LESSON XXXII.

THE CALL OF ST. MATTHEW.

A.D. 28.-LUKE v. 27-39.

And after these things he went forth, and saw a publican, named Levi, sitting at the receipt of custom : and he said unto him, Follow me.

*

*

*

*

And Levi made him a great feast in his own house: and there was a great company of publicans and of others that sat down with them.

But their scribes and Pharisees murmured against his disciples, saying, Why do ye eat and drink with publicans and sinners?

And Jesus answering said unto them, They that are whole need not a physician; but they that are sick.

I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.

And they said unto him, Why do the disciples of John fast often, and make prayers, and likewise the disciples of the Pharisees; but thine eat and drink?

And he said unto them, Can ye make the children of the bridechamber fast, while the bridegroom is with them?

But the days will come, when the bridegroom shall be taken away from them, and then shall they fast in those days.

And he spake also a parable unto them: No man putteth a piece of a new garment upon an old; if otherwise, then both the new maketh a rent, and the piece that was taken out of the new agreeth not with the old. And no man putteth new wine into old bottles; else the new wine will burst the bottles, and be spilled, and the bottles shall perish.

But new wine must be put into new bottles; and both are preserved. No man also having drunk old wine straightway desireth new; for he saith, The old is better.

COMMENT.-As our Lord was leaving Capernaum, He passed the office where toll was collected from those who landed from the lake of Gennesareth. The collector is called by St. Mark and St. Luke, Levi the son of Alphæus. He is called in his own Gospel and in St. Mark's, Matthew. Levi was probably the true Jewish name given to him at his circumcision, Matthew that which he was called by in intercourse with the Gentiles, and his own humility led him to record himself by the less honourable term.

The Order of Equites, or horsemen, at Rome were entrusted with the care of collecting the tribute. They employed in all the many

conquered provinces men of the nation itself, who were called publicans. The sum required from a province, district, or city was specified, and was to be produced by the publican, who was paid for his trouble by keeping for himself whatever he could collect above this amount. He thus had every temptation to becoine an oppressor and practise extortion, and the trade had a bad name even among the Romans themselves, who said a publican was worse than a sweeping storm of rain. And among the Jews the publican was regarded with double horror, because of his close connection with heathens; so that only the most degraded persons could be led by the hope of riches to undertake the office, and wealthy as they usually were, they could not purchase respect, and, were always classed with sinners. But the very fact of their being looked down upon by all, and hopeless of keeping all the ceremonies of the Law, rendered many of them more willing to listen to the teaching that began with repentance. Some had been hearers of the Baptist, and most likely Matthew had made one of the crowds who followed our Lord at Capernaum, and had just listened on the Mount to the sermon which he has so fully recorded. At any rate, when called from his receipt of custom, he obeyed as readily as the fishermen who were called from their nets, and became the seventh recorded disciple. Before going, however, he brought his Master into his house, made a great feast, and called in his fellow-publicans and their associates, if perchance they would listen to the teaching that had gained himself. Here, again, observe his humility. It is from St. Luke we learn that it was a great feast. From himself we simply hear that JESUS sat at meat in the house, as though he would not proclaim either the honour done to himself or the wealth he had left. For a teacher of religion to feast with a rich publican was thought a disgrace, and the Pharisees first objected to this; but they were answered by the obvious statement that the physician goes to the sick instead of to the healthy, and if they thought themselves righteous and in no need of repentance, they had no right to object to His going to such as were openly known to be sinful and to need His call.

Then followed another objection, namely, that John the Baptist and his disciples fasted and lived a stern life of self-denial, while He and His disciples were sitting at a banquet. John had already

(John iii. 23) spoken of our Lord as the Bridegroom, and himself as only the friend who first heard His voice, and our Lord takes up the comparison. He, the Bridegroom, was actually present. These were the days of His espousals. How, then, should His friends fast, and not keep their bridal festival? The days would come when He would be taken away. Then would His widowed Church mourn.

A parable followed, taken from the sights of the feast,-old worn garments cannot be mended with strong new cloth; nor can an old worn-out skin bag of wine be used for fresh, fermenting, effervescing wine. Even so His new, perfect doctrine, cannot be accepted by hearts unprepared for it. The agitation and ferment it causes turns to bitterness and destruction. Some change must come first. And that change we find in after times to be the "becoming a new creature," being "born again by water and the Spirit," as He had told Nicodemus, and obtaining spiritual insight into the kingdom of God. Christ makes all things new (Rev. xxi. 3); and this newness is needed to accept Him truly. Nay, even as old wine is preferred by the palate, the new life and freshness of His teaching is distasteful to the natural man, who shrinks back from what searches him so deeply.

LESSON XXXIII.

THE POOL OF BETHESDA.

A.D. 29.-JOHN V. 1-16.

After this there was a feast of the Jews; and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.

Now there is at Jerusalem by the sheep market a pool, which is called in the Hebrew tongue Bethesda,* having five porches.

In these lay a great multitude of impotent folk, of blind, halt, withered, waiting for the moving of the water.

For an angel went down at a certain season into the pool, and troubled the water whosoever then first after the troubling of the water stepped in was made whole of whatsoever disease he had.

The house of mercy.

And a certain man was there, which had an infirmity thirty and eight years.

When Jesus saw him lie, and knew that he had been now a long time in that case, he saith unto him, Wilt thou be made whole?

The impotent man answered him, Sir, I have no man, when the water is troubled, to put me into the pool: but while I am coming, another steppeth down before me.

Jesus saith unto him, Rise, take up thy bed, and walk.

And immediately the man was made whole, and took up his bed, and walked and on the same day was the sabbath.

The Jews therefore said unto him that was cured, It is the sabbath day : it is not lawful for thee to carry thy bed.

He answered them, He that made me whole, the same said unto me, Take up thy bed, and walk.

Then asked they him, What man is that which said unto thee, Take up thy bed, and walk?

And he that was healed wist not who it was: for Jesus had conveyed himself away, a multitude being in that place.

Afterwards Jesus findeth him in the temple, and said unto him. Behold, thou art made whole; sin no more, lest a worse thing come unto thee. The man departed, and told the Jews that it was Jesus, which had made him whole.

And therefore did the Jews persecute Jesus, and sought to slay him, because he had done these things on the sabbath day.

COMMENT.-The second Passover in our Lord's ministry had come round, and He attended it, as usual, in accordance with His perfect fulfilment of the law. The history of His visits to Jerusalem is almost always supplied by St. John, perhaps because the discourses made to the learned Jews there were so much more difficult than those to the simple Galileans that the Church would hardly have entered into them when the three first Evangelists

wrote.

.

Bethesda means the House of Mercy. It was a pool around a clear spring of water. The water was periodically troubled. There are many intermitting springs, which at certain times bubble forth with an overflow, and these often have medicinal properties, from the minerals contained in them, and their healing power is greater at the time of the overflow. St. John, knowing the spiritual world, understood that it was an angel who was sent to produce this merciful ebullition. And surely this shows us that many of those merciful gifts of God, which we can nevertheless trace to what we call natural causes, are wrought unseen .through the hands of angels.

Jewish beneficence had surrounded this pool with what the translators call porches, but which were in fact cloisters. We may imagine the pool, with marble steps into its cool depths, in the centre of a pentagonal court, with a portico supported on pillars on each side, affording in that climate a sufficient shelter for the numerous sufferers who lay around upon their mats waiting for the troubling of the water. The pool was near the sheep-market and gate by which the animals for sacrifice were brought into the Temple, but it is entirely choked, and all traces of it are now lost.

Going thither on the Sabbath, our Lord found a poor man who had been lame for thirty-eight years. It was one of the miracles wrought out of compassion, meeting the case, not as a reward for prayer or faith, for to the inquiry "Wilt thou be made whole?" the man only replied by a complaint that he had no friend to help him, and was always crowded out of the pool before he could get into it.

Upon this, our Lord restored him with one word, and bade him take up his bed, and walk. The mat was easily rolled up and carried, but it was a burthen; and the Jews, who considered a blind man's staff to be a burthen which he might not carry, immediately rebuked the man. There is reason to think he had been a man of careless, irreligious life, who took no interest in the thought of the Messiah, and had never heard of JESUS of Nazareth. He made the answer that He who cured him had bidden him carry his bed, as if to shift the blame. Shortly after our Lord met him in the Temple, and warned him not to return to his former sins, lest a worse evil should befall him. The ungrateful man immediately went and told the Jews that it was JESUS who had led him to what they viewed as a breach of the Law, and thus led to the first beginning of the persecution at Jerusalem, founded on this question of the observance of the Sabbath.

It was the only point where they could accuse the Lord of not observing the law, and their requirements were absurd, unreasonable, and what was more, unloving, and He therefore disregarded them, and, in the discourse which followed, maintained His own right, as One equal with the Father, and His own Son, to decree what was fit to be done. He also pointed onward to the Resurrection, which should be connected with the whole Christian life, and