can defile him: but the things which come out of him, those are they that defile the man. If any man have ears to hear, let him hear.

1

Having confuted the blind guides 1 of the people, the Lord now addresses Himself to the people who were in danger of being misled by them. He bespeaks their individual attention to what He is about to say to them, and bids them try to discover the meaning and application of the parable; to crack as it were this nut, that they might get at the kernel it contains. They are not to be indolent, and content to let others think for them. It is a matter which concerns every man. On this subject of ceremonial defilement, of which so much had been made, He tells them, in a brief parable or comparison, that the source of defilement is not so much from without as from within. They made great distinction of meats, and called much that God had cleansed common and unclean.` A man might abstain from these, and yet be full of defilement. He might partake of these, and be free from it." Already He intimates the end of those temporary distinctions. And He draws off His hearers from a superficial and outside view of things, to what is really important. He bids them look within. "Keep thine heart with all diligence, for out of it are the issues of life." The parable He explains to His Disciples presently. Now He calls upon the people, in a frequent saying, to use their ears, the ears of their mind.

CCLXXII.

THE PHARISEES ARE OFFENDED.

St. Matthew xv. 12-14.

Then came his disciples, and said unto him, Knowest thou that the Pharisees were offended, after they heard this saying? But he answered and said, Every plant, which my heavenly Father hath not planted, shall be rooted up. Let them alone:

they be blind leaders of the blind. And if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch.

After the Lord had dismissed His congregation, the Disciples, who had not yet shaken off the superstitious dread of the Pharisees, in their concern for their Master tell Him what had come to their ears. They ask Him if He is aware of it. It sounds like a sort of friendly remonstrance, that He should not expose Himself to danger, or come into collision with those who possessed such power to do Him harm. It is as if a child, in terror of a bigger child, should warn his father against him. The Lord calms the minds of His timid followers, answering them in proverbs or brief parables. First He states generally and prophetically what must come to pass, what is indeed one object of His mission. False doctrines, such as those He had come from denouncing, are like noxious weeds. These are in no sense Divine, but ever of the devil's planting. They shall, so He predicts, be eventually rooted up. One part indeed of His mission is to begin this work of judgment. Even now the axe is laid to the root of the tree. Then He tells His Disciples that they need not be moved, any more than He was, by the cold looks of self-complacent Pharisees. Do not mind them. The Disciples were still too much under their spell. He therefore shows what they really were. They professed to be "guides of the blind," but they were really blind themselves. Is it not time to speak out, lest those whom they are misleading be involved in their ruin? Who, in his senses, would commit the blind to the blind? 5

2

1 "Doctrine, which however in its growth becomes identified with, and impersonated by, its recipients and disseminators."-Alford.

2 The brief parable in more than one point touches that of the Tares. In each there is a weed of foreign

growth. In each, though tolerated for a time, it shall be rooted out at last. St. Matt. xiii. 30, 39, 41.

3 St. Luke xii. 49.

4 Rom. ii. 19; St. John ix. 39, 40. 5 St. Luke vi. 39.

CCLXXIII.

THE LORD INTERPRETS HIS SAYING.

St. Mark vii. 17-23,

And when he was entered into the house from the people, his disciples asked him concerning the parable. And he saith unto them, Are ye so without understanding also? Do ye not perceive, that whatsoever thing from without entereth into the man, it cannot defile him; because it entereth not into his heart, but into the belly, and goeth out into the draught, purging all meats? And he said, That which cometh out of the man, that defileth the man. For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lasciviousness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness: all these evil things come from within, and defile the man.

The Disciples did not dismiss from their minds what they had heard, but thought upon it, and sought to understand its meaning, applying for further instruction to their Lord. Though willing to be inquired of, He gently reproves them for their dulness, stimulating them by His questions, as His manner was; as a kindly Teacher or Parent would quicken the apprehension of a backward child. The Lord puts it to them as a self-evident truth. "They are ignorant indeed who understand not that moral pollutions are abundantly worse than ceremonial ones." 2 The Lord points out the vast difference between the body and the soul. What enters at a man's mouth does not also enter into his mind. transient. He states a simple physical fact. not so defiled, but rather purified. Upon all indeed that so enters a purifying process is effected. But "that which cometh out of the man" evidences the spiritual defilement, the well of wickedness within. Hence David's prayer in the Penitential Psalm, "Create in me a clean heart, O God." 3

Its effect is

The man is

3 Ps. li. 10. See also v. 6, and

The Lord specifies some of these evil things which have their home in the heart of the natural man. He begins with the evil thoughts which lead to shameful and cruel deeds. He expounds certain of the commandments, showing that more is contained in them and forbidden by them than the letter of the law lays down, and that we must look at the spirit of the enactment.1 By wickedness is here meant malice. An evil eye refers to an envious and selfish spirit, like that reproved in the parable of the labourers that murmured.3 Blasphemy is, generally, speaking injuriously against another. He who acts thus, wise as he may be in his own estimation, is in the sight of God a fool." These, things which Pharisees made light of, are the things which really defile a man. Merely to eat with unwashen hands, which they made a deadly sin, had no such moral effect as they imagined.

5

CCLXXIV.

THE SYRO-PHOENICIAN'S DAUGHTER.

St. Matthew xv. 21, 22.

Then Jesus went thence, and departed into the coasts of Tyre and Sidon. And, behold, a woman of Canaan came out of the same coasts, and cried unto him, saying, Have mercy on me, O Lord, thou Son of David; my daughter is grievously vexed with a devil.

To the extreme north of the country called Galilee, bordering on the sea, was a strip of land called Phoenicia or

compare the Response after the recitation of the Commandments, "Write all these Thy Laws in our hearts."

St. Matt. v. 21, 22, 27, 28.

2 The word, as well as the word that precedes it in the catalogue, is in the plural.

3 St. Matt. xx. 15. See also Deut.

XV. 9.

4 "Want of decency is want of sense. ."—Roscommon, Essay on Translated Verse.

5 Compare the catalogue in Rom. i. 29-31.

Prov. xiv. 9; Rom. i. 21, 22.

1

4

Phoenice. It was sometimes called also Canaan, and the people who dwelt there were called Canaanites, after the name of the aboriginal inhabitants, whom the children of Israel dispossessed, and who so retired to the extremities and corners of the country. Tyre and Sidon were towns in those parts. Thither our Lord now went from Capernaum. It seems to have been the most extended journey He ever took. Here He sought retirement, not notoriety. "But He could not be hid." His name was as ointment poured forth," which bewrayeth itself.3 A woman living in that border-land, in the neighbourhood of those towns, now came out of the same country to seek His help. She had heard of the fame of Jesus. Even to her, Gentile as she was, of a heathen stock, and living in a foreign land, had reached the report of this wondrous Person who went about doing good. She, a woman of Canaan, had more faith than many a mother in Israel.5 Remote from the city of David, she had yet learned to look for the Son of David. Of an alien race, and far from the ordinances of Divine service, she made a better use of what little she had than those Jews of Jerusalem who had in their midst the Temple of the living God. How many a pious soul in foreign parts and outlandish places, in the backwoods of our colonies and in the outlying settlements of lands beyond the seas, would value and use to their souls' health, those religious privileges which too many at home care little or nothing for. There we hear of men, of feeble women, of young children even, travelling many a mile to see a minister, to receive a Sacrament, to hear a Sermon, while we know how it too often is here where the Gospel is brought to our very doors." So this woman sought the Saviour. And much she needed His aid. For she had a domestic trouble at home. Her young daughter' was possessed with a spirit of an unclean dæmon. It was one of those cases of demoniacal possession, which for aught we

1 St. Mark vii. 24.

2 Cantic. i. 3.

3 Prov. xxvii. 16.

St. Mark vii. 26. The Jews generally called other civilised nations Greeks. She is described as of Phoenice

7

in Syria, to distinguish it perhaps from other countries of the same

name.

5 St. Luke iv. 25.

6 St. Matt. viii. 11, 12.

7 St. Mark vii. 25.