Being Lessons from the Gospel of Matthew.

I. WITH GENEALOGY AND WITHOUT. (CHAP. I.)

It has been many times said, and is now understood by many, that the gospel of Matthew presents to us Christ as King. We may see by the first verse that this is true. Jesus Christ as " the Son of David " is the first thought in it suggested, though not the sufficient thought; and therefore the chapter goes on to connect with this two other titles :He is also the " Son of Abraham,"the promised Seed of blessing to the Gentiles ; and then much more than this, He is Immanuel, " God with us." These three threads woven together make our Joseph's many-colored coat as He is here put before us.

" Son of David," put first, declares His kingship to be the fundamental thought; "Son of Abraham" widens His dominion into universal reign over the earth ; " Immanuel " plants His throne in heaven, and subjects souls as well as bodies to His easy yoke. The last gives us the peculiar phrase of Matthew, nowhere else found, here abundant, "the kingdom," or rule, "of heaven." What fullness of blessing, for which the earth yet groans, is in this thought of a heavenly rule over the earth !

The break-down of thrones which the present day is witnessing, but which was long ago predicted in the Word, speaks not of royalty as a mistake or needless, as men deem ; but only that He has not taken power to whom it can be safely trusted. When He is come, despotic power will not only be His right, but a necessity, that the blessing of His rule may be realized in its fullness. It is for Him that, as "the desire of all nations," though with unintelligent groans, the whole earth waits ; when " all kings shall fall down before Him; all nations shall serve Him:for He shall deliver the needy when he crieth, the poor also, and him that hath no helper. He shall spare the poor and needy, and shall save the souls of the needy . . . and men shall be blessed in Him ; all nations shall call Him blessed."

The genealogy comes first in Matthew because it is the legal proof of the Lord's being David's Son, for which reason also it is traced downward, because the title to the throne descends. In regard to supernatural birth, the law could take no notice of it,-it could not affect the title. Thus Joseph is reminded of his lineage where he is plainly told that " that which is conceived in Mary is of the Holy Ghost." That it is heirship that is in question is plain in the fact that Jeconiah is here said to have " begotten " Salathiel, whose real father, as we are told elsewhere, was Neri, Jeconiah himself being pronounced by the prophet childless (Jer. 22:30):his heir is reckoned as if begotten by him, just as seed raised up to him by his brother after his own death might be. (Deut. 25:6.)

Luke it is that gives us the true father of Salathiel ; and thus the genealogy in Luke is shown to be the natural one,-an important help to settling in the affirmative the question whether it is Mary's, as Mary alone is prominent throughout the early chapters. And this is completely in character with the way the Lord is seen in Luke, the gospel of His manhood, not His kingship. Heirship, therefore, in it is out of question :that He is son of man need not be proved. Thus the genealogy there does not commence the book:He gets no title from any special line of ancestors ; thus also the stream flows backward, as it were, in it also ; for it is grace that has connected Him with the family of man, and He is the spring of it. Thus the line of connection stretches back to Adam (reinstated in his old dignity as " son of God "), and the genealogy itself is appended to that part of the Lord's history in which He comes forward from His thirty years' private life to take up openly His public ministry among men. At His baptism by John He is seen and borne witness to as the anointed Son of God.

Returning now to Matthew and his genealogy, he himself points out to us its division into three parts, in each of which he gives and numbers fourteen generations- for a purpose clearly, as there are names left out to make this number right. Why should this be ? The number itself, which is twice seven, must be therefore significant, and the significance would be apparently, according to the meaning of these numbers (2 X 7), the " testimony of complete divine work." They would assure us that in this carefully measured succession God was bearing witness of His own hand at work in power and wisdom to control and bring order out of that which might seem to be fortuitous, or man's failure merely, – each name the record of a step toward the final result, which is the introduction of Christ as the Ruler in God's kingdom, to whom all from the beginning pointed. Read in this way, the three periods in their general character are plain :First, the period of promise from Abraham to David, the two heads of it ; secondly, a period of decay and ruin till the carrying captive into Babylon ; thirdly, a period of prostration, yet expectancy, ending suddenly in a resurrection of the long-lost royalty, in David's infinitely greater Son. The numbers here, to those who can read them, are again significant, and a divine purpose should be evident to all, which in its details may be difficult to trace indeed, for we have scarcely begun to realize the minute perfection of Scripture, and how as in nature mines of wealth often lie in what seem the most barren spots.

Promise, coming first, lays the foundation for faith, and shows the divine plan, which nothing on the part of man or Satan can alter or interfere with. Then comes the winter-killing of the weeds of self-reliance and confidence in man, who, "being in honor, abideth not;" and then, though still after a long trial of patience, the sudden advent of the promised King. In the first of these periods, just between Abraham and David, when the divine counsel is making itself known, and in a part of the genealogy which no Jew whatever could deny to be Messiah's, occur three of those four women's names, conspicuous as those of the only women there which show that not to Jews only is the Son to be born upon whose shoulder the government is laid. Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, Bathsheba, are all, as it would appear-certainly the first three-Gentiles, and thus show the blessing for the nations in the Seed of Abraham. Tamar's place is given her by her sin, God's grace being supreme above it; Rahab finds hers there through the faith of which she is in the history of the times a prominent example ; against Ruth the Moabitess lies the law which forbids the entrance of her posterity into the commonwealth of Israel, yet David is only in the third generation king over the whole. What lessons for the law-confiding Jew of our Lord's day ! and still for us what assurances of a grace that has been since fully revealed ! Uriah's wife comes into the second period, of break-down and ruin, and (how fittingly there!) completes the picture of grace that wearies not, nor comes short of the full salvation of those who are recipients of it. Fruit of this perseverance, not so much of the saint as of God toward the saint, is Solomon, the " peaceful," as his name means. Yet from its glory in him the kingdom wanes rapidly and goes on toward Babel when it passes to the Gentiles ; Israel is dispersed; God still over all, so as to make that dispersion the preparation for a gospel to be preached unto all nations, and a spiritual reign among the Gentiles of Christ the King.

Here we must leave the genealogy with its riches indicated only, scarcely at all possessed, yet the divine stamp plainly on it all and on the book to which it is the preface. What follows is the sanctuary into which the long line of this succession has conducted us :we learn after what manner and under what suspicion at the first the King of kings comes to His own world. Under a vail, in the distance of a dream, as if His coming were still to be (as it is) to the Jew but a parable, the angel of the Lord declares to Joseph the dignity of Him who comes. It is the Seed of the woman, the Conqueror, to whom is to be given the name of a conqueror of another time, Joshua, or Jesus, but whose first deliverance is of " His people from their sins." This is the meaning of His disguise; born in poverty,-a manger, not a throne, receiving Him; no room for Him in the "inn," the stopping-place for a night, to which sin has degraded the earth,-how could He assume honor in it? Rather would He take His place here with the very beasts of burden, the patient witnesses of ministering goodness, though in the scene of man's fall, and suffering with him its bitter consequences. " Thou hast made Me to serve with thy sins" had been God's word of old to His people; and here was He how serving who could claim as Jehovah Israel for His own. Yet the place of service is that which glorifies, as the place of honor would have degraded Him. He alone had ability to serve those in such a condition,-to serve as savior, and thus to secure to them in due time His kingdom also, bringing their hearts into subjection to Him by that which makes His throne a "throne of grace."

He is Jesus, the Savior, that He may be, according to Isaiah's witness, Emmanuel. ' Those delights with the sons of men which had been of old are now in Him to find their expression and their justification. The sin which has come in is only itself to be made to witness, more emphatically than all else, of those delights. Emmanuel is the Savior, the kiss of God for prodigals, in His own person wedding man to God. May our hearts not think of it without making for Him fit music for the marriage-feast ! " God with us,"-not merely over us,- but so with us that He shall be indeed over us; His yoke the badge of freedom,-true liberty as delivered from the lusts that preyed on and enslaved us, the service of love, which is but obedience to the instincts of its own nature, love that serves in answer to a love that has served us.

" God with us,"-here in our world, on His way to a kingdom, marking out the road in which we are to walk with Him. With Him who would not walk ? Not a path but He knows, who has taken up that which we had thrown off, to show us how our meat may be even in such a scene to do His will who sent us into it. The thorns of our path are upon His brow ; plucked from it, they are indeed His crown.

Such is the manner, then, in which this new King is introduced to us. King of the Jews, His kingdom is world-wide, heaven-high ; the kingdom of One who serves that He may reign, and who if He reigns, serves all over whom He reigns ! A glorious King is He,-Jesus, the " King of glory,"-soon and as suddenly to come, as He came in the days to which we are looking back, and to which through all eternity with unabated intensity of interest we shall still look back.