garden, feeling guilty they try to get further from God; or, like Saul, they present themselves before God, urging that they have been obedient; or, like Herod, they cling to their sin even in the midst of their remorse. They cling to it, and their desire to see Christ profits them nothing; they cling to it, and Christ comes before them, bound and apparently helpless. They question with Him in mere curiosity, they fling around Him the gorgeous robe of the worship of unreal words, or undisguised hypocrisy-they relegate Him to others to do with Him as they will ; but they cling to their sin.

But what saith God: "I held my tongue, and thou thoughtedst wickedly that I am even such an one as thyself; but I will reprove thee, and set before thee the things that thou hast done." How? When? If conscience be in any sense the echo of the Almighty Voice, it may be silent now in time, but it will be heard in eternity; it is the language of Eternity, it is the utterance of the Spirit. What is the sting of the undying worm-what is the burning of the unquenchable fire? Sorrow, changed into remorse despair for ever crying out, Too late, too late!

But now, brethren beloved, we have the voice of God within us, we have a High Priest who pleads for us above, we have a Saviour, we have time. "Casting away," as conscience bids us, "every weight, and the sin that doth so easily beset us, let us run with patience the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our Faith."

XVI.

EATING BREAD IN THE KINGDOM OF

GOD.

S. LUKE xiv. 15.

And when one of them that sat at meat with him heard these things, he said unto him, Blessed is he that shall eat bread in the kingdom of God.

VERY true! Perhaps we are inclined to add, if we make any comment at all on these words, "Very true, very blessed indeed are they that shall eat bread in the kingdom of God." And we feel very comfortable upon reading it, and very well satisfied as we add our own mental assent. And then perhaps we read on, without paying any particular attention to the connexion in which the words stand-without observing what our blessed Lord had said to draw out this remark, or what He proceeded to say in reply to it.

Yet both these examinations are necessary, if we would ascertain, not only the meaning of the words said, which is one thing, but the meaning of the man in saying them, which is another.

Our Lord had been invited to a feast by one of the chief Pharisees, as to a trap. It was on the Sabbath day, and they watched Him, to see what He

would do or say, that they might take hold of it against Him. The opportunity, as they thought, soon came. There was a man with the dropsy. Before they sat down to dinner Jesus healed him, though it was the Sabbath day. But before they could bring their hypocritical charge of Sabbath breaking against Him, He answered them, or made them answer themselves out of their own consciences, by an appeal as to what they would do in a case where something far less than a fellow-creature's lifelong misery was concerned on the Sabbath day.

But the rebuke for their hypocrisy was not yet consummated. He had read their thoughts, and answered them by anticipation. He has all the more power now in rebuking what He observes in their outward conduct. He had healed the man with the dropsy; He now attacks that spiritual malady, pride, under which He saw them suffering-that inflated feeling, that dropsy of the soul.

He spake a parable to them, when He marked how they chose out the chief rooms or places at table, everybody afraid that his rank or station would not be sufficiently observed, afraid he would not be high enough, not treated with enough consideration—where, we may wonder, did the Lord of all sit at that proud Pharisee's banquet ?-and seeking with energy places that after all might have to be surrendered. He spake a parable, it is said, but one so plain that there was no possibility of giving any meaning to it but the right one. And having for their good thus wounded the guests in their tenderest feelings-for pride, as you

know, my friends, is very tender of itself-He turns to His host and speaks a word of remonstrance to him; He blames him, and in him the world at large, for the selfishnesses of society. The principle of "do nothing that won't bring you in some return; help another, if it is likely that he can help you ; be generous, on the ground that one good turn deserves another; invite people to your house and your parties, if they can invite you back again,”—this, and all the mass of selfish consideration that underlies it, Jesus rebukes in His address to the Pharisees. "When thou makest a feast, call not thy friends, nor thy brethren, neither thy kinsmen, nor thy rich neighbours; lest they also bid thee again, and a recompence be made thee. But when thou makest a feast, call the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind: and thou shalt be blessed; for they cannot recompense thee; but thou shalt be recompensed at the resurrection of the just.”

We will only observe on this verse in passing, that the prohibition does not mean that we are to show no kindness to our friends and equals, but that we are not to do it for the sake of a return; we are to look not at the wording only of the passage, but at the spirit of it. Christ never taught us to overlook the duties of friends and neighbours, but He taught us a wider interpretation of the words; and bade us, as we value His blessing, recognize our brethren among the needy and the outcast; and lay no claim to kindness, or generosity, or hospitality,—so long as we render our good offices only to those who would make return in like fashion.

We

But to return to the Pharisee's dining-room. may quite believe that these exhortations were very unpalatable cheer both to guests and host; yet they contained utterances and principles which no one who valued a reputation in the religious world would like to contradict. So one good man, very good in outward seeming, tries to turn the conversation. He feels, as one has said, that the atmosphere of the conversation had become overcharged, and he is anxious to draw off what might become dangerous to selflove. So he breaks forth in an utterance very true, as we have already said, but evidently framed with the idea of picking up whatever was pleasant in the sayings of Jesus, and weaving it into a pious sentence that might be generally edifying and shock no one. For everyone would admire the sentiment; everyone would feel their self-love tacitly complimented in the implied idea that they severally would be among those who would so 66 eat bread," everyone would think how cleverly the speaker had received the words of Jesus, and, like an adroit fencer, parried their force; no one would care to notice that it was the resurrection of the just that Jesus spoke of, or to ask themselves whether they intended to earn that blessedness by obeying His commands. But the Lord replied by a longer, more searching, more terrible address than any which the man had tried to escape from in his religious generalities. It is the parable of the Marriage Feast-the supper ready, the guests invited, the manifold excuse, the calling in of the lame, the halt, the blind, from the streets and lanes of