(Continued from p. 287.)

CHAPTER III.

Gospel of Matthew has seven primary divisions. The two chapters we have been considering form the first of these, in which our attention is fixed upon the person of the King. That which commences with the third chapter presents the kingdom. It occupies five chapters, to the end of the seventh, and has five subdivisions, although these are not at all marked out for us by the chapters. The first subdivision has in fact, as I believe, only six verses, in which we have set before us the herald of the kingdom, John the Baptist, a remarkable person, both in himself and in the place he fills. "Among those that are born of women," is our Lord's testimony of him, "there hath not arisen a greater than John the Baptist." And yet He adds, (and this connects itself with the place he fills between two dispensations,) "Nevertheless, he that is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he."

It is not yet the place to consider this. We have first to see what the kingdom itself is, and what is the meaning of the expression for it, the "kingdom of heaven," which is peculiar to and characteristic of this gospel. In all the others we have only the "kingdom of God." Matthew has both terms, but predominantly the former.

The difference is implied in the terms themselves. "Heaven "is a place; " God " is a Person:"heaven" naturally suggests "earth" as the sphere of the kingdom; "God" suggests "man." God might reign upon an earthly throne, as He did in Israel, when He dwelt between the cherubim. All that had long
ceased; the glory had left its earthly tabernacle, and the kingdom upon earth had been put into the hand of the Gentile. The throne, so to speak, removed to heaven, the way is prepared for the coming of a " kingdom of heaven."

Heaven had always ruled upon earth in fact; it was a fact which probably would have been any time admitted even by Nebuchadnezzar, though his pride might forget it, that " the Most High ruleth in the kingdom of men."But this was not the truth of the "kingdom of heaven"; for it meant a government of secret forces, and according to principles which might be themselves unknown. This kingdom, on the other hand, meant something open, God in this way drawing near, not even faith requisite to realize the fact. For we are not now speaking of the kingdom of heaven as it exists at present, with the King absent and the prevalence of evil upon the earth:that is for the first time made known, and then in parables, in the thirteenth chapter:where they are declared to be " mysteries of the kingdom of heaven."The very manner of speech was in accordance with this, as the evangelist applies the words of the prophet:"I will open my mouth in parables ; I will utter things which have been kept secret from the foundation of the world."

Of such hidden things the Baptist could therefore know nothing. He was not a prophet of the Christianity so soon to come, but the last voice of the dispensation passing away, which could not pass until it had pointed to Him in whose hand were the ages beyond it. He was the voice of the past in the present, the law in its moral significance, its testimony to its own insufficiency, its reference to Him that was to come. "Repent," says the Voice, crying in the wilderness, "for the kingdom of heaven is at hand."

Prophets had long before announced the kingdom and the king; always in connection with Israel, with the law going forth from Zion, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. It is the same kingdom that the Baptist declares to be "at hand," though now for the first time spoken of under this peculiar title. Yet Daniel had seen " One like the Son of man come in the clouds of heaven " to receive it, and Zechariah had announced that His feet should "stand" in that day "upon the mount of Olives, . . . and the Lord my God shall come, and all the holy ones with Thee."

Since then but one prophet had spoken, and he to show that the remnant brought back out of the captivity in Babylon were but filling up the measure of their fathers' sins. Priests and people were alike gone astray from God. There remained but a remnant of a remnant. The day that was to come would therefore have to discriminate, and be in judgment as well as mercy. But "Behold," says Jehovah, " I will send My messenger, and he shall prepare My way before Me ; and the Lord, whom ye seek, shall suddenly come to His temple."

The voice dropped, and the centuries had run on. Now, after a long interval, the messenger had come, with the express warning of his Master's feet behind him. The years had brought no recovery, and the promise had to come as warning still. The new "voice" cried in the wilderness, not in the cities of Israel :there where Jehovah remembered still the kindness of her youth, the love of her espousals, when Israel was holiness to the Lord, and the first-fruits of her increase (Jer. 2:2, 3), and where again He will have to allure her, in order to speak comfortably to her (Hos. 2:14). There the cry of "Repent" was in its place.

The people were in fact being brought into the wilderness, whether or not they would accept the warning and return to God. They were under the heel of the Gentile fully. Even the bastard rule of the Herods was now over for Judea, (although it was destined to a brief revival,) and there was a Roman governor over the land. The sanctuary throne had long been empty; Lo-ammi, "not my people," had long been the verdict against them ; there was no Urim and Thummim by which God might be consulted ; for centuries no prophet had spoken for Him. God was outside, and the messenger of God had to deliver his message from a place outside. The son of a priest, John, exercised no priestly function. We never find him at Jerusalem. His clothing is of camel's hair-such as spoke of the desert, with a leathern girdle about his loins. His food is locusts and wild honey. Everything with him speaks of separation; as if he had heard (as he had) the word to Jeremiah:"Let them return to thee, but return not thou to them."

His baptism confirms his preaching. He baptizes to repentance, and in Jordan, the river of death; baptizes thus to death, the people confessing their sins, of which death was the just due. This is repentance :not a vain promise of reform, not the reform itself, but what is primary and antecedent to all this, the taking of true ground before God as hopeless and undone, with such an one as Job, who, though the best man of his day, and so pronounced by God, found his place here in self-abhorrence. " I have heard of Thee by the hearing of the ear," he cries to God, "but now mine eye seeth Thee:therefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes."

Were repentance the same as reformation, or '' doing better," as is more vaguely said, we might well despair if the best man on earth, so declared by God Himself, had yet to repent in this sense. On the other hand, it is not hard at all to realize how the very perfection, comparatively, of his life and ways might hinder the apprehension of the evil in him, till he had measured himself fairly in the presence of God. This is his own account of it, as is evident. He had found in such light, deeper than his outward life, a self from which he turned in shame and loathing. Repentance was with him, at least, not doing, in any shape, but turning from all that he had done "and been, to cast himself upon mere mercy. And that mercy in God met him there and then with full deliverance and lifting up from all his sorrows.

Thus, then, was the way of the Lord to be prepared into His kingdom. As Isaiah renders it,- though the quotation is only found in Luke, not here,- the mountain was to be leveled, the valley filled, pride abased, the lowliest exalted, grace in God realized as needed alike by all, sufficient for any. So would He have His way.

John preached, and there was power in his word:"there went out to him Jerusalem and all Judea, and all the region round about Jordan, and were all baptized of him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins."

We come now to the second subdivision, which contains only six more verses:and here we find the opposition of the heart to God revealing itself, and John emphasizing, therefore, the division that would have to be made between men when the King should come. For now, among the multitude, whether merely to be in the fashion, or moved by the power which yet they would not yield themselves to, many Pharisees and Sadducees came to his baptism. They were the religious leaders of the people, though far enough apart from one another, types of the two directions in which men turn away from God. The Pharisee was the legalist and formalist; the Sadducee, the rationalist and infidel of his day. Apart as they were, they could show their essential oneness by the way in which they could combine against the followers of the Lord, and John treats them as one, essentially:"O generation of vipers," he exclaims on seeing them, "who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come ?" He could not credit them with having felt the sting of such an incentive. They must prove the reality of it:" Bring forth, therefore, fruits meet for repentance"; and here self-judgment would show itself first of all:"and think not to say within yourselves, We have Abraham for our father; for I say unto you that God is able of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham."

Natural birth, outward participation with the people of God,- it is possible for men even yet, and under a very different dispensation, to attribute to such things an extraordinary importance. With the Jew, the promises to Abraham's seed, taken in the crudest way and with the grossest misconception, made him value himself exceedingly upon the connection with the "friend of God." John's language, therefore, attacked his most cherished expectations. Not only might all the promises fail him upon which he had built, but God could by His power bring into the enjoyment of them those who had no natural claim or birth-relation at all! To us who enjoy, in fact, a place so given, this is simple. For the Jew it would be an overwhelming thought. It did, indeed, show that the axe was being laid at the root of the trees. All turned upon the fruit that manifested the tree. If the fruit was bad, what matter though it might come of the finest stock ?

The sinner, as such, whoever he was, was under the wrath of God. Once the limit of forbearance reached, the tree cut down was destined for the fire. Very simple truth indeed, but no man loves it. Because he does not love it he will invent every possible way of escape; or, rather, hide from his own eyes that from which there is none. How terrible is the power of self-deceit in all of us; and what need for the plainest possible speaking where this is the case! For, thank God, there is a way of escape; not indeed from the need of repentance, but by its means. Repentance is only the back side of faith:he who turns his back on himself finds grace from Him to whom he turns.

All John's aim, therefore, was to bring man to repentance. For this he baptized with water:he mentions the "water," expressly to free them from the idea that there was anything in this, apart from the significance which it had as a baptism to repentance. Water is only water, can only produce a material effect, and not a spiritual. Nor does God ordain it to a magic use, perverting the nature of what He created. On the contrary, He takes up what is in itself nothing, in order that men should not lose sight of the spiritual by what might seem capable of inherent virtue. Baptism with John, as with Paul, was simple "burial"; not life, not resurrection, but the very opposite of these. The confession of death, – of the sinner's "need and helplessness,-that Another may be seen and known and trusted in; accordingly he turns to that Other' now:-

'' I indeed baptize you with water unto repentance:but He that cometh after me is mightier than I; whose shoes I am not worthy to bear:He shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with fire."

(To be continued.)