all
pointed on to the more perfect dis-
pensation for which they were pre-
paring the way, and in which they
were to find their fulfilment. The
law was to be fulfilled, v. 17 (see
Notes above, pp. 88-92, 94), not
by the literal observance of all its
precepts, but in the purer life and
spirit by which it should be eman-
cipated from its now burdensome
forms and ritual observances. So
the prophecies, foreshadowing, by
such types and images as could be
used the richer life and diviner
glories which should belong to the
Messiah's kingdom, are fulfilled, not
so much by the precise i-eproduc-
tion of each one of those types and
images in the outward acts and
events of his life, as by the unfold-
ing of its spirit and power and truth
through him. The fifty-third chap-
ter of Isaiah, e. g. foreshadowing
the humiliation and sufferings and
death of the Messiah, has its ful-
filment in Christ, even though some
of the terms used should not liter-
alh-^ describe any specific action or
event connected with him, or his
kingdom. Still, in a few cases, our
attention is called to the fulfilment
of prophecy, not only in this higher
sense, but in minute and apparently
unimportant particulars. Isa. liii.
7, 9, 12 : '' As a sheep before her
shearers is dumb, so he opened not
his mouth. And he made his grave
with the rich in his death.
And he was numbered with the
transgressors." The passage before
us is of this kind. The prophet
Zechariah, in his anticipations of
the Messiah's kingdom and the
blessings Avhich should attend it,
breaks out, ix. 9, into language
which, taken figuratively, would
describe the character and office of
Christ. " I suppose," says Dr.
Noyes, "the mild, pacific disposi-
tion of the Messiah, rather than his
humility, to be particularly denoted
by the adjective, and by the cir-
cumstance of his riding upon an
ass. It seems to have been appro-
priate to princes and magistrates to
ride upon asses, especially white
asses (see Judges v. 10 ; x. 4 ; xii.
14); but it was a sign of peace to
ride upon an ass rather than a war-
liorse." But while the prophetic
language here used has its fulfilment
in the mild and pacific character as
well as the kingly office of the Mes-
siah, it is also literally fulfilled to a
remarkable degree in its minute and
apparently unimportant particulars.
The very images which were em-
ployed to foreshadow his character
and office are actually reproduced
before the eyes of men, though, as
St. John says (xii. 16), even the
disciples did not understand or
call to mind the prophetic words
till after " Jesus was glorified."
The language in its connection
with the events is very extraor-
dinary : —
368
MATTHEW XXI.
And the disciples went, and did as Jesus commanded them, 6
and brought the ass, and the colt, and put on them their 7
clothes, and they set him thereon. And a very great multitude 8
spread their garments in the way ; others cut down branches
from the trees, and strewed them in the way. And the multi- 9
tudcs that went before, and that followed, cried, saying, Ho-
sanna to the Son of David ! blessed is he that cometh in the
name of the Lord ! Hosanna in the highest ! And when lo
he was come into Jerusalem, all the city was moved, saying,
Who is this ? And the multitude said. This is Jesus, the n
prophet of Nazareth of Galilee. And Jesus went into the 12
temple of God, and cast out all them that sold and bought in
" Rejoice greatly, daughter of Ziou,
Shout, daughter of Jerusalem !
Behold thy King cometh to thee !
He is just, and having salvation ;
Meek, and riding upon an ass,
Even upon a colt, the foal of an ass."
Were these particulars, thus cir-
cumstantially fulfilled, merely inci-
dental coincidences, or were they
foreseen and foretold as events
which should actually and literally
take place ? We incline to the opin-
ion that they Avere thus foreseen
and foretold. But if this view is the
correct one, here and in a few other
cases we must remember that such
a minute and literal specification of
apparently unimportant facts Avhich
are to be, forms no essential part of
the prophet's work. It belongs
rather to the art of the conjuror
than to the inspiration of the proph-
et to insist on such verbal coinci-
dences. 8. spread their
garments in the Avay] a token
of extraordinary respect. An in-
stance is mentioned by Dr. Robin-
son, in his Biblical Rese'arches, II. p.
162. At a time when the inhabit-
ants of Bethlehem were in deep dis-
tress on account of some oppressive
act of the government in 1834 or
1835, "Mr. Farran, then English
Consul at Damascus, was on a visit
to Jerusalem, and had rode out with
Mr. Nicolayson to Solomon's Pools.
On their return, as they rose the
ascent to enter Bethleheni, hundreds
of the people, male and female, met
them, imploring the consul to inter-
fere in their behalf, and afford them
his protection ; and, all at once, by a
sort of simultaneous movement, they
spread their garments in the way
before the horses. The consul was
affected unto tears ; but had of
course no power to interfere." The
time is to be obser\'ed in the Greek.
The very gi-eat multitude spread
(aorist) their garments in the way,
and others were cutting (imperfect)
branches from the trees, and strew-
ing them in the way. 9.
Hosanna to the Son of David]
Save now, salvation to the Son or
David, — a term which seems to
have been given to the Messiah.
The rest of the sentence is from Ps.
cxviii. 26. 12. went into
the temple] not the temple proper,
but witliin the sacred enclosure,
where the mercenary spirit was
cherished while furnishing doves
for sacrifice, or exchanging at a
profit the money with Avhich the
people might make their purchases
for sacrifice. This took place in
the outer court, or court of the
Gentiles. " By the authoritative
act of cleansing this part of the
temple, our Lord not only testified
his zeal for God's house, agreeably
to the construction put on it by
the disciples (John ii. 17), but his
zeal for the Gentiles also: it being
a way of teaching by action that
the Gospel Avas open to them as well
as the Jews." Archbishop New-
come. " Our blessed Saviour, who
came to redeem, not the Jews only,
MATTHEW XXI.
369
the temple, and overthrew the tables of the money-changers
13 and the seats of them that sold doves ; and said unto them,
It is written, " My house shall be called the house of prayer ;
14 but ye have made it a den of thieves." And the blind and the
16 lame came to him in the temple, and he healed them. And
when the chief priests and scribes saw the wonderful things
that he did, and the children crying in the temple, and saying,
Hosanna to the Son of David ! they were sore displeased, and
16 said unto him, Hearest thou what these say ? And Jesus
saith unto them, Yea ; have ye never read, " Out of the
mouth of babes and sucklings thou hast perfected praise " ?
17 And he left them, and went out of the city into Bethany, and
he lodged there.
18 Now in the morning, as he returned into the city, he hun-
19 gered. And when he saw a fig-tree in the way, he came to it,
and found nothing thereon, but le&ves only ; and said unto it,
Let no fruit grow on thee henceforward forever. And pres-
but the Gentiles also, and to make
them a principal part of his fold,
would not suffer them to be thus
neglected ; but in this act of his
gave them a prceludium of his fiu--
ther favor intended towards them;
and he that was to vindicate their
souls from death, and take away
the partition wall between them and
the Jews, first vindicates their ora-
tory ^i'om'^roi?avAt\o\\.'''' Mede. Ac-
cording to Mark, this cleansing of
the temple did not take place till
the day after the triumphant entry.
A similar cleansing of the sacred
enclosure occurred near the com-
mencement, as this was near the
close, of our Saviour's ministry.
(Johnii. 13-17.) 13. Two
passages from the prophets are here
brought together. " My house shall
be called a house of prayer for all
people," or, as in Mark xi. 17, " for
all nations." (Isa. Ivi. 7.) "Is this
house, which is called by my name,
become a den of robbers in vour
eyes?" (Jer. vii. 11.) ' 19.
And when he saw a fig-tree]
Jesus had come from Bethany
early in the morning, and apparent-
ly without having taken any food.
Beuig hungry, and seeing a single
fig-tree, i. e. a fig-tree either stand-
ing by itself or distinguished from
others by its leaves, while Ihey were
still bare, he went to it and found
nothing on it but leaves. Mark says
that it was not yet time for figs, but
Jesus, seeing fi*om a distance this
tree covered with leaves, may have
supposed from the fact of its having
leaves, that as one of the early kinds
it might have fruit, since the fruit
of the fig-tree is formed before the
leaves come out. A great deal of
learning has been spent on this pas-
sage with little profit. Early figs
are now ripe at Jerusalem in May.
Barclay's City of the Great King.
Let no fruit grow
on thee henceforward forever]
" And yet this forever has its mer-
ciful limitation, when we come to
transfer the curse from the tree to
that of which the tree was as a
living parable; a limitation which
the word itself favors and allows.
None shall eat fruit of that
tree till the end of the present cbo»,
not until these times of the Gentiles
are fulfilled." Trench. The wither-
ing of the fig-tree from its very roots
is described much more fully and
exactly in Mark xi. 12 - 14, 20 - 26.
370
MATTHEW XXI.
ently the fig-tree withered away. And when the disciples saw 20
it, they marvelled, saying, How soon is the fig-tree withered
away ! Jesus answered and said unto them, Verily I say 21
unto you, if ye have faith, and doubt not, ye shall not only do
this which is done to the fig-tree, but also if ye shall say unto
this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the
Matthew mentions the different
parts of the transaction, and the
words connected with it, without
any reference to time, as if all had
happened at once. Mark mentions
the visit to the fig-tree and the words
of Jesus, " Let no one eat fruit of
thee hereafter," as occurring on the
morning (Monday) of the second
visit to Jerusalem, while it was not
till the morning of the third day, or
Tuesday, that the disciples 'saw
how it had withered away, and
Jesus added his remarks on the
power of faith. This shows how
careful we must be about assigning
to one specific date facts which are
found related together without any
notice of a change of time. The
important words and events (all that
can be essential for our instruction)
are sometimes brought together
under a single head, as if they had
all occurred at once, when they may
in fact have been separated from
each other by considerable intervals
of time. This withering of the fig-
tree stands apart from all the rest
of our Saviour's miracles, as a work
of destruction. There is no mark
of impatience or anger, such as
some critics think they find indi-
cated by it. Amid the impressive
and solemn imagery which Jesus in
those last days is throwing around
the subject by his terrible words of
warning, this blasted tree stands
forth a perpetual type and symbol
of the curse of death which rests
on all unfruitful lives, whether of
nations or of men. Especially did
it then apply to the Jews, whose po-
litical histoiy was drawing rapidly
to a close. 'On passing the spot the
next day (Mark xi. 20), the disciples
being greatly impressed by what
they saw, Jesus took occasion from
it to repeat (bee xviii. lU) what he
had before taught respecting the
power of faith and prayer. In Mark
xi. 21, Peter says, " Master, behold
the fig-tree which thou didst curse
has withered away." We shrink
from applying the word curse to any
expression used by our Saviour. It
has an air of harshness and almost
of profiineness in our language
which it has not in the Greek. In
order to understand its meaning
here, we have only to bear in mind
the words which called out Peter's
remark, " Let no man eat fruit from
thee hereafter forever ; " or, as in
Matthew, " Let there be no fruit
from thee forever." Neither of
these expressions implies disaj)-
pointment, vexation, or anger. It
is only the calm and terrible sen-
tence of death pronounced upon the
unfnxitful tree, as a symbol of the
more terrible ruin which nmst fall
on man's unfruitfulness. It was
also, as the words following show, a
proof of his power to strengthen
the faith of the disciples. " In
view of the dangers that surround-
ed them," says Davidson, Intr. to
New Testament, I. p. 102, " this
impressive act was fitted to call
forth their highest faith in his
ability to save from every foe,
whether human or spiritual,"
21. if ye shall say unto this
mountain, Be thou removed]
" The Jews used to set out those
teachers among them that wei-e
more eminent for the profoundness
of their learning, or the splendor of
their virtues, by such expressions
as this, ' He is a rooter up (or a re-
mover) of mountains.' The same
expression with which they sillily
and flatteringly extolled the learn-
ing and virtue of their men, Christ
deservedlv useth to set forth the
power of 'faith." Lightfoot.
MATTHEW XXI. 371
22 sea ; it shall be done. And all things whatsoever ye shall ask
in prayer, believing, ye shall receive.
23 And when he was come into the temple, the chief priests and
the elders of the people came unto him as he was teaching,
and said, By what authority doest thou these things ? and who
24 gave thee this authority ? And Jesus answered and said unto
them, I also will ask you one thing ; which, if ye tell me, I in
like wise will tell you by what authority I do these things.
25 The baptism of John, whence was it ? from Heaven, or of men ?
And they reasoned with themselves, saying, If we shall say,
From Heaven ; he will say unto us. Why did ye not then be-.
26 lieve him ? But if we shall say. Of men ; we fear the people ;
27 for all hold John as a prophet. And they answered Jesus, and
said, We cannot tell. And he said unto them. Neither tell I
28 you by what authority I do these things. But what think
ye ? A certain man had two sons ; and he came to the first,
29 and said. Son, go work to-day in my vineyard, He answered
and said, I will not; but afterward he repented, and went.
30 And he came to the second and said likewise. And he an-.
31 swered and said, I go, sir ; and went not. Whether of them
22. And all things whatsoever sent with a view to make our
ye shall ask in prayer, believ- Saviour declare himself to be a
ing, ye shall receive] " As re- prophet sent from God, — in which
spects the idea that believing prayer case the Sanhedrim had power to
will be heard, St. John (xiv. 13; xv. take cognizance of his proceedings,
16; xvi. 24) has given it in its com- as of a professed teacher." The
plete form, by adding the clause in question which he puts to them by
viy name (Comp. on Matt, xviii. 19); way of reply confounds and baffles
for in that clause the pure origin of them in their attempt, and opens
such prayer is traced to the mind the way for the condemnation
and spirit of Jesus, and in this very which he by the two ensuing para-
or/j^m of the supplication there lies bles leads them (31-41) indirectly
the necessity of its fulfilment." to pronounce upon themselves.
Olshausen. . "Faith in God would 28-32. But what think ye ?]
place them [the disciples] in rela- Here you are making your profes-
tion with the same power which he sions of fidelity to God ; but how
wielded, so that they might do does it seem to you? A certain
mightier things even than this." man had two sons, &c. Which of
Trench. 23-27. And the two did the will of his father?
when he was come into the They say unto him, The first. Even
temple] Jesus had now, Tuesday so, is the reply ; the very publicans
morning, entered the sacred en- and harlots, who were at first dis-
closures of the temple (not the obedient to God, but afterwards be-
temple itself), probably for the last lieved in John and repented athis
time. The chief priests and elders preaching, shall enter the king-
have come with artfully prepared dom of God sooner than you, who
questions to entrap him. '" It was," with all your professions neither
says Alford, " an official message, believed in him at first, uor after-
372 MATTHEW XXI.
twain did the will of his father ? They say unto him, Tlie
first. Jesus saith unto them, Verily I say unto you, that the
publicans and the harlots go into the kingdom of God before
you. For John came unto you in the way of righteousness, 32
and ye believed him not ; but the publicans and the harlots
believed him ; and ye, when ye had seen it, repented not after-
ward, that ye might believe him." Hear another parable : 33
There was a certain householder, which planted a vineyard,
and hedged it round about, and digged a wine-press in it, and
built a tower, and let it out to husbandmen, and went into a
far country. And when the time of the fruit drew near, he 34
sent his servants to the husbandmen that they might receive
the fruits of it. And the husbandmen took his servants, and 36
beat one, and killed another, and stoned another. Again, he 36
sent other servants, more than the first ; and they did unto
them likewise. But last of all he sent unto them his son, say- 37
ing, They will reverence my son. But when the husband- 38
men saw the son, they said among themselves. This is the
heir ; come, let us kill him, and let us seize on his inheritance.
And they caught him, and cast him out of the vineyard, and 39
slew him. When the lord, therefore, of the vineyard cometh, 40
wards repented that you mio^lit be- door near the ground, and a level
lieve, wlien you had seen him in space on the top, where a man could
the way of righteousness. sit and command a view of the plan-
33. a vineyard] " The vinestock tation." Hackett. According to
often appears on the Macabaaan Professor Hackett, these towers are
coins as the emblem of Palestine, sometimes forty or fift}'- feet high,
sometimes, too, the bunch of grapes and so built as to serve for houses,
and the vine-leaf." " The image 38. come^ let us kill
of the kingdom of God as a vine- him] In the original we have here
stock, or as a vineyard, runs through the verj' words that are used in the
the whole Old testament. (Deut. Septuagint (Gen. xxxvii. 20) by
xxxii.32; Ps. Ixxx. 8-16 ; Isa.v 1 the brothers of Joseph. As then
-7; xxvii. 1-7; Jer. ii. 21; Ezek. against Joseph, so now against
XV. 1-6; xix. 10.)" Trench. We can- Jesus, counsel had already been
not lay much stress on such referen- taken (John xi. 53) to destroy him.
ces. a tower] i. e. a watch- 40. When the' lord,
tower. These towers " first caught therefore] " We may observe that
my attention as I was approaching our Lord here makes "^IVJien the lard
Bethlehem from the southeast, of the vineyard cometh coincide with
They appeared in almost every field the destniction of Jerusalem, which
within sight from that direction; is unquestionably the overthrow of
they were circular in shape, fifteen the wicked husbandmen. This pas-
or twenty feet high, and, being built sage forms, therefore, an important
of stone, looked, at a distance, like key to our Lord's prophecies, and a
a little forest of obelisks decisive justification for those who,
Those which I examined h^d a sniall like myself, firmly hold that the comr
MATTHEW XXI.
373
41 what win he do unto those husbandmen ? They say unto him,
He will miserably destroy those wicked men ; and will let out
his vineyard unto other husbandmen, which shall render him
42 the fruits in their seasons. Jesus saith unto them, Did ye
never read in the Scriptures, " The stone Avhich the builders
rejected, the same is become the head of the corner ; this is
43 the Lord's doing, and it is marvellous in our eyes " ? There-
fore say I unto you, the kingdom of God shall be taken from
ing of the Lord is, in many cases, to
be identified primarily witli that
overthrow." Alford. The Lord of
the vineyard here is not the Son, but
He who sent the Son. The minute
adjuncts of a parable are not to be
insisted upon in any interpretation
we may put upon it. 41.
They say unto him] The lan-
guage here put into the mouth of
those standing by is represented by
;Mark and Luke as spoken by Jesus.
Luke (XX. 16) adds, that'" when
they heard it, thev said, God for-
bid." De Costa in The Four Wit-
nesses, pp. 32, 33, Edinburg Edition,
says, " Who sees not that, in order
to explain the difference between
St. Mark, and still more between
St. Luke and St. Matthew, we must
look in the two former for the man-
ner in which the thing actually hap-
pened; while from a higher point
of view St. Matthew's narrative ex-
presses that inward conviction felt
by the enemies of Jesus and of his
truth, which compels them involun-
tarily, in their own consciences, to
justify the sentence he pronounces
against them? " Wc have no right
to infer any such purpose, or such
insight into the secret thoughts of
men, on the part of St. Matthew.
We rather infer, from a comparison
of the diflFerent narratives, that Mat-
thew, with his characteristic exact-
ness, here relates tilings as they
actually took place, — that Mark
and Luke give the sentiment of this
verse, which was actually spoken
by others, as coming fro'm Jesus,
since, in drawing it from others in
the manner he did, he in fact adopt-
ed and confirmed it as his own.
And though the bystanders may
32
have uttered the speech here at-
tributed to them, they also, at the
thought of th« terrible example
which was to be made of the un-
faithful, as taught by Jesus from
their own lips, may have added the
words, fif) -ycVotro, " may it not
be," or, "heaven avert the neces-
sity of such an infliction." The
whole has been represented in a
parable. They assent to the dread-
ful conclusion ; but since it is all
represented under the conditions as-
sumed in the pai'able, they couple
their assent with the hope or prayer
that a state of things requiring such
punishment may never be. It is
not improbable that, after their
reply in Matthew, Jesus, in Avords
not recorded by either of the Evan-
gelists, made the application of their
sentence more directly to the Jew-
ish nation, and that the deprecating
AVords, Not. so, or God forbid, were
then called from them.
43. Therefore I say unto you]
Therefore refers to the whole previ-
ous parable, and not to the quotation
alone. Jesus, according to Luke
XX. 9, directed this parable of the
wicked husbandmen rather to the
people than to the priests and
scribes. The parable itself is too
plain to need any explanation, being
spoken directly against the Jewish
people, and having its fulfilment in
the destruction of Jerusalem, hi
its form there is perhaps a reference
to Isa. V. 1-7, which would make
it more impressive to the Jewish
mind. The great law of retribution,
hoAvever, Avhich is illustrated by it,
and applied to the Jewish nation, is
so set forth as to be a warning to
all those who live unfaithful to their
374:
MATTHEW XXI.
you, and given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof.
And whosoever shall fall on this stone shall be broken ; but on 44
religious privileges. For a moment,
at verse 42, Jesus leaves the wicked
husbandmen, who have slain the
son and heir, and carries out the
subject of his rejection by a figure
of speech, wliicli under the sanction
of what the Jews regarded as a
prophecy of the Messiah, Ps. cxviii.
22, 23, shows forth not only his re-
jection, but his subsequent promo-
tion to the highest place, — the
chief corner-stone. (See note to
verse 44.) And whosoever falleth
on this stone, to him it shall be a
rock of stumbling and offence on
which he shall be bruised and
broken ; but he on whom in his per-
verse and obstinate disobedience
this stone shall fall, it shall grind
him to powder. By the stone is
meant Christ himself, the imper-
sonation of his religion and his
kingdom, which shall be a stum-
bling-block on which some shall
fall to their hurt, and which shall
fall on others with its grinding retri-
butions. If we do not build upon
it in faith, either we shall fall upon
it in unbelief, or it will fall on us in
judgment. " For this reason,'''' Jesus
adds, 43, referring back to the para-
ble, i. e. because this religion with
its righteous retributions bruises
those who stumble upon it, and falls
with crushing, grinding power on
those who set themselves against it ;
therefore the kingdom of God shall
be taken away from you, and given
to a people, i. e. the true followers
of Christ, who bring forth its fitting
fniits. 44. And whoso-
ever shall fall] This Verse is
omitted by Tischendorf, who thinks
it has been interpolated from Luke
XX. 18. Griesbach and Alford re-
tain it. Its proper place is between
the 42d and 43d verses. Verses 42
and 44 have been thought to refer,
not only to Ps. cxviii. 22, 23, but to
Isa. viii. 14, xxviii. 16, and especi-
ally to Daniel ii. 44, 45. The pas-
sage from the Psalms is the only
one distinctly cited in this place.
It is also cited in Acts iv. 11, The
words used in the triumphal entry,
9, " Blessed is he who cometh in the
name of the Lord," are from the
same psalm. " Some of tlie ancient
Jews," says Dr. Noyes, *' perhaps
those who lived in the time of
Christ, regarded the psalm as pro-
phetic of the Messiah ; and some
supposed that Christ and the Apos-
tles regarded it as such. But the
most common opinion of interpreters
is, that those verses are quoted only
by way of accommodation, or rhe-
torical illustration, or, at least, are
applied to Jesus in a mystical, not
a literal sense." In opposition to
such interpreters, Stier says, " He
who will acknowledge in the Old
Testament no foreseeing sense of
the Spirit transcending the 'human
consciousness of the prophets, mov-
ing above the typical histories and
relations in independent miraculous
power, finds the just recompense
of this false inspiration-theory
(especially in such passages'^as that
now before us), in a most unworthy
degi-adation of the words of Christ
and his apostles to a mere play
upon Old 1 estament phrases in mo-
ments of most exalted and holy
earnestness." A favorable speci-
men of the mystical interpretation
which prevailed particularly among
the early fathers is to be found in
Cyprian's Treatise on the Lord's
Prayer, and is applied to this quo-
tation in verse 42: " We ought to
renew our prayers again at the
setting of the sim, and the close of
the day. For because Christ is the
true sun, and the true day, when at
the departure of the sun and dav
we pray that the light may at length
come again, we prav for the com-
ing of Christ who shall afford the
grace of eternal light. But that
Christ is called the day, the Holy
Spirit declares in the Psalms."
The stone, it says, which the build-
ers rejected is "become the head of
the comer. By the Lord this was
made, and is marvellous in our eyes.
This [or he] is the day which the
Lord hath made; let us walk and
rejoice therein." This may serve
MATTHEW XXI. 375
45 whomsoever it shall fall, it will grind him to powder. Aiid
when the chief priests and Pharisees had heard his parables,
46 they perceived that he spake of them. But when they sought
to lay hands on him, they feared the multitude ; because they
took him for a prophet.
as poetry to embellish a thought, ing, or as a truthful explanation
or as rhetoric to commend an ex- of the passage above quoted from
hortation, but it can hardly be Psalm cxviii.
soberly accepted as sound reason-
376 MATTHEW XXII. 1-14.
CHAPTER XXII.
1-14. The Wedding Feast.
1-14. A SIMILAR parable to this of the Wedding
Feast is given in Luke xiv. 16-24, and has been thought
by many critics to be the same. But the two are unlike
in so many particulars that they may be considered as
separate parables.
The parable here speaks of the calling of the Jews,
their neglect, 3, they woidd not come, their contemptuous
indifference, 5, they made light of it, and finally their in-
sults and murderous cruelty, for which the king sent his
armies and destroyed their city; — foretelling the coming
of the Roman armies, instruments in the hands of God,
whose eagles may possibly be alluded to in xxiv. 28, and by
whom the great city of the Jews should be burned up.
Jerusalem was destroyed by the Romans within a little less
than forty years from the time of the prediction. From
9 to 13 mention is made of the Gospel invitation, which,
since the Jews refuse it (Acts xiii. 46), goes to all, bad and
good, with its oflfers of mercy, and would gather all in to
the marriage feast. But it must be remembered, that
though all, even the wicked, are called, yet there are con-
ditions to be fulfilled, and that, without the wedding garment,
"the internal adornment of the soul" in righteousness,
the very guests at the table will be cast out from the
lighted festal-room into the outer darkness of the night,
where in shame and grief there shall be wailing and gnash-
ing of teeth.
We would call attention here to the quiet manner in
which the prophecy rises from the loss of national privi-
leges, and an earthly retribution to the fulfilment of that
MATTHEW XXIT. 15-22. 377
same law of retribution in the judgments of another
world. Intervals of time vanish away. The boundaries
between this life and that which is to be are disregarded.
The spiritual insight of our Lord, following the great
laws of God's kingdom on to their results, whether in
the conduct of individuals or nations, fixes itself on national
ruin heue, and exclusion from the society of the redeemed
hereafter, as the condition of the unfaithful, without any
broad line of distinction to separate them from each other,
as if they belonged to two different orders of events.
The sharp distinctions between this world and another,
or this life and another, which enter into all our thoughts,
do not seem to have had the same place in his mind.
He looked through both alike, and saw in both alike the
operation of. the same divine principles and laws. His
kingdom, having its seat in the soul of every follower
here, receives and cherishes within itself all faithful souls,
whether on earth or in heaven. So as his thought reaches
alike through seen and unseen worlds, facts which in their
outward surroundings seem to us to belong to entirely
distinct orders of events, are in his mind and language
intimately connected together, as brought about by the same
laws. The shadows of time which imprison us within this
material world, and make us look on all that lies beyond
as of a character entirely different, never with him separate
causes from their effects, or deeds done in the body from
their legitimate results, whether in this world or that which
shall succeed.
15-22. Paying Tribute to C^sar.
15-22. The Pharisees, foiled in their previous attempt
(xxi. 23) to entrap Jesus, hold a consultation, and in their
extreme craftiness lay a snare for him which they believe
it will be impossible for him to escape. The leading men
keep in the backgi-ound. But they have arranged their
32*
378 MATTHEW XXII. 15-22.
measures with the Herodians, who, though usually their
enemies, are now brought to act together with them by
their common hatred against Jesus. The Pharisees did
not believe in paying tribute to the Romans ; the Herodians
were the creatures of a dynasty established and sustained
by the Roman government. The disciples of the Phari-
sees, and the Herodians, "spies" Luke calls them, were
to come as if engaged in a dispute on this subject, and to
refer the question to him as to one of such impartiality,
truthfulness, and wisdom, that they are willing to abide by
his decision. "Is it right," they ask, "to pay tribute to
Caesar or not ? " If he should answer. No, then the Hero-
dians are ready to charge him with rebellion against the
Roman government, and his destruction is sure. If he
should say. Yes, then the Pharisees will make use of his
reply to turn the popular prejudices of the Jews against him,
and destroy his authority with them. But he saw through
their artful disguise, and, with words which laid open their
hypocrisy, asked them to bring him the tribute money.
Pointing out to them the image and superscription of Caesar,
he said, " Render unto Caesar the things which are Ccesar's,
and unto God the things which are God's." He is not satis-
fied with simply baffling them in their inquiries, and sending
them away confounded and silenced, but in his reply he
lays down a broad and most important principle of conduct.
Give to the government the money and the allegiance which
are due to it, but let it be done in accordance with the
higher allegiance and the more unqualified obligations
by which you are bound to him in whose image you have
been created. By uniting the two, he shows that the lesser
obligation is to be limited and explained by the greater.
They who put the question had supposed that he must
join himself either to one side or the other. But, as has
been finely said, "the very peculiarity, the very proof of
the divinity of his doctrine, was that they could not square
it with any of their existing systems. It was with his
MATTHEW XXII. 23-31. 379
doctrine, as it was in the legendary tale which describes
how the tree of the wood of the True Cross had been of
old rejected, because it would not fit into the building of
the ancient temple. It was too long for one corner, it was
too short for another And so it was laid aside till
it came forth at last to be the means and symbol of the
world's redemption." "The true Creed of the Church,
the true Gospel of Christ, is to be found, not in proportion
as it coincides with the watchwords or the dilemmas of
modern controversy, but rather in proportion as it rises
above them and cuts across them. How often are we
told that we must be either Pharisees or Herodians ; that
we must follow everything to its logical extreme
But there is a * right division of the word of truth,' — there
is a middle way of religion, which, not from weakness, not
from indolence, not from halting between two opinions,
but from sincere love of Christ, and from desire to conform
ourselves to his image, we may humbly desire to walk." —
Stanley's Canterbury Sermons, pp. 112, 113.
23-33. The Resurrection from the Dead.
23-31. The Pharisees, amazed and wondering, left Jesus.
They believed in the resurrection of the dead. But the
Sadducees, who say that there is no resurrection, " neither
angel nor spirit" (Acts xxiii. ^), came with a question
which they believed would be wholly unanswerable. A
woman who has had seven husbands, — "in the resurrec-
tion, whose wife shall she be?" We may imagine the
cunning, sharp, triumphant look with which these closing
words were uttered. Jesus did not argue with them after
their own fashion, but in one of the most instructive pas-
sages in the New Testament, in the calmness and depth
of his spiritual insight, he pointed out to them how utterly
they had been mistaken, not knowing either the Scriptures
or the power of God. From that day to this a class of
880 MATTHEW XXII. 23-33.
keen, but shallow and conceited men, sometimes nominally
as friends and sometimes as enemies of our religion, have
founded their objections to Christian doctrines or to Chris-
tianity itself on this double mistake, attributing to the
Scriptures what the Scriptures do not teach, and shuttino"
up the power of the Almighty within the limits of their
narrow, short-sighted conceptions. In no particular perhaps
has this been more remarkable than with the two classes
represented by the Pharisees and Sadducees ; — the latter
denying altogether the immortality of the soul, and the
former believing, as Martha did (John xi. 24), in the resus-
citation of the body at a general resurrection in the last
day. The reply of Jesus, while directed against the Saddu-
cees, is so framed as to meet both these classes. Though
the great laws of spiritual life prevail- in all worlds alike, it
will not do, he says in substance, to carry into the world
to come the limitations and connections which here grow
out of our sensuous and material* organization. " The sons
of this world are given in marriage," but in the resurrection,
"when (Mark xii. 25) they rise from the dead,'* "they
(Luke XX. 35, 36) who shall be accounted worthy to
obtain that world, and the resurrection from the dead,
neither marry nor are given in marriage ; neither can they
die any more ; for they are as angels, and are children
of God, being children of the resurrection." The sublime
view which is here opened to us of that world, and the
spiritual relations which alone prevail there, ought to banish
forever from our minds all thought of the resurrection
of the present body, with its outward, material organization.
31-33. But lest the doctrine of the resurrection should
still be misunderstood, Jesus quotes from the sacred writ-
ings which Pharisees and Sadducees alike reverence, a
passage (Ex. iii. 6) which not only implies the fact of
a resurrection of the dead, such as the Sadducees denied,
but which also proves, in opposition to the belief of the
Pharisees, that the dead are already risen. As touching
MATTHEW XXII. 34-40. 381
the resurrection of the dead " (Matthew), " concerning the
dead that they are raised" (Mark), "that the dead are
raised, even Moses showed at the bush " (Luke). For as
the Lord is not the God of the dead, but of the living, so
when he called himself the God of Abraham and Isaac and
Jacob, he declared by this form of speech that they were
then risen from the dead, " for all (Luke xx. 38) live unto
him." It is worthy of remark, that when Martha said
(John xi. 24), "I know that he shall rise again in the
resurrection at the last day," Jesus immediately corrected
this view of a distant resurrection by announcing the true
doctrine of a spiritual, uninterrupted, eternal life. " I am
the resurrection and the life." "And whosoever liveth
and believeth in me shall never die."
34-40. The Tw^o Great Commandments.
34 - 40. The lawyer who put the question, Which is the
great commandment in the law? may have supposed that
Jesus would propose some precept of his own as more
important than any commandment in the law, and thus
lay himself open to the condemnation of the Jews. But
in reply to their captious questioning, he brings out from
the law itself (Deut. vi. 5; Levit. xix. 18) two precepts,
which contain within themselves the substance of all our
duties to God and man, — of all that has been taught by the
law and the prophets.
Thus the enemies of Jesus could not question him in
their craftiness and malice, without being astonished and
overwhelmed by some principle of Divine truth. He did
not answer them according to their folly, but took advantaj^e
of the occasions which they made to expound our relation
to human governments and to God, to unfold the true
doctrine of the eternal life, and to set vividly before us
the sum and substance of our duties to God and man.
882 MATTHEW XXII. 41-45.
41-45. Christ the Son of David.
41-45. There are those who believe that Jesus here
intended nothing more than to silence and confound his
enemies. "Alike from the terras of the conversation and
from its context," says Dr. Palfrey in his Relation between
Judaism and Christianity, p. 108, " I infer that the object
of Jesus was not to prove or disprove anything, but simply
to perplex the Pharisees, and show to the bystanders
what incompetent teachers they were, and what shallow
and unskilful interpreters of the Old Testament Scriptures."
Hase says, " He (Jesus) proved to them his dialectical
embarrassment by proposing a sophistical question on the
Messianic signification of Psalm ex." But as Jesus, in
reply to the captious questions which his enemies have
put to him, has taken occasion to unfold or announce to
them great and important principles of political duty and of
moral and religious life, and to silence them, not by so-
phistical reasonings after their own fashion, but by the pro-
found and majestic truths which he uttered, is it probable
that now, when they are all sileiiced, he of his own accord
would propose a question respecting a passage in their
sacred writings with no higher purpose than to perplex
them and show off their incompetency as religious teachers ?
Unless the language pretty decisively indicates this design
on his part, we should be slow to believe it. It is not
countenanced by his conduct on any other occasion.
What then is the true interpretation of this passage?
Jesus has already been announced publicly as the Messiah,
and the last day of his public ministry has now come.
But all the Jews, his friends hardly less than his enemies,
view the Messiah as an earthly king, exercising a wider
and holier sway than any king who had gone before, but
still an earthly dominion. Jesus would prepare the way
for the overthrow of these erroneous ideas. But they
will not receive plain instructions, or a direct contradiction
MATTHEW XXII. 41-45. 383
of prejudices so deeply rooted in their minds. He can
reach them only through their Jewish habits of thought.
He therefore asks them, "What think ye of the Christ,"
i. e. the Messiah or the Anointed One ? " " Whose son is
he?" They say unto him, "The son of David." "How
then," he asks, " doth David in spirit call him Lord, saying
(Ps. ex. 1), Jehovah said unto my Lord?" &c. "If David
then call him Lord, how is he his son?" These ques-
tions are put by Jesus in regard to the interpretation of
a psalm which all around him regarded as a prediction
of the Messiah, and they are put in such a way as to show
that the construction which they put upon these words
is wholly inconsistent with the fact certainly established
by their prophetic writings that the Messiah was to be
of the seed of David. As no one among the learned
Pharisees and lawyers could explain the contradiction,
would not his friends at least, and might not some even of
his enemies, be led to reconsider the whole matter, and
to admit different and higher views of the Messiah and
his kingdom, when the spiritual claims and authority of
Jesus should be more distinctly presented ? " There is
certainly," they would say to themselves, and perhaps among
themselves, "a difficulty here. These two views of ours
cannot be harmonized with one another. If the Messiah
is really, and on this point there can be no question, the
son of David, and David nevertheless looks up to him
with reverence and calls him Lord, may it not be that he
and his kingdom are of a more exalted and divine charac-
ter than we have supposed? And these w^onderful works
which are attributed to Jesus, his resurrection from the
dead, his ascension into heaven, and the everlasting king-
dom which he professed to establish, — the kingdom of
God or the kingdom of Heaven, — may it not be that these
after all are the true fulfilment of the ancient prophecies ? "
Those who were disposed to follow Jesus, and some of the
more thoughtful even among his enemies might be led into
S84: MATTHEW XXII.
reflections of this kind. A doubt lodged in the mind by a
pertinent and suggestive question will often do more in the
end to remove a deeply rooted prejudice and to revolution-
ize all one's habits of thought than any specific instructions
or reasonings on the subject. A doubt thus introduced into
the mind is like the water which is sometimes poured
into the clefts of a granite ledge, and which freezing there
rends the whole mass asunder, when direct and violent
efforts to split it would be wholly unavailing.
These views of the passage agree substantially with
those of Campbell, Kumoel, and Norton.
NOTES.
And Jesus answered and spake unto them again by parables,
and said, The kingdom of Heaven is like unto a certain king, 2
which made a marriage for his son, and sent forth his servants 3
to call them that were bidden to the wedding ; and they would
not come. Again, he sent forth other servants, saying. Tell 4
them which are bidden. Behold, I have prepared my dinner ;
my oxen and my fatlings are killed, and all things are ready ;
come unto the marriage. But they made light of it, and went 6
their ways ; one to his farm, another to his merchandise. And 6
the remnant took his servants, and entreated them spitefully,
and slew them. But when the king heard thereof, he was wroth ; 7
1. answered] "Not only he a rebuke in the expression itself to
who has been questioned, but he those who would shroud his relig-
also to whom a reason for speaking ion in gloom ! 3. to call
has been given, may rightly be said them that were bidden ] It
to answer." 2. a mar- seems to have been customary in
riage] Any great celebration or the East (Esther v. 8; vi. 14) to send
festival was so called. The acces- a second time to call those who had
sion of a prince to his throne was already been invited to a feast. In
called the marriage of a king with this case, as there might have been
his people. " Blessed are they who some mistake in the matter, the
are called unto the marriage supper king sends, 4, the third time a still
of the Lamb." (Rev. xix. 9.) How more pressing call. 7. But
often does Jesus set forth this festive when the king heard thereof,
character of his religion, and what he was wroth] " Among the
MATTHEW XXII.
385
and he sent forth his araiies, and destroyed those murderers
8 and burned yp their city. Then saith he to his servants, The
wedding is ready, but they which were bidden were not worthy.
9 Go ye therefore into the highways ; and as many as ye shall
10 find, bid to the marriage. So those servants went out into the
highways, and gathered together all, as many as they found,
both bad and good ; and the wedding was furnished with guests.
11 And when the king came in to see the guests, he saw there a
12 man which had not on a wedding garment ; and he saith unto
him. Friend, how camest thou in hither, not having a weddin<T
13 garment ? And he was speechless. Then said the king to
Mohammedans, refusal to come to
a marriage feast, when invited, is
considered a breach of the law
of God. Hedaya, Vol. IV. p. 91.
It was probably considered in this
light among all the Oriental na-
tions." Ad. Clarke. 9.
and as many as ye shall find]
Pococke says, " that an Arab prince
will often dine before his door, and
call to all that pass, even to beggars,
in the name of God, and they come
and sit down to table, and when
they have done retire with the usual
form of returning thanks. It is al-
wa;>s customary among the Ori-
entals to provide more meats and
drinks than are necessary for the
feast, and then the poor who pass
by, or whom the rumor of the
feast brings to the neighborhood,
are called in to consume what re-
mains. This they often do in an
outer room to which the dishes are
removed from the apartment in
which the invited guests have feast-
ed ; or, otherwise, every invited
guest, when he has done, with-
draws from table, when his place is
taken by another person of inferior
rank, and so on, till the poorest
come and consume the whole." J.
Cobbin. 10. bad and
grood] are alike invited and broiiglit
in (xiii. 47), with the expectation,
however, that all will become fitted
for the companionship of those who
are there. 11. a wedding
garment] It is disputed among
the critics whether the master of
the feast usually had such garments
33
distributed among the guests, to be
worn as a badge or token of their
right to a place at the festival. There
is no sufficient evidence in the Old
Testament of such a custom. The
passages quoted by Stier ( Gen. xlv.
22; Jud. xiv. 12; 2 Kings v. 22) are
not to the point. It seems, how-
ever, to be implied in the passage
before us, and the custom, we be-
lieve, still exists in the East. " We
may and ought, when he calls, to
come just as we are ; but we may
not, if we would see his face and
enjoy his last feast, remain as we
are." " As the king clothes his
guests, the bridegi-oom his bride, so
does God himself clothe us with
the robe of righteousness and gar-
ment of salvation," if we only will
receive it with humble and faUhful
hearts. The wedding gannent is
spoken of in Rev. xix. 7, 8 : " For
the marriage of the Lamb is come,
and his wife hath made herself
ready. And to her was granted that
she should be arrayed in fine linen,
clean and white ; for the fine linen
is the I'ighteousness of the saints."
12. Friend] 'Eraipe,
comrade. A word of ambiguous
meaning, which may be addressed
to an intimate friend, and also to
those with whom we are not on
tenns of intimacy. And
he was speechless] He had no
word of explanation or excuse to
give for having put himself among
the wedding guests without the wed-
ding gannent, — for having come
without the fitting preparation.
386
MATTHEW XXII.
the servants, Bind him hand and foot, and take hhn away,
and cast him into outer darkness; there shall be weeping
and gnashing of teeth. For many are called, but few are 14
chosen.
Then went the Pharisees, and took counsel how they might 15
entangle him in his talk. And they sent out unto him their dis- I6
ciples, with the Herodians, saying. Master, we know that thou
art true, and teachest the way of God in truth, neither carest
thou for any man ; for thou regardest not the person of men.
Tell us therefore. What thinkest thou ? is it lawful to give 17
tribute unto Cassar, or not ? But Jesus perceived their wick- I8
edness, and said, Why tempt ye me, ye hypocrites ? Shew
me the tribute money. And they brought unto him a penny. 19
All, bad and good, were invited ;
but some preparation of heart Avas
needed, before they could properly
accept the call. 13. bind
him hand and foot] These mi-
nor particulars in the parable are
not of course to be literally inter-
preted and applied. As tlie guest
who had here numbered himself
among the chosen ones had not the
qualities which would fit him for a
place at the marriage feast of the
Lamb, he could find no freedom or
pleasure or fellowship there, but by
the very condition or his heart, and
the affinities of his nature, helpless
and dumb, like one speechless and
bound hand and foot, he is shut out
from their society, and left in the
outer darkness and soiTOW in which
his soul must dwell. outer
darkness] Those who left the
lighted hall of the marriage feast,
were sent out into the outer dark-
ness of the night, — a figure of
speech to describe the darkness of a
soul shut out from the light and
warmth of God's tmth and love.
14. For many are called,
but few are chosen] ( See Note
XX. 16.) Though all are invited,
yet few so accept the call, and use
the means of salvation, as to be
numbered among the chosen ones.
These words apply to the whole
parable, and not merely to its clos-
ing sentence. The idea is the same
as in Matthew vii. 14, and refers to
the difficulties which lie in the way
of those who Avould follow Christ.
16. with the Herodians]
Little is known of the Herodians.
They Avere a political rather than a
religious sect. They were attached
to the party of Herod, and of course
supporters' of the Roman govern-
ment. Their usual position Avas
one of hostility to the Pharisees.
But Avherever they are mentioned
in the Gospels (Mark iii. 6; xii. 13),
they are acting Avith the Pharisees
against Jesus. Some little light,
but not much, is throAvn upon their
histoiy by Josephus, Antiq. XVH.
3. Their flattering address here
saA'ors of political cunning, and is
in keeping Avith their position as
courtiers Hoav terrible to
such men the reply of Jesus, seeing
as he did through their Avicked de-
sign. 19. the tribute
money] a Roman coin, dtnarius.
There Avas also another coin (xvii.
24-27) Avhich would seem to haA-e
been used for temple money. Some
have supposed that the reply of
Jesus related merely to these tAvo
kinds of coins, one of which Avas to
be paid to Cresar, and the other to
God. But his reply goes deeper
than this, even if it does not tacitly
refer to man as bearing in his imago
and superscription the same relation
to God Avhich the penny bears to Cjb-
sar. The tribute money, — " it has
been often described; it may still be
MATTHEW XXII. 387
20 And he saltli unto them, Whose is this image and super-
21 scription ? They say unto him, Caesar's. Then saith he unto
them, Render therefore unto Cassar the things which are
22 Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's. When
they had heard these words, they marvelled, and left him, and
went their way.
23 The same day came to him the Sadducees, which say that
24 there is no i esurrection, and asked him, saying. Master,
Moses said, " If a man die, having no children, his brother
25 shall marry his wife, and raise up seed unto his brother." Now
there were with us seven brethren ; and the first, when he had
married a wife, deceased ; and, having no issue, left his wife
26 unto his brother. Likewise the second also, and the third,
27 vmto the seventh. And last of all the woman died also.
28 Therefore, in the resurrection, whose wife shall she be of the
29 seven ? for they all had her. Jesus answered and said unto
them. Ye do err, not knowing the Scriptures, nor the power
30 of God. For in the resurrection they neither marry, nor are
given in marriage, but are as the angels of God in heaven.
31 But as touching the resurrection of the dead, have ye not read
32 that which was spoken unto you by God, saying, "I am the
God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Ja-
cob"? God is not the God of the dead, but of the living.
33 And when the multitude heard this, they were astonished at
his doctrine.
34 But when the Pharisees had heard that he had put the Sad-
35 ducees to silence, they were gathered together. Then one of
them, which was a lawyer, asked him a question, tempting
36 him, and saying, Master, which is the great commandment
37 in the law V Jesus said unto him, " Thou shalt love the Lord
thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with
seen, — the little silver coin, bear- Augustas, son of the divine Augus-
ing on its surface the head encircled tus, ?]mperor." Stanley. 30. are
with a wreath of laurel and bound as the anjE^els of God in heaven]
round with the sacred fillet, — the as angels of God in heaven, not as
well-known features, the most beaii- the angels. They are not like the
tiful and the most wicked, even in angels, but are themselves as angels
outward expression, of all the Ro- in heaven. 32. is not the
man Emperors — with the super- God of the dead, but of the
scription running round, in the living] God is God, not of dead
statelv language of Imperial Rome, but of living persons ; — without the
' Tibeiius Gcesar, divi Augusti flius article, and more emphatically de-
^M^z*stos, /ffjpemtor,' Tiberius C'gesar noting the present and continuous
388
MATTHEW XXII.
all thy mind." This is the firsf and great commandment. 38
And the second is like unto it ; " Thou shalt love thy neighbor 39
as thyself." On these two commandments hang all the law and 40
the prophets.
While the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked 41
them, saying, What think ye of Christ ? whose son is he ? 42
They say unto him. The son of David. He saith unto them, 43
How then doth David in spirit call him Lord ? saying, " The 44
life of those whose God he is.
40. on these two command-
ments hang all the law and
the prophets] " Christ appears
to us to point by tlie metaphorical
expression to the symbolical tassels
worn by the Pharisees on their gar-
ments, and enjoined by Moses, as a
memorial of the commandments :
two as the two tables, in each many
threads, but bound together in one
blue string, i. e. ' many command-
ments of one indivisible heavenly
law of love.' " Stier. The simpler
interpretation, " On these two prin-
ciples depend all the rest," seems
to us the more natural and coi-rect. *
43. in spirit] "Vates, pro-
pheta," i. e. Seer, prophet. Kuinoel.
" Speaking by inspiration." Camp-
bell. "Under a Divine impulse."
Norton. " In spiritual contempla-
tion." Palfrey. The expression
" in spirit " does not necessarily
imply a special Divine influence, —
" shall worship the Father in spirit
and in truth" (John iv. 23), "in
the spirit, and not in the letter"
(Rom. ii. 29). " Walk in the spirit,
and ye shall not fulfil the lust of
the flesh " (Gal. v. 16). But when
it is used to express the impelling
cause, it does, we thjnk, imply be-
ing moved by the Spirit of God, —
divinely moved or inspired, —or, as
Mr. Norton explains it, "under a
Divine influence." " And he onme
in the spirit into the temple." (Luke
ii. 27.) "And he was led in the
spirit into the wilderness." (Liike
iv. 1.) " As it is now revealed unto
his holv apostles and prophets in
the spirit." (Eph. iii. 5.) "I was
in the spirit on the Lord's day."
(Rev. i. 10.) Unless the phrase in
sjnrit is here used to express a state
of peculiar spiritual exaltation or
sensibility to spiritual influences,
the spiritual faculties pecialiarly
open to spiritual impressions, or pe-
culiarly moved by the spirit of God,
it is diflicult to assign to it any
meaning adapted to the place which
it holds. This, we think, must have
been the meaning intended by the
writers. So in the passage before
us, " David in sjnrit,^'' or, as Mark
has it (xii. 36), ^^ David in the holy
spint,'^ there is implied a state of
mind more or less produced and
guided by the special influences of
the Divine Spirit. There can hard-
ly be a question that Jesus was
and meant to be, so understood at
the time. It may be said that he
was only accommodating himself
to the views of others in order to
confute them. But we cannot think
that this would be quite in accord-
ance with the perfect sincerity and
truthfulness of his character. He
plainly assumes, first. That David
is speaking here of the Messiah ;
and, secondly, That he does this
under a divine impulse, in the spirit.
But because David was thus, in
the spiritual exaltation of his fac-
ulties, enabled to foretell the king-
dom of the Messiah, and its ultimate
triumph, it does not follow that he
had a perfectly clear and adequate
conception of the Saviour's charac-
ter and ofl^ce. Divine illumination
does not imply perfect infallibility.
The prophet inay not always un-
derstand entirely the visioii that
comes before him. Daniel (xii. 8,
9) says, " I heard, but I understood
not," and when he asked for an
explanation, the reply was, " the
words are closed up and sealed till
the time of the end." We should
MATTHEW XXII.
389
Lord said unto my Lord, Sit thou on my right hand, till I
45 make thine enemies thy footstool." If David then call him
always bear this in mind in our
attempts to explain the prophetical
■writings of the Old Testament.
Visions of a future and holier king-
dom than the world, had known, —
foregleams of one greater than any
monarch or conqueror, who should
put down all his enemies, and rule
the nations in righteousness, -were
granted to prophets and holy men of
old who spake as they were moved
by the spirit of God. But they
were obliged to employ such terms
as were used among men ; and the
whole prophetic vision, as it stood
revealed in the words of the prophet,
must be marked by the imperfec-
tions necessarily inherent in our
limited human conceptions, habits
of thought, and forms of speech.
As a single illustration of our mean-
ing, we subjoin the whole of Psalm
ex. as it stands in Dr. Noyes's
version : —
1. Jehovah said to my lord,
" Sit thou at my right hand,
Until I make thy foes thy footstool."
2. Jehovah ■will extend the sceptre of thy
power from Zion ;
Thou shalt rule in the midst of thine
enemies.
3. Thy people shall be ready, when thou
musterest thy forces, in holy splen-
dor [in the beauty of holiness] ;
Thy youth shall come forth like dew
from the womb of the morning.
4. Jehovah hath sworn, and he will not
repent :
" Thou art a priest forever,
After the order of Jlelchisedek I "
5. The Lord is at thy right hand,
He shall crush kings in the day of his
wrath.
6. lie shall execute justice among the
nations ;
He shall fill them with dead bodies ;
He shall crush the heads of his ene-
mies over many lands.
7. He shall drink of the brook in the
way ;
Therefore shall he lift up his head.
We will suppose this psalm to be,
as our Saviour himself assumes in
speaking of it, composed by David.
Could the opening words be applied
by him to any one of his succes-
sors? The question of Jesus still
33*
comes in with all its original force:
" If David call him Lord, how is he
his son ? Must there not then be a
different and higher sense in which
the language is used than in its ap-
plication to a kin^ of Israel? Be-
sides, what Jewish monarch was
there who united in the manner
here indicated, 4, the priestly with
the kingly character and office ?
There is no suitable correspondence
between the words and the subject.
But if, on the other hand, David in
spirit had a glimpse of the higher
and holier kingdom of the Messiah
with its attendant conflicts and vic-
tories and glories, are not the images
here such as a warlike king like
David might fittingly employ to
body forth the essential facts of the
case? — 1. The exalted condition
of the Messiah whom the prophet
king looks up to as his Lord ; 2.
The sceptre of his power going
forth from Zion, the seat of the Jew-
ish religion, gaining its ascendency
even in the midst of his enemies ;
3. His people in the beauty of holi-
ness, and his followers coming forth
in the ft-eshness of their youthful
zeal like dew from the wonib of the
morning; 4. His joining the priestly
to the kingly office; Jehovah, 6,6,
putting doVn and destroj'ing his
eneiuies when kings and rulers rise
against him, and executing justice
among the nations, while he, 7, like
one in a desert land suddenly re-
freshed by a ranning brook, lifts up
his head in joy and triumph. Is
there not here under these various
images, 1 - 4, a picture of the Mes-
siah in his exaltation and holiness,
while the warlike images that^ fol-
low show how amid violent oppo-
sition and bloody conflicts, where
kings and people are overwhelmed
and destroyed, his kingdom shall
be established, and he, notwith-
standing these wearisome wars,
shall, like one refreshed by a
stream in the sultry day, lift up his
victorious head, the cruelties spo-
ken of in the psalm are objected
to. " The least," says Dr. Palfrey,
390
MATTHEW XXII.
Lord, how Is lie his son ? And no man was able to answer 46
him a word ; neither durst any man, from that day forth, ask
him any more questions.
" that such a supernatural inspira-
tion, had David possessed it, might
have been expected to do, would be
ture Messiah, the meek and peace-
xpei
fro
to keep him from describing the fu-
ful Jesus of Nazareth, as a furious
soldier who should ' strike through
kings,' and pile up heaps of bloody
and helpless corpses, and slay till
he should be exhausted with weari-
ness and thirst." But is not this a
caricatui-e ? The images in the
psalm, of war and cruelty and
desolation, do they not truthfully
describe the condition of things
through which the religion of Jesus,
" extending the sceptre of its power
from Zion," passed in its victorious
progress ? And do they not accord
Avith tlie wars and rumors of wars,
nation rising against nation, and
kingdom against kingdom, which
Jesus himself has spoken of as
among the signs of his coming ?
We wish to state the matter pre-
cisely. Here is a psalm which the
Jews' received as written bv David,
and as referring to the '^^essiah.
Jesus in quoting from it, speaks of
David as saying these things in
spirit, and \vith reference to the
Messiah. The presumption from
all this is that Jesus believed in
David as the author of the psalm,
and that the psalm was, or at least
contained, a prediction of the Mes-
siah and his kingdom. The psalm
itself, in the first four verses, is
altogether in harmony with this
view of its Messianic character,
and can hardly be explained natu-
rally and intelligibly, on any other
supposition. Is there in the last
three verses anvthing inconsistent
with this view? We leave it for
the careful reader to judge whether
the latter clause is not also per-
fectly in accordance with the dark
and destructive conflicts which
marked the early progress of Chris-
tianity, and whether its language
may not without any violence be
interpreted as a highly impassioned
and condensed figurative descrip-
tion of the struggles and slaughters
and conquests by which God in his
providence was' preparing for the
establishment of the Messiah's king-
dom. 44. till I make
thine enemies thy footstool]
We would refer to tlie striking co-
incidence between Ps. ex. 1, and 1
.Cor. XV. 25, to the use made of the
same verse in Acts ii. 34 ; Heb. i.
13, and x. 13 : " The eternity of the
session," says Bengel, " is not de-
nied; but it is denied that the as-
sault of the enemies will interfere
with it. The warlike kingdom will
come to an end; the peaceful king-
dom, however, will have no end.
Compare 1 Cor. xv. 25, &c. Even
before that the Son was subordinate
to the Father, but did not then ap-
Eear so, on account of the glory of
is kingdom : even after that' he
Avill i-eign, but as the Sou, subordi-
nate to the Father."
MATTHEW XXm. 391
CHAPTER XXIII.
Christ's Denunciation of the Pharisees.
According to Matthew, the Sermon on the Mount was
the first public discourse of Jesus to the Jews, and this
the last. There is, in some respects, a remarkable resem-
blance or contrast between the two. As that opened with
seven beatitudes, so this closes with seven woes. Verse 14
is omitted by Tischendorf. The beatitudes offer themselves
in sounds of perpetual gladness and welcome to those who
will come ; the woes stand out as sad and awful warnings
to those who will not hear. It is remarkable that in
enumerating the crimes which made a national existence
no longer possible for the Jews, Jesus did not dwell on the
vices of the people, but on the spiritual wickedness, — the
vainglory, hypocrisy, and religious insensibility of their
spiritual teachers and guides.
3-12. As teachers of the law, holding the place and
reading the precepts of Moses, the Scribes and Pharisees
are to be respected; but beyond this, their example and
their teachings are to be shunned. They, 4, profess much
and do little, and what they do, 5-7, is in order to be seen
of men. But do not ye, 8-11, seek these human dis-
tinctions, — these titles of honor, Rabbi, Teacher, Father.
By Father is not meant the relation of parent to child, but
some official title of respect which Jesus would not have his
followers assume or apply, — as, e. g. the term Pope, Papa,
Father, in the sense in which it is now assumed by the
head of the Roman Catholic Church. The expression,
" for one is your teacher, and all ye are brethren," strikes
directly at the pretended supremacy of any one over
the other disciples.
392 MATTHEW XXIII.
13-34. Some have thought the translation Woe unto you
too severe, and have substituted for it, Alas for you. But
the former expression comes more nearly to the meaning
of the original in its union of severity and pity, and is more
in accordance with the whole tone of our Saviour's dis-
course. Woe unto you, 13, because ye shut up the
kingdom of Heaven, i. e. will not yourselves receive my
religion, and as religious teachers and guides use your
authority to prevent others from receiving it. Woe unto
you, 14, because under the pretence of religious services
and duties, ye contrive to appropriate the possessions
of widows and devour as it were their houses. This verse
is omitted by Tischendorf. Woe unto you, because without
the vital religious faith through which alone a true convert
can be gained, ye compass sea and land to bring one man
over a proselyte to your hypocritical and wicked purposes.
" A disciple," says Alford, " of hypocrisy merely, — neither
a sincere heathen nor a sincere Jew, — doubly the child
of hell, — condemned by the religion which he had left, —
condemned again by that which he had taken," — not a
sincere convert, but an apostate from the old religion, a hyp-
ocrite in regard to the new. Mr. Norton supposes that this
may refer to Judas, whom the Pharisees had won over to
their dark and murderous purposes. Woe unto you, 16-
31 (see also v. 33-36), because ye evade and profane the
most sacred religious obligations by your unfounded and
bewildering distinctions. Woe unto you, 23, 24, because
while punctiliously scrupulous about the slightest observ-
ances — the tithing of unimportant herbs — ye omit the
weightier matters of the law, viz. righteousness, mercy,
and love. Allusion is probably made here to Micah vi. 8 :
" He hath showed thee, O man, what is good ; and what
doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love
mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God ? " Woe unto
you, 25, 26, because ye regard only the outside of the cup
and the platter, both in the literal and figurative sense of
MATTHEW XXIII. 393
the expression, while within they are full of rapine and
excess ; yea, woe unto you, 27, because, being thus mindful
of the outside alone, ye are like whited sepulchres, fair
without, but within full of dead men's bones and all un-
cleanness. — Finally, woe unto you, 29 - 33, because, as
the last consummate act of hypocrisy and crime, at the
very time that ye are building and adorning the tombs of
the prophets, and saying, " if we had lived in the days
of our fathers, we would not have been partakers with
them in the blood of the prophets," ye by your very words,
and by actions which speak more powerfully than words,
testify to yourselves that ye are the sons of them who
slew the prophets. Go on then, if you will. Since there
is no hope of amendment for you, and no room for the
establishment of my kingdom except on the ruins of yours,
Fill up speedily the measure of your fathers. Complete
the work of cruelty and crime which they began, that, in
the national overthrow and destruction which must ensue,
the time of redemption to my followers from all your cruel-
ties and oppressions may come. O ye serpents, ye genera-
tion of vipers, [no longer, as with John the Baptist, iii. 7,
"Who hath warned ye to flee from the wrath to come?
but] how can ye escape the damnation [or judgment] of
hell? Wherefore, or, for this reason, 34, refers to this
clause as well as to what goes before. It is as if Jesus
had said. If there were any hope of your amendment and
co-operation with me, — any hope that you would cease to
stand in the way of God's kingdom, and to persecute and
oppress my disciples, I might even yet bear with you.
But since there is no such hope, and no way in which my
religion can be established on earth except by the consum-
mation, on your part, of crimes which must soon end in
the overthrow of your power and the destruction of your
city and nation, therefore, as the only way of shortening
those evil days, and hastening the coming of the Son of
man, behold, I send unto you prophets and wise men
394 MATTHEW XXIII.
and scribes, whom ye shall persecute apd scourge and
murder, so that your measure of iniquity may soon be full,
and on you may come every kind of blood-guiltiness that
the world has known, — all the righteous blood that has
been shed from the blood of righteous Abel, unto the blood
of the last righteous man, whom ye slew within the very
precincts of the temple. Verily I say unto you. All these
things shall come upon this generation.
The cumulative Guilt of a Nation.
We have here stated by Jesus, in its terrible results
the slow but constantly progressive power of sin among
a people who give themselves up to what is evil. The
catalogue becomes constantly darker from generation to
generation. Children grow up into the crimes of their
parents, and add to them yet other crimes of their own.
Partial judgments fall upon them from time to time, and
check somewhat the progress of corruption. Prophets
and holy men are raised up and sent among them that
all who will may yet repent and be saved. But these
messengers of God's mercy only aggravate the guilt of those
who will not hear. So they, hardened alike by the judg-
ments and mercies of heaven, add to the murderous spirit
of their fathers a deeper hypocrisy of their own, and fill up
whatever has been left wanting in the measure of crime
by those who went before, till they have reached such
a point of obduracy and wickedness, that national dissolu-
tion and death must ensue, and in that crisis, that day of
national retribution, all the crimes which have been accu-
mulating through so many ages, unfolding new depths of
iniquity in each successive generation, as they are now
consummated in their lives, so also are they fulfilled in the
judgments which fall upon them. " The mills of the gods
grind late, but they grind clean.'* Mercy not less than
justice requires that their reign of iniquity should be ended.
When a people, through the slowly accumulating results of
MATTHEW XXIII. 395
ages of infidelity and sin, are at length ripe for judgment,
when the lust terrible crisis, so long preparing, has come
and neither the warnings nor the promises of God will
move them to turn from their iniquities and live, then
mercy and justice alike require that the sorrowful retribu-
tions which have been gathering through the whole period
of their history, from their earliest to their latest crime,
shall fall in ruin on their sinful and devoted heads. The
Jews were now reaching this period. They had had their
opportunities. But now to them the end of the world, the
end of their (Eon or dispensation, was at hand. All that
can be done has been done. One thing only waits, — the
cross of Christ. But except with the few who will hear,
that will only deepen their guilt, and hasten the day of
vengeance. All efforts in their behalf are in vain. It
only remains to pronounce their sentence, though it be
with tears and with the yearning of an infinite ten-
derness towards them. "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou
that killest the prophets and stonest them who are sent
unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children
together, even as a bird gathereth her young under her
wings, and ye would not ! Behold, your house is left unto
you desolate. For I say unto you. Ye shall not see me
henceforth, till ye shall say, Blessed is he that coraeth in
the name of the Lord." These were the words of Jesus
as he went out of the temple for the last time. And when
he departed its glory also departed, and it was left indeed
naked and desolate to them. Then was the beginning of
that desertion which Josephus in his Wars of the Jews,
VI. 5. speaks of as among the omens which preceded the
destruction of the temple. " Moreover," he says, " at that
feast which we call Pentecost, as the priests were going by
night into the inner court of the temple, as their custom
was, to perform their sacred ministrations, they said, that
in the first place they felt a quaking, and heard a great
noise ; and after that, they heard a sound as of a multitude
saying, Let us depart hence."
396
MATTHEW XXIII.
NOTES.
Then spake Jesus to the multitude, and to his disciples,
saying, The scribes and the Pharisees sit in Moses' seat. 9
All, therefore, whatsoever they bid you observe, that observe 3
and do ; but do ye not after their works ; for they say, and do
not. For they bind heavy burdens, and grievous to be borne, 4
and lay them on men's shoulders ; but they themselves will not
move them with one of their fingers. But all their works they 3
do for to be seen of men. They make broad their phylacteries,
and enlarge the borders of their garments, and love the 6
uppermost rooms at feasts, and the chief seats in the syna-
gogues, and greetings in the markets, and to be called of men, 7
Rabbi, Rabbi. But be not ye called Rabbi ; for one is your 8
2. sit in Moses' seat] The
Sanhedrim, which was composed
mainly of the scribes and Phari-
sees, was the highest religious au-
thority recognized among the Jews.
3. therefore] This
word limits the command which it
introduces. Therefore, inasnmch as
they occupy the seat of Moses, and
so jar as they occupy it, and are
the expounders of his law, observe
their directions, but do not imitate
them in their conduct.
for they say, and do not]
There is always this danger with
those whose business it is to ex-
f»ound the duties of moral and re-
iglous obligation. They are so
taken up with thinking about them,
and enforcing them on others, that
they are in danger -of failing to re-
ceive them into their own hearts,
and carry them out in their lives.
There is no soul so impervious to
the vital and vitalizing powers of
divine truth as one encased in its
own religious speculations and stud-
ies. Its intellectual processes on
these great themes absorb into
themselves the life which should
enter into it and quicken alike its
sensibilities, its affections, and its
active powers. 4. For
they bind] The allusion here is
to beasts of burden, which when
men have loaded with a heavy
weight, they apply their hand to it
to keep it steady, and prevent it
from foiling." Kenrick. " hi what
an entirely different light does the
Saviour appear, who himself sought
to bear the heaviest burdens, and l)y
his love to make everything easy fi'ir
his people." Stein, 5. their
phylacteries] Strips of parch-
ment with certain passages of Scrip-
ture, viz. Exod. xiii. 11-17, and 1
-11; Deut. xi. 13-22; vi. 4-10,
written on them, and worn on the
forehead between the eyes, on the
left side next the heart, and on the
left arm. and enlarge the
borders of their garments] The
fringes were commanded to be worn
for a memorial. (Num. xv. 38.)
6. the uppermost rooms]
the highest place for reclining at
the feasts. the chief seats]
The uppennost seats in the Syna-
gogue, i. e. those which were near-
est the Chapel, where the sacred
books were kept, were esteemed
peculiarly honorable." .Tahn.
8. Be iiot ye called Rabbi]
Rabbi, my Cluster. The negative
particle is sometimes used in He-
brew instead of the comparative
" For thou desirest not sacrifice,
else would I give it, and the sacri-
fices of God are a broken spirit."
MATTHEW XXin.
397
9 Master, even Christ, and all ye are brethren. And call no man
your father upon the earth ; for one is your Father, which is in
10 heaven. Neither be ye called masters ; for one is your Mas-
11 ter, even Christ. But he that is greatest among you shall be
12 your servant. And whosoever shall exalt himself shall be
abased; and he that shall humble himself shall be exalted.
13 But woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites ! for
ye shut up the kingdom of Heaven against men ; for ye neither
go in yourselves, neither suffer ye them that are entering to go
14 in. Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites ! for ye
devour widows' houses, and for a pretence make long prayer ;
16 therefore ye shall receive the greater damnation. Woe unto
you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites ! for ye compass sea
and land to make one proselyte ; and when he is made, ye
make him twofold more the child of hell than yourselves.
16 Woe unto you, ye blind guides, which say. Whosoever shall
swear by the temple, it is nothing ; but whosoever shall swear
17 by the gold of the temple, he is a debtor. Ye fools, and
blind 1 for whether is greater ? the gold, or the temple that
(Ps. li. 16, 17.) That i?, outward
sacrifice is less required than a bro-
ken spirit. So it may be here, that
Jesus commands his disciples not
to receive or bestow these titles of
respect, for they are nothing when
thus received and accepted, com-
pared with what they are when ap-
plied to Christ their only master,
and to God who alone in the highest
import of the word is their Father.
The meaning of the passage is the
same, whether we adopt this or the
common interpretation. In either
case, Jesus forbids his disciples to
seek or to use among themselves
those titles of distinction which
may interfere with their brotherly
equality, or put any one on earth as
a master between them and him.
16-22. Bishop Jebb (Thirty
Years' Correspondence, Vol. II. pp.
66, 57) has pointed out in these
passages a construction which cor-
responds very closely to the paral-
lelism of Hebrew poetry, and Avhich
may interest those who are curious
in some of the lighter matters per-
taining to the form of our Saviour's
teachings. The characteristic con-
34
struction is less marked in English
than in Greek, but may be repre-
sented as follows : —
Wo'^ unto you, blind leaders, who say,
Whosoever shall swear by the temple,
it is nothing, —
But he who shall swear by the gold of
the temple, is bound thereby ;
Ye fools and blind ones I
For which is the greater, the gold,
Or the temple that sanctifieth the
gold?
And woe unto you, blind leaders, who
say,
"Whosoever shall swear by the altar, it
is nothing ;
But he who shall swear by the gift
that is on it, is bound thereby :
Ye fools and blind ones !
For which is the greater, the gift,
Or the altar that sanctifieth the gift?
Whoso, therefore, shall swear by the
altar,
Sweareth by it, and by all things
thereon ;
And whoso shall swear by the temple,
Sweareth by that, and by hun who
dwelleth therein ;
And he who shall swear by heaven,
Swears by the throne of God, and by
him that sitteth thereon.
398 MATTHEW XXIII.
sanctifieth the gold ? And, Whosoever shall swear by the 13
altar, it is nothing ; but whosoever sweareth by the gift that is
upon it, he is guilty. Ye fools, and blind ! for whether is great- 19
er ? the gift, or the altar that sanctifieth the gift ? Whoso 20
therefore shall swear by the altar sweareth by it, and by all
things thereon ; and whoso shall swear by the temple sweareth 21
by it, and by him that dwelleth therein ; and he that shall swear 22
by heaven sweareth by the throne of God, and by him that sit-
teth thereon. Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypo- 23
crites ! for ye pay tithe of mint, and anise, and cumin ;
and have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment,
mercy, and faith. These ought ye to have done, and not to
leave the other undone. Ye blind guides ! which strain at a 24
gnat, and swallow a camel. Woe unto you, scribes and Phar- 25
isees, hypocrites ! for ye make clean the outside of the cup
and of the platter, but within they are full of extortion and ex-
cess. Thou blind Pharisee ! cleanse first that which is within 26
the cup and platter, that the outside of them may be clean also.
Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites ! for ye are 27
like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful
outward, but are within full of dead men's bones, and of all
uncleanness. Even so ye also outwardly appear righteous 28
unto men, but within ye are full of hypocrisy and iniquity.
23. tithe of mint, and anise, 24. which strain at a ^nat,
and cumin] These were unim- and swallow a camel] The
portcaiit herbs, and the scribes and Jews carefully strained their wine,
Pharisees are represented as hypo- that they might not drink, any
critically magnifying the impor- unclean 'insect in it. The camel
tance of paying 'their tenths on was also an unclean animal. The
them, that they might cover up meaning of the comparison is obvi-
their short-comings in weightier ous. The translation should be who
matters. Jesus tells them that they strain out a gnat, &c.
should not omit the least, but above 27. Ye are like unto whited
all they should observe the weight- sepulchres] " In order that those
ier matters of the law. " The tithe who were forbidden to approach
was a provision made by the law of unclean places might not be pol-
Moses for the support of" the Levites, luted, the Jews were accustomed
the stranger, the fatherless, and the to whitewash the sepulchres."
widow, Deut. xxvi. 12 ; and was Schleusner. " The Jews used once
therefore intended to proceed from a year (on the 15th of the month
the produce of the field, and not Adar) to whitewash the spots where
from garden herbs. The Pharisees, graves were, that persons might not
however, were so scrupulously exact be liable to uncleamiess by passing
in observing the injunctions of the over them. (See Num xix. 16.) This
law, that they tithed all small goes to the root of the mischief at
herbs." Kenrick. once : your heart is not a temple of
MATTHEW XXIII. 399
29 Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites ! because ye
build the tombs of the prophets, and garnish the sepulchres of
30 the righteous, and say, If we had been in the days of our
fathers, we would not have been partakers with them in the
31 blood of the prophets. Wherefore ye be witnesses unto
yourselves that ye are the children of them which killed the
32 prophets. Fill ye up then the measure of your fathers.
33 Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers ! how can ye escape the
34 damnation of hell ? Wherefore, behold, I send unto you
prophets, and wise men, and scribes; and some of them ye
shall kill and crucify, and some of them shall ye scourge in
35 your synagogues, and persecute them from city to city ; that
upon you may come all the righteous blood shed upon the
earth, from the blood of righteous Abel unto the blood of
Zacharias, son of Barachias, whom ye slew between the tera-
36 pie and the altar. Verily 1 say unto you, all these things shall
come upon this generation.
37 O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and
stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have
gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her
38 chickens under her wings ! and ye would not. Behold, your
39 house is left unto you desolate. For I say unto you, Ye shall
the living God, but a grave of pesti- pig and the altar] between the
'^■3'5Ta"cCria^ilS.''''of Bara- "r' '^P'^ P"P- -"/•- ''1'='^.
chiasl It is not known witli cer- which was in the court, lepov, just
tainty who is meant here. There is m front of the temple. 1 he altar
a tradition mentioned by Origen built by Solomon, was, according to
that Zacharias, the father of John Josephus, about 30 feet square and
the Baptist, was slain by them in the 15 feet high. According to the
temple. It may have been some s«me winter the altar in the enclos-
other person of that name wliom ure of Herod's temple was about
the Jews had recently murdered, or 75 feet (50 cubits) square, and 22^
it mav be that Jesus alluded to feet high. 39. Ye shall
Zacha'rias the son of Jehoiada, "ot see me henceforth, till]
who was killed there (2 Chron. ^hiny commentators find here a
xxiv. 21), and of whose blood the prediction of the future conversion
Jews had a saying, that it was nev- and restoration of tlie Jews. Un-
er washed away till the temple was til that day the siibject of all proph-
burnt at the captivity. ^^y," says Alford, ' Avhen your re-
Soii of Barachiah] "does not pentant people shall turn with true
occur in Luke xi. 51, and perhaps and roval hosannas and blessings t»
was not uttered by the Lord fiimself, greet Him whom they have pierced,
but may have been inserted bv mis- '' V'^'^f* takes leave of them says
take, as Zecharlas the prophk was Stier, " not merely with the feeling
son of Barachiah, see Zech. i. 1." that he can return to the temple
Alford. between the tem- only as Messiah or never (accord-
400
MATTHEW XXIII.
not see me henceforth, till ye shall say, Blessed Is he that com-
eth in the name of the Lord !
ing to Hase), but with the clear-
discerning prophecy that at one
time the people of God shall honor
him. The still future restoration of
Israel according to the flesh is an-
nounced throughout all the Old
Testament, from Deut. iv. 30, on to
Zechariah ; he who has not
read this is not yet able rightly to
read the prophets." — "I depart
from you: after this ye shall not
see me in this temple till ye recog-
nize me as the Messiah; i. e. ye
shall never see rae in this temple
again." Kuinoel. But is there
not another interpretation which is
more in harmony with our Saviour's
habits of speech? We have seen
how often and almost insensibly
he rises from the literal to the fig-
urative and spiritual meaning of
words. " He who saveth his life,"
i. e. his bodily life, " shall lose it,"
i. e. his spiritual life. In this very
chapter, 25, 26 is an instance of the
same transition from the literal to
the spiritual, from the cups and
platters which the Pharisees used,
to themselves in their outside con-
duct and inward life. So here,
after announcing the destruction
which is soon to tall upon the Jews
as a nation, may it not be that he
turns from the outward ruin of the
city and nation as a whole to the in-
ward spiritual manifestation of him-
self which he will make to those
among them who shall heartily re-
ceive and acknoAvledge him as the
Messiah ? Your house is left unto
you desolate. My visible ministry
among you is ended. Hereafter,
none of you shall see me till, con-
verted, and born into a higher life,
ye joyfully behold and recognize me
as the Son of God. This is sub-
stantially in accordance with Mr.
Norton's view.
MATTHEW XXIV. 401
CHAPTER XXIY.
Our Saviour's Gift of Prophecy.
The question of prophecy is intimately connected with the
Scriptures, and any attempt to explain the Gospels must be
incomplete unless it should treat this subject fully and
fairly.
1. A prophecy may be merely a message or a simple
communication in relation to some future event, as, e. g.
(1 Kings xxi. 17 - 19) : " And the word of the Lord came
to Elijah the Tishbite, saying, Arise, go down to meet Ahab,
king of Israel, saying. Thus saith the Lord, Hast thou
killed, and also taken possession? And thou shalt speak
unto him, saying, Thus saith the Lord, In the place where
dogs licked the blood of Naboth shall dogs lick thy blood,
even thine.'* The interpretation of dreams (Gen. xl. 8 - 23 ;
Dan. ii. 31 -45), the message to Cornelius (Acts x. 1 - 8),
and the message to Peter in the same chapter are instances
of this.
2. An impression in regard to the future may be made
upon the mind, so as to act upon it with a mysterious power.
Some insects are endowed with a prophetic instinct, by which
they provide for the preservation and support of their off-
spring which are to be born after their death. We find this
sort of blind but prophetic instinct having a marked influence
in forming the minds and shaping the destiny of extraordi-
nary men, such as Julius Caesar, Lord Bacon, Oliver Crom-
well, and Napoleon. As in the heart of the plant and insect,
so in the heart of man, it would seem as if there had been
sometimes implanted from his earliest years a propelling
power urging him on, he hardly knows how or why, to the
.34* Z
402 MATTHEW XXIV.
work for which Providence has designed him. Do we not
see something of this kind working in the heart of a nation ?
In Rome, e. g., did not this prophetic conviction of the great
national destiny which lay before them nerve the people
with a sterner fortitude under defeat, and prompt them to
more daring enterprises, and thus help them to accomphsh
the designs of Providence 1 Or is this an idea attributed to
them by later writers in describing the deeds of their ances-
tors, after the imperial grandeur of the nation had become an
historical fact ? The history of the Jewish nation furnishes a
remarkable instance of the same kind. From the time of
Abraham onward through all their individual and national
reverses, they were led on by an indefinite but certain assur-
ance of future greatness and glory. This impression, repeat-
edly renewed, was continued from Abraham to Moses, from
Moses to David, from David on his throne, through a suc-
cession of prophets, to Daniel an exile and captive. What-
ever may be thought of specific prophecies, this expectation
of a destiny beyond what had fallen to the lot of any other
people has followed them from the earliest times recorded
in their history down to the present hour. However indis-
tinct their expectations may have been, however mistaken
the interpretation which they have put upon it, and however
misguided their conduct under it, that such an expectation
has existed among them for thousands of years is a fact
which can hardly be called in question by any intelligent
and careful student of history. As we examine their records,
we find notices of great men rising up from age to age, who,
professing to be moved by a divine inspiration, foreshadowed
sometimes more and sometimes less distinctly the coming of
a most extraordinary person, whose influence should be felt
throughout the whole world. Abraham is told (Gen. xviii.
18) that " all the nations of the earth shall be blessed in
him." Moses (Deut. xviii. 18) says, " The Lord thy God
will raise up unto thee a Prophet from the midst of thee, of
thy brethren, like unto me; unto him ye shall hearken."
MATTHEW XXIV. 403
Sometimes he is described as a conqueror (Ps. ex.), some-
times as the Prince of peace (Isa. ix. 6), under whose mild
and powerful reign (Isa. ii. 4) " nation shall not lift up sword
against nation, neither shall they learn war any more." He
shall be endowed with a divine wisdom, authority, and
strength (Isa. xi. 2-10) to uphold the poor and meek. " By
him the eyes of the blind (Isa. xxxv. 5, 6) shall be opened,
and the tongue of the dumb shall sing," and yet he is to be
(Isa. liii.) a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief, pour-
ing out his soul unto death. These and other visions of fu-
ture greatness and power, many of them conflicting with the
prevailing notions of the times when they appeared, were
given from generation to generation, especially when times
of great national corruption were about to be followed by
their just retribution. Through the darkness of the impend-
ing evils announced as the judgments of God there comes
always this light of promise from beyond. This is a most,
remarkable feature running through all the prophetic writ-
ings. However severe the calamities which are announced,
whatever desolation of fire and sword may fall upon the
land, though the whole remnant of the people should be car-
ried away into captivity, there is still a great and glorious
future. We think no one can read even the minor prophets
without recognizing this extraordinary feature in their pre-
dictions. Whether we call them seers or poets, whether we
regard them as moral teachers or inspired prophets, this fea-
ture still remains in their writings, and it marked the con-
duct of their greatest men in the most hopeless peripds of
their history. The writers, even though they were divinely
inspired prophets, may not themselves have comprehended
in full the character of the deliverer or of the era whose
coming they foretold. John the Baptist, whom Jesus de-
clared (xi. 11) not inferior to the greatest of them all, evi-
dently did not fully understand the Saviour, or the nature of
his kingdom. Daniel, after one of his sublime prophecies, says
(Dan. xii. 8, 9), " And I heard, but I understood not i then
404 MATTHEW XXIV.
said I, O my Lord, what shall be the end of these things*
And he said, Go thy way, Daniel ; for the words are closed
up and sealed till the time of the end." This sort of im-
pression in regard to future events, made upon the mind and
bodied forth in words or images through a divine influence,
is a mode of prophecy which we can easily conceive of as
possible.
3. There may be another and still higher form of proph-
ecy. Future events are folded up in the present as in a
seed. The oak is already in the acorn, the bird in the egg^
the man in the child. From the seed the naturalist to a cer-
tain extent foretells what will be the progress of the plant,
through each successive period of its growth. So to some
extent in human affairs, from our knowledge of men and the
influences which act upon them, i. e. from our knowledge of
causes and the habit of following those causes on in their
workings, till we begin to understand the laws of succession
or of progress, we may learn to anticipate events, and to catch
some glimpses of the future in the present. In proportion
to the completeness of our insight into causes, and the laws
of their progress in any particular sphere of activity, will be
our ability to foresee and foretell future events,
" Till old experience do attain
To something like prophetic strain."
If we suppose a mind divinely quickened in this respect so
as to look at a glance through causes to their immediate
or remote results, and determine with certainty the course
of evQnts in the complicated web of human affairs, we
should have an instance of this third and highest form o^
prophecy. It is the way in which all future events lie
open to the Omniscient Mind.
Now this is the form under which our Saviour's prophetic
endowments manifested themselves in perfect harmony
with all the other manifestations of his greatness. We
have seen above (pp. 128-135) that his miracles were
"his works," as natural and easy to him as our ordinary
MATTHEW XXIV. 405
actions are to us. In his views of death (see above, pp.
174, 175) we have seen him, in the plane of his ordinary-
thought, recognizing the existence of a higher world, which
lay as much open to his spiritual insight as the material
world does to our bodily senses. So from time to time he
foretells future events, not as something specially communi-
cated to him, but as lying within the plane of his ordinary
thought. As, from his knowledge of the laws of nature,
to use his own illustrations, he foresaw that a cloud from
the west would bring rain, that a south wind would be
followed by heat, and that when the fig-tree put forth her
leaves the summer would be nigh, so also from " the sighs
of the times " he foresaw future events. From his knowl-
edge of the laws of the moral universe, and his insight into
the condition of society and the souls of men, he saw in the
world of human passions and interests, and the influences
which encompassed them, unerring indications of events
which must ensue. In the souls of Peter and Judas he
foresaw the denial and repentance of one, and the treachery
of the other. In the character of priests and rulers, as
contrasted with his own pure doctrine and life, he foresaw
the antagonism whict could result only in his death. So
at this time he saw the utter and irremediable corruption
of the nation, — justice poisoned at the fountain, wickedness
sustained and honored under the forms of law, falsehood,
murder, impiety and all uncleanness disguised and rever-
enced under the forms of religion, the people rapidly
ripening for judgment in the accumulated guilt of ages.
The crimes enumerated in the twenty-third chapter are
the premises from which the judgments afterwards an-
nounced follow as necessary and logical conclusions.
Those judgments consist in the destruction of Jerusalem
and the retributions which lie beyond the sphere of the
senses. The rapidity with which Jesus passes from one
to the other class of judgments is what makes the diffi-
culty in the interpretation of this prophetic discourse.
406 MATTHEW XXIV.
As was natural to one who looked with equal ease and
clearness through the physical and the spiritual world,
his thought and his language go easily from one to the
other, and often without any word to mark the point of
transition. The destruction of Jerusalem, which is so dis-
tinctly foretold as the judgment of God on a wicked
people, is to him an emblem, or rather the foreground, of
the judgments which reach on from their early indications
and partial fulfilment here to their perfect consummation
hereafter. It is difficult for us who are shut up so closely
within the senses to understand the true perspective in
the views of one who with equal ease comprises both worlds
within the sphere of his vision. The present glances on to
the future, and the future throws back its light or its shadows
into the present. The two worlds are united and blended
by almost insensible gradations into one comprehensive
plan. The sharp distinctions by which they are separated
to us are hardly recognized by him. This mortal life,
with its germ of immortality unfolding itself here, is only
the beginning of the eternal life which reaches through the
everlasting ages. The horizon of his thought lies always
in that higher life and world ; and unless we constantly
recognize this fact, we can hanlly understand aright any
word that he uttered. Least of all can we understand the
prophetic imagery by which he lays before us the future
judgments of God, which display them partially here and
perfectly hereafter. From the foreground of visible cir-
cumstances and events he is constantly following his prin-
ciples on to the vast and mysterious background beyond.
There is no dark line of separation between the two, and
we may not always be able to determine when the scenery
is shifted from one to the other.
MATTHEW XXIV. 1-35. 407
1-35. The Coming of the Son of Man in Judgment
TO THE Jews.
Bearing these remarks in mind, we shall endeavor to
explain the extraordinary predictions before us. In the
previous chapter we are told that Jesus pointed out the
causes of the national ruin, and foretold the destruction
of Jerusalem. On leaving the temple, the disciples, as if
incredulous, and supposing that they must have misunder-
stood what he had said, came to call his attention to the
buildings within the sacred enclosure, and the immense
stones of which they were composed. In this way they
probably meant to indicate to him that it was impossible
that the destruction of the city and temple which he had
foretold should take place. Titus himself, after he had taken
the city, when examining the strength of its fortifications,
is represented by Josephus (Wars of the Jews, VI. 9. 1)
as expressing a similar thought. " We have certainly," he
said, " had God for our assistant in this war ; and it was
no other than God who ejected the Jews out of these
fortifications. For what could the hands of men, or any
machines, do towards overthrowing these towers ? " Jesus
knew the thought of his disciples. He also knew that
walls and towers and the most desperate courage furnish
no adequate security for a hopelessly corrupt and wicked
people. He therefore replied to his disciples only by re-
peating more explicitly what he had already said. " See ye
not all these things ; verily I say unto you. There shall not
be lefl here a stone upon a stone which shall not be thrown
down." In less than forty years from the time when these
words were spoken, i. e. in September, A. D. 70, Jerusalem
was taken, and the temple was utterly destroyed, in spite
of the earnest efforts of Titus, the Roman general, to save it.
Dr. Robinson (Researches, &c., I. p. 436) says of Matt.
xxiv. 1, 2: "This language was spoken of the buildings
of the temple, the splendid fane itself, and its magnificent
408 MATTHEW XXIV. 1 - 35.
porticos ; and in this sense the prophecy has been terribly
fulfilled, even to the utmost letter. Or, if we give to the
words a wider sense, and include the outer works of the
temple, and even the whole city, still the spirit of prophecy
has received its full and fearful accomplishment; for the
few substructions which remain serve only to show where
once the temple and the city stood."
After Jesus had uttered this prediction, he went out to the
Mount of Olives. While he was sitting there, four of his
disciples, Peter, James, John, and Andrew (Mark xiii.
3), came to him privately, and asked when these things
should be. "And what shall be the sign of thy coming
and of the end of the world ? " These last two events, how-
ever imperfectly understood by the disciples, were grouped
together, and evidently regarded by them as belonging to
the same grand manifestation of the Messiah's kingdom.
From 4 to 35 is the reply to their question. The principal
subject is the destruction of Jerusalem, and the signs wliich
should precede and accompany it, intersi^ersed with such
cautions and warnings as might be useful to his followers.
First, he warns them, 5, against the false Christs, whose
pretensions and influence in leading men astray would be a
natural consequence of the feverish and mistaken expecta-
tions of the Messiah on the part of the Jews. Then, 6, 7,
shall be wars and rumors of wars, nation rising against na-
tion, and kingdom against kingdom, famines, pestilences, and
earthquakes. Yet all these, 8, are only the beginning of
sorrows, — the beginning of the death-agony in which the
old order of things should perish, and of the birth-throes by
which the world should be born into a higher life. Then
shall succeed, 9, persecutions and martyrdoms ; many, 10,
shall be offended, and they shall betray and hate one
another. False prophets, 11, who usually abound amid the
superstitious fears which mark the great epochs of national
corruption, shall rise and lead many astray, and, 12^ because
of iniquity many will be discouraged, and their love shall
MATTHEW XXIV. 1-35. 409
grow cold. But, he says, 13, rising in thought from thes^
earthly calamities to the higher life into which the faithful
shall enter, " He that shall endure unto the end, the same
shall be saved." (See Rev. ii. 10.) The Gospel, 14, must
first be preached in all the world, i. e. through all the known
world, or the Roman empire.
Here were the signs which should precede the great event,
and bring on the end. How far were they fulfilled ? Any
one who will read from the latter part of the second to the
fifth Book of the Jewish Wars, by Josephus, may see how
exactly, in its general features, the condition of the Jews,
and of the Roman empire, as it appeared to the Jews dur-
ing the few years previous to the destruction of Jerusalem,
corresponded to the picture here given. The Jews were
engaged in wars against one another, and in fatal outbreaks
against the Romans. "War in the immediate neighbor-
hood," says Stier, " ever growing alarms in the distance, terri-
fying rumors of war, commotions and tumults of the people
against each other, this is in reality, on the small scale, the
picture of the time as described by Josephus, which, with
every year, became more exactly applicable. The wars
were certainly, at that time, more of the nature of insurrec-
tions, tumults here and there (Luke xxi. 9), manifold com-
motions and massacres, for example, between the Syrian and
Jewish inhabitants in the cities (nation against nation), such
as are to be read of in Josephus, Jewish Wars, H. 17, 10,
18, 1 -8: according to his expression, 'every city was divid-
ed into two opposing hosts.' " Confidence between man and
man was lost. Governments were overthrown. The ties
by which society is kept together were dissolved, and the
wretched superstitions and fanatical pretensions which mark
the absence of a living faith abounded and prevailed.
As to the literal fulfilment of the prophecy, point by point,
in its minute specifications, history furnishes no sufficient
materials for the decision. Christian writers, by whom alone
any account could be given of the false Christs, 5, have left
35
410 MATtHEW XXIV. 1 - 35.
^o records of the events belonging to that period, beyond what
we gather from the later writings of St. Paul (2 Tim. iii.
1-13) and St. John. Commentators adduce from different
historians of that period accounts of famines, pestilences, and
earthquakes, enough to give a coloring of plausibility to the
doctrine of a literal fulfilment of ver. 7 ; but we have not the
historical details which are needed in order to put ourselves
into the position of those who lived at that time, and to deter-
mine how they were affected by these events. For this rea-
son, in accordance with the view which we have taken of
our Saviour's gift of prophecy, and also in accordance with
the poetical and prophetic use of language, we incline to re-
gard the latter part of ver. 7 as carrying out in a figurative
form the idea begun in the first clause of the sentence : " na-
tion shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom ;
and there shall be famines [Tischendorf omits " pestilences "]
and earthquakes," i. e. great privations, sufferings, and com-
motions in divers places. As to the persecutions, 9, Peter,
and Paul, and James the brother of John, and probably
many others, were put to death before the destruction of Je-
rusalem. The manner in which some of the early Christiana
were led to betray and hate one another may be inferred
from Tacitus (Ann. XV. 44), where, in giving an account of
the destruction of the Christians at Rome by Nero A. D. 64,
he says, that " some of them were taken who confessed, and
through them as informers a great multitude were seized,"
and exposed to cruel tortures and death. Eusebius, refer-
ring to Vespasian as emperor, says ( H. E. III. 8), " At that
very time the sound of the sacred Apostles had gone out to
all the earth, and their words to the uttermost parts of the
world," the word used by him for world being the same that
is used in the passage before us, ver. 14. St. Paul (Col. i.
23) speaks of the Gospel, which then, about A. D. 63, " was
preached to every creature which is under heaven."
The preliminary signs are now finished. " Then shall the
end come." The last and fatal series of events is at hand.
MATTHEW XXIV. 1-35. 411
When, therefore, 15, ye see the abommation of desolation
spoken of by Daniel the prophet stand in a (not the) holy
place (" standing where it ought not," Mark xiii. 14), let them
who are in Judaja flee to, or, as Alford translates it, over, along,
across the mountains. Whoso readeth, let him understand, is
a word of warning put in by the Evangelist, as it also is by
Mark, to direct the attention of those who might be living at
the time of its fulfilment to the sign here given. It is im-
possible now to determine precisely what the sign was. The
passage referred to may be found in Dan. ix. 27, or xii. 11.
Josephus says (Ant. X. 11. 7), " Daniel wrote concerning
the Roman government, and that our country should be
made desolate by them." But what was this " abomination
of desolation," or " desolating abomination " ? Whatever it
may have been, as used by Jesus, it undoubtedly was meant
to apply to some event which the Christians would under-
stand as connected with the terrible calamities that should
immediately precede the destruction of Jerusalem. Luke in
the parallel passage says (xxi. 20), " But when ye shall
see Jerusalem compassed by armies." This may have been
the explanatory clause inserted by Jesus immediately after
the words recorded by Matthew and Mark, so that the whole
passage would read as follows : " When, therefore, ye shall
see the desolating abomination spoken of by the prophet
Daniel standing, where it ought not, in a holy place, — when
ye shall see Jerusalem compassed by armies, then know that
its desolation draweth near. Let them who are in Judfea
flee over the mountains." This appears to us, upon the
whole, to be the most probable reading of the passage. If
so, we are to see its fulfilment in the Roman armies with
their eagles, which, as objects of idolatrous worship on the
part of the legions, were an abomination to the Jews ; and
certainly in the miseries and slaughter which came with
them they were a desolating abomination. AVhenever, there-
fore, the Christians should see Jerusalem thus invested by
armies, they were to seek for refuge among or beyond the
412 MATTHEW XXIV. 1-85.
mountains. This event took place when the Romans under
Cestius Gallus encamped around Jerusalem, A. D. 66, or
about four years before the final siege of the city by Titus,
A. D. 70. Josephus, in his Wars of the Jews (11. 19. 6),
says that when Cestius made his attack on Jerusalem, a
horrible fear seized upon the seditious, and many of them
ran out of the city as if it were to be taken immediately, and
that after Cestius had left the city (II. 20. 1), " many of the
eminent Jews swam away from the city, as from a ship when
it was going to sink." The Christians must at that time
have been numerous in Jerusalem. May not the precipitate
flight urged by our Saviour when the sign should be given
be that which is mentioned in these passages by Josephus ?
Eusebius (H. E. III. 5) says : " The people of the church
in Jerusalem being commanded by a divine revelation, which
had been given to their leaders before the war, to leave the
city, and to dwell in a city of Persea, which they call Pella,
those who believed in Christ, removing from Jerusalem,
dwelt there, while holy men utterly deserted the royal me-
tropolis of the Jews, and the whole country of Judaea, and
thus the judgment of God followed those who had acted un-
justly towards Christ and his Apostles, and caused that race
of ungodly ones utterly to disappear from among men."
This account, which harmonizes with what Josephus has
said of the flight from Jerusalem, shows that the warning
given by Jesus was not in vain. Eusebius, however, does
not mention what the warning was. As the sign was given
for the Christians, it would be likely to be understood only
by them, and as they have handed down no particular ac-
count of the events connected with the siege of Jerusalem,
we must be content to remain in ignorance on this point.
The fact that the sign, whatever it may have been, was un-
derstood by those for whom it was intended, and that they
were saved by it, is the only fact that is clearly established
here by the tradition M'hich Eusebius has transmitted to us.
The passage in the three Evangelists may be harmonized as
MATTHEW XXIV. 1 - 35. 413
follows : " When ye shall see Jerusalem compassed with
armies, and the abomination of desolation spoken of by Dan-
iel the prophet standing, where it ought not, in a holy place,
then," &c. This rendering would seem to refer to some sign
in or near Jerusalem, and immediately connected with the
Roman armies ; but, notwithstanding what has been said on
the matter by Hug (see Livermore) and Alford, we are
wholly unable to. determine what specific event is pointed
out. This harmony of the different expressions used by the
Evangelist would accord perfectly with the passages which
we have quoted above from Josephus and Eusebius.
When the sign, whatever it might be, should appear, then
the Christians in Judcea were to flee, 1 6 - 20, with the ut-
most haste. But why this haste, if the sign were given four
years previous to the final and fatal siege of Jerusalem ? In
our ignorance of the precise position which they held and the
dangers which threatened them, it is impossible to give a
specific answer to this question. The four years which fol-
lowed were years of dismal and overwhelming calamities
among the Jews. Their miseries were caused even more by
the cruelty of opposing factions, and the wickedness and
tyranny of their own leaders, than by the sword of the Ro-
mans. By separating themselves immediately and utterly
from the Jews at this early period, the Christians were freed
from the wretchedness among their countrymen, which ex-
cited the compassion even of their enemies. Unless they had
taken this early opportunity to escape, while the Jews were
wholly intent on driving away the Roman army, they might
have turned the eyes of hostile factions upon themselves as
a common enemy, and, thus being cut off from the possi-
bility of escape, they might have been involved as innocent
victims in the slaughter which the Jews were inflicting on
one another with such merciless and indiscriminate ven-
geance. In the winter, 20, or rather stormy weather, fleeing
as they must with their wives and little ones, their sufferings
would have been greatly aggravated ; and if they should flee
35*
414 MATTHEW XXIV. 1-35.
upon the Sabbath, though they might not feel bound by the
strictness of the Jewish observance, they would excite the
suspicion and bring down upon themselves the hostility of
the Jews.
For then, 21, during the four years ending with the siege
of Jerusalem, shall be great tribulations, " such as was not
since the beginning of the world, to this time, no, nor ever
shall be." We have not room to copy ffom Josephus the
details which go to prove the fulfilment of this prophecy.
There were sieges, murders, famines, in Galilee, not less than
in Judaea, hundreds of thousands slain, mutual and general
hatred and distrust, with all the miseries attendant on this
condition of things, before the final siege of Jerusalem ; and
then, according to the historian's estimates, more than two
millions and a half of people who had come up to the feast
of the Passover were crowded together within the walls of
the doomed and devoted city. There were no cruelties and
no extremities of suffering to which they were not subjected.
" No other city," says Josephus (Jewish Wars, V. 10. 5),
" ever suffered such miseries, nor did any age, from the be-
ginning of the world, ever breed a generation more fruitful
in wickedness than this was." Again, he says, in his
Preface to the Jewish Wars, that " if the miseries of all
mankind from the creation w^ere compared with those which
the Jews then suffered, they would appear inferior."
And except those days should be shortened, 22, no flesh
would be saved, i. e. the w^hole race or nation would be
utterly cut off; but on account of the elect or chosen ones,
i. e. on account of their influence and prayers, those days
shall be shortened. "And they," Luke (xxi. 24) adds in
this place, " shall fall by the edge of the sword, and shall
be led away captive into all nations, and Jerusalem will
be trodden down of the Gentiles until the times of the
Gentiles be fulfilled." Eleven hundred thousand Jews
were slain in the siege of Jerusalem, thousands were de-
stroyed by the sword or by wild beasts for the entertainment
MATTHEW XXIV. 1-35. 415
of the Eomans at their national festivals, and of the ninety-
seven thousand taken captive in the war, those above
seventeen years of age were sent to the works in Egypt or
distributed through the Roman provinces, and those under
seventeen were sold as slaves. At Ciesarea, Titus mur-
dered twenty-five hundred Jews in honor of his brother's
birthday. " Some he caused to kill each other : some were
thrown to the wild beasts, and others burnt alive."
If they, 23, 24, " shall say unto you, Lo, here is Christ,
or there ; believe it not. For there shall arise false Christs,
and false prophets," &c. St. Paul, in what is probably the
last Epistle that he ever wrote (2 Tim. iii. 1, 13), speaks of
" the perilous times " that shall come, and of the " evil men
and seducers," who " shall wax worse and worse, deceiving,
and being deceived." This was probably written A. D. 68,
or about two years before the fatal siege of Jerusalem.
St. John, in his first Epistle (ii. 18), says, " Little children,
it is the last hour; and as ye have heard that antichrist
shall come, even now are there many antichrists." Again
(iv. 1) he says, " But try the spirits whether they are of
God; because many false prophets are gone out into the
world." This Epistle was written either just before the
siege of Jerusalem, or afterwards. In either case its words
go with those of St. Paul to indicate the state of things
which our Saviour had foretold as connected with the over-
throw of the Jewish polity, when " the end," or, as St. John
calls it, the " last hour," should come. Josephus also, in his
Jewish Wars (VI. 5), says : " There was then a great num-
ber of false prophets suborned by the tyrants to impose
upon the people Now a man that is in adversity
does easily comply with such promises Thus were
the miserable people persuaded by these deceivers, and
such as belied God himself." Jesus, 26, warns his follow-
ers not to be led astray by any such pretensions. " For,"
27, "as the lightning cometh out of the east and shineth
even unto the west ; so shall also the coming of the Son of
416 MATTHEW XXIV. 1-35.
man be." That is, he comes not with a limited, bodily
presence, in the wilderness or the secret chambers, but in
the power of his religion overspreading the whole land, like
the lightning, which, confined to no one spot, fills the whole
sky. With the downfall of the Jews, the new religion
will rise as the fulfilment of the old, and in its advancement
Christ will manifest his presence to the world, as he did in
the judgments which fell at that time upon the Jews. "For,"
28, " wheresoever the carcass is, there will the eagles,"
more properly the vultures, " be gathered together." Where
moral death and corruption are, there the judgments of God,
like vultures, shall come to clear away the pollutions of
the land, — a retribution for the past, a preparation for
the future.
Immediately after, 29, or rather in connection with, the
tribulation of those days, shall the sun be darkened, and
the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall
from heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall be
shaken. Josephus speaks of "a star resembling a sword,
which stood over the city ; and a comet that continued
a whole year." But the language is rather to be taken
figuratively. " That is," says Lightfoot, " the Jewish heaven
shall perish, and the sun and moon of its glory and hap-
piness shall be darkened and brought to nothing. The
sun is the religion of the church ; the moon is the govern-
ment of the state ; and the stars are the judges and doctors
of both." We doubt whether the language was intended
for so specific an application. We speak of a dark and
dreadful day, or a dark and troubled night, to describe
a period of great public or private misery. Oriental writers
carry their figures of speech more into details than is
allowed by the usages . of language among us, and give
the particulars which go to fill out the idea of gloom and
sorrow. It is not merely a dark day, but "the sun is
darkened;" — -not merely a dark and dismal night of grief
and pain, but its darkness, the moon refusing to give her
MATTHEW XXIV. 1-35. 417
light, should be rendered more frightful by the portentous
glare of falHng stars, and in the universal consternation
and distress, men's hearts failing them for fear, the very-
powers of the heavens should be shaken. Every source
of light or hope to which men had been accustomed to
look up should be withdrawn, amid troubles and terrific
commotions in what had seemed to them most elevated
and stable among the powers by which the order and
government of the world had been sustained.
The same powerfully figurative language is continued.
"And then shall appear the sign of the Son of man
in heaven, " 30 ; not the sign shall appear in heaven, but,
" Then shall appear the sign of the Son of man that he
is in heaven." Then, when the rites of their own religion
shall no longer be observed, when (Josephus, Jewish Wars,
VI. 2. 1) the daily sacrifice (Dan. xii. 11) shall be taken
away, and the city overthrown with such sufferings and
slaughters as never had been known before, — when such
unspeakable calamities have fallen upon them, then shall
all the tribes of the land smite their breasts, then shall
appear the sign which I have now made known to you
of the Son of man in heaven, and they who refused to
recognize him before shall in these events see him coming
in power and great glory to establish his kingdom on the
earth. " The Jews," says Kuinoel, " will recognize the ma-
jesty and power of the Messiah as their Judge, when, as
a punishment for their perversity and madness, he shall
mournfully exhibit them in the overthrow of their temple
and city. The Hebrew prophets use the same image which
occurs here. When they would describe God as declaring
his majesty, they speak of him as about to come sitting
upon the clouds, whether it be to bring assistance or to
pass judgment (Deut. xxxiii. 2G ; Isa. xix. 1)."
«And," 31, "he shall send his angels," &c. "When
Jerusalem shall be reduced to ashes, and that wicked
nation cut off and rejected, then shall the Son of man
418 MATTHEW XXIV. 36-51.
send his ministers with the trumpet of the Gospel, and
they shall gather together his elect of the several nations,
from the four corners of heaven." Lightfoot. He shall
send forth his angels, the messengers of salvation, and as
with the sound of a trumpet, which was used to call re-
ligious assembhes together, he shall gather his chosen
ones, i. e. those who hear and obey the call, into his Church
throughout the whole earth. As a matter of fact, the
religion of Jesus prevailed wonderfully after its most in-
fluential and violent opponents and persecutors had been
cut off in the wars which ended with the destruction of Jeru-
salem. "It was after this peiiod," as Adam Clarke has
said, " that the kingdom of Christ began, and his reign was
established in almost every part of the earth.'* That there
might be no mistake as to the time included in this proph-
ecy, and as to what was there meant by his coming and
the end of the world, — ceon or dispensation, — he distinctly
declares, 34, that the generation then before him should
not pass away till all these things were fulfilled.
36-51. The Coming of the Son of Man in Judgment
TO All.
At the thirty-sixth verse is the point of transition from
God's judgment, as shown in the destruction of a wicked
city and nation, to his judgment in its wider application
to the whole family of man. All that has been predicted
thus far applies primarily to the destruction of Jerusalem,
and would be accomplished before that generation should
pass away. In the foreground of the prophetic picture
lie the events which should precede, and the circumstances
of dread and horror which should accompany, that great
national catastrophe. These events are distinctly portrayed
and their limits fixed. But beyond them, in a background
reaching onward into eternity, is another and kindred class
of events, which are also denoted by the coming of the
MATTHEW XXIV. 36-51. 419
Son of man, and of which the precise limits are not to be
distinguished or defined. The time when the holy city-
should be overthrown had been fixed, and the signs of
its approach pointed out. But of that day and hour, when
this more extended series of events included in the general
judgment of our race should be completed, «o man could
know, not the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but the
Father only (Mark xiii. 32). Only He whose omniscient
mind takes in all causes, and sees in them all future
results as already present, can determine that.
The idea which fills out the whole picture or succession
of pictures, and harmonizes all their parts, is tlie idea of
a divine retribution. This shows itself in the foreground ;
then, 37-39, it goes back to the times of Noah and of
Lot, and from the past goes on again to the future, dwell-
ing at first on single examples, and finally gathering up
all separate incidents and souls and ages into one over-
powering scene of divine majesty and justice.
At first we seem to be lingering still around Jerusalem
in those days of impending ruin, as if, after its destruction
had been foretold and language pointing on to a wider
range of judgments had been used, he at first, in his refer-
ence to the flood and to Sodom (Luke xvii. 28), employed
images equally applicable to both classes of events. From
this point, however, there is nothing which can be construed
as applying, like what has gone before, distinctly and
exclusively to the destruction of Jerusalem. The coming
of the Son of man carries us into a wider field, until at
length we see the 'whole human family standing before
him in judgment.
A great deal is said about types. May it not be that
all the language relating to the destruction of Jerusalem
was meant to be a type of the general judgment? Is there
not this double meaning running through it ? In the sense
in which the expressions type and double meamna are
commonly used by theologians, we answer, No.
420 MATTHEW XXIV. 36-51.
Nothing has added so much to the perplexity and confu-
sion of ideas in the study of this discourse, as the notion of a
double meaning running through it. But, in another sense,
it is typical, as every fact in nature is, of something beyond
itself. A falling globule of water, as an expression of the law
of gravitation, is typical of the form and motion of the stars,
and thus a type of the whole frame and structure of the mate-
rial universe. Almost every incident or fact mentioned by
our Saviour is so put by him, that it stands forth as the ex-
pression of a general law, and the type of whatever may be
brought about in accordance with that law. The clothing
of the lilies, and the feeding of the ravens, as an expression
of the paternal benignity and providence of God, is made a
type of the still greater kindness which he always exercises
towards us. The corn of wheat (John xii. 24), which, ex-
cept it fall into the ground and die, abideth alone, but if it
die it bringeth forth much fruit, as an expression of the
great law of self-sacrifice in order to the attainment of the
highest results, is typical of every fact included under that
law, and especially of the death of Christ and the unmeas-
ured benefits resulting from it. So the destruction of Jeru-
salem, as an expression of the Divine justice, or of the judg-
ments of God, is typical of every fact included under that
law, and especially of the righteous retribution which awaits
every soul, when at the close of its probation here it is
called to judgment. The coming of the Son of man in
the destruction which fell on a city and people hopelessly
corrupt, as an expression of a great law, is typical of
Christ's advent to judgment, with regard to every soul that
appears before him. The difficulty usually is in detecting
the deep and hidden law which serves as a bond of union
between one class of facts and another. As, in natural sci-
ence, superficial resemblances are disregarded, and, by a
law of association which it is difficult for the uninitiated to
recognize, the strawberry, the mountain-ash, the black-
berry, and the apple are placed side by side in the same
MATTHEW XXIV. 36-51. 421
family, so in our Saviour's words facts are sometimes
grouped together which have little or no superficial resem-
blance, though they are vitally connected as representa-
tives of the same law. In this way language is employed
in describing one class of facts, which applies with equal
force to other and kindred, though apparently dissimilar,
classes of facts. Almost all the language on which we have
been commenting in this chapter, and which describes with
such terrific power the events connected with the overthrow
of the Jewish ritual and nation, designates with great force
the general law of retribution in its application to our race ;
and with most readers this last is the only lesson which it
teaches. On the other hand, when the subject is really
changed, as it is in verse 36, from one to another kindred
class of facts, those two classes of facts are in the mind and
the language of Jesus bound together so closely, by the same
uniting law, that only a slight and indefinite notice is given
of the transition, and it is only by the closest attention that
we can discover precisely where the change has taken
place.
Jesus has just spoken, 36, of the uncertainty of ''that day
and hour," and would make this uncertainty a reason for
watchfulness to all. As, in the time of Noah, the flood came
unexpectedly upon a world absorbed in other cares, so shall
the coming of the Son of man be. No man can tell when his
"day" shall come. " Then two men shall be in the field; one
is taken, one is left. Two women grinding at the mill, turn-
ing with their hands the same stone ; one is taken, one is left.
"Watch, therefore, for ye know not what day your Lord doth
come." How could this language apply to the destruction of
Jerusalem ? Jesus has already, 15,16, pointed out the sign by
which his followers are to be saved from that catastrophe.
In the 34th verse he has limited the time within which that
series of events is to take place. But the same idea of a di-
vine retribution, which is there characterized as the coming
of the Son of man, is here carried out in the divine retribu-
36
422 MATTHEW XXIV.
tion which awaits every man at the close of this mortal life,
and which is to him the coming of the Son of man in judg-
ment, when, as St. Paul describes it, " we must all appear
before the judgment-seat of Christ." We are not all called
at once. Even with those most intimately connected, " one
is taken, one is left." No man knoweth when the call shall
be made to him. How perfectly and with what a powerful
warning does this language hold up before us the uncer-
tainty of life, and the certainty of judgment ! No philo-
sophical precision of speech could address itself to the heart
with such truth and power. The same idea is dwelt ujK)n
and enforced with still greater distinctness in the ensuing par-
ables. The parable which closes this chapter, and which
applies to "that " unknown "hour" which comes to all, is
too direct and explicit in its appeal to each soul to allow of
any labored comment. It applies to our conduct here as a
preparation for that solemn moment when the Son of man
shall come to each one of us at the close of our mortal la-
bors, and the interests of this world shall be lost in the retri-
butions of the world to come. He comes, first, to every soul
in the offers of mercy and salvation which he makes. He
comes to all, when they receive him, and strive to obey
him, with loving and believing hearts. His final coming to
each one is when he shall call us to account for the use that
we have made of his gifts.
Conclusion.
We have endeavored to explain this remarkable prediction
of our Saviour. We have shown how the part of it which
applied to " that generation " was fulfilled, not literally per-
haps in all its parts, but exactly in accordance with its spirit.
And this is the way in which we are to interpret and apply,
not only the highest prophecy, but the highest poetry, the
profoundest inductions of philosophy, and the grandest gen-
eralizations of transcendental mathematics. The literal,
MATTHEW XXIV. 423
precise interpretation of a single expression is often false,
and false in proportion to the magnitude of the truth which
soars up in its majestic proportions through such words and
images as our human forms of speech and thought may fur-
nish. Any one may see that a literal, prosaic interpreta-
tion of King Lear, or Paradise Lost, sentence by sentence,
in order to show precisely what facts are proved by them,
would do no sort of justice to the grander movements of soul
which fill out with their inspiration every part of those won-
derful works. Far more in the prophetic words of our Sav-
iour, which so far surpass all the other words that have ever
been spoken, it is the letter that killeth. No one, whether
as the advocate or the enemy of our faith, can understand
them, unless he enter beneath the letter into the spirit, and
thus catch as he may something of the inspiration, the large-
ness of thought and affluence of life, which they are fitted to
awaken and impart. The humble inquirer, entering thus
into the heart of our Saviour's words that he may cherish
their spirit and obey their commands, will come nearer to the
essential truth which they are designed to teach, than the
ablest scholar, who, without religious sympathies, or with a
superstitious regard to the letter, seeks to analyze them by
applying critically, sentence by sentence, the rules of the
grammar and lexicon.
NOTES.
And Jesus went out, and departed from the temple ; and his
disciples came to him, for to show him the buildings of the
1. to show him the build- destruction of the temple could ap-
ings] They were amazed at his ply to an event so utterly improba-
words, and, wondering whetlier ble as that, they point out to him
they could have understood him the massive structures within the
aright, instead of asking directly sacred enclosure, and say, " Master,
whether what he had said of tlie see what manner of stones and
424
MATTHEW XXIV.
temple. And Jesus said unto them, See ye not all these 2
things ? verily, I say unto you, there shall not be left here one
stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down. And 3
as he sat upon the Mount of Olives, the disciples came unto
him privately, saying. Tell us, when shall these things be ? and
what shall be the sign of thy coming, and of the end of the
what manner of buildings." (Mark
xiii. 1.) The temple had been built
by Herod the Great, who employed
18,000 men on the work for nine
years before the building could be
used at all. Additions were contin-
ually making afterwards till A. n.
64. It was first occupied about
eight years before the birth of
Jesus; but as the work was still
going on, it might be said to Jesus
by the Jews, as in John ii. 20, that
it had then been forty and six years
in building. Sixteen years added to
thirty — the age of Jesus at that
time — would make the forty-six.
Some of the stones employed in the
building are represented by Jose-
phus as more than 70 feet long, 10
wide, and 8 high. Even Tacitus,
accustomed as he was to the impe-
rial wealth and grandeur of Roman
architecture, speaks of the temple
as of unmeasured opulence, " im-
mensae opulentife templum."
2. there shall not be left
here one stone upon another]
According to Josephus (.Jewish
Wars, Vll. 1. 1), the Roman general
gave orders to demolish the entire
city and temple, .except three tow-
ers, which were left to show poster-
ity what kind of a city it had been.
"But for all the rest of the wall,"
he says, " it was so completely ^lev-
elled with the ground by those that
dug it up to the foundation, that
there was nothing left to make
those who came thither believe it
had ever been inhabited."
3. And as he sat upon the
Mount of Olives] Opposite to
Jerusalem, and probably in full
view of the temple, on which the
light of the moon, then nearly
full, would shine. when
shall these things be?] The
question was put privately by four
of the disciples (Mark xiii". 3).
and what shall be the sign
of thy coming, and of the end
of the -world?] The fulfilment of
the prediction, the coming of the
Son of man, and the end of the
world, i. e. the consummation of the
ceon, are here put together as belong-
ing to the same family of events.
In this instance they primarily and
distinctly refer to the destruction of
Jerusalem, the dispersion of the
Jewish people, and the passing away
of the Mosaic dispensation as the
authorized religion of the land.
The disciples who put the question
to Jesus undoubtedly supposed that
his great but earthfv kingdom was
then to be established in Judaea,
and that when he came to close the
old dispensation, (in the end of the
world, — the consummation of the
ceon,) he would commence his kingly
reign upon the earth, clothed with
authority and power like other
kings, only with a greater majesty
and a more universal dominion. In
his reply he uses the terms, coming
of' the Son of man, the end, first in
reference to the destruction of Jeru-
salem, but also, according to his
usual manner, in such a way as to
show forth other and grander truths.
The retribution which was at length
to fall upon the Jews, the end of
their dispensation, and the coming
of the Son of man in judgment to
them, were also terms' equally ap-
?licable to every human being,
'he images here used to describe a
particular case so set forth a uni-
versal principle of divine retribu-
tion, that in almost every instance
they may be applied now" to men in
their individiial experiences. The
way in which the specific language
of .Jesus is made to embody princi-
ples of iniiversal application is more
marvellous than any miracle which
he wrought. But because his Ian-
MATTHEW XXIV.
425
4 world ? And Jesus answered and said unto them, Take heed
6 that no man deceive you. For many shall come in my name,
6 saying, I am Christ ; and shall deceive many. And ye shall
hear of wars, and rumors of wars : see that ye be not troubled ;
for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet.
7 For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against
kingdom ; and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and
8 earthquakes, in divers places. All these are the beginning of
9 sorrows. Then shall they deliver you up to be afflicted, and
shall kill you ; and ye shall be hated of all nations for my
10 name's sake. And then shall many be offended ; and shall
11 betray one another, and shall hate one another. And many
12 false prophets shall rise, and shall deceive many. And because
13 iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall Wax cold. But
he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved.
14 And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the
world, for a witness unto all nations ; and then shall the end
15 come. When ye, therefore, shall see the abomination of
desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, stand in the holy
16 place, (whoso readeth, let him understand,) then let them which
guage is so overcharged with mean-
ing, reaching out in every direction,
it is exceedingly difficult in any
single instance to do justice to its
fulness bv any one specific interpre-
tation. iVe must bear this in mind,
especially in onr attempts to under-
stand a vast, sublime, and compre-
hensive discourse like this, which
takes up almost as much space in
the Gospels as the Sermon on the
Mount, and which, if the whole of
it were confined to the destruction
of Jerusalem. Avould occupy a place
wholly out of proportion to its im-
portance in the records of a divine
and universal religion.
4. Take heed that no man
deceive you] Calamities may
come, many and fearful, — impos-
tors, mmors of wars, famines and
earthquakes, — but these are only
the preliminary symptoms, — the
beginning of those birth-pangs by
which the regeneration, the birth of
the new world or dispensation, is to
be accomplished. 13. he
that shall endure unto the
36*
end] This may refer to the escape
from impending death of the Chris-
tians, who remembered these warn-
ings, and held out to the end in their
fidelity to Christ. But the language
applies with equal force to the re-
Avard of fidelity which shall crown
with salvation every one who con-
tinues faithfully to the end.
14. in all the world] throughout
the Roman empire, or the known and
habitable world. In consequence of
the unsettled state of Palestine, and
the ]>ersecutions there, the mini^^ters
of Christ went abroad, more than
they otherwise might have done,
among all nations, — into Asia Mi-
nor, and the remote P^ast, into Af-
rica, and through Europe to the
western boundaries of Spain.
15. stand in the holy place] in
a holy place. There is no article.
The holy place would denote the
enclosures of the temple. But a
holy place might be outside of the
city ; e. g. on the Mount of Olives,
wliich was occupied by Roman
troops previously to the destruction
42&
MATTHEW XXIV.
be in Judaea flee into the mountains ; let him which is on the 17
house-top not come down to take anything out of his house ;
neither let him which is in the field return back to take his is
clothes. And woe unto them that are with child, and to them 19
that give suck, in those days ! But pray ye that your flight be 20
not in the winter, neither on the sabbath-day. For then shall 21
be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the
world to this time, no, nor ever shall be. And except those 22
days should be shortened, there should no flesh be saved ; but
for the elect's sake those days shall be shortened. Then if 23
any man shall say unto you, Lo, here is Christ, or there ; be-
lieve it not. For there shall arise false Christs, and false 24
prophets, and shall show great signs and wonders, insomuch
of the city. whoso read-
eth, let him understand! Mat-
thew probably wrote his Gospel on
the eve of the events here foretold ;
and it is supposed that he inserted
these words to call the attention of
his readers to the sign here indi-
cated, and thus warn them of the
ap])roaching dangers. Mark inserts
the same caution. 17. on
the house-top] The roofs being
flat, those who were on them in
the city could pass from house to
house, and thus escape over the
walls. The expression, however, is
designed merely to indicate the ne-
cessity of great haste.
19. And woe unto them] Here
is an instance of our Saviour's ten-
der, thoughtful, and compassionate
sympathy for women. The expres-
sion," woe unto them, uttered here
with such a depth of commisera-
tion, may also nave been spoken
more in sorrow than in anger, even
when it occurs in his most terrible
denunciations, as, for example, in
the twenty-third chapter.
22. for the elect's sake] On
their account. God does interfere to
change the direction of human af-
fairs and shorten the season of ter-
rible calamities on account of his
elect, — of those Avho endear them-
selves to him by their fidelity.
24. there shall arise false
Christs] " The nearer the Jews
were to destruction, the more did
these impostors multiply, and the
more easy credit did they find with
those who were willing to have
their miseries softened by hope.
Even during the conflagration of
the temple, a false prophet encour-
aged the people with pretended mi-
raculoas signs of deliverance. The
Jewish Christians themselves were
very unwilling to give up all liope
of deliverance from their subjection
to the Romans: this accounts for
the language of Christ, when he
speaks of the danger which the
elect were in of being deceived by
these impostors; and shows his
wisdom and goodness in forewarn-
ing them against trusting to the fal-
lacious promises of persons who af-
firmed confidently that they were
divinely raised up, to accomplish
such a deliverance." Kenrick.
great signs and wonders]
signs, to convince and mislead them ;
wonders, or portents and prodigies,
to perplex and terrify them. In
times of great public commotion
and alarm, men's hearts failing
them for fear because of the uni-
versal insecurity and distress, they
feel that desperate measiu'es are
rendered necessary by the desper-
ate condition of affairs. When not
only governments are losing their
authority, and laws and rufers are
hated and rebelled against, but the
whole social fabric is breaking up;
when a imiversai distrust succeeds
MATTHEW XXIV.
427.
25 that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect. Be-
26 hold, I have told you before. Wherefore, if they shall say
unto you, Behold, he is in the desert ; go not forth : Behohl,
27 he is in the secret chambers ; believe it not. For as the light-
ning Cometh out of the east, and shineth even unto the west,
28 so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. For whereso-
to confidence in the family relations,
and faith is dying out, — then, in tlie
convulsive throes and agitations of
society, bold, bad men are in the
ascendant ; impostors and deceiv-
ers reign amid the general wreck
of earthly interests and heavenly
hopes; with an uisane and frantic
desperation men rush into any ex-
travagant delusions that are impu-
dent enough to promise relief. The
most reckless credulity, at such
times, succeeds to an utter want of
faith, in sudden and frenzied alter-
nations. The dissolution of society,
the disintegration of all the ele-
ments of social, moral, and relig-
ious influence, the universal break-
ing up, which comes as " the end
of the world " {(rvvTeXeia tgv ala-
vos) to the old and long established
order of things, are marked by these
wild and terrific changes and^ exag-
gerations. It was so in the break-
ing up of the Jewish polity. It
was so in Rome, where at about
the same time, amid similar com-
motions and catastrophes in the
moral and social condition of the
people, the dissolution of the old
civilization was preparing a way
for the introduction of higher ideas
in the coming of the Son of man.
But there never was a period in the
lloman history when such extrava-
gances of superstitious credulity, ac-
companied by all the worst sorts of
religious imposture, prevailed, as in
that unbelieving and godless age.
Against such times and dangers,
though they had not begun to show
themselves' when he spoke, Jesus
uttered these distinct and solemn
warnings. With his profound and
prophetic msight into the human
soul, and into the moral relations of
cause and effect, he saw then the
seeds of impiety and superstition,
credulity and unbelief, which must
bring forth such a harvest of decep-
tion and crime, and thus, in the
overthrow of the past, prepare the
way for the uitroduction of the new
dispensation. Compare with this
the prophecies (before quoted) in
the last two chapters of Malachi;
and the destructive and warlike
processes by which the kingdom
spoken of in the one hundred and
tenth Psalm was to be established.
See note, xxiii. 39.
26. Wherefore, if they shall
say unto you] " Christ here men-
tions the very places where these
deceivers would appear, and Jose-
phus tells us, that impostors, under
pretence of a divine inspiration, en-
deavored to introduce novelty and
change, and raised the common
people to such a degree of mad-
ness, that they drew them fortli
into the desert, pretending that God
would there make them see the to-
kens of liberty, i. e. of their being
rescued from the Roman yoke. He
also mentions some who appeared
in secret chambers, or places of se-
curity in the city." Kenrick.
27. so shall also the
coming of the Son of man
be] He was to come in judgment
to the Jews, — the end of the world
to them, for their woj-ld, age, or dis-
pensation was now to end, — but at
the same time he was to come in
his religion, with a new world, age,
or dispensation, to those who would
receive him. Herein his coming
then was an emblem of his finiU
coming to all, — in judgment and
with the loss of all that they most
valued to the unfaithful and unbe-
lieving, to those who have lived
only for this world ; — with a new
world of life and joy to the penitent
and the faithful who beUeve iu him.
.428
MATTHEW XXIV.
ever the carcass is, there will the eagles be gathered together. -
• Immediately after the tribulation of those days shall the 29
sun be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and
the stars shall fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens
shall be shaken. And then shall appear the sign of the Son 30
of man in heaven ; and then shall all the tribes of the earth
mourn, and they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds
of heaven, with power and great glory. And he shall send his 31
angels with a great sound of a trumpet ; and they shall gather
29. Immediately after
the tribulation of those days
shall the sun be darkened]
" ' A day of darkness ' is an obvious
figure for ' a day of distress.' Hence,
in the Oriental style, a time of utter
calamity, the destruction of a na-
tion, is described by the extinction
of the sun, and the other lights of
heaven. Thus Isaiah (xiii, 9,
10), in speaking of the destruction
of Babylon, says : ' Behold, the day
of Jehovah is"^ coming, cruel with
wrath and fierce anger, to lay the
land desolate and to destroy its
sinners out of it. For the stars
of heaven and its constellations
shall not give their light, and the
sun shall be darkened in his going
forth, and the moon shall not cause
her light to shine.' So also Ezekiel,
describing the fall of Egypt (xxxii.
7, 8)." Norton's Translatiou of the
Gospels, II. o28.
30. And then shall appear the
sign of the Son of man in
heaven] The iulfilment of the
events here predicted would be a
sign of the Son of man in heaven;
and while all the tribes of the land
— not of the earth — should smite
their breasts and mourn, they would
recognize in these calamities, which
he had foretold as the downfall of
their.polity and their nation, the evi-
dence of his truth, and in them would
see him coming as on the clouds of
heaven, and with power and great
glory, to establish the kingdom of
heaven on earth. in the
clouds of heaven] This was an
image familiar to the Jews, and
was perhaps derived, in the first
instance, from the pillar of cloud
which went before them in the wil-
derness as an emblem of God's
providential care aud presence.
" The glory of the Lord appeared
in the cloud." (Ex. xvi. 10.) God
" called unto Moses out of the midst
of the cloud." (Ex. xxiv. 16.) From
these and similar expressions often
repeated in the Pentateuch, the idea
of any special act of Divine inter-
ference with human aff\\irs would
naturally clothe itself in imagery of
this sort. Thus when Isaiah (xix.
1) would represent God as about
to punish the Egyptians, he says,
" Behold, the Lord rideth upon a
swift cloud, and shall come into
Egypt." The language of course
was figurative. God was not rep-
resented as visibly or actually rid-
ing on a cloud, ^o in the passage
before us, this image of impressive
grandeur is employed to describe
the majesty of the Son of man
when he shall come in judgment to
the Jews, i. e. in the power of those
divine principles of justice, which,
as embodied in his religion, were
then to be enforced, and by which
the way Avas to be prepared for the
wide and speedy establishment of
the kingdom of heaven, i. e. of his
religion on the earth.
31. And he shall send his
angels] Literally, his mtssengers.
In the Gospels the word anyel is
almost always used to denote heav-
enly beings. But there are excep-
tions. " And when the messengers
[angels] of John had departed."
(Luke vii. 24.) "This is he of
whom it is written, Behold, I send
my messenger [cingel] before thy
face." (Luke vii. 27.) When Jesus
was going up to Jerusalem, he
" sent messengers [angeJs] before
MATTHEW XXIV.
429
together his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven
32 to the other. Now learn a parable of the fig-tree ; when
his branch is yet tender and putteth forth leaves, ye know that
33 summer is nigh. So likewise ye, when ye shall see all these
34 things, know that it is near, even at the doors. Verily I say
unto you, this generation shall not pass till all these things be
35 fulfilled. Heaven and earth shall pass away ; but my words
36 shall not pass away. But of that day and hour knoweth no
his face." (Luke ix. 52.) These
passages are all from Luke. In the
other Gospels there is, we believe,
no instance of a similar use of the
word, iinless in the case before us.
In the Apocalypse (ii. 1, 8, 18; iii.
1) the expression '■'■angel of the
church" is evidently applied to the
minister or bishop of the church.
And this, we suppose, is the mean-
ing of the word in the passage be-
fore us. When the hitherto pow-
erful elements, of Jewish hostility
should be overthrown and destroyed,
and the way open everywhere for
the more rapid dift'usion of the Gos-
pel, the Son of man would send
forth his messengers with a great
sound of a tmnipet — the trumpet
was used by the Jews to call relig-
ious assemblies together — as her-
alds of salvation, to gather together
his chosen ones, i. e. those who
would hear and obey the call, from
every quarter under heaven. They
who Avere ready to hear and obey
would thus be gathered into his
church. 32. Now learn
a parable of the fig-tree] " On
my first arrival in the southern part
of Syria, near the end of March,
most of the fruit-trees were clothed
with foliage, and in blossom. The
fig-tree, on the contrary, was much
behind them in this respect, for the
leaves of this tree do not make their
appearance till comparatively late
in the season. As the spring is so
f'Av advanced before the leaves of the
fig-tree begin to appear, (the early
fruit, indeed, comes first,) a person
may be sure, when he beholds this
sign, that summer is at hand."
Hackett. 33. know that
it is near] When ye shall see all
these signs fulfilled, then know that
it — the coming of the Son of man
in the destruction of Jerusalem —
is near, nay, is at your very doors.
34. This generation
shall not pass] In order to im-
press it upon his disciples' minds
that he was not speaking of some
event in the remote and indefinite
future, he fixes the time, as in Matf.
xvi. 28, within the lifetime of some
of those who belonged to that gen-
eration. This definite limitation of
time confines the signs thus far men-
tioned to a period harmonizing with
their consiimmation in the destruc-
tion of Jerusalem and the events
immediately preceding and follow-
ing it. At the same time, we must
admit that much of the language,
which Avas unquestionably spoken
with a specific reference to that
class of events, may be read now
with something of a personal appli-
cation to ourselves. 36. But
of that day and hour] The
obvious interpretation of this pas-
sage is, that though all these things
shall take place before the present
generation shall pass away, yet no
one knows the precise day and hour
of their fulfilment. But there is
another interpretation which seems
to us more in accordance with our
Saviour's usual method of instruc-
tion, mingling together as he often
does things temporal and things
etei-nal, and passing almost insensi-
bly from the one order of facts and
events to the other. The language
which heretofore,in pointing to a sin-
gle event, overflows Avith thoudits
and images that reach beyond it,
here ceases to dAvell on the single
instance of divine retribution as tlie
principal topic, and, touching only
incidentally on circumstances cou-
430
MATTHEW XXIV.
man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only. But 37
as the days of Noe were, so shall also the coming of the Son of
man be. For as in the days that were before the flood they 38
were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage,
until the day that Noe entered into the ark, and knew not until 39
the flood came and took them all away ; so shall also the com-
ing of the Son of man be. Then shall two be in the field ; 40
the one shall be taken, and the other left. Two women shall 41
be grinding at the mill ;- the one shall be taken, and the other
left. Watch, therefore, for ye know not what hour your Lord 42
nected with it, holds up, in the
background, the termination of our
human and mortal life, and the ret-
ributions which shall then succeed.
TJiie transition from the specific to
the universal is indicated, if not
distinctly announced, by the words
employed. " The Lord,'" says Ben-
gel, " shows the time of the'temple
and of the city in ver. 32 - 34 ; he
denies in this verse that the day
and hour of the world [to each
soul] are known. The particle Se,
but^ implies a contrast: the pro-
nouns ravra, these, avTT], this, refer
to events close at hand ; the pronoun
cKeipTjS, that, to that which is dis-
tant." These things of which I
have been speaking shall all take
place in the present generation ; but
of tliat day and hour [when the Son
of man in a still higher sense shall
come] no one knoweth. That day
is several times used in this sense.
" In that day many shall say to me,
Lord, Lord, did we not pi-ophesy in
thy name, &c. And then will I
confess to them, I never knew you;
depart from me, ye workers of in-
iquity." (Matt. vii. 22, 23.) " Hence-
forth there is laid up for me a crown
of righteousness, which the Lord,
the righteous judge, shall give me
at that day." (2 Tim. iv. 8.) Some
commentators suppose that there is
no such transition as we have here
suggested, but that the whole dis-
course of our Saviour down to the
end of the twenty-fifth chapter re-
lates to the destruction of Jerusalem.
It requires much ingenuity to apply
all his words to that subject, aud
the majestic images which he em-
ploys seem to us degraded by such
a limitjition of their meaning. But
why, if he passed from one subject
to the other, did he not more dis-
tinctly indicate the point of transi-
tion? We can only say, 1. that
there is what seems to us an indica-
tion of such a transition; and 2.
that it was not his habit to mark,
like a modern logician, the different
topics of his discourse, especially
when, as in this case, they were, to
his mind, only different phases of
the same thought or illustrations of
the same principle. To his wonder-
ful intuitive perceptions, the partic-
ular included the universal. Partic-
ular facts were held up as illustra-
tions of general principles, and facts
which we from our superficial habits
of thought regard as wholly distinct
were grouped together by him, be-
cause the same underlying principle
reaches through them all and makes
them parts of the same series. It
is only by going down to this under-
lying thought that we can learn the
close logical connection by which
the different parts of his discourses
are bound together. 42.
Watch, therefore] "You may
ask why those who were so far
distant from the last day were ex-
horted to watchfulness on that
ground. I answer, — 1. The remote-
ness of the event had not been in-
dicated to them. 2. Those who
are alive at any particular time
represent those who will be alive
at the end of the world. 3. Tha
principle of the divine judgments,
and of the uncertainty of the hour
MATTHEW XXIV. 431
43 doth come. But know this, that, if the goodman of the house
had known in what watch the thief woukl come, he would have
watched, and would not have suffered his house to be broken
44 up. Therefore be ye also ready ; for in such an hour as ye
45 think not, the Son of man cometh. Who then is a faithful
and wise servant, whom his lord hath made ruler over his
46 household, to give them meat in due season ? Blessed is that
servant whom his lord, when he cometh, shall find so doino-.*
47 Verily, I say unto you, that he shall make him ruler over all
48 his goods. But and if that evil servant shall say in his heart,
49 My lord delayeth his coming ; and shall begin to smite his
60 fellow-servants, and to eat and drink with the drunken ; the
lord of that servant shall come in a day when he looketh not
51 for him, and in an hour that he is not aware of; and shall cut
him asunder, and appoint him his portion with the hypocrites ;
there shall be weeping, and gnashing of teeth.
of death, resembles in every age clay, might be entered with little
that of the last day; and the hour difficulty by digging through tlie
of death is equivalent to the liour walls. See note, vi. 19. 45.
of resurrection and judgment, as Who then is a faithful] the
thoudi no time had been inter- ftiithful and wise sei*vant. 51.
posed. 4. The feeling of the godly, and shall cut him asunder]
which stretches forward to meet cut him in pieces, " a cniel kind of
the Lord, is the same, whether punishment practised among the
with the longest or the shortest Hebrews and other ancient nations."
expectation." Bengel. To us who Here it is tised figm-atively, to de-
believe that the day of each one's note a severe punishment. " It may
death is the day also of his resur- mean to cut off or separate. " He
rection and judgment, these re- will cut him off [from his present
marks come with greater force associates] and assign him his por-
tlian to Bengel, who believed as tion with the hypocrites."
Martha did (John xi. 24) before the hypocrites] This word
Jesus had taught her better, that is used by Jesus to denote those
we " shall rise again in the resur- who have incurred the greatest
rection at the last day." 43. possible guilt, making virtue and
his house to be broken up] religion a cloak for their hideous
dtopvy^vai, to be dug through. The crimes against God and man.
houses, being built of stones and
432 MATTHEW XXV. 1-13.
/
CHAPTER XXy.
Purpose of these Parables.
The conclusions at which we arrived in the last chapter
make the interpretation of the present chapter easy. From
the judgments of God which are represented by the coming
of the Son of man in the retributions which fell on the
Jewish city and people, the .transition (xxiv. 36) is nat-
ural to the judgments of God which are represented by
the coming of the Son of man in the retributions which
await each individual soul when its period of earthly proba-
tion is ended. The twenty-fourth and twenty-fifth chapters
are continuous parts of the same discourse, which treats of
the coming of the Son of man in the retributions of God
on a wicked city and people, on each individual soul at the
close of its earthly life, and on all the nations of men. The
momentous thought which presents itself to any one who
carefully reads the parables here given, is unquestionably
that which they were intended to teach. The impression
which they make as a whole is the true one, and it ought
not to be weakened or disturbed by any minute analysis of
the parts. One after another, by images the most awful
that can be presented to the soul, they would set before us,
in their most personal and practical form, the principles of a
divine retribution, and thus keep alive in us a sense of
solemn accountability to God, and the need of constant
diligence and watchfulness in our calhng.
Parable of the Virgins.
1-13. In xxiv. 37-51 we are exhorted to watch,
because we know not how soon our Lord will come ; and
MATTHEW XXV. 1-13. 433
here, by the example of the wise and foolish virgins, we
are taught not only to be ready now, but to make provision
also for the future ; for we know not how long we may have
to wait for his coming. They who are, represented by the
wise virgins " foresee," says Trench, " that they may have
a long life to live of toil and self-denial, before they are
called to cease from their labors, before the kingdom shall
come unto them ; — and consequently feel that it is not a few
excited feelings which will carry them successfully through
all this. They feel that principles as well as feelings must
be engaged in the work, — that their first good impulses and
desires will carry them but a very little way, unless they be
revived, strengthened, and purified by a continual supply of
the Spirit of God. If the bridegroom were to come at once,
perhaps it might be another thing, but their wisdom is, that,
since it may possibly be otherwise, they see their need of
making provision against the contingency." Another dis-
tinction between this and the previous parable is, that in
that acts of wickedness are reproved ; here, a lack of the
Christian virtues, — not bad oil, but no oik There is little
reserved power for the unknown contingencies that may
arise. " By the lighted lamps," says Gerhard, " may be
understood the. external profession and outward form of
piety," as well as the sudden emotions connected with it ;
"• by the oil in the vessels, the inward righteousness of the
heart, true faith, sincere love, watchfulness, and prudence,
which, though unnoticed by man, are God's alone." With
what a solemn emphasis do the words, " and the door was
shut," fall upon the heart ! The privilege, whatever it may
be, which we have neglected to prepare ourselves to improve,
is closed against us. Thus day after day the door is shut ;
and if at its close the whole of life has failed of its great
pui'pose in regard to us, its privileges are all withdrawn,
the door is shut, and we are left outside in darkness and
37
434 MATTHEW XXV. 14-30.
Parable of the Talents.
14-30. This parable goes a step further. Not merely
must we abstain from cruel and wicked acts ; not merely
must we have a reserved fund of religious principle for
future emergencies ; but we must increase that fund by con-
stant fidelity in the use of it. Not only are we accountable
for what has been given to us, but also for the gain which
we might secure by using it with diligence and care. God
provides us with opportunities according to our several
abilities. These opportunities are really ours only as we
avail ourselves of them. He who neglected to use the one
talent had not even that. The great law of our nature and
of retributive justice here laid down is, — 1. that we cannot
really continue to possess any one of God's gifts, except so
far as we faithfully exercise, appropriate, and improve it ;
and, 2. that we are accountable, not for the amount that we
have gained, but for our diligence and fidelity in the use of
what has been entrusted to us. It is not, Well done, good
and successful, but good and faithful servant. He who had
gained five, arid he who had gained two talents, are in the
same terms welcomed to the joy of their Lord. And he
who came with his one talent was condemned, not because
he had been unfortunate, but because, harboring evil
thoughts towards his lord, he had shown himself a wicked
and slothful servant in the use he had made of the talent
intrusted to him. Verses 25 - 28 show how an evil dispo-
sition of mind and heart lies at the bottom of a sluggish and
unfaithful life. The want of opportunity is oftener the fault
than the misfortune of those who resort to it as an excuse
for their evil conduct ; and therefore it can only aggravate
their condemnation.
Parable of the Sheep and the Goats.
31-46. Thus far this world has been in the foreground,
its characters and acts visibly ripening for the judgments
MATTHEW XXV. 31-46. 4oO
which are represented as taking place at the coming of tlie
Son of man. Here the higher world is brought forward,
and the actions of this mortal life, the deeds done in the
body, lie in the background, and appear only in their results.
Not the scenes and events of tliis life, hastening to judg-
ment, .but the judgments which await them in another world,
are foremost in the picture. Heretofore the mind has dwelt
on individual cases, — the wicked city and people, the cruel
servant, the ten virgins, the three servants to whom the
different talents were intrusted ; but now, by one majestic
sweep of thought, all individual cases from all ages and
nations are brought together, and the view is the most awful
and sublime that has ever been presented in human lan-
guage. " But when the Son of man shall come in his
glory, and all the angels with him, then shall he sit on the
throne of his glory, and before him shall be gathered all the
nations." So, 2 Cor. v. 10 : " For we must all appear
before the judgment-seat of Christ, that every one may
receive according to what he hath done in the body, whether
it be good or bad." So again. Rev. xx. 12:" And I saw
the dead, small and great, stand before God ; and the books
were opened." The great fact that every soul shall here-
after meet a retribution in accordance with its life here, is
thus set before us in language the most solemn and emphatic.
And the grounds on which the sentence rests, as in Matt,
vii. 22, 23, are not outward professions or forms of belief,
but the principles of holiness and love manifested on earth,
though in ways and acts obscure and unrecognized by
man. He who sits upon the throne of judgment identifies
himself with every one of his suifering brethren, and in the
great day of account will acknowledge any act of kindness
done to the least of them as if it had been done to him.
Both righteous and wicked are filled with amazement and
surprise ; but not the less, therefore, shall the words of
Christ stand ; and the inward life of all, as revealed to him
in their conduct, shall go on working out for each one the
436 MATTHEW XXY. 31-46.
awards of eternal justice. Now that the true character of
that life is fully manifested in the light of divine truth, or
the all-enlightening presence of Christ, it fixes its stamp on
every soul, and divides them even as a shepherd separates
his sheep from the goats. No longer united by ties of kin-
dred, the bonds of neighborhood, or the necessities gf our
mortal condition, they are separated from one another, and
drawn by the very affinities of their nature, these into
eternal punishment, but the righteous into life eternal.
Eternal, — an epithet applying to the new era, the more
advanced condition of being on which they have entered,
and applying also to the elements or principles of spiritual
life, which are unfolded and exercised here on earth, and
which then will be all in all.
The great facts of the Divine retribution — the eternal
bliss into which the righteous are drawn up, and the eternal
woe into which the wicked are cast down — are too plainly
set forth to be the subject of criticism. These central and
indisputable facts stand unaffected by any just principles of
criticism. The images of uplifting or appalling grandeur
in which they are enveloj^ed cannot act too powerfully on
the imagination and the heart of man. The obscurity, in
which the particulars of our future being are left, was un- .
doubtedly intentional on the part of our Saviour. For
though the whole matter in its blissful or terrible details
may have been disclosed to him, he knew that we, in our
present stage of existence, could not comprehend them, and
would only be confounded or misled by any language in
which they might be described. We cannot understand,
except in a general way, that which in all its particulars
must lie so far beyond all our experience here.
For this reason, we attempt no minute definition or
analysis of the precise images or language employed in this
grand and awful picture of the retributions of eternity. We
take no notice of the doctrine of a first and a second resur-
rection, which some commentators think they find intimated
MATTHEW XXV. 31-46. 437
here. And we should gladly avoid all other disputed
doctrines involved in the criticism, were it not for the disas-
trous hold which some of them have taken on the popular
mmd.
The General Resurrection and Day of Judgment.
Does Jesus here, 31-46, teach that some specific day,
separate from that of each man's death, is to be set apart for
the general and simultaneous resurrection and judgment of
all the tribes and generations of men ? His language does
not, we think, require any such interpretation. In the
previous parables he has been singling out individual cases
of sudden judgment. But lest they should leave upon the
mind an idea of a partial and imperfect retribution, which
some men might escape, he here in one awful picture repre-
sents all men of all nations and times as standing before
him to undergo the searching ordeal which in the previous
parables has been applied to individual souls. Nothing is
said or intimated in regard to a resurrection of the body, or
the simultaneous resurrection of the whole race. The
meaning of the language is : Not one, or a few, like those
already specified, shall meet the Son of man and be judged
by him at his coming, but all the nations and generations of
men shall be gathered before him in his glory, to receive
from him — in the words which come from him as the
great essential law of God's kingdom — the sentence of joy
or woe which awaits them as they enter on their eternal
state of being.
It will not do to bind down to a literal exactness language
like this, intensified with emotion and abounding in the
sublimest figures of speech. But even when construed in
its stricter sense, the language here does not imply what is
usually understood by the day of judgment. Suppose that
every soul, when its earthly course is ended and its earthly
garments laid aside, goes directly into the presence of Christ
37*
438 MATTHEW XXV. 31-46.
and his angels, to be judged according to the principles of
life or death which it has cherished here, and which are
there to work out their solemn retributions. In this individ-
ual manifestation, or coming of Christ to each individual
soul, is it not strictly true that " all the nations shall be
gathered before him " ? As, in a vast military review, the
armies of an empire pass, company by company, day after
day, before the monarch, each battalion as it comes from its
neighboring barracks or distant campaign, till all at length
have been gathered before him, so in this grander procession
and review of human beings, moment by moment, hour by
hour, year after year, and generation after generation, each
individual soul by itself, in the solemn depths of its own
consciousness, and yet all in one ceaseless succession of
companies^ pass on, till at last all the nations shall be
gathered before him, and separated one from another, as a
shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats.
When we say, the hour will come when all who are on
the earth must die, we do not mean that all shall die at the
same hour. So when it is said, " We must all stand before
the judgment-seat of Christ," or, " When the Son of man
shall come in his glory, all the nations shall be
gathered before him," it is not implied that we shall all
stand before him, or be gathered before him at one and the
same moment. As the coming of the Son of man in mercy
now to each soul is whenever that soul is ready to receive
him, so the coming of Christ in judgment to each one
of us is when we go from this to the next stage of our
existence.
MATTHEW XXV. 439
NOTES.
Then shall the kingdom of heaven be likened unto ten vir-
gins, which took their lamps, and went forth to meet the bride-
2 groom. And five of them were wise, and five were foolish.
3 They that were foolish took their lamps, and took no oil with
4 them. But the wise took oil in their vessels with their lamps.
5 AVhile the bridegroom tarried, they all slumbered and slept.
6 And at midnight there was a cry made, Behold, the bridc-
7 groom Cometh ; go ye out to meet him. Then all those virgins
8 arose, and trimmed their lamps. And the foolish said unto the
9 wise, Give us of your oil, for our lamps are gone out. But
the wise answered, saying, Not so, lest there be not enough
for us and you ; but go ye rather to them that sell, and buy for
10 yourselves. And while they went to buy, the bridegroom
came, and they that were ready went in with him to the mar-
11 riage ; and the door was shut. Afterward came also the other
12 virgins, saying. Lord, Lord, open to us. But he answered
13 and said, Yerily I say unto you, I know you not. AVatch,
therefore, for ye know neither the day nor the hour Avherein
14 the Son of man cometh. For the kinodom of heaven is as a
6. And at midnight] An Ar- as if in the very words of Scrip-
menian wedding is thus described ture, Behold, the bridegroom com-
by a traveller quoted in Livermoi-e"s eth; go ye out to meet him! All
Commentary. "' The large number the persons employed now lighted
of young females who were present their lamps, and i-an with them in
naturally reminded me of the wise their hands to fill up their stations
and foolish virgins in our Saviour's in the procession ; some of them
parable. These being friends of the had lost their lights and were uu-
bride, the virgins, her companions, prepared ; but it Avas then too late to
(Ps. xlv. 14,) had come to meet the seek them, and the cavalcade moved
bridegroom. It is tisual for the forward to the house of the bride,
bridegroom to come at midnight; The bridegroom was carried in the
so that literally ot midnight the cry arms of a friend, and placed on a
is made, Behold, the bridegroom com- superb seat in the midst of the
eth ; go ye out to meet him. But on company, where he sat a short
this occasion the bridegroom tarried ; time, and then went into the house,
it was two o'clock before he ar- the door of which was immediately
rived." 8. are gone out] shut and guarded by Sepoys. I
rather, are going oid. 10. and others expostulated with the
And the door was shut] The door-keepers, but in vain."
following account of a Hindoo wed- 14. the kingdom of heav-
ding by Mr. Ward is also copied en] These words are inserted by
from Mr. Livermore. " After wait- our translators without reason. Jc-
ing two or three hours, at length, sus has been speaking all along of
near midnight, it was amiouuced, the coming of the Son of man, and
440 MATTHEW XXV.
man travelling into a far country, who called his own servants,
and delivered unto them his goods. And unto one he gave five is
talents, to another two, and to another one ; to every man ac-
cording to his several ability ; and straightway took his jour-
ney. Then he that had received the five talents went and i6
traded with the same, and made them other five talents. And 17
likewise he that had received two, he also gained other two.
But he that had received one went and digged in the earth, is
and hid his lord's money. After a long time, the lord of those 19
servants cometh and reckoneth with them. And so he that had 20
received five talents came and brought other five talents, say-
ing, Lord, thou deliveredst unto me five talents ; behold, 1
have gained beside them five talents more. Plis lord said unto 21
him, Well done, thou good and faithful servant ; thou hast
been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over
many things ; enter thou into the joy of thy lord. He also 22
that had received two talents came and said, Lord, thou de-
liveredst unto me two talents ; behold, I have gained two other
talents beside them. His lord said unto him, Well done, 23
good and iaithful servant ; thou hast been faithful over a few
things, I will make thee ruler over many things ; enter thou
into the joy of thy lord. Then he whicli had received the one 24
talent came and said. Lord, I knew thee that thou art an
hard man, reaping where thou hast not sown, and gathering
where thou hast not strawed ; and I was afraid, and went and 25
hid thy talent in the earth : lo, there thou hast that is thine.
that ftxct is the one still to be illus- the end of life, but all along, that
trated. " Watch, therefore, because this reckoning is made, and its
ye know not the day nor the hour: terms enforced, — the diligent and
for it is as a man travelling into a faithful furnished Avith larger op-
far conntvy," &c. ' 15. pnrtnnities, the slnggish and un-
to every man according to his faithfnl deprived of wlaat they once
several ability] =not oppressing had. But in the final summing up,
the servant of small powers with we shall be called to accomit only
opportunities and responsibilities for the use of what we have had.
beyond his strength. And is it not The much or little, if only faithfully
so with us all? We may complain used, will be all the same to us
of the narrow sphere, the small then. 24. I knew thee
opportunities, granted to us; but if that thou art an hard man]
we have the ability to use greater, Here the real character of the
shall we not find tliem ? Our fidel- slothful servant comes out. And
ity and skill in the use of what we how true is the picture ! They who
have to-day will prepare us for neglect the means of success, who
greater opportunities, and them for give way to indolence and refuse
us, to-morrow. It is not merely at to make the required exertions, are
MATTHEW XXV. 441
2(5 His lord- answered and said unto him, Thou wicked and sloth-
ful servant, thou knewest that I reap where I sowed not, and
27 gather where I have not strawed ; thou oughtest therefore to
have put my money to the exchangers, and then at my coming
'28 I should have received mine own with usury. Take therefore
the talent from him, and give it unto him which hath ten talents.
29 For unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have
abundance ; but from him that hath not shall be taken away
30 even that which he hath. And cast ye the unprofitable ser-
vant into outer darkness : there shall be weeping and gnashing
of teeth.
31 When the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all tlie
holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his
33 glory, and before him shall be gathered all nations ; and he
shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth
33 his sheep from the goats ; and he shall set the sheep on his
34 right hand, but the goats on the left. Then shall the King say
unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father,
inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of
35 the world. For I was an hungered, and ye gave me meat;
I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink ; I was a stranger, and ye
36 took me in ; naked, and ye clothed me ; I was sick, and ye
37 visited me ; I was in prison, and ye came unto me. Then
the ones who complain most of the will be the kingdoln of heaven,
hardness of their lot and of the con- but from him that hath
duct of God towards them. not] He had had it; bnt yet, as
26. thou knewest that I he had made no use of it, it was a^
reap where I sowed not] The if he had it not. 30. into
slothful servant is answered on his outer darkness] the outer dark-
own ground. This is made a little ness. A reference again to the
more explicit in Luke xix. 22: feast and joy within, the darkness
" Out of thine own mouth will I and sorrow without. 38.
judge thee." 29. unto Come, ye b'essed of my Fa-
every one that hath shall be ther, inherit the kingdom
given] A re it law of our nature, prepared for you] Bnt not, 41,
tilling out as its complement the ye cursed of my Father ; the curse
other law announced (v. 3, 6 ; they had brought upon themselves.
Luke vi. 20, 21), that in proportion Nefther is it, "41, depart into eter-
a-( we feel our want, will be the sup- nal fire prepared for you, but pre-
ply that is granted. To him that pared for the devil and his angels,
liiith the disposition and the ability i. e. pi'cpared, in the very nature of
to use will be given, that he may things, for what is evil as its natural
have the more abundantly; and at fruit. Not a punishment purposely
the same time they who 7eel their and arbitrarily prepared by God,
wants, and in lowliiiess of spirit are but growing as a necessarv^ conse-
hungering and thirsting after right- quence out of the life which they
eousness, will be filled, and theirs had lived, and the characters they
442
MATTHEW XXV.
shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord when ' saw we
thee an hungered, and fed thee ? or thirsty, and gave thee
drink ? when saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in ? or 38
naked, and clothed thee ? or when saw we thee sick, or in 39
prison, and came unto thee ? And the King shall answer and 40
say unto them, Yerily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have
done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have
done it unto me. Then shaU he say also unto them on the left 4i
hand. Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, pre-
pared for the devil and his angels. For I was an hungered, 42
and ye gave me no meat ; I was thirsty, and ye gave me no
drink ; I was a stranger, and ye took me not in ; naked, and 43
ye clothed me not ; sick, and in prison, and ye visited me not.
Then shall they also answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we 44
thee an hungered, or athirst, or a stranger, or naked, or sick,
or in prison, and did not minister unto thee ? Then shall he 45
had formed. 41. for the
devil and his angels] We have
already given quite as much space
to the subject of demonology as its
importance demands, and would re-
fer the reader interested iq such
things to the remarks which may
be found in chapters iv., viii., and
xiii. The expression here may de-
note a personal being and his agents,
or it may be used only as a personi-
fication of evil, — sin, and those who
are employed as its messengers to
disseminate it. Go ye into the sor-
rows which have been prepared —
not for you — but for sin and its
agents, as its natural and necessary
results. In partaking of sin you
must partake also of the bitter
fruits which it bears. The neces-
sary and awful connection between
sin and sorrow, so that those who
engage in the former must also be
involved in the latter, unless they
repent and leave their wickedness
behind, is the ten-ible fact which is
here annoimced as a part of the
great system of things. The doc-
trine of demons, or of a personal
devil, is not found in the old He-
brew Scriptures; though the word
Satan, an adversary or enemy, is
sometimes used, as m Numbers
xxii. 22; 1 Sam. xxix. 4; 1 Kings
xi. 14. In 1 Chron. xxi. 1 and
Zech. iii. 1, 2, is the first appear-
ance in the Old Testament of Satan
as the evil one, and both these writ-
ings belong probably to a period
not antecedent to the Babylonian
captivity. During the period of
more than five centuries which in-
tervened between that captivity and
the birth of Christ, the minds of the
Jews became imbued with the idea
of demons and a prince of demons,
such as we find in the New Testa-
ment. Traces of these notions may
be found in some of the apocrj'-
phal writings, but the fullest devel-
opment of tlie doctrine is seen in the
Apocalypse of FmocIi, a work which
belonged to that period, which Avas
known and quoted from by some
of the New Testament Avriters
(2 Peter, and Jude 14), but which
was unknown in the Christian
Church for nearly a thousand
years. In 1773 Biiace the trav-
eller brought three copies of it
from Abyssinia, and in 1821 a
translation of it into English was
made bv Richard Laurence, after-
wards Archbishop of Cashel. See
Christian Examiner for May, 1859,
Art. The History and Doctrine of
MATTHEW XXV.
443
answer them, saying, Verily, I say rmto you, inasmuch as ye
46 did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me. And
these shall go away into everlasting punishment ; but the
rifjhteous into life eternal.
the Devil. 46. And
these shall go away into
everlasting punishment ; but
the righteous into lile eter-
nal] iLrerlasting and eternal^ in
this verse and verse 41, are in
Greek the same word altoviov {nio-
nion). For its meaning, see note,
xii. 32. It relates to the condition,
for good or for evil, in which we
are when we pass from this to the
next stage of our existence. As
our earthly or mortal lile relates to
our external mode of being here, so
our eternal life or eternal punish-
ment relates to the s])iritual quali-
ties Avhicli, beginning here, shall
abide with us hereafter, and bear
in us the fruits of righteousness or
sin, which belong to our condition
there, i. e. to our eternal (aionion)
condition. It relates rather to the
nature than the duration of the con-
dition in which we may be placed.
The eternal life here begun shall
enfold the righteous in the splen-
dors of its bliss, and the eternal
death or punishment shall envelop
the ungodly in its ghastly shadows
of sin and shame. " The same
word, ald)ULOv, eternal, is applied
to the punishment of the bad and the
liappiness of the good, and it refers
not at all to duration in months and
years. It means, rather, those op-
posite states of mind froiu which
the idea of time and all its contin-
gencies has been completely elimi-
nated; one lifted up into the eter-
nal glories, the other depressed into
the shadows of eternal gloom. It is
a happiness or disorder, transfused
not from tliis world, but from anoth-
er, and which, therefore, survives
temporal duration and mortal disso-
lution, and exists in sharper con-
trasts than ever, after the fa,shions
of this world have passed away."
Foregleams of Immortality, pp. 129,
130. Bengel in his note on this pas-
sage says, " Eternal signifies that
which reaches and passes the limits
of earthly time.'''' So in his note on
.Rom. xvi. 25, " since the tvorld began,
Xpovois aloyuiois, [during the eter-
nal ages,] from the time when not
only men, but even angels, were
created. The times are denoted,
Avhich with their first commence-
ment as it were touch upon the
previous eternity, and are, so to
speak, mixed with it; not eternity
itself, of which times are only the
streams ; for the phrase, Before'f ifer-
nal ages (English Aversion, Before
the world began) is used at 2 Tim. 1,
9; Ps. Ixxvii. 5 (Ixxvi. 6.)"
punishment] KoXaaty, pun-
ishment, not Tifxwpia^ vengeance;
" for punishment is inflicted for the
sake of him who suffers; vengeance^
for the satisfaction of him who in-
flicts it." Bengel.
444 MATTHEW XXVI. 1-17.
CHAPTER XXYI.
1-17. The Supper at Bethany. — Judas.
1-2. It was now (see introduction to chap, xxi.) late on
Tuesday evening, which, according to the Jewish method ot
reckoning, was tlie beginning of Wednesday. The expres-
sion " after two days is the Passover " would place that
event on Thursday. 3-5. Here the scene changes, and the
writer recurs to deliberations previously held by the chief
priests and elders in regard to the best way of getting Jesus
into their hands by subtlety or deceit, and putting him to
death. They had concluded that it would' not be expedient
to do this during the festival. 6-13. The writer then,
without explicitly stating his object, proceeds to show how
their purpose came to be altered by the proposal of Judas to
put Jesus into their hands. And in order to give what
stood in his own mind as the immediate occasion of the
traitor's proposal, he goes back four days (John xii. 1), and
gives an account of a supper at Bethany, where an event
had occurred which, with the comment of Jesus upon it,
exasperated Judas, and hastened him on in his work of
treachery. The passage is worthy of remark, as showing
how, in the narrative of an unpractised writer like Matthew,
the true order of events is departed from without notice being
given, and how the object which is foremost in the mind of
the writer may be left so obscurely indicated by his words,
that we can discover what it is only by comparing his narra-
tive with that which has come to us from another source.
No mention is made of Judas in the account of the supper
by Matthew, but at the close of the account he says, 14-16,
" Then one of the twelve, called Judas Iscariot, went unto the
MATTHEW XXVI. 17-29. 445
chief priests," as if his going were in some way dependent
on what had just been described. John, on the other hand,
in his more precise and circumstantial detail of events (xii.
1 -8), singles out Judas as the one most prominent in com-
plaining of the waste. Judas, therefore, must have been the
one who was most excited by the indignation which Matthew
mentions, and who would feel most keenly the rebuke implied
in the language of Jesus. Indignant, therefore, and exas-
perated, he sought an interview with the chief priests. The
same avaricious spirit which had caused his indignation at
the supper manifests itself in the offer which he made to the
priests. " This might have been sold for two hundred
pence," were his words when he saw the precious ointment
poured upon the head and feet of Jesus ; and now his ques-
tion is, " What will you give me if I will give him up to
you ? " There is no formal connection between these two
expressions in Matthew. He does not even tell us that the
questions were both put by the same man. It is only by the
help of John's Gospel that we discover this, and by his aid
we see, not only how perfectly the two narratives, apparently
different, harmonize with each other, but how important in
its place the apparently irrelevant account of the supper at
Bethany is in the Gospel before us. Where a man's mind
is full of a subject, and he sees as an actual witness the
relation of all its parts to one another, he is very apt to
state facts as they lie in his mind in their true relation to one
another, but without the explanatory clauses which a reader
not conversant with the facts needs in order to understand
their connection, and which a writer
with the facts would hardly fail to put
17-29. The Last S
17-19. The writer now returns to
first day of unleavened bread when the disciples asked Jesus
where they should prepare the Passover. There is nothing
38
446 MATTHEW XXVI. 17-29.
miraculous implied in the narrative. All the houses in
Jerusalem were open at that time for guests. Jesus may
previously have spoken to some one in the city who was
friendly to him, and engaged a chamber in his house. And
\iow he tells two of his disciples (Mark xiv. 13), viz. Peter
and John (Luke xxii. 8), go to such a one, probably men-
Honing his name, and say to him, " The teacher " — the title
by which Jesus was best known to his followers — " saith.
My time is near for me to keep the Passover with my disci-
ples at thy house." Jesus probably sent Peter and John
privately, so that the other disciples did not know the place
until they had assembled there to eat the Passover. A rea-
son for this may have been, that Judas might not know be-
forehand whither to bring those to whom he intended to
betray him, and that Jesus might have a few last hours
with his disciples entirely undisturbed.
21-29. Nothing could be more simple or more touchingly
beautiful than the account which the Evangelists have given
of the Last Supper. The chamber had been prepared.
Jesus and his twelve disciples were there, reclining at the
table. While they were eating, Jesus was troubled in spirit,
and said, " Verily I say unto you, that one of you shall
betray me." And they were exceeding sorrowful, and
looked at one another, not knowing who it might be. But
each one, being more ready to suspect himself than either of
his associates, began separately and perhaps priyately to
ask, " Lord, is it I ? " And he replied, but in such a way
that Judas could not hear him, " lie that dippeth his hand
with me in the dish, the same shall betray me. The Son of
man goeth, as it is written of him ; but woe to that man by
whom the Son of man is betrayed ! It had been good for
that man if he had not been born." Judas, recovering
somewhat from the confusion occasioned by the announce-
ment of Jesus that one of them should betray him, and
supposing that he might be suspected by his associates unless
he should put the question which they had put, now the last
MATTHEW XXVI. 17-29. 447
of them all, asked, " Rabbi, is it I ? " His guilty heart
caused his tongue to stumble in its words, and instead of the
hearty, loving reverence implied in the address, Lord, is it
I ? his treacherous purpose half revealed itself in the term
which he used, — Rahhi, which is not, like Rabboni, expres-
sive of the highest honor and reverence. The very word
that Judas uttered so fixed itself in the minds of the disciples,
that in Matthew, though his Gospel comes to us in another
language, the Hebrew word is retained. " Rabbi," he asked,
" is it I ? " Jesus answered, " Thou hast said," i. e. It is
even as thou hast said. Soon after this, when the otliers
had received from Jesus the sign who it was that should
betray him, Judas (John xiii. 30, 31) probably withdrew,
and Jesus, relieved from the pressure caused by his presence,
exclaimed, " Now is the Son of man glorified."
Then followed the institution of the Lord's Supper. The
Passover had been eaten. But while they were yet at the
table, Jesus took bread, and having blessed and broken it,
he gave it to his disciples, saying, " Take, eat, this is my
body, given [Luke xxii. 19] for you; this do in remem-
brance of me." " It was a round cake of unleavened
bread which the Lord broke and divided ; signifying there-
by both the breaking of his body on the cross, and the par-
ticipation in the benefits of his death by all his." Alford.
What could be the meaning of the clause, this do in remem-
brance of me, unless it was intended that the Supper should
be observed as a lasting memorial of himself? The bread
thus broken is to us an emblem of the broken body of
Christ, and his body expresses to us the' truth, — the bread
fj-om heaven which he came to impart to man, — the words
of his which are spirit and life (John vi. 63), loaded down
as they are with the divine fulness of meaning and of
redemptive power which is given to them by his whole
"manifestation in the flesh." In this sense, our spiritual
being is upheld "by the inward and spiritual process of
feeding upon him by faith : of making that body our own,
448 MATTHEW XXVI, 17-29.
causing it to pass into and nourish our souls, even as the
substance of the bread passes into and nourishes our bodies.
Of this feeding upon Clirist in the spirit by faith is the
sacramental bread the symbol to us." " The commemoration
is of him, in so far as he has come down into time, and
enacted the great acts of redemption on this our world, —
and shown himself to us as living and speaking man, an
object of our personal love and affectionate remembrance; —
but the other and higher parts of the sacrament have regard
to the results of these same acts of redemption, as they are
eternized in the counsels of the Father." Alford.
And he took the cup, and gave thanks, and gave it to
them, saying, " Drink ye all of it ; for this is my blood of
the new testament, which is shed for many for the remission
of sins." As the bread is an emblem of the body of Christ,
and that an emblem of the divine truth which came through
him into the world to feed and sustain the souls of men, so
is the wine an emblem of his blood shed for many for the
remi?:sion of sins, and his blood thus shed for sinful men is
an emblem of the divine love manifested in him for the
redemption of the world. As in partaking of the wine we
rise through the symbol into that wliich it symbolizes, we
receive into our souls the love of Christ, and are thus made
partakers of his spirit. This it is in its highest spiritual
sense to partake of the blood of Christ. The cup of blessing
thus received in faith, " is it not the communion of the blood
of Christ ? " " Let us recur to the paschal rite. The lamb
being killed, the blood (Ex. xxiv. 8) is sprinkled on the
door-posts, and is a sign to the destroying angel to spare the
house. The blood of the covenant is the blood of the lamb.
vSo also in the new covenant. The blood of the Lamb of
God, slain for us, being not only sprinkled on, but actually
partaken spiritually and assimilated by the faithful soul, is
the blood of the new covenant, and the sacramental cup is,
signifies, sets forth, this covenant in his blood, i. e. consist-
ing in a participation in his blood." Alford.
MATTHEW XXVI. 31-35. 449
29. " But I say unto you, that I shall not drink henceforth
of this fruit of the vine, until that day when I drink it new
with you in my Father's kingdom." Here the fruit of the
vine (see note) is used in its higher and spiritual signification.
" The Lord's Supper points not only to the past, but to the
future also. It has not only a commemorative, but also a
prophetic meaning. In it we have not only to show forth
the Lord's death till he come, but we have also to think of
the time when he shall come to celebrate his holy supper
with his own, new, in his kingdom of glory. Every cele-
bration of the Lord's Supper is a foretaste and prophetic
anticipation of the great Marriage Supper which is pre-
pared for the Church at the second appearing of Christ."
Thiersch.
31-35. Warning Peter.
31-35. Probably the discourses and prayer recorded by
John (xiv. -xvii.) were spoken after the paschal psalm or
hymn, and before they left the city. They were certainly
spoken (John xviii. 1) before the party had crossed the
Kedron. From Luke xxii. 31—34, and John xiii. 36 — 38,
it would seem as if some warning, 31, had been previously
given, perhaps more than once, and with a more direct and
exclusive application to Peter. It may be that they are
only different accounts of the same conversation, each
writer retaining or omitting the parts which made the
strongest impression on his mind, and using the words as
they remained in his memory. The different topics, how-
ever, which are introduced, especially in Luke as compai'ed
with Matthew and Mark, seem to us to indicate different
occasions. And if Peter had been thus warned once or
twice before, it will account for the eagerness with which he
here repels from himself, 33, the charge which is made, 31,
equally against all the eleven.
38* CC
450 MATTHEW XXVI. 36-46.
36 - 46. — The Agony of Gethsemane.
The external facts here narrated are easily understood.
After the supper, late in the evening, Jesus with the eleven
went out of Jerusalem across the brook Kedron to Gethsem-
ane, a place which lay a little way up on the Mount
of Olives, in sight of the eastern wall of Jerusalem. It is
supposed that there may have been a house there, in which
the eight disciples remained (for the night was cold), while
Jesus, with Peter and James and John, Avent to a more
retired part of the grounds. There, as the " agony," the
struggle, as St. Luke calls it, came upon him, he said to
them, " My soul is exceedingly sorrowful, even unto death ;
tarry ye here and watch with me." He yearned for their
sympathy. He loved to have them near, though in the
depth of his agony he wished also to be apart from them.
He went, therefore, about a stone's throw from them (Luke
xxii. 41), and, kneeling, fell on his face, and prayed, saying,
" O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me !
nevertheless, not as I will, but as thou wilt." After remain-
ing thus for a season, he came back to the three disciples,
and finding them asleep, he said, "What! could ye not
watch Avith me one hour ? Watch and pray, that ye enter
not into temptation: the spirit inde'ed is willing, but the
flesh is Aveak." He Avent away a second time, and prayed,
saying, " O my Father, if this cup may not pass away from
me, except I drink it, thy Avill be done." The altered form
of the prayer shoAvs that the sharpness of the struggle Avas
over. He came to his discijDles again, and finding them
asleep, he Avent aAvay the third time, and prayed, using the
same Avords. Several hours may thus have been passed by
him in Gethsemane. When he returned the third time to
his disciples, he found them asleep. Grief (Luke xxii.
45) had overcome them. " Sleep on noAV, and take your
rest," he said. A short interval of time now probably
MATTEHW XXVI. 36-46. 451
elapsed, while the disciples continued sleeping, when Jesus
saw, as he might from that spot in the moonlight, Judas, and
the crowd who were with him, coming through one of the
eastern gates of the city. Then he roused his disciples, and
said, " Behold, the hour is near, and the Son of man is he-
trayed into the hands of sinners. Kise, let us go : behold, he
is near who doth betray me."
The narrative here is a plain one. It is a condensed
statement of the prominent facts, which probably took up
several hours, viz. from nine or ten in the evening till
somewhere from twelve to two in the morning. It is ob-
jected that the disciples, being asleep, could not have heard
what Jesus said in his prayer. But they were awake each
time when he left them, and may each time have heard the
first piercing words of his prayer, and then have fallen
asleep while he still lay upon his face in agony. The dis-
tance, a stone's throw, would not prevent their hearing the
words which were forced from him in his anguish.
But how shall we account for the intensity of his suffer-
ings ? Luther supposes that the physical pangs, and conse-
quently the dread of death, were greatly aggravated in his
case. " We men," he says, " conceived and born in sin,
have an impure, hard flesh, which does not soon feel. The
fresher and sounder the man is, the liner the skin, and the
purer the blood, so much the more does he feel, and is sus-
ceptible of what befalls him. Now, since Christ's body was
pure and sinless, whilst ours is impure, we therefore
scarcely feel the terrors of death in one fifth, of the degree
in which Christ felt them. Since he was to be the greatest
martyr, he therefore had to suffer death's extremest terrors."
This may be true of the susceptibility to merely physical
suffering. The exquisite physical organization of a perfect
man may have the most acute sensibility to pain, as well as to
enjoyment. But beyond its physical sufferings, we cannot
conceive of death as having any terrors for Jesus. We
have seen how he looked through it, and regarded it only as
452 MATTHEW XXVI. 36-46.
a sleep, an incident or change in the mode of living, — an
entrance, through momentary pangs perhaps, into the heav*
enly and immortal life. The dread of death, therefore,
could not of itself have been that which so weighed down
and oppressed his soul in Gethsemane.
How, then, can we account for the agony which the Evan-
gelists have described in language so remarkable ? First,
there may have been the exquisitely sensitive physical or-
ganization mentioned by Luther. All its natural suscepti-
bilities would be increased, and its powers of endurance
weakened, by the exciting and exhausting scenes through
which he had been passing. After the excitement of some
extraordinary effort is gone by, in the physical and mental
prostration that succeeds, when the nerves are as it were
unsheathed and laid open to every painful sensation, the
soul itself is more than at any other time exposed to depress-
ing and disheartening thoughts. Painful and discouraging
views throng before it, and shut out the light which might
come from other quarters. It was so with Jesus at Geth-
semane. In the extreme physical exhaustion and the con-
sequent nervous sensibility and depression of those hours of
agony, his mind was in a state to look only on the dark side
of his mission. Not the glorious line of apostles, martyrs,
saints, the ransomed of the Lord, an innumerable com-
pany who shall owe their salvation to him, rose in vision
before him ; but the unthankfnlness and hatred of those for
whom he was about to die, the scorn and bitterness with
which they would reject his offers, the cruelties to be en-
dured by his followers, the long centuries through which
they would be struggling with the world and its powers of
evil. The treachery, desertion, and denial which he was to
experience among his chosen friends, the cross, the bodily
anguish, the howls of anger and derision with which his
sufferings would be mocked and insuhed by those for whom
his keenest agonies were borne, the overshadowing dark-
ness, the ensuing ages of sin and misery, which might be
MATTHEW XXVI. 36 - 46. 453
removed if men only would come to him, — all these lay
with their intolerable weight upon his soul, making it ex-
ceeding sorrowful, even unto death. And this intolerable
anguish, this bitterness and darkness, worse than of death,
which was then pressing upon him and shutting out all
light and hope, this was the cup which he could not think of
without agony, and concerning which he prayed that, if it
were possible, it might pass from him.
How strong his yearning for human sympathy was is in-
dicated by his touciiing appeal to his disciples, ver. 38,
"My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death ; stay here
and icatch with nie^^ And how keenly he felt the want of
sympathy is shown by the exclamation when he returned
and found them sleeping : " Were ye so entirely unable to
watch with me for a single hour ! " They who have gone
through some terrible grief know how, for the time, all their
painful susceptibilities were aggravated and inflamed, so
that every little act of apparent neglect or thoughtlessness
on the part of their friends was like vitriol poured into a
deep and angry wound. Now if we consider that the sensi-
bilities and sympathetic emotions of our Saviour, in delicacy,
intensity, and extent, went as far as his other faculties be-
yond all that men have ever known, and that not only the
unworthiness of those who were near, but the sins and cru-
elties, the infidelity and indifference of coming generations,
were bi-ought before his prophetic vision, to smite upon the
soul that was pouring itself out in agony for a deliverance
which they would not accept, we may have some inadequate
idea of the causes of the unutterable anguish which op-
pressed and overpowered him beneath the shadows of Geth-
semane. A mother may be made to suffer an agony worse
than death, through her love and sympathy for an unworthy
child. Every sin of his, every act of ingratitude, every new
sign of increasing depravity in him, smites on her heart ;
and the more intense her love and sympathy for him, the
more terrible the suffering which it is in his power to inflict.
454 MATTHEW XXVT. 36-46.
What she feels for her child, Christ felt still more intensely
for each one of the thousands who, in rejecting him, were
sinninsT as^ainst God and their own souls'. What she with
limited powers endures for one, he, with his finer sensibilities,
his deeper love, his enlarged sympathies and comprehensive
insight, may have suffered an hundred-fold from every one of
those whose salvation he was longing and struggling to se-
cure. As she in the intensity of her love and sympathy
bears in her own breast the sins and sorrows of her ruined
child, so he in Gethsemane, and on the cross, bore in his
own body the sins and sorrows of a lost world. And thus
the words of the prophet were fulfilled in him : " He hath
borne our griefs and carried our sorrows, and we esteemed
him stricken from above, smitten of God, and afflicted. But
he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised fo^
our iniquities, the chastisement of our peace was upon him ;
and with his stripes are we healed. All we like sheep have
gone astray ; we have turned every one to his own way ;
and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all." (Isa.
liii. 4- 6.) When, through his love and sympathy for man,
this dreadful weight of sin and pain was laid upon him, and
only the dark and awful side of his ministry to a sinful
world was open to him, for a little while he sunk beneath
the burden, and in agony of soul cried out, " O Father," —
not, O my Father, — " if it be possible, let this cup pass from
me." When he prayed again, the intensity of the struggle
had abated : " O my Father, if this cup may not pass away
from me, except I drink it, thy will be done." A third time
he prayed : it was in the same words ; the darkness had
gone ; he " was heard in that he feared." (Heb. v. 7.) He
had prayed to be delivered from the intolerable anguish
that overpowered him, and while he prayed it was removed.
In submitting himself to drink the cup, it had passed from
him. And how often, when in an agony of prayer we strive
to bring ourselves into the fitting frame to endure, by this
very act of submission the cup is emptied of its bitterness,
MATTHEW XXVI. 36-46. 455
and the anguish which had seemed to us so dreadful in its
a2^proach has ah-eady passed away !
The intensity of our Saviour's sufferings in consequence
of the greatness of his endowments is a subject which can-
not be comprehended by us in all its length and breadth,
and depth and height, any more than we can comprehend
tlie full extent of his thought or emotion in any other direc-
tion. But what we learn here is in harmony with all that
we know of him. Every part of his nature is on the same
grand scale. The miracles which he wrought no more de-
cisively indicate the possession of powers over material
nature beyond what other men possess, than the truths
which his words open to us, and the life which he lived,
sliOAv the possession of powers of thought, spiritual per-
ceptions, and moral energies beyond what has ever been
revealed to us in the history of man. And here we find
him exhibiting a sensibility to suffering on the same vast
scale ; and the agony of Gethsemane, in its mysterious and
terrible severity, has awed and subdued the world, •as a
deeper and more affecting expression of ithe same greatness
which reveals itself in his other acts and words.
But is there not a deeper meaning than this in his suffer-
ings ? May not these sufferings have been aggravated by
the assaults of evil spirits ? As, in the Transfiguration, the
splendors which shone around him were from a world be-
yond the reach of our mortal senses, so may it not be now,
in his humiliation and agony, that the cause of his severest
agony lay beyond the limits of this mortal life ?
Since the consequences of his victory over death and
sin reach on into unseen worlds, and have their fullest con-
summation there, may it not be that the conflict, as, e. g.,
in the wilderness and Gethsemane, may have been aggra-
vated by the action of invisible and spiritual agencies?
Apprehending the influence of his victorious death in over-
throwing and subduing their kingdom, may they not have
rallied their forces for a last terrible conflict with him ? We
456 MATTHEW XXVI. 36-46.
know so little in regard to the whole realm of unseen spirit?
ual agencies, especially on the side of what is evil, that it
becomes us to approach the subject with diffidence. So far
as relates to the passage before us, there is no expression
used by Jesus which implies the presence of any such influ-
ence. What we have said of his sensibility to suffering,
through the exquisite texture of his physical and emotional or-
ganization, and his unbounded love and sympathy for man,
may be sufficient to account for all his sufferings there and
on the cross. Still there may have been these other agen-
cies. His words immediately after, " This is your hour, and
the power of darkness," (Luke xxii. 53,) will bear, and nat-
urally suggest, such a construction. " His struggle," says
Olshausen, " was an invisible agony of the soul ; .... a con-
test against the power of darkness ; for as in the beginning
of his ministry the Saviour was tempted by the enemy
through the medium of desire, so now at its end was he as-
sailed through the medium oi fearT This is the view taken
by Mr. Parsons in his fine essay on " The Ministry of Sor-
row." " All the hells," he says, " were admitted to assault,
to temjtt, that humanity All evil influences attacked
him. There were no tendencies to sin in human nature
which they who had lived in the indulgence of those sins,
and had so gone down into darkness, and then and there
become the embodiment of those sins, did not find in the
humanity he assumed, and endeavor to rouse into activity.
They were all resisted, all conquered No spot or
stain from hell could cleave to him. And all the enemies
of good yielded to his perfect goodness, and found them-
selves, all and forever, defeated and subdued He re-
duced them to order, and subjected them forever to the force
of those laws which permit them to excite in man so much
only of their own evils as shall leave man in full and per-
fect ability to resist them and reject what they would give
to him." This, we suppose, is Swedenborg's view of the
subject, and it is substantially the same as that taken by
MATTHEW XXVI. 36 - 46. 457
Trench in his Notes on the Demoniacs in the country of
the Gadarenes. " That whole period," he says, " was the
hour and power of darkness We cannot doubt that
the might of hell has been greatly broken by the coming of
the Son of God in the flesh ; and with this the grosser mani-
festations of his power."
We leave this whole branch of the subject, in connection
with what we have already said of evil spirits, as lying
in a region which can be only darkly and imperfectly
explained or explored by us.
There is another view of the cause of our Saviour's
sufferings which has entered deeply into the theology of
Christendom. It is expressed by Olshausen in its mildest
form, when he says that Jesus in Gethsemane, " as repre-
sentative of mankind, sustains the wrath of God." We
cannot accept this view of the subject, — 1. Because it is in-
consistent with all the moral instructions of Jesus, and gives
a shock to all the moral sensibilities and convictions which
he came into the world to revive and sustain. We must
throw aside the Sermon on the Mount, the Parable of the
Prodigal Son, and everj^thing else in the Gospels which
relates to our duties and the character of God, before we
can accept such a doctrine. 2. We cannot accept it, because
we find nothing in the Scriptures to countenance it. In the
different accounts of the agony of Gethsemane there is no
indication of such a relation between God and his Son.
Nor is the' doctrine to be found in the Old Testament.
Allowing the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah to refer, as we think
it does, at least in its secondary sense, to the Messiah, the
interpretation that we have given above seems to us much
more in accordance with its language and its spirit than the
horrible idea that the sinless One was under the wrath and
curse of God. " We must not for a moment," says Alford,
" think of the Father's wrath abiding on him as the cause
of his sufferings. Here is no fear of wrath, but, in the depth
of his human anguish, the very tenderness of fiUal love."
39
458 MATTHEW XXVI. 47-56.
For a fuller view of this subject, see Introduction to " The-
ological Essays," edited by Dr. Noyes, and the Notes at the
close of that volume.
47-56. — The Apprehension of Jesus.
The different narratives of this event are marked by the
differences which we should expect from independent wit-
nesses of actions which most of them took place in the
night, which must have been hurried and confused, and
which could not have been seen entire in all their relations
by any one of those who were present. We must call to
mind the- disciples just waking out of their sleep at Getli-
semane, the overshadowing trees, the glimmering of the
moonlight through them, the crowd with weapons and
staves or clubs, with lanterns and torches, hastening
eagerly towards them, hardly knowing what to expect, and
without the thorough understanding and concert among
themselves that would be found if they had been only a
military detachment or band. The great multitude which
Matthew speaks of were, — 1st, a detachment of Roman
soldiers (^ a-nelpa, a batid, the word used to express a cohort,
John xviii. 3, 12); 2d, the oflBcers or captains of the temple,
who were Jews (Luke xxii. 52) ; 3d, servants and others
deputed by the priests ; and, 4th, some of the high-priests
and elders (Luke xxii. 52). Among these was Judas.
He had given some of them a sign by which ' they might
know Jesus. Confused and disconcerted, we may suppose,
by the consciousness of his treacherous purpose, he rushed
forward and kissed his Master, who may still have been
among the trees, and in such a position that the preconcerted
signal would hardly be seen by the associates whom the
traitor had left behind. The mild rebuke of our Saviour
would increase the agitation and mental embarrassment of
Judas, so that he may have fallen back, hardly knowing
what he did, and therefore leaving his companions still in
MATTHEW XXVI. 47-56. 459
doubt as to which person was Jesus. The subsequent con-
duct of Judas, as inferred from his repentance and death,
shows how keen his sensibihties were, and that he might
now have been wholly confused and disconcerted. At this
moment Jesus came forward, as represented by John (xviii.
4-9), and, giving himself up, by the extraordinary im-
pression which his calm and majestic presence produced,
gained for his disciples an opportunity of going away. But
at that time another party of his assailants, perhaps, coming
up and laying hands upon him, one of his followers asked,
" Lord, shall we smite with the sword (iiaxaipa) ? " (Luke
xxii. 49) ; and Peter, without waiting for a reply (John
xviii. 10), drew his weapon (see note to verse 51) and cut
off the right ear of one of the high-priest's servants. This
would, of course, cause some commotion and delay. Jesus
immediately commanded Peter to sheathe the weapon, and
then healing the wound he thus allayed the anger of his
enemies, which otherwise might have been dangerous to
Peter. At the same time he rebuked the rashness of his
disciple, by reminding him of the fatal consequences of such
conduct, and, 53, the needlessness of any human inter-
ference ; since even then he had only to ask for deliverance
from his enemies, and it would be granted. It was still
in his own power to live or die, as he had said (John x.
18), " No man taketh it (my life) from me, but I lay it down
of myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power
to take it again." But how then could the purposes of Di-
vine mercy, as revealed in the Scriptures, be fulfilled ? In
this same calm and self-collected spirit he appealed to the
multitudes, — the high-priests, the officers of the temple,
and the elders (Luke xxii. 52), — asking why they had come
against him as against a robber, with weapons. But this
also, he added, 56, was a part of the same divine plan as
declared in the Scriptures. " All this was done in such a
manner that the Scriptures of the prophets were fulfilled."
Mark (xiv. 27), at an earlier period of the narrative, had
460 MATTHEW XXVI. 67-68.
quoted the passage (Zech. xiii. 7), " I will smite the shep-
herd, and the sheep shall be scattered." Matthew, after the
general reference to the prophets, adds, as Mark also does
(xiv. 50), " Then all the disciples forsook him and fled."
But Mark goes on to say, "And there followed him a certain
young man, having a linen cloth cast about his naked body ;
and the young men laid hold on him : and he left the linen
cloth, and fled from them naked." All the Evangelists write
that Peter followed Jesus afar off, and John adds (xviii. 15),
undoubtedly speaking of himself, " and so did another dis-
ciple: that disciple was known unto the high-priest, and
went in with Jesus into the hall [not the palace] of the
high-priest."
57-68. — Jesus taken before the High-Priest.
The distance from Gethsemane to the nearest gate of the
city is less than a thousand feet. The house, or rather pal-
ace, of the high-priest was probably on the northeastern
slope of Mount Zion, very near the temple, and perhaps a
third of a mile from the fortress of Antonia, where the
Roman Procurator or governor had his quarters. Jesus
was taken first to Annas, who had been high-priest, and was
father-in-law to Caiaphas (John xviii. 13). Annas, who
may have been in the same palace with his son-in-law,
sent Jesus bound to Caiaphas (.John xviii. 24). His being
sent to Annas is omitted by the first three Evangelists as a
circumstance of little importance. This examination before
Caiaphas was only an informal preliminary investigation ;
" for it was not lawful to try causes of a capital nature in
the night." (Jahn's Bib. Arch. 246.) The object of the ex-
amination was, not to discover what crimes the prisoner had
committed, but what charges could be brought against him
with the best prospect of causing him to be put to death.
As a trial, the whole proceedings were irregular and illegal.
He was taken to the high-priest, with whom (Mark xiv.
MATTHEW XXVI. 69-75. 461
53) all the high-priests, elders, and scribes had assembled.
The whole Sanhedrim (Council) sought false testimony
against him in order to put him to death. After many
unsuccessful efforts, 60, 61, they at last, succeeded in getting
two witnesses, who, by perverting both the words and the
application of an expression which he had used a long time
before (John ii. 19), gave some color of excuse for the
charge of blasphemy. Whereupon the high-priest asked
Jesus what explanation he could make in regard to the
accusation. Jesus, knowing that they were only seeking
to compass his death, made no reply. Then the high-priest
said, " I adjure thee by the living God to tell me whether
thou art the Christ, the Son of God." Jesus replied, " Thou
hast said " (" I am," Mark xiv. 62.) Then addressing him-
self to the assembled representatives of the Jewish people,
in language more impressive to them from its resemblance
to a remarkable passage in one of their prophets (Dan. vii.
13, 14), he continued, " Hereafter shall ye see the Son of
man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming upon
the clouds of heaven." This was enough. The high-priest,
as an expression of his horror at such blasphemy, rent his
garments ; when, catching his spirit, the attendants who held
Jesus (Luke xxii. 63, 64) spit in his face, and, having
blindfolded him, smote him with the palms of their hands
and with sticks, saying in derision, " Prophesy to us now,
thou Christ, who it is that is striking thee."
69-75. — Peter's Denial.
While these things were taking place, another series oi
incidents was occurring, which is recorded, though with
slight differences, by all the Evangehsts. In order to un-
derstand the narratives, it is necessary to understand some-
thing of the architecture of a Jewish palace. It was " usually
built round a quadrangular interior court ; into which there
is a passage (sometimes arched) through the front part of
39*
4G2 MATTHEW XXVI. 69-75.
the house, closed next to the street by a heavy folding gate,
with a small wicket for single persons, kept by a porter."
(Robinson's Harmony, 225.) This interior court is some-
times called avXf), or the hall, and the passage from the
street to it, TrpoavXiov or irvXcov, the porch or gateway. When
Jesus was first brouglit to the high-priest, Peter followed
him at a distance as far as to the hall, 58, (not palace, but
hall, or open court), into which he was brought by a disciple
(John) who was known to the high-priest. There in the
hall he sat by a fire which had been made (John xviii. 16,
18), to see what was passing in the room in Avhich Jesus
was, and which would be open on the side next to the court.
"While he was sitting out here, 69, i. e. outside of the room
where Jesus was, he was recognized by a damsel as one of
those who had been with Jesus, and charged with having
been with him. But he denied the charge. In order to
withdraw himself from observation, he then went out into
the passage-way or porch, 71, and there being recognized
very soon, he denied his Master the second time. After
about an hour, during which time he had probably returned
to the court, he was recognized a third time, when with
vehement imprecations he denied all knowledge of the man.
At that moment the cock crew, and Jesus, who was in a
room that was open on the side towards the court, turned
and looked upon him, and he, remembering the prediction,
rushed out through the passage-way and wept bitterly. It
is possible that the third denial took place just as they had
bound Jesus and were leading him away to Pilate. For
"the morning," spoken of Matt, xxvii. 1, began with the
cock-crowing, or at three o'clock.
MATTHEW XXVI. 463
NOTES.
And it came to pass, when Jesus had finished all these say-
2 ings, he said unto his disciples, Ye know that after two days is
the feast of the passover ; and the Son of man is betrayed to
be crucified.
3 Then assembled together the chief priests, and the scribes,
and the elders of the people, unto the palace of the high-priest,
4 who was called Caiaphas ; and consulted that they might take
6 Jesus by subtilty and kill him. But they said, Not on the
feast-day, lest there be an uproar among the people.
6 Now when Jesus was in Bethany, in the house of Simon the
7 leper, there came unto him a woman having an alabaster box
of very precious ointment, and poured it on his head as he sat
8 at meat. But when his disciples saw it, they had indignation,
9 saying, To what purpose is this waste ? For this ointment
10 might have been sold for much, and given to the poor. When
Jesus understood it, he said unto them, Why trouble ye the
11 woman ? for she hath wrought a good work upon me. For ye
have the poor always with you ; but me ye have not always.
12 For in that she hath poured this ointment on my body, she did
13 it for my burial. Verily I say unto you, wheresoever this
gospel shall be preached in the whole world, there shall also
this, that this woman hath done, be told for a memorial of her.
14 Then one of the twelve, called Judas Iscariot, went unto the
15 chief priests, and said unto them, What will ye give me, and I
2. after two days is tlie real name. Josephus calls him " Jo-
feast of the Passover] i. e. seph Caiaphas." 5. Not on
oil the next day. ^ _ 3. the feast day] Our translators
the chief priests] or high-prlesis. have inserted the word day without
This office was originally for life, authority. It should be, JN^ot during
and was received by right of inheri- the festival. The expression refers
tance. But Herod the Great changed to the whole period of the feast or
the high-priest at his pleasure, and festival, which continued eight Jew-
the Roman Procurators or governors ish, or seven of our days,
followed his example in this respect. 12. she did it for my buri-
Valerius Gratus, who appointed Cai- al] rather, she did it to prepare me
aphas to the office, had, according for burial. Sometimes a long period
to Josephus (Ant. XVIII. 2. 2), ap- intervened between the preparation
1 minted and displaced five or six of a body for burial and the burial
ligh-priests within a few years. itself. The preparing of Jacob's
who was called] surnamed, body for burial (Gen. 1. 2) took
i. e. being called in addition to his place m Kgypt, his sepulture in
464
MATTHEW XXVI.
will deliver him unto you ? And they covenanted with him for
thirty pieces of silver. And from that time he sought opportu- is
nity to betray him.
Now the first day of the feast of unleavened bread the disci- n
pies came to Jesus, saying unto him, Where wilt thou that we
prepare for thee to eat the passover ? And he said, Go into is
Canaan. 15. And
they covenanted with him
for] or paid to him thirty pieces of
silver, — thirty silverlings it has been
translated, or shekels of silver, —
about fifteen or twenty dollars. As
the thirty shekels were the esti-
mated value of a slave's life (Ex.
xxi. 32), that sum may have been
fixed upon as a mark of con-
tempt towards Jesus.
17. the passover] was instituted for
the purpose of preserving among
the Hebrews the memory of their
liberation from Egyptian servitude,
and of the safetv ot their first-l)orn
on that night wlien the first-bom of
the Egyptians perished. (Exod. xii.)
It was celebrated for seven days
(Lev. xxiii. 4-8), din'ing the whole
of which time the people ate un-
leavened bread. On the eve of the
14th day of the month Abib the
leaven was removed. On the 10th
of the month the master of a family
separated a ram or a goat of a year
old. It was taken to the appointed
court of the temple, and there slain
and prepared in the presence of a
priest, that he might see that it was
free from defect or disease, and
sprinkle its blood on the altar. It
was slain on the 14th day of the
month, between the two evenings.
*' The Pharisees and Rabbinists, ac-
cording to the Mishna (Pesach 5. 3)
held the first evening to commence
with the declining sxm; and the sec-
ond evening with the setting sun.
This latter view was the prevailing
one in the time of our Lord ; the
hour of evening sacrifice and prayer
being then the ninth hour, or 3 P. M.
(Acts iii. 1); and the paschal lamb
being regularly killed between the
ninth and eleventh hours. (Jose-
phus, Jewish Wars, VI. 9. 3.)" Rob-
inson's Lexicon. It was roasted
whole, with two spits thrust through
it, the one lengthwise, the other
transversely, so that the animal was
in a manner crucified. Its flesh was
divided, and served to those who
partook, with a salad of wild and
bitter herbs. Not fewer than ten
nor more than twenty persons assem-
bled in one place to observe the
feast. At first the Passover was
eaten by them standing, with the
loins girt about, and with shoes on
the feet. But this was not the case
at the time of our Saviour, when
the Greek and Roman custom of
reclining at the table prevailed.
" It is the custom of slaves," says
the Jerusalem Talmud, ''to eat
standing; but now Israelites eat
reclining, to denote that they
passed from servitude into fi-ee-
dom." Jahn's Archajologj^ " The
paschal supper, 1. began with the
first cup of wine, before drinking
which the master of the household
ofiered a prayer of thanksgiving to
God for the gift of wine. Then wns
put on the table, 2. a sujjply of
bitter herbs, commemorative of the
bitter life led in Egypt: of these,
dipped in an acid and salt liquid,
each partook amid songs of praise.
Then followed, 3. the serving of the
unleavened bread, of the highly-
seasoned khnroset, or broth of the
paschal lamb, and the peace-offer-
ings (Lev. iii. 3; x. 14). There-
upon, 4. the master, after blessing
Him who made heaven and earth,
dipped a portion of the bitter herbs,
about the size of an olive, into the
iharosety and ate the sop. In this
act he was imitated by all at the
3nd cup wf
was the j
which the father of the family,
asked or unasked by his son, ex-
plained the import of the feast in
all its parts." After singing, 6.
the first part of the series of PsaJms
table. 5. The second cup was made
ready; and this was the point at
MATTHEW XXVI. 4G5
tlie city to such a man, and say unto him, The Master saith,
My time i5 at hand ; I will keep the passover at thy house with
19 my disciples. And the disciples did as Jesus had appointed
20 them ; and they made ready the passover. Now when the
21 even was come, he sat down with the twelve. And as they
did eat, he said, Verily, I say unto you, that one of you shall
22 betray me. And they were exceeding sorrowful, and began
23 every one of them to say unto him, Lord, is it I ? And he
answered and said, He that dippeth his hand with me in the
24 dish, the same shall betray me. The Son of man goeth, as it
is written of him ; but woe unto that man by whom the Son of
man is betrayed ! it had been good for that man if he had not
25 been born. Then Judas, which betrayed him, answered and
said, Master, is it I ? He said unto him. Thou hast said.
26 And as they were eating, Jesus took bread, and blessed
it, and brake it, and gave it to the disciples, and said. Take,
27 eat ; this is my body. And he took the cup, and gave thanks,
28 and gave it to them, saying. Drink ye all of it ; for this is my
blood of the new testament, which is shed for many for the re-
29 mission of sins. But I say unto you, I will not drink hence-
termed the Hallel (Ps. cxiii., cxiv.), sidered already far off." Bengel.
the master, 7. washed his hands, We find in the*^ Gospel narratives no
and, breaking a loaf, pronounced a ground for sympathy with those
thanksgiving, and then, the cere- who would excuse or palliate the
monial preparation being finished, conduct of Judas. He who could
the meal, 8. properl}'^ was eaten, be so long a time with Jesus, and
It was at this period probably that yet gain nothing of his moral and
Jesus, ti-oubled in spirit, said, 21, spiritual power, must have closed
'' Verily I say unto you, that one of his heart against all that was high
vou shall betray meV' See Beard's or holy. The very tenns of his
biblical Reading-Book, p. 254. proposal to the rulers, 15, " What
24. it had been good for that will ye give me if I mil deliver him
man if he had not been born] to you f' show how base and shame-
" This phrase does not necessarily less his motives were, and ai'e en-
imply the interminable eternity of tirely inconsistent with the view
perdition: for it is a proverbial' ex- sometimes entertained, that Judas
pression. Cf. Luke xxiii. 29, Eccle- took this step only that he might
siasticus xxiii. 14. Judas obtains a urge Jesus on to announce his real
situation of exclusively pre-eminent purpose and to assume the royal
misery amongst the souls of the authority which belonged to him as
damned. For so long a time he the Messiah. His subsequent re-
accompanied our Lord, not with- morse, ending in death, shows in-
cut sharing the sorrows connected deed strong sensibilities, but this
therewith; a little before the joy- only aggravates his guilt. For it
ful pentecost he died." indicates what he had to struggle
that man] " The words, that man, against in his own' heart befoi"e he
might seem a predicate. That is could bring himself to betray his
the designation of one who is con- Lord for the price at which a
466
MATTHEW XXVI.
forth of this fruit of the vine, until that day when I drink it
new with you in my Father's kingdom.
And when they had sung an hymn, they went out into the 30
slave's life was valued, and thus
proves him to have been, in spite of
his better nature, guilty of the two
most detestable crimes* avarice and
treachery, if not also of- murder.
No good can come from the attempt
to extenuate the guilt of such a
character. 29. when I
drink it new with you in my
Father's kingdom] The word
neto, Kaivov, used here, is not the
same as that which is used, ix. 17,
veou, to describe the newly-made
wine which was not to be put into old
bottles. It is the same word which
is applied to the new covenant, or
Christian dispensation, to distin-
guish it from the old covenant, or
Mosaic dispensation. It means, not
something newly made of the same
sort, but something of a different
sort. As the religion of Jesus is the
spiritual fulfilment of that which
was shadowed forth in the Mosaic
dispensation, so " the mne " which
he will drink '■'■new'''' with his disci-
ples in the kingdom of his Father,
is the spiritual refreshment and life
which shall be the perfect fulfil-
ment of that which is now only
symbolized by the eucharistic wine,
or, in its spiritual sense, the blood of
Christ. " The Jewish Passover was
superseded by the Lord's Supper;
this will be again succeeded by fur-
ther things of a heavenly nature."
Bengel. Another instance this of
the way in which Jesus rises from
the natural to the spiritual signifi-
cation of language, withoxit a single
explanatory word to show where
the transition takes place. We
have only the connection in Avhich
the words are found to guide us
in the interpretation. " Emblem,"
says Lord Bacon, "reduceth con-
ceits [conceptions] intellectual to
images sensible, which strike the
memoiy more." " The scope or
purpose of the Spirit of God is not
to express matters of nature in
the Scriptures otherwise than in
passage, and for application to
man's capacity, and to matters
moral or divine." 30.
sung an hymn] The word thus
translated may mean that the
hymn was either sung or recited.
into the Mount of Olives]
One of the most aftecting incidents
in the Bible is related in connec-
tion with the Mount of Olives, and
forms no unsuitable introduction to
the agony of Gethsemane. When
Absalom had rebelled against his
fother, David, leaving the ark of
God in Jerusalem, " went up by
the ascent of Mount Olivet, and
wept as he went up, and had his
head covered, and he went bare-
foot: and all the people that was
with him covered every man his
head, and went up, weeping as they
went up." (2 Sam. xv. 30.) The
western base of the Mount of Olives
is bounded by the brook Kedron,
and is one or two hundred yards
distant from the eastern wall of the
temple. The summit is about 2750
feet above the Mediterranean, and
4060 feet above the Dead Sea, and
137 feet above the highest part of
Jenisalem. (See Barclay's Jerusa-
lem, pp. 104, 105.) The mean dis-
tance of that part of the summit
which lies opposite to the city, from
the eastern wall of Jenisalem, is
about half a mile by the nearest
pathway, and of course, in a
straight line, much less. " When
about half the way up the ascent,"
says Prof. Hackett, " I found my-
self, apparently, off against the lev-
el of Jerusalem." " Three paths,
deeply worn," he savs, " lead over
the mount W'e gaze at those
Eaths the more intentlv because we
ave no doubt that th'e feet of the
Saviour trod them again and again
as he approached the city or left it.
That reflection came over me with
such power, as my eyes fell upon
them for the first time,' that I could
not refrain from weeping." Olivet
" must have been adorned, ancient-
ly, with fields of errain, "tovp- -- -^
MATTHEW XXVI.
467
31 Mount of Olives. Then saith Jesus unto them, All ye shall
be oifended because of me this night ; for it is written, " I
will smite the Shepherd, and the sheep of the flock shall be
32 scattered abroad." But after I am risen again, I will go be-
33 lore you into Galilee. Peter answered and said unto him,
orchards. At present it exhibits, on
the whole, a desolate appearance.
Kocky ledges crop out here and
there above the surface, and give to
the liill a broken, sterile aspect.
The loose soil, which might cover
them ill part, is left to be washed
away. Yet the mount is not whol-
ly destitute of verdure even now.
A few spots are planted with grain;
and fmit-trees, as almonds, figs,
pomegranates, olives, are scattered
up and down its sides. The
olives take the lead decidedly, and
thus vindicate the propriety of the
ancient name." Barclay, in his
" City of the Great King," p. 60,
says that " there is not in all the
world a prospect so delightful to
behold as the panorama to be en-
joyed by ascending the minaret
alongside the Church of the As-
cension, that now crowns the ele-
vation nearest the city." From this
point towards the east are to be
seen the Dead Sea, the valley of the
Jordan, where a green, streak " —
" a blue strip " it appeared to Dr.
Hackett — " on a whitish ground
marks the course of the river," and
beyond the plain of the Jordan, from
north to south, appears a continuous
chain of mountains, as far as the
steep cliffs of the Dead Sea, above
which rises, deeper in the country,
Jebel Shihan, with its compressed
and gently rising summit, which in
the Avinter time is frequently cov-
ered with snow." 31. for
it is written, I will smite the
Shepherd] These words (Zech.
xiii. 7) are from a prophecy which,
we think, in several places glances
on through the shadows of interven-
ing events to the Messiah. " My
servant, the Branch" (Zech. iii. 8),
and again (vi. 12, 13), "'the man
whose name is the Branch," who
"shall build the temple of the
Lord," who "shall bear the glory,"
and " be a priest upon his throne,"
refers, according to Dr. Noyes, to
the Messiah. So does (ix. 9) " Re-
joice greatly, daughter of Zion,"
" behold thy king cometh unto thee,"
" lowly, and riding upon an ass, even
a colt, the foal of an ass." See
Matt. xxi. 5. The words (xii. 10),
" they shall look on me whom they
have pierced," (see John xix. 37,"^)
may have looked forward to the
same period for their fulfilment.
The passage here quoted by the
Saviour is more obscure in the con-
nection from which it is taken in
Zechariah, but in the obscured
gleams of coming conflicts and
glory which passed before the
prophet's mind, the vision may
have been designed by the Om-
niscient Spirit to foreshadow the
specific event to which the words
are here applied by Jesus. With
our views of prophecy, there is no
serious difficulty in this interpreta-
tion. 32. But after I
am risen again, I will go be-
fore you into Galilee] This
passage has troubled the commen-
tators. " It is something extremely
improbable," says Schleiermacher,
" that Jesus, if he foresaw so exact-
ly the days of his resurrection, and
therefore could not but know that
he should see his disciples again
more than once in Jerusalem,
should here have said that he.
would lead them into Galilee."
At this distance of time, and
with our ignorance of the cir-
cumstances, it is impossible for
us to say why such a promise
should or"^ should not be made at
that particular time. The meeting
of the disciples with the Lord in
Galilee after the resurrection holds
a prominent place in the Gospel of
Matthew (xxviii. 7, 10, 16,) and
makes the impressive close of the
Gospel of John. And th«re may
4G3
MATTHEW XXVI.
Though all men shall be offended because of thee, yet will I
never be offended. Jesus said unto him, Verily, I say unto 34
thee, that this night, before the cock crow, thou shalt deny
me thrice. Peter said unto him, Though I should die with 35
thee, yet will I not deny thee. Likewise also said all the
disciples.
Then cometh Jesus with them unto a place called Gethscm- 36
ane, and saith unto the disciples, Sit ye here, while I go and
have been special reasons for fixing
in the minds of the disciples the
faet that they, and perhaps the
larger company, " above five hun-
dred brethren at once," mentioned
by St. Paul (1 Cor. xv. 6), were to
meet him in Galilee. The ardent
and confiding impetuosity of Peter's
character, 33, shows itself here.
Probably the precise reply of Jesus
is given by Mark (xiv. 30) as he
received it from St. Peter himself:
" Verily I say unto thee, that thou
to-day, this very night, before the
cock has croweid twice, shalt deny
me thrice." But Peter could not
believe that the warning was need-
ed, and replied, " Though it should
be necessary to die with thee, I will
not deny thee; " and likewise all the
rest of the disciples asserted the
same, in their vain self-confidence.
34. this night, before the
cock crow, thou shalt deny me
thrice] How is this to be recon-
ciled with Mark xiv. 30, " Before
the cock has crowed tioice, thou
shalt deny me thrice"? The dif-
ference is so slight that it may be
allowed to stand without impairing
our confidence at all in the writers.
But the passages may perhaps be
reconciled. " The ^first cock-crow-
mg is at midnight; but inasmuch as
J'tiv hear it, when the word is used
(jenernlly, we mean the second crow-
ing, early in the morning, before
dawn. If this view be taken," the
two expressions, before the cock-
crow, and before the cock crow
twice, " amount to the same, — only
the latter is the more accurate ex-
pression. It is most likely that
Peter understood this expression as
only a mark of time, and therefore
received it, as when it was spoken
before, as merely an expression of
distrust on the Lord's part; it was
this solemn and circiunstantial rep-
etition of it which afterwards struck
upon his mind when the sign itself
was literally fulfilled." Alford. We
do not think this explanation per-
fectly satisfactory. We know too
little about it to speak with con-
fidence. It has been questioned
Avhether cocks were kept in Jerusa-
lem. But even if they were not
kept by the Jews, which is by no
means certain, they may have been
kept by the Romans who resided
in the 'city. The difterent night
watches among the Koman soldiers
were announced bv the sound of the
trumpet. (Livy, X!XVI. 15.) Cicero,
Pro Murena, '9, in contrasting the
civil with the military life, says,
" You [the civilian] ai-e roused by
the crowing of the cock, he [the
soldier] by the sound of the trum-
pet." In Jerusalem the night
watches may have been indicated
to the citizens generally by the
sound of the trumpet in the tower
of Antonia, Avhich was the head-
quartei-s of the military, and from
which the blast of the trumpet
might easily be heard in the hall
of the high-priest's palace. " The
cock crew " may have been the cus-
tomary form of expression for the
sounding of the trumpet which an-
nounced the completion of that pe-
riotl of the night which was called
" the cock- crowing." The Avatches
were reckoned backward; midnight
beginning at nine, and cock-crow-
ing at twelve (Mark xiii. 35), and
Avere announced, not at the begin-
ning, but at the close. 36.
Gethsemane] To some persons
the factr that Kedron, the name of
MATTHEW XXVr.
4G9
37 pray yonder. And he took with him Peter and the two sons
38 of Zebedee, and began to be sorroAvful and very heavy. Then
saith he unto them, My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto
39 death : tarry ye here, and watch with me. And he went a
little farther, and fell on his face, and prayed, saying, O my
Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me ! nevei'-
40 thcless, not as I will, but as thou wilt. And he cometli unto
the brook over which Jesus passed
on his way to Gethsemane, means,
to be black, and Gethsemane, an
oUve-pi-ess, may suggest thoughts in
accordance with the associations of
the pkice and hour. Gethsemane is
but a very short distance from the
city, the north end of the garden
being about 145 feet beyond the
bridge over the Kedron, and 985 feet
from the nearest gate of the city.
" It is the spot," says Professor
Hackett, " above every other which
tlie visitor must be anxious to see.
It is the one which I sought out be-
fore any other, and the one of which
I took my last formal view on the
morning of my departure. The tra-
dition which places the agony and
betrayal of the Savioiir here has a
gi-eat amount of evidence in its sup-
port The space enclosed as
Gethsemane contains about one third
of an acre, and is surrounded by a low
wall covered with white stucco. It
is entered by a gate, kept under lock
and key, under the control of one
of the cotivents at Jerusalem. The
eight olive-trees here are evidently
very aged, .... and it is not im-
possible that those now here may
have sprung from the roots of
those Avhich grew there in the days
of Christ As I sat beneath the
olives, and observed how very near
the city was, with what perfect ease
a person there could survey at a
glance the entire length of the east-
ern wall, and the slope of the hill
towards the valley, I could not di-
vest myself of the impression that
this local peculiarity should be al-
lowed to explain a passage in the
account of the Saviour's apprehen-
sion. Every one must have noticed
something abrupt in his summons
to the disciples, — ' Arise, let us be
40
going; see, he is at hand that doth
betray me.' (Matt. xxvi. 46.) It is
not improbable that his watchful
eye, at that moment, caught sight
of Judas and his accomplices, as
they issued from one of the eastern
gates, or turned round the northern
or southern corner of the Avails, in
order to descend into the valley."
37. to be sorrowful and
very heavy] " To be in great dis-
tress, and almost beside one's self for
trouble." Bengel. 38, My soul
is exceeding sorrowful, even
unto death] A Hebrew form of
speech indicating sorrow in the great-
est possible degree. Soul, the sentient
principle of animal and spiritual life,
fhis is the only instance, Ave be-
lieve, in which Jesus uses the Avord
death to express bodily dissolution,
unless Avlien obliged to do so in
order to prevent misapprehension.
Death with him applies to the soul.
(John V. 24; viii. 51, 52; xi. 26.)
Can it be that he uses the word in
this sense here, to intimate that in
the extremity of his anguish it was
as if he were subjected, for the time,
to the pangs of spiritual death, and
brought so into contact with the
sins and consequent sufferings of
the Avorld, that he felt their dread-
ful Aveight of woe and death, as if
they had been laid upon his own
soul? 39. this cup] "We
may be sure that the cup A\diich he
prayed might pass from him could
not' have been merely the bodily
pain and death, Avhich so many
men have endured Avith unshrink-
ing fortitude." Whately. It was
the shuddering sense of horror and
grief that was overAvhelming him,
respecting Avhich he prayed that it
might pass from him, and in regard
to Avhich his prayer was heard.
470 MATTHEAV XXVI.
the disciples, and findeth them asleep, and saith unto Peter,
What ! could ye not watch with me one hour ? Watch, and 4V
pray, that ye enter not into temptation ; the spirit indeed is
willing, but the flesh is weak. He went away again the sec- 42
Ond time, and prayed, saying, O my Father, if this cup may
not pass away from me, except I drink it, thy will be done.
And he came and found them asleep again : for their eyes were 43
heavy. And he left them, and went away again, and prayed 44
the third time, saying the same words. Then cometh he to his 45
disciples, and saith unto them. Sleep on now, and take your
rest ; behold, the hour is at hand, and the Son of man is be-
trayed into the hands of sinners. Rise, let us be going ; behold, 46
he is at hand that doth betray me.
And while he yet spake, lo, Judas, one of the twelve, came, 47
and with him a great multitude with swords and staves, from
the chief priests and elders of the people. Now he that be- 48
trayed him gave them a sign, saying. Whomsoever I shall
kiss, that same is he : hold him fast. And forthwith he came 49
to Jesus, and said. Hail, Master ; and kissed him. And so
Jesus said unto him. Friend, wherefore art thou come ? Then
40. asleep] deeping for 45. Sleep on now] The
S01T010. (Luke xxii. 45.) " There is agony is now over. Jesus no longer
another symptom of grief, which is requires their sympathy. He tliere-
not often noticed, and that is pro- fore lets them sleep on, though the
found sleep. I have often witnessed hour and the man of treachery are
it even in mothers, immediately after at hand. After this, the disciples
the death of a child. Criminals, we may have taken their rest for a
are told by Mr. Akerman, the keep- considerable time, before he saw
er of Newgate, in London, often the company M-ith their torches and
sleep soundly the night before their lanterns coniing to seize him, when,
execution. The son of Gen. Cus- vei-se 46, he roused his disciples that
tine slept nine hours the night be- they might have a few moments in
fore he was led to the guillotine in Avliich to awake and recover them-
Paris." Dr. Rush. 41. selves before thev were assailed.
but the flesh is weak] " We 49. and kissed him] " It
ought to take this, not as an excuse was not unusual for a master to kiss
for torpor, but as an incentive to his disciple; but for a disciple to
watchfulness." Bengel. " An aban- kiss his master was more rare,
donment to soiTow and its sequent Whether, therefore, Judas did this
emotions, diminishes the dominant under pretence of respect, or out
energy of the spirit, and thus facili- of open contempt and derision, let
tates the victory of indwelling sin; it be inquired." Lightfoot.
Avhilst to stniggie against the beset- 50. Friend] companion.
ting disposi*^ion, and to give our- See xx. 13, " Friend, I do thee no
selves to prayer, which supplies wrong." The word must have come
man Avith fresh energy from the home sharply to the heart of Judas,
spiritual world, secure" us against " Friend, wherefore art thou come V"
temptation." Olshausen. "Betrayest thou the Son of man
MATTHEW XXVI.
471
61 came they and laid hands on Jesus, and took him. And,
behold, one of them which were with Jesus stretched out his
hand, and drew his sword ; and struck a servant of the high-
with a kiss?" The latter half of
the appeal is from Luke. We sup-
pose that both the expressions were
used by Jesus, and not, with Alford,
that the meaning of the words re-
ported by Luke is involved in the
expression recorded by Matthew.
It may have been thus : When
Jesus saw Judas coming near, he
may have said, " Friend, why art
thou coming?" and then after the
kiss was given, he may in a dif-
ferent tone have added, " Judas,
betrayest thou the Son of man with
a kiss?" 51. and drew
his sword] What was the weapon
or instrument here denoted? The
word used by all the Evangelists is
fid)(aipa, mnchnira, of which the
primary meaning is a knife, a large
Knife, a slaughter-knife. Among the
Greeks in the heroic ages it was
worn suspended in a sheath by the
sword on the left side of the body,
and was used on all occasions as a
knife. (See Smith's Greek and
Roman Antiquities ; Homer's Iliad,
III. 271 - 273 ; Herod. II. 61.) It was
used either as a weapon or a knife.
In the Septuagint version of the
Old Testament the word is used to
designate just such an instrument,
and whether it is to be rendered
knife or sword must be determined
by the accompanying circum-
stances. For example, in Ezekiel
xxvi. 15, *' Thus saith the Lord
God to Tyre, Shall not the islands
be shaken at the sound of thy fall,
when the wounded groan, when the
rnachaira is drawn in the midst of
thee ? " In our English version this
last clause is rendered, " When the
slaughter is made in the midst of
thee," and the word machaira, an
instrument employed not only in
war, but primarily in slaughtering
cattle, may have been used in this
its primary sense, to describe the
butchery of an efteminate and help-
less people at the hands of their
enemies. In Genesis xxvii. 40,
" And by thy machaira shalt thou
live, and shalt serve thy brother,"
the word may be rendered as a
knife to be used by the hunter,
rather than as a sword to be used
only in war. In Ex. xy, 9, " The
enemy said, I will pursue, I will
overtake, I will divide the spoil, I
will fill my soul, I will destroy with
the machaira, my hand shall pre-
vail," the word is used to designate
a weapon of war; as it also is in
Gen. xxxi. 26, " and carried away
my daughters as captives taken
with the machaira.'''' On the other
hand, in Gen. xxii. 6, 10, machaira
is the instrument (properly trajis-
lated knife) which Abraham took
with him: " And he took the fire in
his hand, and a knife." " And Abra-
ham stretched forth his hand, and
took the knife to slay his son."
And in 1 Kings xviii. 28, the
machairui were the knives with
which and with lancets the priests
of Baal cut themselves, " till the
blood gushed out upon them." Now
the language of the Septuagint Avas
evidently as familiar to the Evan-
gelists as that of the Hebrew Scrip-
tures. Their quotations are often
made from it, and its use of Greek
words would have great influence
Avith them. As far as that influence
was concerned, they may have used
the word machaira in either sense ;
but its primary meaning was that
of knife, and they had at least one
other word, pofi^aia (Luke ii. 35;
Rev, i. 16; ii. 12, 16; vi. 8; xix. 15,
21) by which to denote a sword
without ambiguity. We must then
be guided by the circumstances of
the case in the construction that we
put upon the word in any particular
instance in which it is used by them.
There is no doubt that machaira
would properlv designate the knives
used by the ^ews in killing, dress-
ing, and dividing sacrifices, in pre-
paring animal food before it was
cooked, and in carving it afterwards.
When carried, they Avere, for safety
and convenience, secured in a
472
MATTHEW XXVI.
priest, and smote off his ear. Then said Jesus unto him, 5»
Put up again thy sword into his place ; for all they that take
sheath. Except in the passage be-
fore us, and those connected with
it, the word is found in tlie Gospels
only twice. " I came not to send
peace, but a machaira; for I am
come to divide a man from (or
against) his father, and a daughter
against her mother." (Matt. x. 34,
35.) Here, as opposed to peace,
the warlike use of the weapon is
first suggested ; but in the explana-
tion which follows, dividing one
against another, or separating one
from another, the other use of the
insti-ument may possibly be indi-
cated. "And they shall fall by the
edge of the machaira^ and shall be
led away captive into all nations."
(Luke xxi. 24.) hi this case it is
spoken of as a weapon of war. In
the Acts it occurs twice : " And he
killed James the brother of Jolm
with the sword " (xii. 2), the exe-
cutioner's sword. "And the keeper
of the prison, awaking out of his
sleep, and seeing the prison doors
open, he drew out his viachaira and
would have killed himself." (xvi.
27.) In both these cases the word
is rightly ti-anslated sward, though
the instniment spoken of may have
been used both as a knife and a
sword. In the Epistles of Paul the
word occiirs twice. " Who shall
separate us from the love of Christ ?
Shall tribulation or distress,
or peril, or machaira f " (Kom. viii.
35.) " For he [the mler] beareth not
the machaira in vain." (Rom. xiii.
4.) In both these cases the warlike
use of the instrument is what is
first suggested by the connection.
In the Epistle to 'the Hebrews (xi.
34, 37), "escaped the edge of the
nvichaira,'^ " were slain with the
maihaira,^^ the same idea evidently
lies uppermost. But Heb. iv. 12
appears to describe the other and
peaceful uses of the instrument.
" For the word of God is living and
effective, sharper than any two-
edged machaira, penetrating even
to the dividing asunder of soul and
spirit, both of joints and marrow,
and a> discerner of the thoughts and
imaginations of the heart." The
machaira, as a knife, was used to
separate the joints, to take out the
marrow, and to divide and open the
animal offered for sacrifice, so that
the priest could inspect all its in-
ward parts. Thus it might be said
to be a discerner (the idea of divis-
ion lying at the root of the expres-
sion) of the thoughts and imagina-
tions of the heart. In the Apoca-
lypse the word occurs three times.
("Rev. vi. 4, xiii. 10, 14), and in each
case as a destructive weapon. The
result of this examination goes to
show that the word machaira, pri-
marily signifying an instrument
which was used both us a weapon
of war and as a knife, was employed
by the writers in the New Testa-
ment to denote an instrument which
might be used for either of these
purposes, but which was most fre-
quently named in reference to its
warlike uses. In which capacity
is the instrument spoken of in the
connection before -us? We give
the reply nearly in the words of
a very intelligeiit and painstaking
student of the Scriptures, who has
kindly favored us with his views: —
" About sunset Peter and John,
m obedience to the command, ' Go
and pre])are for us the Passover,"
(Luke xxii. S,) had killed and pre-
pared the j)aschal lamb. In doii'g
this, and in dividing the roasted
lamb for those who partook, they
must have had knives. Those now
used by the Jews for such purpo^es
vary from six to eighteen inches
in length, and when carried are
secured in a belt, girdle, or sheath.
Machaira is unquestionably a word
which might Avell be used to denote
such an instrument. Between the
Paschal feast and the institution of
the Lord's Supper, soon after Judas
had left the chamber, while warn-
ing his disciples of the inhospitality
for which they must now be pre-
pared (Luke "xxii. 35-38), Jesus
inquired of them if, when he had
sent them without any provision
for their physical wants, ' without
MATTHEW XXVI.
473
63 the sword shall perish with the sword. Thinkest thou that I
cannot now pray to my Father, and he shall presently give me
Eurse and scrip f^ncl shoes,' tliey
ad lacked anything ; and they
answered, 'Xothing.' '■But now,'
he said, as if circumstances had
changed, and they must do some-
thing to provide for themselves, —
' But now he that hath a purse let
him take it, likewise also a bag ;
and he who has not [one], let him
sell his cloak and buy a machaira.
For I say unto you that this which
is written, " And he was reckoned
among the transgressors," must
now be accomplished [reXecr^JJi/ai]
in me. And indeed the things
[Avritten] concerning me are hav-
ing their accomplishment [re'Xos].'
And they said, ' Lord, behold, here
are two machaii'nV And he said to
them, ' It is enough.' Were not these
the machdirai which had been used
late in the afternoon by Peter and
John in killing and dressing the
paschal lamb, and later still at the
table in dividing the lamb among
those who partook ? Chrysostom,
commenting on Matt. xxvi. 51, says :
' But whence were these machairaif
They [the disciples] had come from
supper and from the table. Where-
fore it is probable that the machairai
were there on account of the lamb,
and that they [the disciples] hear-
ing that an attack would be made
upon their Master, took them for aid
against those who should assail him.'
In Matt. Horn. Ixxxiv. al. Ixxxv.
0pp. VII. 797, 798, ed. Montfaucon.
Theophylact, on the same passage
of Matthew, says: ' He [Peter] had
a machaira because he had just
slain the lamb which they ate.'
0pp. (Venet. 1754, fol.) 1. 151. Cor-
nelius a Lapide, in his note on Matt.
xxvi. says: ' That this simrd of St.
Peter was a knife which the Apostles
had used in slaying and eating the
lamb, is maintained bv Toletus on
John xviii. 10. This' view is fa-
vored also by ChrA'sostom, Theo-
phylact, Joannes Maior, Jansenius
on Matt, xxvi.' Comm. in Matt,
p. 494. Neander savs : ' The word
(viachairai) may 'be translated
40*
Jcnives, andthese were in common use
among travellers in those regions.'
Life of Jesus, Am. Vei-sion (New
York, 1848), p. 393.
" Later in that night, Judas came,
and with him a great multitude,
with machairai and staves, — not
spears, the more appropriate weapon
of warriors, but staves or clubs, and
such other weapons, most likely
knives, as were at hand, to be
hastily seized by the multitude.
Alexander, in his Comm. on Mark
xiv. 43 - 48, suggests the rendering
' knives and sticks.' Some of the
multitude laid hands on Jesus. 'And
when his followers saw what was
about to take place, they said to
him, Lord, shall we smite with thfe
machaira ? And one of them smote
the servant of the high-priest, and
struck off his right ear.' (Luke xxii.
49, 50.) Then Jesus saith unto him,
' Put up again thy machaira into its
place; for all tliey who take the
sword shall perish bv the sword.'
(]\Iatt. xxvi. 52.) In his rebuke to
Peter, Jesus evidently implied that
the disciple, in making the use of
the machaira which he did as a
weapon of war and violence, had
misunderstood and perverted his
meaning in the conversation re-
specting it at the paschal table. But
were they who put the question,
* Lord, sliall we smite with the
sword?' Peter and John, or one of
them for both ? There were but
two machairai among the disciples,
the same, we suppose, which had
been used by Peter and John in
killing, preparing, and dividing the
paschal lamb. One of these dis-
ciples who had a machaira was
Peter, a fact which we learn only
from John (xviii. 10). He was
warned bv his Master not to use it
in that wav, and probably escaped
unknown while Jesus was healirg
the wound which had been inflicted.
Was John heard to ask the question,
• Shall Ave smite with the machaira f '
Or was he seen to draw, or to have
such a weapon, and was he there-
474
MATTHEW XXVI.
more than twelve legions of angels ? But how then shall the 54
scriptures be fulfilled, that thus it must be ? In that same 55
Jore ' laid hold of so that he could
escape only with the loss of his gar-
ment? It was like John to inquire
and wait for his Lord's reply ( Luke
ix. 51 - 56), and it was like Peter to
rush into action without waiting
for advice. If such were the fticts,
then the narrative relating to ' a
certain young man' (Mark xiv. 51,
52), given after the general state-
ment, ' they all forsook him and
fled,' is a recurrence back, such as
is ' natural and common in all nar-
rative style,' to state what had
happened to one of their number
before they fled."
Thus a careful review of the oc-
casion and related facts does not, we
think, authorize a departure from
the primary meaning of the word
machaira In these passages, by
translating it sicord. We have no
reason to suppose that the disciples,
in procuring the two which they
possessed, had reference to anything
further than the peaceful uses to
which they might be applied. We
may not be able to show why it was
that Jesus should think it so im-
portant for his disciples to have a
knife of that sort after the supper.
But that he did not mean to com-
mand them to arm themselves witli
it as a weapon of war, is a supposi-
tion consistent with the use of tlie
word machaira, and Avith the uses
to which the uistrument itself was
put ; while the other supposition,
that he did mean to command them
thus to arm themselves with it as a
sword, is at variance with the gen-
eral spirit of his life and his religion,
and is directly contradicted by his
words to Peter after he had so used
it. 52, 53. Here Jesus
contrasts the aid which comes from
man's violence with that which
may come from God. Thinkest Ihou
that [cannot now pray to my Father,
and he shall presently give me mare
than twelve legions of angels f A
legion consisted of about 6,000. The
language may be figurative ; but it
seems to us much more reasonable
to suppose that it was intended to
give us a glimpse into the vast
economy of God''s kingdom and the
multitudes of the heavenly hosts
who act as his spiritual agents. But
always in our j)rayers for lielp, " Not
as /will, but as ihou •wilt,^'' must un-
derlie our petitions. We must not
ask for the intervention even of
God's angels, except as it may be
in accordance with his higher pur-
{)oses. '' The cup which my Fatlier
lath given me, shall I not drink
it? " is given (John xviii. 11) as the
qualifying clause here, wliere Peter
is forbidden to use the weapon. In
Matthew, however, 54, the same
idea is conveyed by the words, " But
how then shall the Scriptures be ful-
Jilltd, that thus it must ie?" which
are thus explained by Mr. Norton:
" Your prophets and you have an-
ticipated a great messenger from
God ; what they and you have
anticipated, I am ; but Avh'at is now
taking place is necessary in order
that I may fully sustain the charac-
ter and perform the offices of such
a messenger." In ver. 53 Jesus dis-
tinctly implies his own free agency.
It lies within his choice to live or
die. And knowing this, he cheer-
fully bows to the higher purposes for
Avhich he had come into the world.
The same idea is repeated in ver. 56,
and brought out still more forciblj^
in John xii. 27. Jesus asserts man's
freedom, but he quite as distinctly
recognizes the overruling Provi-
dence and all-pervading designs of
the Divine mind. He asserts them
both as facts, and shows how we
practically are to act in regard to
them, though he does not show on
metaphysical grounds how the two
are to be reconciled ; especially
when the purposes of God have
been revealed in prophecies which
are to be fulfilled by men. Good
men will choose to work for their
fulfilment, and whatever bad men
in their freedom may choose, their
actions in the orderings of the
Almighty and Omniscient mind will
help on to the fulfilment of his pur-
poses, as contrary winds, while they
MATTHEW XXVI. 475
liour said Jesus to the multitudes, Are ye come out as against
a thief, with swords and staves, for to take me ? I sat daily
with you teaching in the temple, and ye laid no hold on me ;
66 but all this was done, that the scriptures of the prophets
might be fulfilled. Then all the disciples forsook him, and fled.
57 And they that had laid hold on Jesus led him away to Caia-
phas the high-priest, where the scribes and the elders were
58 assembled. But Peter followed him afar off, unto the high-
priest's palace ; and went in, and sat with the servants to see
59 the end. Now the chief priests and elders, and all the council,
60 sought false witness against Josus, to put him to death. But
found none ; yea, though many false witnesses came, yet found
61 they none. At the last came two false witnesses, and said,
This fellow said, I am able to destroy the temple of God, and
62 to build it in three days. And the high-priest arose, and said
unto him, Answerest thou nothing ? what is it which these
63 witness against thee ? But Jesus held his peace. And the
high-priest answered and said unto him, I adjure thee, by
the living God, that thou tell us whether thou be the Christ,
64 the Son of God. Jesus saith unto him. Thou hast said : nev-
ertheless, I say unto you, hereafter shall ye see the Son of
man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the
65 clouds of heaven. Then the high-priest rent his clothes, say-
ing, He hath spoken blasphemy ; what further need have we
of witnesses ? behold, now ye have heard his blasphemy.
are left to blow where they list, are of expression to say, that while
by tlie art of man made to propel Jesus was in the room with the
the ship on against their current, high-priest, Peter was down (kuto))
57. to Caiaphas] " The i„ the court. 64. sitting
palace of the high-priest on the right hand of power,
was situated between Millo and the and coming in the clouds of
Armory, on the northeastern slope heaven] These remarkable words
of Mount Zion. As thus situated are intended to describe the power
on the declivity, a story below the and maj'estv of Christ as it shall
chief suite of rooms was very nat- at length appear, even to those who
nral, and indeed almost unavoida- now reject him. The words "Christ
ble: and this circumstance enables < coming,' 'coming in the clouds,'
us the better to understand the ^(.^^ not'onlv indicate his advent at
expression (Mark xiv. ^66),^^ Peter a far distant period, but also his
was beneath in the auX,^," i. e. spiritual world-historical manifes-
the court or hall. Barclay, p. 171. tation." Neander. 65.
Without regard to this declivity, the Then the high-priest rent his
court would be a few steps below clothes ] " They that judge a
the floor of the surrounding rooms, blasphemer first ask the Avitness
60 that it would be a natural mode and bid him speak plainly what he
476
MATTHEW XXVI.
What think ye? They answered and said, He is guilty of 66
death. Then did they spit in his face, and buffeted him ; and 67
others smote him with the palms of their hands, saying, Proph- 68
esy unto us, thou Christ, who is he that smote thee ?
Now Peter sat without in the palace. And a damsel came 69
unto him, saying. Thou also wast with Jesus of Galilee. But 70
he denied before them all, saying, I know not what thou sayest.
And when he was gone out into the porch, another maid saw 71
him, and said unto them that were there. This fellow was also
with Jesus of Nazareth. And again he denied with an oath, I 72
do not know the man. And after a while came unto him they 73
that stood by, and said to Peter, Surely thou art also one of
them, for thy speech bewrayeth thee. Then began he to curse 74
hath heard ; and when he speaks it,
the judges, standing on their feet,
rend their ganrients and do not sew
them up again." Lightfoot. Jose-
phus, Jewish Wars, II. 15. 4.
70. But he denied] We place
the different accounts of Peter's
denials side by side, that our read-
ers may compare them : —
FIRST DENIAL.
MATTHEW.
And Peter sat
■without in the hall,
and a maid came to
him, saying, " Thou
also wast with Jesus
of Galilee." But he
denied before them
all, saying, " I know
not what thou say-
est." And when he
had gone out into
the porch,
MARK xnr.
And as Peter was
down in the hall,
there cometh one
of the maids of
the high-priest; and
when she saw Peter
warming himself,
she looked upon him
and said, " Thou
also wast with Jesus
theNazarene." But
he denied, saying,
" I know not, nei-
ther undefstand I
what thou sayest."
And he went out
into the porch, and
the cock crew.
LUKE xxn.
And when they
had kindled a fire in
the midstof the hall,
and were set down
together, Peter sat
down among them.
But a certain maid
beheld him as he sat
by the fire, and ear-
nestly looked upon
him, and said, "This
man was also with
him." And he de-
nied, saying, " Wo-
man, I know him
not."
JOHN xvm.
John, who was
known to the high-
priest, came into
the hall, leaving Pe-
ter at the gate with-
out. John spoke to
the maid who kept
the gate, and slie
brought Peter in,
i. e. to the hall. And
she saith to Peter,
" Art not thou also
one of this man's dis-
ciples? " He saith,
" I am not." And
the servants and offi-
cers, having made
a fire of coals be-
cause it was cold,
stood there Warm-
ing themselves, and
Peter was with
them, standing, and
warming himself.
SECOND DENIAL.
another dam!?el saw
him, and saith to
those who were
there, " This one
also was with Jesus
theNazarene." And
again he denied with
an oath, " I do not
know the man."
And a maid saw 1 And after a short j They said, there-
him, and began to 'time another [mas- fore to him, ''Art
say to those stand- 1 culine gender] saw not thou also one of
ing by. " This is one ; him and said, "Thou his disciples ? " He
of them." But he art also of them." | denied it, and said,
again denied it. And Peter said, " I am not."
Man, I am not."
MATTHEW XXVI.
477
and to swear, saying, I know not the man. And immediately
75 the cock crew. And Peter remembered the word of Jesus,
THIRD DEXIAL.
And after a while !
came unto him they
that stood by, and
said to Peter, " Sure-
ly thou also art one
of them ; for thy
speech makes thee
manifest." Then
began he to curse
and to swear, say-
ing, "I know not
the man." And im-
mediately the cock
crew. And Peter re-
membered the word
of Jesus which saidl
unto him. " Before
the cock crow, thou
Shalt deny me
thrice. " And he
went out and wept
bitterly.
I MARK.
And a little while
after, they that
stood by said again
to Peter, '' Surely
thou art one of
them ; for thou art
a Galilsean " [and thy
speech a<rrcet/i there-
to, is not in Tischen-
dorfj. And he be-
gan to curse and to
swear, saying, " I
know not this man
of whom ye speak."
And the second time
a cock crew. And
Peter called to mind
the word that Jesus
said unto him, '* Be-
fore the cock crow
twice, thou shult
deny me thrice."
And rushing out, he
wept.
JOHX.
One of the per-
vants of the high-
priest (being his
kinsman whose ear
Peter cut off ), saith
to him, '• Did not I
see thee in the gar-
den with him ? "
Again, therefore,
Peter denied ; and
immediately a cock
crew.
At the first recognition and denial
of Peter, all the Evangelists agree
in statin^ that he was in the hall,
and that he was accosted by a maid.
Her manner of speaking, though
differing slightly in the words used,
is substantially the same. The vari-
ations are only such as we should
expect to find in the honest report
of the same transaction by differ-
ent witnesses. All the different ex-
pressions here assigned by the dif-
ferent writers to her and to him
may have been used. Slie may
have asked, as in John, "Art not
thou al.so one of this man's dis-
ciples?" and when he answered, ''I
am not," she- may have added, as in
Matthew, " Surely thou wast with
Jesus of GaHlee." When Peter
denied, saying, " I know not what
thou sayest," she mav have repeated
her assertion, with the slight varia-
tion in Mark, " Thou surely wast
with Je.sus the Xazarene; " and he
would naturally meet the charge,
thus repeated, with the still stronger
denial, " I know not, neither under-
stand I what thou sayest." Then
LUKE.
And about the
space of one hour
after, another [•</.-
i^'?, masculine] con-
fidently affirmed,
saying, " Of a truth,
this man also was
with him ; for he is
a Galilean." And
Peter said " Man, I
know not what thou
sayest." And im-
mediately, while he
was yet speaking,
the cock crew. And
the Lord turned and
looked at Peter, and
Peter remembered
the word of the
Lord, how he had
.said unto him, " Be-
fore the cock crow,
thou shalt deny me
thrice." And Peter
went out and wept
bitterly.
the woman, looking earnestly at him,
so as to satisfy herself that it was
he, may have said, as in Luke, to
those around her, " This man cer-
tainly was with him;" and Peter
in reply might say, " Woman, I
know liim not." All the expres-
sions would thus belong to one act
of I'ecomition and denial. Such
repeated assei'tions and denials are
in themselves more probable than a
single one, under the circumstances.
Luke says that Peter was sitting by
the fire ; John says that he was
standing. Both the accounts may
have been true, as nothing is more
Erobable than that the parties should
ave changed their place and pos-
ture during the altercation. At the
second recognition and denial Mat-
thew and Mark both speak of Peter
as being in the porch or passage-way.
Matt., TTuXcoj/a, a gateway. Mark,
irpoavKioVt which exactly describes
the passage leading from the street to
the hall. Luke and John say nothing
of Peter's having left the hall. Ac-
cording to Matthew and Mark, it was
478
MATTHEW XXVI.
which said unto him, Before the cock crow, thou shalt deny me
thrice. And he went out, and wept bitterly.
a woman who recognized and spoke
to him (" another maid," Matthew) ;
according to Luke, it was a different
person from the one who at first
spoke to him, and a man. John,
in using the plural number, " they
said,'^ intimates that the charge
against Peter was made by more
than one person, and thus authorizes
us to suppose that both the other
accounts are true, and that he was
addressed both by a woman and a
man. In the account of the third
denial, no one of the writers tells
where Peter was ; but it is not im-
probable that, after he was dis-
covered in the passage-way, he re-
turned to the hall, and remained
there during the considerable time
(Luke says "about an hour") that
intervened. Then those who were
standing by (Matthew and Mark)
recognized him by his . Galilaean
dialect. Luke says, that a different
})erson from the one who spoke to
lim before, a man, charged him
with being one of the party who
had been with Jesus ; and John
says, that a servant of the high-
priest, the kinsman of him whose
ear Peter cut off, said to him, " Did
not I see thee in the garden with
him? " There is no reason to sup-
pose that this servant of the high-
priest is the same person mentioned
by Luke, especially as the plural
number used by Matthew and Mark
intimates that several persons were
engaged in making the charge.
Peter replied to them, one after
another, growing more excited as
the charge was repeated, till at
length his loud and eax-nest impre-
cations attracted the attention of
Jesus, who was in a room that
was open towards the hall or
court, and just after the cock crew
turned and looked on Peter, Avho,
thus reminded otHhe Lord's words,
rushed out and wept bitterly. In
this way the different accounts are
perfectly harmonized, except for
those who are " slavishly bound to
the inspiration of the letter " We
do not usually make sufficient al-
lowance for what is left out in each
of the Gospel narratives. We un-
justly charge the Evangelists Avith
contradicting one another, when in
fact they are only giving different
incidents connected with one com-
mon event. In this instance we
think of three distinct charges, each
made by one person in a single
short sentence, and each replied to
by Peter in one single expression
of denial. But it is far more likely
that each case of recognition would
lead to a considerable altercation, in
which the original charge would bo
repeated, as it would also be denied,
in different words, and that different
persons as they recognized Peter
would add their testimony to that
already given. Each of the\vritings,
which are drawn from independent
sources, and none of them giving
an account of all the particulars,
would be likely to bring out dif-
ferent persons and expressions.
Each one, therefore, may be regard-
ed as supplying what is wanting in
the others. By bringing together
the different accounts in this way,
we are able, at least in the case
before us, to give a much more
life-like and probable narrative of
events than in the way which is
usually adopted either by the friends
or the 'enemies of the Gospels. The
A'ariations in the accounts show that
the writers draw their statements
from independent sources, and with
such writers it must often happen
that, in our ignorance of the details
familiar to them, we may find it im-
possible to reconcile, as we can in
this case, incidents which did nev-
ertheless truly occur. These ap-
parent differences, says Alford, to
whom we are indebted for impor-
tant suggestions here, we value " as
testimonies to independence : and
are sure, that if for one moment
we could be put in complete pos-
session of all the details as they
happened, each account would find
its justification, and the reasons of
all the variatious would appear."
MATTHEW XXVII. 479
CHAPTER XXYII.
Preliminary Trial of Jesus before the Sanhedrim.
It is impossible even for the ablest scholars, with the
scanty means of information which are now within their
reach, to speak with any confidence concerning the precise
forms of judicial proceeding which were held to be neces-
sary among the Jews in a case like this. " From the time
when Archelaus was deposed," A. D. 6 or 7, says Alford,
" and Judaea became a Roman province, it would follow by
the Roman law that the Jews lost the power of life and
death." From Josephus (Ant. XX. 9. 1) it would appear
that the high-priest had no right to assemble the Sanhe-
drim in a capital case without permission from the Roman
governor or Procurator. In Johnxviii. 31, the Jewish elders
and high-priests say to Pilate, that they have no legal right
to put any one to death. Still, in order to accomplish their
designs against Jesus, it was important that the Sanhedrim
should go through the customary forms of judicial investi-
gation, and secure his condemnation before the highest Jew-
ish tribunal, with such a weight of authority on their side
that they might be able to extort from the Roman ruler the
assent, without which their own judicial decisions could not
be carried into efiect. The examination at the house of the
high-priest was only for the purpose of seeing what charges
and witnesses could be used against him most effectively at
his trial.
"When, therefore, the morning (Trpmas — Mark xiii. 35 —
the watch of three hours which ended at six o'clock in the
morning) had come, and the elders of the people, the high-
priests, and scribes were gathered together, so as to form a
480 MATTHEW XXVII. 3 - 10.
legal Sanhedrim at their room in the vicinity of the temple,
Jesus was taken up (Luke xxii. 66) from the house of
Caiaphas to the council-chamber. It is not improbable
that they had been in session for a considerable time, and
had already determined on the course which they were to
pursue, when Jesus was brought before them. Luke (xxii.
66-71) is the only one of the Evangelists who gives any
account of the proceedings here, which were little more than
a repetition of what had already taken place, and resulted in
a more formal act of condemnation. Being thus by the
highest judicial tribunal of his own nation condemned to
death, Jesus was bound and taken before Pilate.
3-10. — Repentance and Death of Judas.
This account is found only in Matthew. When Judas
saw Jesus condemned to death, and delivered over to the
Roman power, he was smitten with sudden remorse, and
brought back to the Jewish rulers the thirty pieces of money,
with an acknowledgment of his guilt in his fatal treachery
against innocent blood. But driven to desperation by their
cold and contemptuous reply, he threw down the money in
the midst of the temple, and went off and hanged himself,
or was choked to death (strangled) by the intensity of his
anguish. Many attempts have been made to reconcile this
account of the death of Judas with that which is given in
Acts i. 18. Matthew says, he "strangled himself," the
natural meaning of which is, that he " hanged himself,"
though the words may possibly be constru.ed as implying
that he died of suffocation from the intensity of his emotions.
In the Acts (i. 18) it is said, " falling headlong, he burst
asunder in the midst, and all his bowels gushed out." In the
notes may be found some of the explanations by which com-
mentators have tried to harmonize these two passages. No
one of them seems to us perfectly satisfactory. We know
too little of the circumstances and of the language used, to
MATTHEW XXVII. 11-31. 481
assert with confidence that the two accounts directly contra-
dict one another, or that any explanation given is certainly
the true one. The consultation among the priests, and the
purchase of the potter's field, probably, took place at a later
period, and not on the day of the crucifixion.
11-31. — Jesus before Pilate.
It is necessary to compare the Evangelists carefully with
one another to get a clear and full account of these transac-
tions. Matthew alone, 19, speaks of the message sent to
Pilate by his wife, and of his washing his hands, 24, in
token of his innocency. Luke alone (xxiii. 7-12) mentions
the fact that Jesus was sent away to Herod. John (xix.
1-13) enters more fully into the state of Pilate's mind, his
conversations with Jesus, and his repeated efforts to induce
the Jews to set him free.
While it was yet early in the morning (John xviii. 28)
Jesus was taken to the Pra^torium, or hall of judgment, in
the tower of Antonia, a little north of the temple, where he
stood before the governor. This Praetorium is the same as
the hall (Mark xv. 16) or open court in the centre of the
building, while in front of the palace was apparently a wide
open space with a tessellated pavement, where Pilate on that
day placed his judgment-seat (John xix. 13). The Jews
on account of their religious scruples could not enter the
court, lest it should make them unclean, and unfit for the
feast. Pilate, therefore, several times during the trial pas.<ed
back and forth between the Jews in front of the palace
and Jesus, who, with the Roman soldiers, was in the Prjetor
rium. Two or three times Jesus was taken out into the
presence of the Jews. Bearing these things in mind, we
may get a clear view of the transactions of the morning.
Jesus is brought into the Praetorium (John xviii. 28-32).
Pilate comes out and asks the chief priests and rulers what
their accusation against him is ? They reply, " If he were
41 EB
482 MATTHEW XXVII. 11-31.
not a malefactor, we should not have delivered hira up
unto thee." This vague form of accusation did not suit the
Roman governor's ideas of a judicial trial, and he told them
that they had better take him and condemn him according
to their law. They said, in reply, what he undoubtedly
knew perfectly all the time, that they had no legal authority
to put any man to death. Then they began (Luke xxiii. 2)
to accuse him of perverting the nation, of forbidding to give
tribute to Caesar, and of making himself to be Christ a king,
or an anointed king. Then Pilate went back into the
Prietorium, and had with Jesus the conversation which is
most fully recorded in John xviii. 33-38, — a conversation
which evidently produced a very strong impression upon his
mind. He then went out to the Jews, probably taking Jesus
with him, to declare that he found no fault in him. And
when they, growing more urgent, spoke of Jesus as begin-
ning his work of insurrection in Galilee (Luke xxiii. 5-12),
Pilate sent him to Herod, who probably occupied the mag-
nificent palace built by Herod the Great, in the western part
of the city, near the Tower of Hippicus. More than an
hour probably intervened before Jesus was brought back
to the Praetorium. Pilate then called the Jewish rulers
together again, and after asserting that neither he nor Herod
found any fault in Jesus, he proposed to set him free, since
it had been his custom always to set some prisoner free at
this festival. Just at this time, while he was sitting on the
judgment-seat outside the palace, he received a message
from his wife, warning him to have nothing to do " with that
righteous man ; " " for," she said, " I have suffered many
things this day in a dream, because of him." Her language
shows that she must have known the reputation which Jesus
had for purity and sanctity. Her message must have added
to the perplexity and awe of Pilate. For dreams were re-
garded by many of the Greeks and Romans as sent from
the gods. The classical reader will call to mind the expres-
sion of Homer, " for dreams are from Jupiter," and the
MATTHEW XXVII. 32 - 61. 483
warning dream by which Caesar's wife endeavored to keep
him at home on the day when he was assassinated in the
Capitol. Pilate redoubled his efforts to release Jesus. But
the multitude had been already persuaded by the chief
priests and elders, and only became the more clamorous for
the blood of their victim. He then, to express in the
strongest and most solemn terms his sense of the prisoner's
innocence, took water and washed his hands before the mul-
titude, saying, " I am innocent of the blood of this righteous
man ; see ye to it." And all the people answered, " His
blood be on us, and on our children ; " — an imprecation
fearfully and terribly fulfilled in the manifold sufferings and
slaughters which attended the destruction of Jerusalem be-
fore that generation had passed away. Pilate now gave him
up to his soldiers to scourge and mock him ; but even then
(John xix. 4 — 12) he tried again and again to awaken their
compassion. The majestic and mysterious bearing of his
prisoner, the message from l^is wife, and the character of the
charges against the prisoner created in him a sentiment of
awe, and perhaps of superstitious fear. Whether any, how-
ever distant, perception of the truth touched him, is not
shown by either of the narratives. We have no right to
judge him by the Christian standard, and condemn him be-
cause he did not receive Christ as the Son of God. But we
have a right to judge him by his own law, and to condemn
him, because, in spite of the warnings and misgivings which
he had, he weakly and wickedly, against his own convic-
tions, consented to condemn the prisoner, in violation of the
law by which he was to be judged.
32 - 61. ^ The Crucifixion.
We come now to the most solemn, the most affecting,
the most significant and majestic event in the history of our
race. Here is the deepest and most touching expression of
Grod's love, stooping with infinite compassion to save man
484 MATTHEW XXVII. C2 - 61.
from sin and the misery consequent upon it. We shrink
from interrupting the account by any critical remarks, and
give the narrative as we find it in the four Evangehsts, re-
serving our comments for the notes at the end of the chapter.
Jesus, being worn down by the sorrows and watchings of
the night, and the indignities and sufferings to which he was
subjected after his apprehension, especially the scourging
which had just been administered, the cross was bound upon
his shoulders, and a little before the third hour, or nine o'clock
in the morning, he went bearing his own cross with pain, as
the expression (John xix. 17) seems to intimate, towards a
place called Golgotha. A man named Simon, a Cyrenian,
who had come in from the country, having shown probably
some'marks of pity for the sufferer, was compelled to lift up
the end of the cross, and, perhaps without materially light-
ening the Saviour's burden, was made to share the insults
and mockery that were heaped upon him. This Cyrenian,
however, was not the only one «vho sympathized with him
in his sorrows. In the midst of that scoffing multitude who
were howling after him, and making him the butt of their
impious jests, was a great number of people, especially of
women, who were lamenting and bewailing him. Jesus
turned towards them, and, thinking of the terrible ca-
lamities which were to fall on them and their children
(Luke xxiii. 28), he said, " Daughters of Jerusalem ! weep
not for me ; but weep for yourselves and for your children."
In a short time their mournful journey was finished, and
they reached the spot whose name must always be sacred in
the thoughts and affections of the Christian world. There
they crucified him, having previously stripped him of his
garments and offered him a stupefying potion, which, when
he had tasted it, he refused to drink. Either at the moment
when they were driving the nails through his hands and his
feet, or at the moment of excruciating anguish when the
cross, with his body nailed to it, reaching an upright position,
sunk down with a shock into the hole prepared for it in the
MATTHEW XXVII. 32 - 61. 485
earth, the sharp and sudden agony wrenched from him, as
in a shriek, the cry, his first utterance on the cross, " Father !
forgive them ; for they know not what they are doing."
Now the cruel and blasphemous acts of mockery and scorn
were renewed, Jewish priests and Roman soldiers, rulers
and people alike, wagging their heads as they passed by,
and scoffing at him and his sufferings. Even one of the two
malefactors who were crucified with him, one on either side,
joined in the revilings, and said scoffing (Luke xxiii. 39),
" If thou art the Christ, save thyself and us." But the other,
subdued by what he had seen of divine benignity in Jesus,
after rebuking his companion, said to Jesus, " Remember
me, when thou comest in thy kingdom." Jesus, moved with
compassion towards him, said, and this was his second ut-
terance on the cross, " Verily I say unto thee. To-day
shalt thou be with me in paradise."
The long hours of torture passed. Near the cross where
he hung helpless and submissive in his agony stood (.John
xix. 25) Mary, the mother of Jesus, and her sister, and
Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. When
Jesus, therefore, saw his mother and the disciple whom he
loved standing by her, he said to his mother (this was his
third utterance on the cross), " Woman, behold thy son,"
and to the disciple, " Behold thy mother." " Everything
which she had experienced in the happiest part of her life
had now become darkened to her ; doubts agitated her,"
and unable to bear longer a sight so full of anguish, which,
turning her hopes into despair, pierced as a sword through
her soul, she allowed herself to be taken away, " and from
that hour the disciple took her to his own home."
It was noonday, when darkness overspread all the land,
and continued for three hours. The sufferings on the cross
now reached their sharpest and most dreadful extremity.
There is no record of any word that was spoken, or of any
act or sound to break the terrible stillness of the scene. For
three hours forward from that awful moment when at
41*
486 MATTHEW XXVII. 32-61.
noonday the unearthly darkness began, so far as we can
learn, " not a word of derision is heard all around the cross.
All is hushed into absolute silence." The angry passions of
men subside. They gaze through the darkness in fear and
wonder. " Jesus is silent : the sufferings he endured at the
hands of men now give place to more painful inward suffer-
ihgs. The' darkening of the heavens accompanies and ex-
presses the dreadful darkness that prevails in the soul itself
of the suffering Saviour," when those around are suddenly
startled by the agonizing cry, " My God, my God, why hast
thou forsaken me ? " But why this cry as of utter desolation
and despair? How could God leave his beloved Son so
unsustained in the moment of his keenest anguish? It is
not for us to comprehend all the wonders and mysteries of
the Divine mercy in the great work of our redemption. The
sufferings of the righteous at all times, but most of all the
sufferings of the Son of God, in their relation to the sins of
the world, are, so far as we are concerned, among the secret
things of the Most High. They have indeed a most affect-
ing significance. They show the personal sympathy of
Jesus with the keenest pangs of conflict, or of pain and
despair, that can ever rend our hearts, and indicate to us
how we, through the victory which he has gained, may
triumph over them. But we cannot tell how far his suf-
ferings were essential to our salvation in their influence on
the counsels of God. The mighty train of causes and effects
in God's spiritual kingdom, reaching up through the highest
heavens and down through all the depths of sin and its
attendant sorrows, must be involved in mystery to us. We
cannot comprehend in all the fulness of their meaning these
highest moments in God's dealings with man, when in the
hidings of his power he is bringing to a crisis those vast
designs, which, in working out the redemption of our race,
reach, we know not how far, into the infinite realms of being.
Such a moment it was that heard from the cross the cry of
anguish and desolation which has pierced the heart of the
world, " My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me ? "
MATTHEW XXVII. 32 - 61. 487
These words of Jesus, his fourth utterance upon the cross,
were misunderstood by those around him. But there were
no marks of levity or contempt. It would seem as if even
those who came to scoff at his sufferings had been subdued,
or at least silenced, by the solemnity of the scene. Imme-
diately afterwards Jesus, moved by what is said to be the
severest physical suffering of those who die by that painful
death, said, "I thirst." A sponge filled with vinegar was
raised to his mouth, and when he had received it, he said,
" It is finished." The great work which he came into the
world to accomplish was now done. Pie had drained to its
dregs the cui) which his Father had given him to drink.
The agony was over. And with his seventh and last utter-
ance, " Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit," he
bowed his head and gave up the ghost. " And, behold, the
veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the
bottom ; and the earth did quake, and the rocks rent ; and
the graves were opened, and many bodies of the saints which
slept arose, and came out of the graves after his resurrec-
tion." And " when the centurion, and they that were with
him, watching Jesus, saw the earthquake and those things
that were done, they feared greatly, and said, ' Truly this was
a son of God'" (literally, ' a God's son'). " Certainly, this
was a righteous man." And all the multitudes who had
come out with angry and revengeful feelings, demanding Ijis
life, and making a mock of his sufferings, when they saw
the things which had come to pass (Luke xxiii. 48), smote
their breasts and turned sorrowfully away from what their
own malice or excited passions had helped to accomplish.
Joseph of Arimathea, a rich man, went hastily to Pilate, and
begged the body of Jesus. He then, with the assistance of
Nicodemus, who brought about a hundred pounds of a mix-
ture of myrrh and aloes (John xix. 39), prepared the body
for burial, and inferred it in his own new sepulchre, which
he had hewn out in a garden adjoining the spot where Jesus
had been crucified. And the women who had come from
488 MATTHEW XXVII. 62-66.
Galilee, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary, were there,
over against the sepulchre, seeing the tomb and how the
body was laid. " And now in the tomb lay the holiest being
the earth had ever seen — dead, — a terrible symbol of the
universal death of man, — an image of utter, remediless
despair, — a scene to darken the earth. Then the powers
of darkness seemed to have triumphed. Selfish ambition,
cruelty, rage, hate, still remained on the earth ; but the Holy
One was gone from it. Then might the powers of darkness
have looked out from the clouds, and proclaimed, ^ It is the
hour of our triumph ; henceforth the earth is ours.' " E.
Peabody.
62-66. — Precautions against his Resurrection.
There is a little difficulty in this passage. If the Apostles
so utterly failed to understand the words of Jesus that they
had no expectation of his resurrection, how could his enemies
have had any such idea in their minds ? The words an-
nouncing his resurrection after three days, had been spoken
by him, and repeated by his disciples. The greatness of
the fact foretold prevented their understanding the plain and
literal meaning of the words they had heard and reported.
But when the priests and rulers saw that the body of Jesus
was in the hands of his friends, they recalled to mind these
words, and seeing what their obvious and literal meaning
was, they, with the keenness of religious bigots, suspected
some trick on the part of the disciples, and therefore applied
to the governor to allow them to take the precautions which
would render any such imposition as they feared impractica-
ble. The stone, therefore, was sealed, and a guard was set.
But the very precautions which they had taken turned
against them. The very measures which they had adopted
to expose the cheat which they suspected, served only to
confirm the truth, against which they had set themselves.
MATTHEW XXVII.
489
NOTES.
When the morning was come, all the chief priests and elders
of the people took counsel against Jesus, to put him to death.
2 And when they had bound him, they led him away and de-
livered him to Pontius Pilate the governor.
3 Then Judas, which had betrayed him, when he saw that he
was condemned, repented himself, and brought again the thirty
4 pieces of silver to the chief priests and elders, saying, I have
sinned in that I have betrayed the innocent blood. And they
5 said. What is that to us ? see thou to that. And he cast down
the pieces of silver in the temple, and departed, and went and
6 hanged himself. And the chief priests took the silver
2. and delivered him to
Pontius Pilate the govern-
or] Very little is known of Pilate
beyond what we find in the Gos-
pels. He was not properly gov-
ernor of Judaea, but only the Pro-
curator or deputy-governor, fAid
was subject to the Proconsul of
Syria, who resided at Ciesarea. In
the thirteenth year of Tiberius,
A. D. 26, he came to Judaia as the
successor of Valerius Gratus. Jo-
sephus, Ant. XVIII. 2. 2. He is bare-
ly mentioned by Tacitus as Procu-
rator when Christ was punished.
(Ann. XV. 44.) Josephus speaks of
him, Ant. XVIII. 3. 1, in a way that
shows the weakness of his charac-
ter, and afterwards, in that and the
following chapters, he speaks of
him as engaged in transactions
which indicate the timidity and
mshness, the sensibility and cru-
elty, which ai-e not unfrequently
combined in the same person.
After having been in Judaea ten
vears he was sent to Rome by
Vitellius, governor of Syria, to an-
swer for his conduct to the Emperor
Tiberius, but that crafty and malig-
nant tyrant was deafl before he
reached Rome. According to Euse-
bius (Hist. Eccl. II. 7), the tradition
was that in the reign of Caligula
Pilate fell into such misfortunes
that he " from necessity destroyed
himself, and with his own hand be-
came the avenger, as it seemed, of
the divine justice which at no dis-
tant interval followed after him."
4. have betrayed the in-
nocent blood] This means, not
merely that he had betrayed an in-
nocent man, but that he had betrayed
him to death. What is that to
us? see thou to that.] Moching
could be more cool and contemptu-
ous. They had used the traitor, and
now had nothing more to do with him.
His guilt and anguish were his con-
cern, not theirs. The fewness of the
words that they were willing to
spend upon him added to the fatal
poignancy of their sting. 5.
And he cast down the pieces
of silver in the temple] f " raJ
i/ao). This word does not apply to
the temple enclosures, but to the
holy temple itself, into which none
but the priests were permitted to
enter. It is then an indication of
the utter confusion and desperation
into Avhich the mind of Judas was
thrown, that he should nish in there
to throw down from his guilty hands
the price of blood. and
went and hanged himself]
Alford, in his commentary on Acts
i. 18, says: "It is obvious that,
while the general term used by
Matthew points mainly at s.€lf-
mtirder, the account given here [in
Acts] does not preclude the catas-
490
MATTHEW XXVII.
pieces, and said, It is not lawful for to put them into the
treasury, because it is the price of blood. And they took 7
counsel, and bought with them the potter's field, to bury
trophe related having happened, in
some way, as a Divine judgment,
during the suicidal attempt. Further
than this, with our present knowl-
edge, we cannot go. An accurate
acquaintance vith the actual circum-
stances would account for the dis-
crepancy, but nothing else." 01s-
hausen, after speaking with sever-
ity of the forced interpretations by
which the two passages have been
reconciled, adds : " Yet we must
confess that the accounts may be so
connected as to permit the conjec-
ture that Judas hanged himself, and,
falling down, was so unured that his
bowels gushed out." Prof. Hackett,
whose learning and candor cannot
easily be called in question, adopts
this conjecture as not unreasonable.
In his " Illustrations of Scripture,"
pp. 266, 267, he says: " We have no
certain knowledge as to the mode in
which we are to combine the two
statements, so as to connect the act
of suicide with what happened to
the bodv. Interpreters have sug-
gested that Judas may have hung
himself on a tree near a precipice
over the valley of Hinnom, and that,
the limb or rope breaking, he fell
to the bottom, and was dashed to
pieces by the fall. For myself, I
felt, as I stood in the valley, and
looked up to the rocky terraces
which hang over it, that the pro-
posed explanation was a perfectly
natural one I measured the
precipitous, almost perpendicular
walls, in different places, and found
the height to be, variously, forty,
thirty-six, thirty-three, thii-ty, and
twenty-five feet. Olive-trees still
grow quite near the edge of these
rocks, and, no doubt, in former
times they were still more numer-
ous in the same place. A rocky
pavement exists also at the bottom
of the precipices; and hence, on
that acconnt, too, a person who
should fall from above would be lia-
ble to be cnisliod and mnngled, as
well as killed. The traitor may
have struck, in his fall, upon some
pointed rock, which entered the
body, and caused his bowels to
gush out." Lightfoot's summary
method of dealing Avith the matter
may interest rather than instruct
the reader. " Interpretei-s," says
he, " take a great deal of pains to
make these words agree with his
hanging himself; but, indeed, all
will not do. I know the word
OTT^y^aTO is commonly applied to
a man's hanging himself, but not to
exclude some other way of stran-
gling. And 1 cannot but take the
story (with good leave of antiquity)
in this sense: After Judas liiid
thrown down the money, the price
of his treason, in the temple, and
was now returning again to his
mates, the devil, who dwelt in
him, caught him up on high, stran-
gled him, and threw him down
headlong, so that, dashing upon the
ground, he burst in the midst
This agrees very well with the
deserts of the wicked wretch, and
with the title of Iscariot [i. e. one
who perished bv strangling]. The
wickedness he had committed was
above all example; and the punish-
ment he suffered was beyond all
precedent." 6. into the
treasury] " Kop^avas is the sacred
treasure of the temple, which was
kept in seven chests, called tmm-
pets. Comp. Mark vii. 11." 01s-
hausen. 7. to bury
strang^ers in] Not foreigtiers, but
Jews who were strangers tliere.
the potter's field] '' The
Aceldama, or field of blood, which
was purchased with his money,
tradition has placed on tlie Hill of
Evil Council. It may have been in
that quarter, at least, for the field
belonged originally to a potter, and
argillaceous clay' is still found in
the neighliorhood. A workman in
a pottery which I visited at .Temsa-
lem said tluit all tlieir clav was
obtained from the hill over the val-
MATTHEW XXVII.
491
8 strangers in. Wherefore that field was called, The field of
9 blood, unto this day. Then was fulfilled that which was
spoken by Jeremy the prophet, saying, " And they took the
thirty pieces of silver, the price of him that was valued, whom
10 they of the children of Israel did value, and gave tnem lor the
potter's field, as the Lord appointed me."
11 And Jesus stood before the governor ; and the governor
asked him, saying. Art thou the king of the Jews ? And Jesus
12 said unto him. Thou sayest. And when he was accused of
13 the chief priests and elders, he answered nothing. Then saith
Pilate unto him, Hearest thou not how many things they wit-
14 ness against thee ? And he answered him to never a word ;
15 insomuch that the governor marvelled greatly. Now at that
feast, the governor was wont to release unto the people a pris-
16 oner, whom they would. And they had then a notable pris-
16 oner, called Barabbas, Therefore, when they were gathered
together, Pilate said unto them. Whom will ye that I release
18 unto you ? Barabbas, or Jesus, which is called Christ ? For
19 he knew that for envy they had delivered him. When he
ley of Hiimom." Hackett's III. of
Scrip., p. 267. 8. The
field of blood, unto this day]
This indicates that the Gospel was
written a considerable time after-
wards. Matthew says it was called
" the field of blood " because it had
been bought with the price of blood ;
while in Acts it is said to have been
so called on account of the wretch-
ed death of Judas, — not a contra-
dictory, " but a concurrent reason,
showing that the ill-omened name
could be used with a double em-
phasis." 9. Then was
fulfilled that which was spo-
ken by Jeremy the prophet]
No such passage as the one here
quoted is to be found in Jeremiah.
A passage, not identical, but bear-
ing a strong resemblance to it, is
found in Zechariah xi. 13, 14.
How is this to be accounted for?
" The simplest solution of the
difficulty." savs Olshausen, " is to
suppose that the Evangelist mistook
the name of the prophet, or that
the earliest transcribers mierht luvve
I'ead some contraction for the name
fulj-ely ; or perhaps that there was no
name at all there at first, and that
some transcriber supplied its want
erroneously." The passage in Zecli-
ariah, very different from that which
is here quoted, is thus rendered by
Dr. Noyes: "And they weighed for
my wages thirty shekels of silver.
And Jehovah said to me, Cast it into
the treasury, the goodly price at
which I was valued by them. And
I took the thirty shekels of silver,
and cast them into the house of
Jehovah, into the treasury." It is
impossible for us to see in this ac-
count anything more than an iiici-
dental similarity to some of the
facts connected with the treachery .
of Judas. It can in no sense be re-
garded as a prophecy of the events
described by Matthew. IG,
17. According to Tischendoi-f, these
verses should read thus : " And they
had then a notable prisoner, called
Jesus Barabbas. Therefore, when
they were gathered together, Pilate
said unto them, " Which shall I re-
lease unto you, Jesus Barabbas, or
Jesus who is caUed Christ? " The
492
MATTHEW XXVII.
was set down on tlie judgment-seat, his wife sent unto him,
saying, Have thou nothing to do with that just man ; for I
have suffered many things this day in a dream because of him.
But the chief priests and elders persuaded the multitude 20
that they should ask Barabbas, and destroy Jesus. The 21
governor answered and said unto them, Whether of the
twain will ye that I release unto you ? They said, Barabbas.
Pilate saith unto them, What shall I do then with Jesus, 22
which is called Christ ? They all say unto him. Let him be
crucified. And the governor said. Why ? Avhat evil hath he 23
done ? But they cried out the more, saying. Let him be cru-
cified. When Pilate saw that he could prevail nothing, but 24
that rather a tumult was made, he took water, and washed his
hands before the multitude, saying, I am innocent of the blood
of this just person ; see ye to it. Then answered all the peo- 25
pie, and said, His blood be on us, and on our children. Then 26
released he Barabbas unto them ; and when he had scourged
best critics, hoAvcver, do not approve
of this as the true reading. 19.
when he was set down on the
judgment-seat] This judgment-
seat (John xix. 13) was outside of
the palace or fortress, on the pave-
ment. The tower or fortress of An-
tonia, where Pihite sat in judgment,
was situated on the north side of
the grounds occupied by the temple,
and took up a space nearly or quite
as large as that which was set apart,
Avithin the sacred enclosures, for
the temple. The Antonia enclosure
measured, south, 975 feet ; east, 710 ;
north, 1030; west, 730. Barclav,
•p. 245. 23. Let him be
crucified] This punishment was
cliiefly inflicted on slaves and the
worst kind of malefactors. ( Juv. VI.
219; Hor. Sat. I. 3. 82.) The crim-
inal, after sentence pronounced, car-
'ried his cross to the place of execu-
tion; a custom mentioned by Plu-
tarch (De Tard. Dei Vind") and
Artemidoms (Oneir. II. 61) as well
as in the Gospels. From Livy
(XXXIII. 36) and Valerius Maximus
(I. 7) scourging appears to have
fonned a part of this as of other
capital punishments among the Ro-
mans. The scourging of our Sav-
iour, however, is not to be regarded
in this light, for it was inflicted be-
fore the sentence was pronounced,
and was done by Pilate with the
hope of thus satisfying the ven-
geance of the Jews without the cni-
cifixion which they had demanded.
The criminal was next stripped of
his clothes, and nailed or bound to
the cross. The latter was the more
painful method, as the suflerer was
left to die of hunger. The body
was not supported by the nails, but
by a piece of wood which passed
between the legs. Instances are
recorded of persons who survived
nine days. Smith's Greek and Ro-
man Ant. 24. he took
water, and washed his hands]
*' The washing of hands, to betoken
innocence from blood-guiltiness, is
?rescribed Dent. xxi. 6-9, and
ilate uses it here as intelligible to
the Jews." Alford. Pilate, having
now resided in Judsea seven years,
must have become well acquainted
with Jewish customs. 26.
Then released he Barabbas]
" One who was moreover guilty of
that very crime (treason) of which
Jesus Avas accused ; nay, even guilty
of a worse crime. However, it was
by the death of Him who was the
Just One, that those very persons
MATTHEW XXVII.
493
27 Jesus, he delivered him to be crucified. Then the soldiers
of the governor took Jesus into the common hall, and gathered
28 unto him the whole band of soldiers. And they stripped him,
29 and put on him a scarlet robe. And wlien they had platted a
crown of thorns, they put it upon his head, and a reed in his
right hand ; and they bowed the knee before him, and mocked
30 him, saying, Hail, King of the Jews ! And they spit upon
31 him, and took the reed, and smote him on the head. And after
that they had mocked him, they took the robe off from him,
and put his own raiment on him ; and led him away to cru-
cify him.
32 And as they came out, they found a man of Cyrene, Simon
who had deserved death are set
free." Beiigel. and when
he had scourged Jesus, he de-
livered him to be crucifled]
This passage may be taken as a
specimen of the manner in which
events, which were in fiict sepa-
rated by intervening incidents, are
brought together in a condensed
narrative, as if one had grown im-
mediately out of the other. Be-
tween the scourging of Jesus and
his being given up to be crucified,
according to John xix. 4 - 16, Pilate
had a private interview wiih Jesus,
and more than once tried to per-
suade the Jews to release him.
27. the whole band]
CTTTf tpai/, a cohort, the tenth part of
'a legion, about 600. The woi-d
whole is not to be pressed. Alford.
28. a scarlet robe] Mark
(xv. 17) and John (xix. 2) say pur-
ple. The two words were probably
used indiscriminately to express the
color adapted to royalty. In Rev.
xvii. 4, the two words are used to-
gether. " And the woman was ar-
rayed in purple and scarlet color "
29. a crown of thorns]
" The acanthus itself," says Alford,
" with its large succulent leaves, is
singularly unfit for such a purpose ;
as is the plant with very long sharp
thorns, commonly known as Spina
Christi, being a brittle acacia. Some
Jlexile shrub or plant must be under-
stood. Has'selqnist, a Swedish nat-
urnlist, supposes a very common
plant, naba or nubka of the Arabs,
42
with many small and sharp spines ;
soft, round, and pliant branches;
leaves much resembling ivy, of a
very deep green, as if in designed
mockery of a victor's wreath."
and mocked him] This
mockery and personal abuse were
three times inflicted: 1. at the ex-
amination before the Sanhedrim
(xxvi. 67); 2. when he was sent to
Herod ( Luke xxiii. 11); and, 3. here
by the Roman soldiers.
32, " Jesus is led towards Golgotha.
St. Matthew gives the outline only:
They f mind a man of Cyrene, Simon
by name : him they compelled to bear
his cross. St. Mark (xv. 21) adds
to this a Avord which seems to put
the living scene before your eyes : a
man who was passincj by (that very
place); and then a particnlar cir-
cumstance which St. Luke (xxiii.
26) adopts from him : coming out of
the country; finally, another also,
Avhich is mentioned by none but St.
Mark, and bears upon the person of
this Cyrenian: he was the father of
Alexander and Rufus, men in Mark's
time well known in the Church, and
particularly in that of Rome. We
are not, however, so to understand
the matter, as if the ci'oss Avere
taken- off* onr Lord's shoulders and
transferred to those of this Simon ;
much less, as we see it sometimes
represented in Bible prints and pic-
tures, as if the men who were
leading away Jesus, on seeing him
sink under the Aveight, had there-
fore thought of laying it on Simoa
494
MATTHEW XXVII.
by name : him they compelled to bear his cross. And when 33
they were come unto a place called Golgotha, that is to say, a
as he was passing by. The im-
probability of this will be per-
ceived at once, by attending to the
circumstance, that among the Ro-
mans the cross Avas ordinarily fas-
tened to the shoulders of the con-
demned person, and could not, ac-
cordingly, have been first uidoosed
by the soldiers, as this supposition
requires. No! the Saviour's cross
was taken off" his shoulders by no
one. But the soldiers must in irony
have compelled Simon, who in pass-
ing had expressed his compassion
for the adorable sufferer, to lift the
cross, and (as St. Luke expresses it)
to bear it after him. Thus Simon
presents us liere with an image of
the true disciple of our Lord, shar-
ing in his cross and in his igno-
miny. In perfect accordance with
this we find the expressive state-
ment of St. John xix. 17: Jesus,
bearing with pain (^^acrrd^iov) his
cross, went forth, &c." Da Costa's
Four Witnesses, pp. 414, 415. It may
have been, nevertheless, that Jesus,
bearing his cross with pain, sunk
beneath it by the way, and that it
Avas then taken from him and put on
Simon, though we prefer Da Costa's
view. 3.3. And when
they were come to a place
called Golgotha, that is to
say, a place of a skull] Cia-
nium. Luke, xxiii. 33, says: " And
when they were come to the place
which is called Cranium,'^ not Cal-
vary. Kpaviov is the Greek Avord,
meaning a shdl, and Calvary is
formed from the coiTesponding Latin
word, Calvaria. The term Avas prob-
ably given in consequence of some
natural feature of the place resem-
bling a skull, rather than because
the place was use4 for burial. The
situation of the place is unknoAvn.
The Church of the Holy Sepulchi-e,
AAdiich is fiA'e or six hundred yards,
in a direction nearly Avest, from the
northern extremity of Mt. Moriah,
was built by order of the Emperor
Constantine," and dedicated A. D.
335, to commemorate the spot. It has
been seriously questioned Avhether
this Avas really the place Avhere
Jesus Avas crucified. Dr. Robinson
has shoAvn, we think, quite conclu-
siA-elv that the site of the Church of
the Holy Sepulchre lies Avithin the
space which AA-as enclosed by the
Avails of Jerusalem at the time of
the Cnicifixion, and it is admitted
on all hands that no public execu-
tion would at that time have been
alloAved Avithin the city A\-alls, Dr.
Robinson has also shoAvn that there
is no historical testimony on the
subject Avhich is to be relied upon
now, and that there Avas none when
the church Avas erected, three hun-
dred years after the crucifixion.
Stanley, in his able and scholarly
work on Palestine, admits the force
of the objection to the historical
testimony, but does not think Dr.
Robinson's A'icAV of the topographi-
cal question Avholly free from diffi-
culties. Barclay, in his City of the
Great King, adopts Dr. Robinson's
view, and supports it with great
earnestness, though with no addi-
tional argimients Avhich are entitled
to much Aveight. He even goes so
far as to suggest as the scene of the
cnicifixion a spot lying nearly in
the opposite direction from the judg-
ment-hall. After speaking of the .
name Cranium, as being applicable
not only to the head of an animal,
but e(pially so to a head or cape of
land, in Avhich Ave find him sus-
tained by the authority of Tischen-
dorf, he adds, p. 79: "'Noav there is
a kind of head, cape, or promontory
of land projecting southeastAvanlly
into the Ivedron valley, a shoi-t dis-
tance aboA'e Gethscmane, to Avhich
such a term seems quite api)licable,
just as the Ioav spur of Lebanon on
Avhich Beimt reposes is called Cape
or Head of Beirut. May not this
similar spur of an unnamed ridge be
the site of that aAvful scene, — the
cnicifixion of the Son of God?"
This may have been t}ie spot, but
the arguments adduced by Barclay
are not suflielent to prove it. Nor
do Ave attach any gi-eat importance
MATTHEW XXVII.
495
84 place of a skull, they gave him vinegar to drink, mingled with
gall ; and when he had tasted thereof, he would not drink.
35 And they crucified him, and parted his garments, casting lots;
that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet,
" They parted my garments among them, and upon my vesture
36 did they cast lots." And sitting down, they watched him there ;
37 and set up over his head his accusation written, THIS IS
to the question. The grave of Moses
was unknown, hi order that the peo-
ple might never have an opportuni-
ty to indulge their idokitrous pro-
pensity by any superstitious observ-
ances connected with it. In the
writers of the New Testament we
find nowhere the slightest mark of
veneration for the places connected
with our Saviour's life. They had
imbibed too much of the spirit of
him to whom Jerusalem and Geri-
zim were ahke unimportant as
places of worship, to dwell with
reverence on things so purely exter-
nal. It was not till the spiritual life
which he came to awaken and iiu-
part had begun to mingle with baser
elements, and the worship of the
Father " in spirit and in truth " had
been alloyed by something very like
idolatrous ingredients, that the pas-
sion for I'elics and sacred places
was excited in the Church, and
pilgrimages began to be performed,
and idolatrous substitutes for a
devout and holy life bemm to exer-
cise their degrading and demoraliz-
ing influence on the souls of men.
Still there is a reasonable curiosity
in such matters ; and there are as-
sociations which ought not to be
disregarded. No true follower of
Christ could visit the scenes of his
earthly ministry, — Nnzareth, the
Lake of Tiberia'^, the hills of Gall-
lee, the banks of the Jordan, or t!ie
Mount of Olives, — without strong
emotion. We even agree with Stan-
.ley, when he says, " Granting to the
full the doubts which must always
hang over the highest claims of
the Church of the Sepulchre, no
thoughtful man can look unmoved
on what has from the time of Con-
stantine been revered by the larger
part of the Christian world as the
scene of the greatest events of
the world's history." Wherever
the place was situated, the name of
Calvary can never lose its pow-
er with the followers of Christ.
Among the traditions respecting
Golgotha is one that Adam, or at
least Adam's skull, was buried
there, and the precise spot is still
pointed out and believed in as the
" entombment of Adam's head " !
34. they gave him
vinegar to drink^ mingled
with gall] Just before crucifix-
ion the Romans were accustomed
to give to the convicts a stupefying
drink, wine mingled with myrrh, in
order to deaden their sensibility to
the awful agonies of this dreadful
punishment. Mark (xv. 23) says
wine mingled toith myrrh ; Matthew,
vinegar mingled with gall. But vine-
gar was nothing else than the com-
mon sour wine, and the word gall
was used to denote bitters of any
kind. " They gave me also gall
for m}' meat; "and in my thirst they
gave me vinegar to drink." (Ps.
Ixix. 21.) It was tmdoubtedly in-
tended by the Romans as an act of
mercy, yet it was here administered
in an insulting way. " And the
soldiers also mocked him, coming
to him, and ofTering him vinegar."
(Luke xxiii. 36.) When Jesus had
tasted it, he refused to drink, for
" he did not wish to meet death
otherwise than in the full posses-
sion of his consciousness."
35. that it might be ful-
filled] These words, and what fol-
low in this verse, are not found in
the best manuscripts. They were
probably copied in here by tran-
scribers from John xix. 24.
87. And set up aver his head
his accusation written. This
496
MATTHEW XXVII.
JESUS, THE KING OF THE JEWS. Then were there 38
two thieves crucified wjth him ; one on the right hand, and
another on the left. And they that passed by reviled him, 39
wagging their heads, and saying, Tliou that destroyest the 40
temple, and buildest it in three days, save thyself; if thou be
the Son of God, come down from the cross. Likewise also the 41
chief priests, mocking him, with the scribes and elders, said,
He saved others, himself he cannot save ; if he be the King 43
of Israel, let him now come down from the cross, and we will
believe him. He trusted in God ; let him deliver him now, 43
is Jesus the King of the
Jews] In Mark it is, The King
OF THE Jews; in Luke, The King
OF THE Jews this; in John, Jesus
OK NaZAKETH, THE KiNG OF THE
Jews. " On the difFerence in the
four Gospels as to the words of
the inscription itself it is hardly
worth while to comment, except to
remark that the advocates for the
verbal and literal exactness of each
Gospel may here find an undoubted
example of the absurdity of their
view, which may serve to guide
them in less plain and obvious
cases. A title was written, con-
taining certain words; not four
titles, all different, but one, differ-
ing probably from all of these four,
but certainly from three of them."
Alford. Da Costa, who holds to
a literal or verbal exactness, ex-
plains the differences thus. Ac-
cording to John xix. 20, the super-
scription was written in Hebrew,
Greek, and Latin. It may therefore
have been written with variations,
and each of the Evangelists may
liave given it according to the lan-
guage and the form best suited to his
own plan or style. In St. Luke, he
says, it is probably the Latin super-
scription ; in St. Mark, the Hebrew,
while St. John gives it to us in the
fullest form, which is the Greek,
and " St. Matthew (jives us a kind of
combination.''^ What is this " kind
of combination," but a giving up of
the literal and verbal exactness/
40. save thyself. 42. He
saved others ; himself he can-
not save] The word Jesus means
Saviour; and it has been supposed
that here in the original Hebrew or
Aramaic was a taunting play upon
the Saviour's name.
39. And they that passed by
reviled him, wagging their
heads] 41. '• Likewise aLio Hie chief
jivlests, inockin<j him, with the scribes
and elders, said,'' 43, " He trusted
in God; let him deliver him now if
he will have him ; for he said, I am
the Son of God.'' The correspond-
ence between this and the seventh
and eighth verses of the twenty-
second Psalm is very remarkable.
" All that see me laugh me to scorn :
they shoot out the lip, they shake
the'head, saying. He trusted on the
Lord that he would deliver him: let
him deliver him, seeing he delighted
in him." In this Psalm are the
other expressions : " My God, my
God, why hast thou forsaken me V "
" They pierced my hands and my
feet." " They part my garments
among them, and cast lots upon my
vesture." Are these accidental co-
incidences, or were they thrown in
through the superintending and \n-o-
phetic spirit of God, that they might
associate themselves with the scene
upon the cross as a prediction of
that event in some of its minute par-
ticulars? Undoubtedly the Psalm,
as Dr. Noyes says, is one in Avhicli
a pious Israelite makes his suppli-
cation to God in the midst of great
distress, and enumerates the cir-
cumstances which aggravate his
distress, and the faith by which he
may triumph over it. But may it
not also be in some of its parfs a
type of the sufferings of Christ?
'io this question we would apply
MATTHEW XXVir.
497
44 if he will have him ; for he said, I am the Son of God. The
thieves also which were crucified with him cast the same in his
45 teeth. Now from the sixth hour there was darkness over
46 all the land, unto the ninth hour. And %bout the ninth hour
the remarks of Dr. Noyes. " As to
the typiciil or mysticnl sense which
has been assigned to this and other
psalms, it seems to be beyond the
province of the interpreter. Tliere
are no human means by which to
ascertain it. None but the Divine
Spirit can be sure what it is. As
has been well observed by Emesti,
in his Principles of Biblical Inter-
pretation, — ' Nor, in searching for
this typical sense, is there need of
the care and talents of an inter-
preter. For it is revealed by the
information and testimony of the
Holy Spirit, beyond whose' showing
we should not in this matter at-
tempt to advance.' " 44.
The thieves also which were
crucified with him cast the
same into his teeth] It may be
that both at first reviled Jesus, and
that afterwards one of them, im-
pressed and subdued by his bearing
on the cross, may have spoken as
in Luke xxiii. 40-43. It is diffi-
cult, however, to suppose that the
Avriter here was acquainted with
the facts narrated there. 45.
Now from the sixth hour
there was darkness over all
the land, unto the ninth hour]
From 12 M. to 3 \\ M. This could
not have been an eclipse of the sun,
for it was then the time of the full
moon ; nor does the language im[)ly
that the darkness extended to any
great distance beyond the vicinity
of Jerusalem. VVe know not how
close and sti-ong may be the sym-
pathy between the spiritual and the
physical universe, nor how far the
phenomena of the outward world
may be affected by the life and
conduct of men. The greatest po-
ets have recognized intimate rela-
tions between the two ; nor can we
" set to the account of accident or
imagination all those remarkable
coincidences between heaven and
earth, all those testimonies which
the signs and tokens of heaven
42*
have so often yielded, and men
taken note of, that the great of
this world do not come or go with-
out warning At no time
does nature put on a careless, un-
meaning face, when aught that
intimately concerns her foster-child
man is being done, nor make as
though this was nothing unto her.
On the contrary, her history runs
parallel, and is subordinate, to his,
— the great moments in the life of
nature concurring with the great
moments in the life of man, and
therefore most of all Avith the great
crises of the kingdom of God, which
concerns him the nearest of all.
Thus, during all those hours that
the Son of God hung upon the
cross, there was darkness over the
whole earth [land ?] ; nature shud-
dered to her very centre, at the
moment when he' expired; for it
Avas her king, as well as man's,
that died." Trench, Star of the
AVise Men, p. 23. " The sublimity
of this moment seems to have been
symbolically solemnized even by
nature herself." " How deep lies
its foundation in human nature to
regard natural events symbolically
as maiiifesting a symput ly between
the life of nature and the incidents
of humanity, is shown by parallel
passages fro'm the profane writers."
" In the history of Immanuel ap-
pear in their complete and actnal
truth what were but erroneous, and
diversely distracted, sxippositions of
mankind." Olshausen. " The wise
men from the East were led to the
Redeemer by the remarkable phe-
nomena Avhich attended his birth ;
and similar Avonders accompanied
his death. As the unity of the
Avorld as a Avhole [the Avorld of
nature and of spirit] is seen in
natural signs accompanying epoch-
making events in history, so we
need not marvel to find the greatest
event in history — shown as such
by its fruits in the spiritual reuova-
498
MATTHEW XXVII.
Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eli, Eli, lama sabach-
thani ? that is to say, My God, my God, why hast thou for-
tion of mankind, even to those who
cannot comprehend. its internal im-
port — attended by similar mani-
festations. At the moment of
Christ's death there was an earth-
quake; and at the same time, and
perhaps from the same cause, a
darkness spread over the sky. The
veil of the Holy of Holies in the
Temple was rent asunder, signify-
ing that the Holy of Holies in
Heaven is openetl to all men
through the finished work of
Christ; the wall of partition be-
tween the Divine and the human
broken down, and a spiritual wor-
ship substituted for an outward and
sensible one." Neander, Life of
Jesus, pp. 421, 422. " Those whose
belief leads them to reflect wlio it
was then suffering, will have no
difficulty in accounting for these
signs of sympathy in nature, nor
in seeing their applicability. The
consent, in the same words, of all
three Evangelists, must silence all
question as to the universal belief
of this darkness as a fact; and the
early fathers ( Tertull. Apol. c. 21 ;
Origen c. Cels. 2. 33; Euseb. in
Chronicon) appeal to profane testi-
mony for its truth." Alford.
46. Eli, Eli, lama sabach-
thani? that is to say, My
God, my God, why hast
thou forsaken me ?] It is one
of the incidental proofs of the gen-
uineness of the Gospels that these
extraordinary words should be pre-
served in the language in which they
were spoken. They may be found
in the first verse of the twenty-sec-
ond Psalm. Dr. Noyes says in re-
gard to them : " I cannot agree with
those who find in them no expres-
sion of anguish or tone of expostu-
lation, and who suppose them to
be cited by our Saviour merely in
order to suggest the confideiice and
triumph with which the Psalm ends,
but which do not begin before
the twenty-second verse. Under
the circumstances of the case, the
words appear to have had sub-
stantially the same meaning when
uttered by Christ as when uttered
by the Psalmist. They should not
be interpreted as the deliberate re-
sult of calm rertection, but as an
outburst of strong involuntary emo-
tion, forced from our Saviour by
anguish of body and mind, in the
words which naturally occurred to
him, implying momtutary expostu-
lation, or even complaint. But that
the interiiiption of the consciousness
of God's presence and love was only
momentary, both in the case of the
Psalmist and the Saviour, is evi-
dent, first, from the expression. My
God! my God! repeated with ear-
nestness; secondly, from the ex-
pressions of confidence in the
course of the Psalm, which might
follow in the mind of Christ as well
as in that of the Psalmist; and
thirdly, from the usage of language,
according to which the expression
' to be forsaken by God ' merely
means ' not to be delivered from
actual or impending distress.' The
very parallel line in the verse under
consideration, ' Why art thou so
far from helping me?' is, accord-
ing to the laws of Hebrew parallel-
ism, a complete exposition of the
language, ' Why hast thou for-
saken me?' So Ps. xxxviii. 21,
22." Theological Essays, p. xviii.
In confirmsKtion of this view Dr.
Noyes quotes Meyer on Matt, xxvii.
46,' as follows: "By the words
' ^yhy hast thou forsaken me V '
Jesus expressed what he personally
felt, his consciousness of communion
with God having been for a moment
interrupted by his sufferings. But
this momentary subjective feeling
is not to be confounded with an
actual objective abandonment by
God (against Olshausen and the
older commentators), which at
least in the case of Jesus would
have been a physical and moral
impossibility. ...'.. To find, with
the older dogmatic theologians, the
vicarious feeling of Divine wrath in
the cry of anguish, ' Why hast thou
forsaken me?' is to go beyond the
New Testament view of the atoning
MATTHEW XXVir.
499
47 saken me ? Some of them that stood there, when they heard
48 that, said, This man ealleth for Elias. And straightway one
of them ran, and took a sponge, and filled it with vinegar, and
49 put it on a reed, and gave him to drink.. The rest said, Let
death of Christ, ns also that of tlie
agony in Gethseinane. On the oth-
er hand, the opinion of some inter-
preters, that Jesus, when he quoted
the first verse of the Psahn, had in
his mind the whole of it, is arbitra-
ry, and brings into his condition of
immediate feeling the heterogenous
element of reflection and citation."
For our view of the state of Christ's
mind here, and the overpowering
nature of his sufferings, we refer to
what we have said of the agony in
Gethsemane, xxvi. 36-46. "His
capacity for suffering was on the
same vast scale as his other facul-
ties, and therefore far transcending
anything that we can know of hu-
man anguish. Wliat there may-
have been beyond this, what rela-
tion his sufferings may have had
to the redemption of man in the
infinite counsels of God, and be-
yond the limits of this world, has
not been revealed in the Scriptures,
and therefore cannot be known by
us. To assert that they had no
such far-reaching influence would
be as unauthorized a piece of dog-
matism, as to assert that their prin-
cipal efficacy lies in that direction.
We cannot fathom the depth of our
Saviour's sufl'erings, because we
canjiot comprehend the greatness
of his mind, his nature, or his mis-
sion. We can no more ex{)lain all
the sources of his grief, than Ave
can the sources of his knowledge or
his power. When we can analyze
the process by which he revealed to
us the mysteries of the kingdom of
heaven, or raised Lazarus from the
dead, or talked in open vision, face to
face, with Moses and Elias, then we
may hope to analyze the sufferings
of Gethsemane and Calvary. Un-
doubtedly his sufferings were ter-
ribly aggravated by the intense
and"^ perfect sympath}^ with man,
through which he became the rep-
resentative of the whole race, tak-
ing upon himself their sorrows and
their sins. We can hardly do more
than guess at the amount of an-
guish thus forced upon him.
" An enigma indeed," says Nean-
der, " must this exclamation ap-
pear to those who forget
that Christ suffered and died for
mankind, — for mankind laid up in
his heart; an enigma to all, in a
word, who are strangers to the
Christian life. But the Christian
sees in this feature of his Master's
history a type of the life of indi-
vidual believers, and of the whole
Church; for both must be led
through all stages of suffering, and
even through moments of ai)i>arent
abandonment by God, to perf\iction
and glorification." Life of Jesus,
p. 420. 47. Some of
them that stood there, when
they heard that, said, This
man ealleth for Elias] We
see no evidence that these words, or
those in v. 49, " Let us see tohtther
Elias will come to snve hiin,^^ were
spoken in derision. The spectators,
we suppose, had been deeply im-
pressed by the darkness and the
silence, and now that the silence
was broken by the remarkable
words of Jesus, they misunder-
stood their meaning, and were
waiting with awe to see what the
result might be. 48. And
straightway one of them ran,
and took a sponge, and filled
it with vinegar] " We have no
reason for assuming that the soldiers
offering vineyar in Luke xxiii. 36,
37 is the same incident as this.
Since then the bodily state of the
Redeemer had greatly changed ; and
what was then offered in mockery
might well be now asked for in the
agony of death, and received when
presented, as in our text. The o^os
is the posca, sour wine, or vinegar
and water, the ordinary drink of
tlie Koman soldiers." Alford. The
500
MATTHEW XXVII.
be ; let us see whether Elias will come to save him. Jesus, 50
when he had cried again with a loud voice, yielded up the
ghost. And, behold, the veil of the temple was rent in si
twain from the top to the bottom ; and the earth did quake,
and the rocks rent ; and the graves were opened, and many 52
bodies of the saints which slept arose, and came out of the 53
graves after his resurrection, and went into the holy city, and
appeared unto many. Now when the centurion, and they that 54
were with him watching Jesus, saw the earthquake, and those
things which were done, they feared greatly, saying. Truly
this was the Son of God. And many women were there, 55
beholding afar off; which followed Jesus from Galilee, minis-
tering unto him ; among which was Mary Magdalene, and 56
drink is given in reptly to the re-
quest of Jesus, " I thirsty " in John
xix. 28. 51, 52. And,
behold, the veil of the temple
was rent in twain] This must
have been the veil or curtain before
the Holy of Holies. See note on
45. And many bodits of the snints
which slept arose, and came out of
the graves after his resurrection, and
went into Uie holy city, and appeared
to many. This passage is rejected
by Mr. Norton as an interpolation.
But it is found in all the best man-
uscripts. The events are of a most
extraordinarj'^ character; but that
alone will hardly justify us in ex-
cluding the passage from the Gos-
pels. There is nothing in the ac-
count which should be incredible to
those who believe in the miracles of
Jesus. It is only as accessory or
dependent incidents arrangiiig them-
selves around the one great fact of
Christ's death and resurrection that
these extraordinary events can be
regarded in their true aspect and
relations. When thus regarded, they
may appear as the natural and fit-
ting accompaniments of that death
which broke down the powei*s of
the grave, and which became a
door or gateway of life to all be-
lievers, and thus brought life and
immortality to light. But when we
undertake to explain the events, and
to show precisely how they may
have occurred, we find many diM-
culties in the way, and are obliged
to say, with Adarri Clarke, that " the
place is extremely obscure." There
is but one other passage in Mat-
thew (xvii. 27) which seems to us
to bear such internal marks of
being a mythical accretion.
54. Truly this was the Son of
God] The expressioji in Luke,
xxiii. 47, is, " Certainly this was a
righteous man.'''' The two expres-
sions, we suppose, were actually
used by the centurion. They may,
however, be only different transla-
tions of the same words, and mean-
ing substantially the same thing.
They were spoken by one who be-
lieved in the Gods. The exact ver-
sion of the words recorded by Mat-
thew is, " Truly this was a God's
son," i. e." a dirine,'' or, as St. Luke
has it, " a righteous, man.'''' It is pos-
sible that he used the words in the
Jewish sense, as indicated in our
common version. 56. Mary
Magdalene] " See ch. xv. 39.
She is not to be confounded
with Mary who anointed our Lord
(John xii. 1), nor with the woman
who did the same, Luke vii. 36;
see Luke viii. 2." Alford. There
is no evidence except what is indi-
cated by the disease of Avhich Jesus
cured her (Luke viii. 2), that she
had been a dissolute woman. Her
name probably came from Magdala.
and Mary the mother of
James and JosesJ The motlier of
MATTHEW XXVII.
501
Mary the mother of James and Joscs, and the mother of Zebe-
dee's children.
67 When the even was come, there came a rich man of Arima-
thea, named Joseph, who also himself was Jesus' disciple.
68 He went to Pilate, and begged the body of Jesus. Then Pilate
59 commanded the body to be delivered. And when Joseph had
60 taken the body, he wrapped it in a clean linen cloth, and laid
it in his own new tomb, which he had hewn out in the rock ;
and he rolled a great stone to the door of the sepulchre, and
61 departed. And there was Mary Magdalene, and the other
Mary, sitting over against the sepulchre.
James the less, or the youufjer, says
Mark, to distinguish him from James
the son of Zebedee, and the wife of
Alplieeus or Clonas; see John xix.
2r>, and com. ( n M itt. xiii. 53 - 58.
and the mother of Zebe-
dee's children] = S'llome, Mark
XV. 40. 57. there came
a rich man of Arimathea,
named Joseph] " A disciple of
Jesus," says John (xix. 38), "but
secretly, through fear of the Jews."
" A counsellor," i. e. a member of the
Sanhedrim, says Luke (xxiii. 50,
51), " and he was a good and right-
eous man (this man had not con-
sented to their coiuisel and their
deed) from Arimathea, a city of the
Jews, who also himself was waiting
for the kingdom of God." This is
all that is known, nor can it be
determined now precisely where
Arimathea was. He was evidently
a man (Mark xv. 43) of great re-
spectability of character as well as
a man of wealth. 58. He
went to Pilate, and begged
the body of Jesus] The Roman
custom Avas to leave the bodies ex-
posed on the crosses till devoured
by birds of prey. Horace, Epis. I.
16. 48. The Jewish custom, on the
other hand, ( Josephus, Jewish Wars,
IV. 5. 2,) was to take them down
before sunset and bury them. If no
one had come to ask for the body
of Jesus, it would have been buried
in the common place appointed for
the burial of executed criminals.
He has been " numbered with the
transgressors," and now he is to
have his grave " with the rich in
his death." Had he been placed
with others in the common burying-
ground for malefactors, it wouldhave
been impossible to obtain the cir-
cumstantial evidence that we now
have of his resurrection. The chief
priests would not have thought of
sealing the stone, or setting a watch
there. 59. Wrapped it
in a clean linen cloth] " The
Jews, as well as the Egyptians,
added spices to keep the body
from putrefaction, and the linen
was wrapped about every part to
keep the aromatics in contact with
the flesh. Eroin John xix. 39, 40,
we learn that a mixture of mvirh
and aloes, of one hundred pounds'
M^eight, had been applied to the
body of Jesus when he was buried.
And that a second embalmment
was intended, we learn from Luke
xxiii. 56 and xxiv. 1, as the hurry
to get the body interred before the
Sabbath did iiot permit them to
complete the embalming in the first
instance." Adam Clarke.
60. And laid it In his own
new tomb] Matthew alone re-
lates that it was Joseph's own tomb.
John relates that it was in a gar-
den, and in the place where he was
cnicified. " All that we can deter-
mine respecting the sepulchre from
the data here furnished is : — 1. That
it was not a natural cave, but an
artificial excavation in the rock.
2. That it was not cut doionwards,
after the manner of a grave with
us, but horizontally, or nearly so,
502 MATTHEW XXVII.
Now the next day, that followed the day of the preparation, 62
the chief priests and Pharisees came together unto Pilate, say- 63
ing. Sir, we remember that that deceiver said, while he was
yet alive, After three days I will rise again. Command 64
therefore that the sepulchre be made sure until the third day,
lest his disciples come by night, and steal him away, and say
unto the people. He is risen from the dead ; so the last error
shall be worse than the first. Pilate said unto them, Ye have 65
a watch ; go your way, make it as sure as ye can. So they 66
went, and made the sepulchre sure, sealing the stone, and set-
tinir a watch.
into the face of the rock fxion. Sir] Kupte, Lord.
3. That it was in the spot where the The title of respect usixally apphed
crucifixion toolc place." Alford. to .Jesus, and to persons ot' distinc-
62. the next day, tion, but not implying the homage
that folIoAved the day of the or reverence due to a divine being.
preparation] More exactly, On 66. sealing the stone,
the next day, i. e. the day that and setting a watch] " The
came after the preparation. The sealing was by means of a cord or
preparation was the day before the string passing across the stone at
Jewish Sabbath. Why should it the mouth of the sepulchre, and
be mentioned here? Because to fastened at either end to the rock
Matthew, when he recorded these by sealing-clay." The watch or
events, that preparation day on guard was probably a small detach-
which Jesus had been crucified ment of Roman soldiers which the
was the day from which to reckon governor placed at the disposal of
even the Sabbath which came im- the priests, and of course subject to
mediately after it. It was as if he their orders,
had said, The day after the cruci-
MATTHEW XXVIII. 503
CHAPTER XXVIII.
The Gospel Narratives of the Resurrection.
" The independence and distinctness of the four narra-
tives in this part," says Alford, "have never been ques-
tioned, and indeed herein lie its principal difficulties. With
regard to them, I refer to what I have said in the Prole-
gomena, that supposing us to be acquainted with everything
said and done, in its order and exactness, we should doubt-
less be able to reconcile, or account for, the present forms of
the narratives : but not having this key to the harmonizing
of them, all attempts to do so in minute particulars must be
full of arbitrary assumptions, and carry no certainty with
them. And I may remark, that, of all harmonies, those of
the incidents of these chapters are to me the most unsatis-
factory." After a very careful comparison of the different
narratives, without reference to any commentator or har-
monist, we do not find the difficulties so great as Alford
supposes them to be. The result to which we have been
led by our own independent inquiries agrees substantially
with the conclusions of Dr. Carpenter, and is in most par-
ticulars nearly the same as that in Dr. Robinson's Harmony,
which we did not read till after we had satisfied our minds
in regard to the true succession of events. In order to
study the matter to advantage, it is necessary that the reader
should thoroughly master the different accounts, so as to
carry clearly and distinctly in his mind all the details as
they are given by each separate Evangelist.
In the first place, we have no reason to suppose that all
the women mentioned by the Evangelists set out from the
same place or at the same moment. It is not improbable
504 MATTHEW XXVIII.
that Mary Magdalene and " the other Mary " had spent the
Sabbath at Bethany, and there prepared the spices with
which to anoint the body of Jesus. Salome, on the other
hand, and Joanna, the wife of Chuza (Luke viii. 3), were
probably in the city. It would appear also, from Luke
xxiv. 33, that the eleven had a place of meeting in the
city, and from John xx. 2, that Peter and John at least
had their places of abode in Jerusalem.
We may suppose then that " very early in the morning "
(Mark xvi. 2), "while it was yet dark" (John xx. 1), Mary
Magdalene and the women who Avere with her set out from
Bethany, which was nearly two miles from Jerusalem, talk-
ing by the way of what had taken place, and questioning
among themselves how they should roll away the heavy
stone from the mouth of the sepulchre. When they reached
the spot, the sun had already risen (Mark xvi. 2). Mary
Magdalene, the moment she saw that the stone had been
removed, supposing that the body had been taken away,
ran swiftly into the city to Peter and John, who, excited
by her words, ran as rapidly as possible to the sepulchre.
During this interval, which must have taken up from fifteen
to thirty minutes, the other women come nearer to the tomb,
see the angel (one angel, Matthew and Mark), and hear
from him that Jesus has risen, and that he would meet his
disciples in Galilee. They depart to find the disciples, and
while on their way are met by Jesus, who has already
shown himself to Mary Magdalene at the sepulchre. They
tell what they have heard and seen to the disciples, but are
not believed. Immediately after they had left the sepul-
chre, the women from the city, Salome, Joanna, and per-
haps others, came with their spices, as by previous agree-
ment, and while they stood there amazed and perplexed
(Luke xxiv. 1-7), two men stood by them in shining gar-
ments, and said, " Why seek ye the living among the dead ?
He is not here, but is risen" (is raised). They hastily de-
parted, and now, or perhaps before their arrival, Peter and
MATTHEW XXVIII. 505
John reached the spot, and having entered the tomb, and
seen precisely how the grave-clothes were laid, they went
away, leaving Mary Magdalene behind. She stood weeping
by the sepulchre (John xx. 11-18) when two angels ap-
peared to her, and afterwards Jesus himself addressed her.
There is no certain evidence that this was the precise
order of events. Nor is there any necessity for supposing
that any of the women came from Bethany that morning.
They may all of them have been spending the Sabbath in
Jerusalem, and by a previous agreement may have left
their homes in different parts of the city at about the
same time to go to the sepulchre. In reading such nar-
ratives we should not forget the haste, surprise, and aston-
ishment which must have characterized the transactions of
that morning, and prevented any one person from getting at
all the details in their precise order of succession or their
exact relations to one another. Traces of this state of mind
and the apparent inconsistencies growing out of it must be
expected, and are to be found, in the Gospels.
The Different Accounts not Contradictory.
But are there any important contradictions ? 1. As to
the persons. According to Matthew, Mary Magdalene and
the other Mary came very early, &c. Mark mentions Mary
Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome. Luke
speaks of Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and
Joanna, and the other women who were with them, while
John makes mention only of Mary Magdalene. But no
one professes to mention all the women who were there,
and it would be natural for each writer to call by name
only those who were uppermost in his own mind. John
does not say that Mary Magdalene was the only woman.
On the contrary, the words which he represents her as
using, "we know not where they have laid him," imply
that others had been with her, especially as after her return
43
506 MATTHEW XXVIII.
to the sepulchre, when she was left alone, she, in the same
form of expression (John xx. 13), says, "and /know not
w^here they have laid him." This is one of the out-of-the-
way coincidences which go to establish the authority of
truthful writings, because they cannot be counterfeited.
2. As to the angels. Matthew speaks of one angel,
whose appearance was like lightning, and his raiment white
as snow, and who was sitting on the stone that had been
rolled from the sepulchre. Mark (xvi. 5) says, that when
they entered or came to the sepulchre, for the Greek word
may have either meaning, they saw a young man sitting on
the right clothed in a long white garment. One of the two
writers may speak of an angel outside, and the other of an
angel within the sepulchre ; but the language of both may
equally well apply to the same angel in the same position,
i. e. sitting on the right hand, outside of the sepulchre.
Luke, who at the end of his account mentions Mary Mag-
dalene, and Joanna, and Mary the mother of James, and
the other women with them, as the women who told these
things to the Apostles, would naturally confine his narrative
of occurrences at the sepulchre to what particularly con-
cerned that portion of the company from whom his informa-
tion was derived, and they may have been Joanna and the
women from Galilee who were with her. These women
may have come a little later than the others. They saw
not one, but tivo angels, and them not sitting, but standing,
and speaking to them in language very different from that
which the angel had spoken to the other women (Luke
xxiv. 5, 6, 22). According to John, Mary Magdalene saw
no angel when she first came to the sepulchre, and Peter
and John, who came with her, or rather a little before her,
on her return to the sepulchre, saw none, though they
entered the sepulchre. But after they had gone, she, stoop-
ing down to look into the sepulchre, saw there two angels
in white, one at the head and the other at the feet where
the body of Jesus had lain. This is plainly a different
MATTHEW XXVIII. 507
transaction from that which is described by the other Evan-
gelists. The inference from all this is, that Matthew and
Mark describe one appearance, Luke another to a different
party, and John still a third. Where, then, is the contradic-
tion or inconsistency ?
3. As to the jfirst manifestation of Jesus. According to
John XX. 15-17, he appeared first to Mary Magdalene;
according to Matthew, he appeared to the women as they
were hastening away from the sepulchre. Matthew may
have generalized the occurrence which John has given in
detail, and represented Jesus as appearing to the women,
when as a literal fact he appeared to only one of their num-
ber. This is no unusual form of speech. We rather infer,
however, from the narrative, that Jesus appeared twice, viz.
1. to Mary Magdalene, and 2. to the women who had been
with her when she first came to the tomb.
In the accounts of what occurred in the morning there
are no contradictions. The whole period taken up by these
events probably was not more than an hour, and may not
have been half that time. Yet how have the disclosures of
those few moments revolutionized the world, changing its
great currents of thought and inaugurating a new and mo-
mentous era in its history !
Leaving the events of the morning, the writers go on in
very different ways. After a paragraph relating to the
soldiers, and without anything to indicate the time or events
that had intervened, Matthew hastens to give an account
of the meeting which Jesus had appointed with his disciples
in Galilee. Luke details in full the meeting of Jesus with
two disciples [not Apostles] on their way to Emmaus in the
afternoon, and his appearance to the Apostles in Jerusalem
in the evening. This evening appearance of Jesus to the
Apostles is mentioned by John (xx. 19 -23) in a narrative
which is remarkably distinct from Luke's account, and yet
strikingly corroborates it. Mark, in a passage (xv. 12-20)
which Tischendorf rejects as not belonging to the Gospel,
508 MATTHEW XXVIII.
says that Jesus appeared in another form to two disciples
as they were going into the country ; that they announced it
to the rest, — their associates, and probably not the Apostles,
— and were not believed ; and that afterwards he appeared
to the eleven as they were at meat, and reproached them
for their want of faith. This part of Mark's Gospel is very
much condensed, and evidently crowds into a few sentences
sayings and events which were separated by considerable
intervals of time.
The Different Times of his Appearance.
From all the accounts we gather that Jesus appeared, —
1. to Mary Magdalen (John xx. 13 - 17) ; 2. to the [other]
women (Matt, xxviii. 9, 10) ; 3. to Peter (Luke xxiv. 34,
1 Cor. XV. 5) ; 4. to the two disciples on their way to Em-
maus (Luke xxiv. 15), which may possibly have been before
his appearance to Peter ; 5. to the Apostles (Thomas being
absent) at supper in Jerusalem (Luke xxiv. 36 - 42, John xx.
19, 20, 1 Cor. XV. 5) ; 6. on the next Sunday at Jerusalem
to the Apostles, and particularly to Tliomas (John xx. 26) ;
7. to above five hundred of the brethren at once, probably
in Galilee (1 Cor. xv. 6); 8. to James, probably also in
Galilee (1 Cor. xv. 7) ; 9. to all the Apostles (1 Cor. xv.
7), probably the same meeting as that described in John
xxi. ; 10. to the Apostles on a mountain in Galilee (Matt,
xxviii. 16, 17), which may be the same as his appearance
to "above five hundred." 11. There is the charge given to
the Apostles (Matt, xxviii. 18-20, Mark xvi. 15-18) with
nothing to mark the time or place. 12. There is the last
interview, ending with his Ascension (Luke xxiv. 44-50,
Mark xvi. 19, 20, Acts i. 4- 10). But as Jesus was seen
of the Apostles from time to time for forty days (Acts i. 3),
" speaking to them of the things pertaining to the kingdom
of God," we have no reason to suppose that these were the
only occasions on which he was seen by them.
MATTHEW XXVIII. 509
Matthew (xxviii. 7, 10) says that both the angel and
Jesus directed the women to announce a meeting of the
disciples with him in Galilee. " Go, tell my brethren that
they go into Galilee, and there shall they see me." "Then,"
verse 16, "the eleven disciples went away into Galilee, into
a mountain where Jesus had appointed them. And when
they saw him, they worshipped him : but some doubted."
If Matthew, one of the Apostles, knew, as he must have
known, of the meeting of Jesus with the Apostles more than
once in Jerusalem, how could he fail to leave some record
of the fact in his narrative ? His Gospel is only a sketch
of portions of our Saviour's life, and nowhere professes to
give a full account of everything that took place in a single
instance. His whole account of the resurrection, and the
sayings and events connected with it, contains only a few
more words than it requires to fill one of these pages. A
dry summary of- facts, such as would be required in order
to bring the various particulars within such limits, was not
at all after his manner of writing. He gives the salient
acts and words as they lie most prominent in his mind,
often without reference to the intervening or accompanying
circumstances. He belonged to Galilee, and may have gone
thither before the other Apostles to call the disciples who
were there together to meet their risen Lord. In this way
the meeting there may, after an interval of some years,
have been the one which he remembered most distinctly,
and which he therefore selected to be preserved in his brief
narrative. The points which he relates are all connected
together. On the morning of the resurrection, both the
angel and Jesus speak of the meeting which was to take
place in Galilee, and after stating this, and inserting by
way of parenthesis a short account of the bargain between
the elders and the soldiers in regard to the events of that
morning, Matthew passes over all that took place in Jeru-
salem, and hastens on to the meeting in Galilee.
But he says that at the meeting in Galilee " some doubt-
43*
510 MATTHEW XXVIII.
ed." If the meetings spoken of as taking place in Jerusa-
lem had really taken place, how could there have been this
element of doubt ? There is nothing to show that tlie meet-
ing. in Galilee was confined to the Eleven. The direction,
" Go, tell my brethren," indicates a wider circle. St. Paul
speaks of Jesus being seen by above five hundred at once.
And it certainly would not be strange if some of these five
hundred came in an unbelieving state of mind. The honesty
of the writer who recorded the doubt is more remarkable
than that the doubt should exist under such circumstances.
The great and important omissions which must, from tlie
nature of the case, belong to so brief a narrative, should
make us slow to infer that even important facts connected
with the events which he relates either did not take place,
or were unknown to the writer, because they are not men-
tioned by him. This consideration has had too little weight
both with those who defend and those who would break
down the authenticity of the Gospel narratives. In ac-
counts which from their very nature and design are neces-
sarily so incomplete and fragmentary, the omission of any
fact, however important in itself, is no evidence that it did
not take place, or that it was unknown to the writer. With
so many facts of the greatest significance and weight press-
ing upon him for admission, and yet obliged as he was by
the necessities of the case to exclude most of them from his
narrative, it ought not to seem strange to us if we should
find wanting in his brief account circumstances as interest-
ing and important as those which he has retained. An
accomplished writer in these times would probably fill a
hundred pages where St. Matthew did one with the ac-
count of what transpired between the Crucifixion and the
Ascension. One closely written half-sheet of our letter-
paper is more space than he had to spare for his record
of all the circumstances connected with the most momentous
event in the history of our race.
MATTHEW xxvni. 511
Each Account Independent of the Rest.
We have examined in their relation to the Resurrection
of Jesus four distinct and independent narratives. Neitlier
of them could have been drawn from one or from all the
rest ; for each has some characteristic feature of its own, —
not only characteristic forms of expression, but statements
of fact which are not found in either of the others. Each
of the writers must therefore have had his own independent
sources of information ; and from these separate sources of
information they all testify to the same great and wonderful
event, not in general terms, but each one in his own way, by
facts, and incidental shadings, and colorings of facts, peculiar
to himself. These variations are in some cases so great,
that superficial or hostile readers have sometimes supposed
them to be utterly irreconcilable. But a thorough exami-
nation shows, in almost every case, that these apparent dis-
crepancies may be harmoniously adjusted, and thus made to
corroborate the truthfulness of the whole account. For
example, Mark (xvi. 5) says that the women entered into
the sepulchre. Matthew says nothing about their entering
into it, but he says (xxviii. 8) " they went quickly out from
the sepulchre." Or, to take another of the many instances
that might be given, Matthew, Mark, and Luke speak of
the women — more than one — who came to the sepulchre
early on the morning of the resurrection ; John speaks of
Mary Magdalene alone. Here is an apparent inconsistency.
But on looking carefully into John's account, we find Mary
saying to Peter and John, "They have taken away the
Lord from the sepulchre, and we know not where they
have laid him," — implying the presence of others with
them at the tomb, and thus undesignedly corroborating the
accounts of the other Evangelists. Now, unless Jesus did
actually rise from the dead, and meet his disciples, and talk
with them, how could writings so independent of one an-
512 MATTHEW XXVIII.
Other, and apparently so inconsistent with one another, bring
forward such a variety of facts, which bear upon the same
point, presenting different sides and features of the same
case, and which, notwithstanding their apparent inconsist-
encies, are found, on a minute and exact investigation, to
harmonize entirely in their accounts ?
The Resurrection op Jesus.
But we do not like to dwell on this great and life-giving
event as critics. It comes to us in a more living foi-m, and
has higher lessons to teach.
When the disciples saw that their Master was really
dead, their most dearly cherished hopes and expectations
died within them. They must have been like men stunned
by a violent blow, or walking in some terrible dream, hardly
knowing where they went or what they did. The women,
less mindful of consequences and more true to the loving
instincts of their nature, followed after the body to see
where it was laid, when it was hastily embalmed and
entombed. They then prepared spices and gums, that,
when the Sabbath was ended, they might come back again
and complete the rites of burial. There is no word to
show how the Sabbath was spent, — that first day of sharp
and hopeless grief, whose heavens encircled them like the
wall of a tomb out of which all joy and hope were gone,
and when there was nothing left to them but a shuddering
sense of dreariness and death. The Sabbath interposed its
merciful release from care and toil, till they had recovered
somew^hat from the first benumbing shock of misery. But
with the first day of the week, the first Christian Sunday,
they are up before the earliest dawn. Their grief must
find expression and relief in some act of grateful remem-
brance, though only to the body of him whom they had
followed with such intensity of love and reverence. While
it is yet dark, from Bethany, from different parts of Jeru-
MATTHEW XXVIII. 513
salem, by previous agreement, or with the spontaneous move-
ment prompted by a common impulse, they are on their
way, talking sadly as they go, and asking who shall remove
for them the heavy stone which had been placed against the
mouth of the sepulchre.
But it had been removed. Mary Magdalene, the most
ardent and impetuous of their number, having come first
within sight of the sepulchre and seen the stone rolled away,
ran to Peter and John, with a fresh outburst of grief, to say
that even the consolation of paying the last sad rites of
burial had been taken from them. "They have taken away
the Lord, and we know not where they have laid him."
The other women, who were a little behind her, went to
the tomb, and saw an angel clothed in white, sitting on the
stone which had been rolled away. He asked them, " Why
seek ye the living among the dead ? He is not here, but
is risen." They fly with the intelligence. Other women,
from other parts of the city, come, and see two angels.
Then Peter and John come running to the tomb, which
they enter, and seeing how the grave-clothes are laid, one
of them at least believes that he is risen from the dead.
Mary Magdalene returns, and, as she stands weeping by
the tomb, two angels appear to her. Then, her eyes
blinded with tears, she perceives some one whom she sup-
poses to be the gardener. He asks her why she is weeping,
and whom she seeks. She says to him, in the sharpness of
her griefj " If thou hast borne him hence, tell me where
thou hast laid him, and I will take him away." Then, in
tones which could not be mistaken, he called her by name.
She turned to him with an exclamation of surprise and rev-
erence, and went away bearing with her to the disciples the
wonderful intelligence. But it seemed to them as an idle
tale, and they believed her not. They ran from one to
another, telling and hearing, — not believing what they
heard, yet repeating it to others, and impatient with those
who did not believe, — thrilled with expectation and wonder.
514 MATTHEW XXVIII.
But the truth breaks upon them. " The Lord is risen in-
deed." It is the creation of a new heaven and a new earth
to them. The tomb has given up its dead, and Death him-
self, discrowned and disarmed, leaves its terrors at the foot
of the cross, and through the gate which it has opened
points upward to the realms of eternal life. What occurred
to Jesus while he was among the dead is unknown, beyond
what may be inferred from his words upon the cross : " This
day shalt thou be with me in Paradise." If the Evangehsts
had been unscrupulous men, earnest to make the most of
their subject, by ministering to the diseased taste for prying
into the things which have been wisely hidden from us,
what tales of wonder would they have told of his experience
there ! But there is nothing of this. And there is the same
reserve in regard to all the details Avhich could only serve
to excite and gratify an idle or a dangerous curiosity. The
great fact of the resurrection of Him who is the resurrection
and the hfe to all who live and believe in him, is set forth
in language which cannot be explained away. He came
forth, a new sun, from the dark and universal night of
death, to throw the radiance of a triumphant morning over
the tombs of the world, to drive away the shadows that
pressed everywhere so heavily on human hearts, to unfold
to them the joy and gladness of the eternal life, to revolu-
tionize the religious ideas of the world, and create a new
life in the souls of men. It was so with the Apostles of
Jesus Christ. It has been so with his followers since, from
generation to generation. New hopes, new principles of
thought and life, new aspirations and desires, have been
awakened and cherished. No earthly gloom can over-
shadow the light. They whose plans and expectations
here are all broken up, to whom this life, devoted to the
highest ends, has sometimes seemed an utter failure, behold
now, in that world beyond, a new sphere of activity and
power, where plans here broken up shall be renewed, where
hopes here dead shall live again, where aspirations doomed
MATTHEW XXVIII. 19. 515
here to a perpetual disappointnaent shall find their fulfil-
ment, and visions of holiness and joy and blessed compan-
ionship with others, which were here mocked with a per-
petual rebuff, shall embody themselves in the glorious
realities which live around them. And most of all, the
sinful and rejected, alienated from God and wandering
away from their own happiness and rest, dead to all the
best hopes and instincts of the soul, may find in him new-
ness of life, reconciliation, atonement through his death and
resurrection from the dead, if they come with penitent and
trusting hearts to him. " But now is Christ risen from the
dead, and become the first-fruits of them that slept." (1 Cor.
XV. 20.) "If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those
things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right
hand of God." (Col. iii. 1.) "To him that overcometh
will I grant to sit with me in my throne, even as I also
overcame, and am set down with my Father in his throne."
(Rev. iii. 21.) If the Lord is risen within us, we have
passed already from death unto life, and death can have
dominion over us no more. Let not the greatness of his
promises overwhelm and confound and oppress us as reveal-
ing too bright a glory and too great a joy for us to bear;
but through our faith in him, and our fidelity to him, may
his immortal energies unfold themselves within us.
19. — The Formula of Baptism.
" Go ye, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them
into the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the
Holy Ghost." Sectarian writers generally maintain that
their peculiar views of the Trinity, whatever they may be,
and they are many and various, are taught in this formula.
There can be no doubt, we think, that the words were in-
tended by our Saviour to indicate the broad outlines of
Christian belief, as distinguished from every other system of
religious faith. They teach not merely a beUef in God, but
516 MATTHEW XXVIII. 19.
in God as he is revealed to us in Christ, and as he acts upon
us by his sanctifying influences, or his Holy Spirit. The
religion which Jesus came into the world to teach, and into
which those who would be his disciples are to be initiated, is
not a more elevated form of Deism, or a refinement on Juda-
ism. It has elements, implied in the baptismal form, which
are peculiar to itself, and which deeply affect the character
of its disciples, and the nature of their worship. If the New
Testament should be divested of all that is said in it about
Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit, leaving to us only what is
revealed of the Infinite Father, our religion would lose much
of what most commends it to our hearts. God would be
thrown back into the distant heavens. Our conceptions of
him would become remote, and our feelings towards him
chilled. He would not connect himself as he now does with
the loving reverence that draws us towards him, and makes
us look up to him, not with awe alone, but with tears of
trusting gratitude and affection. As we follow Jesus, in the
Gospels, through his ministry, and hear his words and im-
bibe his spirit, we feel that he is to us the manifestation of
the Father, that he brings God in all his gentle and endear-
ing attributes home to our hearts, connecting him with our
fireside affections, and giving warmfeh and tenderness, and a
sense of trust and nearness to us in our devotions. So like-
wise our feelings towards God are modified by what is
taught of the Holy Spirit, which dwells a sanctifying pres-
ence and influence in the soul, subduing our hearts, forming
them anew through a divine life into the image of God, till
his love pervades all our affections, purges away all bitter-
ness, and is breathed out from us in our daily thoughts and
acts.
Here is a type of character and of piety altogether imlike
those which proceed from any other religious dispensation.
And the influences under which it is formed are in some
way or other connected with the formula of Christian bap-
tism. All the agencies — Father, Son, and Holy Ghost —
MATTHEW XXVIII. 19. 517
unite to create in us the highest type of Christian worship
and the Christian life. They who cherish that worship and
that life feel themselves bound together by a powerful bond
of sympathy and union. They are drawn to one another,
and feel that wherever two or three are gathered together
in his name, there is Jesus in the midst of them. They are
brought into communion with him and with heavenly things.
Inward life, strength, peace, is imparted to them, and a
nearer intimacy with heaven.
Now, why cannot the whole Christian world fall back on
the great Scriptural expressions which address themselves
with such power to the imagination and the heart, and feed
the inmost springs of thought and life ? Why not be satis-
fied with the way in which the doctrine has been taught by
Jesus- and his disciples ? Why refine upon their words, or
cover them over with our metaphysical distinctions, or tie
them up by our definitions, till the simplicity, the power, and
the freedom of the divine revelation is lost ? Those living
words, wliich come to us always in the perennial greenness
of a divine creation, with thought enough to exhaust the
intellect of the profoundest philosopher, while they come
home also to the heart and apprehension of a child, the
moment they are stript of their freedom, and drawn up into
a creed, lose their charm, and become unsatisfactory, barren,
and dead.
Whatever the doctrine of the Father, Son, and Holy
Ghost may be in its last analysis, — a point which no
mind of mortal man will ever be able to reach, — it does
not in the Scriptures ofier itself to us under any metaphys-
ical formula. We find a part of it used by Peter as a heart-
felt expression of grateful trust : " Thou art the Christ, the
Son of the living God." (Matt. xvi. 16.) It was breathed
out in a promise of unspeakable tenderness : " I will not
leave you comfortless ; I will come to you Because I
live, ye shall live also." (John xiv. 18,19.) "I will pray
the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that
44
518 MATTHEW XXVIII. 19.
he may abide with you forever." (John xiv. 16.) And in
the prayer after the last Supper, " And this is Hfe eternal,
that they might know thee, the only true God, and Jesus
Christ whom thou hast sent." (John xvii. 3.) It was uttered
more fully in the baptismal service. It revealed itself to the
first martyr, when at his death he saw the glory of God,
and cried, " Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son
of man standing on the right hand of God." (Acts vii. 56.)
It came as a benediction from St. Paul, when, yearning to-
wards his converts with desires which no other language
could express, he said, " The grace of the Lord Jesus
Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the
Holy Ghost, be with you all." (2 Cor. xiii. 13.) And in
the Apocalypse it appears as a solemn ascription in the tri-
umphal scene, where " a great multitude, which no man
could number, of all nations and kindreds and people and
tongues, stood before the throne, and before the Lamb,
clothed with white robes, and palms in their hands, and cried
with a loud voice, saying, ' Salvation to our God who sitteth
upon the throne, and unto the Lamb.'" (Rev. vii. 9, 10.)
These were the earliest expressions of the doctrine, — not
metaphysical abstractions, or subtile distinctions, or articles
of faith, — but a promise full of tenderness, a prayer, a
benediction, or an anthem. And so it continued to be at
least for three centuries after Christ. The early Christians
had too deep an interest in him, and were bound to him by
affections too strong and full of life, to attempt by any poor
refinements or definitions of theirs to analyze and set forth
the mysteries of his nature. Least of all did they attempt
to bind them up in articles of faith. They were guided by
a higher wisdom than that And herein let us learn of
them. Man's thoughts respecting God change. Words
lose their power. " The words of that creed, for example,
which we read last Sunday (the Athanasian), were living
words a few centuries ago. They have changed their mean-
ing, and are, to ninety-nine out of every hundred, only dead
MATTHEW XXVIII. 519
words. Yet men tenaciously hold to the expressions of
which they do not understand the meaning, and which have a
very different meaning now from that they had once, — Per-
son, Procession, Substance ; and they are almost worse with
them than without them, — for they conceal their ignorance,
and place a harrier against the earnestness of inquiry^
(Robertson's Sermons, First Series, p. 73.) But worse than
this, they oppress humble, sensitive, and conscientious souls,
and often either bind them to forms of belief which they
cannot accept, or drive them away from a communion which
their religious instincts crave, and to which they are bound
by the dearest and most sacred associations. " It is a re-
markable and indisputable fact, that if Christ were to come
on earth unknown, and say anything or everything which
he is recorded to have said while on earth, that and no
more, it would not be sufficient for his admission into any
[so-called] Evangelical church : no bishop could lay hands
on him without violating his rubric ; no synod ordain him
as a preacher." We quote this extraordinary statement
from an abstract of a sermon by Rev. George Putnam, D. D.
Its truth cannot be denied. And it is a fact of terrible sig-
nificance to those who hold, as essential to church-member-
ship here and to salvation hereafter, terms of intellectual
belief which would exclude from their communion the
Saviour himself, unless he should consent to add some new
and more explicit articles of faith to those which the Evan-
gelists and Apostles have left on record.
Concluding Remarks.
The Gospel of St. Matthew begins with an account of the
human and the divine parentage of Christ, his earthly hu-
miliation, though descended from patriarchs aYid kings, and
his more than earthly dignity and greatness, though placed
in the lowliest walks of life. This twofold aspect of his
life appears throughout the Gospel. His humility shows
520 MATTHEW XXVIII.
itself amidst his mightiest works, and even when he as-
sumes an authority beyond all that man has ever claimed.
And wherever his humiliation and helplessness are most
apparent, there his majesty shines forth. This humility
and grandeur, the most difficult combination in the life and
character, are easily and harmoniously combined and carried
out from beginning to end. There is no one act or word to
mar the beautiful and always living consistency of the por-
traiture. Except in the other Gospels, no other such nar-
rative, nor anything which makes any approach to it, is to
be found in the hterature of the world. Those who have
followed us through our work, reading the Gospel itself more
than our comments upon it, who have entered into the mar-
vellous depth and elevation of its thought, and of the life
in which, more than by any words, its thought is revealed,
must, we think, see in them the workings of a power more
wonderful than any miracles that were wrought, though on
the side of its active manifestation it would find in miracles
only its natural forms of expression. But with all this ex-
hibition of power, there is nothing strained, and nowhere
any appearance of effort. The language, even when charged
with the weightiest burden of meaning, or rising to the sub-
limest heights, is, in its naturalness and simplicity, fitted to
be the reading of a child. Wlien we go into the Epistles,
especially those of St Paul, we are conscious of a change.
The same ideas come up to be applied under new circum-
stances, or carried out into their more distant results. But
we feel the strain that is put upon the language, and the
efforts that are made by the writer to keep up with the
greatness of his theme.
Christ came to establish the kingdom of heaven on
earth. Perhaps we may say that this is the central idea of
the Evangelist. The Baptist came to announce it, and its
near approach was the burden of his preaching. It was the
key-note to the ministry of Jesus. " From that time Jesus
began to preach, and to say, ' Repent, for the kingdom of
MATTHEW XXVIII. 521
Heaven ia at hand.' " In his Sermon on the Mount, he un-
folded the nature of that kingdom ; and, beginning with the
Beatitudes, showed how it was to absorb into itself the Law
and the Prophets, and refine their precepts into the prin-
ciples of a spiritual and divine life. From time to time,
as his disciples could bear, and beyond what they could
bear, he brought forward the graces and charities which
were peculiarly his own, and established a sincere and child-
like humility of soul as the one essential condition of pre-
eminence in his kingdom. " Whosoever wishes to be great
among you, let him be your servant ; and whosoever wishes
to be first among you, let him be your slave." Only he
who, unmindful of his own interests, binds himself by the
severest obligations to serve others, can hope for the highest
place in the kingdom of God. This heavenly kingdom, or
kingdom of Heaven on earth, is explained and illustrated by
precept and parable and symbolical act It is represented
as already here, a divine influence and agency in the world.
He speaks of the time, then not far removed, when he should
"come in his kingdom " (xvi. 28), " on the clouds of heaven
with power and great glory" (xxiv. 30). He speaks of it,
at other times, as reaching above and beyond this world in
its acts and retributions (xvi. 19, xxv. 31-46). In the
last words of the Gospel, he speaks of its final consum-
mation, — whether on earth or in worlds beyond, he
does not say ; for time and space are only occasional,
and, as it were, accidental accompaniments to his thought,
which reaches through and beyond all that belongs to
them.
But in the closing words of the Gospel, taken in connec-
tion with all that has gone before, we have indicated to us
the great Mediatorial ofiice and kingdom of Christ, for
which, as its head and king, all authority on the earth and
in heaven has been given to him, and for the advancement
of which he sends forth his messengers into every land,
promising himself to be always with them until the whole
44*
522 MATTHEW XXVIII.
shall be fulfilled. Here in this world are its beginnings,
arid, to a certain extent, its progress with each individual
soul, and with the race from generation to generation. It is
a spiritual kingdom in which Christ reigns, coming down
into this sphere of human interests and souls, dispensing its
divine influences more and more, as men are prepared to
receive them from age to age, taking up into itself whatever
is highest and holiest in man's thought, to infuse into it a
diviner life, to lay upon it the hand of a holier ordination,
and set it apart for a higher purpose, using present attain-
ments, never as ends, but always as instruments and helps to
a further progress, translating its faithful subjects as the
ransomed of the Lord from earthly experience to heavenly
fruition in what is to each one of them " the end of the
world."
Christ came to establish this kingdom among men. He
has revealed to us its nature, its agencies, and its design,
in words of calmness and power. He has promised to be
always with us while we arc laboring to unfold its truths, to
enforce its precepts, and establish its authority on the earth.
His words (xiii. 41, xxv. 34) point also to an influence and
a kingly office which he is to have beyond this mortal life
and world. But the idea which he introduced is taken up
by St. Paul, and carried on into its remote and final results
with all the enthusiasm of his fervid and powerful mind.
Perhaps we cannot give a more striking example of the
difference between Christ's method of instruction, as shown
in the Gospel of St. Matthew, and Paul's, as shown in his
Epistles, than is furnished by what they have taught on this
subject. The teachings of Christ we have already consid-
ered. St. Paul delights to enlarge and expatiate upon
them. With him this idea of the Mediatorial kingdom of
Christ reaches we know not how high into the realms of
light, or how far below into the realms of darkness, extend-
ing back in its preparation before the foundation of the
world, and forward through we know not what succession
MATTHEW XXVIII. 523
of ages upon ages, till at length, working out its mighty
evolutions, every opposing rule and authority and power is
subdued and overthrown, and it has accomplished its design
as one of the a^ons of eternal love and wisdom, and Christ
in triumph shall give back into his Father's hands the king-
dom and the authority which are now intrusted to him. In
looking to the new worlds of spiritual life and joy which
have been created in the advent and progress of that king-
dom, through every part of which Christ's influence extends
as a redeeming, creative, and sustaining presence, he thus
speaks : " Giving thanks unto the Father, who hath made
us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in
light; who hath delivered us from the power of darkness,
and hath translated us into the kingdom of his dear Son, in
whom we have the redemption [" through his blood " is
omitted by Tischendorf], the forgiveness of sins ; who is an
image of God, first-born of all creation ; because in him
were all created that are in the heavens and upon the earth,
visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominations or
principalities or authorities, — all were created through him
and to him, and he is before all, and all stand together in
him, and he is the head of the body, the Church, who is
first, being first born from the dead, that he might be pre-
eminent in all." (Col. i. 12 — 18.) Carrying his thoughts
on into other worlds, respecting which there is a sacred
reserve in our Saviour's communications, St. Paul delights
to speak of the homage which was there paid to his Re-
deemer, when God " raised him from the dead and set him
at his own right hand among the heavenly ones, far above
aM principality and power and might and dominion, and
every name that is named, not only in this world [ason], but
in that which is to come, and hath put all things under his
feet, and gave him to be head over all things to the Church,
which is his body, the fulness of him that filleth all in all.'*
(Eph. i. 20 - 23.) His language glows with a new intensity,
and rises into a more majestic grandeur and a loftier har-
524 MATTHEW XXVIII.
mony, as he catches from beyond this world glimpses of the
active power of Christ, the still advancing progress of his
victorious kingdom, or its last and crowning triumph. " Fi-
nally," — we quote from the translation of Conybeare and
Howson, — " the end shall come, when he shall give up his
kingdom to God his Father, having destroyed all other
powers which claim rule and sway. For his kingdom must
last * till he hath put all enemies under his feet.' And last
of his enemies, death also shall be destroyed. For * God
hath put all things under his feetJ But in that saying, ' all
things are put under him,' it is manifest that God is except-
ed, who put all things under him. And when all things are
made subject to him, then shall the Son also subject himself
[himself be made subject] to Him who made them subject,
that God may be all in all." (1 Cor. xv. 24-28.)
There is a singular grandeur and a far-reaching grasp of
thought in these views which St. Paul has given of the Me-
diatorial kingdom and office of Christ. But we see in his
language marks of effort and excitement, the strugglings of
a mind, however great and inspired it may have been, to
master his vast theme, and to find language in which to
embody his conceptions. But the words of Jesus come to
us as the unexcited and easy utterances of one who is
speaking without effort, and by no means above the level
of his daily and familiar thought. They lie before us in
the calm sunlight of God's truth and the bosom of his love.
Great as they are, they plainly come from one who is
greater than they, and in whom it is an act of condescension
rather than of exaltation to set them forth, and to illustrate,
explain, and enforce them, as a Master to his disciples, while
an air of divine authority and of unspeakable tenderness
distinguishes alike his words to them and all his deportment
towards them. Whatever we may find in the language of
the Apostles, — and no other writers have ever approached
them in richness of spiritual thought or loftiness of concep-
tion and of speech, — when we read the words and the life
MATTHEW XXVIII. 525
of Jesus, we feel, as did the officers who were sent to appre-
hend him, that " never man spake [or lived] like this man."
But in studying the Gospels we must beware of placing
ourselves too much in the attitude of critics and judges,
even though it be to confirm their authority. The word
that Christ hath spoken shall judge us, and not be judged
by us. Our posture is that of loving, trusting, inquiring,
and believing disciples. We come with no theories of our
own to establish, but with a single purpose and desire to
learn the true meaning of his words of eternal life, and
what he would have us to do. It is sad to think with what
" a veil upon their hearts " the great majority of the Chris-
tian world come when they would study the Gospel of
Christ. They can receive from the boundless affluence of
his instructions only so much as may be in accordance, not
only with their present moral, intellectual, and spiritual cul-
ture, but with formulas of faith drawn up and established by
the authority of man. Christ speaks to the individual soul,
and holds each one of us to a severe and solemn sense of
accountability to himself, from which no authority on earth
can ever absolve us. The one distinguishing feature of his
Gospel is the way in which it addresses itself to the individ-
ual consciousness, and demands from each one a direct and
personal allegiance to him. The more universal the truths
which he proclaimed, the more directly should they come
home to each heart and draw it towards himself. Almost
every word that he spoke, whether for doctrine, reproof,
correction, or instruction and encouragement in righteous-
ness, comes to us, not only as a truth on which our minds
should dwell, but as a precept which we should take home
to our hearts and carry with us in our lives. In this way
his words may become spirit and life to us. And his last
directions to his followers, instead of furnishing matter for
theological disputations, may be dwelt upon and cherished
and obeyed as if addressed to each one of us with all the
weight of his commandment, with all the fulness of his in-
526
MATTHEW XXVIII.
struction, with all the tenderness of his love, and with the
certainty that to every one of us his promise will be ful-
filled. " All power is given unto me in heaven and on
earth. Go ye and make disciples of all nations, baptizing
them into the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of
the Holy Ghost ; teaching them to observe all things what-
soever I have commanded you : and lo, I am with you
alway, even unto the end of the world."
NOTES,
In the end of the sabbath, as it began to dawn toward the
first day of the week, came Mary Magdalene, and the other
Mary, to see the sepulchre. And, behold, there was a great
earthquake ; for the angel of the Lord descended from heaven,
and came and rolled back the stone from the door, and sat
upon it. His countenance was like lightning, and his raiment
1. In the end of the sab-
bath, as it began to dawn
toward the first day of the
week] The Jewish Sabbath, it
•will be remembered, con-esponds
with our Saturday. The dnj
ended at sunset. The passage
may be rendered. After the Sab-
bath, as it began, &c. " No mortal
eye," says Dr. Carpenter, " wit-
nessed th'e glorious moment when
the Son of God came forth from the
tomb, the first-fruits of a resurrec-
tion to an immortal life; ana the
narratives of the Evangelists merely
respect the disdosw'es of the great
event. Their close adherence to
"what alone was known is very
striking." " The writers of the
New Testament," says Olshausen,
" make mention of what they saw
only, as ' that the sepulchre was
already empty.' The creative en-
ergies operated in silence and unob-
servedly, and Avove for the sublime
person of the Lord, as it were, a
raiment of celestial light, worthy of
investing the king of the worltl of
light. Lven so, no human eye, at
that moment when the energies of
life flowed into it, beheld how the
bodv of the Holy One arose."
" The resurrection was the great
act which the Apostles published,
and that peculiarlv and alone."
2. And, behold, there
was a great earthquake] " A
shaking or commotion of any kind;
probably the word means no more
than the confusion caused among
the guards by the angel's appear-
ance; all this had taken place be-
fore the women reached the sepul-
chre." Adam Clarke. for
the angel of the Lord] an angel
of the Lord. " Like the commence-
ment of the Lord's life upon earth,
this beginning of his glorified life
was also adorned with kindred an-
gel visions." 3. his counte-
nance] his form or apjienrance loas
like lightning. The commotion, what-
MATTHEW XXVIII.
527
4 white as enow. And for fear of him the keepers did shake,
5 and became as dead men. And the angel answered and said
unto the women, Fear not ye ; for I know that ye seek Jesus,
6 which was crucified. He is not here ; for he is risen, as he
7 said. Come, see the place where the Lord lay. And go
quickly, and tell his disciples that he is risen from the dead ;
and, behold, he goeth before you into Galilee ; there shall ye
see him : Iq, I have told you. And they departed quickly from
the sepulchre, with fear and great joy,tind did run to bring his
9 disciples word. And as they went to tell his disciples, behold,
Jesus met them, saying, All hail ! And they came and held
ever it may have been, and the
opening of the tomb by rolling
back the stone from the door, must
have occurred before the women
reached tlie place. The manifesta-
tion of the angel is probably de-
scribed as it appeared to them in
dazzling Avhiteness and splendor.
Whether the angel appeared to their
bodily eyes, or only to their spiritu-
al perceptions, is a speculative ques-
tion which hardly fulls within the
province of a work like this. The
reader Avho may be curious in such
matters will find it ably discussed
in " Foregleams of Immortalitv," by
the Rev. E. H. Sears. "All the
difficulties, or seeming discrepan-
cies," it is there said, (p. 191,) "in
the four narratives, have grown out
of the most absurd assumption that
the angels appeared in bodies like
ours, and to the mortal senses.
The variations are j'ust what they
would be to the variant perceptions
of the half-opened spiritual vision.
John and Peter saw nothing, some
of the women probably saw noth-
ing, and doubtless none of them
saw all. We do not imagine that
the divine messengers had been ab-
sent from any part of that scene of
sorrow and dismay on Friday after-
ternoon, as they certainly were not
absent from Gethsemane the night
before. True, the Roman soldiers
might not know it till the gleaming
terrors dispersed them; and the
women saAv but one or two among
the divine powers that engirded and
guarded to its sure accomplishment
the central fact in the world's his-
tory, and heralded the victory of
the Son of God over death and the
grave." It is well to have the pic-
tin*e of these scenes distinctly be-
fore us. We have no doubt of the
fact that angels were then seen ; but
the precise mode of the angelic
manifestation, whethei* by an im-
pression on the bodily senses or a
quickening of the spiritual percep-
tions, is not clearly revealed. The
effect produced on the soldiers who
were guarding the sepulchre mu^^t,
we think, have been through the
bodily senses. 7. and,
behold, he goeth before you
into Galileej This was fore-
told by Jesu^ (Matt. xxvi. 32)
in almost exactly the wortls here
used. The object in going into Gal-
ilee may have been to secure retire-
ment, and also that Jesus might
show himself to the more numerous
body of his disciples who resided
there. But while that was to be
J;he scene of his most important
interviews with the Apostles after
his resurrection, he may have
shown himself to them first in
Jerusalem, that they might thus
be led so far to dismiss their doubts
as to go and meet him with the
larger company of his followers at
the appointed place in Galilee.
8. with fear and great
joy] " Rejoice with trembling."
(Ps. ii. 11.)' The two emotions in
the proportions here indicated may
be united. It is one of those touches
of nature which help to bring the
whole scene before us. 9.
And they came and held him
528
MATTHEW XX VI IT.
him by the feet, and worshipped him. Then said Jesus unto la
them, Be not afraid : go, tell my brethren that they go into
Galilee, and there shall they see me.
Now when they were going, behold, some of the watch came ii
into the city, and showed unto the chief priests all the things
that were done. And when they were assembled with the 12
elders, and had taken counsel, they gave large money unto
the soldiers, saying, Say ye. His disciples came by night, 13
and stole him away, \diile we slept. And if this come to u
by the feet, and worshipped
him] A not unusual mark or rev-
erence in the East to persons of su-
perior dignity. With what body
Christ rose, is a question which it
is more difficult than profitable to
discuss. The body which was laid
in the tomb had risen. But what
changes it had undergone is nowhere
intimated. From the fact that the
women clung to his feet, that
Thomas was asked to thrust his
hand into his side (John xx. 27),
and that he asked the disciples to
handle him and see, " for a, spirit
hath not flesh and bones as you see
me have " (Luke xxiv. 39), we can-
not well escape the conviction that
he rose in a body which acted on
those he met, as other bodies do,
through the physical organs of
sense. On the other hand, his not
being recognized by the two disci-
ples with whom he conversed on
the w^av to Emmaus would seem to
show that he had then undergone
some remarkable change in his per-
sonal appearance; and his disap-
pearance from them the momenf
lie was known (Luke xxiv. 31),
and his appearance in the midst of
the Apostles more than once while
they were assembled with closed
doors (John xx. 19, 26), seem to
imply a facility of movement of
which the Gospels furnish no pre-
vious instances, unless perhaps in
the account or his walking upon
water. We cannot tell when his
body became spiritual and immortal.
Olshausen supposes that " the pro-
cess of glorification went on during
the forty days after the resurrec-
tion, and was not thoroughly per-
fected until the period of his ascen-
sion to heaven." It becomes us to
be diffident in regard to any spe-
cific views that we may entertain
in this matter. It is enough for us
to know Christ did rise from the
dead, whatever may have been the
changes which his body underwent
in death, and before the ascension.
12. And when they
were assembled with the el-
ders, ana had taken counsel]
Here was a meeting, a hasty and
probably an informal one, of the
Jewish Sanhedrim. It may seem
strange that the soldiers should
have gone first to the priests, rather
than to their own superior officers.
But it is plain, from Matt, xxvii. 64,
65, that the guard of soldiers had
not only been granted at the request
of the priests and Pharisees, but
had been placed under their charge.
" Ye have a guard," [or watch,]
said Pilate; " go, make it as sure as
ye know how." It would therefore
De proper and natural for them to
make their report in the first in-
stance to their immediate employ-
ers. 13. Say ye. His
disciples came by night, and
stole him away, while we
slept] This whole incident, it is
said, is unhistorical and improbable.
But the ablest scholars cannot trans-
fer themselves to Jenisalcm, as it
was during those three days, with
such a minute knowledge of the pre-
vailing customs, and all the special
interests then acting, as to be able to
say precisely what would or what
would not be historical in a lit-
tle incidental occurrence like this.
Even in an army under the most
MATTHEW XXVJII.
529
^Tie cTovernor's ears, we will persuade him, and secure you.
15 So they took the money, and did as they were taught. And
rigid discipline, directly before an
enemy, there are constantly coming
up little exceptional cases, which
seem inconsistent with the stately
march of history, but of which no
man after the lapse of two thousand
years can know enough of the at-
tendant circumstances to pronounce
them unhistorical or improbable.
It would be inconsistent, it is said,
with the dignity of the Sanhedrim,
to make such a bargain as this with
the Roman soldiers. But the his-
tory of the world shows plainly
enough, that where political or re-
ligious bigotry has an important
end to gain, it is not accustomed to
stand much on its dignity in the
means which it uses. They who in
their pride assume the loftiest airs,
and claim for themselves the gi-eat-
est show of respect, are often the
very persons who stoop to the
meanest and most dishonorable
arts. But tlien* how could they
know that Jesus had predicted that
he should rise from the dead on the
third day? Even his own disciples
did not understand him ; how then
could they, his enemies ? There is
nothing in the world so suspicious
as the malignant spirit of such men,
when confronted with an ingen-
uous and powerful mind, that sees
through and exposes their subter-
fuges and pretensions. Having no
honesty of their own, they cannot
conceive of such a thing as an lion-
est purpose in those who stand in
their Avay. Thev distrust them at
every turn. They subject their
acts and words to every unfavora-
ble construction that is possible.
They see a plot or an intrigue in
the simplest declaration. What
wonder, then, if the chief priests
should have heard the distinct
and reiterated declarations of our
Saviour respecting his death and
resurrection on the thii'd day ? The
disciples could not understand the
words of their Master, but they
must have repeated them again and
again, with strange pei-plexity of
heart. And what more natural
45
than that the Jewish leaders, look-
ing everywhere for a plot, and
never quite secure of having ac-
complished their guilty purpose,
even in the death of their victim,
should, in calling to mind this dec-
laration, apprehend and provide
against some such design as that
which is recorded at the close of
the previous chapter? And when
their precautions, as the most sub-
tle devices of such men often do,
had failed, and turned against them-
selves, what more natural than for
them to adopt the only expedient
then possible, and bribe the soldiers
to misrepresent the facts? But
then, it is asked, how would the
soldiers dare to confess that they
had faUen asleep on their watch"?
Would it not expose them to the
severest punishment for a serious
violation of the rules of military
discipline? In reply to this, it may-
be said, that their employers — the
very men to whom tliey were di-
rectly accountable for any remiss-
ness in their Avatch, and who alone
would have an opportunity to com-
plain of them — were the men who
proposed the bargain with them,
whose interest it was that no seri-
ous accusation should be brought
against them, and who promised to
interfere in their behalf if by any
chance the report of their remiss-
ness in duty should reach the ears
of the governor. " To affirm," says
Davidson, (Introduction to the Ne\v
Testament, Vol. I. pp. 82, 83,) " that
the falsehood could not have es-
caped Pilate, is to assume that he
took more interest in the matter
than his whole cluiracter justifies.
All his anxiety must have coin-
cided with the measures, already
taken against the person of Christ,
in which he had reluctantly in-
volved himself. And as the story
told him by the chief priests and
scribes must have been more wel-
come than the real account of the
case would have been, he naturally
believed it, and took no fui-the'r
trouble. Had he heard the true
530
MATTHEW XXVIII.
this saying is commonly reported among the Jews until this
day.
circumstances attendant on Jesus's
rising from the dead, his fears
would have been excited, and his
conscience rendered doubly uneasy.
Such tidings must have been disa-
greeable to his agitated spirit. But
■when he learned that the body had
been stolen by the disciples at
night, his fears had not to be al-
layed, nor were his superstitious
feelings to be quieted. He felt that
the part he had taken in putting
Christ to death was unattended by
the guilt and impiety in which it
must have presented itself, had Je-
sus proved himself the Son of God
by rising from the dead. Thus the
information given by the Sanhe-
drim to Pilate, false though it was,
found a welcome reception. Had
he even suspected its truth, he
would not have instituted a process
of inquiry. Whether Joseph of
Arimathea, Nlcodemus, and Ga-
maliel wei'e present at the meet-
ing of the Sanhedrim, is a point
that cannot be ascertained
And if they were present, had
they the moral courage to object?
And suppose they did protect
against the unworthy resolution,
was it incumbent on "the historian
to relate the fact? The decision of
the majority is the decision of a
council Hence the record is
perfectly consistent with the idea of
a few persons refusing to sanction
the open dissemination of a fiilse-
hood." On the whole, this little
episode, instead of appearing unhis-
torical and improbable, seems to us
to bear upon its face the marks of
tnith. We agree entirely with
what Mr. Norton has said on this
matter in his Internal Evidences of
the Genuineness of the Gospels (pp.
233,234): "The remark that the
miracles of Christ appear from the
Gospels to liave been unquestioned,
is true of what may be more strict-
ly called his miracles. But it is not
true of the fact of his resurrection.
Respecting this, St. Matthew re-
lates that there was a story in cir-
culation that his disciples came by
night and stole his body away
while the guards slept. The effect
of this single exception is to con-
firm the argument derived from the
general characteristics of the Gos-
pels before mentioned. Here we
are told by the Evangelist, that the
most important miracle which he
records was treated as an impos-
ture. We may fairly conclude,
therefore, that with the same hon-
esty, or the same indifference, or
the same incapacity for deception,
he would, in some waj', have given
us information of the fact, if the
tnith of the other miracles recorded
by him had been called in question.
What he here expressly states con-
firms most strongly the correctness
of those accounts which imply that
their truth was not disputed. But
in what manner does ne mention
this particular story of the unbe-
lieving Jews ? He merely states it,
without any attempt at refutation,
without even a formal denial of it,
without a single remark respecting
it. He could not have treated it
with more indifference, or with
more appearance of regarding it as
destitute equally of plausibility and
of tnith, and VhoUy unlikely to
obtain credit. If the storj- had
been urged Avith any confidence, if
it had been in fact believed by
those Avho brought it forward, ft
would hardly have been passed
over with such slight."
15. until this day] i.- e. until the
time when the Gospel was written.
There is no decisive evidence when
that was, but the probabilities, we
think, rather point to a period eight
or ten years after the death of
Christ, or about A. d. 42 or 43.
16. Then the eleven disci-
ples went away into Galilee]
There is no then in the Greek.
Matthew not unfrequently passes
from one event to another, which
took place at a different period,
without one word to indicate the
time that intervened between them.
The natural inference from his lan-
guage here would be that the Apos-
MATTHEW XXVIII.
531
16 Then the eleven disciples went away into Galilee, into
17 a mountain, where Jesus had appointed them. And when
ties went to Galilee immediately
after the resurrection. But, in ac-
coi'dance with his method of speak-
ing in other cases, we may suppose
a week or a month to have inter-
vened between the two events.
into a mountain] to " the moun-
tain, where Jesus had appointed."
the eleven] Matthew men-
tions only the eleven ; but this does
not imply that they were the only
persons who met Jesus at the ap-
pointed mountain. The " Go, tell
my brethren,'''' of ver. 10, indicates a
larger circle of disciples. Probably
notice had been extensively given
among the more intimate and trust-
ed followers of Jesus that they should
meet him at some particular place
which he had specified. The defi-
nite article, which our translators
omit before mountain, proves this,
though Matthew does not mention
where it was. This may have been
the occasion when he was seen of
" above five hundred brethren at
once." (1 Cor. xv. 6.) 17. but
some doubted] Of course, the
Apostles who had met Jesus in Je-
rusalem more than once since his
resurrection, could have had no
doubts. Either Matthew has trans-
ferred to this meeting the doubts
which the Apostles had shown in
Jerusalem, or, as is more probable,
he speaks here of doubts entertained
by some of the followers of Jesus
who had not met their risen Lord
before, and who in the excitement
of a first interview could hardly
overcome their doubts so as to be-
lieve their own eyes. It was pre-
cisely the same state of mind which
the Apostles had shown when they
were first told of the resurrection,
and which Thomas persisted in till
he had the opportunity to see and
examine for himself. It is a strong
proof of the truthfulness of the
writers, that they should so fear-
lessly insert this in their narratives,
without one word of explanation
or apology. Our view of the
doubters is that given by Juven-
cus, a Latin writer who lived in the
reign of Constantine. " Nor yet,"
he says, " did fidelity [virtus] re-
main equally in the breasts of all
[who were assembled to meet him
on the Galilsean mountain]; for a
part of them doubted." Grotius
and some others render the verse,
" but some had doubted," giving to
the aorist the force of the pluper-
fect. The interpretation that we
have adopted is more in accordance
with the language of Matthew.
18. All power is given unto
me in heaven and in eartJi]
Literally in heaven and on earth. All
power, or authority, indicating the in-
fluence which it is given him to ex-
ercise over the souls of men in this
world and the world to come. In
Col. i. 11, St. Paul says, that ve,
" strengthened vnth all power,^^ (Sic.
But Christ's authority is not con-
fined to the earth, but diffuses itself
through earth and heaven. See Eph.
i. 19-23; Col. i. 12-18; 1 Pet. iii.
22. We suppose that St. Paul (Rom.
xiv. 9) explains what is meant by
the expression on earth and in heav^
en ; " For to this end Christ both
died, and rose, and revived, that he
might be Lord both of the dead ami
living.''^ The living, and the dead
who live in a yet higher sense,
make one great community of souls,
over whom God has given' to Christ
all authority or power on earth and
in heaven. " Wherefore God also
hath highly exalted him, and given
him a name which is above every
name, that at [literally ml the
name of Jesus every knee snonld
bow of those in heaven, and those
in earth, and those under the eartli;
and that every tongue should con-
fess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to
the glory of God the Father."
(Phil. ii. 9-11.) It will be ob-
served, that every one of these pas-
sages which unite with that before
us in ascribing to Jesus such au-
thority, agrees also with his asser-
tion here, and Matt. xi. 27, in de-
claring that however vast his powet
may be, it is all ffiven to liira by the
Father. It is a derived, and not an
532
MATTHEW XXVIII.
they saw him, they worshipped him ; but some doubted. And 18
Jesus came and spake unto them, saying, All power is given
original authority. We must be
careful in our dogmatic theology
lest we forcibly inject our ideas into
our Saviour's language, and, by in-
corporating them into his instmc-
tions, give his words a meaning
wliolly foreign to his intention. All
authority is given to me in heaven and
on earth. "Was there ever a man
that dared put himself on the world
in such pretensions ? — as if all light
was ill liim, as if to follow him, and
be worthy of him, was to be the con-
clusive or chief excellence of man-
kind! But no one is oifended with
Jesus on this account, and, what is
a sui'e test of his success, it is re-
markable that, of all the readers of
the Gospel, it probably never even
occurs to one in a hundred thou-
sand, to blame his conceit, or the
egregious vanity of his pretensions.
Come now, all ye that tell us
in yoiir Avisdom of the mere natural
hiimanity of Jesus, and help us to
find lioAv it is, that he is only a nat-
ui-al development of the "^human;
select your best and wisest charac-
ter; take the range, if you will,
of all the great philosophers and
saints, and choose out one that is
most competent; or if, perchance,
some one of you may imagine that
he is himself about on a level with
Jesus (as we hear that some of you
do), let him come forward in this
trial and say, ' Follow me,' ' Be
Avorthy of me,' ' I am the light of
the Avorld,' ' Ye are from beneath,
I am from above,' ' Behold a great-
er than Solomon is here ; ' take on
all these transcendent assumptions,
and see how soon your glory will
be sifted out of you by the de-
tectiA'e gaze, and darkened by the
contempt of mankind ! Do
you not tell us that you can say as
divine things as he ? Are you
not in the front rank of human
developments? Do you not rejoice
in the power to rectify many mis-
takes and errors in the words of
Jesus? Give us then this one ex-
periment, and see if it does not
prove to you a truth that is of some
consequence; viz. that you are a
man, and that Jesus Christ is —
more." Bushnell, " Nature and
the Supernatural, " pp. 289-292.
19. Go ye, therefore, and
teach all nations] Therefore
does not belong to the text. Teach ;
the original Avord means make dis-
cij)les, and it is unfortunate that it
was not so translated in our com-
mon version. " Go ye and make
disciples of all nations, baptizing
them into the name of the Father,
and of the Son, and of the Holy
Ghost, and teaching them to ob-
serve all things Avhatsoever I have
commanded you." That is, they
are to make aU men disciples, bap-
tizing them as the initiatory rite,
and teaching them to observe aU
things whatsoever that Christ had
commanded them. baptizing
them in the name of the Fa-
ther, and of the Son, and of
the Holy Ghost] " After all that
has been Avritten," says Davidson,
(Introduction to the Ncav Testa-
ment, I. 93, 94,) " it is exceedingly
difficiilt to settle the precise mean-
ing of the expression to baptize into
the name of the Father^ ij-c. Per-
haps De Wette assigns it too much
meaning, when it is made to in-
volve an express obligation to re-
ceive the doctrine of a Triune God
as a direct object of faith. The
primarv' idea of it, as far as Ave can
gather from similar phrases in the
New Testament, seems to be this,
that the person baptized is sup-
posed to adopt the system of relig-
ion in which the Father, Son, and
Holy Ghost occupy the pre-eminent
position, — to come into a state of
subordination to the laws of Chris-
tianity Those who submit-
ted to baptism virtually professed,
by their desire for initiation into a
Christian church, to adopt the re-
ligious system, and to be subject to
the laws' of the Son of God. This
is probably all that the Apostles and
their companions inculcated on the
baptized, or that they Avould have
required from them had they rea-on
MATTHEW XXVIII.
533
19 unto me in heaven and in earth. Go ye, therefore, and
teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father,
to think that any desiring to be
admitted within the pale of Christi-
anity were not proper subjects of
baptism." It certainly could not
have been without design that our
Saviour left this form of introduc-
tion into his Church with so wide a
margin for differences of individual
thought and belief. If he had
wished to establish the doctrine of
a Trinity of three equal persons in
the Godhead as a fundamental and
essential article of faith, he could
easily have so expressed it in this
formula as to put his view of the
matter beyond all possibility of
doubt. He would have only to say,
" baptizing them into the name of
God the Father, of God the Son,
and of God the Holy Ghost, three
equal pei-sons, and one God." But
if we shrink, as we do almost with
a shudder, from putting these words
into his mouth, or adding them to
those which he has spoken, why
should we not also shrink with equal
earnestness from imposing upon his
words a meaning which he has
nowhere expressly authorized, and,
contrary to his example, insisting
on that'as an essential condition of
Christian fellowship ! Why not be
content to let the terms of admis-
sion to his Church stand as he and
his Apostles left them? It will
not do to narrow down a great
central statement like this into
an expression of any one form of
doctrine which man has been able
to work out of his own brain. It
does not follow that, if any one view
of the Divine nature is false, the op-
posite view is therefore true, and the
one which our Saviour meant to
teach here. No human mind is
able to exhaust his meaning. The
more minutely we endeavor to ex-
plore and explain the nature of the
Father, and of the Son, and of the
Holy Ghost, the further we shall be,
in all probability, from the truth.
We must beware of allowing any
human standard of opinions to
measure its capacity or extent.
" We are all of us, old and young,"
45*
says Stanley in his *' Canterbury
Sermons," (pp. 111-114,) "beset
more or less by the sophistries, the
systems, the schools, the parties,
which time and circumstance, which
past ages and our own age, have
cast up around us and beside us,
before us and behind us. We are
involved in their meshes, we walk in
the grooves which they have made
for us Yet still there is en-
couragement and consolation in the
thought, that none of these things of
themselves constitute the whole, or
the essence of Christianity; that in
this respect our Lord is still the pat-
tern of his Church There is
a true middle way of religion, which
not from weakness, not from indo-
lence, not from halting between two
opinions, but from sincere love of
Christ, and from desire to conform
ourselves to his image, we may
humbly desire to walk No
one of us can embrace at a glance
the whole of Christian truth
It is both a confinnation and illus-
tration of this character of Evan-
gelical doctrine, that, if we look
into some of the earthly representa-
tions of it which have met with
most universal acceptance, they
also share in this freedom from the
bonds in which the world is anxious
to confine them Not be-
cause their genius is irreligious, not
because it is weak and faltering.
No ; but because it transcends the
limits of our ordinary thoughts, be-
cause it approaches by another way
to something like the loftiness of
Him, whose image and superscrip-
tion it bears." As we stand before
a great and comprehensive saymg
of our Lord, like the baptismal
words, we must remember this, and
not attempt to measure it by any
speculative opinions or dogmatic as-
sumptions of ours. 20. unto
the end of the world] eas rijs
avvreKeias rov almvos. This form
of expression occurs five times in the.
Gospel of Matthew, and nowhere else
in the New Testament. Asimilar ex-
5U
MATTHEW XXVIII.
and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost ; teaching them to 20
observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you. And,
pression is found, Heb. ix. 26 : " But
now once in the end of the world
(avvreXeia rSav dioivav, end of
the ages), hath he appeared to put
away sin by the sacrifice of him-
self" In this instance the word
diwvoiv, or cBons, in the plural, re-
fers to a series of dispensations
which had their consummation in
the religion of Jesus. In Matt,
xxiv. 3, " Tell us when these things
shall be, and what shaU be the
sign of thy coming, and of the e7id
of the world f^^ the expression prob-
ably has the same meaning. Jesus
has been announcing the destructive
retribution that is soon to fall upon
the Jewish people and their city.
The disciples ask when these things
shall be, and what shall be the
sign of his coming, and of the end
of the world? The language has
a characteristic of Hebrew poetry,
repeating substantially the same
idea in different words. 77ie end
of the world there is the same as
the end of the Jewish dispensation,
though it may also foreshadow the
end of life, i. e. of this present
earthly dispensation to each indi-
vidual soul. This higher meaning
of the expression in its more uni-
versal application is plainly, we
think, implied in Matt. xiii. 39, 40:
" The harvest is the end of the
world [of this present earthly dis-
pensation] ; and the reapers are the
angels. As therefore the tares are
gathered and burned in the fire ; go
shall it be in the end of this world.''''
This world or dispensation may pos-
sibly there, as in chapter xxiv.,
refer to the Jewish dispensation,
and the process by which the good
and bad among the Israelites should,
like wheat and tares, be separated
from one another at the destruction
of Jerusalem, and the overthrow of
the old religion. But the language,
taken in its connection with what
goes before and after, seems to us to
foreshadow a mightier event, even
the retribution wliich meets every
man, when to him this age, i. e. the
dispensation of this mortal life, is
ended. It is the same at xiii. 49.
So in the passage before us, the end
of the world may possibly refer to
the great event which Jesus has
described with such prophetic ma-
jesty of speech (Matt, xxiv.), and
which, while it should destroy the
old dispensation as a national relig-
ion in the overthrow of the nation
itself, was to free the new dispensa-
tion and its supporters from a most
galling tjT^nny. In this case he
promises his disciples, that during
their trials, until that event, he wiS
every day be personally present
with them. It is much more prob-
able, however, that his promise has
a more universal application, and is
for all his followers, in all ages of
the world, until to each one of tliem
in the fulness of time the end of the
world shall come. It is impossible
to give in English the precise mean-
ing of the expression. The word
translated loorld has nothing to do
with the material universe which
we call the toorld, but means an age
or dispensation, or condition of being.
E. g. the care of the world (Matt,
xiii. 22), i. e. of this present con-
dition of being. The words trans-
lated the end mean rather the con-
summation, com2)leiion, or fulfilment.
So that the end of the world means,
as nearly as our language can give
its meaning, the end or fulfilment of
a dispensation, as in Heb. ix. 26, and
Matt. xxiv. 3, or the completion or
consummation of our present con-
dition of being, as Matt. xiii. 39. 40,
49 ; and xxviii. 20. The end of the
world, as used by Matthew, in both
of its significations, Is nearly synony-
mous with the coming of the Son of
man. They both imply the passing
away of an old, and the coming of
a new order of things, the first of
which is directly indicated by the
end of the world, and the second by
the coming of the Son of man. Both
the terms imply far more than they
directly express. They have done
so much in the development of the
MATTHEW XXVIII.
535
lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world.
Amen.
Christian consciousness, and have
so bound themselves up in the most
solemn and endearing associations,
that no other words can ever take
their phice, or have tlie power which
they have over the Christian heart
and imagination. No attempt to
analyze such words, or to define
them precisely, can ever be suc-
cessful. The fine aroma of senti-
ment, which fills them as a holy
incense, and makes them sacred,
escapes in the process, and leaves
the woi-ds which we use in their
stead poor and meagre substitutes.
'■^ And, lo, J am with ywu alwoy,
even unto the end of the world.''''
" For then we shall be with the
Lord, as he is even now with us.
To him, therefore, reader, commit
thyself, and remain in him; so will
it be best for thee in time and in
eternity." Bengel.
INDEX,
Agony of Gethsemane, 450 - 458,
468, 469.
Ambition, Christian, 359.
Angels, 152-156, 327, messengers,
428, 429.
Apostles, 195, 196.
Article, the Greek, 342.
Baptism, 67, 69, 336, 358. Formula
of, 515-519,532, 533.
Bearing our infirmities, 143 - 146,
498, 499.
Beatitudes, the, 87, 88.
Bethlehem, 48.
Bethphage, 366.
Centurion, 169.
Church, 289-292, 298, 320-326,
328 - 330, 359.
Coincidences, 29, 30, 444, 445, 511,
512.
Coming of the Son of Man, 186 - 188,
302-304, 346, 347, 399, 400, 407-
418,418-422,534.
Conception, miraculous, 35 - 39, 382,
383, 519.
Creeds, 15-17,517-519.
Crucifixion, 483-488, 492. Place
of, 494, 495.
Darkness, outer, 142, 170.
Dav, That, 124, 429, 430.
Death, Christ's view of, 174, 175.
Death of Christ, 199, 292 - 294, 357.
Demoniacs, 160-168, 172, 212.
Devil, the, 76, 77, 82. See Satan.
Discrepancies, 58, 359, 360, 373, 467,
468, 470, 471, 489, 490, 505-508,
508-510, 511.
Double sense, 79, 140, 144 - 146, 274
-277,374, 376, 377,422,423.
Elijah, 66, 312, 313, 315, 316.
End of the world, 264, 255, 533 - 535.
Eternal, 229, 254, 255, 344, 443.
EVenings, two, 170, 269, 270.
Existence of evil, 240 - 242.
Faith, 169, 176, 278, 279.
Fasting, 179.
First last and last first, 348 - 354.
Forgiveness of sin, 176, 177.
Fulfilled, that it might be, 43, 44,
252, 366, 367.
Genealogy of Jesus, 34, 35.
Good, One alone, 344.
Gospels, to be studied in their own
light, 11 - 14. With preparation
of heart, 14, 15. Without pre-
conceptions, 15 - 30.
Guilt, national, cumulative, 394,
395.
Hell, 95, 208, 214.
Herod Antipas, 260 - 264.
Herod the Great, 46, 47, 55.
Herodians, 386.
Holy Ghost, the, 68, 69, 80.
Hypocrites, 282, 295.
Inspiration, 21, 22, 388.
Jerusalem, destruction of, 407 - 418.
Jews, why Jesus confined his min-
istry to them, 284.
John the Baptist, 60 - 65, 268.
Jonah, 296.
Jordan, 68, 356.
Judas, 444, 445, 458, 465, 480.
Judgment, day of, 437, 438.
Just, righteous or justified, 178, 212.
Kingdom of heaven, or of God, 66,
116, 211, 253, 303, 344, 346, 520-
526.
Lake of Galilee, 148, 149.
538
INDEX.
Law fulfilled in Christ's teachings,
88-93,94.
Leprosy, 136 - 138.
Lord, 169.
Marriage, 42, 97, 832 - 335, 342, 343.
Jliiry, the mother of Jesus, 224-
226.
Matthew's Gospel, peculiarities of,
32, 34. When written, 31, 32.
Miracles, 35 - 39, 126 - 134, 497, 498,
500.
^Murder of the Innocents, 50 - 52.
Mysteries, 251.
Name, 112. My, 197, 329.
Oaths, 97.
Oflend, 210, 327.
Olives, Mount of, 466.
Onmipresence of Jesus, 329, 330.
Palm Sunday, 362, 364 - 366.
Parables, 232. Why Jesus taught
in, 238-240.
Parallelism, 122, 123, 397.
Passover, 464, 465.
Peter's denial, 461, 462, 476-478.
Pharisees, 67, 226, 295.
Portents, 426, 427.
Prayer, the Lord's, 102-107. Ef-
ficacy of, 371.
Predictions made bv Jesus, 357, 376,
401 - 406, 407 - 418.
Priests, Chief, 356.
Prophecy, 39-41, 43, 44, 52-55, 82,
83, 211, 213, 214, 274-277, 388-
390, 401 - 406, 467, 491.
Professions, danger of, 396.
Providence, 107 - 110, 271.
"irvxf}, life or soul, 115, 191-193,
199, 301, 302.
Publicans, 99, 196.
Regeneration, the, 346, 347.
Repent, 66.
Resurrection, 379 - 381, 437, 438. Of
Jesus, 503-508, 612-615, 526,
527, 528.
Retribution, 121, 193, 207, 208, 243,
244, 331, 340, 341, 373, 374, 386,
407-422, 432, 434 - 436, 440, 441.
Rich, 338, 339.
Sabbath, Christ's view of, 217, 218.
Sadducees, 67, 295.
Salvation, 43.
Sanhedrim, 56.
Satan, 219 -222, 245-250,256-257,
293, 442. See Devil.
Scribes, 95, 170, 273.
Self renunciation, 340.
Sign from heaven, 288.
Spirits, evil, 157 - 168, 230, 442, 456.
Son of David, the, 34, 41. Of God,
35-39, 297, 319, 461. Of Man,
170, 171, 226, 227, 296, 519, 520.
Star in the east, 48, 49, 56, 57.
Supper, the Lord's, 445-449, 466.
Sword, 471 - 474.
Synagogue, 83.
Temptation, the, 70 - 78, 293.
Temptmg God, 81.
Time, Jewish mode of reckoning,
355, 361 - 363.
Tithes, 398.
Tomb of Jesus, 501, 502, 528-530.
Transfiguration, 305 - 311, 315, 316.
Trial of Jesus, 479, 480, 481-483.
Tribute-money, 318, 386.
Types, 419-422.
Wise men, the, 45 - 60.
THE EKD.
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