WITH this chapter we reach the second section of the final division of the Gospel. The first section revealed the King as specially devoting Himself to His own disciples in view of His coming Cross. In this section, which occupies three chapters, we really begin this study of the last week in the life of our Lord. The time covered was brief, but filled with solemnity. The King is seen deliberately passing back to Jerusalem for the express purpose of definitely and officially rejecting the Hebrew nation. It is the story of the rejection of the Hebrew nation by the King, not that of the rejection of the King by the nation.

In this paragraph the subject is that of the coming of the King to Jerusalem. In the first seven verses we have an account of His preparation for entering the city. In verses eight to eleven we have an account of the actual entry. In verses twelve to seventeen we have the story of the first act of the King in the city, His executive cleansing of the Temple of God.

First, let us observe carefully this story of the preparations; how He acted when they drew nigh to Jerusalem. There are three very simple and yet important points to be noticed. First, He acted deliberately and with evident intention. His going into Jerusalem as He did, was not a result of accident. He rode in by His own will and upon His own initiative. This action of Jesus was an extraordinary one for Him: He had always seemed to avoid anything which would provoke enthusiasm; but upon this occasion He definitely did so. There have not been wanting those who have questioned the authenticity of the narrative, because it seems to be out of harmony with that unobtrusiveness of spirit, which fulfilled the prophetic word concerning Him, "He will not cry, nor lift up His voice, nor cause it to be heard in the street."

It is our business to interpret these actions of Jesus by the King Himself; and to remember that, if for a moment He departed from the ordinary course of the exercise of His ministry, there must have been .some reason for it; and it is good for us to seek that reason. He did not yield Himself to the popular clamour, but He evoked the popular clamour, and that of set and deliberate purpose.

It is evident also that He acted with knowledge. This is manifested in the detailed instructions. If we read the story quite naturally and simply, we cannot escape from this view. He knew where they would find the colt. He knew the frame of mind in which the people would be, to whom He sent them. This is another of the simple and yet complex stories, which we must change in some way if we are to think of Jesus as a man within the limitations of other men. As He hastened His disciples down and across the ravine to prepare for His coming, He choosing to travel round with the rest of the people along the highway, there was manifest an accurate knowledge which none of them shared, "Go into the village that is over against you, and straightway ye shall find" and-He told them exactly what they would find-"And if any one say aught unto you, ye shall say, The Lord hath need of them: and straightway he will send them."

And finally He acted with unquestioned authority. A great deal has been written about the fact that Jesus said, "If any one say aught unto you ye shall say, The Lord hath need of them: and straightway he will send them." There are those who have interpreted the word Lord there as referring simply to the local association between Jesus and His disciples. It is more in harmony with the facts of the incident to say that He used the word as indicating His universal authority, His Chief Proprietorship of all things-the Lord hath need of them. Matthew's interpretation of what our Lord said warrants us in this conclusion. Referring not merely to the sending of the colt, but to everything that happened afterwards, Matthew wrote; "This is come to pass, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken through the prophet, saying,

That quotation is from the ninth chapter of Zechariah. It occurs in that portion of the prophecy of Zechariah which is called, "The burden of the word of Jehovah upon the land of Hadrach and Damascus." If we pass on to the twelfth chapter we read, "The burden of the word of Jehovah concerning Israel." These are the beginnings of two consecutive messages, and yet two separate ones. "The burden of the word of Jehovah upon the land of Hadrach," occupies chapters nine to eleven, and consists of the message of the prophet concerning an anointed King Who would be rejected. If we take the next burden, "The burden of the word of Jehovah concerning Israel," chapters twelve to fourteen, we find that the message is that of the rejected King enthroned. Out of the prophecy then which deals with the rejection of the anointed King, Matthew quoted; and he affirmed that this sending for the colt, this riding into Jerusalem, this cleansing of the Temple, all was in fulfillment of the prophecy of Zechariah, and of that part of it which foretold the rejection of the anointed King. So that according to Matthew, we see this action of Jesus set in relation to the ancient prophecies; and we see how He Who inspired the prophecy, Himself came to fulfill it; He Who fore-arranged all things, and gave men visions of things to come, moved into human history with set purpose, and fulfilled the things according to His own interpretation by the spirit of prophecy in the past. That is the value of the quotation.

Now that quotation emphasized two things according to Matthew's interpretation of the ancient prophecy; first, the coming of the King, "Behold, thy King cometh unto thee;" and, secondly, the meekness of the King,

Two things were intended by the coming of Jesus to Jerusalem in this way. The first was that of official kingly entry. That is one reason why He provoked this demonstration, riding into Jerusalem in such a way as to attract attention. He had often passed into Jerusalem quietly. Men had often crowded to Him. He had spoken kingly words and phrases, and had exerted kingly power in benefits conferred; and men had listened, criticizing, admiring, rejecting, believing. But here, once, and once only, He went in such a way as to manifest the fact of His Kingship to the crowds of Jerusalem, "Behold, thy King cometh." And yet Jesus went in this way to exhibit not merely His Kingliness, but His meekness. And if Jerusalem, in that last hour of her dying day, had known Him, there would have been not judgment, but mercy. He never closes the door in the face of a sinner. He waits only until the sinner closes that door for himself. Thus they found the colt, and brought it to Him. His own disciples yielded Him homage as they spread their garments on the colt, and He accepted the homage as He sat thereon.

And so we pass to the second stage of the story, that which records the actual entry. Notice the things material, and the things essential in this story.

The things material. If it were possible for us to imagine ourselves back in Jerusalem, not among the Galilean crowds coming up with Jesus, but among the dwellers in Jerusalem; if we could imagine that we were Romans in Jerusalem on the day of that triumphal entry, we should find ourselves saying; Who is this that is coming?

If we asked the multitudes they would say, Jesus of Nazareth. That would mean nothing to us, for Nazareth was obscure; or if we knew anything of it our attitude would be one of contempt. The Central Figure in the strange procession was riding upon a beast of burden. Kings never ride upon beasts of burden. There was a race of swift asses in those eastern countries, the peculiar animals of Kings, but the word describing this one is the word showing that it was a beast of burden picked up by the wayside. Who were those people all about Him? An un-organized mob. What were the signs of loyalty and rejoicing? Old clothes and broken trees. Imagine how a Roman, familiar with imperial Rome-having perhaps seen one of those triumphal entries, when some emperor or general returned from war, was led in triumph through the streets of the city, that imperial city on the seven hills-would have looked upon this scene. What the Romans really thought of it all we can gather by noticing their attitude toward the movement. Pilate's attitude was one of absolute indifference from the beginning. All the gathering of this mob of Galileans around some man that they thought was a prophet, did not affect Rome. Rome could afford to ignore it. She said; There are no arms amongst them, there is not a scowl upon a face, they are all full of laughter and song; it is perfectly harmless; it is amusing; they think it is a triumphal entry; they are shouting about a King; let them shout. Remember, that notwithstanding all our popular interpretation of the text, when presently Pilate said, "I find no crime in Him,

If we look back upon the triumphal entry from the standpoint of earthly kingship it was indeed characterized by weakness and poverty. A beast of burden, an obscure man, a shouting mob, mainly of Galilee. Metropolitan Jerusalem despised them. We know the current contemptuous phraseology of Jerusalem concerning Galilee-"Galilee of the Gentiles."

But let us look again, "Behold, thy King." Nineteen centuries vindicate the truth of the prophetic message. He was a King; royal without trappings. His garment was a home-made garment. Presently they would cast lots for it, perhaps because it was preeminently comfortable, woven from the top throughout without a seam, which simply means woven by the deft fingers of some loving woman. A King in a home-made garment! His steed was a beast of burden not yet broken to harness, "Whereon no man ever yet sat." His courtiers were fisher-folk, His cavalcade a mob of Galileans. And yet no pageant that ever passed through the streets of imperial Rome has so impressed the centuries as that. The triumphal entries of Roman emperors are almost forgotten, but of that entry of Jesus to Jerusalem, every detail recorded is known by the common people everywhere.

As they moved into the city, "All the city was stirred." The Greek word translated stirred is the one from which we obtain our word seismic. There was an earthquake, not materially, but mentally. His coming made an earthquake; it shook the metropolis to its very centre. The wildest excitement prevailed. A man, a mob of shouting Galileans, old clothes, and palm branches; and the city was stirred to its very centre. That was His intention; He would attract the attention of Jerusalem to the fact of His coming. He was compelling Jerusalem to recognize Him at least for an hour, at least till it should have heard His voice again, and have seen His authority once more. As she would not listen, He would stir her as by an earthquake, and attract her to Himself, if only to pronounce that final doom upon her.

But now we come to the last part of this paragraph. This was the second time Jesus had cleansed the Temple. He did so at the commencement of His ministry. John tells the story of that. But now again at the close of that public ministry, the King, Who had thus come deliberately to attract men and to make them see and hear Him once again, Who had come in all the symbolism of Kingship, a symbolism suggestive of meekness and poverty in material things, went immediately and directly to the Temple of God. How many things He passed on the way which needed attention. His eyes must have seen many things out of harmony with the Kingdom of heaven, contrary to the will of God His Father. There were many things waiting for the activity of the social reformer, but He passed the whole of them and went to the Temple. Do not misinterpret this. It does not mean that He had nothing to do with the social conditions through which He rode, but He knew the best way to touch them. "Judgment "must" begin at the House of God." That is the meaning of His passing through to the centre, of His going to the Temple. As long as the Temple was wrong the city was bound to be wrong. Presently there will be a CITY WITHOUT A TEMPLE. As the Seer in Patmos said, "I saw no Temple therein." Why not? Because the whole city will have become a Temple. All the streets will be courts in which men worship, and all the civic authorities will be ministers of the Most High. So long as the Temple at the heart of the city is wrong, the city cannot be saved. The King came to the city Jerusalem, beautiful for elevation. How He loved it! At the end of this section we shall hear the tears in His voice as He said; "Oh, Jerusalem, Jerusalem . . . how often would I have gathered thy children, and ye would not!" The ancient King-Psalmist never loved Jerusalem as He loved Jerusalem; and He went to the city, the centre of the nation, and He went to the Temple, the centre of the city.

Now what did He do? We love the tender pictures of Jesus, but we need such as these also. He "cast out," He "overthrew." There is more than gentleness in that. There is more than sentiment in that He "cast out all them that sold and bought in the Temple." There was a magnificence in His roughness. He "overthrew the tables of the money-changers, and the seats of them that sold doves." Why did He do these things? Notice very carefully His own words; "It is written, My house shall be called a house of prayer, but ye make it a den of robbers." Two quotations from the Old Testament prophecies are brought together here- Isa 56:7 and Jer 7:11. Let them be read in connection with their context.

The King, having come to the city, and come to the Temple, cast out and overthrew; and He vindicated His action by quotation from the ancient writings of Scripture, one descriptive of what the house should be a house of prayer; the other descriptive of what the house had become-a den of robbers. Taking a word from Isaiah, the prophet of vision and hope; and capturing a word from Jeremiah, the prophet of vision and of tears, He put them together. The house ought to be a house of prayer. They had made it a den of robbers. Those were great moments for Jerusalem. Oh if Jerusalem had but known! There, at the centre of the city, not because He did not love the city, but because He did love it, He stood in the Temple and said in effect, If the city is ever to be seasoned with salt, the Temple must be right;

Then for one brief moment, so brief a moment that if we are not careful we miss it in our reading-we find the Temple made beautiful indeed; "the blind and the lame came to Him in the Temple, and He healed them." That was one brief moment of restoration. For one brief moment the house was no longer a den of robbers, it was a house of prayer. What a picture! The Temple was not tidy. There were overturned tables, and money scattered everywhere, the debris of a great reconstruction. But there were the blind and the lame; and the face that a moment before had flamed with indignation was soft with the radiance of a great pity. That is one of the greatest pictures in the Gospel according to Matthew. He casts out, but He takes in; He overthrows, but He builds up.

Let us go back to Isaiah. In that fifty-sixth chapter we read, "My house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples." That is what the King quoted. He stayed His quotation there; but what follows? "The Lord Jehovah Who gathereth the outcasts of Israel, saith, Yet will I gather others to Him, besides His own that are gathered." He did not quote that, but He did it! He rebuked them for the desecration of the house. He cast out, and He overthrew; and then He gathered the outcasts of Israel; and He gathered others besides His own. We know there is a wider significance. We know that this was one of the greatest prophetic words of Isaiah; but there was the first fulfillment of it.

Thank God for that vision of the King. We could not live in the midst of all the iniquity that prevails if we did not believe in a King Who can overthrow and cast out. And thank God, that before the rearrangement of details, before we have put the house in order; with the tables still upset, the money scattered, and the men of affairs driven forth, He gathers the outcasts, and heals them.

We know the rest of the story-priests; and as surely as we hear the word, we know that mischief is brewing. They heard of the wonderful things, and they heard children singing, and were moved with indignation! Think of it! They saw the wonderful things that He did, and they heard the bairns singing, and they were angry. We do not want to know anything more about them; that is their condemnation. These children were practically proclaiming the Messiah. Dost thou hear it? they asked. "Yea," said Jesus, I do hear it, and "Did ye never read, Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings Thou hast perfected praise?" It was an uproarious day in Jerusalem. The Galileans had been shouting, and Jerusalem had been shaken. He had turned out money-changers, and the crash and the flash of it all was about Him. Then the children sang, and He said, That is perfected praise. God help us, what a King He is!

THE last verse of our previous study declared that after the priests' objection to the singing of the children, "He left them, and went forth out of the city to Bethany, and lodged there." These verses contain the story of His coming from Bethany, after a night spent there, back to Jerusalem, and of what happened on the way. This story has created difficulty in the minds of many, and it is well to notice at once, and to recognize the fact, that it is peculiar, in that it is the only record we have of the performance by Christ of a miracle of judgment. There are other occasions when, by exercise of His power judgment was manifested, but on such occasions there was also always deliverance wrought. According to the story of the Evangelists, in the country of the Gadarenes He destroyed an unholy traffic in swine, but He did it in connection with His freeing two men from demon possession. But this is the story of Christ coming to a fig-tree, and pronouncing upon it a doom, and of how the disciples saw it wither away. Mark tells us the story with a little more detail than Matthew, and we gather that their question was asked not there and then, but on the morning after, its important and permanent values.

Let us consider first of all the difficulties; and then look at the story as to It has been said that this act of Christ was an act of injustice, because, according to Mark, it was not the season of figs. The story has also been objected to because it has been said that Christ manifested a spirit of anger, that, being hungry, and finding no fruit, He immediately cursed the tree, and that such manifestation of anger is out of harmony with the character of Christ. That same thing has also been stated, not as a reflection upon the character of Christ, but as being out of harmony with His method, in that He did not come to destroy life, but to save it, that He did not come to execute judgment, but to show mercy.

Let us look at these three objections. First, what are the facts concerning this fig-tree? The usual time of figs was June, and there is no doubt whatever that this was what would answer to our month of April. But there was a "first ripe fig before the summer." The phrase occurs in the prophecy of Isaiah, the twenty-eight chapter, and there is an intimate association between the prophecy of Isaiah and this particular miracle. The phrase referred to was undoubtedly used by Isaiah as a figure of speech, and yet of course it was one that was familiar to the men of his time, and indicated a fact concerning a certain kind of fig-tree to be found in Palestine. There were those that constantly produced what the prophet called "the first ripe fig before the summer," and one of the peculiarities of that tree was that the fruit appeared before the foliage. The presence of foliage on the tree before summer ought to have indicated the fact that fruit was there, too. If this explanation is accepted we have a perfectly natural understanding of the equity of His dealing with this tree, so that there was no injustice in the sentence He pronounced upon it. This miracle was also a parable, as all His miracles were; and this tree was not faithful in fulfilling its true function; it was putting forth a manifestation which was not true to its inner life.

There is not in this parable any sign of personal vindictiveness. Notice, the effect produced upon the men who beheld what happened, was not one of wonder that He should act as He did in the presence of the tree, but rather at the speed with which His fiat was carried out; and surely we have the right to interpret the attitude of Jesus, and the method of His action, and the spirit manifested, by the effect produced upon the men who were there, rather than by the effect produced upon others, centuries after, who did not sec or hear what He said, and how He said it. The disciples were evidently in agreement with what He had done.

Then, finally, the objection-and this is perhaps the most serious of them-that this is not in harmony with the methods of Jesus as revealed in the Gospel stories. When He entered into the synagogue at the commencement of His public ministry, and read from the prophecy of Isaiah the great Scriptures which indicated the meaning of His mission, He ended abruptly in the midst of His reading. He read from that portion of the prophecy of Isaiah where it is written, "The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me;" but He did not read the latter part; He paused with the words, "The acceptable year of the Lord." He was then commencing His ministry, and in the prophecy of Isaiah, as we have it by translation, there is but a comma between that phrase, "The year of Jehovah's favour," and the phrase, "The day of vengeance of our God." So that we need to remember that in the counsel of God, as revealed in the ancient prophetic writing, the Servant of God came not only for the "year of Jehovah's favour," but also for "the day of vengeance of our God." That day of vengeance had not yet dawned. But so far as the Hebrew nation was concerned, the "acceptable year of the Lord" had ended; and the King had now come up to Jerusalem for the specific purpose of pronouncing its doom. We immediately find Him in conflict with the rulers in the Temple. In a series of parables He revealed the doom, and the reason of it. He gathered His disciples together, and most marvellously predicted the overthrow of Jerusalem by aliens; and cursed it with an eightfold woe. All this has no application to personal salvation, but only to national accountability. Also in Matthew another of the prophecies of Isaiah is quoted. "A bruised reed shall He not break, and smoking flax shall He not quench," and it is an interesting thing, we almost invariably end our quotation there. And yet the quotation ends, "Till He send forth judgment unto victory." When He sends forth judgment unto victory, He will break the bruised reed, and quench the smoking flax.

One other illustration of the method of Jesus. We remember His own parable of the fig-tree. The parable of words was borrowed, as to its thought, from the song of Isaiah, "Let me sing for my well-beloved a song of my beloved touching his vineyard." That parable declared that a certain man had a vineyard, and a fig-tree planted within it. The plea of the intercessor was that he might have opportunity to provoke it to fruit-bearing, and the final word was, "If it bear fruit thenceforth, well; but if not, thou shalt cut it down." The intercessor was at one with the proprietor; and the last method of the intercessor was a method of judgment and destruction for that which did not yield to his ministry. Jerusalem had had its opportunity. The King was coming up to pronounce judgment upon it, to be at one with the Proprietor in flinging it out as a nation for testimony, and reducing it to ashes in the economy of God. On the way, this method of His work, never seen before, flamed out, as He no longer acted in pity, but in judgment; no longer in mercy, but for the destruction of something which in itself was a failure.

Let us now look at the immediate and permanent values of this miracle of judgment. Carefully notice the opening words of this section; "Now in the morning as He returned to the city, He hungered." Why did He hunger? During the last week in the life of our Lord, He never stayed in Jerusalem for the night. Speaking merely on the level of the human, He dare not. Men were waiting to arrest Him. The first night that He did stay in the neighbourhood of Jerusalem, on the mount of Olives, He was arrested. So that during those days, in which He was officially denouncing Jerusalem by parable and by woe, He went out every night to Bethany. Now Bethany calls to mind at once certain associations. Bethany was the home of Lazarus, and Martha, and Mary, and it is a most strange thing to read at the beginning of this paragraph that, coming back from Bethany in the early morning, He was hungry. It is inconceivable that He had spent the night in the home of Martha and Mary, and Lazarus. It may be only speculation, but perchance it was out of tender regard for them, knowing He was being followed, knowing very likely that Lazarus's life would be in danger on His account. In all probability He had spent the night in some long lone vigil on the hill-side, in a quiet and secluded place, and when the morning came, and He turned; His face back toward Jerusalem, He was hungry. Through the stress and strain of the spiritual conflict there had been no sense of hunger; and suddenly, He hungered. And what had been His spiritual experience through that night, and during the whole of that period? One of intense spiritual hunger. The song of Isaiah and the parable of Luke both come back to mind. In that great song of Isaiah, God's desire after the fruitfulness of His people is pathetically and magnificently declared, "What could have been done more to My vineyard, that I have not done in it? Wherefore, when I looked that it should bring forth grapes, brought it forth wild grapes?" Jehovah in the person of Jesus of Nazareth had been in Jerusalem, looking for judgment and finding oppression, looking for righteousness and finding a cry. Or, to take His own parable, He Who was at once Proprietor and Intercessor in a strange and wonderful unity of purpose, had been there, attempting by the ministry of His teaching and the ministry of His doing, to provoke Jerusalem to fruit-bearing, and the men and rulers of His time to being what God intended they should be; and they had refused Him. We can enter in some measure into the intense and overwhelming hunger of the heart of the Christ. "Who hath believed our message? and to whom hath the arm of Jehovah been revealed?" was infinitely more than the cry of Isaiah. We know how it was fulfilled in this King, and probably during that night He had been filled with spiritual hunger. The material hunger was caused by the spiritual. That is to say, the spiritual hunger had made Him for the moment careless as to food, careless for the sustenance of the body, and when morning came, and He set His face toward Jerusalem for all the awful ministry to be exercised there, the spiritual hunger was expressed through the material.

Now notice what happened. With all naturalness, walking back to Jerusalem with a little group of men, strangely perplexed around Him, we have this strange act. Let us go back again to the prophecy of Isaiah, the twenty-eighth chapter. It is the chapter in which the prophet declares that at last God deals in judgment with people who refuse the ministry of His servant. That is the peculiar message of the chapter in which the prophet describes the taunts of the men who opposed Him, "Precept upon precept, precept upon precept; line upon line, line upon line: here a little, there a little." And he answered them, Yes, so God has spoken to you, because He has been bound so to speak. And at last the prophet uttered this word, in verse twenty-one (Isa 28:21), "For Jehovah will rise up as in Mount Perazim, He will be wroth as in the valley of Gibeon, that He may do His work, His strange work, and bring to pass His act, His strange act." If men will not listen to the wooing, patient, halting speech of grace, halting because men can only hear line upon line, precept upon precept; then at last God will be driven to judgment, and He will be compelled to do that which is strange to Hun, His strange work, His strange act.

Now on His way to the national rejection, conscious of material hunger, He stood in the presence of the fig-tree with leaves that ought to have been the sign of the early ripe fruit before summer. There was no fruit, and the condition was symbolic. He understood His relation to the ancient prophecies and that the prophet of old had foretold His coming there. There at the parting of the ways stood the fig-tree, symbolic of the new condition of the people to whom He had been sent, with a fine exterior of promise, but with no fruit. Then the wail of God sounded in His heart, "Wherefore, when I looked that it should bring forth grapes, brought it forth wild grapes?" and the word of God thundered through His soul, "Cut it down; why doth it also cumber the ground?" In the presence of the symbol He acted in answer to material hunger, but in order to express the spiritual hunger, and the absolute necessity that was thrust upon Him for carrying out the intention and the purpose of God.

When His disciples wondered, He gave them no answer to the astonishment in the way in which they expected; but by saying a thing which seemed to have very little connection, He declared to those men that if they had faith, not only this fig-tree, but mountains should be removed. Let us try to enter into the very mind of Christ and see what was passing therein.

Why was it necessary for Him to denounce this nation, and cast it out? Because of its lack of faith. The whole economy of God in connection with the Hebrew nation was that of revealing to the nations of the world the fact that the one master-principle of life for men was that of faith in Himself. The whole nation was founded upon faith. "By faith Abraham."-And because the people had failed in their faith, and had garbed themselves in the works of a mere external ritualism, they must be flung out. They had lost their contact with infinite power because they had lost their faith. And so, in the presence of the miracle, Jesus did not account for His power at all, did not draw attention to Himself at all, but said to this little group of men round about Him, "If ye have faith, and doubt not, ye shall not only do what is done to the fig-tree," but you will be able to fling all obstacles out of the way of God's progress. He gave no explanation of the meaning of this miracle of judgment; but calling His own disciples, the little group of men to whom He was about to give the responsibility of expressing the will of God in the world, which responsibility was being taken away from the Hebrew people, He called them back to the fundamental principle, for having forgotten which, the Hebrew people were to be cast out from testimony and to be rejected, while He pronounced upon them the woes that negatived the Beatitudes with which He had opened His ministry.

There are permanent lessons here which we do well to understand. First of all, we have a revelation of the absolute oneness of Christ with God. His ministry of mercy merges into that of judgment when men refuse to submit themselves to His mercy. Of course, this is to recognize and to abide by the truth of man's responsibility. The next two parables are both parables of the vineyard the ancient figure of Isaiah-directed against the rulers, and then against the people; and through all Christ recognized human responsibility. Jesus Christ is one with God in underlying purpose as He deals with men. He seeks to provoke men to fruit-bearing for the satisfaction of God. He comes seeking righteousness; He does more, He comes to make it possible for men to live the life of judgment and of righteousness. But if man refuses, then Jesus Christ is absolutely one with God and as in the parable of the fig-tree, so in the miracle of the fig-tree, the ministry of Jesus is intended not to be a ministry of pity merely, but a ministry that provokes us to the realization of God's underlying purpose for us. To imagine that He simply came to plead for pity upon men who fail, is false to the whole of the New Testament teaching. He came to reveal sin to be what it is, active, willful, definite, positive rebellion against God; and He came to deal with men, so that their will should be turned in the direction of the will of God, that men should be made to fulfill the divine intention. Of course the application in this story is national, but we may apply it also in individual life; and if a man shall, in spite of all the ministry of grace, and mercy, and power, still refuse and fail to trust Him; then, as surely as Jesus blasted the fig-tree on the way between Bethany and Jerusalem, He will blast the life of that man.

There is the other side of the application; and it also is of permanent value. The power in which His own are to cast obstacles out of God's highway is to be that of faith in Him. He was emerging along the great highway of the Divine purpose, and if we miss that view, we miss the whole point of our story. When we see Him as the great Servant of God, that His every act was a link in the chain of the Divine continuity of purpose and of power, when we understand that His casting out of Jerusalem was by the act, and power, and will of God, then we understand what He meant when He said to His disciples, If you have faith, you will not only be able to wither away one fig-tree, but all the mountains; you will be able to speak to them with faith, and they shall be removed.

The Hebrew people had become God's greatest hindrance instead of God's greatest help; and officially and positively He flung the nation away, declaring in detail how that judgment should fall within a generation. Within one generation the Roman legions had swept through the city, and it was flung down until no stone was left upon another. He was thus flinging a mountain of difficulty out of the way of God, that He might move forward according to the purpose of His heart, in blessing to others. So men of faith, operating through faith, are able to take hold of the power of God for the accomplishment of the purpose of God, that purpose being the setting up of His Kingdom. God operates through faithful men, but men can do nothing toward removing mountains of difficulty without God. So that when Christ tells us we are to have faith, it is not merely an individual thought, it is not merely in order that a soul may be saved; it is that, but it is in order that we may be workers together with Him, in order that we may fling the mountains of difficulty away, and make the high places smooth, and fling up the valleys to levelness.

God through the centuries has been moving ever onward, and He has always moved onward through human agency, but He has never been able to move onward through human agency save where man has operated upon the rock foundation of faith in Himself. Let us remember as we go forward we are the servants of a Christ Who waits in infinite and long-continued patience, but Who, at last, if the fig-tree bear no fruit, will Himself wither it with a word, and fling it away; but He does it in order that in the place which it occupied in the vineyard of God some other may be placed for the fulfillment of His ultimate purpose.

And so the miracle becomes a flaming teaching, filling the heart with fear in the presence of the Lord, making one recognize that if He be tie Lamb of God which beareth sin in the mystery of an infinite meekness, there is such a thing as the wrath of the Lamb, against which none can stand. If we fail to answer the ministry of His love, we must be blasted by the ministry of His judgment.

WE now commence the section in which we see the King in Jerusalem, and in the Temple, the Centre of opposition. The hostility of the priests and rulers is more than ever manifest. First, they challenged Him as to His authority, and He answered them in parables. They were angry, for .they saw that His two parables were intended to apply to them, and they commenced with more earnestness than before to plot against His life. He answered their anger with a third parable, a parable of judgment. Then they endeavoured to entangle Him in His talk, bringing to Him questions.

In this section we see the forces that had always been against Him manifesting themselves in clear succession; and they are the forces which are against Him still. They are, first unbelief, as represented in the rulers who asked Him concerning His authority; secondly worldliness, as represented in the men who asked Him questions concerning the tribute money; thirdly rationalism, as represented in the men who asked Hun questions about the resurrection; and, finally intellectual dishonesty, as represented in the man who asked Him a question which was merely that of casuistry.

Let us consider first, the challenge of unbelief; and the King's answer. The challenge was expressed in the words: "By what authority doest Thou these things? and who gave Thee this authority?" Let us remember the occasion upon which the question was put. Think of the surroundings. We have studied the story of our Lord's entry into Jerusalem, and the fact of the cleansing of the Temple. We now see the Christ, having returned from the quiet, lonely vigil near Bethany, coming into the Temple which He had cleansed. Remember these events all took place within two or three days. He had driven out the money-changers, overturned the tables of the traffickers in the courts of the House of God, and for "one brief moment restored the Temple to its original purpose.

He had now returned to the cleansed Temple, and was teaching. He had come with quiet assumption of authority. We cannot understand these men's questions at this point unless we see this,-the Man Who had dared to cleanse the Temple, had now returned to it in order to teach, and the people-Jerusalem was very full at this time-were crowding upon Him. That was the occasion.

While He was so teaching, the chief priests and the elders came to Him. That appears a simple statement, but it was no mere casual coming of the chief priests and elders. They were fringe of the crowd, sometimes nearer, these rulers, the members of the official council, members of the Sanhedrim. But this was not an occasion when some member of the Sanhedrim, having heard Him teaching, asked Him some casual question. This was an official visit of the chief priests and the elders of the people, the representatives of the ruling powers of Jerusalem in matters of religion, the men of authority, the men whose authority had perhaps never been questioned for long years until Jesus came. He did not commence by questioning their authority. As a matter of fact, He told His disciples that they were to do all that the Pharisees told them as they sat on Moses' seat. He had never called in question the fact that these men had authority; but He had so taught as to make the people call in question their authority; for as we have already seen, they "were astonished at His teaching; for He taught them as one having authority, and not as their scribes."

Now this was His last visit to Jerusalem, and the men of authority, who had been put into contrast with Him by the people, and not by Himself, came to Him, and interrupted Him in His teaching. They had the technical right to do this within the Temple Courts, according to their own understanding of their own position, and according to the popular estimate of that position.

They now asked Him two questions. First, "By what authority doest Thou these things?" "In what authority," as the word is more accurately; that is, What is the note of Your authority? Is Your authority a political authority, a social authority, or a spiritual authority? What do You claim? That was the first question, and that was the deepest. But that which really troubled them was revealed in their second question, "Who gave Thee this authority?" His presence there was without their sanction. He had asked no permission from the elders or priests to find His way into the Temple Courts and to teach. Such was their challenge, and it was made in order that they might encompass His arrest, and end His mission.

Now let us carefully notice the King's answer. This story, in common with many others, has suffered from a very superficial interpretation. We need to understand the spirit of it. First, He declared to them that He was quite willing to tell them, if they were ready to receive His answer. "I also will ask you one question, which if ye tell Me, I likewise will tell you by what authority I do these things." It was not that He declined to declare His authority. It was not that He resented their interference, and was not prepared to answer; but that it was quite useless for Him to tell them His authority; they were not prepared to believe Him. He was perfectly prepared to declare what was the nature of His authority, and whence He obtained His authority, to men who were ready to receive it.

What was His test? "The baptism of John, whence was it? from heaven or from men ? "He said, in effect, You are challenging Me as to whether I have any right to come into the House of God, and assume authority in the House of God. Am I a Teacher answering the authority of God, or am I here as a man craving the popular acclaim of the people? I will ask you one question, "The baptism of John, was it from heaven or from men?" Before He could reveal to them what they asked, He took them back to the last revelation which they had received; for readiness to receive a new revelation always depends upon the attitude to the previous one. That is always the principle of God's dealing with men. Thus we see that there was more in Christ's question, than appears upon the surface. Supposing these men had admitted that the baptism of John was from heaven, then their question concerning Christ was immediately answered, because John had been His herald. John discontinued his ministry when Jesus began. John had said, "He must decrease, but I must increase." If they had accepted that testimony as from heaven they would not have asked Him this question about His authority. They knew full well what John's testimony to Him had been. Thus there was an intimate connection between His question and their answer. The prime meaning of Jesus' question was this; What did you do with the last light that fell upon your pathway? If you tell Me that, I shall know whether you are ready to receive more light or not!

How did they reply? Their difficulty was twofold. "If we shall say, From heaven"-and that is what we ought to say then He will ask us why we do not obey Him. "If we shall say, From men"-and that is what we would prefer saying "we fear the multitude." The people had come to the common conclusion that John was a prophet, and they dare not say that he was not. Therefore "they answered: We know not."

To catch its significance we must interpret that particular answer of these men in the light of what Jesus said to them immediately afterwards-"Neither tell I you." He ignored, and treated as untrue, what they declared, when they said they knew not. They withheld an honest answer; He withheld the answer which they asked. Theirs was the answer of blindness and of dishonesty. Of blindness, for they had seen the issue of John's ministry. They had seen an ethical revival resulting from the emotional revival. They had seen harlots and publicans pressing into the Kingdom of God, which meant obeying God, yielding to His demands, giving up the things John denounced, turning to the way of righteousness; and yet they dared to look in the face of Jesus, and say, "We know not" It was willful blindness, and it was absolute dishonesty; and as such our Lord treated it. Then said He, "Neither tell I you."

And why not? Because it was quite useless. If they were blind in the presence of the evidences of the Divinity of the mission of John, then they would also be blind, as they were, in the presence of the evidences of the Divinity of the mission of Jesus. If they were dishonest in dealing with the former light, they would be dishonest whatever He declared to them.

And not only because reply was useless, but because reply was needless. "By what authority," said these men, "doest Thou these things?" and in the use of that word they revealed their subconscious conviction. They did not say, By what authority sayest Thou these things? They knew perfectly well that wherever He had come with His ethic, He had also provided a dynamic, and by obedience men had been changed. His answer therefore declared that the things concerning the authority, of which they had questioned Him, were themselves the evidences of the authority.

Then immediately, not allowing them to escape, He continued; "But what think ye?" And then He gave them two parables, in which He condemned first of all their methods, in the parable of the two sons; and, secondly, their motives, in the parable of the vineyard, the husbandmen, and the one son who was cast out.

In considering the blasting of the fig-tree we turned to the song of Isaiah, that great song of the vineyard. Now observe that both these parables are parables of the vineyard. Christ spoke as in the particular region which the prophet had described; as the Servant of God, The song of the well-beloved concerning His vineyard, was the. song of the vineyard neglected. The fences were to be broken down, and destruction was to come thereto; and He was in Jerusalem for the specific purpose of pronouncing doom upon that very vineyard of the Lord of hosts, because of its failure. Thus when He was dealing with the rulers, His two parables returned to the figure of Isaiah, the figure of the vineyard. The second one is most evidently an accommodation of the Song of Isaiah, in order to apply its truth to the rulers of His day, who had failed.

Let us take the first, and notice what our Lord did. He stated the case by employing the figure of two sons. The father said to the first of them, "Son, go work to-day in the vineyard," and he said, "I will not," and then he repented-and the word "repent" here is not to change the mind, but to be filled with sorrow-he realized the mistake, and he went into the vineyard. To the next son he said the same thing, and he replied and it is a somewhat curious and yet remarkable reply-"I sir." We read it, "I go, sir,

Then notice carefully the application. He put into contrast two classes of people the publicans and the harlots, the rebellious people who said, We will not do the will of God; and those very men who were the rulers. He said in effect; You have given a verdict against yourselves. The publicans and harlots had said, We will not; and then repenting, went. The rulers had said, We go, and had not done so.

For the purpose of this contrast He had taken them back to John's ministry. They had heard him, and professing obedience had been disobedient. The publicans and harlots had heard him, and they who had said, We will not go, had repented, and entered into the Kingdom of God. There is no question as to what Christ thought of those men; He knew perfectly well that they were sure John's ministry was from heaven. John came in the way of righteousness, and they knew that they, the exponents of the ethic of Judaism, could not quarrel with the great ethic he declared; they knew it was the way of righteousness; and yet when he pronounced the way of righteousness they did not obey; they who affirmed their loyalty to God, would not obey the ethic through John. And it was not merely true that the publicans and harlots believed and obeyed, and they did not; the truth was that they refused to believe, even though they saw the signs of the publicans and harlots entering into the way of righteousness. They not only refused to be persuaded by John himself, but when they saw the effect of John's preaching, that those men and women whom they despised, and would not help, were helped, and lifted, and healed, they still refused.

The parable was indeed a white light, and a fierce fire; and the King standing there in the Temple, challenged as to His authority, instead of answering the quibble, assumed the throne of judgment, and welcomed into the Kingdom of God harlots and publicans who set their faces toward the Kingdom, and flung out the men who had professed to be the exponents of His Kingdom, who nevertheless had been disobedient to His command.

If in this first parable He had condemned their methods, He now probed more deeply into their lives, and dealt with their motives. And once more the figure is Isaiah's figure. The proprietor's perfect provision was in order to the production of fruit. "Hear another parable: There was a man that was a householder, who planted a vineyard, and set a hedge about it, and digged a winepress in it, and built a tower." He made every provision necessary in order that He might gather fruit from His vineyard. To borrow the word of Isaiah, "He looked for justice, but, behold, oppression; for righteousness, but, behold, a cry." What did He look for? For judgment, for righteousness. Thus Jesus reminded them of this song of their own prophet. He then declared that the proprietor let this vineyard "out to husbandmen." He said, "he went into another country," which was a figurative way of saying that God made the priests and rulers and elders responsible for the vineyard; and the failure of the vineyard was to be charged back upon them.

That was the perpetual message of the prophets; "Woe to the false shepherds." And so also when Christ saw the multitudes and was moved with compassion it was because they were as sheep without a shepherd. This parable is not for the crowd, but it is for the shepherds. The priests and the elders were in front of Him; the men who ought to have taken care of the vineyard of the Lord of hosts, and so cultivated it that it would have brought forth fruit for which God looked; judgment which is justice, and righteousness. They were responsible. But what had these husbandmen done? The messengers came to receive the fruit. They beat them, bruised them, flinging them out, because instead of husbanding the vineyard for the proprietor, they had been cultivating it for themselves. And at last, said the King, He sent His own Son. Now, said the husbandmen, is the opportunity, that for which we have been waiting. We have gathered the fruit for our own self-enrichment, now we will possess the whole husbandry; let us kill Him, and the inheritance shall be ours. Said Jesus, What shall be done with these men?

He had made them find the verdict; He now made them pass the sentence. He Who compelled them to be the jury, finding the verdict in the case of their own wrong, now compelled them to be the judge, passing sentence upon their own iniquity. And they were quite vehement about it, and their very vehemence is the evidence of the tremendous force with which Jesus spoke the words, that searching intensity that stirred the conscience, and compelled attention, and made the chief priests forget their quarrel with Him and speak out the truth. He found the deepest in them, and appealed to that deepest in them which they were resolutely setting themselves to stifle, in order to crucify Him. He compelled them to tell the truth. What shall be done to these men? Oh, they said, "He will miserably destroy those miserable men, and will let out the vineyard unto other husbandmen, who shall render Him the fruits in their seasons."

There was no need for Christ to say anything more. They saw He spoke concerning them. They knew perfectly well that they had come to arrest Him, and challenge His authority in the Temple; and yet with quiet and matchless authority He had gathered them to the judgment throne of the unending ages, and made them say they were miserable sinners who deserved punishment at the hands of an angry God. They made their own confession.

This was the condemnation of their motive. They had been exercising authority in ethical and religious matters, but never for the sake of the glory of God, but for the sake of the maintenance of their own official position. They said, We will take this vineyard of Jehovah of hosts; it is our great opportunity to maintain our own position; we will farm it, and work it for ourselves. We are not anxious that God should find judgment and righteousness, we are anxious that we should find dignity and office. That is the dastardly sin of false authority in every age, that it cares for its own robing and dignity, and for the enslaving of the people to its own rule, and not for judgment and righteousness and truth for which God is seeking.

Thus our King brought these rulers to His judgment throne, and then flung back upon them their own sentence, "I say unto you, The Kingdom of God shall be taken away from you, and shall be given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof." You are here to arrest Me, you are here to encompass My death, you are the builders, you are here to take this Stone that lies in your way, a stumbling-block, and fling it out! "Did ye never read in the Scriptures:

A stone of stumbling, and a rock of offence. Fall on it-and there is a touch of mercy even here-and you will be broken, but the broken man can be healed. But let it fall on you, and you will be ground to dust, and there is no healing then.

The supreme interest in this paragraph is the revelation of Jesus. He is the Master of all ages, and His judgments are the judgments of the ages. His is the voice of eternity, and He so deals with men as to compel them to acquiesce in the justice and righteousness of His verdicts and sentence.

IN our previous study we found the solemn words of the King in which He declared the Hebrew nation to be rejected: "Therefore say I unto you, The Kingdom of God shall be taken away from you, and shall be given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof." There is the most intimate connection between that declaration and the parable which we have now to study.

There is a difference between this parable and those already considered which we must notice at the outset. In the former two the King was dealing with the rulers' responsibility concerning the Kingdom of God in the world. In this it is no longer responsibility, but privilege which is under consideration. The figure changes from that of a vineyard into which labourers are sent, to that of a marriage feast to which guests are bidden; and if we interpret the figures from the Eastern view point, we at once see the contrast. On the one hand, we have toil and service; and on the other, rejoicing, and gladness, and merriment

Then notice that running through all these parables there is an identity, not declared, but most evidently claimed, between Christ and His Father. Whatever we may think of the meaning of these parables, it is quite evident, as Matthew tells us, that the chief priests and the Pharisees knew that He was applying them to themselves. It is quite evident that our Lord intended to teach the proprietorship of God, the fact that these men owed allegiance to Him. Moreover, by the second parable it was perfectly evident that He intended to teach that He had come as the Sent of the Father; they having refused the messengers, He had come with the final message as the Son. In the three parables there is a growing movement. In the first He showed what the attitude of these rulers had been toward God. They had said, I go, and had failed to go; the attitude of disobedience and disloyalty. In the second He showed what their attitude would be toward Himself, "This is the heir; come, let us kill Him, and take His inheritance;" His inheritance of rule and authority and influence shall be ours. In the third parable He revealed to them what their attitude would be toward His messengers, those who are sent to bid them to the privileges. So long as He was dealing with their attitude to the Father, and to Himself, the parables moved in the realm of responsibility. When He began to deal with their attitude toward His messengers, His parable moved in the realm of privilege.

There are three distinct movements in the particular parable we have now to consider, indicated by the three invitations sent out. The King was very near the end of His ministry, and was in Jerusalem for the specific purpose of casting out from privilege and responsibility the people that had refused His Kingship. Thus all His parables become more intensely suggestive, and need examination in the light of that fact. To take this parable, and to preach the Gospel from it, is to strain its meaning. There is not a word here concerning the preaching of the Gospel.

Remembering that our Lord was in Jerusalem definitely for the purpose of dealing with the rulers and the nation, notice how these three invitations exactly cover the fact of His ministry in the world, concerning the Kingdom of God. In the first invitation He was referring to the call already given by Himself and His disciples in their journeyings throughout that whole district. By the second invitation He was referring to the work which His disciples would do from that moment until, the nation rejecting the message for the second time, God would send His armies and destroy their city, a definite prophecy of the destruction of Jerusalem. We have therefore in the second movement, a reference to the call to the Kingdom, from the point of His rejection, until, rejecting not merely Jesus, but the ministry of the Holy Spirit, Jerusalem was destroyed. That took place a generation afterwards. Thirdly, we have in the parable a movement which follows that. After the destruction of Jerusalem the messengers would be sent forth into the highways; that is, beyond the places of covenant, beyond the people of privilege, beyond those who were originally bidden; and they were to go forth with the same message. But the difference is that, instead of bringing to the marriage feast the bidden ones, they were to bring bad and good together, in order that the house might be filled, in order that the ideal might be realized. In that third invitation, then, we have a picture of the call which His messengers were to utter after the destruction of Jerusalem until this time. It is a reference to work which we have to do.

Turn, then, to the first of these invitations, "The Kingdom of heaven is likened unto a certain king, who made a marriage feast for his son." What is the Kingdom of heaven? Exactly what this Gospel has revealed. In order to understand the phrase here, we must first, behold the King; secondly, listen to the laws which are in His Manifesto ; thirdly, observe the facts of His Kingship as revealed in His authority in the realms of the material, mental, and moral. If we would know the claims of the Kingdom, let us listen to the King as He demanded of men that they should submit and obey, and yield to Him their allegiance. If it were possible for us to lift out of this Gospel the great ideal which Jesus presented; if it were possible for us for a moment to forget these particular men that crowded about Him; and if it were possible for us to forget popular interpretations of the meaning of the Gospel; and if we could appreciate the ideal of the Kingdom, apart from the refusal, and apart from the local circumstances, what would it be? God absolutely enthroned. It is the Kingdom of God. Under His enthronement character is the supreme thing. Individualism consists of the realization of character that harmonizes with the character of God. People of character, harmonizing with the Kingdom of God, living in mutual interrelationship, would constitute a great theocracy of souls loyal to the Throne of God, and serving each other, and thus bearing testimony to those outside, concerning the graciousness and goodness of the government of God. That was the ideal that filled the heart and mind of Jesus. When He taught us to pray the prayer, Thy Kingdom come on earth, He saw the ideal conditions of life in the world. It is not a prayer that anything may come in Heaven; it is a prayer that things may be here as they are there. Wherever we take the words of Jesus, and apply them simply, we see that to have been His ideal. "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, . . . and . . . thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments the whole law hangeth, and the prophets."

Now said the Master, the Kingdom of heaven is likened unto a marriage feast. As our Lord, in dealing with responsibility, chose the figure of the Old Testament, the vineyard, so here, in dealing with the privileges of His Kingship, He employed the prophetic figure; "I will betroth thee unto Me for ever." That was the word of God to the people whom He had chosen to represent Him in the world. And yet Hosea uttered those awful prophecies of his! He charged Israel with having broken the relationship between herself and God, between husband and betrothed. Spiritual adultery and harlotry, said Hosea, is the sin of the chosen people. That figure of the Old Testament, Christ now employed, and said, God has made a marriage feast for His Son, a day of gladness and rejoicing. But this is Christ's picture of the Kingdom of God as to its righteousness and peace and joy. "The Kingdom of God is ... righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit."

The first call to the Kingdom went out "to them that were bidden," to those who were under authority, to those who ought to have heard, and understood, and answered. With what result? They would not come. Jesus and His twelve disciples had through that whole neighbourhood, for about three years, preached that Kingdom, preached its principles, preached its privileges, preached its responsibilities, and the people would have none of it. They had, as His previous parables revealed, declined the responsibilities, and so they had rejected the privileges. They would not come to the marriage feast. That was His first charge against them.

Then He told them that there was another invitation. First, the figurative description of the King's preparation; "Again He sent forth other servants, saying, Tell them that are bidden, Behold, I have made ready my dinner: my oxen and my failings are killed, and all things are ready: come to the marriage feast." Very quaint, and very beautiful, and very solemn, are some of the Puritan writings upon that passage. They draw attention to the fact that the way in which the King spread the great feast, whereby men should come into the Kingdom realization, was a costly way. When Jesus uttered those words, and said, "All things are ready," He knew at what infinite cost God was preparing for the possibility of the realizing of that great Kingdom which He had preached, and which men had rejected. This declaration that all things are ready so far as God is concerned, was a new call to men to come into the privileges of the Kingdom.

How did they respond? There were two classes, the indifferent, and the rebellious. The indifferent turned every one to his own farm; and there is a special emphasis there. "His own farm." Christ had preached the Kingdom, God's Kingdom, in which men should seek, not their own, but His and each other's good; a Kingdom in which the first passion of the individual life should be the glory of God; and the necessary sequence of that passion the good of other men; but they would not come. They went back to the self-centered life that sought for personal enrichment and comfort, without regard to the Kingdom of God, or the good of their fellow men. Others were definitely rebellious. They treated the messengers ill, they beat and flung them out, and killed them. And all that actually happened in those days succeeding the ministry of Jesus. In the Acts of the Apostles we find the story. We must not forget that in those early days of Christian preaching, they preached the Kingdom of God, not nebulously as we do, as though the Kingdom of God only meant that a man should submit to God; but socially, as we do not, realizing that they came, not merely for the saving of their own soul, but for His glory, and for the realization of the ideal national communal life.

But they killed the messengers and at last the King was wroth, and He sent His own armies. He Who girded Cyrus long before, led and guided the Roman armies, sweeping the city out, burning and destroying it, and irrevocably scattering to the winds His people who would not have His Kingdom because His Kingdom interfered with their own self-centered interest.

Then said Christ in this parable, "The wedding is ready, but they that were bidden were not worthy. Go ye therefore unto the partings of the highways," go and gather in the bad and the good; which does not mean that He was inviting into His Kingdom a promiscuous crowd both bad and good, but that no longer was the invitation to be confined to a people of a certain order. Our Lord was not minimizing the importance of character, as we see by the final reference to the man without a wedding garment. This is one of the cases where one is bound to confess that no translation can quite accurately carry the sense of the method by which Jesus said that the King addressed that man; "He saith unto him, Friend, how earnest thou in hither not having a wedding garment?" The word not in verse eleven is a different word from the not in verse twelve, and it is impossible to translate the different meaning by any equivalent in our language. Dr. Vincent stated the matter in the simplest form when he said, In the Greek language the first not was always used when referring to a matter of fact, while the second was always used in reference to a matter of thought. By that he means, and this is certainly the intention of the passage, there came in a man not having a wedding garment; that is the fact. But when the king looked at him and said, "How earnest thou in hither not having" that is, deliberately not having, with determination not having, it is the not of thought-you did not mean to have a wedding garment, you have dared to come without a wedding garment. And so by that Jesus revealed to us that, even though the bad and good were to be called into the Kingdom, the question of character did matter.

Let us now go back to that statement in the previous chapter, not so much now for its application to the Hebrew people as for its principle. "The Kingdom of God shall be taken away from you, and shall be given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof." How does this apply to us as to responsibility? What is the fruit of the Kingdom of God? The fruit of the Kingdom of God is the Kingdom of heaven. They are intimately related. The greatest word of all is the Kingdom of God, which means the Kingship of God, which means the Kingship of God recognized and obeyed; and the Kingdom of God in some senses includes the whole universe over which He governs. Hell itself is in that Kingdom. The Kingdom of God, if we understand the phrase in all its breadth, and length, and height, and depth of meaning, describes His ultimate and final and present authority everywhere. The immanence of God, and the transcendence of God, are not contradictory ideas, but mutually expository ideas; and whether it be far or near, near or far, God is, and rules, and governs all. He has created in the great mystery of His universe, beings with will, and to certain of these people, in a fallen world, and in the midst of a fallen race, He has committed the Kingdom of God; He has made them responsible to reveal it, to let other men see what it means. If we can find a community realizing the Kingdom of God in its own life, that is the Kingdom of heaven; it is the fruit of the Kingdom of God. There was a time, a little time in the history of the Hebrew people when they realized it, when they were a theocracy purely and simply; no King interfering but lie one King Jehovah; all their life centered about Him. That was the Kingdom of heaven. There were a few fleeting months in Florence when the world saw the coming of the Kingdom of God in power and judgment, when in answer to the preaching of Savonarola people woke, and broke the chain of Lorenzo de Medici. There was a moment in our English history when we had a glimpse of the Kingdom of God-it was never a perfect glimpse-when men called Ironsides held sword and Bible, and tramped to the music of the declarations of Holy Writ. We had one gleam when Oliver Cromwell saved us all from the evil of a decadent age. They were never lasting. They could not last because, even though there was a gleam of the glory of the Kingdom, the conditions were not established by the methods of the King. The Kingdom of heaven is realization in actual human life of the fact of the Kingship of God. The King coming up to Jerusalem, said to the people who had been made the depository of the holy and sacred truth, "The Kingdom of God shall be taken away from you, and shall be given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof;" that is, to a people who will exhibit all that is meant by the Kingdom of God. And what was the nation to whom it was given? The Church.

Peter, to whom our Lord first spoke concerning the Church, said in his letter, "Ye are an elect race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God's own possession." That does not exhaust the Divine intention. It will never be exhausted until the whole world realizes the Kingdom of God. From then until now the world is only able to know the meaning of the Kingdom of God as it sees it realized in the Church of Jesus Christ. But the Church has failed to reveal the Kingdom of God in all its earthly meaning and glory as the Hebrew people did. That is why we are being broken up, and scattered abroad; that is why our work has become largely individualistic. There have been some attempts; some stately and magnificent, and yet terrible; some full of marvellous power, yet always failing; and some grotesque. One of the greatest attempts to realize it has been that of the Roman Catholic Church; that great and massive structure, boastfully one o'er all the face of the earth. But Rome has failed because she has allowed the Christian ideal to be paganized, and thus has ruined the testimony to the Kingdom of God. The movement of the Plymouth Brethren was a great one. They had the vision of a great ideal, but their testimony is a ruined and spoiled testimony, because they became Romanized with a popery more severe than that of Rome, a popery that tracked a man from village to village if perchance he did not quite agree with some view of truth, until he was ostracized and hounded almost out of existence. More recently another attempt at the manifestation was seen in Dowieism. But Dowie's ministry was that of taking his community, and putting it into a city by itself. Jesus Christ would have His people scattered, for His salt must live next door to the corruption; His light must shine in the darkness. Outside the borders of the Church, there are men to-day who are seeing at least the Divine intention though they have not discovered the Divine dynamic; and perhaps, presently, we shall be surprised to see God moving toward a realization through people we thought could not be used for it, and all because His Church has not been true to Him in this matter.

What is our responsibility? What shall we do? Attempt to re-unite Christendom? In the name of God, no. There is no time to waste; life is all too brief. What shall we do? At least we ought, wherever there is a Christian fellowship, to realize the Kingdom of God within it. Every Church ought to find out how, in that local fellowship, there may be at least a centre of light, a revelation to the men outside, of the love, and the light, and the life, which come to men inside the Kingdom of God. It is not enough that in our personal life we reveal to the world what Christ can do for us. The world is waiting to see, not merely what Christ can do for a man, but what Christ can do for the community of souls who, having come to Him individually, are now living within His Kingdom. And if He has committed to us the Kingdom, and we do not bring forth the fruits of it, so surely as He cast His Hebrew people away from service-not from salvation, but from service-so surely will God move outside the churches and do His work beyond it in ways that will astonish us. This is the message of His Kingship, and unless we realize what He means, and obey Him, we also will be cast away from service, and from helping to fulfill His great ideals in the world.