BEING LESSONS FROM THE GOSPEL OF MATTHEW.

CHAPTER V. (Continued from page 125.)

Their whole method was a false one. They valued apparently God's altar, loading it, Cain-like, with gifts defiled by the hands that offered them. The Lord warns them therefore to be reconciled with their justly offended brethren before presuming to bring such offerings; and while the application here is, of course, to Israelites, the principle as manifestly applies to us to-day. A sinner coming to God is not at all in question:for he can only come as what he is, and has the explicit assurance that he will be received. Even the Pharisees said truly of the Lord, "This man receiveth sinners, and eateth with them." He Himself said, " Him that cometh unto Me I will in no wise cast out." Abel too, bringing his sacrifice to God, "obtained witness that he was righteous, God testifying"-not of his works, nor of his character, but-"of his gifts." (Heb. 11:4.) How impossible, if it were otherwise, to have any assurance at all! for as to how much could we never set ourselves right with brethren! Blessed be God, it was for our sins that Jesus died, and our sins are the best of titles to the Saviour of sinners.

But while God would never turn away a sinner thus seeking Him, or delay even for a moment the reception of such an one, this is not to hinder any possible restitution to those we may have injured, but the very contrary. For now we come under the rule before us, and as saints, we are to "lift up holy hands" to God (i Tim. 2:8). A sinner cannot possibly yet lift up holy hands; but for a saint this is absolutely necessary for communion. And how many suffer sadly in their souls because of an unjudged condition in these respects! For such the Lord's words here have the gravest importance.

Those to whom they were addressed, however, were Jews, in no wise taking the place of sinners, nor yet truly saints, but legalists, going on with the law in which they boasted, and not realizing that Moses, in whom they trusted, was necessarily their greatest adversary (Jno. 5:45). Judgment must be the end, if they did not in the meanwhile reconcile themselves to him, by the offering of which already the law had spoken, but which the glorious Speaker Himself was to provide. This He does not, however, go on to in this place. He is convicting them of a need without the consciousness of which, all revelation of God's way of grace would be impossible to be understood. The judgment reached, they would by no means come out from it until they had paid the uttermost farthing.

Hopeless then would be their confidence in the law. But the Lord has not yet done with it for the purpose of conviction, and of clearing it from the mistakes and perversions of the scribes. He goes on therefore from the sixth to the seventh commandment, to show once more that out of the heart the positive transgression came, and that what was in the heart to do was in effect done as to the guilt of it. Opportunity had lacked, and that was all.

And he urges that if the right eye or hand caused men to stumble, it were better to cut them off and go on maimed through life, than to preserve these and go whole into hell. Better sacrifice what might seem most necessary, than give oneself up to the tyranny of sin.

Clearly no asceticism or self-mutilation is intended by such an injunction; but men excuse, by the plea of necessity, what they find to be the constant provocative of sin. God's law admits no such excuse, whatever the pretext.

In connection with this commandment, the Lord takes up also the law of marriage, to refuse the laxity which even Moses had permitted, and still more the license of the rabbins. Moses had on account of the hardness of their hearts only been able to modify somewhat the existing custom of divorce. The "writing" which he had "commanded" was in the interests of social order, not of license, which the prevalent school of Hillel favored in the most shameless way. The Lord peremptorily, and on his own authority, restricts the allowance of it to that one ground which plainly destroys the very idea of marriage; and declares the putting away of one's wife for any other cause to be making her to commit adultery by another union. Also he who marries such a divorced one commits adultery.

The Lord's words, while addressed to Israelites, cannot surely be less binding upon Christians of the present day. It is plain that Christianity cannot be supposed to require a lower morality than He enforces here, not as a national or ecclesiastical regulation, but just as morality. What was "adultery" according to Him must be ever adultery; and no law of man can alter this in the slightest degree. Let the Lord's people look to it, in a day when men are doing their own will with continually more audacity.

He proceeds now to another matter, in which again that which was at least tolerated under the law is forbidden in the new morality which He is enforcing. "Thou shalt not forswear thyself, but shalt perform unto the Lord thine oaths," plainly speaks of vowing -of promise under oath. There had been great abuse of it, as Israel's history makes evident, men not hesitating to vow recklessly to God the dictates of their pride and passion and self-will, to find themselves then entangled by what seemed their duty. Careless profanity had come in at the heels of this, and God's name been profaned by light appeals to it on every occasion, modified according to conscience or the lack of it by every kind of circumlocution and indirect expression of what they dared, not openly give utterance.

Our Lord sweeps into His prohibition all these evasions of the third commandment, putting them into the same category with that which was once permitted. "But I say unto you, Swear not at all:neither by heaven, for it is God's throne; nor by the earth, for it is His footstool; nor by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King. Neither shalt thou swear by thy head, because thou canst not make one hair white or black. But let your word be yea, yea; nay, nay:for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil."

Man's utter weakness, so fully and simply demonstrated, is made (at least in part) the basis of the prohibition here. God might swear; for He could accomplish; and knew, too, all the consequences of what He was pledging Himself to. Beautifully we find thus this grace in Him when seeking to assure the soul of His creature, so ready to doubt the perfect faithfulness even of His God:"Wherefore God, willing to show unto the heirs of promise the immutability of His counsel, confirmed it by an oath; that by two immutable things,"-His word and His oath:His word really as certain as His oath, but not to man,-"wherein it was impossible for God to lie, we might have strong consolation, who have fled for refuge to lay hold upon the hope set before us." (Heb. 6:13-18.)
We then, on our parts, are to be far from what is so suited to His strength, and so ill-suited to His feeble creatures. The legal covenant had, however, in its essential features the character of an oath; and the last chapter of Leviticus looks at them typically a's failing under it, in contrast with the One who did not fail. The law, therefore, until man was fully proved by it, could not forbid the vow. It is an anachronism, and worse, that it should be imported into Christianity, and that we should hear of covenant-vows, the baptismal vow, etc., so contrary to the simplicity of Christ's institutions for us, and to the grace which alone we know to be our strength. See the "Numerical Bible," Vol. I. The vow is wholly passed away, but to make room for Christ's strength to rest upon us, our very infirmities to be gloried in on this account (2 Cor. 12:9, 10). God's oath is sworn to us, that His abundant grace shall bring us through. F. W. G.

(To be continued.)