'What tremendous withering words!' exclaims the modern critic. Can they have been really spoken 'at the house of one who asked Jesus to dine with 'him? How His temper must have been changed! 'What irritation must have been awakened in Him by 'the hostility which He encountered!' I admit at once that, if the Pharisee were not abusing a trust which had been committed to him for the good of the nation, and if it was not the King of the nation-his King-who was calling him to answer for his trust, this language is wholly strange-I can make no defence of it. If that were so, then I say the more Jesus cared for the poorest, the most suffering, the most sinful of the land-the more He had stooped to them the more might we expect Him to speak in thunders to the consciences of those who were lifting up themselves, of those who were making themselves gods and hiding from the people the living and true God. If it were the great disease of the Pharisee, that he made all clean without and left all foul within, was our Lord merciful or unmerciful for telling him to his face that it was so? Was it merciful or unmerciful to remind him that the unseen God, the God of his fathers, demanded truth in the inward parts, and was willing to give what He demanded? Was it better for him to know, or not to know, that his money was not his to buy God's favour with, but his to be used as the almoner of God's bounty to His creatures? Was it well that he should wake up to discover in some dying hour, or when the land was perishing, that he had substituted mint, anise, and cummin for judgment and the love of God, or that the disguise should be torn from his eyes whilst he was yet full of ease and satisfaction? Was it good that he should

go on receiving the greetings in the markets, and thinking himself the best of men, or that he should for a moment be discovered to himself in his rags and corruption? Was it well that more men should drop into the hollow graves which looked so fair without, or that the owners of the graves should be admonished to purify them from the bones and pollutions within?

(8) Did these words merely strike at the evils of a single school or sect? Were they not meant to reach all the teachers of Israel-all who were busy with commenting on the laws and letters of the Holy Book?

'Then answered one of the lawyers, and said unto him, Master, thus saying thou reproachest us also. And he said, Woe unto you also, ye lawyers! for ye lade men with burdens grievous to be borne, and ye yourselves touch not the burdens with one of your fingers. Woe unto you! for ye build the sepulchres of the prophets, and your fathers killed them. Truly ye bear witness that ye allow the deeds of your fathers: for they indeed killed them, and ye build their sepulchres. Therefore also said the wisdom of God, I will send them prophets and apostles, and some of them they shall slay and persecute that the blood of all the prophets, which was shed from the foundation of the world, may be required of this generation; from the blood of Abel unto the blood of Zacharias, which perished between the altar and the temple: verily I say unto you, It shall be required of this generation. Woe unto you, lawyers! for ye have taken away the key of knowledge: ye entered not in yourselves, and them that were entering in ye hindered.'

:

No sentence here is wasted.

Each is aimed at

some special tendency of the time. Each is more

intense than the one that went before it. First, the infliction of hard rules and practices, burdensome to the conscience of the victim, not causing the least trouble to the imposer. Then the complacent admiration for holy men who are safe out of reach, who can no more utter the reproofs which enraged their contemporaries and brought death upon themselves. 'You joyfully build their sepulchres; what would you 'do if they stood up and confronted you!' Then the fearful assurance that the age, instead of being free from the guilt of previous ages, as it fancied, was gathering the guilt of them into itself, was cultivating all the murderous tempers and habits which had been their curse, was sowing wind to reap a whirlwind, such as they had not reaped. And this because the teachers of the divine law had that great master sin,— the sin of priests and possessors of knowledge in all times. They think that knowledge is given for their own use. They think the people are to be kept away from it, and fed on mere husks. So the key which might unlock divine treasures becomes rusty in their hands, and cannot move the lock. They cannot find their own way into the kingdom of God, and those that are longing for it they keep out.

Woes indeed these were-woes for the most grievous of all sins, but woes contained in the sins. themselves. These religious teachers were their own tormentors, as well as the tormentors of the land. And this was their sorest misery. They longed to silence the voice which told them of their misery. They did not know that, in ridding themselves of the Judge they would be ridding themselves of the Saviour. They did not know that He could take from them their pride, their hypocrisy, their hatred of Him and of His

Father. Therefore, 'And as he said these things unto them, the scribes and the Pharisees began to urge him. vehemently, and to provoke him to speak of many things: laying wait for him, and seeking to catch something out of his mouth, that they might accuse him.'

Oh my friends, may we take warning by that example! If we believe that He who sat in the Pharisee's house was indeed the Eternal Son of God, may we open our ear to hear what He is now saying to the Churches! In the cottage, where sisters are working and learning, may they know Him as the Inspirer of their work, as the Giver of their knowledge! May He teach us to pray, that we may pray aright! May He conquer the spirit which is dividing us by His uniting Spirit! May that Spirit come and dwell with us, that the evil spirit of pride and malice may not enter into us and possess us! May he enable us to listen to all the warnings which heathens who have repented at His call and profited by His Word sent to us! And if our religion ever becomes one of show and not of substance, of self-exaltation and not of humility, of death and not of life, may the words that have been fulfilled to other countries and ages ring in our ears and make us tremble, that we may turn with all our hearts to Him who can renew us by His grace, who can cause the light which He has kindled in us to shine forth on the world!

LECTURE XVI.

THE FIRE WHICH IS TO BAPTISE THE NATION AND THE KING.

I am come to send fire on the earth; and what will I, if it be already kindled? But I have a baptism to be baptised with; and how am I straitened till it be accomplished!-ST. LUKE xii. 49, 50.

THE words which were spoken in the house of the Pharisee were an open declaration of war. It had begun before. John the Baptist had denounced both the sects as generations of vipers. Jesus had provoked the wrath of this sect by His acts on the Sabbath day. The suggestion, 'He casteth out demons by Beelzebub the Prince of the demons', proceeded most probably from them. But He had not till now spoken to them directly of their habits of mind as those which were bringing down curses upon the nation, and which would destroy it. He had not before showed men who assumed to be the worshippers of God-the teachers of the people how they should worship Him,—that they were essentially godless; that they were undermining all godliness in the land. Henceforth there can be no doubt of His meaning. If the Gospel of His kingdom is true, their scheme of divinity and their code of ethics are false. The establishment of one must be the ruin

of the other.