Bible Commentaries

Healing the Sick

Luke 9:2

It is the pressing task of the Christian Church to see, first, that the faith of Christ shall not be reduced to mere philanthropy; secondly, that it shall earnestly appropriate all that is good in human life, and animate, elevate, and enlarge it by making it the expression of Christian faith and love. The particular good in human life to which we shall now apply Christian principles is the noble work of healing the sick.

I. The healing of the sick as a part of the ideal mission of the Christian Church. Healing the sick was a part of Christ's work on earth, not as a disconnected marvel, but in necessary and organic connection with the moral and spiritual redemption He came to effect. He healed the sick, not by superior medical knowledge, nor by supernatural power acting independently of human moral conditions, but through the energy of moral and spiritual forces. He confined His miraculous work within a limited sphere, and within that limit there were still further limits to its exercise. Luke 9:6

For a double curse there must be a double cure. That prince of African missionaries, Dr. Robert Moffat, in laying the foundation of the Livingstone Medical Missionary Memorial in Edinburgh in1877 , uttered these words: "I have often said, and I say it again, that a missionary is a good thing, and anyone who knows his work will say so; but a medical missionary is a missionary-and-a-half—or, rather, I should say, a double missionary".

I. Medical Missions—Their Origin and History.—The Bible is the oldest medical journal in the world. Far back in Old Testament story we see traces of medical missionary work, for we read that Elijah and Elisha were healers as well as prophets and teachers. But the greatest of all medical missionaries—and the perfect model for all time—was our Divine Master, Jesus Christ. After Christ came the Apostles, who faithfully carried on the healing work which He had so nobly inaugurated. It is evident, then, that preaching and healing were old-time allies; but, unfortunately, the alliance was dissolved for centuries, and the kingdom of Christ suffered incalculable loss.

II. Medical Missions—Their Object.—(1) One object in view is bodily healing. Men are not disembodied spirits; and Christian philanthropists are just beginning to realise this fact. (2) Another, and far nobler object, which the medical Evangelist has in view is spiritual healing. All the medical work is preparatory for, and subsidiary to, the higher work of soul salvation.

III. Medical Missions—Their Authority.—(1) We find our authority in the special command of Jesus Christ: "And He sent them to preach the kingdom of God, and to heal the sick"—a beautiful union of the two ministrations. (2) We also find our authority for medical missions in the noble example of Christ—"Himself took our infirmities, and bore our sicknesses".

IV. Medical Missions—The Crying Necessity for Them.

V. Medical Missions—Their Positive Advantages.—(1) The medical missionary has a fine opportunity of teaching the heathen the preciousness of human life. (2) The medical missionary has a fine opportunity of shaking the confidence of the heathen in their charms and superstitions. (3) The medical missionary has a wonderful power of removing agelong hatreds and prejudices. (4) The medical missionary has an unrivalled opportunity of winning the confidence and affection of the heathen. George Eliot once wisely said: "The tale of the Divine pity-was never yet believed from lips which had not first been moved by human pity".

VI. Medical Missions—Their Perils.—(1) It is a dangerous experiment to send out unqualified men as medical missionaries. (2) Another peril which has to be guarded against—the Evangelist must not sink himself in the Physician.

VII. Medical Missions—Their Wonderful Success.—The story of the medical Evangelist reads more like a romance than a page of sober history.

—J. Ossian Davies, The Dayspring from on High, p132.

References.—IX:6.—Expositor (5th Series), vol. i. p398. IX:10-17.—A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture—St. Luke 9:13

God requires no man to do, without ability to do; but He does not limit His requirement by the measures of previous or inherently contained ability. In many, or even in a majority of cases, the endowment of power is to come after the obligation, occurring, step by step, as the exigencies demand.... All the pillars of the Church are made out of what would be weeds in it, if there were no duties assumed above their ability in the green state of weeds. And it is not the weeds whom Christ will save but the pillars. No Christian will ever be good for anything without Christian courage, or, what is the same, Christian faith. Take upon you readily, have it as a law to be always doing great works; that Luke 9:23

I have seen the face of a high-souled and sensitive teacher colour with the deep flush of a young girl in her moment of keen feeling when he was compelled to censure a slothful student. The face of Christ was flushed with pain when He uttered His words of rebuke to Peter, "Get thee behind Me, Satan". Jesus did not love to utter reproach. His usual method of rebuke was by a silent look. For that reason He turns at once from the ashamed man and begins to speak to them all. He will no longer emphasise his fault. And He is well aware that the mind which was in Peter was in all his fellow-disciples, and would require to be purged out of every man who would come after Him. He lays down that law of self-denial which is the primary law of the Cross.

The Christian life presents itself in a full-orbed teaching under two contrasting aspects. In one aspect it is a life of liberty in Christ. It is the coming into full and lovely flower of the whole nature of man. Its keyword is not repression, but expression. Its method is culture, not restraint. Christ has come to give us life, "life more abundantly". It is a call to walk in the Spirit, and to live in that kingdom whose delights are righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost. Augustine states this truth in his great saying, "The Christian law is to love, and to do as you please". But in the other aspect it presents itself not as a liberty but as a captivity, not as a self-abandonment but as a self-control, not as an easy yoke but as a stern and ceaseless struggle. This contrast is to be found on every page of the New Testament. It is set down clearly in Christ's teaching, and it is illuminated by His life.

Let me make this law clear by considering two points. Look, in the first place, at the spheres of the law of self-denial; and, in the second place, at the penalty of its refusal.

1. In the first place: the spheres of the law of self-denial.

We must, to begin with, deny ourselves in the sphere of our natural appetites. There are appetites which are God-given, and, when wisely indulged, are God-blessed. We have the natural hunger for our daily food, a healthful longing for pleasant sights and sweet sounds, and all that ministers to our delight, a craving for rest when we are weary, and for recreation when we are jaded, and a longing for the satisfactions of the mind and the heart. As we grow older we thirst for recognition and influence and reward. From youth to age we crave to love and to be loved in return. These are all natural and innocent appetites, but every one of them must be controlled if our life is to be Christlike.

The law operates with a sterner rigour in the subtler sphere of duty. The demand of duty may not fall upon our ears with so sharp a tone as the call to school our appetites, but it persists through all the hours, and exacts a more trying obedience.

A third sphere in which this law must be obeyed is the sphere of service. Service is a continuous self-denial. Young hearts present themselves for the service of Christ in an hour of chivalrous devotion, but they do not walk far on in the way until they find the pressure of this law. I have seen a shadow fall upon the face of a man who was worn by nights of service he had given to Christ, when some other, who had sat beside his evening fire, was pouring forth the treasures of a full mind to the delight of all who heard him. He felt a keen pang as he realised his impoverishment. But there were many to whom that shadowed man was dear, to whom his very name was music, and I doubt not but that Luke 9:23

It seems that Christian obedience does not consist merely in a few occasional efforts, a few accidental good deeds, or certain seasons of repentance, prayer, and activity, a mistake which minds of a certain class are very apt to fall into. This is the kind of obedience which constitutes what the world calls a great Luke 9:24

In his volume on Bushido, Dr. Nitob quotes the following sayings of a seventeenth-century priest in Japan: ""Talk as he may, a Samurai who ne"er has died is apt in decisive moments to flee or hide". "Him who once has died in the bottom of his breast, no spears of Sanada nor all the arrows of Tametono can pierce."" "How near," adds the author, "we come to the portals of the temple whose Builder taught, He that loseth his life for My sake shall find it!"

All really human persons want to give themselves away, at least for something, if not for somebody.... We may preach a prudential morality sometimes, because it seems so sane, and men are so selfish, ourselves included, we say; but we know very well that no man ever satisfied his soul with prudence—with the sanest selfishness—though many have tried. The only thing that can satisfy a human being is an object of devotion, not himself, for which he can feel it worthy of him to sacrifice himself without limit. No man is fully alive, who is not ready to die for something. The characteristic law of human life, as we feel it in our most vivid moments, is not self-preservation, but self-devotion passing into readiness for selfsacrifice. "He that loseth his life for My sake"—for some sake—"shall find it."

—Dr. Sophie Bryant, Studies in Character, pp47 , 146 f.

References.—IX:24.—Expositor (4th Series), vol. iii. p278. IX:25.—Ibid. (4th Series), vol. vii. p333.

Ashamed of Christ

Luke 9:26

I can understand how men were ashamed of Christ as He moved about the villages of Galilee. Born in a humble and malodorous village, living in the deepest obscurity for thirty years, then suddenly appearing with a claim to be Messiah yet contradicting the warmest hopes of Israel, it is not to be wondered at that there was disappointment, and that many were ashamed of Jesus and His words. But the thing that is difficult to understand is how any man can be ashamed of Jesus now. The man who is ashamed credits that Christ is living and is energetic in human hearts today; and the mystery is how crediting all that, it should be possible to be ashamed of Christ. That it is possible every one of us knows, and it is on that strange possibility I wish to speak.

I. First, then, about its Luke 9:26

The cruellest lies are often told in silence. A man may have sat in a room for hours and not opened his teeth, and yet come out of that room a disloyal friend or a vile calumniator. And how many loves have perished because, from pride, or spite, or diffidence, or that unmanly shame which withholds a man from daring to betray emotion, a lover, at the critical point of the relation, has but hung his head and held his tongue.

—R. L. Stevenson.

References.—IX:26.—S. A. Tipple, The Admiring Guest, p92. R. W. Church, Village Sermons (3Series), p236. W. M. Clow, The Secret of the Lord, p151. IX:27.—Expositor (4th Series), vol. iii. p22. Ibid. vol. x. p191. Expositor (5th Series), vol. vi. p372. IX:28.—Marcus Dods, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xlvi. p155. C. J. Vaughan, The Prayers of Jesus Christ, p43.

The Mount of the Transfiguration

Luke 9:28-35

Mr. Robert Hichens says: "The ascent of Mount Tabor is often omitted from the programme of visitors to Nazareth. I confess to having enjoyed it much more than any time spent in the town. Ever since the fourth century Mount Tabor has been claimed as the site of our Lord's transfiguration. On this account monasteries have been built there. The best authorities, however, think it improbable that the transfiguration took place there, as in our Lord's time the summit was crowned by a fortified town. Nevertheless, multitudes of pious pilgrims, heedless of authority, and intent only on earnest belief, with imaginations aflame, wind up among the little oaks, the terebinths, the bushes of sweet-scented syringa, the starry daisies and small scarlet poppies, singing hymns upon the way and ceasing only when they reach the plateau on the crest of the helmet-shaped hill where stands the Latin monastery. There they pause near the door of the little chapel, above which is boldly written: "Hic Filius Dei Dilectus Transfiguratus est". The good fathers at least have no doubts as to the sacredness of their strange and beautiful home, and their quiet certainty adds a flame to the fire of the devotees from far-off lands."

—The Holy Land, pp128 , 129.

References.—IX:28 , 29.—Expositor (4th Series), vol. iii. p384. IX:28-31.—D. Macleod, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lvi. p261. IX:28-36.—A. B. Davidson, Waiting upon God, p139.

The Transfiguration

Luke 9:29

I. Consider the transfiguration-glory in its relation to the inner life of Jesus Christ. Godet, that magnificent expositor, gives us a suggestion on this head which is as wonderfully beautiful as it is fruitful. He says that our Saviour had now arrived at the highest possible pinnacle of human attainment in the moral and spiritual domain. He had forced His way from point to point until He now reached the very gates of heaven: and now He stands on the glory-peak of a perfect human life, and the way of the eternal glory is open for Him to enter. This is true in Godet's suggestion: the transfiguration-glory means this, that if Jesus had been man and nothing more, only an individual fighting for His own hand, He had reached the point when, having victoriously perfected His life, He would have found the way open for Him into the eternal glory. But Jesus was more than an individual. He had not come simply to conquer for Himself. He had come to be the Saviour of the world, and Luke 9:29

It is in the study of our Lord as a Man of Prayer that we realise the blessedness, the potentiality of prayer. In every crisis of His experience He found inspiration and strength in prayer. He who, humanly speaking, needed prayer least, prayed most. And He was always in the spirit of prayer. I would have you consider the strength and inspiration of prayer from its practical side.

I. It produces a calm, a contentment, a peace in our souls which the world cannot give. There are days of dull monotony, of depressing drudgery; there are days when our souls are vexed within us because of the hardness of the way. Then it is that the evil spirit of discontent strives to enter in and possess the heart, then it is we have need to fall on our knees in prayer and to cast all our care upon Him.

II. Prayer engendereth courage. The prayer of Gethsemane preceded the courage of the judgment-hall, the victory of Calvary. What is the lesson? That, as for the Master, so for the disciple. Prayer braces the human spirit for the conflicts of life.

III. But we learn from my text that there is a metamorphic power in prayer, that prayer transfigures. The face reveals the inward life. It is when our faces are turned heavenward day by day that the fashion of our countenance is changed.

—T. J. Madden, Tombs or Temples? p90.

References.—IX:29.—J. C. M. Bellew, Sermons, vol. iii. p1. G. Campbell Morgan, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lix. p364. W. M. Clow, The Secret of the Lord, p178.

The Holy Mount of Prayer

Luke 9:29-30

Prayer is the toilet of the mind, the bride of the heart, the key to things invisible. Jesus prayed, and, as He prayed, three wondrous things came to pass.

I. There was a revelation of the unseen. The three who were with Jesus on the Mount saw, and felt, and heard the invisible. They became conscious of what Emerson calls "the sweep of the celestial stream". And is not the law of the spiritual life this—that knowledge of unseen realities by the human soul is contingent upon the diligent practice of spiritual intercession? The man of mind may "hitch his waggon to a star," but the man who prays has fellowship with Him who makes the stars.

II. There was a glorification of common things. Common things took on new forms of loveliness, and both nature and life revealed new splendours while He prayed. It is thus that prayer both hallows and transfigures all life's commonplaces. The exaltation of the ordinary to the sublime is characteristic of the Christian religion. Pope, in his preface to his translation of the Iliad, says, that Homer's poetry "brightens all the rubbish about it, till we see nothing but its own splendour". And prayer, by which I mean reverence, sympathy, worship, adoration in the presence of the Supreme, can alone create that spiritual mood which in common things discovers the beauty of the Lord.

III. There was a transfiguration of self. It is a law of science that environment influences life. It is also a law of the spiritual realm that associations colour personality. Looking unto Jesus will produce a new face, as well as fashion a new soul. Prayer has power to transform flesh as well as spirit.

—J. Flanagan, Man's Quest, p149.

References.—IX:29.—Expositor (6th Series), vol. viii. p117. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture—St. Luke 9:32

I. It is one mark of every great awakening that it reveals to us unexpected glories. When intellect is quickened and the feelings are moved; when the will is reinforced and conscience purified, the world immediately ceases to be commonplace, and clothes itself in unsuspected splendour. Do you think it is an idle figure of speech when we talk of the long sleep of the Middle Ages? Do you imagine that we are only using metaphor when we describe the Reformation as an awakening? I hardly think that we could speak more literally than when we use such simple terms as these. It was not till powers and faculties were quickened in the great movements of Renaissance and Reform that the clouds scattered and the blue heaven was seen.

II. In spiritual awakening we find that the suggestion of our text arrests us. There are many glories which we never see till the call of our Lord has bidden us awake. (1) There is the Bible, for instance. It is one thing to feel the Bible's charm, and it is another thing to see the Bible's glory: and the glory of the Bible is a hidden glory, until a man is spiritually awake (2) Or think again of the life of our brother man. Underneath all life of passion and affection there are spiritual possibilities for the meanest, and not till the world is wakened by the Gospel are the hidden glories of humanity revealed. (3) And the same thing is true of our dear Lord Himself. We must be spiritually wakened if we would see His glory. It is only then that He reveals Himself, in the full and glorious compass of His grace.

III. It is part of God's discipline with us in the years, that the years should waken us to see glories which once we missed. (1) The value of our college education is not the amount of raw knowledge which it gives us. True education is not meant to store us; true education is intended to awaken us; and the joy of the truly educated man is no poor pride in his superior knowledge: it is that he has been so wakened that in every realm and sphere he can see glories unobserved before. (2) Now if this be true of our schools and of our colleges, do you not think it holds also of God's education? It is a truth we should ever keep clear before us. But the deepest interpretation of the text is not of this world. It will come to its crown of meaning in eternity.

—G. H. Morrison, Surprise: Addresses from a City Pulpit, p290.

Fully Awake

Luke 9:32

Thus it must ever be. Most men are half-asleep, and they do not know it So they see nothing, and go home to tell nothing, and say, worst of all, that there was nothing to be seen. It is always Luke 9:46-48

With a fearless candour, the Evangelists tell us that more than once the spirit of rivalry manifested itself among our Lord's disciples, and the first occasion is that of which the description has just been read to you.

Christ calls upon His disciples to be voluntarily and deliberately what children are unconsciously. They are not to be self-seeking and self-asserting, like the grown children of this world, but meek and lowly of heart, not thinking of their relative rank and importance, but in singleness of heart giving themselves to the twofold service, that of each other and that of their King. In this sense the greatest of all in the Kingdom, the Head of the Kingdom Himself, was the humblest of all.

I. It was New Teaching for the World that the meek were to inherit the earth, and that self-repression was a surer mark of worth than self-assertion. The Apostles of Christ, on whom that teaching had been so often, so emphatically impressed, placed it in the forefront of their ministry. Yet it is evident that the childlike spirit was not easy to develop, even in the first days, when hearts glowed with a newly-found peace and joy in believing. The Epistles speak in many places of a disappointing state of things, reveal to us jealousies and heart-burnings, assertions of superiority, factious efforts to gain the upper hand, and St. Paul has to insist again and again on the greatness of meekness and lowliness. The temper for which He pleads is the voluntary surrender of the individual for the common good.

II. The Spirit at Work in Society To-day.—Is it not disquieting, to say the least, to turn from such teaching to observe the spirit at work in the society of today? It has been well remarked that not only has humility fallen into disrepute, but even its place in the list of virtues has been questioned. As with humility in its political phase, so also with its social phase. Men ask themselves, "Why should I be humble? Why should I even temporarily take up an attitude of subordination to another? Why should not my will, my wishes, my purposes prevail, or at least assert for themselves whatever place they can gain?" and the answer to be given to all these questions seems conclusive, even apart from the Christian motive. It is this: that civilised society would be impossible, or if possible would be intolerable, were it an arena from which conciliation was absent, and in which every man was fighting for his own end.

III. The Place where we can Serve Best.—To a man in whom the Spirit of Christ is at work, the humblest place is the highest if his heart tells him it is the place where he can serve best. It is a law which only a sincere faith can bow to and cheerfully live by, but the very severity of the law which makes service the highest dignity has a fascination for every noble nature.

References.—IX:46-48.—Expositor (6th Series), vol. iv. p416. IX:48.—J. H. Jowett, British Congregationalist, 15th Aug1907 , p138.

The Providence of Time

Luke 9:51

If we look carefully into things, we shall find that every matter is related to a plan, a method or scheme of life. Time has hitherto been treated in the sacred record almost with contempt; it is spoken of as so transient, so empty, and our very life as measured by time is as a post hastening on his way, is as a vapour rising up to be blown away by the wind. What is our life as measured by time? A breath, a gasp, nothingness. Yet here we have time elevated into a kind of significance and special importance. "When the time was come:" cannot man hasten the time? That man can never do. Cannot man hasten the coming of the summer? Not by one hairsbreath. Is it not in the power of man to say to the snow, Be melted and flow away in fertilising rivers among the valleys and the meads and the fair gardens? The snow does not know the name of man. The Lord keeps all the great opportunities and appointments in His own hand, and He will not allow the most scientific and painstaking of us to interfere for one moment in the degree in which His providences shall ripen and take effect.

I. This or that action, says the Divine Ruler, shall be done at such and such a time; it shall not be done one hour before the appointed moment; all the kings in the world cannot hasten the chariot-wheels one hairsbreadth; we simply have to stand still and see the Divine movement and watch the palpitations that make the very clouds of mystery alive as if a heart were throbbing within their folds. Jesus Christ was very careful in pointing out this matter of providential time, and so was the Apostle Paul. Jesus Christ said, "Woman, what have I to do with thee? Mine hour is not yet come:" it may come at any moment, but that moment itself has not yet arrived; we must not forestall or anticipate. Jesus Christ was ready to show the world all His miracles; He was prepared from eternity with all the wonders which were to accompany the Messianic reign. Yet Jesus Christ waited for the moment, Jesus Christ tarried for the Divine will; Jesus Christ said, Mine hour is not yet come, I am watching, I am waiting, I am neither wishing nor praying, I am simply awaiting the ripening of time, the almost visible presence of the one moment that is critical and agonistic. We are too small to live as Jesus did; we can only hope and pray to live in the direction of His life, to show what we would be if we could but for this sense of death that outruns the summer and this sense of incompleteness that mocks our most aspiring ambition.

II. Something is to be learned from the almost taunt with which Jesus Christ replied to the scribes and Pharisees upon one occasion; said Luke 9:51

Is not every time alike? Is there a ripening ministry proceeding in nature and in the affairs of men? Is there any poetry in the clock? May we not strike our own hours? What is the meaning of this continual allusion to punctual moments, points of time, the analysis of hours, the waiting, the watching, the flying, the word of command as to time and arrangement? Can we not do things just when we like? Certainly not. Why not? Because we are not atheists. There is a providence of moments; everything is settled, defined, delimited, and is to be known at the altar. We are impatient because we are small; the humming-top goes round sooner than the sun. There is a religion of magnitude; the velocity of every planet is determined and the fall of every sere leaf is known; not a sparrow falleth to the ground without your Father. Is this the teaching of Jesus Christ? This is pre-eminently the doctrine which Jesus Christ laid down and upon which Jesus Christ acted; He did nothing roughly—He moved step by step according to the footfall of the Divine going. "Woman, what have I to do with thee? Mine hour is not yet come." Is there a coming of hours? are there jubilee days and victory moments? has the summer a birth-time? is she calendared and scheduled among the expected and certain visitors? does she come regularly? is there a punctual moment in which summer, the daughter of the skies, is born? "Mine hour is not yet come."

I. And Jesus said, "Father, the hour is come." Do you recognise this? The same voice of patience; it has lost its reproving accent. "Woman, what have1to do with thee? Mine hour is not yet come:" a whispered rebuke, a censure amid the wedding favours and confectioneries and wines; then years after, "Father, the hour is come"—just come, it came a moment ago—"now glorify Thy Son". Why not three years before, or thirty? The hour was not then come; now that the hour has come, let the glory flow. I would enter gratefully and reasonably into these mysteries of the economy and providence of time that I may chide myself with many a cutting rebuke for impatience and hurry, when I ought to have been tranquil with the calm of God.

II. This makes life very solemn. This consideration, and all the issues that belong to it, should penetrate into our business calculations and arrangements and all our forecasts and vaticinations of things; specially ought it to penetrate into that evil temper of ours, which is prone to ascend the judgment-seat and doom men to penal servitude. "Judge nothing before the time:" you do not know the whole case yet; you think you know it, but you are only common jurymen under the direction of a paid magistracy, and you are only wanted to return a verdict according to the evidence that is laid before you, and within these small points you can build prisons, and put irons on the wrists and ankles of men. It is not judgment, it is a miserably inadequate reply to a sin old as the devil and inwardly as hot as one of hell's own cinders. "Judge nothing before the time:" the man is not so bad, or so good, as you think him to be; all the evolution will take place, and the harvest will determine everything; let us have no offhand, hurry-scurry judgments, but a waiting upon God, because only God can show you the evidence of the man's heart, and there you will some day trace how he came to be a criminal, and you will forgive him and kiss him and break bread with him. "Judge nothing before the time."

III. What, then, have we to do? To wait. You have not to force your destiny, you have not to be impatient with time, but to accept its slow hours; and oh, how leaden can be the foot of time! the weary day, the endless night, the pendulum that oscillates, and yet ticks off no sign of progress, the sleep that will not come, the tranquillity that puckers its face into a bitter sneer! Yet we have to wait; we think we could open the gate now, but God says it is not now to be opened; He keeps us standing outside gates which we could vault, but we must stand outside until the gates are opened. What can keep us in any state of quietude during those moments of resentful, impatient waiting? Only one ministry can keep us right, and that is the ministry of faith. Is there a text upon that subject? There is a beautiful text which every man should write upon the very equator of his heart and make a belt of gold bearing this legend, "He that believeth shall not make haste".

IV. There are two times that cannot be too soon recognised. "It is high time to awake out of slumber, for now is our salvation nearer than when we first believed." That time is ready, the time to get up, to shake off slumber, to rise to kiss the morning wind and to lay hold of the morning plough and have a good long day's work of honest service. The man who is going to succeed is the man who gets up first and works with a will, and that tells old mocking, tempting, bribing slumber to stand back till he has tired himself into a condition to deserve and enjoy it.

There is another time, a pre-eminently Biblical time; that time has come, that time has always been here, making its silent or its resounding appeals to human attention. What is that other time? Shall I name it? "Now is the accepted time, now is the day of salvation." "Seek ye the Lord while He may be found, call ye upon Him while He is near." "Now"—that is God's time in the matter of salvation of the soul. Blessed are they who hear that Now and answer it with a great love!

—Joseph Parker, City Temple Pulpit, vol. vii. p71.

References.—IX:51.—J. Bannerman, Sermons, p163. W. M. Clow, The Secret of the Lord, p323. Expositor (4th Series), vol. iii. p307. Ibid. vol. vi. p51. Ibid. (6th Series), vol. vii. p297. A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture—St. Luke 9:54

I. Elias is a New Testament name for the Elijah of the Old Testament. Elijah was a prophet of fire and vengeance and doom, a most austere and terrible Luke 9:56

I. The title assumed by Jesus, "The Son of Man". It is remarkable that throughout the Gospels no person ever addressed the Christ as the Son of Luke 9:57-62

I. The circumstance which evoked this scribe's sudden exclamation was simple enough. Jesus, wearied with a forenoon of attendance on the sick, and an afternoon of loud speaking from a boat to the crowd on the shore in an atmosphere sultry, close, and thundery, portending the storm that quickly followed, proposed to cross over to the wild, eastern side of the lake, and so for a time get quiet from the pressure of the busy, thickly peopled western shore. The scribe had evidently been greatly impressed by the parables regarding the kingdom which our Lord had been uttering, and which are recorded in the thirteenth chapter of Matthew. Himself a man of education, he saw, perhaps more clearly than the multitude, the extraordinary literary grace and point of these parables, and probably, also, he was influenced by a desire to have a secure place in the kingdom spoken of, which he expected our Lord would immediately establish in Jerusalem. Seeing our Lord about to leave, he proposes to attach himself to Him.

The scribe was sincere but hasty. He was the kind of man who leaps before he looks: by no means the worst kind of Luke 9:58

We shall much misunderstand these words if we think of them as merely referring to the circumstances of Christ's outward life and to the duties of discipleship then. They are true for all time, and the contrast and the requirement in them is for us quite as much as for the disciples who companied with Him as He walked through all Judea, preaching the Gospel and healing the sick.

I. This homeless life raises man above the beasts. What a contrast between the rest of the creatures of the field and the unrest of man! This contrast is really the exhibition of man's superiority. Our sense of homelessness comes from our loftier endowments and can only be stifled by self-degradation, by becoming material and confined to the present.

II. This homeless life must be ours if we are to follow Christ. It is not the mere natural facts of transiency and change which are spoken of here, but it is our attitude in regard to them. Christ's homelessness embraced the literal, and that is wonderful when we reflect that day by day He consciously surrendered it all, and for our sakes. But what constituted it with Him must with us. (1) There must be the habitual sense of transiency and change. (2) Habitual consciousness of disproportion between this and us. (3) Habitual detaching of ourselves from all the outward that we may live in and strain towards God. This strain of mind is ours in proportion as we are Christ's disciples.

III. This homeless life is the only one which makes us feel at home here.

—A. Maclaren.

The Burial of the Past

Luke 9:59-60

Let the dead bury their dead. Ah! if only they would! If only the dead things could be left to the dead men to put away! If only the dead world would make itself scarce and clear up its rubbish and disappear off the scene! But that is just what will not happen. The dead generations have left behind them a heavy deposit. All about us their ruins block the roads and choke the passages and obstruct the channels.

I. We find this literally true in physical fact. Our town plannings, for instance, with their seemly schemes, cannot get forward an inch without being brought up short by the dead weight of the past. We cannot get our spaces clear. The dead hand withholds. We are powerless against the dead. It is they who are strong; it is we who are as impotent ghosts. Those who are in their graves long ago put out their wills upon the living world of today and forbid it its free growth.

The bad cities that the dead built up for our damage and disgrace are round us still. They breed their ancient diseases; they spread their familiar plagues. We cannot sweep them into some vast dustbin, and breathe freely and begin again. The dead have gone their way, but they have not taken their work with them. It is we who have got to bury them somehow, and half our time is taken up in the dreary job of burying dead things which have been left on our hands. Bishop Creighton ironically declared that each generation as it came along had for its main occupation the task of undoing the mistakes of the generation that preceded it. A dismal picture of a melancholy half-truth!

Yet, again, in the social world, what a weary amount of wreckage still encumbers the ground, that no one has the leisure, or the strength, or the heart, to clear up. Old relics of a dead tradition are still about us. They have no intelligible significance now. They carry no responsibility with them. They tell of a story that is told. Yet they are here still, and have power to prevent the realities of the actual day from making themselves felt. They carry on a pretence which disguises the ideals which are now doing the real work. They hinder us, therefore, from understanding where we are, or taking true measure of the forces under which we are living. They are dead, but there is no one to bury them.

II. Our Lord in this imperious "Follow Me" did not require us to ignore the past out of which we came. He cannot have intended to claim that it should be blotted out and a start made as with a clean canvas. There is no possibility for man of a clean canvas, such as Plato asked for long ago. We cannot bury the past away out of sight and follow Christ as if nothing had ever occurred that would qualify that following. For Jesus Christ Himself is historical. He enters in upon a drama already long in action. He takes man's story up just there where it stood. He ignores nothing of what has been; He justifies the process, the gradual growth, the slow development. He makes historical conditions His medium, His material, His interpretation. Out of what has been we all come to Him, and He is unintelligible, except in relation to His evolution. The experience of the past is essential to His manifestation. It is impossible for Him not to give it its full value.

"Let the dead bury their dead "was on His lips no iconoclastic watchword, no Philistine formula that slighted what the dead had done or cut the tender threads that bind us to our fathers. Our Lord was essentially the very last who would ignore the enduring claim upon us of the home that had nourished us and of the father who begot us. We know how profoundly He valued the tenderness that hung round the grave at Bethany, and the passionate love that poured itself out in such self-forgetting abandonment over His own burial. Better than the utilitarian service of the poor to have broken the box of spices, and spilt its wealth over His dying body. "She hath done it for my burial. Verily I say unto you, whenever the Gospel shall be preached in the whole world, there shall also this thing that this woman hath done he told for a memorial of her."

No! He prized dead and dying things.

But dear and near and real as is the dying past, holy and honourable as are the funeral rites of our decay, there is one claim which overpasses it. So He must declare; one supreme and dominant cause, which no death may hinder or withhold. It is the cause of life. Life is for ever moving, advancing, growing.

Life is lord. It makes demands which nothing can gainsay. And Christ is our life. He takes up into Himself all the significance of life. He raises its claims to their highest power. His cause overrides every other plea. "Let the dead bury their dead. Follow thou Me."

That is the final and masterful necessity before which all must give way. "Follow thou Me." He has come out of that past, and it is made all the more precious and significant because it has led up to Him. It has not died in vain! for Luke 9:61

I would ask you to consider these three characters which are brought before us here at the close of this ninth chapter of the Gospel of St. Luke.

I. Now in the fifty-seventh and fifty-eighth verses you have an example of enthusiasm awakened by the teaching, the character, and the person of Jesus Christ. "It came to pass, that, as they went in the way, a certain man said unto Him, Lord, I will follow Thee whithersoever Thou goest. And Jesus said unto him, Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man hath not where to lay His head." Now have we not oftentimes felt something of the same enthusiasm? We have seen a life wholly given to God, or we have marked the daily steps of one who gave forth a loving invitation, not so much by the words she spoke as by the life she lived. Or we have been kindled by the story of some missionary biography. And have you not felt the same thing when first it has broken in upon you how wonderfully forgiving God is? And yet is it not strange this man is not now welcomed? Our Lord, on the contrary says: "Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man hath not where to lay His head". He wanted him to count the cost. Jesus Christ would have you weigh well the pros and cons. He will not have you join Him on false pretences.

II. Now the next case which is suggested to us is the very opposite. "And He said unto another, Follow Me. But he said, Lord, suffer me first to go and bury my father. Jesus said unto him, Let the dead bury their dead; but go thou and preach the kingdom of God." If the first was enthusiastic, the second is reluctant The lesson is very clear. It is this. Beware of anything which says to you, "Jesus Christ may call you, but first do this". No, you must let Jesus Christ be first.

III. The third case which is brought before us has something in it in common with both the others. The man volunteers to follow, but he petitions for delay. He said: "Lord, I will follow Thee; but let me first go and bid them farewell which are at home at my house. And Jesus said unto him, No Luke 9:61

"I think," wrote Mrs. Fry once to her niece, "we are all tempted to take up a half-way house in the religious life, to say, "Thus far will I go and no farther"; but I believe that it is by making no restrictions that we may be brought at last into the glorious liberty, rest, and peace of the children of God."

References.—IX:61.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. vii. No403. Brooke Herford, Courage and Cheer, p203. J. C. M. Bellew, Christ in Life! Life in Christ, p54. IX:61 , 62.—H. M. Butler, Harrow School Sermons, p266.

The Spiritual Ploughman

Luke 9:62

There are many metaphors and similes in the New Testament to understand which we require a special knowledge of the country in which the words were spoken. But this particular metaphor is one that appeals at once to every one.

I. Characteristics of the Ploughman.

(a) Dogged Perseverance.—It is true of his work, if of any work, that it is "dogged" that does it, to use an old proverb. He has to go on hour after hour, and there is little apparent result of his work. The man who passes down the road in the early morning, and sees him steadily engaged upon his work, is almost surprised, as he goes home in the evening, to see the same man still ploughing in the same field, and with apparently so very little result. He has to be a man of dogged perseverance.

(b) Undeterred by Weather.—In the second place he has to go on, and he does go on, whether the weather is fine or the reverse. He may begin with the sunshine in the early morning, but clouds may gather at noon, and he may finish his work in mist and rain.

(c) Must Look Straight On.—And then, again, the ploughman not only must never look back, but he must never look on one side or the other, if he would plough his furrow quite clean and perfectly direct. He must be wholly bent and wholly intent upon his work. It is not an easy thing to plough well, and the ploughman who knows his work looks steadily ahead, that he may keep the furrow straight.

(d) And Work in Hope.—Fourthly, and in some respects most touching and true of all, when we understand the application, the ploughman ploughs wholly in hope. He practically sees nothing, and, perhaps, never will see anything of the work that he does. As he ploughs on, hour after hour, there is a picture ever cheering him of something in which he perhaps will never take part, and it is of a strong sinewy arm gathering in the harvest; and there is a song ever in his ears which Luke 9:62

I. Christ seeks to produce absolute devotion to Himself. It is very remarkable to notice how lofty and uncompromising are His claims. No man ever made such demands on men. Notice the nature of this entire consecration. (1) It is not devotion to a cause, but to a Person. (2) It is not outward action, but inward disposition. (3) Resolute concentration of purpose.

II. Christ secures that entire consecration by the influence of His own entire surrender to us.

III. This consecration is absolutely necessary from the very nature of the case. Christ's demand looked at more closely becomes Christ's gift. To demand all implies that He can satisfy all. He cannot satisfy all without the full adherence of the whole man.

IV. Christ accepts and helps imperfect consecration.

—A. M ACLAREN.

Waverers

Luke 9:62

I. Note that unwavering devotion is sure of success in all spheres of life.

II. Unwavering concentration is in the highest degree essential in the disciple.

III. Entire consecration is interfered with by strong temptations.

IV. Wavering unfits. There is forgiveness for all our wavering.

—A. Maclaren.

Luke 9:62

In the life of St. Francis Xavier there is a striking illustration of this text. While on his way to his great missionary work among the Indians, St. Francis, returning from Italy, passed through Spain and came into his native country. One of the party was the Portuguese Ambassador to the Pope, Don Pedro Mascareas. The travellers entered a rich and fertile valley and the rays of the setting sun shone upon the turrets of a noble castle.

"What a lovely spot!" said Mascareas to his companion, as he slackened his pace the better to enjoy the view; then, suddenly stopping, he exclaimed, "Why, surely, Father Francis, we must be in the close neighbourhood of your home. Is not that the castle of Xavier we see yonder, just visible between the trees? You have said nothing, and it had wellnigh escaped my memory. We must make a halt hard by, in order to give you time to pay a visit to your mother and your family."

"With your permission, noble sir, returned Francis, "we will pursue our journey. My dwelling is now wherever our Lord is pleased to send me; I have given up my earthly home to Him, and have no intention of revisiting it."

"But consider," resumed the other, in astonishment at such a resolution, "that you are about to depart for India, that you may probably never return, and, anyhow, seeing your mother's age, you are not likely to do so during her lifetime."

Francis smiled gently as he replied: "I thank you, noble sir, for the kindness which induces you to urge me in this matter, but pardon me for continuing steadfast in my first intention. Such a visit, and such a leave-taking would be productive only of useless pain and regrets. It would be like a looking back after having put the hand to the plough, and would tend perhaps to unnerve and unfit me for the labours which are before me; while the non-indulgence of my natural wishes is a little offering which I cheerfully and gladly make to our good God."

References.—IX:62.—J. H. Jowett, The Transfigured Church, p205. Expositor (5th Series), vol. ii. p41; ibid. (6th Series), vol. vi. p448. R. J. Wardell, Preacher's Magazine, vol. xviii. p554. J. H. Jowett, British Congregationalist, 23Aug1906 , p84.