Matthew 22

1,2. AND Jesus answered and spake unto them again by parables, and said, The kingdom 3 of heaven is like unto a certain king, which made a marriage for his son, and sent forth his servants to call them that were bidden to the wedding: and they would not come. 4 Again, he sent forth other servants, saying, Tell them which are bidden, Behold, I have prepared my dinner: my oxen and my fatlings are killed, and all things are ready: 5 come unto the marriage. But they made light of it, and went their ways, one to his 6 farm, another to his merchandise. And the remnant took his servants, and entreated 7 them spitefully, and slew them. But when the king heard thereof, he was wroth: and he sent forth his armies, and destroyed those murderers, and burned up their city.

8. Then saith he to his servants, The wedding is ready, but they which were bidden were 9 not worthy. Go ye therefore into the highways, and as many as ye shall find, bid to 10 the marriage. So those servants went out into the highways, and gathered together all as many as they found, both bad and good: and the wedding was furnished with guests.

11. And when the king came in to see the guests, he saw there a man which had not on 12 a wedding garment: and he saith unto him, Friend, how camest thou in hither, not 13 having a wedding garment? And he was speechless. Then said the king to the ser- vants, Bind him hand and foot, and take him away, and cast him into outer dark- 14 ness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth. For many are called, but few are chosen.

IN Theophylact’s words, “the entrance to the marriage feast is without scrutiny, for by grace alone we are all called; but the life of those that have entered, hereafter shall not be without scrutiny: the King will make a very strict examination of those who, having entered into the faith, shall be found in filthy garments”—a most needful caution, lest any should abuse the grace of God, and forget that while they were freely called, they were yet called unto holiness. What this guest lacked was righteousness. He had not, according to the image of Paul, “put on Christ;” in which putting on of Christ, both faith and holiness are included. By faith we recognize a righteousness out of and above us, and wherewith our spirits can be clothed, which righteousness is in Christ, who is the Lord our Righteousness. A time arrives when every man will discover that he needs this covering, this array for his soul. It is woe unto him, who like this guest only discovers it when it is too late to provide himself with such; and then suddenly stands confessed to himself in all his moral nakedness and defilement. The fact of his being but one, brings the matter home to every man: “So diligent and exact will be the future scrutiny, that not so much as one in all that great multitude of men shall on the last day escape the piercing eyes of the Judge.” T.

The crown of the Saviour is still incomplete; the marriage feast of the Lamb is not yet full: the Comforter is still gathering jewels for that crown, and calling guests to that feast; and we may be among those jewels, in the number of those happy guests. Hare.

1-14. The whole scheme of these words is a figurative description of God’s vouchsafing to the world the invaluable blessing of the gospel, by the similitude of a king, with great magnificence solemnizing his son’s marriage, and with equal bounty inviting all about him to that royal solemnity—together with his severe animadversion, both upon those who would not come, and upon one who did come in a very unbesemming manner. R. S.—The appearance of the householder (of the previous parable) as the king, announces that the sphere in which this parable moves is the New Testament dispensation—is the kingdom, announced before, but only actually present with the coming of the king. That last was a parable of the Old Testament history; even Christ himself appears there rather as the last and greatest of the line of prophets and teachers, than as the founder of a new kingdom. In that, a parable of the law, God appears demanding something from men; in this, a parable of grace, God appears more as giving something to them. There, he is displeased that his demands are not complied with—here, that his goodness is not accepted; there he requires, here he imparts. And thus, as we so often find, the two mutually complete one another; this taking up the matter, where the other left it. T.

2. The kingdom of heaven resembles the marriage feast itself in all its parts—the preparation, the invitation, the acceptance of the invitation, and the participation. C. B.—It entered quite into the circle of Jewish expectations, that the setting up of the kingdom of the Messiah should be ushered in by a glorious festival. The two favorite images under which the prophets of the old covenant set forth the blessings of the new, and of all near communion with God, that of a festival, and of a marriage, meet and interpenetrate each other in the marriage festival here.

3,4. The invitation first went forth at the constitution of the Jewish nation, and ran through all their history. It was taken up and repeated by each succeeding prophet, as he prophesied of the crowning grace that should one day be brought to Israel in the actual presence of its Lord and King, and summoned the people to hold themselves in a spiritual readiness against that day. Yet they never did more than thus bid the guests, for they only spoke of good things to come. The actual calling of “them that were bidden” pertained not to them. John the Baptist was the first in whose time the kingdom was actually present, the wedding feast prepared, the king and the king’s son manifested, and the long-invited guests summoned. By the first band of servants I should certainly now understand John and the apostles in their first mission—that which they accomplished during the lifetime of the Lord.

4. Let us not miss in the parable or in its application the infinite grace which gives to the guests the opportunity of coming to a better mind, and making good their first contempt. “Tell them which are bidden,” so tell them that they cannot mistake, that every anterior preparation is made, and that now “all things are ready.” And exactly thus was it with the apostles after the crucifixion; how willing were they to look upon all that was past in the mildest possible light! thus Peter, “And now, brethren, I wot that through ignorance ye did it”—how did they refuse to dwell upon the past sin, urging rather the present grace! 6. Slew them. So there are ever in the world two kinds of despisers of the gospel of God: some who take the trouble perhaps of saying, “I pray thee have me excused”—others in whom it excites feelings of a positive enmity. T.

7. He sent forth his armies. This points out in the plainest terms the Roman armies under Vespasian and Titus, which, not many years after this was spoken, besieged Jerusalem, and destroyed the city, with an immense number of its inhabitants. P.—This bringing in of armies, this mention of a city and its destruction, teaches us to connect the parable of the marriage feast with that of the wicked husbandmen; both intended to set forth the terrible punishment of the Jewish people—the taking of the kingdom from them, and the giving it to others. H.—Their city. It is their city, not any longer the city of the great King, who owns it no more for his own. With a similar threatening Christ says, “Your house is left unto you desolate.” T.—The occurrence of this seventh verse before the opening of the feast to the Gentiles is strictly exact; for although the gospel was preached to the Gentiles forty years before the destruction of Jerusalem, yet the final rejection of the Jews and the substitution of the Gentiles did not take place till that event. A.

8. As many as ye find, bid to the marriage. At all seasons and in all forms goes forth the proclamation of a God who still waiteth to be gracious, the invitation of the ever-merciful King to the whole multitude of his subjects. His offer is universal, for he would be absolved before heaven and earth when that offer is despised. Man’s own reason shall have to acknowledge that man, if condemned, was not unwarned; that if he did not come to God, it was not that God did not come to him. Conscience, overpowered on earth, shall assume a terrible activity in the world of punishment; and in the abode of ruin itself, the miserable attestation shall be uttered, of the long-suffering of God, of neglected mercies whose remembrance shall produce the deepest bitterness of its despair. W. A. B.

9. Gathered together all. Allusion is here made to the calling in of the Gentiles to the privileges of the gospel, after they had been rejected by the Jews. This was first done by Peter in the instance of Cornelius, and afterward extended to the Gentiles at large by him and the other apostles. And in this invitation, no exceptions, no distinctions were to be made. All that they found, both good and bad, men of all characters and descriptions, were to have the offer of salvation, even the very worst of sinners. F.

10. Had not on a wedding garment. The wedding garment, it is thought, was a robe, which it was usual for the master of the feast to furnish for those guests who were unable to provide themselves with it. We find traces of this custom in classical writers, and even in modern entertainments in the East. It was highly indecorous and offensive to intrude on the festivity of the feast without this garment. P.—Besides the separation between those who come and those who refuse, it shall be also tried at the last who among the actual comers have walked worthy of their vocation and who not; and according to this rule there shall be a second sifting and separation. We have had the judgment on the avowed foe; that on the false friend is yet to find place. It was the servants’ work to gather in the guests to the heavenly banquet; but it is not their office to separate finally and decisively between the worthy partakers and the unworthy intruders. The garment which distinguishes these from those is worn, not on the body, but on the heart: and only “the Lord trieth the hearts.” T.

11. How camest thou? It is implied that it was owing to his own culpable carelessness, as well as to his own disregard of what was due to the king, that he appeared without a wedding garment. D. K. D.—We may and ought, when God calls, to come as we are; but we may not, if we would see his face and enjoy his last feast, remain as we are. Stier.

Speechless? It is the terrible silence of conviction. Hardly the most thoughtless have failed to be struck with the force and significance of this part of the representation. Of all the multitude of excuses that now pass current to justify the world’s forgetfulness of its Maker, not one rises to his lips.

W. A. B.—He did not feel that he had anything to say for himself; with no plea to allege for his contemptuous behavior, he stood self-condemned, and judgment therefore immediately proceeded against him. Within the palace was light and joy, but without it was cold and darkness—into this the unworthy guest, with no power of resisting the fulfilment of the decree, for his hands and feet were first bound, was to be cast. T.—Not for us is it to sound those depths of despair, that flame unquenchable, that worm undying, that wall impassable, those mournings unpitied, that future without hope and without end. The faculties of man must be enlarged for even the conception of such misery as that. If there be a glory too bright for human eye to gaze on, there is an anguish too dark for human eye as yet to penetrate.

If this little, dream-like life, slipping so rapidly away through our hands, can never again be repeated, but all we do must now be done, and all we are to be forever we now must learn to be; if nothing crosses the grave with any man but the garb of the soul that he bears to the court of the heavenly King; if God gives us ample opportunity for making our calling and election sure, so that every excuse shall then be vain, and every culprit speechless: can any infatuation equal the infatuation of those who, knowing all this to be certain, can yet defer this mighty work? W. A. B.

Section 124.—Question about the Tribute Money.

The Temple. Tuesday.

M. 15 THEN went the Pharisees, and took counsel how they might entangle him in his talk. L. 20 And they watched him, and sent forth spies, certain of their disciples with the Herodians, which should feign themselves just men, that they might catch him in, and take hold of, his words; that so they might deliver him unto the power and authority of the M. 16 governor. And when they were come, they say unto him, Master, we know that thou art true, that thou sayest and teachest rightly; neither carest thou for any man, for 17 thou regardest not the person of men, but teachest the way of God in truth. Tell us therefore, What thinkest thou? Is it lawful for us to give tribute unto Cesar, or not? 18 Shall we give, or shall we not give? But Jesus perceived their wickedness, knowing their craftiness and hypocrisy; and said unto them, Why tempt ye me, ye hypocrites? 19 Shew me the tribute money; bring me a penny, that I may see it. And they brought 20 unto him a penny. And he saith unto them, Whose is this image and superscription? 21 And they answered and said unto him, Cesar’s. Then saith he unto them, Render therefore unto Cesar the things which are Cesar’s: and unto God the things that are 22 God’s. And they could not take hold of his words before the people: and when they heard, they marvelled at his answer and held their peace, and left him, and went their way.

CHRIST is never a radical, never a conservative. He will not allow his disciples to deny him before kings and governments, he will not let them renounce their allegiance to Cesar. He exposes the oppressions of the Pharisees in Moses’s seat, but, encouraging no factious resistance, says, “Do as they command you.” His position as a reformer was universal; according to his principles almost nothing, whether in Church or state or in social life, was right, and yet he is thrown into no antagonism against the world. With a reform to be carried in almost everything, he is yet as quiet and cordial, and as little in the attitude of bitterness or impatience, as if all hearts were with him, or the work already done; so perfect is the balance of his feeling, so intuitively moderated is it by a wisdom not human. H. B.

L. 20. The Herodians were not a religious sect, but a political party, who began to grow eminent in the days of Herod the Great, as favoring his claims, and those of his patrons the Romans, to the sovereignty of Judea. This party, having begun in the time of Herod, may well be supposed to have continued long afterward in favor and power, by the indulgence of the Herods, and influence of the Romans. Percy.—It was their principle to promote intimacy with the Roman power by flattery and unlimited submission; and, above all, by introducing into Judea the usages and customs of the Roman people. This union with idolatry, on the ground of worldly policy, was probably the leaven against which our Lord cautioned his disciples, as it involves hypocrisy. J. A.—The Pharisees with the Herodians. ‘Twas a well-arranged combination: religious hypocrisy and political craft, hierarchical prejudice and royalist sympathies; each party scarcely tolerating the other except for temporary and special purposes, and yet both of them, for the time and the occasion, working harmoniously together, concurring in the proposal of the most perplexing and dangerous question that could then have been devised—the tributary relations of a conquered to a conquering people. E.

M. 17. Tribute to Cesar. The reigning Cesar was Tiberius, the step-son and successor to Augustus, the first emperor. The tax was based upon property or income, of which a report was exacted from every Jew. J. G. B.—The systematic and direct taxation of the country by Rome was an inextinguishable subject of hatred and strife between the rulers and the ruled. The Jewish law recognized taxes and free gifts only for religious objects; and, according to the rabbis, the very holiness of the land rested on every field and tree contributing its tithe, or gift of wood, to the temple. How, it was asked, could this sacredness be maintained, if a heathen emperor received taxes from the sources consecrated by these tithes and gifts to Jehovah? G.

Shall we give, or shall we not give? No door seems open to evade or to decline an answer. A simple affirmative or a simple negative must be given. On either side, the difficulty and the danger to Jesus seem nearly equal. If he shall say it is lawful to give tribute to Cesar, his favor with the people is gone; his pretensions to be the Messiah are scattered to the winds. Should he say that it is not lawful, they have but to report him to Pilate as a stirrer-up of sedition, and prove their charge by his own declaration made in the presence of the people. H.—19. While the people stood round in wondering silence they brought him a denarius, and put it in his hand. On one side were stamped the haughty, beautiful features of the Emperor Ti-

Tiberius, with all the wicked scorn upon the lip; on the obverse his title of Pontifex Maximus! F.

21. Things which are Cesar’s.** Putting it in this general form, it was impossible for sedition itself to dispute it, and yet it dissolved the snare. And to God. How much there is in this profound but to them startling addition to the maxim, and how incomparable is the whole for fulness, brevity, clearness, weight! B.—By this singular reply the hypocrisy and inconsistency of his questioners are at once exposed. The mere payment of the tribute is but a secondary matter after all. The true question was, Should the Roman rule be submitted to or not? was it or was it not lawful to bear the foreign yoke? This question the Jewish people and these Pharisees, their most influential leaders, had so far decided. They had yielded to and accepted the foreign yoke. There was this manifest token of subjection, that Roman money was circulating among them as the common and accepted coin of the realm. H.—The very word which he used conveyed the lesson. They had asked, “Is it lawful to give?” He corrects them, and says, “Render”—“Give back.” It was not a voluntary gift, but a legal due; not a cheerful offering, but a political necessity. It was perfectly understood among the Jews, and was laid down in the distinctest language by their greatest rabbis in later days, that to accept the coinage of any king was to acknowledge his supremacy. By accepting the denarius, therefore, as a current coin they were openly declaring that Cesar was their sovereign. But Jesus could not leave them with this lesson only. He added the far deeper and weightier words—“and to God the things that are God’s.” To Cesar you owe the coin which you have admitted as the symbol of his authority, and which bears his image and superscription; to God you owe yourselves. F.

Far from separating political from religious obligation, or accepting the question in the alternative form, our Lord returns an answer which shows that it was not a question for either yea or nay; that obedience to Cesar and duty to God were not things to be put in competition with each other. E.—His answer taught them that their obligations to Cesar were not inconsistent with their duties to God; on the contrary, that the latter constituted the basis of the former. At the same time, it reminded them of a duty to which they were most unfaithful, viz., to give truly to God what is God’s; as man, bearing the stamp of his image, belongs to him, and should be dedicated to him. And the “giving to God what is God’s” not only affords the basis, but also fixes the just limitations of the civil obligations growing out of relations brought about by divine providence. N.—Christ defined in principle the distinction of man’s life as it regards religion, and man’s life as it concerns society; the bounds, in fact, of Church and state. Cesar has no right to intervene, with his laws and material force, between the soul of man and his God. And the faithful worshipper of God is bound to fulfil toward Cesar the duties which the necessity of the maintenance of civil order imposes. The independence of religious faith, and at the same time its subjection to the laws of society, are alike the sense of Christ’s reply to the Pharisees, and the divine source of the greatest progress ever made by human society. Everywhere before Christ, religions were national local religions, which established between nations, classes, individuals, enormous differences and inequalities. Everywhere, also, before Christ, man’s civil life and his religious life were confounded, and mutually oppressed each other. But in this catholicity of religious faith, in this independence of religious communities, we recognize new and sublime principles, and see in them flashes from the light of heaven, that God caused first to beam forth from the life and teaching of Jesus Christ. F. G.

Thus this answer establishes the limits, regulates the rights, and distinguishes the jurisdiction of the two empires of heaven and earth, of the spiritual and temporal powers. Q.—It affirms that in rendering to Cesar the things that righteously are Cesar’s, we can never be keeping from God the things that righteously are God’s. And if the things that are God’s be duly and fully rendered, Cesar shall get what is his as one of the very things that God requires at our hands. The second precept, in fact, embraces the first as the greater covers the less. H.

“RENDER unto God the things that are God’s.” Have you ever taken pains to think how much ground of your heart and your life that covers? What are these “things that are God’s?” What share has He; what rights of ownership, creation, preservation; what title, what claims, in your bodily strength, in your time, in your real or personal estate, in your mind and its education, in your tongue and its speech, in your business and its profits, in your social influence and its motives, in your home happiness and the fruits of it? In your habitual way of estimating these things, and talking about them, do you treat them as His, in any sense—His so as to be used for him—His to be left with you or taken away from you as may be his perfect will—His to be accounted for to him? Or is it the habit of your mind to regard them all as your own, in some exclusive and self-gratifying way, as if your rights in them would never be invaded—as if no hand but yours could be laid upon them? F. D. H.

Section 125.—Question about the Resurrection.

The Temple. Tuesday.

L. 27 THEN the same day came to him certain of the Sadducees, which say that there is no 28 resurrection; and they asked him, saying, Master, Moses wrote unto us, If any man’s brother die and leave his wife behind him, and leave no children, that his brother should M. 25 marry his wife, and raise up seed unto his brother. Now there were with us seven brethren: and the first, when he had married a wife, deceased, and having no issue, left L. 30 his wife unto his brother: and the second took her to wife, and he died childless: and 31 the third took her likewise; and in like manner the seven also; and they left no chil- 32, 33 dren, and died. Last of all the woman died also. In the resurrection therefore, when 34 they shall rise, whose wife shall she be of the seven? for they all had her to wife. And Jesus answering, said unto them, Do ye not therefore err, because ye know not the scriptures, neither the power of God? The children of this world marry, and are given 35 in marriage: but they which shall be accounted worthy to obtain that world, and the resurrection from the dead, when they shall rise from the dead, they neither marry, nor 36 are given in marriage; but are as the angels of God which are in heaven. Neither can they die any more; for they are equal unto the angels; and are the children of God, 37 being the children of the resurrection. And as touching the resurrection of the dead, that the dead are raised, even Moses shewed. Have ye not read in the book of Moses that which was spoken to you by God, how in the bush God spake unto him saying, 38 I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob? God is not the God of the dead, but of the living: for all live unto him. Ye therefore do greatly 39 err. And when the multitude heard this, they were astonished at his doctrine. Then certain of the scribes answering said, Master, thou hast well said.

As Christ deduces from the covenant relationship in which God stood to the patriarchs the preservation of their entire being, and the clothing it with a deathless immortality, even so from the relationship in which Jesus stands to all who are in vital union with him, does the Apostle Paul draw the very same conclusion. In taking their nature on him, in bearing their sins, in dying that they might live, Jesus took their whole humanity, and so identified it with his own being, that as in him they live, with him they must rise again, his life and his resurrection involving theirs. Mysterious incorporating union with Jesus Christ! that begins with the simple act of trust and love which binds our weak, sinful spirit to our Redeemer, and brings us into such close fellowship with God, that we can hear him say to us, “I am thy God, even as I was the God of Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, and of the faithful in all ages!”—what a linked array of incalculable blessings does it carry in its train! This among the rest: that he shall change these bodies of ours and make them like to his own glorious body; and associate them as meet companions of the purified spirits of heaven. “If the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in you.” H.

THOUGH constituting a powerful party, it is not till the closing scene of the Saviour’s life that the Sadducees appear to have taken any active part against him. They looked with contempt upon what they regarded as the groundless beliefs and superstitious practices of the great bulk of their countrymen. In common with them they believed indeed in the divine origin of the Jewish faith. They admitted the divine authority of the laws and institutions of Moses. But they rejected that oral tradition which had grown up around the Mosaic revelation, which had come to be regarded as of equal authority with it. They accepted the other books of the Old Testament, but there seems good reason to believe that they held the Pentateuch in preëminent esteem. Into their religious creed the Sadducees would admit nothing which Moses had not directly announced. The freethinkers or rationalists of their age and nation, they were incredulous as to any other existences or powers influencing human affairs beyond those that lay open to the observation of their senses. They did not—as professed disciples of Moses they could not—repudiate the agency of God as exerted in the creation and government of the world. But they limited that agency to a general supervision and control which left full scope to human volition and effort. So far as their professed faith would let them, they were materialists. They could not deny that beings called angels had occasionally, in the history recorded by Moses, appeared to take some part in earthly affairs. But, disbelieving in the existence of any other spirit save that of the Supreme, whatever their explanation of these angelic manifestations, it was one that left them at liberty to deny that there was any separate order of beings called angels standing between men and God. They said that there was “no resurrection, neither angel, nor spirit” (Acts 23 : 8). They believed in the soul of man only as exhibited in and by the body which enshrined it; with that body it perished at death. The future state, a world of rewards and punishments hereafter for the things now done in the body, was but a dream.

34. Do ye not err?** His charge against them is not one of hypocrisy, but of error, that error having a twofold source: 1. Their ignorance of the meaning of the Scriptures, of that very book of Moses from which they had quoted; 2. Their ignorance of the power of God, particularly of the way in which it should be exercised in effecting that resurrection which they denied. H.—With them, as with the Pharisees, he struck at the root, and traced their errors to ignorance of the Scriptures and of the omnipotence of God. Had they known the Scriptures, he showed them, not only in the letter, but the spirit, they could not fail to see a necessary connection between the faith revealed there and the doctrine of an eternal, individual life for man. Had they known the omnipotence of God, they would not have supposed that the forms and relations of the present life must be preserved in the future; God could bestow the new existence in a far different, nay, in a glorified form. N.—Had they not been ignorant of the power of God, they would not have imagined that the life of the children of the resurrection was a mere reflex and repetition of the life of the children of this world. In that heaven beyond the grave, though love remains, yet all the mere earthlinesses of human relationship are superseded and transfigured. F.

36. As the angels.** The saints after the resurrection partake of the immortality of the angels. They will then have no more passions, no more occasion for food, and no more fear of dying, than pure spirits. They will have no other father but the Father of the world to come, who will restore life to the members as he has restored it to the Head, by the eternal and immortal Spirit working in them. They will no longer have anything of the life of Adam, but will be wholly regenerated to a new life, and become entirely the children of God both in soul and body. Q.—They are equal unto the angels. The highest angels in heaven are God’s ministers and messengers, and are glorious and happy in their obedience: and the very meanest of the sons of men, if not wanting in the duties of their present station, whatever it be, will be advanced to the same likeness. The lowest offices in God’s service become the steps of our highest advancement. Ogden.—Children of God, children of the resurrection. The Father, who has regenerated, has regenerated that he may immortalize. Sooner shall he yield his heavenly throne than hold it and forsake us; sooner shall God be no longer God, than the children of God fail to be the children of the resurrection. W. A. B.—But children of a blessed resurrection, of the resurrection unto life, we can only be by becoming now the children of God. H.

37. Hitherto Jesus has encountered the objection of the Sadducees against the resurrection; he now brings forward the positive proof for it. I am the God of Abraham, etc. Unless Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob had survived their decease, God could not at the time of Moses have called himself their God, still less could he have adduced his relationship to them as the reason why he was pleased to succor the Israelites. C. B.—If these words are to be understood in any way worthy of God, then must the fathers still exist as persons, as their names indicate, inasmuch as He thus speaks of them. Stier.

38. God is not the God of the dead.** By a clear inference from the words of Scripture, our Saviour here shows that although the bodies of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, had long been in their graves, yet their souls had survived, and were at that moment in existence. P.—The words are “I am,” not “I was;” therefore God was then the God of those three patriarchs; therefore those patriarchs were still living and endowed with intelligence, somewhere or other, when God declared he was still their God; that is, they were alive as to their souls. Thus the Sadducees, who denied the separate subsistence of souls or spirits, were confuted at once, and that by a very clear and plain text, produced even from the books of Moses. Waterland.

The Sadducees denied the immortality of the soul, as well as the resurrection of the body. Our Lord’s answer is directed against both errors. The words “I am thy God” imply a covenant. There is another side to them: “Thou art mine” follows upon “I am thine.” When God therefore declares that he is the God of Abraham, etc., he declares their continuance, as the other parties in this covenant. It is an assertion that could not be made of an annihilated being of the past. And notice also that Abraham’s body, having on it the seal of the covenant, is included in this. Thus the burden of the law, “I am the Lord thy God,” contains in it the seed of immortality and the hope of the resurrection. A.—Our Lord teaches us to find immortality and a resurrection in the Old Testament, but he teaches us to find it in the spirit rather than in the letter, to look for it, not as a revelation, but as implied in and underlying all revelation. He shows us how inevitably a resurrection follows, from the very recognition of that relation between God and man of which Moses speaks. If the eternal God has made men his friends, if he has taken them into covenant with himself, and declared to them his counsel, if he has given them their names, singling out his friends from the world, and vouchsafing in infinite grace to call himself their God, then he does not mock them with fleeting hopes and transitory promises. He does not bid them stay themselves on him for threescore years and ten, and then cast them into the abyss of annihilation. Even a human father would not let the day come, if he could help it, when his child should cease to know and love him; even a human friend would never cast from him the friend whose heart was bound up in his own. Much less does the eternal Father and the eternal Friend, much less does he whose name is life and love, suffer his children and his friends to perish. God is not a man that he should lie or change. His is an everlasting love. And because he calls the man his friend, because he calls himself the God of the individual, singled out by name, therefore the whole man must survive the shock of death. And so it was that the saints of old “confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims” here, and “desired a heavenly country, and looked for a city which hath foundations whose builder and maker is God.” Perowne.

All live unto him. That is, for him and in his sight, all men continue to exist even after death.

Only for us are the departed really dead. The purpose of this addition is further to illustrate the proof of the resurrection. C. B.—Would it have been possible that he should deign to call himself the God of dust and ashes? How new, how luminous, how profound a principle of Scriptural interpretation was this! The Sadducees had probably supposed that the words simply meant, “I am the God in whom Abraham and Isaac and Jacob trusted;” yet how shallow a designation would that have been, and how little adapted to inspire the faith and courage requisite for an heroic enterprise! To what, if there were no resurrection, had their trust come? To death, and nothingness, and an everlasting sisilence, after a life so full of trials that the last of these patriarchs had described it as a pilgrimage of few and evil years! But God meant more than this. He meant—and so the Son of God interpreted it—that he who helps them who trust him here, will be their help and stay for ever and ever, nor shall the future world become for them “a land where all things are forgotten.” F.

The reserve of our Saviour concerning the future state should be well observed, because it repels all suspicion of enthusiasm; for enthusiasm is wont to expatiate on the condition of the departed above all other subjects, and with a wild particularity. The Koran is half made up of such descriptions. Paley.

Section 126.—The Scribe’s Question. The Two Commandments. Christ’s Question.

The Temple. Tuesday.

M. 34 But when the Pharisees had heard that he had put the Sadducees to silence, they Mk.28 were gathered together. And one of them, a lawyer and one of the scribes, came, and having heard them reasoning together, and perceiving that he had answered them well, asked him a question, tempting him, and saying, Master, which is the first 29 commandment of all, the great commandment in the law? And Jesus answered him, The first of all the commandments is, Hear, O Israel; the Lord our God is one Lord: 30 and thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first and great commandment. 31 And the second is like unto it, namely this, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself: there is none other commandment greater than these. On these two commandments 32 hang all the law and the prophets. And the scribe said unto him, Well, Master, thou 33 hast said the truth: for there is one God; and there is none other but he: and to love him with all the heart, and with all the understanding, and with all the soul, and with all the strength, and to love his neighbour as himself, is more than all the whole burnt 34 offerings and sacrifices. And when Jesus saw that he answered discreetly, he said unto him, Thou art not far from the kingdom of God. M. 41 While the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them, while he taught in the 42 temple, How say the scribes that Christ is the son of David? What think ye of Christ? 43 whose son is he? They say unto him, The son of David. He saith unto them, How then doth David in spirit call him Lord? For David himself saith by the Holy Ghost, in the 44 book of Psalms, The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit thou on my right hand, till I make 45 thine enemies thy footstool. David therefore himself calleth him Lord; how is he then his son? 46 And no man was able to answer him a word, neither durst any man from that day forth ask him any more questions. And the common people heard him gladly.

Jesus teaches that a divine unity pervades the law, a unity that cannot be broken; all its separate commands resting upon a common, immutable basis; also connected in spirit and obligation, that you cannot truly obey one without obeying all, nor break one without breaking all. Looking at the law in this oneness of character, Jesus points to the two requirements of love to God and love to one another as containing the sum and substance of the whole. First we are called upon to love the Lord as our God, with all our heart. It is not a mere faith in his divinity, a bare acknowledgment of his sovereign right, a studious observance of prescribed forms of worship, the presenting of offerings and sacrifices, that is required. Nothing but the supreme love of the heart can meet this great demand. All idolatrous self-love, creature-love, world-love, must be renounced in order that this first and greatest of the commands be kept. And thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself: a mode and measure of loving others which can be truly obeyed only when love to God has predominated over natural self-idolatry; for if a man love himself supremely, he can love no other as he loves himself. You cannot love the God of love as he requires, without loving your neighbor also.

“What think ye of Christ? whose son is he? How can he be David’s son and David’s Lord?” These last words of our Lord’s public ministry, which filled the temple courts of old, and found there no reply, are they not still going forth wherever the gospel of his grace is preached, waiting a response? Nor can any fit response be given till we see and acknowledge that in him, our Saviour, there meet and mingle all divine and human attributes—David’s Lord in his divinity, David’s son in his humanity; till we own him, and cleave to him as at once our elder brother, and our Lord and our God; the morning star that heralds the bright, the cloudless, the unending day. H.

Mk. 28. The rabbinical schools, in their carnal, superficial spirit of word-weaving and letter-worship, had spun large accumulations of worthless subtlety all over the Mosaic law. Among other things they had wasted their idleness in fantastic attempts to count, and classify, and weigh, and measure all the separate commandments of the ceremonial and moral law. They had come to the conclusion that there were 248 affirmative precepts, being as many as the members in the human body, and 365 negative precepts, being as many as the arteries and veins, or the days of the year: the total being 613, which was also the number of letters in the decalogue. They arrived at the same result from the fact that the Jews were commanded (Num. 15: 38) to wear fringes (tsitsith) on the corners of their tallith, bound with a thread of blue; and as each fringe had eight threads and five knots, and the letters of the word tsitsith make 600, the total number of commandments was, as before, 613. Now surely, out of such a large number of precepts and prohibitions, all could not be of quite the same value; some were “light,” and some were “heavy.” But which? and what was the greatest commandment of all? F.—Is it a ceremonial or a moral precept? This was a disputed point among the Jewish doctors; some contending for the law of circumcision, others for that of sacrifices, and others for that of the phylacteries. And though it was a rule among them, that the law of the Sabbath was to give place to that of circumcision, yet they were not agreed as to the rest, which was the principal precept; only in general they were inclined to give the preference to the ceremonial part. D.

29. Hear, O Israel.** This every devout Jew recited twice every day, and they do it to this day, thus keeping up the great ancient national protest against the polytheisms and pantheisms of the heathen world, the great utterance of the national faith in one Living and Personal God. 30. Love. Had the essence of the divine law consisted in deeds, it could not possibly have been expressed in a single word; for no one deed is comprehensive of all others embraced in the law. But as it consists in an affection of the soul, one word suffices to express it—but only one. Love is an all-inclusive affection, embracing not only every other affection proper to its object, but all that is proper to be done to its object; for as love spontaneously seeks to please its object, so, in the case of men to God, it is the native well-spring of a voluntary obedience. It is, besides, the most personal of all affections. One may fear an event, one may hope for an event, one may rejoice in an event; but one can love only a person. It is the tenderest, the most unselfish, the most divine of all affections. Such, then, is the affection in which the essence of the divine law is declared to consist. Soul—i. e., feeling, or what we call warmth: mind—intelligence, in opposition to a blind devotion, mere devoteeism: strength—intensity. In other words, with all our powers. Thus, one single word—love—expresses all that the law of God fundamentally demands. And as God is to be the object of this love, so he will have a sincere, fervid, intelligent, energetic love. And he will have these in their most perfect exercise: he will have the love of “all our heart”—in perfect sincerity; he will have the love of “all our soul”—in the utmost fervor; he will have the love of “all our mind”—in the fullest exercise of an enlightened reason; and he will have the love of “all our strength”—with the whole energy of our being! B.

This is the first and great commandment. And it is so: In antiquity, being as old as the world, and engraven in our very nature. In dignity, as directly and immediately respecting God. In excellence, being the commandment of the new covenant, and the spirit of the divine adoption. In justice, because it alone renders to God his due, prefers him before all things, and secures to him his proper rank in relation to them. In sufficiency, being sufficient of itself to make men holy in this life, and happy in the other. In fruitfulness, because it includes all the other commandments, and is the root of them all. In virtue and efficacy, because by this alone God reigns in the heart of man, and man is united to God. In extent, leaving nothing to the creature which it does not refer to the Creator. In necessity, being indispensable. In duration, as being never to be discontinued on earth, and to continue eternally in heaven. Q.—The reply was at once our Lord’s final triumph over error, and the very central truth of all his doctrine. Heedless of their refinements, he marks that as the first and great commandment which is the sum and root of all the rest, LOVE to GOD; created as a principle in the heart, imbuing the soul—the whole nature of the living man, formed into a sound doctrine by the mind, and carried out practically with all his strength. It deserves remark, that the tongue, which is so often the only instrument of professing love to God, is not here mentioned. To complete the lesson, and to leave no room for perverse distinctions between duties to God and man, our Lord makes the second commandment, the necessary result and complement of the first. S.

31. Love to God issuing in love to man—love to man, our brother, resulting from love to our Father, God—on these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets. F.—Love to God is the grand leading principle of right conduct, the original source and fountain from which all Christian graces flow; from which the living waters of religion take their rise, and branch out into all the various duties of life. A man without any religion may act laudably by chance; his virtue may break out sometimes in sudden temporary gleams; but whoever wishes to be habitually and uniformly good, must have the vital principle of piety working at his heart, and by a constant regular warmth producing constant and regular fruits of righteousness. P.—All human conduct, however it affects our fellow-man, has supreme respect to the known will of God. All truth and honesty, all just and kind dealing toward man, have their vital spring in the heart’s homage and obedience to God. And all injustice and deceit, all unkindness and wrong toward men, have their secret source in the heart’s disobedience and rejection of God. Simply recognizing this cardinal fact of human action, in the sore remembrance of his blood guiltiness toward Uriah, David said, Against thee, thee only, have I sinned. And it is this double foundation truth that Christ asserts in the Judgment-allegory by the words, Ye did it, and, Ye did it not—unto me! J. G. B.—The love of God never can be inconsistent with the love of our neighbor. In all cases where our duty toward our neighbor is clear and plain, we may be certain that our duty to God concurs with it. Sherlock.

Is like: as demanding the same affection—love. As thyself: therefore, not “with all thy heart,” etc. Thus, this is a condemnation of the idolatry of the creature. As sincerely “as ourselves” we are to love all mankind, and with the same readiness to do and suffer for them, as we should reasonably desire them to show to us: the golden rule. All the law. It is the whole law of human duty, simple, brief, comprehensive, and unchangeable. It is inconceivable that God should require from his rational creatures anything less, or in substance anything else, under any dispensation, in any world, at any period. And this incomparable summary of the divine law belonged to the Jewish religion; and this could, therefore, be none other than a God-given religion. B.

If our Saviour could say, that the sum of the Jewish religion, as delivered by Moses and the prophets, did consist in those two things, the love of God and the love of our neighbor, much greater reason have we to say, that the religion which he taught may be summed up in these two duties. For in the Jewish law there were many precepts which concerned indifferent matters, and did not seem to have any immediate reference to loving God and our neighbor, but in our Saviour’s institution there is hardly one thing recommended to us that is not either an instance wherein we are to express our love to God and our neighbor, or a means whereby we may be furthered in the practising of those duties; or an argument, motive, and encouragement, to excite us to the practice of them. It is the design of all his doctrines to give us right notions of God and our neighbor; to teach us how excellent God is in himself, and how kind, how gracious to us; and, therefore, what infinite reason we have to love and serve him; and to love and serve all mankind, who are our neighbors, for his sake. It is the design of his precepts, to give rules in what manner, and in what degree, we are to express our love to God and our neighbor; and to oblige us, under the highest penalty, not to fail in these matters. It is the design of his promises, to encourage us in the constant and sincere performance of these duties, by offering greater assistances, and proposing greater rewards to the performance of them, than mankind had ever yet heard of. And, lastly, it was the design of his whole life and conversation in the world, to give us a true pattern and example of love to God and man, in all the several instances wherein it is our duty to express it. Sharp.

33,34. The scribe showed that he had read the Scriptures to some advantage by summarizing some of those grand free utterances of the prophets which prove that love to God and love to man is better than all whole burnt-offering. F.—This was the last lesson of positive doctrine that our Saviour taught in public. He had begun his ministry by declaring that he came to fulfil the law and the prophets: he closed it by announcing that “Love is the fulfilling of the law.” Scarcely less interesting than the truth itself is the effect it had on the hearers. The very scribe who had proposed the question, seeing the harmony of the answer with Scripture, and catching a glimpse of its spiritual meaning which all his learning had never given him before, was the first to confess its truth in words worthy of being adopted as the Christian creed, and with a heartiness which called forth from Jesus the reply, “Thou art not far from the kingdom of God.” S.—And in this he intended no more and no less than the words themselves conveyed. Had he considered an earnest moral striving, such as this man expressed, to be sufficient, he would have acknowledged him as not only near but in the kingdom of God. He tells him, however, that he is on the way to it, because he was freed from the Pharisaic delusion of the righteousness of works, and knew the nature of genuine piety; and could, therefore, more readily be convinced of what he still lacked of the spirit of the law, which he so well understood. N.

This scribe had seen through that external sanctimoniousness which was cultivated all around him with such sedulous care. But he had not yet come to see all that the first and greatest of the law’s commands required, nor to feel how far short of its requirement his obedience had fallen. He wanted the humble, contrite heart; and so Jesus says to him, “Thou art not far from the kingdom of God;” not far from, but yet not in; nearer by many a step than those who are going about to establish a righteousness of their own before God, but still not across the border-line of that kingdom which we must enter in the spirit of penitence and faith. H.—This man had hold of that principle in which law and gospel are one. He stood, as it were, at the door of the kingdom of God. He only wanted (but the want was indeed a serious one) repentance and faith to be within it. The Lord shows us here that even outside his flock those who can answer discreetly, who have knowledge of the spirit of the great command of law and gospel, are nearer to being of his flock than the formalists; but then, as Bengel adds, “If thou art not far off, enter; otherwise it were better that thou wert far off.” A.

There are circumstances and associations in life that still bring some men closer to the gospel than others. There are dispositions of mind and attitudes in certain persons toward it which make us very anxious that they should take but one decided step, which cause us to wonder why, when they are so near, they go no further. They speak so discreetly about religious things, and have so amiable and reverent a spirit, that we feel as if Christ would still single them out, as he did this scribe, and say tenderly, regretfully—may we not add hopefully?—“Thou art not far from the kingdom of God.” We have all of us met with persons who had a perfection of human grace and attractiveness about them, like the fragrance of a flower, that comes without consciousness or effort. They are wild flowers of nature that with the inclosure of Christ’s garden and the hand of divine culture would put on a rare beauty. The sight of them makes us long to see them in the only safe soil, and they have an affinity for it which brings them near. . . . While in this mixed and imperfect world it is impossible to exclude all harsh and cold things from the kingdom of God, we may aim at having all naturally beautiful things included in it, and at having the graft of heaven inserted in the best of earth. This is certain, that when what is best in nature does enter in, it will be the first to confess that its own was poor and worthless compared with the new aim which God sets before it. Its seeming is made real, and its real rises to a height unthought of before. Its sense of rightness puts on a transparent purity, and its kindness a tenderness of sympathy, that make such a character become one of the most beautiful things our world can look upon. But, while the human graces and virtues may bring a man at times close to the boundary of the kingdom, there is still a limit between, which is of vast importance in the inner life, and which shows itself more openly as time advances. It is as if a man were standing on the shore, close to where a ship is moored. There is but a line between, and a step may cross it. But the one is fixed, the other moves, and all the future of existence depends on that step—new lands, a new life, and God’s great wide world. In the spiritual sphere to stand still is to fall away, to be left on that shore, doomed to decay and death. To pass into God’s kingdom is to move with it, not only up to the grandeur of his universe, but into the heritage of himself. . . . Whether the scribe whom our Lord here addressed finally entered the kingdom we are not told. We may hope that, like Nicodemus, he was led on to a full decision, and that perhaps, “when a great company of the priests became obedient to the faith” (Acts 6 : 7), he was of the number. It may be for a good reason that the result is concealed, to fill us with a salutary awe when symptoms are so favorable, and to urge us to bring them to an undoubted issue. Ker.

M. 41-44. Warned by the discomfiture of all the parties in dispute with Jesus, the Pharisees appear to have stood wavering and uncertain how to speak or act. Jesus seizes the opportunity of still further weakening their authority with the assembled multitude. In his turn, he addresses an embarrassing question as to the descent of the Messiah. H. M.—How then doth David call him Lord? Could Abraham have called Isaac and Jacob and Joseph, or any of his own descendants near or remote, his lord? If not, how came David to do so? There could be but one answer—because that Son would be divine, not human—David’s son by human birth, but David’s Lord by divine subsistence. **F.—**Christ quoted the Psalm in order to unfold the higher idea of the Messiah as the Son of God, and to oppose, not the idea that he was to be Son of David, but a one-sided adherence to this, at the expense of the other and higher one. As he had before used Psalm 82 : 6 to convince the Jews on their own ground that it was no blasphemy for him to claim the title “Son of God” in the highest sense, so now he used Psalm 110 to convince them that the two elements were blended together in the Messianic idea. **N.—**The Jews admitted that these were prophecies touching the Messiah. But the bright vision that had floated for ages before the eyes of the people was that of a king who was to raise the Jewish commonwealth to supremacy over the nations; the vision of an earthly, visible, world-wide monarchy to be set up by the son of David; a vision clung to with an enthusiastic devotion which ennobled them as a nation, and had crowned with glory their last wars with the Romans, but which sunk them into spiritual blindness, and kept them from understanding the very prophecies upon which it was founded. It was this vision, baseless as it was bright, which Jesus seeks to dissipate by putting to them his pointed inquiry: “If Christ be David’s son, how could he at the same time be David’s Lord?” The true key to that announcement in the 110th Psalm, and to many similar prophecies, was wanting to the Jews so long as the true and proper divinity, as well as the true and proper humanity, of their Messiah remained unperceived and unacknowledged. H.

45. They could not answer, because they would not answer. And they would not answer, because they could not answer without confessing that the Christ of the Hebrew Scriptures must needs be both God and man. **R. D. H.—**The only possible answer was that full admission of the spiritual nature of the kingdom of Christ, which would have identified him in all points with Jesus, and rather than confess this, their obstinate silence rejected the last opportunity of offered grace. S.—46. Heard him gladly. The multitudes appear almost always to have gladly received our Lord, except when instigated to a contrary course by his enemies, the ruling and hierarchical party, the Jews of John’s gospel. E.

Section 127.—Denunciations against the Scribes and Pharisees.

The Temple. Tuesday.