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28 And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin:

29 And yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.

30 Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which

or span." Further, they argue that this interpretation of nikia is confirmed by St. Luke; for in the parallel passage he adds, "If ve then be not able to do that thing WHICH IS LEAST, why take ye thought for the rest?" And they argue that, making a small addition to the length of human life, may well be said to be one of the least things; whereas, applied to a man's stature, the addition of a cubit is a VERY GREAT matter. This view, though supported by very great names, is far from being satisfactory; for the argument from these words of St. Luke appears strongly to bear the contrary way. The adding of "a cubit," not merely a "hand breadth" or "a span," and therefore not an inconsiderable space, to human life, is not one of "THE LEAST" things; great and even eternal consequences might depend upon adding even the shortest space to the duration of man's state of trial; but though a whole cubit were added to his stature, it would be a thing of inconsiderable value, or of no value at all, and may therefore be justly called "that which is least." I take the expression to be proverbial, and that the argument against anxiety is thus founded upon man's imbecility: if, by the most careful solicitude, he cannot add a cubit, or any other measure, to his stature, God himself giving every man his bodily form as it pleases him; if he cannot accomplish that which in its import is of as little consequence as whether a man be a cubit higner or lower, much less can he by taking thought so control the arrangements of providence, vast and intricate as they are, so as to command the supply of his wants, and the gratification of his wishes. To which may be added that Akia occurs several times in the New Testament, in the sense

to

of stature; and is so used by Aristotle, Plutarch, Lucian, and other Greek writers.

Verse 28. And why take ye thought for raiment ? Consider the lilies of the field, &c.

This noble flower, which with us is found only in gardens, grows in the fields of Palestine, and especially in the valleys. The white lily, however, is not meant. This is not known in Palestine; but the country, in autumn, is covered with the amaryllis lutea, or autumnal narcissus. On this passage that distinguished botanist, Sir J. E. Smith, observes, "It is natural to presume that the divine Teacher, according to his usual custom, called the attention of his hearers to some object at hand; and as the fields of the Levant are overrun with the amaryllis lutea, whose golden lilaceous flowers afford one of the most brilliant and gorgeous objects in nature, the expression of 'Solomon in all his glory not being arrayed like one of these,' is peculiarly appropriate."

How they grow.-Palairet places a full stop after aypov, and reads what follows interrogatively. Regard the lilies of the field. How do they grow? That is, how do they grow up into grace and beauty? They toil not, to cultivate the earth which nourishes them; neither do they spin, to array themselves with their splendid vestments; but they are arrayed in their beauty by the hand of God.

Solomon in all his glory, &c.—In his royal robes richly embroidered and adorned. So inferior is every work of art to the beauty, delicacy, and splendour which are exhibited by the various flowers of the field!

Verse 30. The grass of the field.—XOPTOS, by us rendered "grass," includes every species of plant which has not a perennial stalk like trees and shrubs.

to-day is, and to-morrow is cast into tne oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith?

31 Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed?

32 (For after all these things do the Gentiles seek :) for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things.

33 But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.

Into the oven.-The scarcity of fuel in most parts of Palestine obliged the inhabitants to use every kind of combustible matter, to heat the ovens which were attached to every family, and used daily for the baking of their bread. The withered stalks of every species of herbage, and the tendrils of vines, were collected for this purpose, and in a climate so hot might be cut down one day and be sufficiently dried by the sun to be used for fuel the next. The argument here is the same as before; but the illustration is beautifully varied. If God so clothe the plants of the field. invest them with a dress of so much richness and beauty, although they may only exist to-day, and to-morrow be used as fuel, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith? Verse 32. After these things do the Gentiles seek.-Heathens who have no knowledge of the true God, and providence, seek, emigre, these things SOLELY and ANXIOUSLY, for επι is here intensive. Beware, therefore, as though our Lord had said, of the Gentile spirit: such earthly-mindedress as theirs becomes not the followers of a religion which discloses all spiritual blessings, and the lofty hopes of eternity itself, to the view of faith; and those cares which distract heathens are most unworthy of men to whom God is revealed as a "Father," and who have his own warrant to trust with entire confidence in his unbounded goodness. It was a severe reproof to the worldliness of the Jews, thus to parallel them with the very Gentiles they despised as having

no knowledge of God; and the reproach is more poignant in the case of those Christians who, with their still superior light, and in possession of the perfected dispensation of mercy, suffer themselves to doubt the love of God, so gloriously attested by the gift of his Son, and sink into a vortex of earthly anxieties. When we are absorbed in the inquiries, What shall we eat, and what shall we drink, and wherewithal shall we be clothed? we divest ourselves of the Christian and put on the Gentile character

Your heavenly Father knoweth, &c.—See note on chap. vi. 8.

Verse 33. But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness.—The kingdom of God is the same as the kingdom of heaven, that kingdom which Christ establishes in the hearts of men by his Spirit ; and his righteousness, is the forgiveness of sin, and the sanctification of the heart and life, in which true righteousness relative and personal consists. This is here called the righteousness of God, that which he bestows upon and works in them that truly believe the gospel, in opposition to "the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees," which stood only in forms. To seek this first, that is, first IN ORDER, to give it the foremost place in our desires and pursuits, and first IN DEGREE, to prefer it to all other things, is the condition on which these promises of the SPECIAL care of our heavenly Father is suspended; for though there is a general care in God for man, as his offspring, and the subjects of his redeeming mercy,

34 Take therefore no thougnt for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.

CHAPTER VII.

1 Christ endeth his sermon in the mount, reproveth rash judgment, 6 forbiddeth to cast holy things to dogs, 7 exhorteth to prayer, 13 to enter in at the strait gate, 15 to beware of false prophets, 21 not to be hearers, but doers of the word: 24 like houses builded on a rock, 26 and not on the sand.

I Judge not, that ye be not judged.

a Luke vi. 37; Rom. ii. 1.

yet that particular and more tender and watchful care here spoken of is restrained to those who receive his kingdom, and seek his righteousness. To them all these things shall be added, meat, drink, clothing, and whatever is necessary, according to their rank in life; and often so as to raise them above that meaner state in which the grace of God finds them. The promises of God never fail when the conditions on which they are made to depend are perseveringly performed. Seasons of suffering, arising out of persecution "for righteousness' sake," are from their nature exempt cases.

Verse 34. For the morrow.-A Hebraism for THe future.

For the morrow shall take thought, &c."The morrow " is here, by a fine prosopopæia, considered as a PERSON sufficiently thoughtful and careful for his own affairs, and needing no obtrusive offer of aid from another. Let every day bear its own cares, and discharge its own duties. Sufficient for the day, each day, is the evil, the trouble and vexation, thereof.

Who after reading this part of our Lord's sermoh can doubt whether the scripture teaches the doctrine of a PARTICULAR providence ? hat which the philosophy of the world so often stumbles at, God's attention to minute and individual things and persons, is here most fully declared. He provides for the fowls of the heaven, that is, for every one of them; he paints every flower of the field; he regards each individual of his human

family in particular; marks who among them "seeks first the kingdom of God and his righteousness," and deals with HIM accordingly. The government of God over individuals, as such, cannot be more strongly marked.

CHAPTER VII. Verse 1. Judge not, that ye be not judged.-This is not to be understood of forensic judgment; nor of those unfavourable opinions which, from the clear evidence of their conduct, we may, without any breach of charity, coolly and with regret form of wicked and perverse persons; but of rash, censorious, and malignant judging, which interprets every thing in the most severe manner, and leaves unregarded every palliating or exculpatory consideration. The punishment of this vice is, that we provoke a similar treatment of ourselves from others; and this indeed is an aggravation of the evil, for the harmony and confidence of society are thereby impaired, and the evil passions are continually fan ned into a flame. The words look also to the retributive judgments of God; for from him as well as from men, with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged, a thought, which, were it always present with us, would make us more careful to avoid evil surmisings and severe sentences. Nor ought we to forget how little, at the best, we know of the secret workings of men's hearts, and of the circumstances in which they are placed. It is wisely said by a Jewish Rabbi, "Do

2 For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: band with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.

3 And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?

4 Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye?

5 Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye.

6¶ Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast

b Mark iv. 24; Luke vi. 38.

not judge thy neighbour until thou comest into his place."

And with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.-Probably a proverbial sentence. Hence the later Jews say, "Measure against measure." Verse 3. The mote that is in thy brother's eye. The word kappos signifies any small dry thing, as chaff, a twig, &c., and has not inaptly been rendered splinter, in opposition to the beam, dokos, that is in thine own eye. The expression is strongly hyperbolical, which consideration makes all conjectural interpretations unnecessary. Campbell, without any sufficient ground, renders dokos, a thorn, because it is impossible to conceive of a beam in the eye. But the antithesis is also thereby lost; the intention being to reprove that disposition which is keen to discover small faults in others, and to look over those in ourselves which are as much greater as a beam is larger than a splinter. Either this was a proverb at that time among the Jews, or they have borrowed it from the New Testament; for it occasionally occurs in their writings, and precisely in the sense of our Lord. So in the Talmud: "In the generation that judged the judges, one said to another,Cast out the mote out of thine eye' to whom it was replied, ' Cast out the beam from thine eye.'" Doddridge's conjecture, that these terms may be used

e Luke vi. 41.

for disorders in the eyes, has nothing to support it.

Heathen moralists and poets have sentiments similar to that of the text;

as,-
Qui alterum incuset probri, eum ipsum se intueri oportet.
PLAUTUS.

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"Let him who censures first inspect himself"
But much more comprehensive are the
divine words of the Teacher sent from
God:
First cast the beam out of thine
own eye, and then shalt thou SEE CLEARLY
to cast the mote out of thy brother's eye."
Freedom from vice is necessary to true
spiritual discernment: it is not enough
that we should see clearly that the mote
is in the eye of our brother; we must SEE
CLEARLY how to cast it out, and that
without injury, without offence, and in
tenderness and charity. And who can
perform so great an office but he that
walks with God, and learns of him? Hea-
then wisdom did not rise to this.

Verse 6. Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither, &c.-Dogs were by the law unclean animals. Even "the price of a dog" was not to be brought into the house of the Lord for a vow. Things profane and unclean, and flesh torn by such beasts as were forbidden to man to eat, were given to the dogs; but no part of the sacrifices, or holy oblations, not even their fragments. Swine are here

ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you.

"preached the gospel of the kingdom in all the synagogues," consequently to all ranks of people,-and also by his having in the same discourse made it the duty of his disciples, to "let their light shine before men." To all, therefore, the great doctrines of his religion were to be declared generally, and to every sincere inquirer its deepest and most spiritual sense was to be opened without exception. But as to the unclean and brutal, to scoffers and blasphemers, to men of perverse minds, who lie in wait to ridicule or blaspheme truth, and to turn into contempt those who hold and teach it, or to expose them to persecution, a wise discrimination and a cautious prudence are recommended. They were so to teach Christ's doctrine, that the holy name of God might not be blasphemed, nor were they needlessly to run into danger. And so now, before the high spiritualities and "the deep things of God," as they are hidden under the general doctrines of Christianity, are fully opened, the Christian teacher must know whom he is addressing; or just in proportion as anything is sacred, it may be trampled contemptuously or blasphemously under foot. There is a manifest difference between St. Paul's sermon to the Athenians, on Mars' Hill, and his epistles to the Greek churches; a circumstance which may illustrate our Lord's meaning. And as a preacher must consider the character of his congregation, so the conversation of Christians on religious subjects, in order to be "good to the use of edifying," must have respect to TIMES, CIRCUMSTANCES, and CHARACTERS.

mentioned, not so much with reference to their being by the law unclean animals, as because of their grovelling nature. Both these appear also to have been proverbial expressions among the Jews; the wisdom of which, as in the case of all proverbs, lies, however, in the application; and as a true proverb embodies some useful general truth, which, by a wrong use, may be as injurious as an error, so the right application gives to it all its value; and he that teaches this teaches true wisdom. Our Lord might have uttered new proverbs; but to show the use of such as were common, and often much misapplied; of which we have several examples in his discourses, quite as important, and in some respects more so. It was not only teaching truth, but counteracting error. These words are not to be understood as a caution against the free and universal publication of the gospel. This is enjoined to be preached to "every creature ;" consequently, to many who are truly represented, as to their character, by dogs" and 'swine;" and must often be done, although the swine may trample under foot the "goodly pearls," and "the dogs turn and rend" the zealous teacher. In this publicity of its doctrines the contrast between Paganism and Christianity is strongly marked. The wise men among the heathen had an esoteric doctrine which they kept from the common people, who were haughtily styled, the profane, and were not allowed to partake their mysteries; and a similar contempt of the mass of mankind was exhibited by the Pharisees and Sadducees, who, in imitation of heathen priests and Some would transpose this verse, and sages, had also their "hidden wisdom," read, "Give not that which is holy to the which they taught only to select disciples. dogs, lest they turn and rend you; and It was one of the enigmatical sayings of cast not your pearls before swine, lest Pythagoras, that you are not to carry they trample them under their feet." But the pictures of the gods in a ring;" that the construction of the text is resolvable is, you are not to expose the sacred and into what is called enavodos, a going back, venerable principles of religion to every and is very frequent in the poetical parts vulgar eye. But Christ sufficiently guards of the Old Testament, and occasionally against such an interpretation of his seen in the prose of the New. Thus we words, both by his practice,-for he have in Matt. xii. 22, "The blind and

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