appearance; it may be, very beautiful; civility, prayers, alms-deeds, and what not. Ver. 28. Even so ye also outwardly, &c.- If this does not put us upon examining ourselves, we are in great danger of being the persons here described. Ver. 29. Ye build the tombs of the prophets, &c.- What could be more plausible than their building and adorning the tombs of the prophets, professing an abhorrence of the sin of their fathers in putting them to death, and doing all they could to wash their hands of their blood? Will nothing do with the deep-searching Jesus, but the correspondent sincerity of the inner man? No; he has a heavier charge than ever to bring against them, grounded on this very circumstance of their owning themselves to be the descendants of such ancestors. Ver. 31. Wherefore, ye be witnesses unto yourselves, that ye are the children, &c.—They owned they were their children; and he tells them they were truly so in all respects, whether they would own it or not, of the very same nature, and altogether as blood-thirsty; which they soon proved, by crucifying Christ, and persecuting his followers. - Ver. 32. Fill ye up then the measure of your fathers →→ They would; nothing could prevent it; he gives them up to their desert. We learn from hence that the sins of the fathers and the children, both together, go to fill up a certain measure, known to God; and that when it is filled up, destruction is at hand. This was then the unhappy case of the Jews; and no age or nation can be sure it will not be their own, but by not adding their sins to those of their forefathers. Ver, 33. How can ye escape the damnation of hell? Then it is plain that their sufferings in this world would be no discharge from the much greater sufferings of the next. And what we have to consider for ourselves is, whether God is not the same, and sin the same now that they were then. Ver. 34. Wherefore, behold, I send unto you prophets, and wise men, and scribes-Hear this. Bless God that he has sent them to you; and let this be your ruling thought and fixed persuasion, that if you would be truly wise, you must turn out all your own wisdom, and submit as babes to their teaching. - And some of them ye shall kill, &c.-You have them not to kill, and think verily you would not have done it. But there is no way to be sure of this, but by showing a sincere regard to their writings. For they are true disciples of Christ; break open the rotten sepulchre of the heart; call loudly for its cleansing, and give no more allowance to a smooth outside than he did; and what they say after. him is very grating to human nature, and will either amend or provoke its graceless passions. It is a great mistake to suppose that the Scribes and Pharisees were such monsters of wickedness, as never appeared but once in the world. You would be amazed to hear of their great strictness in many respects; and yet trusting in themselves, and having not the Spirit, they were the men here described. And why is their character here given, but that they may stand as representatives of all mankind in the same circumstances, especially in the point of persecution, which is not the sin of the worst of men only, but hardly ever to be rooted out of our natures? Ver. 35. That upon you may come all the righteous blood, &c. As if, with their blood-thirsty disposition, they had a hand in all the righteous blood that was shed from the beginning of the world. This is a great mystery. We must confess that the justice of God is an unknown depth, and not to be fathomed by our line. Ver. 37. O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, &c.-The expression is affecting, and the similitude as lively an image as all nature can afford, of his tenderness and love for that devoted city and people. He calls to them; his bowels yearn for them; he mourns over them; but if they will not hear, if they will not be gathered under his wings, mark it well, he cannot save them. Sinner, he speaks to thee and to me. Oh! that I had his compassionate heart for thee, and thou hadst a true feeling of it for thyself! Ver. 38. Behold, your house (the temple) is left unto you desolate. The great inhabitant had left it, and its destruction was inevitable. We hear our own doom, in worse than temporal judgments, whenever we forsake him. Never delude yourselves with a confused hope of mercy, in an impenitent state, till you can blot this passage out of Scripture. Ver. 39. For, I say unto you, ye shall not see me henceforth, &c.-Though they rejected him then, the time will come for the general conversion of their nation to the faith of Christ; which he here foretels, and is the subject of many prophecies. Now is the time of his coming to us, which only can be witnessed by our unfeigned faith in him, and acceptance of him for salvation. Lord, grant we may rejoice in it, fly to thee as a sanctuary from the guilt of sin, and the purifier of our hearts, and say, from our own happy experience, Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord. LECTURE. In this chapter our Lord directs us neither to call any man upon earth Father, so as, like children, to submit wholly to his wisdom, nor to affect the name of Master ourselves; to the end that our affections may be supremely fixed upon God, and his authority only acknowledged, and that we may resign our wills and understandings to the infallible Teacher. Who then is that master and teacher worthy of the name, and perfectly qualified for the office? The answer is here in the book, and you know very well it is Christ. But do your hearts give in the same answer? Does Christ rule there with sovereign authority, and do you take him for your guide to heaven and happiness? Just in proportion as you think of heaven as your happiness, and desire to be put in the way to it. For if you do not learn this lesson of him, to seek the kingdom of God and his righteousness in the first place, you will slight all his other instructions, be your own masters, and go on blindfold all your lives in the way of your own wills. Consider, therefore, what you are doing in the world, and whether it is the great wish of your hearts to be at peace with God, and alive unto God, that you may go to heaven when you die. If it is, you will go to Christ for direction, study his word, bind it upon your consciences, and make it the law of your inward parts. When you hear him condemning all manner of vain oaths, you will carry on your thoughts to the spiritual meaning, and learn of him to reverence the Lord God in your hearts. When you think who he is, and what right he has to be your Master, that he comes to you with almighty love in his heart, and the light of heaven in his hand; if you are in earnest with him, and truly concerned for yourselves, you will hardly be able to go to sleep, without looking into his word, to know what he has done for you; what he has delivered to you in the name of God; what commands he has laid upon you; and what counsel he has given you for the salvation of your immortal souls. And, particularly, when you hear him, throughout this chapter, censuring the Scribes and Pharisees with such severity of expression, you will ask yourselves, and endeavour to know what it was in their doctrine and practice that was so offensive to him. Strict in trifles, and outwardly saint-like, they were foul within, and wretchedly ignorant of themselves; they neither understood the law in its whole extent, nor laid the rule of it to their hearts, and at the same time were so grossly conceited of their own works, as to depend upon them for their admission into heaven. So will you; so do all till they call Christ Master, who prescribe a law to themselves, and, short as their obedience is, think no reward too great for it. * Let this chapter, therefore, be the touchstone of every heart. The Pharisee lies deep within us, and a decent outside is for the most part the sum total of our righteousness. But Christ has a piercing eye, and as he cannot be deceived, so he will not be put off with a form. In what then does he differ from other teachers? If he is so strict in his exposition of the law, requires such exact conformity to it, and comes so close to the heart with it, in what respect is he the Reliever of our burdens, and what shall we gain by taking him for our Master? All we want, or can desire. We shall learn of him to know God and ourselves; we shall know what sin is, what we are in sin, and how we are delivered from the curse of it; our wills will be in consent and agreement with the law of God, and we shall find the yoke of Christ made easy to us, by being reconciled in heart and affection to the whole and every part of it, both in its outward and inward meaning, We are now coming near to the conclusion of this blessed Gospel, and shall soon hear of Christ's dying upon the cross, to purge our sins, to bear our punishment, and to finish the work which the Father gave him to do, that he might be the Lord our righteousness. Is this no ease to the guilty conscience, no rest to the troubled mind? If we had been left to deal with the law, and make our peace with God as well as we could, we |