Matthew 11
ButlerL. 11 And it came to pass the day after, that he went into a city called Nain; and many 12 of his disciples went with him, and much people. Now when he came nigh to the gate of the city, behold, there was a dead man carried out, the only son of his mother: and 13 she was a widow: and much people of the city was with her. And when the Lord 14 saw her, he had compassion on her, and said unto her, Weep not. And he came and touched the bier: and they that bare him stood still. And he said, Young man, I say 15 unto thee, Arise. And he that was dead sat up, and began to speak: and he delivered 16 him to his mother. And there came a fear on all: and they glorified God, saying, That 17 a great prophet is risen up among us; and, That God had visited his people. And this rumour of him went forth throughout all Judea, and throughout all the region round about.18, 19 And the disciples of John shewed him all these things. And John, when he had heard in the prison the works of Christ, calling unto him two of his disciples, sent them unto Jesus, saying unto him, Art thou he that should come, or look we for another? 20 When the men were come unto him, they said, John Baptist hath sent us unto thee, saying, Art thou he that should come, or look we for another? 21 And in that same hour he cured many of their infirmities, and plagues, and of evil 22 spirits, and to many that were blind he gave sight. Then Jesus answering, said unto them, Go your way and tell John again what things ye have seen and heard, how that the blind receive their sight, and the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf 23 hear, the dead are raised up, and to the poor the gospel is preached. And blessed is he, whosoever shall not be offended in me.
THESE mighty works of Jesus, which have been done and duly certified, are fit expressions to us of the fact that he can do for us all that we want. Doubtless it is a great and difficult thing to regenerate a fallen nature; no person, really awake to his miserable and dreadful bondage, ever thought otherwise. But he that touched the blind eyes and commanded the leprosy away, he that trod the sea, and raised the dead, and burst the bars of death himself, can tame the passions, sweeten the bitter affections, and roll back all the storms of the mind. Assured in this manner by his miracles, they become arguments of trust, a storehouse of powerful images, that invigorate courage and stimulate hope. Broken as we are by our sorrow, cast down as we are by our guiltiness, ashamed, and weak, and ready to despair, we can yet venture a hope that our great soul-miracle may be done; that, if we can but touch the hem of Christ’s garment, a virtue will go out of him to heal us. In all dark days and darker struggles of the mind, in all outward disasters, and amid all storms upon the sea of life, we can yet descry him treading the billows, and hear him saying, “It is I, be not afraid.” And lest we should believe the miracles faintly, for there is a busy infidel lurking in our hearts to cheat us of our faith when he cannot reason it away, the character of Jesus is ever shining with and through them, in clear self-evidence, leaving them never to stand as raw wonders only of might, but covering them with glory, as tokens of a heavenly love, and acts that only suit the proportions of his personal greatness and majesty. H. B.
11. Nain still remains under the same name: a small village on the northern slope of Little Hermon. (See maps on pages 46 and 50.) J. G. B.
12-15. Our Lord healed, probably, every kind of disease known in Palestine. But he had not yet raised the dead. This alone was wanting to complete the evidences of divine power which his miracles offered. There were examples of raising the dead by the prophets Elijah and Elisha; but with what remarkably contrasting circumstances of prayer and effort, and delay; whereas Jesus arrests a corpse in the road to the grave, and at once bids it live. The apostles also raised the dead, but they confessedly derived their power from Jesus, and did nothing but in his name. K.—Under the Old Testament, God raised one by Elijah, another by Elisha living, a third by Elisha dead: by the hand of the Mediator of the New Testament, he raised here the son of the widow, the daughter of Jairus, Lazarus; and, in attendance of his own resurrection, he made a delivery of holy prisoners at Jerusalem. He raises the daughter of Jairus from her bed, this widow’s son from his coffin, Lazarus from his grave, the dead saints of Jerusalem from their decay; that it might appear no degree of death can hinder the efficacy of his overruling command. He that keeps the keys of death, cannot only make way for himself through the common hall and outer rooms, but through the most reserved closets of darkness. Bp. H.
Here was a woman in a state of widowhood, a state friendless and forlorn, and frequently mentioned in Scripture as one which God receives under his special protection. She stood childless, without any help or sanctuary except in that kind and tender God, who is a never-failing friend to the unfriended. This complication of miseries the merciful Jesus saw and felt, and relieved by turning her tears into joy. Stanhope.—Here was no solicitor, but his own compassion. In other occasions, he was sought and sued to. The centurion comes to him for a servant; the ruler, for a son; Jairus, for a daughter; the neighbors, for the paralytic; here, he offers the cure unrequested. While we have to do with the Father of mercies, our afflictions are the most powerful suitors. No tears, no prayers can move him so much as his own commiseration. When we are past all our hopes, all possibilities of help, then he is nearest to us for deliverance. Bp. H.
14,15. What mingled majesty and grace shines in this scene! The Resurrection and the Life in human flesh, with a word of command, bringing back life to the dead body; Incarnate Compassion summoning its absolute power to dry a widow’s tears! B.—Pausing only to say to the mother, “Weep not,” he approached, and—heedless once more of purely ceremonial observances—touched the bier, or rather the open coffin in which the dead youth lay. It must have been a moment of intense and breathless expectation. Unbidden, but filled with indefinable awe, the bearers of the bier stood still. And then through the hearts of the stricken mourners, and through the hearts of the silent multitude, there thrilled the calm utterance, “Young man, arise!” F.—He who did this, shall once, when he has spoken the great “Arise,” which shall awaken not one, but all the dead, deliver all the divided, that have fallen asleep in him, to their beloved for personal recognition and for a special fellowship of joy, amid the universal gladness and communion of love which shall then fill all hearts. We have the promise and pledge of this in the three raisings from the dead which prefigure that coming resurrection. T.
Jesus raised the dead as he performed the most common actions: he spoke as a master to those who were sleeping the eternal sleep. One feels that he was Lord of the dead as of the living; never more tranquil than when he wrought the mightiest works. Massillon.—This miracle of the resurrection he does not now repeat; but he still meets us at the grave, the sympathizing Saviour, the Resurrection and the Life. To the heart that yearns to receive its dead to life again he gives a consolation greater than the miracle. Though the cry of nature be not heard, faith wins the answer of peace. J. P. T.
16,17. At the sight of the young man once more alive, the memory of Elijah and Elisha was on every lip, and cries rose on all sides that a great prophet had again risen, and that God had visited his people. Nor did the report confine itself to these upland regions. It flew far and near to Judea in the south, and even to the remote Perea. G.
19,20. John had now been a year in prison, and Josephus states that Machærus, east of the Dead Sea, one of the strong fortresses built by the elder Herod, was the place of his imprisonment. In that case the disciples must have come upward of fifty miles to visit Jesus at Capernaum. K.—On the brink of a great precipice, above the steaming hot fountains of Kalhirrhoë, and facing the Dead Sea, is the lonely fortress of Machærus. Here, in the midst of a scene of most remarkable natural desolation, John the Baptist was imprisoned till he met his death. This fact affords a striking commentary on our Saviour’s reply to the messengers which John sent, wherein he distinctly refers him for consolation and strength to the passage in Isaiah, chap. 35, which so beautifully changes the theme from the prophecy of desolation in chap. 34 on that same land of Idumea and Bozrah. W. H. Thomson.
21,22. Christ contents himself with simply pointing to such works done by him as the Baptist could not fail to recognize as a fulfilment of those prophecies of Isaiah, in which the days and doings of the Messiah were described. H.—As the article is wanting in each of these clauses, the sense would be better perceived by the English reader thus, though scarcely tuneful enough: “Blind persons are seeing, lame people are walking, leprous persons are getting cleansed, deaf people are hearing, dead persons are being raised.” B.
The question of John is nothing else than the prayer, “Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief.” And this prayer is answered by our gracious Lord. O.—23. We conclude from the express words of him, who at this very crisis pronounced upon him the most splendid eulogy ever breathed over mortal man, that the great and noble prophet had indeed, for the moment, found a stumbling-block to his faith in what he heard about the Christ. And is this unnatural? is it an indecision which any one who knows anything of the human heart will venture for a moment to condemn? Though all men flocked in multitudes to listen to the fiery preacher of the wilderness, the real effect on the mind of the nation had been neither permanent nor deep. Though his Friend and his Saviour was living, was at no great distance from him, was in the full tide of his influence, and was daily working the miracles of love which attested his mission, yet John saw that Friend and Saviour on earth no more. He seemed to be neglected not only by God above, but by the living Son of God on earth. Among so many words of mercy and tenderness might not some be vouchsafed to him who had uttered that voice in the wilderness? What wonder if the eye of the caged eagle began to film! F.—Observe, that his doubt is not distrust, for he sends to Jesus for its solution; that Jesus carefully guards the people against the supposition that the temporary doubt really shakes his religious faith and character; that similar experiences of perplexity at the course of God’s providential dealings are recorded of Moses, Elijah, David, Jeremiah, and the unknown author of Psalm 77, written during the Babylonian captivity; that it is not unnatural to suppose that John the Baptist shared the universal expectation among the Jews and Christ’s own disciples of the temporal reign of the Messiah, and may, therefore, have been perplexed by the fact that there was no sign of the establishment of the kingdom of God in the nation; that experience of doubts is a peculiar temptation of active natures in times of enforced inactivity; and finally that the result of this embassy was probably to solve his doubts, certainly to put an end to the doubts and jealousies of his disciples. L. A.
[With these views on the side of John’s failure in the fortitude of faith, we also set the opposite—perhaps the juster—interpretation of his act and words. Ed.] I cannot believe that there was any such shaking in the Baptist’s faith. Rather, in sending his disciples with this question to the Lord, he did but continue to do what he had done from the first, namely, turn all eyes so far as might be from himself, the waning lamp, to Jesus, the risen sun. His disciples had heard his testimony that Jesus was the Christ, and they might have been tempted to believe this, mainly because their master said it, instead of because the Lord himself declared it, to make even their very affiance on the Lord itself an act of homage done to their own master, and not to him. But their faith in Christ shall rest not on their faith in him, but rather on the Lord’s own testimony that he is the Christ John desired, as Augustine well expresses it, that his disciples should dig down to the rock, and set their foundations there, and would not be satisfied until they had so done; and this was the meaning of his sending them with that question to the Lord. He further adds that the Lord’s honorable testimony to John was especially timed to hinder any such misinterpretation of it or misapplication of his own warning words, “Blessed is he whosoever shall not be offended in me,” as should derogate in the least from the just esteem and honor in which the Baptist deserved ever to be holden. T.
The happy result of this mission is intimated in those touching words, “His disciples took up the body of John and buried it, and came and told Jesus.” W.
Section 44.—Extols John, and reproves the Generation.
L. 24 And when the messengers of John were departed, Jesus began to speak unto the people concerning John, What went ye out into the wilderness for to see? A reed shaken with the wind? But what went ye out for to see? A man clothed in soft raiment? Behold, they which are gorgeously apparelled in soft clothing, and live delicately, are in kings’ courts. But what went ye out for to see? A prophet? Yea, I say unto you, and much more than a prophet. For this is he of whom it is written, Behold, I send my messenger before thy face, which shall prepare thy way before thee. Verily, I say unto you, Among them that are born of women, there hath not risen a greater prophet than John the Baptist: notwithstanding, he that is least in the kingdom of heaven, is greater than he. And from the days of John the Baptist until now, the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force. For all the prophets and the law prophesied until John. And if ye will receive it, this is Elias, which was for to come. He that hath ears to hear, let him hear. L. 29 And all the people that heard him, and the publicans, justified God, being baptized with the baptism of John. But the Pharisees and lawyers rejected the counsel of God against themselves, being not baptized of him. And the Lord said, Whereunto then shall I liken the men of this generation? and to what are they like? They are like unto children sitting in the market-place, and calling one to another, and saying, We have piped unto you, and ye have not danced; we have mourned to you, and ye have not wept. For John the Baptist came neither eating bread nor drinking wine; and ye say, He hath a devil. The Son of man is come eating and drinking; and ye say, Behold a gluttonous man, and a winebibber, a friend of publicans and sinners! But wisdom is justified of all her children.
If the nearer a human soul approaches to perfection, the more sensitive does it become to the evils, pains, sorrows, sins, that surround it in such a world as this—surely far beyond all human experience, far even beyond all human comprehension, must have been the sufferings of the soul of Jesus. His was indeed the gentlest, noblest, purest spirit that ever dwelt in human breast; it had therefore a capability of suffering, a cognizance of surrounding evils, an exquisitely strung susceptibility to sorrow, such as soul of man besides never felt. His soul’s delight was in holiness; it recoiled with deep and instinctive abhorrence from sin: upon the pure, burnished mirror, so to speak, of that spotless nature, the slightest breath of outward impurity would have gathered dimness. What, then, must it have been for him to live in such a world as this—to be exposed for thirty years to the foul atmosphere of its ungodliness and evil! His soul’s delight was in happiness. What, then, must it have been for him to take in with his omniscient, world-wide glance, the tears, and griefs, and pains, and struggles, and sicknesses of men, to hear the great forlorn wail of humanity borne to his ear upon the four winds of heaven! Caird.
Our Lord had answered the question of John’s disciples by an appeal to their own senses. He now replies to the thoughts of the multitude concerning
John. They might imagine from John’s message and the words in which it was delivered, that the Baptist wavered in his faith, and that his imprisonment had shaken his constancy. Our Lord, therefore, reminds them of what John was, how he had acted, and how they themselves had behaved to him. What went ye out to see? Not an inconstant and vacillating man, but a man of inflexible resolution and invincible courage. Not a man of effeminate temper; not a sycophant who would flatter for hope of gain. No: his rigorous fare, his simple garb, the very place in which you found him, refute this notion. If he had been such, he would have been in the court, and not in the desert. W.—No pliant reed, that would bend before the wind of adversity: no dainty courtier, to fear a king’s frown or a queen’s hatred. No! he was the very Elijah predicted by the prophets as the Messiah’s herald; but their childish folly, never knowing what to ask for or expect, vented itself in discontent and unbelief alike against the stern asceticism of John and the winning love of Jesus. S.
24. The reed of Egypt and Palestine is a very tall cane, growing twelve feet high, with a magnificent panicle of blossom at the top, and so slender and yielding that it will lie perfectly flat under a gust of wind, and immediately resume its upright position. It grows in great canebrakes in many parts of Palestine, especially on the west side of the Dead Sea, where, nourished by the warm springs, it lines the shore for several miles with an impenetrable fringe—the lair of wild boars and leopards—to the exclusion of all other vegetation. On the banks of the Jordan it occurs in great patches, but is not so lofty. H. B. T.
27. Before thy face.** In Mal. 3 : 1, it is “before me,” God being the first person. Then it appears that Christ is one with God the Father, and that the coming of Christ is the coming of God. Hammond.—M. 11. He that is least. The manner in which Christ contrasted the Old Testament with its fulfilment, the New, and elevated the least of Christians above all the prophets, shows how clearly he distinguished the kernel from its perishable shell, the divine idea from its temporary veil, the truth which lay in germ in the Old Testament from the contracted form in which it presented itself to Old Testament minds.
12. The violent take it.** These words are expressly chosen to denote the earnest will, the struggle, and the entire devotion of soul which are requisite to enter into the kingdom of heaven. All the powers of the spirit, its submission, its efforts, are necessary at all times to secure the kingdom amid the reactions of the natural man, the carnal mind, its selfishness, its worldliness of spirit; but at that time it was especially the worldly notions of the Messiahship that had to be struggled against. N.
13,14. The Baptist was, so to speak, the impersonation of the whole preparatory discipline for men’s reception of a Saviour: that whole preparation culminating in him; “the law and the prophets were until John.” Yet, though standing thus at the threshold, he did not himself move in the sphere of New Testament and evangelical life, but in that of the Old; and thus it would have been a confounding of things which it was the intention of God should be kept distinct, the law and the gospel, prophecy and its fulfilment; it would have troubled and marred the representative character of John, personifying, as he did, the first of each of these great contrasts, had he entered into closer personal relation with Christ who was the end of the law, the fulfilment of prophecy.
L. 31-34. The children sitting in the markets, now mourning and now piping, are the Jews, the generation of which the Lord just before had spoken; and the companions of whom they complain are Jesus and John. The Jews wanted John to be laxer; they would fain have had him give up his strict ascetic ways; and complained that he would not do so, that he would not dance to their piping. Christ himself was equally at fault, though in an opposite extreme. They mourned to him, and he would not lament. The bridegroom and the bringer of joy, he would not change for any sadder note that note of joy to which the gospel that he preached was set, any more than John to please them would change the note of a sterner sadness to which his preaching of the law was attuned. T.—More than one public testimony had been borne by John to Jesus. Jesus answers these by the witness he thus bears to John. But as he thinks of himself in conjunction with the Baptist, the strange and inconsistent treatment that they respectively had met with from the men of that generation presents itself to his thoughts. Addressed by two different voices, speaking in two different tones, they had turned a deaf ear to both. The rigor of the law came to them in the message of the Baptist; they took offence at it. The gentleness and love of the gospel came to them in the message of Jesus; they took equal offence at it; justifying in either case their conduct by fixing on something in the character or life of each of the two messengers which they had turned into matter of complaint and accusation. H.
35. Wisdom is justified.** That generation rejected both John and his master: the one because he was too unsocial; the other because he was too much the reverse, given to consorting with the lowest classes of society. But the children of wisdom recognize and honor her whether in the austere garb of the Baptist or in the more attractive style of his Master. B.—This word “wisdom” which Christ uses here has the advantage that by aid of it he is able to include in a common justification both his own dealings and those of John, which last he would fain vindicate not less than his own. “Her children” can be no other than as many as have accepted her teaching, and now walk in her ways. T.—The heavenly wisdom from which emanated both law and gospel—that which instituted both the Old and New Testaments—is always justified—that is, approved—by her children, or those by whom she is truly loved. C. B.
That which distinguishes the standpoint of the Saviour from that of the Old Testament was the spirit of liberty with which, in Christianity, the divine life appropriates to itself the relations of the world and society, in contrast with the spirit of ascetic opposition to the world. The Jews could see nothing of the holy prophet in a man who shared with his disciples in the pleasures of social life, and sanctified them by his presence; in a man who did not hesitate to partake of the entertainments of publicans and sinners. No schools of spiritual life, indeed, before that time, had trained their pupils as Christ did his. We can easily imagine the amazement of the Pharisees! N.—Our Lord enjoined no austerities as absolute duties, nor even recommended any, as carrying men to a higher degree of divine favor. The religion of Christ stands eminently distinguished in this respect when compared with other religions which have been founded in the fanaticism either of their authors or their first followers. Paley.—His gospel was not to be a system of asceticism, nor of any kind of external uniformity. It would take men as it found them, and enter into the daily life. The kingdom of heaven was more than meat and drink, more than names and rules: men must take hold of it from within, with true earnestness of spirit, with energy of faith—must break away from the world, not by going into the desert, but by breaking off from sin. The outer life must be governed by the inner spirit of wisdom, truth, and love. The Christian should not bind himself by tradition or custom in things not essential. The true Christian spirit will not compromise with sin, nor court the world; yet it is full of mercy and of good fruits. J. P. T.
Section 45.—Upbraids the Favored Cities. Invites the Heavy-laden.
Capernaum.
20. THEN began he to upbraid the cities wherein most of his mighty works were done, 21 because they repented not. Woe unto thee, Chorazin! woe unto thee, Bethsaida! for if the mighty works which were done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they 22 would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes. But I say unto you, It shall be 23 more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon at the day of judgment, than for you. And thou, Capernaum, which art exalted unto 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 24 remained until this day. But I say unto you, That it shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom in the day of judgment, than for thee. 25 At that time Jesus answered and said, I thank thee, O father, Lord of heaven and earth, because thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed 26, 27 them unto babes. Even so, Father, for so 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 whomsoever the Son will reveal 28 him. Come unto me, all ye that labour, and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. 29 Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me: for I am meek and lowly in heart; and ye 30 shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.
If all the anxious thought and weary labor, the prayers, the pains, the self-mortifications, the sacrifices—personal, domestic, social, of affections, of property, of life—that have been made by mankind to turn away the apprehended wrath of heaven—if they could be all heaped up in one great mass, what a mountain-pile of toil and suffering would they exhibit, what a gigantic monument to the sense of sin, the power of conscience in the human heart! With a mournful eye we look upon that pile as we remember that it has been heaped up in vain, that all that was wanted was the ceasing from the effort to establish a righteousness of their own before God, the ceasing from any such methods to ward off the displeasure or win the favor of the Most High; and the opening simply of the ear and the heart to the words of Jesus, “Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”
It is as those who have been redeemed to God by Christ’s most precious blood, whose sins have been forgiven for Jesus’ sake, whose peace has been made with God through him; it is in the spirit of child-like confidence, looking up to God as our Father in heaven, and to himself as having ready in his hand for us the grace and strength we need, that Jesus would have us take up every duty, face every temptation, endure every trial, of the Christian life. But if, instead of this, it be with a doubtful mind and a divided heart that we take on the yoke—if we do this, not so much to render a return for a great benefit already received, as to add to our chance of receiving that benefit hereafter—if it be for peace and not from peace, for life and not from life that we are working—what is this but trying to shift the old yoke of self a little, loosen some of its fastenings, and by their help try to attach to us the new yoke of Christ? Is it any wonder that, encumbered thus, there should be little freedom of motion, little capacity for and little enjoyment of the work of faith and labor of love? As ever we desire to know how truly easy the yoke of Jesus is, first let us enter into the rest that at once he gives to all who come to him—the rest of forgiveness, peace, acceptance with God. And then, as animated and strengthened by this rest, let us assume the yoke, that in the bearing of it we may enter into the further rest there is for us in him—the rest of a meek and lowly heart, gentle, resigned, contented, patient of wrong, submissive under suffering, a rest not given at once or in full measure to any. H.
20-24. And now the time was come for Christ to reveal himself as a judge, to those who would not accept him as a Saviour. The cities of Galilee most favored by his ministry—Chorazin, Bethsaida, and especially Capernaum—are doomed to a far heavier judgment than Tyre and Sidon, Sodom and Gomorrah. Such words, uttered now over Galilee, as afterward over Judea and Jerusalem, show the wounded sympathies of the human friend, as well as the just indignation of the divine judge. S.
The warnings denounced against Tyre and Sidon in Ezekiel (chapters 26, 27, and 28) rendered these cities notably a type of warning to the Jews. L. A.—The names of Tyre and Sidon are preserved, their sites are unquestioned; but the names of Beth-
Bethsaida, Chorazin, and Capernaum are gone, and even the sites are disputed. H. B. T.—The name and perhaps even the remains of Sodom are still to be found on the shore of the Dead Sea, while that of Capernaum, on the Lake of Gennesaret, has been utterly lost. A. P. S.
A ride of two miles westward, from the mouth of the Jordan along the shore, brought me to the ruins of a large town. Broken columns, hewn stones, sculptured slabs of marble, and great, shapeless heaps of rubbish, half concealed by thorns and briers, alone serve to mark the site of a great and rich city. The Arabian does not pitch his tent there, the shepherd does not feed his flock there—not a sound fell on my ear as I stood amid those
Chorazin, on the North Shore of the Lake.
ruins save the gentle murmur of each wave as it broke upon the pebbly beach, and the mournful sighing of the summer breeze through sun-scorched branches; yet that is the place where Chorazm once stood! Farther along the lake, I reached a little retired bay, with a pebbly strand, just such a place as fishermen would delight to draw up their boats and spread out their nets upon. Here were numerous fountains, several old tanks and aqueducts, great heaps of rubbish, and fields of ruin. Two Arab tents were pitched a little way up on the hill-side, but I saw no other trace there of human habitation or human life; and yet that is the site of Bethsaida—the city of Andrew and Peter, James and John. A few minutes more and I reached the brow of a bluff promontory, which dips into the bosom of the lake. Before me now opened up the fertile plain of Gennesaret. At my feet, beneath the western brow of the cliff, a little fountain burst from a rocky basin. Beside it are some massive foundations, scarcely distinguishable amid the rank weeds, and away beyond it, almost covered with thickets of thorns, briers, and gigantic thistles, I saw large heaps of ruins and rubbish. These are all that now mark the site of Capernaum. On that day I climbed a peak which commands the lake, and the Jordan valley up to the waters of Merom. The principal scene of Christ’s public labors lay around me—a region some thirty miles long by ten wide. When he had his home at Capernaum, the whole country was teeming with life and bustle and industry. No less than ten large cities, with numerous villages, studded the shores of the lake and the plains and the hill-sides around. The water was all speckled with the dark boats and white sails of Galilee’s fishermen. Eager multitudes followed the footsteps of Jesus through the city streets, over the flower-strewn fields, along the pebbly beach. What a woful change has passed over the land since that time! The angel of destruction has been there. From that commanding height, through the clear Syrian atmosphere, I was able to distinguish, by the aid of my glass, every spot in that wide region celebrated in sacred history, or hallowed by sacred association. My eye swept over the lake from north to south, from east to west; not a single sail, not a solitary boat was there. My eye swept the great Jordan valley, the little plains, the glens, the mountain-sides from base to summit—not a city, not a village, not a house, not a sign of settled habitation was there, except the few huts of Magdala and the shattered houses of Tiberias. A mournful and solitary silence reigned triumphant. Desolation keeps unbroken Sabbath in Galilee now. Nature has lavished on the country some of her choicest gifts—a rich soil, a genial climate; but the curse of heaven has come upon it because of the sin of man. I saw how wondrously time has changed a prophetic sentence into a graphic reality: “I will make your cities waste, saith the Lord; I will bring the land into desolation.” J. L. P. (See Section 34, page 141.)
20-24 and 25-30. [A linking thought for these two portions.] Nothing strikes me more in the gospel than the double character of austerity and love, of severe purity and tender sympathy, which constantly appears in the actions and words of Jesus Christ in everything that touches the revelation of God and mankind. To Christ the law of God is absolute, sacred; the violation of the law and sin are odious to him; but the sinner irresistibly attracts and moves him. This harmony of severity and love, this union of holiness and sympathy, is Heaven’s revelation of the nature of Jesus himself, of the God-man. God, he made himself man. God is his Father, men are his brethren. He is pure and holy, like God: he is accessible and sensible to all that man feels.
25. Hidden from the wise. It is a noble privilege of man that God, in creating him an intelligent and free agent, has given him a capacity to desire and to pursue through study the truths of science, and even to attain them in a certain measure and in a certain sphere. But when science attempts to exceed that measure, and to quit that sphere; when it ignores and scorns the instincts—natural, universal, and permanent instincts of the human soul; when it essays to set up everywhere its own torch in the place of that primitive light that lights mankind, then, and from that cause alone, science fills itself with error: and this is the very case which called forth these words of Jesus. F. G.
Revealed unto babes. Precisely because these men, destitute of all higher learning, attached themselves to him like children, were they best fitted to receive his spirit with childlike devotion and confidence, and to propagate the revelations which he made to them. Everything in them was to be the growth of the new creation through Christ’s spirit; and men who had received a complete culture elsewhere would have been ill adapted for this. They were trammelled, it is true, by their carnal conceptions of divine things; but this was counterbalanced by their anxiety to learn, and their childlike submission to Christ as master and guide; while, on the other hand, insurmountable obstacles would have been presented in the preconceived views of men who had been trained and cultivated before. Moreover, this reverential submission to Christ tended surely and constantly to refine and spiritualize their mode of thinking. His image, received into their inner life, exerted a steady and overruling influence. N.
It is to be observed that he does not address the Father as his Lord, but as Lord of heaven and earth.
These things. These mysterious arrangements, by which the sinner is condemned in his pride and unbelief, the humble and childlike saved, and God justified when he saves and condemns. These are “revealed” to those who, in a simple and tractable spirit, obey the invitation in verses 28-30, but “hidden” from the wise of this world, who attempt their solution by the mere human understanding. A.—Our Lord does not say that God denied means of salvation to any; but he thanks him, because he has revealed to the apostles what he has hidden from the Pharisees, and thus punishes pride and rewards meekness. He thus teaches the proud that if they will become humble, they will be able to see the wondrous things of God’s law, and so escape the punishment due to pride. W.
26. Take up the great enigma of the doings of God and the destinies of men at what end you may; adopt whatever method of solution you may prefer; make your way through the difficulties that beset you as far as you can: sooner or later you reach the point where explanation fails, and where there is nothing left but to join with him who said, “Even so, Father, for so it seemed good in thy sight.” H.—27. Not, as in our version, no man knoweth, but no one knoweth—man, angel, archangel. That is, Christ claims a character which only the Infinite can fathom, because only the Infinite can fully understand the Infinite. L. A.—What encouragement is there for our trustful gratitude that we are left to no painful questioning, whether Christ’s word is God’s word, Christ’s promises sustained by Almighty veracity, Christ’s reconciling invitation pledged by the Father’s power! Faith is made independent of doubt; and Hope casts her anchor fast by the pillars of heaven. F. D. H.
The Son will reveal him. To some partial knowledge of the Supreme Being as Creator, Upholder, Sovereign, we may attain without help of this revelation by Christ; but if we would know him in his living personality, know him as a God not afar off, but near at hand, know him in all the richness and fulness of his mercy and love, know him as a pitying, forgiving, protecting, providing, comforting, reconciled Father, we must get at that knowledge through Christ; we must see him as the Son reveals him. No man knoweth thus the Father, but he to whomsoever the Son will reveal him. But who is he to whom this revelation of the Father is offered? Let the broad unrestricted invitation with which the statement of the Saviour is immediately succeeded supply the answer: “Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” This invitation loses half its meaning, taken out of the connection in which it was spoken. We understand and appreciate its significance only by looking upon it as grounded on and flowing out of what Christ had the moment before been saying “All things are delivered unto me of my Father.” Simply that they might so freely fully come unto us, he has all, holds all as the treasurer of the kingdom, the steward of the divine mercies. And he holds all under the condition that there shall be the freest, most gracious dispensing of all, that whoever asks shall get, that no needy one shall ever come to him and be sent unrelieved away. H.
28-30. Come unto me, etc. He contrasts himself, as the Redeemer of “heavy-laden” souls, with the rigid teachers of the law, who, while they burdened men’s consciences with their multiplied statutes, imparted no power to perform them, and repelled, in haughtiness, the conscience-stricken sinner, instead of affording him peace and consolation. The “friend of publicans and sinners” thus invites all who feel their wretchedness to enter his communion; and announces himself as the “meek and lowly” one, repelling none because of their misery, condescending to the necessities of all, taking off the load from the weary soul instead of imposing new burdens, and giving them joy and rest in his fellowship. He makes no extravagant, impracticable demands. Obedience, indeed (“the easy yoke”), he does require; but an obedience which is easy and pleasant, flowing spontaneously from the divine life within, and rendered in the spirit of love. “Come unto me (says he), and I will free you from your burdens, and give you the peace for which you sigh. Enter the fellowship of my disciples, and you will find me no hard master, but a kind and gentle one; you shall obtain rest for your souls, for my yoke is mild, and the burden which I shall lay upon you, light.” N.
The expressions labor and are heavy laden, in the first verse, answer exactly to yoke and burden in the last; and the two ideas comprehend all the modes in which working animals can be employed. They either draw or carry; in the former case they wear a yoke; in the latter, they bear a burden. There is then a beautiful contrast between the ideas in the first verse and those in the last. The bondage of the world and flesh in the one is opposed to the happy enfranchisement implied in the service of Christ in the other. A. K.—God wishes to impress us most forcibly with his pity and love, to bring us into fellowship with him, to make us more trustful and loving, better in heart and so in life. This is his design, and the restraints he imposes are in accordance with it. When we take the yoke of Christ we are at the same time to learn of him, we are to drink in of his spirit; and the new spirit of the Master will make the restraints of the Master easy and his burden light. Let the mind of Christ be in you first, and the yoke of Christ you will take through love. J. D.
30. A yoke of some kind we all are born under or willingly take on. Some assume the yoke of a single passion; and if that passion be a strong one, such as covetousness, it turns the man into a slave, making him a mere beast of burden—time for nothing, care for nothing, taste for nothing, joy in nothing but in working for it and under it. And the more work is done for it the more does it impose. Nor does it mend the matter if, instead of one, there be many such yokes about the neck, fretting and galling the wearer by the force of the impulses that drive him in this direction and in that. It is to all mankind as bearers of the one yoke or the many that Jesus says, “Take up my yoke, throw off these others, the yoke of pride, of covetousness, of sensuality, of worldliness, of ambition, of self-indulgence—take on that yoke which consists in devotedness to me and to duty, in a life of self-restraint, in a struggle with all that is evil, a cultivation of all that is beautiful and good and holy. A hard yoke you may think this to be, but believe me, my yoke is easy, my burden is light, easier and lighter far than those you are groaning under.” II.
25-30. The nature of the truths contained in the gospel and their moral effects are the abiding evidence of their divine origin; and this evidence addresses itself to a humble sincere mind, to a childlike state of feeling. The mysteries of Providence, which lie beyond the analysis of reason, may lie open to the higher vision of faith. A meek and lowly mind will rest in the word of Christ, in the wisdom and love of the Father, and cannot be disquieted by that which for the present baffles the understanding. The true rest comes, not from outward circumstances, nor from the decision of vexed problems, but is within the soul—in its moral convictions, in its spiritual affections, in its trust and hope; and, when these are fixed upon God, no disturbance of affairs, no perplexities of Providence, no mysteries of faith, can really disquiet the mind. In such a frame, Christ becomes manifested to the consciousness as the embodiment of divine truth, love, and grace; and so the Father is revealed in the Son. J. P. T.
28-30. The whole of this comprehensive conclusion of the discourse is an inexhaustible text, which can never be preached out! Who is it that invites, beseeches, and calls? The eternal Son of the eternal Father, for us become the Son of man. Whom does he call? All who will know themselves to be what they are, weary and heavy laden. What does he promise them? Refreshment and rest for their souls. What does he require as the conditions? Nothing, absolutely nothing, but coming; and when they are come, and have already received his consolation, only the abiding with him, learning of him. Stier.