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22 Zebedee their father, mending their nets; and he called them. And they immediately left the ship and their father, and followed him.

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And Jesus went about all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, and preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing all manner of sick24 ness and all manner of disease among the people. And his fame

verse 18. It has been ingeniously observed, that the inventor of a fictitious tale would not have been likely to have mentioned so trivial a fact as that they were mending their nets; trivial to one not engaged in that calling, but important to the fisherman himself. The mention of such a fact is one of those minute, but strong and beautiful filaments of truth and reality which are woven into every page of the Gospels; were not our eyes so dulled by custom and familiarity as to pass them over unheeded.

22. Left the ship and their father, and followed him. Mat. x. 37. xix. 27, 29. They feel it to be their duty to leave all, at the command of one whom they considered as a divine messenger, and perhaps as the Messiah; and though they had not yet, and did not have for a long time, correct ideas of the mission of their Master, yet they showed their religious faith and loyalty in adhering to one authorized and sent by God.

23. Synagogues. This word at first meant a collection of people, but, like the English word church, it afterwards was applied to the building where the assembly was held. The origin of Synagogues is unknown. They were probably introduced during or after the Babylonish captivity. They are not mentioned in the Old Testament. At first they were erected without the cities, in the fields, and usually near streams, or on the sea-shore, for the greater convenience of ablution; subsequently, they were erected in cities, in proportion to the

population. Jerusalem had nearly five hundred. Services were held in them on festival and fast days, and the first, second, and seventh days of every week. Saturday was the Jewish Sabbath. The exercises consisted in reading the law and the prophets; prayers, and addresses to the assembly, consisting chiefly of interpretations of Scripture. The whole was closed by a short prayer and benediction, to which the assembly responded, Amen. The officers in a Synagogue were ten in number. The most important were the Rulers, who constituted, according to Lightfoot, the "council of three," and the scribe, or minister, who prayed and preached. Mark v. 22. Luke iv. 20. The Synagogues opened a fine avenue for Christ and his Apostles to communicate their instructions to the Jewish people, for strangers were often invited to give a word of exhortation. Acts xiii. 15.-Gospel of the kingdom, i. e. Christianity. Gospel is compounded of two Saxon words, meaning good, and message, or news. preached the good news of Christianity, the glad intelligence of the mercy of God, and the brotherhood and immortality of mankind. The word kingdom is used as implying that its subjects would all recognize and obey God, as the Supreme Lawgiver and Judge.-Healing all manner of sickness and all manner of disease, i. e. every kind, not every case of sickness. According to Bloomfield, the original word, translated sickness, signifies a thoroughly formed disorder, and that

Jesus

went throughout all Syria; and they brought unto him all sick people, that were taken with divers diseases and torments, and those which were possessed with devils, and those which were lunatic, and those that had the palsy; and he healed them. And there followed him 25

translated disease, an incipient indisposition. Jesus had already, as we learn from John ii., v., begun to work his beneficent miracles. How active was his benevolence! He went about doing good, and proclaiming glad tidings.

24. Syria was at this period a Roman province, lying north and north-east of Palestine, and contiguous to it.—All sick people. Not literally every one, but great numbers of all kinds.-Possessed with devils. Or, to hold to the original, possessed with demons, demoniacs. None probably believe that the Jews supposed that these persons were possessed with devils, in the present acceptation of that word; but with demons, or the departed spirits of wicked, malignant men, evil genii, who entered into the living. Josephus says, "that those called demons are no other than the spirits of the wicked, that enter into men that are alive, and kill them, unless they can obtain some help against them." This was probably a superstition. Wetstein has conclusively shown that it is the unanimous opinion of physicians, whose authority is great upon such a subject, that demoniacs and lunatics were cases of natural disorders and insanity. The demoniacs sometimes believed, indeed, that they were possessed with evil spirits; but their testimony is not admissible; since the insane often imagine themselves to be what they are not; kings, generals, Christ, and even God. The symptoms, as given in the New Testament, of this class of sufferers, are precisely those of insanity. Their dislike to wearing clothes, their love of living

in by-places, and wandering about, their recklessness in attacking persons, their sudden fits of violent convulsions, their fixed idea of being some thing or some body dif ferent from themselves, indicate a state of derangement. See Luke viii, 27-30. Mat. viii. 28. Mark ix. 20. When cured, the demoniacs are said to be restored to reason. Luke viii, 35. Jesus and his Apostles used the popular language of the times in reference to them. Nor was there any prevarication in it, any more than in our using the word bewitched, though we do not believe in witchcraft; and the expressions, St. Vitus' dance, and St. Anthony's fire, though we suppose that those saints have nothing to do with certain disorders of the human body called by those names. Jesus came not to reform institutions, but men, their makers; not language, but the spirit from which it sprang. When true religion had enlightened mankind, he foresaw that the superstitions about demons, ghosts, and witches, would disappear, as the unseemly birds of night vanish before the shining of the sun.-Lunatic. Not maniacs, but those affected by epilepsy, or falling sickness. Mat. xvii. 15. Luna, in Latin, means moon. It was supposed that persons affected by this disorder were made better or worse by the changes of that luminary. The same influence is supposed to affect the insane, and with some reason. Hence the insane are often called lunatics at the present day.-Had the palsy. This disorder affects the perves of locomotion. Sometimes it seizes the whole body, Some

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great multitudes of people from Galilee, and from Decapolis, and from Jerusalem, and from Judea, and from beyond Jordan.

AN

CHAPTER V.

The Sermon on the Mount.

ND seeing the multitudes, he went up into a mountain; and when he was set, his disciples came unto him. And he opened

times it fixes upon particular parts or limbs, and then takes various names according to its location. The cure, by our Master, of these severe chronic complaints afforded him an opportunity to do immense good, and furnished one of the strongest evidences of the divine authority of his mission and ministry. "The works that I do in my Father's name, they bear witness of me," was his convincing argu

ment.

25. Decapolis. Or, "the ten cities," from two Greek words having this meaning. This region was situated east of the Lake of Galilee. The names of the ten cities were, according to Pliny, Scythopolis, Hippos, Gadara, Dion, Pella, Gerasa, Philadelphia, Canatha, Damascus, and Raphana; but Ptolemy makes Capitolias one of the towns, and Josephus substitutes Otopos for Canatha. The vast throngs which assembled from the most distant parts of the land were drawn together, probably, by the astonishing news of Christ's miraculous power, with the wish to be cured of their diseases; with the sentiment of curiosity, wonder, ambition, highly exalted national hopes, and all the various motives that could actuate the human heart under circumstances so extraordinary. Multitudes no doubt came hoping to see him declare himself the Messiah, unfurl the banner of that mighty name, and strike for the liberties of Palestine, and the subjugation of the world.

How widely they would be disappointed in their hopes is apparent from the following chapter.

CHAP. V.

As has been already said, the Jews were in expectation of a temporal, not a spiritual Messiah. The vast multitudes that thronged around the Saviour, and witnessed his miracles, and heard his words, were probably inflamed with the same worldly desires. And as the masses of living beings swelled larger and larger, these persuasions would be immensely deepened by sympathy. Heart would beat to heart, and deep call unto deep; all the strongest passions of human and Jewish nature were setting, like an ocean tide, in one direction, with an irresistible momentum. We can, by throwing ourselves into the scene, and imagining the circumstances under which Jesus spoke, gain some idea of the moral intrepidity, which impelled him to dissipate these brilliant but false anticipations, and, in the face of thousands, ready to raise the war-cry of a military leader, and rush to conflict, rapine, and dominion, to deliver first the Beatitudes, and then his searching comments upon the opinions and practices of the Scribes and Pharisees.

The object of the Sermon on the Mount, as it has usually been called, was to give the collected multitudes some notions of the nature of his kingdom. He defines it as a king

his mouth, and taught them, saying: Blessed are the poor in spirit; 3

dom within, a reign of the spirit. He settles the long vexed question of Happiness. He prostrates their worldly hopes, by showing that his followers must look for spiritual rewards only, rewards within themselves; the happiness that arose, not from riches, honors, or pleasures, but from meekness, humility, righteousness, peace, and purity. The groundwork of his system, the fundamental precepts, he lays down in a series of bold and beautiful paradoxes; at least, such they seem to most men, so small are their spiritual attainments. Then he proceeds to inculcate an infinitely higher toned morality and piety than that preached and practised by the teachers of the day. He proclaimed what may be called the Magna Charta of the spiritual life for all mankind, in this sublime address. It affords in itself alone an unanswerable argument for the truth of Christianity.

1-12. For a parallel passage see Luke vi. 20-26.

1. Seeing the multitudes, i. e. the multitudes mentioned in the last verse of the foregoing chapter. That was a reason for his speaking, He saw thousands around him, and he took the opportunity to explain his doctrines. What is here condensed in one continuous discourse was probably also delivered in parts to different people upon other occasions. He went up into a mountain. Or, according to the original, the mountain. Some well known mountain or hill in the vicinity of Capernaum. Its location cannot now be determined. From this elevation he could more conveniently address the vast concourse. And when he was set. Was seated. While teaching, the Jewish Rabbins were accustomed to sit, but their pupils

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kept a standing posture. Luke iv. 20. John viii. 2. Acts xvi. 13.His disciples came unto him. The disciples were learners, or those who were taught. Probably the multitude are included in the term, as they were for the time his pupils, his disciples. So upon other occasions, those who followed his instructions, though not of the twelve, nor of his immediate attendants, were denominated disciples. John vi. 66. Nevertheless, others have understood by disciples those only who attached themselves to Jesus in the belief that he was the expected Messiah.

2. He opened his mouth. These words are pleonastic, or redundant, i. e. they do not add any thing to the meaning of the sentence. Pleonasm is a common figure of speech in the Bible.

3. Blessed are the poor in spirit. Some are in favor of the use of happy in this connection; but blessed is a more forcible and solemn word, and, as Carpenter observes, has reference to the appointment and blessing of God. There is no verb in the original, and the translation would be more spirited thus, Blessed the poor in spirit. The declarations from verse 3 to 12 are sometimes called Beatitudes, because each of them begins with the word blessed, or happy, the Latin for which is beatus. The qualities here pronounced blessed are directly the reverse of those which the Jews of that time, and the world generally, have so esteemed. Common opinion says, Blessed the rich. Jesus says, Blessed the poor. Common opinion says, Blessed the joyous, the elevated, the quick-spirited, the popular, the worldly-wise, the ambitious. Jesus says, Blessed the mourning, the meek, the spiritually

4 for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are they that mourn;

aspiring, the merciful, the pure, the persecuted, the peace-makers. What a signal testimony to the divine origin of Christianity is presented in the fact, that its author flattered none of the prejudices or desires most current, but struck out a new path, taught a pure and lofty theology and philosophy, with great distinctness, which the wise men of old had only felt after, and caught a glimpse of, not fully found! He settled the long vexed question about happiness. He shows in these profound axioms, that religion promotes present and eternal felicity. "In the first place," says Dewey, "our Saviour addressed a company of men, his disciples and others, who looked for their Mes siah as a temporal king, who expected that he would deliver them from the Roman yoke, conquer the surrounding nations, and reinstate the Jews in all and more than all the possessions and splendors of the ancient monarchy. In the next place, he addressed a company who were accustomed to all those evasions of the moral law, which had been brought in by tradition, and which were daily multiplied by Jewish doctors and scribes. Let these things be borne in mind, and we shall see how far from being abstract, how pertinent, indeed, and pointed, is every word he utters."The poor in spirit, i. e. according to Norton, those whose poverty is of the spirit; who feel that they are poor inwardly; who are conscious of their moral and spiritual destitution. Blessed are such, whether of much or little estate, though the poor in goods were more likely, indeed, to feel their spiritual wants; for they are prominent candidates for the kingdom of heaven. They are much happier than the spirit

ually self-satisfied, self-sufficient, Rev. iii. 17; who thank God that they are not as other men are, and who boast of a lineage from Abraham, and think that of course they abound in spiritual riches.-For theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Their state of mind entitles them to the kingdom of heaven. They will be its possessors, rather than those who feel rich in spirit, who are puffed up with their religious attainments. It will be observed throughout the beatitudes, that there is a tacit comparison instituted between the poor in spirit, the merciful, pure, &c., and the opposite characters, the proud, the cruel, the sensual, &c. Another point worthy of notice is, the correspondence of the rewards with the characters described. The merciful obtain mercy in return. The hungry are filled. The poor in spirit are heirs of the whole rich kingdom; the Gospel is theirs.

4. They that mourn; for they shall be comforted. It has been a question with interpreters, whether Jesus means those who mourn under a sense of their sins, or under the experience of afflictions. Both perhaps are included. Those who mourned under a sense of their spiritual destitution and unworthiness, who had that "godly sorrow which worketh repentance to salvation not to be repented of," would be rendered happy indeed under the Gospel, which tenderly cherishes every penitent emotion, and reveals a Father of mercy who is ready to forgive to the uttermost all that come unto him. Those who suffered in the cause of Christianity would be comforted under their trials by the great and entrancing promises it held out to them of eternal blessedness. Those who lost their goods, or friends, or were

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