L. 1 AND Jesus being full of the Holy Ghost, returned from Jordan, and immediately was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil. And he was there in the wilderness with the wild beasts, being forty days tempted of Satan. And in those M. 2 days he did eat nothing. And when he had fasted forty days and forty nights, he was afterwards an hungered.

3. And when the tempter, the devil, came to him, he said, If thou be the Son of God, 4 command that these stones be made bread. But Jesus answered him and said, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.

5. Then the devil taketh him up into the holy city, and setteth him on a pinnacle of the temple, and saith unto him, If thou be the Son of God, cast thyself down from hence: for it is written, He shall give his angels charge concerning thee, to keep thee; and in their hands they shall bear thee up, lest at any time thou dash thy foot against a stone. 7 And Jesus answering, said unto him, It is written again, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God.

8. Again, the devil taketh him up into an exceeding high mountain, and sheweth him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them, in a moment of time. And the devil said unto him, All these things, all this power will I give thee, and the glory of them; for that is delivered unto me, and to whomsoever I will, I give it. If thou therefore wilt fall down and worship me, all shall be thine. Then answered Jesus and said unto him, Get thee hence, behind me, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve.

11. Then when the devil had ended the temptation, he leaveth him, and departed from him for a season. And behold, angels came and ministered unto him.

A SPECTACLE as illusive as that presented to Jesus on the mountain-top, the arch-deceiver spreads out before our eyes, whispering to our hearts, “All this will I give you;” all this money, all that ease, all that pleasure, all that power. He asks from us no act of outward worship; all he asks is, that we believe his false promises, and turn away from God and Christ to give ourselves up to worldliness of heart and habit and pursuit.

Take unto you the whole armor of God, for all is needed; but remember, of all the pieces of that panoply, the one that Christ himself used, and the only one that serves for defence and assault, is the sword of the Spirit, the word of God. By it all other parts of the armor are guarded. The helmet might be shattered on the brow, the shield wrenched from the arm, did it not protect; for hope and faith, that helmet and that shield, on what do they rest, but upon the word of the living God? H.—Christ’s triumph is only the earnest and pledge of the believer’s. The believer is in presence of the same versatile enemy, tempting him, now through his appetite, now through his intellect, now through his pride, making error attractive by decking it in the garb of truth, distributing false and pernicious dogmas wrapped up in isolated texts and misquoted paragraphs of God’s word. But the believer has the same infinite wisdom to expose Satan’s sophistries, and the same infinite power to resist his persuasions; he has the same weapon, too, “the sword of the Spirit.” Let him believe, and watch, and pray, and strive, and his final triumph is secure. J. L. P.

HAVING been baptized with water and the Holy Ghost, he shall now be baptized with the fire of temptation; even as there is another baptism, the baptism of blood, in store for him. It is not too much to say, as Augustine said often, that the entire history, moral and spiritual, of the world, revolves around two persons, Adam and Christ. To Adam was given a position to maintain; he did not maintain it, and the lot of the world for ages was decided. And now with the second Adam the second trial of our race has arrived. The second Adam, taking up the conflict exactly where the first had left it, and inheriting all the consequences of his defeat, in the desert does battle with the foe; and conquering him there, wins back the garden for that whole race, whose champion and representative in this conflict he had been. T.

Christ could not well have lived in this world to the age of thirty without having excitements of wrong desire present before his mind, and without making his choice between obedience and disobedience. But now, when he had received a solemn inauguration by baptism from the forerunner, and a most remarkable testimony from God by a voice from heaven—now, when publicly and formally he took the place of representative for mankind in the system of grace, and when interests mightier than man had sustained before hung on his conduct—now there was a momentous crisis; and the parties most aware of what he might accomplish as the Son of God might well be most active in putting his character to the test. Accordingly, the sacred historian tells us that God and Satan were alike concerned in his temptation. . . . That Christ’s innocence was secure by even more than divine help, by the possession of a divine nature, is a mere inference of the reason, and involves disbelief in the simple record of the gospel. Why was he tempted by a sagacious tempter if he could not by any possibility be led into evil? And if he himself knew that he could not sin, what could the transaction have been to him but a mere formality? Or how is he an example to us if his temptation is an unreality? No! They dishonor Christ’s work who think thus. When he took on him the form of a servant he became by his own will subject to everything which can affect human nature. . . . The temptations were intended, not for Jesus in his nature as a man, but for Jesus in his official station as the Messiah. God was putting it to the test whether Jesus was qualified for his office—whether that man whom he had severed from the rest of mankind by a wondrous birth and a union with the divine nature, and who yet stood forth in perfect freedom as a man—whether he would remain true to the spiritual idea of the Messiah, or would fall below it under temptation. Nor was the tempter in this case anxious simply to lead a good man into sin, but he was striking at the root of salvation; his aim was to undermine the principles of the kingdom of heaven, to lead the Christ, if possible, by some subtle way of conduct inconsistent with the office to which he had been chosen, and which he had freely accepted. This thought is the key to the story of the temptation. T. D. W.

The whole temptation presents a contrast between the founding of God’s kingdom as pure, spiritual, and tried by many forms of self-denial in its slow development, and the sudden establishment of that kingdom as visible and earthly. This contrast forms the central point of the whole. And the free and conscious decision manifested in these three temptations, fully contrasting the true and false Messiahship, was made before his public ministry, which itself was but a continuation of the strife and the triumph. N.

What happened in the desert and what happened in the garden are only parts of one great whole. What Christ shrank from at last was just what Satan tried to dissuade him from at first. And the three temptations all issued and centred in this one: To be the Messiah without suffering and death; such a Messiah as carnal Judaism then longed for. As the Messiah, Christ is challenged to satisfy his hunger and to fling himself down from the battlement of the temple. And the universal dominion offered was not secular but Messianic. The same world-inclusive possession that God had promised (Psalm 2: 8), to be won by self-denial, suffering, and death, Satan now offered to be won by worldly Satanic methods. The whole appeal of Satan was: Put forth your power in self-seeking and self-assertion, carry the Jewish nation by storm, and so begin at once the conquest of the world. And the answer of Christ was: No, I shall bear this fasting till I am told to end it; I shall not dazzle and stun the Jewish people into discipleship; I shall let them put me to death; and by this lowly pathway shall I take at last the crown. R. D. H.—The rejection of a false Messiahship, in accordance with the hopes and based upon obedience to the worldly spirit of Judaism, in favor of an inward kingdom to be developed gradually out of apparent failure by the power of the Divine Spirit, admits us to the secret of the entire after-plan—from the refusal to satisfy the craving for signs, to the cross itself, which was the final answer to the tempter. Eng. Review.

1. Immediately he was led by the Spirit. No sooner is the Holy Spirit descended upon his head in the form of a dove, than he is led by the Spirit to be tempted. No sooner doth God say, “This is my Son,” than Satan says, “If thou be the Son of God.” Bp. H.—In the words of Jeremy Taylor, “He was led by the good Spirit to be tempted of the evil."—Into the wilderness. No man who stands on the banks of the Jordan at Jericho could doubt for a moment where that wilderness is. He has only to lift up his eyes and look westward, and it is before him. A bare white plain, with two or three narrow strips of verdure, extends about six miles from the west bank of the

Rocky Hills of the Wilderness, near Jericho.

river. On its farther side rises up a ridge of white limestone cliffs, extending north and south far as the eye can see, and supporting a chain of jagged, rocky hills behind, equally white and bare. A more dreary, desolate, and forbidding landscape the world could not furnish. The wilderness of Judea, including the whole of that wild region lying between Jericho and Jerusalem, was unquestionably the scene of the temptation. J. L. P.

To be tempted of the devil. Such a personal tempter innumerable moral and spiritual phenomena of this fallen world at once demand and attest; and such a tempter or devil existing, it lay in the necessity of things that he should come into direct and immediate collision with him who had one mission in the world, and that, to destroy the works of the devil. T.—The Christian doctrine of the devil, as revealed in the Word of God, is, that he is a created being of a higher order than man, who has fallen away from God (Jude 6); that he is related to sin as its primeval and seductive originator (John 3:8; John 8:44); that he is an adversary, accuser, and a tempter of God’s people (Gen. 3; compare Rev. 12:9; Matt. 4:1; Matt. 13:39; John 14:30); that he stands in relation to the Redeemer as a conquered enemy (John 12:31; Rev. 12:9), and in relation to the redeemed as an enemy absolutely vincible (1 Peter 5:8, 9; James 4:7); that he nevertheless continues to rage and persecute on earth (Rev. 2:10; Rev. 3:9), and is finally related to universal heathenism and the world, as well as to apostate Judaism as a patron, prince, and father (John 8:44; John 14:30; Ephes. 2:2; Ephes. 6:11, 12); and that, together with everything anti-Christian, he shall be delivered up to eternal punishment. An.—That evil was first introduced into the world by a being who goes under the name of Satan or the Adversary, we are told; that this being endeavored first to seduce and afterward to menace our Saviour into evil; and that he is constantly engaged in tempting us, as he tempted Christ, we are also told. How Satan exists, or where at the present time, or how his power avails, as we are told it does, to contrive and suggest temptations to the mind of man; and to what extent he is aware of what is passing in men’s minds, so as to adopt his suggestions to their weakness, we are not told, and do not therefore know. But our not being told the manner in which his power is exercised and brought to bear is no proof of the unreality of that fearful being, who is everywhere in the New Testament exhibited as the adversary of God and goodness, whether in the individual or in the development of the human race. C. P. R.

Fasted forty days. Of the same length were the fasts of Moses and Elijah; he the head of the new covenant in nothing coming short of those who stood as the chiefs and representatives of the old, of the law, and of the prophets. T.

THE FIRST TEMPTATION. 3. If thou be the Son of God. “If"—since faith and trust are the mainstay of all human holiness, the tempter is ever strongest in the suggestion of such doubts; strong, too, in his appeal to the free-will and the self-will of man. “You may, you can—why not do it?” F.—Command that these stones be made bread. He who made the water wine could have made the stones bread; but to that he was solicited by the need of others, to this only by his own. And this abstinence of self-help was the law of his whole life, a life as wonderful in the miracles which it left undone as in those which it wrought. T.

4. Every word which proceedeth out of the mouth of God.** This is a Hebrew phrase to express “everything that God appoints” or “arranges.” It is the full recognition of God’s Fatherhood. It assumes that every appointment of God is wise and loving. It asserts accordingly that a man’s life—that which is his genuine abiding life and happiness—cannot consist in opposing such appointments of his Father, or in trying to get free from them as from chains and fetters; but must consist in a meek acquiescence in them, in sympathizing with a Father’s will as revealed in them, and thus, by the inner chemistry of love, converting them into food wherewith to nourish the life of the spirit. N. M.—He takes the words of Moses to the children of Israel, which mean, not that men must dispense with bread, and feed only on the study of the divine word, but that our meat and drink, our food and raiment, are all the work of the creating hand of God; and that a sense of dependence on God is the duty of man. S.

The temptation was to distrust God’s providence under pressure of want, on the plea that relief in other ways could easily be had. Jesus replies: “The power of the Son of God is not the present question, but the duty of man under want: Israel was sustained in the wilderness for forty years, hanging on the bare word of God (Deut. 8 : 4); to show that in God’s word of promise lies man’s security for life: As man, therefore, so resting, I will calmly await divine supply.” Mark here, how apt the quotation! how invincible in the hand of faith! B.—This is the most common, the most universal form of attack with which the enemy has assailed the soul of man, this of making him lose confidence in the Fatherhood of God, because of the wilderness, the hunger, or the physical sufferings into which God has brought him in his providence; and to make him rebel against the restrictions he lays upon many things we might naturally desire. N. M.—He who thinks that we live by bread alone will make the securing of bread the chief object of his life, and, because he seeks no diviner food, will inevitably starve with hunger in the midst of it. But he who knows that man doth not live by bread alone will, when he has done his duty, trust God to preserve with all things needful the body. He will seek with more earnest endeavor the bread from heaven, and that living water whereof he who drinketh shall thirst no more. F.

THE SECOND TEMPTATION. 5. On a pinnacle of the temple. Our Lord went into a desert, and literally fasted and hungered there. But his temptations, like our own, may all have been subjective, without the help of either voice or visible appearance. Indeed, they must have been subjective, in order to be as much as possible like ours. As to the being taken up into the holy city, and into an exceeding high mountain, it may have been in thought, without doing any violence to the terms employed. R. D. H.—If Satan did appear in bodily shape, his suggestions could become temptations only as they might act upon the mind of Jesus. Hence the better view of the temptation is that which regards it as a mental scene. These three suggestions, artfully woven into the words of Scripture, were presented to the mind of Jesus in such a way that he knew them to proceed from the devil. Whatever view we take as to the form of the temptation, the lessons from the fact are the same. It teaches us that Christ had a human nature in all things like our own, yet without sin. It teaches us that sin does not consist in a nature susceptible to temptation, but in yielding to temptation by an act of will. It shows us how to resist temptation, by the word and the grace of God. And, above all, it teaches us that Christ can sympathize with us in our temptations, and is qualified to help us with grace in every time of need. With such a helper we have no excuse for being overcome with evil. J. P. T.

6. Cast thyself down.** Nothing could be more natural than at once to vindicate his rank and authority, and open the way for his ministrations, by some startling miracle. No place was so well fitted for such a demonstration as Jerusalem, the holy city, and no spot in it so suited as the temple, the centre of the national religion, and the chosen dwelling-place of God. G.—The ultimate object of this second temptation, as of all the others, was to destroy Christ’s spirit of perfect Sonship, of perfect filial love, faith, and obedience toward his Father. Its immediate object was to destroy his faith in the reality of his Father’s presence and love by inducing him to “tempt the Lord his God,” and therefore to demand a sign as the ground of faith. N. M.—In the first temptation Satan urged the Lord to a distrust of his Father’s love; now he urges him to put that love to the proof in a way of his own choosing, and not of God’s appointing. Satan, too, has learnt that the Scripture is the law of Christ’s life; the sphere in which he lives and moves. Here, then, is a word of that same Scripture, which should induce him to consent to that which is now put before him. The words following, “to keep thee in all thy ways,” he omits altogether. But that to which he now challenged the Lord was not a “way” appointed by his heavenly Father for his treading. T.—One cannot help being impressed with the daring effrontery of Satan in quoting this psalm at such a time (Ps. 91). If there is one passage in the Word of God which we might suppose Satan would avoid more than another at such a crisis, it is this, for the whole psalm is full of promises to him who has a childlike trust in God.

7. Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God.** In this reply Christ showed that what Satan proposed as the evidence of faith would have evidenced unbelief. To cast himself down without any command from God, or any call of duty, was virtually to “try” or to “tempt” the truthfulness and love of God himself, by demanding supernatural protection as a “sign.” True love does not thus test love, but rests and relies upon it with unhesitating faith. To demand proof of love is to doubt it, and to doubt love is to disbelieve it. And so our Lord, with the clear spiritual light of love, pierced the darkness of the evil one as he replied, “Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God.” N. M.—In this refusal of Christ’s are implicitly condemned all who run before they are sent, who thrust themselves into perils to which they are not called, with all those who presumptuously draw drafts on the faithfulness of God, which they have no Scriptural warrant in believing that he will honor. There lies in that “It is written again” of Christ the secret of our safety and defence against all distorted use of isolated passages in Holy Scripture. Only as we enter into the unity of Scripture, as it balances, completes, and explains itself, are we armed against error and delusion, excess or defect on this side or the other. Thus the retort, “It is written again,” must be of continual application; for, indeed, what very often are heresies but one-sided exaggerated truths, truths rent away indeed from the body and complex of the truth, without the balance of the counter-truth, which should have kept them in their due place, coördinated with other truths or subordinated to them; and so, because all such checks are wanting, not truth any more but error? T.

THE THIRD TEMPTATION. 8. Sheweth all the kingdoms. By an angelical power he draws into one centre ideas from all the kingdoms and glories of the world, and makes an admirable map of beauties, and represents it to the eye of Jesus. J. T.—All these will I give thee. Herein was the temptation, that the Messiah should not develop his kingdom gradually, and in its pure spirituality from within, but should establish it at once, as an outward dominion; and that, although this could not be accomplished without the use of an evil agency, the end would sanctify the means. We find here the principle, that to try to establish Messiah’s kingdom as an outward, worldly dominion, is to wish to turn the kingdom of God into the kingdom of the devil. And in rejecting the temptation, Christ condemned every mode of secularizing his kingdom, as well as all the devil-worship which must result from attempting that kingdom in a worldly form. We find here the principle, that God’s work is to be accomplished purely as his work and by his power, without foreign aid; so that it shall all be only a share of the worship rendered to him alone. N.

9. For that is delivered unto me.** As regards this power of Satan, a striking contrast exists between the material world and the spiritual world, the world of things and that of personalities. In the one he is utterly powerless. Against the will of God, as expressed in the movement of every star or beam of light, in the outburst of the hurricane, the growth of a flower, or the formation of a drop of dew, he can do no more than any intelligent creature. But in the far higher and nobler world of personality it is different; for this implies will, and the awful power of its possessor to choose that which may be against the will of God. It is thus that Satan, without having any power to change that world “without,” may so change the world “within” the spirit of man as to make the former minister to the latter, and make it the means of gratifying the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life. N. M.

10. Get thee hence, Satan. The divine patience gives room now to the divine indignation, such as the character of this suggestion required. T.—Worship the Lord thy God. He thus spoke as a true Son, who glorified his Father by faith and love. He spoke as a true Priest, whose whole life was a self-sacrifice, a worship of the only living and true God. He spoke as a true King, whose kingdom was not of this world, but in the hearts of redeemed men. The words “Get thee behind me, Satan,” were an epitome of the future history of the world; a prophecy of all the glory that should be; a light ushering in the brighter day, seen beyond the shadow of the cross. As he uttered them, Satan was henceforth doomed to depart from the weary and oppressed earth, and the Son of man to step forth before him, ever advancing to take possession of human spirits, and make all men kings and priests, by enabling them through faith in himself to worship the Lord their God, and to serve him only. N. M.

11. Angels came. Straightway those blessed spirits, whose ministry but a few moments before the devil had tempted Him to command, now tender to their Lord’s weakened humanity their loving and unbidden services. E.

3-10. To convert the hard, stony life of duty into the comfort and enjoyment of this life; to barter, like Esau, life for pottage; to use divine powers in him only to procure bread of earth;—To distrust God, and try impatiently some wild, sudden plan, instead of his meek and slow-appointed ways; to cast himself from the temple, as we dash ourselves against our destiny;—To do homage to the majesty of wrong; to worship evil for the sake of success; making the world his own by force or by crooked policy, instead of suffering: These were the temptations of his life, as they are of ours. If you search through his history, you find that all trial was reducible to one or other of these three forms. In the wilderness his soul foresaw them all; they were all in spirit met then, fought and conquered before they came in their reality. F. W. R.

The great declaration is made: Christ is come, not to be obeyed, but to obey. He has given himself unreservedly to God and to man. He has come out conqueror from the great moral ordeal, but the victory is itself a sacrifice, an immolation; it leads not to earthly glory, but to death; not to the throne, but to the cross. For, on entering upon this path of obedience and love, he will come into collision with all the prejudices of the Jewish nation; he will belie all its hopes, and kindle all its hatred. A Messiah who will not reign in the sense in which Jerusalem understands his kingdom must perish. King or victim he must be; there is no alternative. De P.

In striking antithesis the opening chapters of Matthew set before us the new-born King of Peace and the savage Herod; the mysterious adoration of the Magi, and the hasty flight for life into a strange land; the baptism, with the opened heavens and descending Spirit; and the temptation, with all its circumstances of satanic trial. Thus, heightened by contrast as well as heralded by prophecy, the Lord appears to us as the son of David and the son of Abraham, the spiritual King of spiritual Judaism, the Messiah of the Israel of God. The theocratic King and the suffering Messiah pass and repass before our eyes, in ever-new and ever-striking interchange, and a strange deep tone of prophetic sadness blends with all we read, and prepares us for Gethsemane and Calvary. E.

Section 16.—Testimony of the Baptist.

Bethabara. Jordan Valley.

J. 43 Now after two days Jesus departed thence. And when he had heard that John was cast into prison, he came into Galilee, preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God. 44, 45 For Jesus himself testified, that a prophet hath no honour in his own country. Then when he was come into Galilee, the Galileans received him, having seen all the things 46 that he did at Jerusalem at the feast: for they also went unto the feast. So Jesus came again into Cana of Galilee, where he made the water wine. 47 And there was a certain nobleman, whose son was sick at Capernaum. When he heard that Jesus was come out of Judea into Galilee, he went unto him, and besought him that he would come down and heal his son: for he was at the point of death. 48, 49 Then said Jesus unto him, Except ye see signs and wonders, ye will not believe. The 50 nobleman saith unto him, Sir, come down ere my child die. Jesus saith unto him, Go thy way; thy son liveth. And the man believed the word that Jesus had spoken unto him, and he went his way. 51 And as he was now going down, his servants met him, and told him, saying, Thy son

52 liveth. Then inquired he of them the hour when he began to amend. And they said 53 unto him, Yesterday at the seventh hour the fever left him. So the father knew that it was at the same hour, in the which Jesus said unto him, Thy son liveth; and himself believed, and his whole house.

54. This is again the second miracle that Jesus did, when he was come out of Judea into Galilee.

THE answers of Jesus apply much less to the questions asked and petitions addressed to him, than to the frame of mind, the disposition of heart, in the querist or suppliant. Hence on occasions which bear much resemblance in externals, the answers are often different. There were miracle-seekers who wished to make this heavenly power subservient to low desires or mere idle curiosity. Against such Jesus was always stern, often repelling their solicitations unheard. There were also those who were drawn to the Redeemer by craving inward wants which he alone could satisfy. These he loved best, and met with divine tenderness and affection. There was yet another class, who at first were drawn to him by their instant external needs; and who afterward, when they had obtained relief, joined him with feelings of love. The nobleman belonged to this class. He is not disinclined to believe; but it is necessity alone, and not an inward impulse, which brings him to Christ. K.

The Lord spoke out of the fulness of his knowledge to awake in them some infant sense of what constituted all his life—the presence of God; just as the fingers of the light go searching in the dark mould for the sleeping seeds, to touch and awake them. The order of creation, the goings on of life, were ceaselessly flowing from the very heart of the Father: why should they seek signs and wonders dif- fering from common things only in being uncommon? Uncommonness is not excellence, even as common- ness is not inferiority. The sign, the wonder is, in fact, the lower thing, granted only because of men’s hardness of heart and slowness to believe—in itself of inferior nature to God’s chosen way. Yet, if signs and wonders could help them, have them they should, for neither were they at variance with the holy laws of life and faithfulness: they were but less usual utterances of the same. McD.

43. Came into Galilee. He was for a time unattended by the small band of disciples who had accompanied him to the Passover. They had re- mained with him, in Judea, and had returned with him, through Sychar, to Galilee; but, after so long an absence from home, he had let them go back to the Lake of Galilee, to their occupations, till he should once more call them finally to his service. He retired to the north before the rising signs of opposition from the Pharisees, who had at last found means to get John imprisoned, by their intrigues with Antipas, and might at any moment have ef- fected his own arrest. An interval of some months now elapsed, perhaps in stillness and privacy, the time not having yet come, for some reasons unknown to us, for his final and permanent entrance on his public work. G.

The gospel of the kingdom of God. The good news of Messiah’s advent and the erection of his kingdom, for the very purpose of saving his people from their sins. This form of statement showed that the salvation now proclaimed was not a new and independent method of escape from sin and punishment, but one which had been long pre- dicted under the old economy. J. A. A.—Under- lying the whole history of Israel, and all the forms of the Jewish state and religion, was the idea of a living present God who dwelt in the hearts of all true worshippers, “as a monarch living among his subjects;” the temple was his visible house, a rep- resentative of his sacred majesty, and its sacrifices showed how he was to be approached for the for- giveness of sin; but his true abode was in hearts delivered from sin, that honored and obeyed him as the Redeemer—God. With this spiritual conception of the kingdom, it is easy to understand how Jesus “preached the gospel of the kingdom of God.” Coming at a time when the Jews were deprived of every symbol of their nationality save their temple and its worship, they were yearning for a deliverer; to the nominal people of God thus subjugated by military rule, yet clinging to the ancient promise of a Messiah who should restore the glory of the the- ocracy, he said, “I bring to you the good news of the kingdom of God; in me Jehovah once more comes to you as a deliverer; the time predicted by Daniel is fulfilled; the new covenant promised by Jeremiah is brought to you in my gospel; repent of the sins that have humiliated and wellnigh destroyed you; renounce your vain hopes of deliverance, and trust in me as your Saviour.” But the body of the nation looked only for the restoration and perfection of the Davidic theocracy in perpetuity. Because of this popular expectation, which could easily have been kindled into the fever of a revolution, Jesus refrained from announcing himself as the Messiah, until by his teaching and works he had gained a footing for that spiritual commonwealth which in reality he had come to establish. J. P. T.—The very nature of a spiritual kingdom like his, founded on the free convictions of men, not on assertion or authority, demanded this reticence. The heart of man, which was to be the seat of his empire, could be won only by the spiritual attractions of his life and words. G.

45. The Galileans, or Jews of the north.** Their patriotism in national emergencies; their enthusiastic loyalty to their country’s interests; their general adherence to the law of Moses in preference to tradition; their interest in the temple and its solemn feasts; their deep-seated and inspiring hope, which looked “for the redemption of Israel”—these things show that the Jews of the north, at least equally with those who dwelt beneath the very shadow of the temple, maintained within themselves some of the noblest traits of the Hebrew nation. But farther, we find the Galileans to have been a moral, intelligent, industrious, and enterprising people—“healthy as their own climate and cheerful as their own sky”—a people familiar with their own law and history, and not wanting in the finest poetical spirit; with the disposition and ability to appreciate in the main the teachings of Christ; a people among whom were found most devoted men; among whom also devotion to the national idea reached its highest development, till at last they rose, a solid wall of patriot hearts, to be crushed by the all-conquering power of Rome. Both country and people, one may say with truth, fitly chosen of God as the training-place of those men who were to move the world; the proper soil in which first to plant that truth which was destined, ere long, to be spoken by eloquent lips in Cesarea, Antioch, Constantinople, and Rome. S. M.

46,47. It had become known in Capernaum that he was once more in Cana, after his nine or ten months’ absence from Galilee. His miraculous power over sickness and physical evil, as shown in Jerusalem, had become a subject of universal report. Among others, a high officer of the court of Herod Antipas, whose mansion was in Capernaum, had heard of the wonderful Teacher. . . . It marks the minute exactness of the narration that Jesus is asked to “come down” from Cana to Capernaum, the one place being 1,350 feet lower than the other. G.

48. Only “signs and wonders” would compel to a belief; unlike those Samaritans whom the Lord had just left, who, without a miracle, had in great numbers “believed because of his word.” T.—Apparently repelling him for the moment, Jesus was, in fact, opening his eyes to the far greater blessings he might freely obtain. With royal bounty he wished to give the greater while he gave the less. G.

50. Go thy way; thy son liveth.** The man, noble-man certainly in this, obeyed, and found his obedience justify his faith. McD.—With one word doth Christ heal two patients, the son and the father. Bp. H.—A double sign and wonder has been done in Israel. A child has been cured of a fever in Capernaum by one standing miles away at Cana, and a father has been cured of his unbelief—the same kind of power that banished the disease from the body of the one banishing distrust from the heart of the other. Nor is this all; he returns to Capernaum to tell all the wonders of the cure; tells them to the healed child, who also believes—and strange would be the meeting afterward between that child and Jesus—he tells them to the other members of his family, and each in turn believes. He himself believed, and with him all his house—the first whole household brought into the Christian fold. H.

48 50. There is something to be learned by a comparison of the Lord’s dealing with this man and with the centurion. Here being entreated to come, he does not, but sends his healing word. There, being asked to speak that word of healing, he rather proposes himself to come; for here a narrow faith is enlarged, there a strong faith is crowned and rewarded. That centurion is an example of a strong faith, this nobleman of a weak faith; that centurion counts that, if Jesus will but speak the word, his servant will be healed, while this nobleman is so earnest that the Lord should come down, because in heart he limits his power, and counts that nothing but his actual presence will avail to heal his sick. T.—Both plead for others, the one for his child, the other for his servant, and the pleading of both is signally successful, the compliance prompt and generous. Such honor doth Jesus put on all kindly intercession with him on behalf of those to whom we are bound by ties of relationship and affection. H.

52. Then inquired he the hour.** If we compare our hours of need and of help with each other, and give heed to all God’s ways and dealings at this or that time, we should learn to know the Lord better, and strengthen ourselves in faith. If we only took more note of everything, we should then daily and hourly trace the forethought, the fidelity, and the overruling government of God. Bogatzky.

53. Once more glance over the blessed progress of the nobleman. He heard—he went and prayed—he came with the desire to see, but he believed the word before he saw, and went his way; he knew what he had believed—he became a believer, and now again he believed without seeing—he believed with his whole house. R. B.

Section 25.—Preaches at Nazareth, and is rejected.

M. 13 And leaving Nazareth, he came down to and dwelt in Capernaum, a city of Galilee, 14 which is upon the sea-coast, in the borders of Zabulon and Nephthalim: that it might be 15 fulfilled which was spoken by Esias the prophet, saying, The land of Zabulon, and the 16 land of Nephthalim by the way of the sea beyond Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles: the people which sat in darkness saw great light, and to them which sat in the region and shadow of death, light is sprung up. 17 From that time Jesus began to preach the gospel of the kingdom of God, and to say, The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand: Repent ye, and believe the L. 31, 32 gospel. And he taught them on the sabbath-days. And they were astonished at his doctrine: for his word was with power.Mk. 16 Now as Jesus walked by the sea of Galilee, he saw two brethren, Simon, called Peter, 17 and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea: for they were fishers. And Jesus 18 said unto them, Come ye after me, and I will make you to become fishers of men. And 19 straightway they forsook their nets, and followed him. And when he had gone a little farther thence, he saw other two brethren, James the son of Zebedee, and John his 20 brother, who also were in the ship with Zebedee their father, mending their nets. And straightway he called them: and they immediately left their father Zebedee in the ship with the hired servants, and went after him.L. 1 And it came to pass, that as the people pressed upon him to hear the word of God, 2 he stood by the lake of Gennesaret, and saw two ships standing by the lake: but the 3 fishermen were gone out of them, and were washing their nets. And he entered into one of the ships, which was Simon’s, and prayed him that he would thrust out a little from the land. And he sat down, and taught the people out of the ship. 4 Now when he had left speaking, he said unto Simon, Launch out into the deep, and 5 let down your nets for a draught. And Simon answering said unto him, Master, we have toiled all the night, and have taken nothing: nevertheless at thy word I will let 6 down the net. And when they had this done, they inclosed a great multitude of fishes: 7 and their net brake. And they beckoned unto their partners, which were in the other ship, that they should come and help them. And they came, and filled both the ships, 8 so that they began to sink. When Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus’ knees, 9 saying, Depart from me; for I am a sinful man, O Lord. For he was astonished, and 10 all that were with him, at the draught of the fishes which they had taken: and so was also James, and John, the sons of Zebedee, which were partners with Simon. And 11 Jesus said unto Simon, Fear not; from henceforth thou shalt catch men. And when they had brought their ships to land, they forsook all, and followed him.

He, whose purpose it was by the weak things of the world to confound the strong, who meant to draw emperors to himself by fishermen, and not fishermen by emperors, lest his church should even seem to stand in the wisdom and power of men, rather than in the wisdom and power of God, saw in these unlearned fishermen of the Galilean lake the fittest instruments for his work.

Peter, astonished at the strange success of his cast, the same that he afterward appears, as impetuous, yielding as freely to the impulse of the moment, with the beginnings of the same quick spiritual eye which made him the first to see the highest glory of the Saviour, could no longer, in the deep feeling of his own unholiness, endure the nearness of an altogether Holy One. At moments like these the deep heart of man speaks out, and the deepest things that are in that heart come forth to the light. And this is the deepest thing that is in man’s heart under the law; this sense of the gulf of separation that is between him and God. T.

Thus it has ever been. The discovery of a divine presence leads to conviction, and conviction to a dread of deserved wrath. In old times it was the common judgment that none could see God and live. Manoah judged that he must die, because he had seen God. Isaiah learnt and confessed the uncleanness of his lips, when he saw “the King, the Lord of Hosts.” Ezekiel fell upon his face, and Daniel’s beauty was changed, when he came in contact with the divine glory. So long as men but hear of God, they deem themselves safe; but when once their eyes see him, they either abhor themselves and repent as in dust and ashes, or in despair they cry to the rocks to cover them. It is in God’s light that men see themselves and feel their guilt. J. A.

13. Leaving Nazareth, he came and dwelt in Capernaum. He chose the city that had treated him so differently from his own Nazareth as the place of his most frequent residence, the centre of his manifold labors, the scene of many of his most memorable discourses and miracles. H.—Christ’s first miracle of Cana was a sign that he came, not to call his disciples out of the world and its ordinary duties, but to make men happier, nobler, better in the world. He willed that they should be husbands, and fathers, and citizens, not eremites or monks. And, as pointing the same moral, there was something significant in the place which he chose as the scene of his earliest ministry. John had preached in the lonely wastes by the Dead Sea waters; but Christ chose as the earliest centre of his ministry a bright and busy city, whose marble buildings were mirrored in a limpid sea. That city was Capernaum. It rose under the gentle declivities of hills that encircled an earthly paradise. F.

Capernaum lies on the northwestern side of Lake Gennesaret, and is sunk a thousand feet below the elevated plain which surrounds it. From the western hills adjacent the traveller sees far below him a blue sheet of water, some thirteen miles long, and, in the broadest part, six or seven miles wide; its deep depression is a volcanic basin, giving it something of that strange, unnatural character which belongs in a still greater degree to the Dead Sea. The eastern highlands slope abruptly to the water’s edge, forming a lofty wall, extending the entire length of the lake. Midway on the west the range of hills trends first westward and then to the northeast, growing constantly more rounded and beautiful, till, as a gentle elevation, it again touches the lake. In the recess formed by these encircling hills lies the plain or vale of Gennesaret. It is described by all who have seen it as a natural paradise. Well watered by perennial fountains and rivulets, with a soil of unsurpassed fertility, and a climate that favors the production of tropical fruits as well as those of the temperate zone, it is even now famous for its fruitfulness and beauty. In the time of Christ it was thickly studded with flourishing villages, embowered in palm-groves, vineyards, and olive-orchards. Z. E.

Josephus, in a passage of glowing admiration, after describing the sweetness of its waters, and the delicate temperature of its air, its palms, and vines, and oranges, and figs, and almonds, and pomegranates, and warm springs, says that the seasons seemed to compete for the honor of its possession, and Nature to have created it as a kind of emulative challenge, wherein she had gathered all the elements of her strength. F. (Section 189.)—Jesus chose his home, in the midst of this life and beauty, beside the gleaming lake, embosomed deep on this its western shore; the higher hills of Upper Galilee rising beyond, and the majestic Hermon closing the glorious landscape. The view over the waters showed the steep slopes—now yellow limestone, now black basalt—which led up to the Gaulonitis country. The whole neighborhood, indeed, is sacred to the memory of Jesus. The Lake of Galilee had been chosen by God for himself, and honored above all seas of the earth, in a sense which the rabbis little dreamed. The men, the fields, the valleys round it, are immortalized by their association with the Saviour. G.

Not, however, for its beauty only, but because of its centrality, and its populous activity, it was admirably adapted for that ministry which fulfilled the old prophecy of Isaiah, that “the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, beyond Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles,” should “see a great light.” Through this district passed the great caravans on their way from Egypt to Damascus; and the heathens who congregated at Bethsaida Julias and Cesarea Philippi must have been constantly seen in the streets of Capernaum. In the time of Christ it was for population and activity “the manufacturing district” of Palestine, and the waters of its lake were ploughed by 4,000 vessels of every description, from the war-vessel of the Romans to the rough fisher-boats of Bethsaida, and the gilded pinnaces from Herod’s palace. Iturea, Samaria, Syria, Phoenicia were accessible by crossing the lake, the river, or the hills. F.—Nowhere, except in the capital it-

The Plain of Gennesaret—beyond Magdala self, could he have found such a sphere for his works and words of mercy; from no other centre could “his fame” have so gone throughout all Syria; nowhere else could he have so drawn around him the vast multitudes who hung on his lips. A. P. S.

Our Saviour’s chief resort was now the margin of that beautiful lake which is variously called the Sea of Galilee, of Tiberias, and of Gennesaret. This region of beauty was to him the scene of constant labor for the souls that sat there in darkness. Days begun in preaching were filled up with the relief of hundreds who were sick, maimed, or tormented with devils; and the ensuing nights were spent in lonely agonies of prayer, or in crossing over the stormy lake. Here Christ is first presented to our view as preaching the Word of God to such multitudes, that he was fain to seek a station whence to address them on the lake itself. S.—Gliding over the sea, we now touch the placid shore of Gennesaret, where our Saviour dwelt so long. The beach is very low and sloping gently, with a thick fringe of oleanders skirting the deep-brown sand. With such a simple boundary curving inward to the land, the plain is bent into a crescent form, just three miles long by one in breadth, and rising gradually inland to the west. About this amphitheatre the mountains close. Streams and rills from these, and two fine fountains in the plain, bless this favored region with lasting fertility. J. M.—Never did so small a sheet of water see so many keels cutting its surface, or so many human habitations circling round and shadowing its waves, as did the Sea of Galilee in the days of Jesus Christ. Now all is silent there; lonely and most desolate. On its shores, Tiberias in ruins and Magdala composed of a few wretched hovels are all that remain. Capernaum, Bethsaida, Chorazin are gone. Here and there you stumble over ruins, but none can tell you exactly what they were. They knew not, those cities of the lake, the day of their visitation; their names and their memory have perished. H. (Section 189.)

17. Jesus began to preach. Christ declared that the fulness of time was come, and the prophecies were fulfilled in himself. The preparation required by John was repentance and reformation. Christ goes deeper, and besides repentance he demands faith—readiness to believe from the heart the truths he came to teach. This was his claim in the outset of his ministry, reserving for its course the full revelation of those truths and the spiritual exposition of that faith; the laws of the kingdom of heaven. Thus much, however, was clear from the first, that, in proclaiming the new order of things as a kingdom, Christ pointed to the fulfilment of the covenant with David, and claimed all the authority of his promised seed. S.—The kingdom of God. The expressions, “kingdom of heaven,” and “kingdom of God,” refer to the prophecies of Daniel (2:44; 7:13, 14), and denote that kingdom of the God of heaven, which he would set up and give to the Son of man; or, in other words, the spiritual and eternal kingdom of Christ, both God and man, which was to subsist first in imperfect circumstances on earth, and afterward to appear complete in the world of glory. Parkhurst.—The phrase “kingdom of heaven,” or of the heavens, as the original has it, Matthew uses no less than thirty times. The phrase clearly expresses the idea that it is a kingdom distinct from all those kingdoms of this world after which the Jew had fashioned his idea of Messiah’s dominion. It taught that the kingdom of Messiah was to be a spiritual and heavenly kingdom, unlike the old theocracy with its temple and throne in Jerusalem; unlike the magnificent empire patterned after Rome, of which the worldly Jew was dreaming. It is to be a universal kingdom established by the preaching of the gospel throughout the world. D. S. G.

Mk. 17. Fishers of men. The fish was a very frequent symbol of early Christian art. The Greek word ichthās, a fish, was very early used as a Christian anagram, its different letters forming the initials of a confession of Christianity: “Jesus Christ, Son of God, Saviour.” It was hence used as a symbol among Christians of Jesus Christ himself.

20. From that moment the four were his devoted followers. Called to decide there and then, as a proof of their fitness for discipleship, they forsook all and followed him at once. Peter and Andrew were apparently poor; James and John, in a better position. For the convenience of trade, both families had left the neighboring town of Bethsaida, and had settled in Capernaum, one of the centres of the local fisheries and of the occupations connected with them. Peter alone seems to have been married, and in his house James henceforth found a home. G.—L. 6, 7. This draught of fishes was not only a miracle, but it was a prophetic parable in action. It foreshadowed the success that would attend the labors of the apostolical fishers of men, in drawing the net of the gospel through the sea of the world; inclosing heathen nations within it, so that they might be caught—not for death—but for life eternal. W.

8. Peter had already seen Jesus do wonderful things, but somehow this wonder came home to him as none of them had done—wrought in his own vessel, with his own net, in the way of his own calling, after his own fruitless toil. Never had the impression of a divine power at work in his immediate presence taken such a hold of him. Never had the sense of his being in close contact with One in whom such power resided come so upon his spirit. He falls at Jesus’ knees, as he sat there in the boat, quietly watching all the stir and bustle of the fishermen; and he gives vent to the feeling that for a moment is uppermost, as he exclaims, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord!” H.—It was the cry of self-loathing which had already realized something nobler. It was the first impulse of fear and amazement, before they had had time to grow into adoration and love. Peter did not mean the “Depart from me;” he only meant—and this was known to the searcher of hearts

—“I am utterly unworthy to be near thee, yet let me stay.” F.—Christ hath left many a soul for froward and unkind usage; never any for the disparagement of itself, and entreaties of humility. Simon could not devise how to hold Christ faster, than by thus suing to him to be gone, than by thus pleading his unworthiness. Bp. H.

10. There is in these words a double magnifying of Peter’s future function as compared with his past; that it is men and not poor fishes henceforth which he shall take, and that he shall take them for life, and not as he had taken his meaner prey, only for death. For no less than this is involved in the original word by which the catching is expressed. T.—Jesus Christ having chosen the son of Jonas, thenceforth engaged in his education. How much had to be done to discipline that wild energy, to regulate that impassioned vivacity, to purify that too carnal zeal, to humble that presumptuous ardor! To no other does he give such particular care, and one would say that Peter being formed beforehand for the apostleship, all others will be formed of course. Thus the character of Peter carries him always like a valiant soldier in the van, and the will of his Master keeps him there. It keeps him there so evidently, that uniformly in the gospel his name begins the list of the disciples, and when the leading ones only are mentioned, he stands there first also. The education of John was given, if we may so express it, on the bosom of Jesus. John was nourished in silence by the words of his Master, was penetrated with his spirit, appropriated his divine secrets. For a period still distant he treasured up remembrances and inspirations of infinite value. A pure and peaceful star, he was not to rise on the horizon of the Church; he was not to shed the full light of his instructions upon it until all the other apostles had acted and spoken; and his word was to be the magnificent, new, unexpected complement of the lessons of a Peter, a James, a Paul. A. V.—L. 1-10. The remark of Spanheim is here just: “The facts narrated by Luke are not contradicted by Matthew, but only passed over. Nothing is more common than that circumstances omitted by one should be supplied by another; lest the sacred writers should seem to have written by compact, or lest the readers should cleave to one and neglect the others.” R.

THE “call” of Abraham had given the world the grand truth of a living personal God; that of Moses had created a nation, in which the active government of human affairs by one God was to be illustrated, and his will made known directly to mankind; but that of the poor Galilean fishermen was the foundation of a society, for which all that had preceded it was only the preparation; a society in which all that was merely outward and temporary in the relations of God to man should be laid aside, and all that was imperfect and material replaced by the perfect, spiritual, and abiding. Henceforth it only remained to extend the kingdom thus founded by winning the consciences of men to the same devotion, by the announcement of the Fatherhood of God; the need of seeking his favor by repentance; and faith in his divine Son, leading to a holy life, of which that of Jesus was the realized ideal. G.

Section 27.—Heals a Demoniac, Peter’s Wife’s Mother, and Others.

Capernaum.

Mk. 35 And in the morning rising up a great while before day, he went out and departed 36 into a solitary desert place, and there prayed. And Simon, and they that were with 37 him, followed after him. And when they had found him, they said unto him, All men 38 seek for thee. And he said unto them, Let us go into the next towns, that I may preach there also. And the people sought him, and came unto him and stayed him that he should not depart from them. And he said unto them, I must preach the kingdom of 39 God to other cities also: for therefore came I forth. And he preached in the synagogues of Galilee, and cast out devils. M. 23 And Jesus went about all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, and preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing all manner of sickness, and all manner of disease 24 among the people. And his fame went throughout all Syria: and they brought unto him all sick people that were taken with divers diseases and torments, and those which were possessed with devils, and those which were lunatic, and those that had the 25 palsy; and he healed them. And there followed him great multitudes of people from Galilee, and from Decapolis, and from Jerusalem, and from Judea, and from beyond Jordan. L. 12 And it came to pass, when he was in a certain city, behold, a man full of leprosy; who seeing Jesus, came to him, beseeching him; and kneeling down fell on his face and Mk. 41 worshipped him, saying, Lord, if thou wilt, thou canst make me clean. And Jesus, moved with compassion, put forth his hand, and touched him, saying, I will; be thou 42 clean. And as soon as he had spoken, immediately the leprosy departed from him, and 43, 44 he was cleansed. And he straitly charged him, and forthwith sent him away; and saith unto him, See thou say nothing to any man: but go thy way, shew thyself to the priest, and offer for thy cleansing the gift that Moses commanded, for a testimony unto 45 them. But he went out, and began to publish it much, and to blaze abroad the matter, insomuch that Jesus could no more openly enter into the city, but was without in desert L. 15 places. And so much the more went there a fame abroad of him; and great multitudes came together from every quarter, to hear and to be healed by him of their infirmities. 16 And he withdrew himself into the wilderness, and prayed.

CHRIST began his work by acts of kindness toward the poorest, the lowest, the most helpless; and toward the greatest sinners. The objects which surrounded him day after day, as subjects of his grace, were mainly such as now fill our almshouses, infirmaries, and our chambers of protracted sickness and disease, together with the subjects of demoniacal possession. But he had an object in the bestowment of his healing power upon these sufferers, beyond their relief from pain. By his acts of kindness to the lost and wretched, he established in the minds of the common people this truth, that there is love in the heart of God for every miserable sinner; that his vileness and his abandonment by the world only commend him to God as an object of his compassion; that the Son of God came down from the skies to save the worst of men; and that it is impossible for a sinner to be sunk too low for his hand to find him, or his grace to lift him up. N. A.

Mk. 38. Preaching being the characteristic feature of the life of Christ, no true understanding of his mission can be had without a knowledge of what he preached as the truth of God. The gospels which give us the record of his life contain also a gospel which he preached; and this gospel comprises not only the rules of practical morality, the lessons and precepts of humanity and religion, but the doctrines of a positive theology. So far as the very words of Christ have been preserved, these form the essence of Christianity. In his words we find a proper theology—not formulated, indeed, nor systematized, yet expressed in doctrines set forth with a certain gradation of time and thought, or in a certain order of development—and these doctrines interwoven with the whole texture of the precepts and promises of the gospel. J. P. T.

M. 23. Galilee, the most northern of the three divisions of Palestine, is between 50 and 60 miles in length, and from 30 to 40 in breadth. Josephus, who knew it well, speaks of 204 towns and villages, the smallest of them containing above 15,000 inhabitants. Making an allowance for exaggeration, the population of the province must have been about three millions. (Section 189.) We read of nine departures from and returns to Capernaum in the course of the eighteen months of our Lord’s Galilean ministry; of three extensive tours through all the towns and villages of the district like the one now described; and of five or six more limited ones. Could we have traced the footsteps of our Saviour from place to place, from month to month, on these missionary rounds through Galilee, we should have had a year and a half before us of varied and almost unceasing toil, the crowded activities of which would have filled us with wonder. H.—How singular the contrast between the peaceful progress of the Son of man—on the one hand healing maladies, relieving afflictions, restoring their senses to the dumb and blind; on the other, gently distilling into the minds of the people those pure and humane principles of moral goodness to which the wisdom of ages has been able to add nothing—and every other event to which it can be compared in the history of human kind. H. M.

Teaching in their synagogues. It has been questioned by what right Christ and his apostles, who had no public character among the Jews, taught in their synagogues. Dr. Lightfoot observes, that though this liberty was not allowed to any illiterate person or mechanic, they granted it to prophets and workers of miracles; and such as set up for heads and leaders of new sects; in order that they might inform themselves, and not condemn them unheard and unknown. Under these characters Christ and his apostles were admitted to this privilege. Burder.—The only schools, in Christ’s time, were those connected with the synagogues. A synagogue presupposed a school, as in our country a church presupposes a Sunday-school. Synagogues were found in every city, and also in every village, unless the place was insignificant in size; and in such cases they had their place or places of prayer. In the schools, questions were asked and answered, opinions stated and discussed, and illustrations proposed in the form of allegories, or aphorisms, or parables. S. M.

L. 12. Only one of the miracles of this journey is particularly recorded, and that, perhaps, because it was the first of its kind. It was the cure of a leper. There was no disease accounted more absolutely incurable than this. Hence lepers are among the last who are mentioned as seeking the aid of Jesus. K.—The ordinances concerning leprosy had a far deeper significance than a mere sanitary regulation. It is clear that the same principle which made all that had to do with death (as mourning, a grave, a corpse) the occasions of a ceremonial uncleanness, might in like manner have made every sickness an occasion of uncleanness; each of these being also death beginning—echoes in the body of that terrible reality, sin in the soul. But instead of this, God took but one sickness in which to testify that evil was not from him, that evil could not dwell with him; and leprosy, which was indeed the sickness of sicknesses, was through these Levitical ordinances selected of God from the whole host of diseases. Terrible indeed, as might be expected, was that disease round which this solemn teaching revolved. Leprosy was indeed nothing short of a living death, a dissolution little by little of the whole body, so that one limb after another actually decayed and fell away. The leper, thus fearfully bearing about in the body the outward and visible tokens of sin in the soul, was handled throughout as a sinner, as one in whom sin had reached its highest manifestation; that is, as one dead in trespasses and sins. He was himself a dreadful parable of death, to bear about the emblems of death; mourning garments, he mourning for himself as for one dead; the head bare, as they were wont to have it who were in communion with the dead; and the lip covered. As one dead, he was to be put out of the camp, or afterward out of the city; men being by this exclusion taught that what here took place in a figure, should take place in the reality with every one who was found in the death of sin: he should be shut out of the true city of God. In all this it was not in the least implied that he who bore this plague was of necessity a guiltier man than his fellows. Seeing then that leprosy was this outward and visible sign of the innermost spiritual corruption, this sacrament of death, there could be no fitter form of evil over which the Lord of life should display his power. He will prove himself the conqueror of death in life, as of death completed. T.

Wandering a little way outside the walls of the city we came upon the dwellings of the lepers. The place is separated from all other human habitations, and consists of a rude court or inclosure, containing about twenty huts or kennels. At the sound of our voices and footsteps the lepers came out into the sunlight, clamoring, with most unearthly sounds, for charity. Death was visibly eating them away. Some were of a liver color, others white as snow—all deformed. Handless arms were held out to us; half-consumed limbs were obtruded; countenances wofully defaced and eyeless were turned up to us, and cries came out from palateless mouths that were wildly imploring and inhuman. The old law which prohibited the leper from touching or drawing near to a clean person, was scrupulously regarded by them, so that, even when they begged, they stretched out to us little iron cups into which we might drop our alms. As we looked on those rotting wrecks of humanity, we saw with deepened impression, with what instructive fitness leprosy has been employed in Scripture as the emblem of sin—hereditary, contagious, ever tending to increase, and incurable, except by the power of God. A. Thomson.

Lord, if thou wilt, thou canst make me clean. A prayer lovely in the simplicity of its human pleading—an appeal to the power which lay in the man to whom he spoke. The relation between them was of the strongest—that between plenty and need, between strength and weakness, between health and disease—poor bonds comparatively between man and man, for man’s plenty, strength, and health can only supplement, not satisfy the need; support the weakness, not change it into strength; but in regard to God, all whose power is creative, any necessity of his creatures is a perfect bond between them and him; his munificence must flow into the channels of the indigence he has created. Jesus could have cured him with a word. But of all men a leper needed to be touched with the hand of love. Out went the loving hand to the ugly skin, and he was as he should be—with the flesh of a child. McD.

Mk. 41. By the law of Moses, he who touched a leper himself became unclean. Yet at once, without hesitation at the time—without acting afterward as if he had contracted any defilement or required any purification—Jesus lays his hand upon one who was “full of leprosy.” We lose a little of the power and majesty of our Saviour’s answer in our translation. Two words were spoken, the answer the echo to the prayer; two of the very words the man had used taken by Jesus in framing his gracious reply. No petition ever presented to Jesus met with a quicker, more satisfactory response. H.—The hand of Jesus was not polluted by touching the leper’s body, but the leper’s whole body was cleansed by the touch of that holy hand. It was even thus that he touched our sinful human nature, and yet remained without spot of sin. F.

44. The true meaning of the word is “for a testimony against them; for a witness against their unbelief, who are refusing to give credence to me, even while I am attesting myself to be all which I claim to be, by such mighty works as these.” T.

45. The time had not yet come for his openly proclaiming himself as the Messiah, though he acted from the first as such, without formally assuming the title. To have done so would have arrested his work at once, while his acts and words, without compromising him with the authorities, were such as forced men and even the spirits he cast out, to own his true dignity. G.

L. 16. He withdrew into the wilderness, and prayed. This section begins with a similar but fuller record. And the same fact is referred to afterward; intimating that this solitary communion of Jesus with the Father was the habit of his daily life. J. G. B.—He took refuge thus in prayer, mingling devotion with activity, the days of bustle with the hours of quiet, intercourse with man with fellowship with God. Nothing more than his example is fitted to impress upon us the lesson how needful, how serviceable it is, if we would walk and work rightly among or for others around us, that we be often alone with our Father who is in heaven. A life all action will be as bad for the soul itself as a life all prayer would be profitless for others. It is the right and happy blending, each in its due proportion, of stillness and of action, of work and prayer, which promotes true spiritual health and growth; and so much weaker as we are—so much more easily distracted and absorbed by bustling activity—so much more of reflection, retirement, and devotion is needed to temper our spirit right, and to keep it in anything like harmony with that of our Lord and Master. H.—Precious as the periods of seclusion and refreshment are, they are after all but temporary. They are intervals of useful labor, not substitutes for it. Separation from men may possibly be sought for, owing to morbid moods, and it may create them. The real value of going apart into solitary places must be tested by the spirit with which we return from them into the ordinary engagements of our households and the world. Something in our very prayers will be wrong unless we pass from them into the daily ministrations and drudgeries with more patience, more self surrender, a kindlier forbearance with the infirmities of those around us, and a heartier effort to yield our interests to theirs for the Redeemer’s sake. Our very rests will be unrefreshing without him, and he only makes the retirement sacred, and society safe. F. D. H.

Section 29.—Heals a Paralytic. Calls Matthew.

Capernaum.