Bible Commentaries

Chapter15

Christ's Missionary Example—Multitudes and Disciples—Christ's Picture of Blessedness—a Gate for Every Man

Prayer

Almighty God, we thank thee that we have not come to the mount that might be touched, and that burned with fire, and unto darkness and tempest and the sound of a trumpet and the voice of words, a sight so terrible that Moses said, "I exceedingly fear and quake"; but we have come to Mount Zion, the city of the Heavenly Jerusalem, the place made sacred by the presence of our Saviour. We are now about to sit at his feet, that from his gracious lips we may hear the new and larger law. We bless thee that Matthew 5:1-12.

1. And seeing the multitudes, he went up into a mountain: and when he was set, his disciples came unto him:

2. And he opened his mouth, and taught them, saying,

3. Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

4. Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted.

5. Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth.

6. Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall toe filled.

7. Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy.

8. Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God.

9. Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.

10. Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness" sake for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

11. Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake.

12. Rejoice, and be exceeding glad: for great is your reward in heaven: for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you.

"And seeing the multitudes, he went up into a mountain." He has already been in the river, and walking by the seaside: to-day he goes up into a mountain, and presently we shall have to accompany him in his journeys through cities and towns and villages. Thus, little by little, a place at a time, he will claim and sanctify the whole earth. He was baptized in the river, walking by the seaside he called men to service: this morning he walks up the hill as up a stairway his own hands have fashioned; presently he will go further and spread his own gospel typically over all the face of the earth. Thus he will do in symbol what he will tell us to do literally, for what other places are there upon the whole globe besides the river, the sea, the mountain, the city, the town, the village, the house? Thus the kingdom of heaven is like a grain of mustard seed. In the doing and work of our own Saviour he will give us the germ of the missionary idea; we shall see the people of one town getting round him and saying, "Don"t leave us," and he will rise above them and say, "I must preach the gospel in other cities also." Thus, when he comes to wind all up, in the most beneficent climax that ever crowned the eloquence of a lifetime, he will only tell us to expand what he himself began.

He went up into a mountain, into a pulpit not made with hands. I like these weird beginnings. He did not go in conventional methods; we wait till the church is built: he said the church was not made with hands: wherever there is a sky there is a roof, wherever there is a floor there is a platform, wherever there is a man there is a congregation, wherever there is a human heart there is an opportunity of preaching the kingdom of heaven.

"And when he was set." Did the carpenter's son do what the Rabbis did? They gathered their robes about them when they sat down in Moses" seat, for the Jewish Rabbi always sat whilst he talked. It was even so that Jesus did on a larger and grander scale. He begins royally: there is a subtle claim of dominion in this very attitude of his; he does not beg to be heard; he does not say, "If you please, I shall be glad to mention to you a suggestion or two which have been stirring in mine own heart." He sits, and the mountain gives him hospitality. He fills the mountain, it beseems him like a king's throne. Close your eyes and open the vision of your hearts, and look at him. We go into small buildings, we ask permission to speak in limited synagogues; why, in the motion of his limbs there is a subtle, strange royalty of mien. When he sits he sits as one who has a right to the mountain, and when he speaks it is as one whose gentle voice fills the spaces like a healing breeze.

"He opened his mouth." The ages had been waiting for the opening of those lips. When some great men amongst us and all over the world open their lips in high places they seem to have the power of making history. Other nations are listening, wondering, hoping, fearing; when this Man opened his mouth he uttered words which would fill creation, which would be a gospel set" in every language ever spoken by mankind, and easily set in every language. There are tongues into which you cannot drive Milton. Shakespeare must, in many of his utterances, be a stranger for ever to those who have but one tongue, and that not rich in its capacity of utterance. But the words of Jesus Christ go everywhere, and fall into all languages with infinite ease. He speaks of light, love, life, truth, peace, God, home. There cannot be a language without these words having some distinct share in it. He sits down upon every mountain and breathes through every language his most ineffable gospel.

"He taught them." This is a new word; we have not met with this word before in our reading. When we listened to Jesus Christ before, he was preaching, now he is teaching. The preacher was a herald, a crying voice: "Repent," said he. The air was startled by the cry. Now he changes the tone: he sits down and teaches, explains, simplifies, draws the listeners into confidence and sympathy with himself, and makes them co-partners of the infinite secret of the divine truth and love.

Do we run after preachers or teachers? Unquestionably after preachers. The teachers of London to-day are talking to half-dozens, the preachers are thronged. Who cares to be taught? How many of us bring our Bible to church and follow the preacher page by page, checking every reference, testing every doctrine, asking for explanations by eager eyes and burning faces? By the trick of an anecdote I will engage to seduce from the wisest teacher in London nine-tenths of his hearers. We are in the anecdotal age: some child's story would tickle us, while the philosopher's doctrine would muddle the heads that are nearly lunatic because of the mean and vulgar noises of a mean and vulgar world.

"Saying, Blessed." That is a new word also. I have not met that word aforetime. What was it that he said when we first heard him? "Repent." And now he says "Blessed." There is a high logic in this sequence. Preaching first, then teaching. Repentance first, then inspiration—these are the coherences and minute consistencies, the moral unities which you find all through and through this Christian Matthew 5:13-16.

13. Ye are the salt of the earth: but if the salt have lost his savour, wherewith shall it be salted? It is thenceforth good for nothing but to be cast out, and to be trodden under foot of men.

14. Ye are the light of he world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hid.

15. Neither do men light a candle, and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick; and it giveth light unto all that are in the house.

16. Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.

There are two ways of looking at this portion of the Lord's address He is speaking to the disciples—that may be inferred from the first verse of the chapter, wherein it says, "When he was set, his disciples came unto him, and he opened his mouth and taught them." Are we to suppose that these disciples referred to were the salt of the earth and the light of the world, and a city set upon a high hill? Surely not in their merely personal capacity, and in their then condition. Let us take the first view, therefore; namely, that Jesus Christ is speaking of the Jews, and speaking of them he hesitates not to describe them as the salt of the earth, the light of the world, the city set upon a hill. And yet in a very gentle way, but so broad as to admit of no misapprehension, he intimates that the salt has lost its savour, the light has been put under a bushel, and the conspicuousness of the city has become but the greater shame. The effect of this teaching is to remind men of great calling and election, and of great and appalling declension, and to prepare the way for such remedial and reclaiming measures as were in the purpose and counsel of the Eternal. This was not dust that had become drier, it was not clay that had become harder, it was salt that had lost its savour, light that was in danger of being wholly extinguished. Jesus Christ, therefore, recognising the greatness and the grandeur of the call in which the Jews stood, proceeded in this most gracious and gentle manner to indicate the declension into which they had fallen. That is one view.

Take the other view. Jesus Christ sees in those disciples what his church is to be. Not addressing them in their then intellectual and spiritual condition, but looking forward as men look from the germ to the full fruition, he regarded them as the beginning of his own divine kingdom, and addressing them as such, he described them as the salt of the earth, the light of the world, and a city set upon a hill. Both views are, in my opinion, correct. There is enough in each of them to awaken the most solemn reflection, to affect the soul with all the pain of the bitterest humiliation, and to inspire it with all that is most animating in the sacred word. I will take the second view and set it with some breadth before you.

Christ sees the greatest side of our nature, and he addresses that side, because we are more easily and effectually moved by encouragement than by any other influence. Tell a man he is a fool and you cast him into despair. Tell him that he has lost every chance, spoiled every opportunity, neglected all the counsel of heaven, and is no longer worthy of being counted a living creature in God's universe, and possibly you may burden him with all the distress of absolute despair. The effect will be according to the nature of the particular man who is addressed. Jesus Christ never gave us a discouraging view of ourselves whenever he saw us set in any relation to himself, of earnest listening or religious expectation or incipient desire to be wiser and better men. When we stood before him in the full erectness of our own purity, and came before him with a certificate of our own integrity, and requested to be heard upon the basis of our righteousness, he turned upon us the fury of the east wind, and banished us from his presence as men to whom he had nothing to say. Whenever we grouped ourselves around him and said we would listen with reverence and with religious expectation to what he had to say, then he opened the kingdom of heaven, and not until our capacity was surcharged did he withdraw his gracious and redeeming revelations of truth.

This is the great law of human teaching. If you want your boy to be a gentleman, do not begin by treating him as an invincible and incurable boor. I wait until that lesson gets right down into your apprehension. If you want to encourage your scholars in your Sunday-school or your scholastic establishment, begin by treating them as young philosophers. Give them credit for as much as you possibly can—by so doing you will cast them upon themselves in serious reflection, and with some anxiety they will endeavour to respond to the breadth, the sympathy, and the nobleness of your estimation of their capacity and diligence. If you want any man to do his best, trust him with considerable responsibility. Who could do his best if he knew he was watched, suspected, distrusted, and that the object of the vigilant criticism was to entrap him, to find out his defects, and to convince him by multitudinous arguments that he was wholly unfit for his position? Many of us could not work at all under such circumstances; we should simply succumb under their distressing weight if we did not resent them as intolerable humiliations.

Jesus Christ comes to us and says, "Ye are the salt of the earth"—says to a man who thought himself useless in the world, "Thou art as pungent salt in the midst of a putrid age," or, "Thou art as salt cast upon that which is already good, to preserve it from decay." Jesus Christ adds, "Ye are the light of the world"—tells a man who never suspected himself of having any light at all, that it is in him to throw a circle of radiance around his family, his neighbourhood, or it may be his country. Let us learn to follow this example in some degree. We get from men in many cases just what we tell them we expect from them; there is something in. human nature that likes to be trusted with responsibility, something in us that responds to great occasions. Jesus Christ always supplied a grand occasion to his hearers, and he opened the broad and sunny road of hope. He did not point to the low and dank caverns of despair.

Jesus Christ recognises the true influence of good men. He called them salt which is pungent, light which is lustrous, a city set on a hill which is conspicuous, and may be seen afar by travellers and by those who long for home. Some influences are active—salt and light; some influences passive—a city set on a hill. We must not judge one another's influence by our own, and condemn any man's influence in the church because it does not take its tone and range from our own method of doing things. Some clocks do not strike. They have to be looked at if from them we would know the time of day. Some clocks do strike, and they strike in the darkness as well as in the light, and it is pleasant to the weary, sleepless one now and again to catch the tone which tells him that the darkness is going and the light is coming. Do not undervalue me because I am a man of but passive influence. Do not charge me with ambition and madness because I am a man of energetic influence. Let each be what the great, loving, wise Father meant him to be. There is room in his heart for all. The brain makes no noise; the tongue no man can tame—is the tongue, therefore, not a divine creation? Yea, verily, God taught it its trick of speech and its wizardry of music. Is the brain not of divine formation because it makes no noise? Yea, verily, it is as the inmost church of the Lord wherein God shows the fullest of his heavenly and immortal splendour.

George Gilfillan, in his most energetic and inspiriting book called "Bards of the Bible," has some observations upon this matter of silence as contrasted with noise. As a boy I used to be very fond of that rhetorical writer, and as a man I do not renounce him. I have not seen the sentence for twenty years, but I think I can quote it even now in substance. He says, "The greatest objects in nature are the stillest: the ocean has a voice, the sun is dumb in his courts of praise. The forests murmur, the constellations speak not. Aaron spoke; Moses" face but shone. Sweetly might the High Priest discourse, but the Urim and the Thummim, the blazing stones upon his breast, flash forth a meaning deeper and diviner far." Young men, store your memory with such words as these, and you will never want to run away from your own society. The chairs may be vacant, but the air will be full of angels.

Yet whatever our influence may be, we may lose it. The salt may lose its savour, the light may be put under a bushel, and a city set upon a hill may turn its lights out, or build its walls against the sun and turn its windows otherwhere. The foolish discussion has been sometimes raised as to whether salt could lose its pungency—raised by people who wanted to catch the Saviour tripping in his speech. But in proportion to the difficulty is the solemnity. He who made the salt knows more about it than we do, and whatever may become of the salt, taking the mere letter as the limit of our criticism, we all know as the saddest and most tragical fact in life that some of the grandest intellects have lost their glory, and some right hands always lifted in defence of the right have lost their cunning. Let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall. What I say unto one I say unto all—watch.

Every man sheds a light peculiar to himself. No man has all the light; no one star holds in its little cup all the glory of the universe. One star differeth from another star in glory. Suppose one of the least of the stars should say, "I am going to withdraw from the firmament because I see a great flame, compared with whose splendour I am but as a glowworm in the presence of the sun." Better for that little foolish star to say, "The God that made yonder great flame trims my lamp, gives me my little sparkle of light."

There is a right way of using influence. Observe how Jesus Christ puts the matter when he says, "Let your light SO shine before men"; the word so should be emphasized as indicating the manner of the shining. Light may be so held in the hand as to dazzle the observer; light may be brought too near the eyes, light may be set at a wrong angle, light may be wasted, its beams be displayed so as to be of no use to the man who would read or work. Hence it is not enough to be luminous, but so to use our luminousness as to be of use to other people. There are men who, from my point of view, are luminous enough to light a whole country who do not light their own little house. There are men who need to be focalised, all but immeasurable men, with a kind of infinite capacity for anything, and who yet, for want of right setting and bringing together and focalising, live as splendid nothings and die as bubbles die upon the troubled wave. It is not enough, therefore, for us to have light and to be luminous; we must study the great economic laws by which even a little light may sometimes go a long way, and a great light may throw its timely splendour upon the road of him who is in perplexity and doubt.

Our Saviour further teaches us that our light is so to shine that our good works may be seen. He does not say that the worker may be made visible, but that the works may be observed, admired, imitated, may induce men to give glory to the Father which is in heaven. It is thus that his own sun works daily in the heavens: who dares look at the sun when he so shines as to fill the earth with all the beauty of summer? We turn our eyes up to him and he rebukes us with darts of fire; he says, "Look down, not up; look at the works, not the worker." So we may feast our eyes upon a paradise of flowers, and get much of heaven out of it, but the moment we venture to say, "Who did this—where is he?" "Show me the worker," the sun answers us with a rebuke of intolerable light. So no man hath seen God at any time, but we see his son Jesus Christ. No man hath seen God at any time, yet we count his stars when the great daylight is away; we wonder how they were hung upon nothing, and how they shine without wasting, and what they are—porch lamps of a King's palace, street lamps on a heavenly way—who can tell? None, yet the bare question-asking stirs the mind and the heart with a noble wonder that is almost religious. What wonder, then, if you cannot look at the sun, that you cannot look at the God that made the sun? If he is invisible in himself, he is not invisible in his ministry. We also are his offspring. In every little child I see his work, in the meanest human life I see the infinitude of his wisdom and the beneficence of his purpose. In myself I see the divinity of God.

Thus our lesson stands in the meantime. A kind word of encouragement has been spoken to us: we are hot regarded as little, insignificant, contemptible, not worth gathering up: we are spoken of as salt, light, and a city set on a hill. Let us answer the grandeur of the challenge. We have been told that the best influence may decline and die: salt may lose its savour, the light may be extinguished. Let us hear the solemn exhortation, and exercise a spirit of vigilant caution. We have been called to a certain manner of life; let us take heed unto the call, lest having magnificent powers we waste them as rain would be wasted upon the unanswering and barren sand.

Chapter17

Fulfilling the Law—The Minuteness of the Law—Learn By Doing—a Grand Opportunity

Prayer

Almighty God, surely thou dost put us into the fire to take out of us all that is bad, and to make us as good as thou art, according to our degree. Thou dost not delight to see our life in pain, thou hast no pleasure in death, and the darkness thou dost abhor. All thy purpose concerning us is love, therefore dost thou try us by many ways, that we may be brought into thy purity and love, and show forth thine infinite holiness. Thou dost smite the pride of our eyes and rob our right hand of its riches, and cause our right foot to tremble and to fall, that thou mayest do some good to our soul, awakening the attention of our love, and charming the trust of our heart that it may give itself wholly to thee and live in none beside. Give us this view of thy way amongst us, and then our fears shall no longer distress us, but upon our smitten life there shall shine a great light as of the very hope of heaven. Whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth. No chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but rather grievous; nevertheless afterwards it worketh the peaceable fruits of righteousness to them that are exercised thereby. We have not yet resisted unto blood, striving against sin, and our strength has not been utterly crushed in the great warfare. Behold, thou hast purposes of mercy towards us in all these struggles, fears, contests, and subtle temptations. Thou art training us, by a wondrous education, to be like thyself in all pureness and grace. Thou hast chastened us sore, but thou hast not left us utterly in the hands of the tormentor. We are cast down but not destroyed, we are persecuted but not forsaken; thou dost save us with an infinite salvation, and no man can pluck us out of our Father's hand. Undertake for us in all our way, set before us to eat and to drink what thou wilt, grant unto us rest or unrest, send upon us the great storm or the benediction of light; only in the end make us true and good, fit for thy society, and qualified for thy service.

We have to bless thee in long, sweet hymns for thy loving kindness and thy tender mercy: having begun to sing thy praise, our hearts would sing themselves away in grateful Matthew 5:17-20.

17. Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil.

18. For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.

19. Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men Matthew 5:20.

"For I say unto you, that except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of Heaven."

For righteousness read rightness. Then the text will read, "For I say unto you, that except your rightness, your notion and idea of what is right, shall exceed the notion and idea entertained by the Scribes and Pharisees as to what is right, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven." Given, a ministry which begins in this tone, to know how it will end. It is impossible that it can end otherwise than in crucifixion. The Cross is here. If the Scribes and Pharisees get to know that a man has been speaking so of them, they will never rest until they kill him. The shadow of the Cross is in everything spoken and done by Jesus Christ. He here assails the religion and the respectability, the learning and the influence of his day. This is more than a speech, it is a challenge, it is an impeachment, it is an indictment of high treason—how then can the speaker finish his eloquence but in a peroration of blood? He must die for this, or play the hypocrite further on. A man who talks Matthew 5:21-32.

21. Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time (after the return from Babylon, when synagogues began to be established), Thou shalt not kill; and whosoever shall kill, shall be in danger of (liable to) the judgment:

22. But I (the personal pronoun is emphatic) say unto you, that whosoevor is angry with his brother without a cause, shall be in danger of the judgment: and whosoever shall say to his brother, Raca (any term of personal contempt), shall be in danger of the council; but whosoever shall say, Thou fool! shall be in danger of hell fire.

23. Therefore, if thou bring thy gift to the altar (if thou shouldst be offering), and there rememberest that thy brother hath aught against thee;

24. Leave there thy gift before the altar (reconciliation is better than liturgical propriety), and go thy way; first be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift.

25. Agree with thine adversary quickly, whilst thou art in the way with him; lest at any time the adversary deliver thee to the Matthew 5:33-48.

33. Again, ye have heard that it hath been said by them of old time, thou shalt not forswear thyself, but shalt perform unto the Lord thine oaths:

34. But I say unto you, Swear not at all; neither by heaven; for it is God's throne:

35. Nor by the earth; for it is his footstool: neither by Jerusalem; for it is the city of. the great King.

36. Neither shalt thou swear by thy head, because thou canst not make one hair white or black.

37. But let your communication be, Yea, yea; Nay, nay: for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil.

38. Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth:

39. But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.

40. And if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also.

41. And whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain.

42. Give to him that asketh thee, and from him that would borrow of thee turn not thou away.

43. Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy.

44. But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you;

45. That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.

46. For if ye love them which love you, what reward have ye? do not even the publicans the same?

47 And if ye salute your brethren only, what do ye more than others? do not even the publicans so?

48. Be ye therefore perfect, even as your father which is in heaven is perfect.

We had some difficulty in understanding the beatitudes, the music seemed to be too exquisite and refined for the rough instruments at our disposal. We hastened over them, rather than deliberately read them As your teacher, I had a purpose in this; I knew that the beatitudes would all come up again in practical form. Who can understand abstract and purely spiritual truth? But that which is impossible from one point of view may be rendered comparatively easy from another. Jesus Christ now proceeds to give examples upon what we might call the black board. When he said, looking it whilst he did say it, "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God," we did not understand the meaning of the unfathomable doctrine. When he said, "Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth," we thought he was speaking of himself, or of strangers, for we had never come within the sacred lines described by that simple yet immeasurable word, meekness. Now he is proceeding from doctrine to exhortation, and you will find under his exhortations the whole set of the beatitudes: he is giving you now to drink out of the wells he dug when he laid down the doctrine.

I cannot tell what he means by purity of heart, so he approaches my dull understanding with this practical direction—Do not be angry with your brother without a cause, do not call your brother by contemptuous names, do not describe any man wilfully and maliciously as a fool. I think these are easy exhortations, and when I begin to give them incarnation in my life I find they are supreme difficulties; I have not motive force in me enough to carry this tremendous engine along. Now I take him aside and say privately in the house, "I know now something of what you meant when you said, Blessed are the pure in heart." "Yes," he replies, "that was my purpose, and if your heart be not right you will never be able to do the apparently simple duties which I have now indicated. Unless there be pureness of heart there will be pollution of lips, unless there be rightness of heart there will be hidden and baleful fire in the spirit, and it will express itself in contempt and malice, and harshness and cruelty." So now that he comes into practical particulars, I find that they balance the spiritual doctrine which I could not understand. But I will try to do the duty—I shall be led back into the doctrine, and be made to feel that I cannot work with the hand except it expresses the inspiration of a cleansed heart So when he says to me, "If a man smite thee on the one cheek, turn to him the other also;" when I ask, "How is this to be done?" he says, "Recall the beatitudes." I then endeavour to remember what he said in the spiritual part of his discourse, and this sweet word returns to my memory—"Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth." When I heard that sentence the first time I dismissed it as a very beautiful conception, a high and beautiful theory, written in clouds and illustrated with sunset colours; but now that it comes down to me in a practical form, I find it was no cloudy revelation, no mere touch of intellectual beauty, no flash of the moral imagination, but something sound, honest, vital, divine. So it is no use telling a man to turn the other cheek to the man who has smitten him if he has not first turned his heart towards meekness. You cannot put on meekness except as you put on paint that can be washed off. If you have not the meek heart, you cannot do the meek deed. Do not play at meekness, do not simulate meekness; let us hide ourselves with Christ, who is meek and lowly in heart, then we shall be exactly what he meant when he told us that when we were smitten on one cheek we had to turn the other also. Throughout the whole of these practical exhortations you will find that he is reducing the beatitudes or spiritual doctrines to spiritual form and expression.

Let us now go a little into detail to establish this with some breadth of illustration. "Ye have heard that it hath been said by them of old time, Thou shalt not forswear thyself, but shalt perform unto the Lord thine oaths." That is, you have heard it laid down broadly that you are not to commit perjury: having taken a vow, you must be faithful to it; having uttered your oath, you must carefully and deliberately reduce it to practice. It must not be made a dead letter, it must net be evaded, it must not be inverted, there must be no perjury or false-swearing or foregoing of the most sacred oaths of life; but I say unto you, that that is a very poor advancement in the right direction. So far as it goes it is right enough, but go forward, follow me, so as to relieve yourself from the necessity of ever swearing at all. That is to say, let your heart be so sincere that your speech must be simple; cultivate that state of heart in the sight of God which naturally and necessarily, by virtue of the divine compulsion, expresses itself in simple, transparent, and beauteous sincerity and simplicity.

I do not understand the Saviour as forbidding what is known as judicial oath-taking or swearing. He always recognised certain necessities of the time, and he adapted his revelation from the beginning to the hardness of the hearts of those whom he had to instruct. But he was bound to point to the ultimate line he set up of ideal conversation. It is his purpose to make us so like himself that we cannot but speak exactly what is true. Consider the monstrousness of any man speaking only what is true because he has sworn to do it. That man is a liar. In his very nature and blood he is false, if he will only speak that which is true simply on the ground that he has taken an oath to do it. There can be no formal truthfulness: sincerity is a condition of heart; it is not the result of a mechanical contrivance coming out of the kissing a certain book under a certain adjuration. Jesus Christ therefore educates the race up to the point of not needing to swear or affirm or declare, with unusual emphasis. He would have our very breathing to be the expression of our hearts" condition, so that if a man said Yea, he meant that, and that only: if he said Nay, there was no mental reservation, no subtle and unexpressed equivocation of meaning, no intention, deep down in the heart, to take advantage of a certain set of terms under a certain set of circumstances—that is the deep and glorious meaning of the Son of God. Be so right within as to be incapable of uttering one word that is not pure as light and as fire. It is to that high result he would bring us. We are dull scholars, and the teacher has yet an infinite work before him.

Jesus Christ then addressed himself to certain little trickeries that were in custom amongst the people. He told them not to swear by heaven, nor by earth, nor by Jerusalem, nor by the head. Why did he go into this detail? Because such was the corruption of his age, that there were great and learned men who laid it down as right to break any oath in which you could not find, in so many letters, the name Jehovah. There was one great man in history who openly avowed that he felt himself to be at liberty to break any oath in which he did not expressly use the word God. If the word God had passed his lips he felt himself bound in honour to fulfil his oath, but if he sware by heaven, by the altar, by the queen, by his hair, by his palace, he did but gather so much straw as he could cast into the fire of his passion and burn when he pleased. Jesus Christ, with that marvellous comprehensiveness of teaching which is characteristic of his school, proceeds to show that, though you may not have the name of God in your oath, whatever you touch is sacred and has God in it. "Swear not by heaven, for it is God's throne; nor by the earth, for it is his footstool; nor by Jerusalem, for it is his city; nor by thine head, for he fashioned it and clothed it, and thou canst not make one hair white or black." So he delivered the term God from its consisting of so many letters and syllables, and showed that the whole universe was alive with God, and that to swear by a stone was to invoke the Creator that formed it. To be under such a Teacher is an inspiration, to hear such a man is to expose yourself to the mountain breeze or a whiff of ocean air full of life and giving life.

Take the next particular. "Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth, but I say unto you that ye resist not evil, but whosoever shall smite thee on the one cheek turn to him the other also, and if any man shall sue thee at the law and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also. And if any man compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain." We all know to what absurdities and iniquities a merely literal acceptance of these words would lead. You nibble at the meaning of Christ when you begin to think that you see it all in these bare words, as they would be understood by the unenlightened and unspiritual mind. What is Jesus Christ teaching here? He is teaching the great principle of forbearance or long-suffering. He quells all human passion, and sets upon human revenge the seal of his displeasure. Revenge is not to enter into our thoughts. As to self-protection it is written in our nature; it is not a debased instinct, it was in the original Adam, the divinely-shaped and divinely-inspired man, and the very first word spoken to the man constituted an appeal to this instinct, "Take care; in the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die. Protect thyself." It cannot be taken out of our manhood, this instinct of self-preservation; it can be sanctified, moderated, ennobled, and this is what Christ meant it to be. I may smite in judgment or I may smite in revenge, but the individual man who is injured cannot smite in judgment. I smite in temper—that is the very thing forbidden. We caution a man against taking the law into his own hands—that is exactly what Jesus Christ means in this direction. You ought not to have taken the law into your own hands—Why? Because you were only an individual and the individual is incomplete. What, then, should I have done? You should have referred it to the complete man. What is his name? Society. Society will lay its terrific hand upon the man that smote you. When will you learn that you are only a part and not a whole, a fraction and not an integer? The Judges , when he sits upon the bench and condemns a fellow-creature to penal servitude for life, is not an individual, he is the embodiment of Society, the representative of the latest civilization of his time and land. If you, being smitten on one cheek, turn round and smite the man who smote you, you may both be taken before the judge. Rather than that, turn to him the other also. Leave your defence and his punishment in the hands of the social man, the aggregate humanity, the judge.

This is exactly what Christ did himself. Christ did not personally resist evil. He exemplified the very doctrine now being explained. Personally, when he was reviled, he reviled not again, when he suffered he threatened not; he gave his back to the smiters and his cheeks to them that pluck off the hair. But as Judges , not the Jesus of Nazareth, but the Son of man, he shall come in his glory and all the holy angels with him he shall divide the nations and open hell under the feet of those that despised him. We believe that thou wilt come to be our Judge. Every eye shall see him, they that pierced him shall mourn because of him, those whose hands are wettest and reddest with human blood shall seek mercy of the rocks and pity of the mountains, for the wrath of his face shall scourge them like the fire that awaits their coming. Resist not evil, do not take the law into your own hands; personally be meek, forbearing, long-suffering, show that the spirit of revenge has no place in you, show that you would rather suffer wrong than do wrong, take the larger view, be gentle, hopeful, noble, and as to your sufferings, there is an organised anger that shall burn the adversary, there is a judicial scourge that shall cut to his bone. "Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath, for it is written, Vengeance is mine, I will repay, saith the Lord," and he repays through organised society, through enlightened and established civilization, and by a thousand ministries which we can neither name nor measure.

"And whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain." This refers to the system of forced courierships. In ancient times and oriental lands, messages were delivered by couriers, persons were required to show the way to strangers. If you were lost upon a mountain or in a valley, it was part of your right to insist upon any person who was in the neighbourhood to go with you part of the road; to help you out of your difficulty. Persons could be compelled to bear messages and letters. One Simon, a Cyrenian, was compelled to bear the cross. Who would not carry that every mile he has yet to walk? The Saviour said, "If a man compel you to go a mile with him to show him the road, go two rather than not go at all. Show a cheerful disposition under the pressure, let your philanthropy absorb your convenience."

"Give to him that asketh of thee, and from him that would borrow of thee, turn not thou away." We all know that society would be wrecked in a very short time if this rule were to be literally applied. In fact it bears upon its face the proof that it does not admit of application in the way which the mere literalist would expect. It is too broad to mean anything as a mere letter; it is, as the lawyers say, void by generality. It means so much as to mean nothing. And yet it must have some profound signification? Certainly. Where shall we find that signification? In God's own government, just as we find the explanation of non-resistance in Christ's own conduct. God does not do this himself, as the literalist would interpret it. He does it in the nobler and larger way which is of no use to the mere devotee of the letter. Let me explain. I ask God to give me what I mention to him, yet he turns away. Then he tells me to give to the man that asketh of me. I must find the meaning of these words in the course of his own action. I would borrow of God, and yet he turns away from my cry. He judges what is best for me, what is good for me: He Says "No" to many a prayer: many a desire of mine that I have sent out towards the heavens has fallen back upon the door-sill like a wounded bird. I know now what Christ means: he teaches me clemency, sympathy, he developes in me an interest in human affairs, he saves me from absurdity and folly and recklessness and from putting myself into the very position in which I should have gone to repeat the doctrine he lays down, and thus keep up a system and action of absurd borrowing, now one man having it and now another, and so passing it between themselves through every hour of the day.

If you want to find the meaning of these sweet words, you can easily find them. Do not try to discover it in the letter. Whenever you are clement, sympathetic, large-hearted, kind-handed, you are going in the direction of the meaning of this passage. Jesus is not laying down little laws and small maxims, he is developing infinite principles which can be applied in every climate, and which can embody themselves under all the various circumstances which make up all the changefulness of human life.

That I am right in seeking the explanation of the whole doctrine in myself and in God is proved by what Jesus Christ immediately adds, "That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven," that you may do in your degree as he does upon an infinite scale. He does not answer every petition, he turns away from some requests, he knows that difficulty has a place in the discipline and sanctification of life, and he uses the rod as sometimes the only admissible lesson. I would be taught by him, I would be like him, I would err, as we sometimes say, on the liberal side rather than on the ungenerous. I would rather be taken in than take in any human creature, I would rather try to find the means of healing a man than sourly turn away from his distressed face and his faltering voice. If that be my disposition of heart, I am in the school of Christ.

But take these exhortations as you like, you cannot give their application, without you have help from heaven. It is not in man that liveth to work out this sublime morality, it is not in the human heart as at present existing to find room for these divinities. He who made the heart must disinfect it, cleanse it, enlarge it to give hospitality to such guests.