St. Matthew

Chapter I

St. Matthew’S Gospel opens with the words, “The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the Son of David, the Son of Abraham.” It gives us a genealogy commencing from Abraham, reaching to Joseph the husband of Mary. It divides Jewish history into three periods of fourteen generations each. It tells us that Joseph was espoused to Mary, and that before they came together she was found with child by the Holy Ghost. It tells us that herein were fulfilled the words, “A virgin shall conceive and bear a Son, and they shall call His name Emmanuel.” It tells us that the child when he was brought forth was called Jesus.

There are here some obvious difficulties, which all readers have felt, and which cannot be evaded. I will enumerate them. Jesus Christ is said to be the Son of David and the Son of Abraham. So far we have the announcement which might be expected from a Jew, who believed that the Messiah was to be of the race of the great patriarch and the great king. But how is He proved to be so? Joseph is shown to be of that race. But Joseph is declared not to be His father. Secondly, What has the arrangement of Jewish history into periods to do with the genealogy or with the account of the Conception? Thirdly, supposing the miraculous Conception admitted, how was it a fulfilment of the words of Isaiah, who evidently speaks of a child then about to be born, who should not be able to cry, “My father or my mother,” before the two kings who were conspiring against Ahaz should have been put down.

It does not seem to me that we escape from these difficulties by supposing the first two chapters of St. Matthew not to be a genuine part of his Gospel. For we should still have to explain how a story so apparently inconsistent was put together. Nor do I see how we are helped by supposing him to be an Ebionite Christian. For though a portion of the Ebionites believed in the miraculous Conception, it does not seem to have been a characteristic tenet of theirs, and the inconsistency will remain the same. Or, if we suppose it to be portions of two narratives, put together by some later compiler, it is quite unintelligible why he did not omit the genealogy, or try to accommodate it to the account of the conception.

Suppose, on the other hand, that St. Matthew set out from the belief which I have shown to be common to all the Evangelists, that Jesus was the eternal Son of God, would it seem to him strange that His incarnation should take place in what we call a miraculous way? Might it not seem to him, if I may use the expression, the most natural way in which such a Person could be brought into this world? Might he not look upon this birth as rather explaining the law of other births than being merely an exception from them? And if he had this thought, would not all Jewish history seem to confirm it to him? Take, for instance, the first in his genealogy. The birth of Isaac surely intimated to Abraham, and through Abraham to the Jewish nation, that a child is the gift of God, that where there is a human father, it is still to be attributed to Him as its author. With this first example to start from, must not the whole line of Jewish children have been regarded as witnesses of a mysterious divine paternity over the nation and over its different members? Did not every page of the prophets suggest the thought that human relations had a divine counterpart, that they were grounded upon a relation which was most real, but which had not yet been manifested? If this were his feeling, would it be strange that he should deduce his genealogy to Joseph instead of to Mary? Would not the sudden interruption of the history just at that point be the clearest explanation of the previous sequence, denoting that now the meaning of it was declared, that the ground of these human relations was brought to light? The words, “Son of David, Son of Abraham,” would then stand in close and intelligible connection with the latter part of the story; they would intimate that the Son of God was that heir of David’s throne of whom all the previous kings had been testifying, under whom they had been reigning; that the covenant with Abraham was accomplished in Him, for that in Him all the families of the earth were to be blessed.

Upon this hypothesis we might easily explain why Matthew should dwell, though but for a moment, upon the successive periods of Jewish history. He who had come to gather up the history of the people, He who was to be the centre of the different ages, is about to present Himself to us. A writer could not more significantly intimate than in this way what was to be the subject of his narrative, how the past was to be fulfilled in Him.

I have used the word “fulfilled,”in anticipation of the next passage in the chapter. Undoubtedly one who was a virgin at the time when Isaiah spoke to Ahaz, conceived and bore a son, as we are told distinctly that the prophetess did in the eighth chapter. I apprehend that St. Matthew, so far from overlooking this fact, or its connection with the other events which befel Ahaz and the land of Israel, is especially desirous to remind us of them. He wishes us to recollect that Ahaz showed utter faithlessness in God’s covenant, and that since he did so, the Lord Himself promised to give a sign which should show that the accomplishment of the promises to the house of David stood not in his faithfulness, nor in the faithfulness of that house. The sign to Ahaz that his land would be preserved, and that Samaria and Syria would be destroyed, was given. There was no disappointment, no trafficking with words in a double sense, no indefinite postponement of that which the Prophet declared would be immediate. But the meaning of the sign was not fulfilled—could not be fulfilled—unless a perfect King should actually be given to David’s house, unless that King should be the Son of God. The sign itself was accomplished precisely in the sense in which it must have been understood; not by any departure from the ordinary rule of conception and birth, though the Prophet felt that he and his children were, from their very calling, signs and wonders of the Lord of Hosts. But when the intention was completely fulfilled, it was necessary that the sign itself should be fulfilled by an extraordinary indeed, but, as I have dared to say, by the most natural, method in which so divine, and yet so human a fact, could take place.

Chapter II

Thus far, then, without departing from the supposition which is common to all interpreters, that St. Matthew was a Hebrew, and, writing to Hebrews,—only assuming that to have been his faith, which we have already ascertained by other inquiries to have been his faith,—I have arrived at what seems a consistent view of the first chapter. But if we have understood that view, especially if we have entered into his use of the word “fulfilment,” the difficulties of the second chapter will, I think, not be found very serious. I confess, that either upon the ordinary hypothesis that the history is primarily the history of a human person, or upon the notion that St. Matthew was an Ebionite, or upon the hypothesis that several inconsistent narratives have been thrown into one, these difficulties seem to me quite insurmountable.

The chapter opens with the story of the visit and adoration of the Magi. This may be taken as one of the strange and supernatural events which attested Jesus of Nazareth to be a great prophet. But it so entirely breaks the order of the narrative, it forms such an isolated story concerning His childhood, it has so little connection with His acts or teaching as a prophet or as the founder of a religion, that I cannot wonder that those who regard Him chiefly in these characters should have been eager to throw the narrative aside. If it is thrown aside, whence did it come? Not from an Ebionite surely; for the kingly character of the child, which is here put so prominently forward, was that which Ebionites were least disposed to regard; and so far from delighting to think of Him as manifested to the Gentiles, their whole labor was to prove that the New Covenant was as strictly limited as the Old. Unless the process of compilation can be explained, and the piece-work detected, it is just as gratuitous, uncritical, unsatisfactory a method of cutting a knot as the resort to a miracle; in fact it is the Deus ex Machina, or modern indolence and superstition.

But what had St. Matthew to believe in order to make this a consistent narrative? That the God of Abraham did promise that in the seed of Abraham all the nations of the earth should be blessed. That God did promise to raise up a Son of David who should rule over the Gentiles. That the wisdom of Gentiles had been imparted to them by God. That He was the teacher and the ruler of the Gentiles. Once grant these postulates, enormous, absolutely incredible, postulates to a modern critic, but a natural inevitable part of the belief of every instructed Hebrew, and the story of the Magians becomes a perfectly reasonable one. Instead of our being called upon to believe that these Magians received some fortuitous miraculous announcement of our Lord’s birth, such as was given to Habakkuk about Daniel in the apocryphal story of Bel and the Dragon, we are told that they became apprised of the birth of a King of the Jews while they were engaged in the occupation of every Eastern sage, the study of the stars. Honor is put upon laborious scientific diligence. An unseen guide is said to lead them. But the intermediate guide is a star which they have been watching—a star which they would, like all Persian astronomers, regard as a king or dynast of the earth, and would connect with some actual ruler. Such a hint is invaluable, as pointing out the nature of the preparation for the Gospel, not in the minds of one class of Gentile philosophers, but of all: in each case the subject to which he had devoted himself the most earnestly and faithfully being the means of leading him to the true King. But the story of course assumes that this Child was the true King; that there was a divine glory in Him; that this glory could manifest itself. We cannot avoid that assumption; we can only say that to make it does not involve a belief in the inconsistency of St. Matthew, but enables us to feel his consistency.

The part of this narrative which concerns Herod and the priests is entirely natural and consistent with all that we know of either. That an Edomite reigning by the choice of Antony and the toleration of Augustus, should tremble at the notion that a native prince might be at hand, we should all expect. That Herod should consult the Jewish authorities, whom he was always anxious to conciliate, and should take it for granted that an anointed king was sometime or other to be born, is perfectly in accordance with all we know of the feelings of the time. That the priests should fix upon Bethlehem, the city of David, as the birth-place of his descendant, and that they should have quoted Micah in support of their opinion, was equally to be expected. The important point in reference to this last fact is, that the Evangelists dwell so little upon the birth at Bethlehem, upon which the priests dwelt so exclusively; that they rest our Lord’s claims to be received upon evidence wholly distinct from that of connection with the royal village. That the wise men should present gold and frankincense and myrrh to the infant, implies of course the previous notion of a divine King, but is in itself consistent and oriental.

Then follows the passage, “And when they were departed, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared unto 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 young child to destroy him. When he arose, he took the young child and his mother by 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 Egypt have I called my son.” Every one has, I suppose, been puzzled by this quotation Is it not a most forced application of the words of Hosea? Can any one read him and think that any other call than that of the Jews out of Egypt was in the prophet’s mind? Is he not evidently alluding to the past rather than the future? I at least cannot have any doubt that he is. The whole context of the prophecy requires that interpretation. But do I therefore admit that St. Matthew was merely playing with the words of a writer whom he believed, whether we do or not, to have been God’s prophet? Is he merely catching up a chance frivolous application of a sentence that happened to come at that moment into his memory? I apprehend the case was altogether otherwise. He looked for the fulfilment not merely of those particular words, but of the idea to which those words with their context, and with the context of the history, were pointing. Why does God call Israel His son? This was the mystery which had to be cleared up. Till it was cleared up, the history of the people, of the deliverances which God had wrought for them, of his continual paternal care and paternal chastisements, was not fulfilled. If St. Matthew regarded Jesus as the Son of God, he believed that in him this history was fulfilled. The actual relation of Him who had taken the seed of Abraham to God, brought out that relation of the children of Abraham to God which his acts implied, but which had not yet been made manifest. But how was it to be signified to the Israelite that this was his King, that this was He in whom God had looked upon the people amidst all their murmurings and transgressions, as his own holy family? The Evangelists held that all the acts of our Lord’s life were significant, that it was not by chance that he went to Egypt instead of to any other place, not by chance that he was recalled thence. All was a part of the Divine purpose and order. Thus the life of the people was connected with the life of their king, thus Hosea’s language respecting the one was interpreted by that which befel the other. Such a mode of considering the subject would be surely natural if St. Matthew had that object in view which I have supposed him to have. I do not pretend to consider it natural or intelligible if he had any other.

Then follows the murder of the infants at Bethlehem, an event which in itself requires no explanation. It is perfectly consistent with all we know of Herod’s character, that he should take that course if he had any dread himself, or if he supposed any other persons to have a hope, that an heir of the house of David was born who might supplant him. The strangeness is again in the supposed fulfilment of the words of the prophet, “In Ramah was a voice heard,” etc. Upon any other principle of explanation than the one I have just adopted, Jeremiah’s words must be as much distorted from their natural force as Hosea’s. The mother of the Jewish race is evidently weeping there over her children, who are about to be taken captive into Babylon; she will not be comforted because they are nowhere to be found in the country of Jacob and Joseph. She is told to refrain from weeping, for her children shall come again out of the captivity; the nation will live, though so many of its inhabitants were to perish. Where are we to look for the fulfilment of the prophet’s sorrow and the prophet’s hope? Here is the king and deliverer, says the Evangelist, the brother, the Joseph of the family, who is to become its head, who is to preserve its life. These events of his childhood, the deaths which accompany it, his own deliverance, connect him with the history of his land; not only with its past, but with its future history; not only with the captivity which had been, but the captivity which was to be. The deaths of these children called forth the tears of a few Jewish mothers; many more Jewish mothers would weep over the loss of their children before that generation was over; Rachel would weep over the apparent extinction of her whole family; and yet as the Head of it had been saved, blessings and a higher deliverance would come out of the ruin. Such a view of the text as this, of course presumes a belief in the organic life of the nation, in a vital connection between all the different portions of its history. But I ask, whether it is possible to read the Old Testament without perceiving that this feeling pervaded the mind of every legislator and prophet? I ask whether, if the New Testament performs its promise of explaining the Old, it must not take us into the very heart of this mystery, and show us the centre to which all the different lines we trace through these records were converging?

Once more, we are told that Joseph found Archelaus reigning when he returned from Egypt, that he feared therefore to go into Judæa, that he turned aside into the parts of Galilee, and went and dwelt in Nazareth; so the words of the Prophets were fulfilled. “He shall be called a Nazarene.” In the two former cases we had no difficulty in detecting the passage which was referred to, however we might be puzzled by the application of it. Here we are at fault as to the quotation itself. “It was spoken by the prophets,” says St. Matthew; we are not therefore to expect that we shall find the words in any particular prophet; the Evangelist must refer to some general meaning which he traces through all of them, and which this sentence, whether it exists in that form or not, aptly embodies. Looking at the actual reputation of Nazareth as it is indicated so many times in the Evangelists; looking at the argument from his dwelling in Galilee, which was so decisive with the Jews against his title to be accounted a king; looking at all that was intimated by the word “Nazarene,” when it was bestowed upon the disciples, I cannot but suppose that the simplest interpretation of the words is the most accurate; that the Evangelist thinks of all such passages in the prophets as indicate that the coming king and prophet should be like past kings and prophets, like the nation itself of which he was the head, despised and rejected; none seeing his comeliness, none being able to declare his generation. In this way the passage is in keeping with all that precede and follow it, and explains, better than almost any other, what St. Matthew understood by the accomplishment of prophecy.

Chapter III. IV

We come now to a part of St. Matthew which we have considered already. The peculiarity in his account of the baptism is, that he introduces the words, “But John forbade him, saying, I have need to be baptized of Thee, and comest Thou to me? And Jesus answering said unto him, Suffer it to be so now: for thus it becometh us to fulfil all righteousness.” I do not know that there is any thing in these words which assists us in determining the object of this Evangelist, but it is at least curious that the Ebionite gospel should be the one into which the assertion of our Lord’s superiority to John is introduced. At the same time, the words “fulfilling righteousness” have a specially Jewish sound and character, and they interpret the other uses of the word fulfilled, to which we have just adverted.

The righteous man of the Old Testament was the man whom the righteous God chose and set apart to Himself, the man who believed in God, and to whom God’s righteousness was imputed. He fulfilled his righteousness who submitted to the calling of God through whatever voice it came, who submitted to every ordinance of God as the signification of His mind and will. This is evidently implied in the words; it is surely consistent with the previous passages that something more should be implied, viz. that the righteousness of the law was now fulfilled or accomplished in a person, and that His baptism was the proof that it was. The Son submits to the servant that He may be declared to be the Son. This idea so pervades the Gospel that it presents itself unawares at every turn of the narrative.

The order of the temptations in St. Matthew is different, as all have observed, from that in St. Luke. The offer of the kingdoms of the world in the first Gospel follows, in the third precedes, the invitation to cast Himself from the pinnacle of the temple. Others have refined upon this difference more than I wish to do; though I cannot help feeling that there is a meaning in it; not one thrust into it by the writer, but springing naturally from the purpose and habit of his mind. The characteristic temptation of the Jew was to cast himself from the ground upon which God had placed him, from His covenant and worship, into the idolatries of the nations round about; the characteristic temptation of the Gentile, and of those who belonged to the new dispensation, has been to seek universal dominion by paying homage to the Evil Spirit.

After the temptation, begins the history of the preaching of our Lord. He goes down, says St. Matthew, into “the borders of Zabulon and Nephthalim: that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet Esaias, saying, the land of Zabulon,” &c. The connection of this passage with the general prophecy of Isaiah, I should conceive was this: Just at the time when the dimness and darkness of the land of Judæa is greatest, through the idolatries of Ahaz, just at the time when the destruction of the ten tribes is consummated, a great light appears in the land, a king is raised up who rules in righteousness. Hezekiah does not feel himself only a Jerusalem king: the whole land is God’s land; He invites those to come up to the great passover who had been separated from Judah ever since the time of Jeroboam. Even to the furthest corners of the land, to the very borders of the Gentiles, his gracious sovereignty extends; these remote people feel once more that they are under the divine government. The language of Isaiah in speaking of this great coming change is not exaggerated. It is not easy to exaggerate the difference between the influence of a sensual tyrant, or an utter anarchy, and the sway of a king who feels that he is raised up to show forth God’s rule over his subjects. St. Matthew has the whole passage present to his mind. The king is the central object in it. The particular words respecting Zabulon and Nephthalim express how his power pervaded the whole land and reached to the furthest limits of it; these therefore are the words which are said to be fulfilled in that visit to Galilee of the Gentiles, as a sign that the whole was fulfilled in the true and perfect King. The fulfilment is therefore literal. The poor inhabitants of that region, as wretched, probably, in the days of Herod and of Roman ascendancy—as morally dark—as at the time of the first captivity, actually felt the presence of a Divine teacher and deliverer,—of a King. But the fulfilment to them is the sign and witness of the fulfilment of the prophecy to the whole nation, and through the nation to mankind. The universal is seen in the individual, according to the Scripture method, which is also the method of nature, the method of the reason, in short, the divine method in all its manifestations.

Chapters V. VI. VII

I shall not now enter into the question whether the Sermon in the sixth chapter of St. Luke, is, or is not, to be identified with the Sermon on the Mount. But I shall point out the great pervading difference between them, which every one who studies them with the least attention will perceive. The words, “I am not come to destroy the law, but to fulfil,” have nothing corresponding to them in the sixth chapter of St. Luke. But the whole of the comparison between what had been said in old time and what our Lord spoke then, begins with these words and evidently turns upon them. I conceive that the whole discourse in St. Matthew must be interpreted by reference to these. And if we do so interpret it, we shall be more and more struck with the difference which our Lord points out between the age which had preceded Him and that which He was come to establish. He has carefully told us that He has come to destroy nothing. The least commandment would still be precious. Why then should the contrast seem to be so great? The last verse in the fifth chapter explains the ground of it. “Be ye therefore perfect, as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.” This is the fulfilment which you trace throughout the whole chapter. The name “Father,” is one which recurs at every turn, which forms the ground of every sentence. Compare any chapter of Leviticus with this, “I am the Lord,” “I the Lord am in the midst of you.” This is the continually repeated formula, this was the ground of that which was said by them of old time. Great and wonderful words they were, words that could not pass away. This is the everlasting foundation of a Decree. There can be no other. But our Lord uttered no decrees. He revealed the actual mind of God, and showed how that mind was intended to become, and could become, the mind of men; for it was the mind of His Father, and He was come to them as a brother. Take this idea away from the Sermon on the Mount, and you do not merely destroy its unity; you destroy the sanction and the intelligibility of every one of its separate utterances. You cannot make out why a man should not pray in the corners of streets to be seen of men; you cannot make out why he should not do his alms before men to be seen of them; you cannot make out why he should not take thought for the morrow; you cannot make out why he should ask and hope to receive. “Your Father seeth in secret; your Father knoweth you have need of these things; if ye being evil know how to give good gifts to your children, shall not your heavenly Father give good things to them that ask Him?” Here we have the only explanation which our Lord thinks right to give.

I shall not go step by step through this great discourse. The hint which I have given will be sufficient for any one who wishes to investigate the subject more carefully; I am sure he will have a rich reward, and that he will be able to tell me innumerable things which I have not observed, which illustrate the Evangelist’s meaning more fully, perhaps, than those which I have set down

Chapter VIII

I would remark upon this chapter that St. Matthew introduces into the story of the healing of the centurion’s servant, “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 the kingdom of heaven. But the children of the kingdom shall be cast out into outer darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” That St. Matthew should go out of his way, as it were, to record sentences of this kind, is inexplicable upon the hypothesis that he was especially jealous, as every Ebionite was, of the intrusion of Gentiles into the covenant. Such passages therefore must be treated by those who hold that hypothesis, as the interpolations of a later compiler. Why he should choose St. Matthew as the special object of his experiments, does not appear. On the other hand, if St. Matthew were writing as a Hebrew to Hebrews, nothing would be so natural as that he should dwell upon the evidence that in them and their seed the other nations were to be blessed, or that he should warn them, as the prophets of old did, how near they were to desolation and apostasy. Such must have been the continual tone of St. James’s preaching to his fellow-citizens at Jerusalem. The difference between his and St. Paul’s was, as we shall find hereafter, very decided and remarkable; but it did not consist in the fact that one was more tolerant of the sins of the Jews than the other, or believed less than the prophecies respecting the Gentiles were to be accomplished. Nor is this the nature of the contrast between St. Matthew and St. Luke. Their admonitions respecting the coming calamities on the Jewish nation are in many respects curiously distinguished. But it is a distinction of kind, not of degree. If there is any difference, St. Matthew is the more earnest and frequent in his warnings, because, as one treating of the fulfilment of prophecy, this was obviously part of his province.

An instance of prophetical fulfilments occurs in this passage. “When the even was come, they brought unto Him many that were possessed with devils: and He cast out the spirits with His word, and healed all that were sick: that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Esaias the prophet, saying, Himself took our infirmities, and bare our sicknesses.” As it has been so much the habit of commentators to restrict the meaning of these words to the death of our Lord, most readers, I suppose, feel a little startled when they find this application of them by an Apostle and an Evangelist. Surely St. Matthew understood the prophet at least as well as we do. The healing sicknesses and casting out devils seemed to him to involve bearing sicknesses and infirmities. Only He who suffered them could remove them. His power to relieve the woes of humanity could not be separated from His participation in them. Christ’s brotherhood with man answered to all the anticipations which prophets had formed of their king. Without it there could have been no fulfilment of God’s promises or man’s cravings.

Chapter IX

I have already commented on the passage in this chapter which refers to the feast in Matthew’s house, and to the reason for the disciples of John and the Pharisees fasting while the disciples of Jesus did not fast. The peculiarity in the narrative of St. Matthew is that he introduces the words, “Go ye, and learn what that meaneth, I will have mercy, and not sacrifice.” This allusion, slight as it is, opens a very wide view of the nature of the old economy, as well as of the new. The tendency of the Jewish worshipper was always to fancy that his sacrifices were buying God’s mercy. The continual teaching of the Law and the Prophets is, that the mercy was itself the ground of the sacrifices. Instead of contradicting, then, the meaning of the Old Law by showing mercy to those who were not righteous, He was fulfilling it. He was carrying out the mind of God towards men; He was exhibiting Him as the Author of forgiveness, of deliverance, of righteousness to men. Observe how naturally this pervading feeling of the Evangelist’s mind expresses itself in all his quotations; how, at every turn in his Gospel, our Lord is bringing out the mind of the God of Abraham, and showing it to be the mind of a Father.

Chapter X

I have remarked already that the directions to the Apostles are given much more in detail by St. Matthew than by the other Evangelists, and especially that St. Luke transfers to the seventy much of what St. Matthew sets down with reference to the twelve. Supposing that St. Matthew designed to show the fulfilment of the Old Dispensation in the New, and St. Luke to be the teacher of the Gentiles, I think that we should certainly have expected this difference.

The apostolic office, with all its largeness and catholicity, is the unfolding or fulfilment of the tribe institution. It represents the Jewish nation, while it makes that nation what it was always meant to be, the teacher and evangelizer of the world. The directions in this chapter clearly belong to them first in their character of teachers of the lost sheep of the House of Israel, to whom, on their first mission, they were to confine themselves, though every warning and exhortation looked on to a subsequent period, when their office should be unlimited. That characteristic of the Evangelist, which I noticed in the last chapter, is here very prominent: “It is not ye that speak, but the Spirit of your Father which speaketh in you.” “Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? and one of them shall not fall on the ground without your Father.” Here we have the special ground of the Apostles’ faith and consolation. In that name Father also, as I believe, lay the foundation of their office. It was that which by their acts, as well as their words, they were continually to be setting forth.

Chapter XI

St. Matthew and St. Luke both record the coming of John’s disciples to Christ, and the conversation which followed after they were gone. There is one passage¹ in the latter which is peculiar to St. Matthew: “And if ye will receive it, this is Elias, which was for to come.” In the account of the Transfiguration St. Matthew tells us that our Lord said, “Elias had already come, and that the people had done to him what they listed; and that the disciples then understood that He spake of John the Baptist.” He is the only Evangelist who directly identifies them. St. John, in a passage which I shall have to consider hereafter, seems to say that the Baptist himself disclaimed the name of Elias. It will be seen at once how entirely it is in accordance with the purpose I have traced in St. Matthew to dwell upon this point. All the announcements, principles, ideas of the old economy were to be fulfilled in the new. The advent of Christ was to substantiate the indications in Jewish history and Jewish prophecy. Elijah, who had proclaimed the Lord God of Abraham in the face of Jezebel and her priests and her idols, must have his counterpart before the Jewish age was wound up. There must be a protester for the Lord God of Abraham against the heart-idolatries, the fleshly worship, of Pharisees and Sadducees, a witness that He was indeed manifesting Himself, that a great Day of the Lord was come. The Evangelist never, I think, for a moment ceases to think of our Lord as the revealer of the mind of that God for whom Elijah had testified; as fully declaring His righteousness, and His judgments.

There is one memorable passage before the end of this chapter which belongs solely to St. Matthew. It is that which taught St. Augustine the difference between the teaching of Christ and that of the best philosophers: “Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” The words are sufficiently beautiful if they stood alone, unconnected with the passage immediately preceding, which occurs without them in the tenth chapter of St. Luke. But Augustine can never have separated them from that sentence. The heavy burden upon his soul was the sense of ignorance of God and of separation from Him. The philosophers could awaken this sense, but could not satisfy it when it was awakened. He who could say that He knew the Father, and was willing to reveal Him, could say, “Come unto me, I will give you rest.” And He could then call upon them to take His yoke, to work with Him in his Father’s Kingdom, to become a son lowly and obedient as the Son was; so to cast off the heavy oppression of pride and self-will. A soul crying out for the living God, could understand that language. Those who had entered into the cries of the psalmist and prophets of old, could understand and may understand still, how Christ responded to them and fulfilled them.

Chapter XII

This chapter gives us another instance of the kind which we have considered so often before. “And Jesus withdrew Himself from thence: and great multitudes followed Him, and He healed them all; and charged them that they should not make Him known: that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Esaias the 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. He shall not strive, nor cry; neither shall any man hear his voice in the streets. A bruised reed shall he not break, and smoking flax shall he not quench, until he send forth judgment unto victory. And in his name shall the Gentiles trust.”

I will ask any one seriously to meditate on this application of Scripture by St. Matthew, and to ask himself what idea the person who made it must have had of fulfilment.

No one, I think, will dare to say that it is inappropriate. The heart and the conscience at once recognize the most wonderful propriety in it. One who refused to let His deeds of love and mercy be known, who had power to heal multitudes, and had power to reject the fame of healing any, is just the kind of person whom Isaiah describes. This feature of his character implied a number of others. He must have been inwardly and throughout meek and lowly. That meekness, instead of interfering with his power, must have been a main element of it. But analyze the passage in Isaiah after the manner of a modern prophetical interpreter. What becomes of it? What has “showing judgment to the Gentiles” to do with healing the sick in Galilee? What has “sending forth judgment unto victory” to do with commanding sick people not to make Him known? How should “Gentiles trust in his name” because He told Jews not to proclaim it? If just that incident had to be fitted to some special prediction, a hundred might have been chosen that would have matched more exactly. Not many could have been found so wide of the point. Only if we suppose that this Person fulfilled the whole description of royalty and gentleness which the prophet had sketched, only if we suppose the Evangelist to have felt in that one act, how the whole divine, human portrait of the prophet, was embodied in a living man, only if we go along with Him in saying, “such a one as this, only such a one as this, so human, so divine, can rule the nations, can be an object of trust to all nations,” shall we enter in the slightest degree into the intention of the words, or be able to acquit them of frivolity.²

Chapter XIII

The 13th chapter contains two of the parables upon which I have commented already, with two or three which are peculiar to St. Matthew. It is curiously in accordance with all we have found in him thus far, that though our Lord, both in St. Mark and St. Luke, uses the words “that seeing they might not see, and hearing they might not understand,” St. Matthew alone gives the quotation from Isaiah, introducing it with the phrase, “in them is fulfilled the prophecy.” Again, at the 34th verse he says, “All these things spake Jesus unto the multitude in parables; and without a parable spake He not unto them: that it might be 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.” Any one who will consider either of these quotations, will perceive the absolute necessity of bringing them under the law which we have found applicable to all previous ones. To suppose that Isaiah did not refer to the grossness in the minds of the people in his own day, would be to make the awful vision of the Lord of Hosts which He saw in the Temple, and the mission which followed it, a mere mockery. If the writer of the 78th Psalm was not himself going to utter and explain parables and hard sentences, what is the Psalm about? But Isaiah’s prophecy was not fulfilled in his generation; the hardness of heart had not reached its climax, the eyes had not yet been closed against the perfect light which might be poured into them. The Psalmist dwelt upon the parables of his country’s history, uttered the dark sayings concerning God’s dealings with them which their fathers had told them; he was able to see those dealings in their connection, and so to remove part of the veil which covered them while they could only be viewed separately and in progress. But it was only the perfect Image of God, who could set forth fully the parable of his relations with man, who could exhibit His acts in perfect order and sequence.

Now these two quotations remarkably illustrate, I think, that particular aspect of the parable which St. Matthew presents to us. Its general object, as we have seen, is to bring out the inward order of God’s kingdom and government over the heart and will of man, with its outward results, as these are illustrated by other parts of His kingdom and government in nature or in the common transactions of men with each other. The special calling of St. Matthew seems to be, to show us the working of the divine power and influence side by side with the working of those powers and influences which counteract it, and the approach of a crisis which would distinguish and separate them.

Thus the parable of the tares of the field is St. Matthew’s. The leaven which the woman hid in three measures of meal, which recent commentators, with so much justification from the uniform use of the word “leaven” in Scripture, have taken to indicate the mixture of an evil and corrupt principle with the pure seed in Christian life and doctrine, is also his. It is he again who speaks of the Kingdom of Heaven as like a net which was cast into the sea, and gathered of every kind. So that his comparisons seem especially to bear upon that complete working out of the mystery of good and the mystery of evil, which is indicated by the phrase, “end or accomplishment of the age.”

I can scarcely help seeing this character, where it is less obvious, in the other two beautiful parables of this chapter, that of the treasure hid in the field, and of the merchantman seeking goodly pearls. The first surely describes the wonder and delight of those who had been all their life seeking for signs and outward things, when they found the treasure they needed close to them; that the field which they had never cultivated, nay, which they had need to buy as a strange possession, was that of their own hearts. And does not the other describe as livingly, those old philosophers who were really searching for goodly pearls, for shattered portions of divine and true wisdom, and who found all these fragments gathered up into one living Person?—parables which, though they may have various and infinite personal applications, yet belong remarkably to the history of that age, to that conflux of Jewish and Gentile faiths as well as unbeliefs, which was to mark the winding up of it.

Chapters XIV. XV. XVI

I do not know that there is any thing in these chapters upon which I have not spoken already, or which is peculiar to St. Matthew, except the incident of Peter being called to come to Jesus on the water, and the memorable words to the same Apostle: “Upon this rock will I build my Church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” The last subject alone seems to be important: I need not say how important it is.

The blessing to Peter is the point in this passage to which all Romanists would draw our attention, and they are right. All the rest of the passage depends upon that blessing. Let us consider what it is. “Flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven.” To know that Jesus Christ was the Son of the living God, was to know a truth which God only could make known to a man, a truth not for his flesh, but for his spirit, belonging not to the surface of his mind, but to its very ground. This is just what we should have concluded from our previous inquiries. The discovery of the Son of the living God is the discovery of Him upon whom all things and all persons rest. All his miracles and all his parables have been proving this. He had fulfilled the meaning of the old Jewish kingdom, by coming forth as that Prince and Head of it who had been secretly directing all its movements, who had been implied in all its offices.

How beautifully do the next words accord with these: “My Father in heaven has revealed to you that ground which flesh and blood could not make known to you, the ground upon which your own life and all men’s lives stand. And upon this rock will I build my Church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” If the blessing to Peter had not preceded, we might have been in doubt about the meaning and nature of this rock. We might have said with the Romanists, “it means St. Peter himself,” or with a great many Protestants, “it means a dry, formal confession.” But these are just what flesh and blood could reveal. A certain man, the head of a school or college of Apostles, a certain logical formula declaring Jesus to be the Son of God, belongs to the surface of men’s minds. But to teach a man that he can only rest upon the pillars of the universe, can only rest upon the Son of God Himself, this is God’s work. A man who apprehends this, knows that he is standing, not upon a shifting sand, but upon an eternal rock.

“Upon it,” says our Lord, “will I build my Church.” The word Ecclesia has not yet occurred in the New Testament. It only occurs twice in the Gospels. That it should be used both times by St. Matthew may seem strange, considering that the word is so especially Pauline. But be it always remembered, that if it has a very close connection with the so-called Gentile dispensation, its force and application must be entirely learnt from the Jewish Scriptures. The apostle of the Gentiles found the phrase in use in the Greek cities, and applied to an assembly called together by a herald. But he took it in its etymological sense. It was a body called out. In that sense it was expounded by the whole history of the Jewish nation, by the calling out of the first father of the family, of the nation, of every officer and man in the nation. How strictly was it in accordance with all St. Matthew’s previous teaching, to intimate that a body called out which these limits could not confine or ascertain, was to be built up in the world, and that a rock lying deep down was to be the foundation of it. Against a building so established the gates of Hell could not prevail. It could not sink and be lost in the abyss of darkness and death, for it stood upon One who would show that death and hell had not the power to hold Him.

Now that Peter should have the keys of this Kingdom of Heaven, that it should be given to him to open the gates of this Church, and to admit Gentiles as well as Jews into it, might seem very wonderful; but it is just what the history tells us. When he preached on the day of Pentecost, when he preached to Cornelius, this honor was conferred upon him. In the strictest sense, I conceive that which he bound on earth was bound in heaven, and that which he loosed on earth was loosed in heaven. I do not purpose to enter into the consideration of these last words, as they will meet us again in another chapter of this Gospel. But I will say, first, that I do not shrink on the strength of them and of the rest of this passage, from attributing to St. Peter a greater privilege and glory than that claimed for him by those who give him such a position on the earth or in the unseen world, as would prove that the gates of the Kingdom of Heaven had never been opened to men by him or by any other; secondly, that I am ready to test St. Peter’s own position, and his Master’s, by the view which he takes of both in his own epistle

Chapter XVI

This chapter contains one passage which is peculiar to St. Matthew, the account of the tribute-money which was demanded of Peter, and of the way in which he was desired to procure it. It would be a natural thought, that St. Matthew’s position as a publican led him to repeat this story. But the conclusion would be a rash one; for it has been often and rightly remarked, that the didrachma was not a payment to the Roman government, but for the expenses of the Temple, and that the force of the question to St. Peter: “Of whom do the kings of the earth take tribute?” turns upon this circumstance. They were the children of Him who dwelt in the Temple, not strangers, or bondsmen. According to this interpretation, St. Matthew would be the Evangelist most likely to introduce such a conversation; it would accord with the whole purpose of his narrative; it would be a new illustration of the way in which our Lord came to fulfil all the purpose of the old dispensation, to substantiate the meaning of its forms, institutions, holy places. I am not sure that I see the special meaning in the miracle of the fish which some have been disposed to give it. I see in it that general claim of our Lord over the realms of nature, which He had in so many ways asserted. I can understand its force in connection with the draught of fishes, and with other acts of the same kind; but it may have one or many significations which I am not able to perceive. Those who value it simply because it seems to them an act of a more startling kind than others which they read of, must consider with themselves whether they will explain all the miracles by this, or this by them.

Chapter XVIII

I remarked in a former page, that the narrative of the conversation with the disciples which was suggested by their question, “Who is the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven?” was more varied and embraced more topics in St. Matthew’s Gospel than in either of the others. The little child is common to all. That which is peculiar to St. Matthew is the earnest warning respecting scandals, the memorable sentence, “In heaven their angels do always behold the face of my Father which is in heaven,” and the sentence, “It is not the will of your Father which is in heaven, that one of these little ones should perish.” No one can fail to see how the first topic is suggested by the Apostle’s question and dispute. Just the temper which they had been exhibiting, the desire for high places, the notion that offices were prizes for ambition, not services, would, in one form or other, be the cause of all the scandals in Christ’s kingdom. But where lay the test of its existence, as well as the correction of it? The little child, the humblest human creature, was dear to His Father in heaven. He did not look upon it merely as a fallen corrupted thing. Its Angel, its pure original type, that which it was created to be, was ever present with Him, was ever looking up into His face. To bring it to this state was His will. It was against His will that one such little creature should lose its high and original glory. For the Son of Man was come to seek and to save that which was lost, to fulfil His Father’s will, by bringing back into the circle of His holy flock the one sheep that had wandered out of the way. How fearful then those scandals which injured any of those little ones! How needful to cut off the right hand, and pluck out the right eye which caused them!

Hence the transition is easy to the great law, “If 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.” Here is the great law of the family, the great means of checking the scandals which spring up in it. But Christ, the Son of God, the elder Brother of the human race, has come to establish this principle of the family, to make it the universal principle. Here then is the second occasion on which St. Matthew introduces the word Ecclesia. Before we were told of the foundation upon which it rested, now of the principles of its cohesion and of the powers which are threatening it. It is held together by a law of forgiveness and mutual sacrifice. Only when that law has been resisted and renounced by any person utterly and in defiance of all warnings and manifestations of love, is his brother warranted in casting him off, in treating him as the proud scornful Jew treated heathen men and publicans.

Then come in the words, “Verily I say unto you, Whatsoever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever ye shall 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 which is in heaven.” Surely in our disputes about the powers which may or may not be conveyed in the first of these sentences to the priests of God, we have overlooked the radical and characteristic principle of the passage; the assertion that heaven and earth had been brought by the Son of man under one law, that earth was to have really a kingdom of heaven in the midst of it. Here I find the true exposition of the power and reality of the Church, one for which the notion of certain keys put into the hands of a mortal man, or a number of mortal men, would be a miserable substitute. The two clauses should be surely taken together, and taken in conjunction with the whole previous passage. Then they will illustrate the deep mystery of human creatures being adopted as sons of God, by being acknowledged as brothers of Christ, and so being enabled to be perfect as their Father which is in heaven is perfect; the very mystery of the Sermon on the Mount, and which it seems to be St. Matthew’s special function to expound.

Nowhere has he expounded it more strikingly than in the concluding parable of this chapter, that of the king taking an account of his servants. The grand truth that God’s forgiveness is the ground of man’s forgiveness, and that God’s forgiveness, free, large, absolute as it is, only reaches a man’s heart when it subdues his unbrotherly nature and makes him forgiving—a truth of which we are all most imperfectly conscious, and which we are setting at naught continually by our theories, as much as we forget it in our practice.

Chapters XIX. XX

There is nothing in the next chapter of which I have not spoken already. But the concluding passage in it is inseparably connected with the parable in the twentieth, which is peculiar to St. Matthew. The importance of that parable as declaring the nature of the divine kingdom, and of its rewards, cannot be overrated. St. Peter had proved, as I remarked before, that the temptation of the rich man is in another form the temptation of the poor. “What shall we have therefore” was the thought of the Apostle as well as of the ruler. “Every thing,” is the answer, gifts beyond your imagination; but this is the greatest: To understand that your calling and your work are themselves inconceivable blessings, and that the blessing which follows upon them, the hire at the end of the day, is one of which you are not to be possessors, but sharers. If you look upon it as something which you are to “have,” and from which others are to be excluded for your sake, you will never know what it is; the nature and meaning of my Kingdom will be hidden from you. And why? Because the ground of that kingdom is the will of a Father whose eye is good, who sendeth rain upon the just and the unjust. To be like Him, to enter into His mind, is the good; this is that which the chosen seek; those who fancy themselves chosen to the injury of their brethren are only called. What a lesson to the elect nation! What a deeper, more awful lesson to the elect Church!

Chapters XXI. XXII

In the 21st chapter St. Matthew introduces into the conversation with the chief priests and elders respecting the authority of John the words: “But what think ye? A certain man had two sons; and he came to the first, and said, Son, go work to-day in my vineyard. He answered and said, I will not; but afterward he repented, and went. And he came to the second, and said likewise. And he answered and said, I go, sir: and went not. Whether of the twain did the will of his father? They say unto him, The first. Jesus said 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, and ye believed him not; but the publicans and the harlots believed him: and ye, when ye had seen it, repented not afterward, that ye might believe him.”

These words I think are characteristic of the Evangelist. The Will of a Father; submission to it or resistance to it; the repentance which acknowledges it to be good and the child’s will to be evil; this is the subject of our Lord’s revelations as they presented themselves to his mind. The other aspects of the gospel are not lost, but they are contemplated in reference and subordination to this one. In this way it is the fulfilment of the Law and the Prophets, though it may lead to the casting out of those who boasted most of the Law and the Prophets. The remark is particularly applicable here because the 21st chapter generally records precisely those discourses and parables which we find in the other Evangelists.

The parable in the opening of the 22d chapter, “the King making a marriage for His Son,” concludes with the same moral as that in the 20th chapter, “For many are called, but few chosen.” And surely it does most remarkably expand and develope the idea of the previous story, though the occasion which suggested it, the persons to whom it is addressed, and the scenery of it, are so different. The great reward which the Father bestows upon men is that they should come and rejoice with Him in the marriage of His Son. His bridal with humanity is that which expresses and fulfils the mind and will of the Creator; this it is which unites and reconciles him to His creature. To give thanks for this is to become like Him, to enter into the joy of the Lord. The refusal of those to do this who were first invited because their hearts were set upon special possessions, occupations, enjoyments of their own, the calling of the most wretched and helpless who had nothing of their own, the determination of some even of these to appear in their own ragged clothing, rather than to receive the wedding-dress, explain the nature and root of the evil in man, that evil of which the Jewish pride, distrust, exclusiveness, were the great exemplifications in that day, but which belonged equally to the Gentiles, and would be manifested in them when they were endued with the same privileges. I do not doubt for a moment that the parable belongs to that class of discourses which our Lord spoke after His entry to Jerusalem, and which bore so directly upon the sins of its rulers. But this specific character does not hinder it from possessing a universal character arising from the very nature of the subject, or an individual character arising from the distinct purpose of the Evangelist who records it.

Chapter XXIII

The specific, the universal, and the individual, all appear in the tremendous chapter which follows. Those who think of our Lord’s words as the announcement of a more benignant, more tolerant dispensation, than that which preceded it, are utterly scandalized by the denunciations which they read here. How can we reconcile them, they ask, with the tone and spirit of the Sermon on the Mount? They are in the most literal and in the most inward harmony with the Sermon on the Mount. “Except your righteousness exceed the righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven.” This was the maxim of that discourse. Now we are told, with the same authority which pronounced that sentence, what the righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees is. If Jesus did not speak as a king and lawgiver, then the tone of this discourse is new and strange. But the feeling of the people who heard Him when he opened His lips, and said, “Blessed are the poor in spirit,” was that He did speak as a King and Lawgiver, as one who knew the very mind of God, and could reveal it. And if so, he implicitly declared there what he explicitly declares here, that all religion which is not based upon that eternal Mind of God, upon truth and righteousness, let it be as seemly as it may in the sight of man, let it clothe itself in what phrases of godliness it pleases, is atheistical, and must be swept away. “It cannot enter into the kingdom of heaven.” The kingdom rests upon a Revelation of the eternal Will and Order of God; all who will confess that Will and Order are invited to share its blessedness; all who will set up themselves upon any pretext must be aliens from it. The Pharisaic religion was the enthronization and deification of self; that which was the evil of the world scattered through many forms was concentrated in them; it stood face to face with Christ, who came to offer Himself as a Sacrifice; it denied not the Son of Man, but the Holy Spirit which dwelt in Him. Our Lord here, in awful language, describes its signs, and announces its downfall. The age which these Pharisees represented would gather up into itself the crimes and sins of all past ages; against it, the final sentence, long delayed, would go forth.

Hereby we see how these woes belong to the time which is assigned for them, how they accord with the parables which precede, and the prophecy which follows them. We see also how everlasting the truth is which is brought out for the condemnation of the rulers of a particular nation. A selfish religion, adopting the names and forms of a religion grounded upon self-sacrifice, must be the imminent sign of any people’s misery and perdition; all its other evils must have their root and their consummation in that. But nowhere more than while he is thus following the course of the history and showing forth its perpetual application, does St. Matthew perform his own distinct function. The denunciations of our Lord are the fulfilment of all the denunciations of former prophets; the execution of them would be the fulfilment of all past judgments. The establishment of His kingdom would be the fulfilment of all those reformations and restorations which had cheered the ancient seer under the overwhelming sense of the sins of the people and its rulers, under the prospect of approaching captivity and desolation.

Chapters XXIV. XXV

I have commented very largely upon the next chapter. I have only to ask that you would read it once more in connection with the one I have just considered, and with the 25th.

That chapter begins with the words, “Then shall the kingdom of heaven be likened unto ten virgins, which took their lamps, and went forth to meet the bridegroom.” I must take the “then” literally, and determine it according to the prophecy respecting the Temple. “Then when the tribulation of these last days comes, when Jerusalem is compassed about with armies, when the abomination of desolation is set up in the holy place—shall the kingdom of heaven be likened unto ten virgins.” And thus, I think, we gain from the parable a new light upon the words which have caused so much perplexity in the prophecy. The coming of the bridegroom in the one is, of course, identical with the coming of the Son of Man in the other. The King has made a marriage for His Son. He comes to claim his bride. If the passing away of the Old Dispensation meant this; if the shaking not of earth only, but also of heaven—not of polities alone which claimed a human origin, but of one which claimed, and had a right to claim, a divine origin—was a proof that the Son of Man had come to assert His fellowship with humanity, we can understand why the day and hour of His coming should be unknown, why He should be said to come as a thief in the night, even though the outward tokens of His judgment should be most startling and conspicuous, though the effects of it should be apparent through all ages to come.

And this is just what the parable of the virgins seems to intimate. The kingdom of heaven—the divine society—would resemble ten virgins, five of whom were wise, and five were foolish. Most commentators, I believe, have supposed these virgins to be churches; few have doubted that the oil means here, as elsewhere, the Spirit, or the spiritual life. Moreover there is much uniformity in the interpretation of the story as denoting that certain churches would have the general outward preparations for Christ’s coming, scriptures and ordinances as lights to their feet; and that some sudden convulsion having startled them into the belief that His coming was near, they would all begin to trim these lamps, to feel the necessity of using them for the purpose for which they were given; but that the foolish would then discover their incapacity for using them, and would be eager for all second-hand helps; would at last be forced to the discovery that unless they went to them that sold, and bought for themselves, unless they had a direct personal apprehension of Him in whom they professed to believe,—they could not meet Him. I believe I am not departing in the least from the ordinary rubric of commentators when I adopt this explanation. All I wish is that it should be brought out more distinctly in connection with the leading idea of the bridegroom. And then I think that the sense of it will be that certain churches would be really waiting for the divine King who had declared Himself as the root of humanity, as the ground of their personal and their social life, as the only bond of their unity, and would therefore find Him in the truest, most living sense, not as their King only, but as the Lord of Man; that the others, expecting some mere outward exhibition of Him, such as the adulterous Jewish generation sought after, would find that they had grasped a shadow, would lose what they had possessed before, would become apostate. “Verily I say unto you, I know you not.” The five virgins would become parts of the new and living Jerusalem; the others would sink into the corrupt mass of Judaism or heathenism. Such would be the specific force of the parable exactly answering to the chronology which our Lord gives it. But in that specific application is involved one of the perpetually-renewing force for all ages of the Christian Church, specially for its last age. St. Matthew, as the Evangelist who sets forth the fulfilment of the Old Dispensation in the revelation of man’s filial relation to God, and conjugal relation to the divine King, was particularly likely to record this parable.

A question was likely to arise in the minds of the disciples who heard it, Had all these virgins equal advantages? Could the foolish be equally prepared with the wise? If it was spiritual treasures in which the former were deficient, are not these emphatically divine gifts? Were not they withheld from those who were without oil, and who went to borrow it? The answer lies in the parable of the Talents. It is not separated from that of the virgins, as our translators have separated it by the formal words, “For the kingdom of heaven is like unto;” words which though they are the proper and ordinary introduction to the parable generally, appear to be awkward and out of place in this instance. The bridegroom in his absence did not leave any of those whom he was afterwards to claim, without those inner gifts and endowments which were necessary that they might receive him on his return. The treasures might be apparently unequal because the tasks and temptations of those to whom they were committed were unequal. But all were adequate, all might be improved. They were precisely of that nature and quality that they could be improved. They were not absolute gifts, but gifts to be traded with. And the difference between one and another arises primarily from the neglect of this trading, ultimately from distrust in the owner, from believing him to be a hard master, “reaping where he had not sown, and gathering where he had not strewed;” instead of a gracious master, who desires that his servants should share his work and enter into his joy. The principle of this parable then, as of the last, is deep and universal. But if the Apostles needed the former for their own time, to explain what was coming upon them, and how they were to act, they needed also this for the same reason. It was a lesson for the world because it was first a lesson for them. There were two aspects of the lesson, one we shall find is brought out by St. Luke, one by St. Matthew. That with which we are especially concerned here, is the lesson concerning the evenness and righteousness of God’s dealings, the assertion that the same joy is intended for all who do not distrust their divine employer, but are ready to work for Him and with Him in his spirit.

Then follows the memorable passage, beginning, “When the Son of man shall come in His glory.” I have very few remarks to make upon it; for I do not in this or in any case desire to propose new interpretations. I only desire that we may consider more earnestly what we mean by our ordinary interpretations, that they may become less shadowy and more real, that they may bear upon our lives, and may not be merely a collection of loose fragmentary notions inconsistent with the letter and tenor of Scripture, inconsistent with themselves. Every one has a kind of dream respecting a great judgment in which the Son of Man shall sit on the throne of his glory. Let him cherish that dream, let him suffer no thoughts or speculations of any one to disturb it, no not even the words of Scripture itself. But let him labor hard that it may be more than a dream. Let him not suffer so awful a truth as it must involve to be lost in phrases about “a great assize,” in very vulgar and yet very vague impressions borrowed from the scenery of English courts of justice, or even from the pictures of great artists. If any of these associations are helpful in bringing to our minds an actual Judge of quick and dead, One to whom the secrets of hearts are open, we ought not to discard them. They must have a relation to these realities; there is something in them which is symbolical of them. But it is a matter of life and death, a matter infinitely concerning the sincerity of our minds, that we should take all possible pains to find out what the relation is, how the thing symbolized is connected with the symbol. Let us confess to ourselves plainly and honestly that we have let the one stand for the other; that we have talked of a judgment and tried to frighten ourselves and others with it, but have not believed in it; that it hangs about us as a terrible phantom which we generally wish to get rid of; that the thought of it inspires us with any thing but the substantial abiding comfort and joy which it caused to psalmists, and prophets, and apostles. And when we have come to that humiliating confession, let us turn to this passage which must be the greatest guide of all to a right and practical understanding of the subject. And if we do believe that the Son of man is Himself best able to tell us what the sitting on the throne of his glory and the gathering before Him of all nations are, let us listen to his own teaching; let us think that when He utters the words, “Inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these, ye did it to me,” He proclaimed that which is the very truth of human existence, that with which it must be eternal life to be in conformity, and eternal death to be at variance. He actually is one with every man. He has come to proclaim that He is by His incarnation and His death. He did judge the old world according to that law. However little we may understand at present the course and method of His judgment, we must, if we accept Scripture as the interpreter of history, think that it was this law and no other which decided the condition of every nation and race. And in proportion as we feel assured that this was the case in every preparatory judgment and in the final judgment of the old world, we shall feel that it is the law, which having been affirmed in the great visitation upon Jerusalem, has guided the treatment of every nation and of every man since; the law which is judging us now; the law which will judge us in the last day. To us if we hold fast this truth and try to live by it, that judgment at the last day will be no idle fiction; not a pageant with which we shall dare to trifle, but a living eternal verity, which it would be the loss of all our hopes for ourselves or for our race, of all our faith in God, to part with.

Chapters XXVI. XXVII. XXVIII

On the first two of these chapters I have dwelt at great length. In the last it is an important characteristic of St. Matthew, that he speaks only of the Resurrection, not of the Ascension. The one is the fulfilment of all the meaning of the Old Dispensation; the other is the ground and commencement of the New. But it would not be the fulfilment of the past if it did not bring forth the Son of David and the Son of Abraham, saying, “All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth;” if the promise, “in thee and in thy seed all the families of the earth shall be blessed,”had not been translated into the words “teach all the nations;”if the name of the I Am, which was the ground of the National polity, had not been expanded into the Name of “the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost,” the foundation of the universal Family.