tion prepared for them, they would bitterly lament their unbelief when it was too late, and their places would be taken by heathen from every quarter under heaven.1 Even John had sternly warned his hearers not to trust in their descent from Abraham.2 And now Jesus found in the Holy Scriptures many and many a lamentation over the stubbornness, the hypocrisy, the dulness of heart with which Israel had rejected the Lord and his messengers, and many an example of a deeper longing for salvation and a greater readiness to receive it on the part of the heathen. And was it not a fact that sinners, who were half heathen, already pressed into the kingdom and put the pious to shame? A little more delay, and their sentence would be passed. And as the Master's disappointment grew, his warnings became darker, and the threatening tone of his discourses rose; while the sense of offended dignity, and the just pride of the rejected prophet heightened rather than toned down the personal claims he put forward. Listen to the reply he made when told that if he wanted people to believe in him he must first prove his claims by a miracle:

"A wicked and adulterous generation asks for a sign, and no sign shall be given it except the sign of the prophet Jona. On the day of judgment the men of Nineveh shall stand beside this generation before the seat of judgment, and shall condemn it by their example; for they repented at the preaching of Jona, and I tell you there is more than Jona here! The Queen of the South shall rise up on the day of judgment by this generation, and shall condemn it by her example; for she came from the end of the world to hear the wisdom of Solomon, and I tell you there is more than Solomon here!"

What are we to understand by this "sign of Jona” that was triumphantly to vindicate the mission of Jesus? The context indicates that the sign of Solomon might be substituted; but a prophet and a whole nation furnish a better parallel than a sage and a single woman to Jesus and his contemporaries. It appears from the explanation that follows that Jesus meant to say that heathen were converted by the preaching of Jona. This case stands alone in the history

1 Luke xiii. 29.

2 See p. 106

8 Matthew xix. 8, xv. 7, xiii. 14, v. 12, xxiii. 37, xi. 21-24, xii. 41, 42; Luke iv. 25-27.

4 See pp. 289 f.

5 Compare vol ii. chap. vii. p. 69, and vol. ii. chap. xix. pp. 525–527.

of the prophets, and may well be called "the sign." In the same way this generation, already condemned by these examples from the olden time, must consent to see the gospel given to the heathen and received by them with regenerating faith. So should the preaching of Jona be a type or sign of the preaching of Jesus. Most certainly Jesus did not mean, as Matthew would have it, that he himself would spend three days in the world below between his death and his resurrection, just as Jona had spent three days in the belly of the monster of the deep. Such an explanation is simply absurd in view of the words themselves, the context, the speaker, the hearers, and the narrative referred to. But neither is Luke correct in supposing the meaning to be that Jesus himself was a sign to his people and his age, just as Jona was a sign to the Ninevites. This interpretation is not supported by the context, and is decidedly obscure; for it would imply that Jona and Jesus were signs of the power of the word, or of the mercy of God, or something similar, all which would be quite inappropriate here. This reference to the Ninevites and the Queen of Sheba immediately calls to mind the similar utterances which we have already heard from Jesus. For instance, he reminded his hearers, on some occasion which we can no longer identify, how Elijah and Elisha, at the command of the Most High, had helped heathen rather than the people of their own country, when the one went to a Phoenician widow and the other healed a Syrian captain. And again, he placed the luxurious and licentious Tyre and Sidon before Bethsaida and Chorazin, and Sodom, the very type of infamy, before Capernaum, in capacity for belief and penitence; declaring that it would be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon, for Sodom and Gomorrah, in the day of judgment than for those places which had been the ordinary scene of his ministry. All these are modifications of that one thought: The Jews are sunk below the heathen by their utter incapacity to receive the gospel.

When Jesus had once formed this idea, that the Jews would be excluded and the heathen would take their places, we might feel almost sure that he would give expression to it in an allegorical description of the prospects of the kingdom of God. In point of fact, we have two parables that answer to this description, one of which is given by both Matthew and Luke; but the two versions differ so widely that we can

1 See pp. 235 and 259.

hardly recognize the story as the same. In Matthew we read as follows:

66

There was once a king who was preparing a wedding feast for his son. When the first day of the festivities arrived, he sent his servants round early in the morning to tell the people he had invited that this was the day on which they were expected. But they all refused to come. Then he commissioned other officers of the court to go to the guests and say again : See now, I have prepared the feast, I have slaughtered my oxen and sheep, and every thing is ready. Come, therefore, to the wedding feast!" But they did not trouble themselves about the matter, and went on their way, -the one to his lands, and the other to his business. [And the rest seized the messengers, and ill-treated them and killed them. And when the king heard of it his anger was roused, and he sent his soldiers to destroy those murderers and to set their city on fire.] Then he said to his servants: "The wedding feast is ready, but the guests were not worthy of it. I will tell you what to do; go to the most frequented spots in the great highways and ask any one you chance to find to come to the feast." So the servants went out and brought back every one they met travellers and tramps alike— until there was not a place empty at the wedding feast.

If we strike out the interpolation about the ill-treatment of the messengers and the vengeance taken by the king the story flows smoothly enough, and, though it sounds very odd to our ears, Oriental customs explain a great deal of it. It evidently means that the places in the Messianic kingdom which Jewish insolence had left vacant would be filled by the heathen. The interpolated passage, to which there is a parallel in Luke in another connection,' is utterly out of place where it stands. It refers to the evil treatment which the messengers of Christ experienced from the Jews, and the punishment inflicted on the latter in the devastation of Jerusalem. It is not a genuine utterance of Jesus, therefore, nay, it is even post-apostolic; and to represent the calling of the heathen as though it were not to take place till after the fall of Jerusalem, which was in the year 70 A.D., spoils the whole parable. Matthew introduces the story at a peculiarly inappropriate point of the history, and concludes it with an appendix, to which we shall have to return presently.

Luke, on the contrary, gives us a picture which calls for no special comment, We read that Jesus was dining with a

1 Luke xix 27.

Pharisee on the Sabbath, and in answer to the exclamation of one of the guests, "Blessed are they that shall be admitted to the Messianic feast!" told the following story: -

A rich man once prepared a splendid entertainment. He asked a great number of guests beforehand, and they accepted. When the feast was prepared, he sent round his servant, as an extra mark of attention, to say to the guests, "All is ready, and I am expecting you." But they all began to make excuses with one mouth. The first said: "I have just bought a piece of land, and I really must go and look at it. You must not take it amiss, but I cannot come." Another said: "I have just bought five yoke of oxen, and I must go and try them. You must not be vexed if I do not come." Another: "I have married lately, and cannot leave home just now." And so with them all; they all thought more of their own business than of their engagement. When the servant came back with these messages, his master was of course very angry, and said to him: the streets and lanes of the city, and and needy, the blind and the lame." returned and said: "Master! I have done as you com manded, and there is room still." "Then go out of the city, and whomever you find on the roads or along the hedgerows spare no trouble, but compel them to come with you that my house may be full. For I tell you not one of thosc who were invited shall taste my feast!"

66

Go out again, into bring hither the poor Presently the servant

Here, as we see at once, every thing is as it should be. The story itself seems far from impossible when we consider the usage of Eastern countries. The separate images correspond closely to the true purpose of the parable, and the order of succession is carefully observed. The points in which Luke departs from Matthew strike us at once. Here there are three separate invitations, first, to the pious and respectable Jews, who decline (observe the delicacy of the delineation); second, to the outcasts of Israel, who accept (the terms by which the sinners are described have something of an Ebionite air about them);1 and third, to the heathen, in which every effort must be put forth to take no refusal. There is but one servant who invites the guests to the kingdom of God — namely, Jesus himself, - and an ordinary supper is substituted for the royal wedding feast. How far Luke has retained the original form of the story in these points, and how far he has modified, improved, and com

1 Compare Luke xiv. 21 with 13. See also p. 245.

pleted it, it is impossible to say with any confidence. All that we can be sure of is that the occasion of its delivery is his own invention.

We have represented all these threats, though doubtless addressed more especially to the Pharisees and their adherents, as extending to the whole of the Jewish people, the "heirs of the kingdom." But of course there were honorable exceptions. We have also supposed that the threats increased in number and severity as Jesus approached the close of his career. But however this may be, it is certain that in spite of his melancholy experience and dark forebodings as to the spiritual incapacity of the Jews he still labored to the very end, with unwearied zeal, to save them. In fact, these very threatenings were intended as one means of bringing them to repentance. We shall presently see him resolve to make a last and mighty effort in the City of the Temple itself, and thus appeal to his nation in general. When he fails in this we shall find him drawing one more sketch, in darker colors than ever, of the conduct and the destiny of the Jews.

But he knew already that the result of his labors and the triumph of his cause did not depend upon his reception or rejection by Israel. Should his gospel be finally rejected by Israel, he still had hope. He had included the heathen world in the sweep of his forecasting thought, and there his gospel would find faith. This was his consolation even before the fatal conflict at Jerusalem was decided.

Whenever Jesus speaks of the Messianic feast, we see that he regards the accession of the heathen to take the place of his own unbelieving countrymen as a kind of incorporation of these heathen into Israel, or at any rate as the communication to them of privileges which originally belonged to Israel. Indeed, this seemed so obvious that the Apostle of the heathen himself took the same view. Israel was, after all, the people to whom the revelations and promises of God had been made. Salvation was of the Jews. How this incorporation or communication was to be effected, it was enough for the heathen to have faith and to desire salvation, or whether they must also comply with certain external conditions, this was a question, as we have said before, which did not rise until after the death of Jesus. Now

1 Romans xi. 15 ff. i. 16.

8 John iv. 22.

2 Romans iii. 1 ff.

- whether