THIS passage constitutes a brief parenthesis in the special work which the King was doing at this time. It gives the account of words spoken to the multitudes and to His disciples, between His conflict with the rulers which ended in their discomfiture; and His pronouncing of woes upon them, and doom upon the people who had rejected Him.

The passage is a very interesting one in that it reveals a remarkable contrast between the false and the true in religion. The King addressed Himself to the multitudes and to His disciples, and it is by no means difficult to see that part of the address was intended for the disciples, and that part was intended for the multitudes. He first spoke to the multitudes. Having done so in general terms of warning, He addressed Himself specifically to His own disciples. This contrast between the false and true in religion is made by the comparison between the false rulers with whom He had been in conflict, and the true spiritual teachers, His own disciples, whom He was commissioning to go forth to exercise a religious authority as they should interpret the meaning of His own message.

At the close of the thirteenth chapter of our Gospel, after the King had spoken the great parables of the Kingdom, part of them to the multitudes and part of them to His own disciples, He ended that parabolic instruction by declaring that a scribe instructed to the Kingdom of heaven must bring forth out of His treasure-house things new and old; and by that statement He appropriated the word scribe for His own disciples. In that statement He enunciated His rejection of the official scribe of the period, but also indicated the fact that His disciples constituted the new order of scribes for the days to come. In this passage, He first warned the multitude against the false teachers, the scribes and the Pharisees, that sit on Moses' seat; and turning from that warning He charged His own disciples as to what their attitude and relationship to men should be, when He said to them, Ye shall not be called Rabbi, you shall call no man father, you shall not be called masters or guides. The false teachers are exposed in the words our Lord addressed to the multitudes contained in verses two to seven; and as He exposed the false rulers, He revealed what false religion is. The true position of spiritual teachers is revealed in His charge to His own disciples, to be found in verses eight to twelve; and in that charge He also revealed the essence of true religion.

First, then, we have His revelation of the essential failure of the rulers. Christ's conflict had never been with the people, it had been with the rulers. All His anger wherever it was manifest, wherever it flamed and flashed, was directed against false shepherds, men who, standing between the people and God, had misinterpreted the way and will of God; and we find in this passage a. very remarkable and carefully expressed estimate of that which was wrong in the rulers; against which, Christ, with all the dignity of His Kingship, with the force of His personality, cast Himself.

Notice in the first place His recognition of the position occupied by these men; He said: "The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses' seat." There is a fine discrimination in the statement, which perhaps we are apt to lose sight of in the reading. We can only express what Christ said by using another tense, and using the verb in a slightly different form. Said He, The scribes and Pharisees have seated themselves on Moses' seat. That is not to say that Christ was saying their position was a false one, although there was a remarkably fine indication of the fact that they were never appointed by God. He was not saying their position was out of harmony with the thought and purpose and intention of God, because immediately afterwards He said to the people, "all things therefore whatsoever they bid you, these do and observe." He recognized that a certain authority belonged to scribes and Pharisees. Bearing these two things in mind we must be careful to see what He really meant. First of all He said that they had seated themselves on Moses' seat. This was not a reference merely to the men of His own age. This was His definition of the position occupied by the whole order of the scribes. In all likelihood the order was instituted in the days of Ezra; and the scribe was the interpreter of the law, the man who taught the people its meaning. Now there was nothing wrong in such a position, and yet Christ was very careful to indicate in the way He stated the case, that they were self-appointed teachers. They seated themselves on Moses' seat. The expression, "Moses' seat," demands our attention. It is peculiarly the word that indicates authority. The Greek word here is Cathedra. These people sat on Moses' seat, the seat of the teachers, of authority, the seat from which they spoke in interpretation of the law with final authority. Their position was authoritative so far. It is impossible, however, to imagine that Christ meant here that men were to obey all the things that the Pharisees were telling them to do. We must not omit the "therefore" from the text, because He Himself resolutely broke the traditions of the elders, treated with disdain the thousand and one things which they had superadded to the Mosaic economy, ignored their multitudinous technicalities, sat down with unwashen hands to eat as a protest against the externality of their religious ideals. So that He certainly did not mean to say that everything the scribes and Pharisees said to men, they were to do. We shall understand Him by putting emphasis on the "therefore." They have seated themselves on Moses' chair, therefore, that is, in so far as their interpretation is indeed true to the Mosaic economy, you must obey them; so far as they fulfill the function of the position they have taken, they have authority, and their teaching is binding upon men.

But having said so much, our Lord proceeded to show the failure of these men. There is no need for exposition, for the statement is so clear. "They say, and do not." "They bind heavy burdens and grievous to be borne, and lay them on men's shoulders; but they themselves will not move them with their finger;" which does not mean they put burdens on men's shoulders, and then would not help men to bear the burden; but that they put burdens on men's shoulders which they would not carry themselves even with the finger. That is to say, they were not true to their own ethical teaching.

The King then proceeded to show the supreme motive of these men. They wore the phylactery. Christ did not say it was wrong to wear it. Tradition has it, and perchance tradition is accurate, that He Himself wore phylacteries. They wore phylacteries, and were careful to wear them conspicuously. They widened the borders of the garment, broadening the cases in which the phylacteries rested, in order to attract the notice of men, in order that men might see the phylacteries. There we have the underlying reason of all the failure of the scribes and Pharisees, "to be seen of men." It was a ruthless unveiling of the false in religion. The false in religion is that which is punctilious and particular in all the matters of external observance, and this in answer to the underlying desire to be notorious religiously, in the view of men. In the Manifesto He had said that men prayed at the corners of the streets. He did not say it was wrong to pray at the corners of the streets, but He said these men prayed at the corners of the street to be seen of men, and with a fine scorn for them He added, "Verily I say unto you, They have received their reward." That is, they pray to be seen of men, and they are seen of men, and they get out of their praying all they want. So here again, coming to the end of the conflict, with the rulers standing around Him, listening to Him, He denounced the same evil.

We miss very much of these stories if we allow the local setting to fade from our mind. Christ was in the Temple, multitudes were with Him, His disciples were there; and there all around were the men who had been questioning Him, and He had silenced and defeated them. With these men as object lessons, the broadened borders of their garments visible, the enlarged receptacle for the phylactery patent, He said, All this to be seen of men! All their interpretation of law had as its inspiration, the desire to create for themselves a position of authority, of pre-eminence. They loved the salutation in the market-places, they loved the recognition of the crowd, and in order to gain these things, they sat in the Mosaic seat, and interpreted the law.

Now the false in religion stands revealed in Christ's contemplation of these men, not only in the case of the men themselves, but in the case of the people who are under the influence of such men. The false in religion in the case of the people is due to failure to discriminate between the human and the divine; and consists of submission to unauthorized authority. This always issues in degradation. Obedience to anything other than the highest, issues sooner or later in .bondage to the lowest. Here was the peril of the age; nay more than the peril; here was the reason of its doom, when presently it was uttered by the lips of the gentle Servant of God.

Immediately turning from His warning, He addressed Himself to His own disciples, and He said to them, "But be not ye called Rabbi;" you are not to claim to have in your teaching any final authority; you are not to call any man your Father; there is to be no claim on your part of spiritual-life relation to any human being; you shall not be called Master, or Guide; you have no right to direct the conduct of any other individual soul. This was His threefold charge to His own disciples. How largely we have lost sight of these things!

In that threefold negation the King recognized the essential element in religion. The deepest fact in religion is suggested by the central of the three things, and we will take that first. You shall call no man Father. It is a superficial treatment to imagine that Jesus meant, we are not to give other men the title of father; it is not the title that matters; it is the thing the title indicates that matters. "Call no man your father." This is our Lord's forbidding of the recognition of any man's power to impart by ceremony or in any other way, spiritual life to his fellow man. The father is the one who begets, the one from whom life comes. That is the essential and deepest fact in fatherhood in our common use of the word. So undoubtedly the word means in this connection. The essential thing in religion is life. The false knew nothing of life in the soul; the false spent its time in making burdens, and binding them on men. There is the difference between false and true religion. False religion is on, true religion is in. That is Isaiah's teaching, in that fine chapter in which he satirizes idolatry. The man goes to the forest, he cuts down a tree, makes an image, and he carries it. That is false religion. But Isaiah goes on to say Jehovah hath carried us. That is true religion. And the difference between the two is Life. That is the central word. Now said Jesus Christ, "Call no man your father on the earth," you shall never recognize any man who claims to be able, by sacramentarian grace or any other thing, to communicate life to your soul. The life of God in the soul of a man must come by the begetting of God.

The other two words reveal the other essentials in true religion. First, Authority. Every man feels his need of it. It is of the very essence of religion. When we have life, our life needs authority, the ultimate and the binding fact, that which commands us. The whole story of religion, false and true, in its conflict in the world, gathers around this question of authority. The Roman Church claims authority, and pity us who are not within the pale of that Church, because they say we have no authority. Let us dismiss all the differences and recognize the need. The soul of man needs authority, needs the voice that speaks to it with authority, needs the word that is binding upon it.

And more, the soul needs direction, not merely that direction of truth, which is authoritative and binding and final, but the perpetual application of truth to the incidents of everyday life, to the commonplaces and the crises as they come. We are always needing in the religious life some one to say to us, This is the way, walk ye in it; the relating of truth to conduct at every point in the life. Religion is life first; secondly it is the authority to which man yields allegiance; finally it is the perpetual guidance which he follows. These are the things that Christ recognizes.

Here we have revealed the standard of truth, and here we have revealed to us the fact of what the real essence of religion is. First, it is the life of God in the soul of a man. And that life can only come to us by His imparting. It was He Who said to an honest and sincere inquirer upon the housetop, in the loneliness of the night, You must be born anew, you need life. "As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up: that whosoever believeth may in Him have eternal life." This is how you will obtain life-by My lifting up. We can only understand what Christ meant as we track Him through, and hear when He uses the phrase again, "And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto Myself." And that there may be no doubt as to His meaning the Spirit interprets it for us, "This He said, signifying by what manner of death He should die." So the King offers men life which is the fundamental necessity of religion, through the mystery of His own dying.

And then He stands for evermore as the final authority. Remember that His authority is not the authority of the interpretation of truth. His authority is the authority of essential truth. He said not, I teach, I declare, I explain truth, but, "I am the truth." If we can bring the soul of man face to face with the Christ, not with any human interpretation of Him, but to the actual Christ of the New Testament, that man immediately knows that he stands in the presence of essential and eternal truth. The one and final authority in religion, is the authority of Christ, and the authority of Christ as revealed to us in the Scriptures of truth.

Finally, the immediate guidance of Christ, for He is near to every one of us, and in every moment waiting to

He sweeps away the intermediation of the man who claims authority, the intermediation of the man who claims to be able by any process to communicate life to the soul of a man, the intermediation of the man who dares to interfere in the conduct of another soul as between that soul and God. We see at once how religion has been falsified wherever its vital principles have been interfered with. We speak with awe and profound respect, of the saints of the great Roman Church, and we see at once how that Church recognizes this threefold conception of religion. There is the reason of its long-continued strength. It recognizes that man needs authority, that man needs Life, that man needs guidance, and in the .threefold office of its ministry it professes to meet those needs. In the priestly office it claims to communicate life through sacramentarian processes. In the teaching office it claims to speak infallibly to man and answer his cry for authority. In the office of the confessional it claims to investigate and guide men, and so to meet their need at that point. Its appalling heresy consists in the fact that it takes hold of the essentials of religion and attempts to continue them by cutting their nerve, and denying what Christ said concerning them.

Our protest, in the name of spiritual religion, is for evermore to be made against all such blasphemous misuse of sacred things. First against all that intermediates between the soul and God as Life Giver; we can only receive life directly from Him; neither through official priesthood nor sacramentarian arrangement can life touch the soul; the Supper of the Lord is the Eucharist, beautiful word indeed; the sacrament of thanksgiving; but the Table of the Lord is not the place where we receive life; it is the place where we give back our song in praise to God; but no man is richer in life by sitting there.

So also with baptism. There is no sacramentarian grace in it. No infant was ever made an inheritor of the Kingdom of heaven in baptism. No adult was ever made a member of the Church by baptism. These things may be valuable external symbols of internal truths, but there is no communication of life to the soul thereby, or kind or measure. The soul can only have life by His begetting, by its actual contact with God.

So also in matters of guidance. Let us make our perpetual, our constant, our vehement protest, against any human interference in matters of conduct. Remember here that priestism is a very insidious thing. It reappears in strange new forms with the passing of years, and there are some people, most pronounced in their objection to Roman Catholicism, who themselves are practising it in their interference with others. Away with priestism! Let us take our orders from Him alone.

But do not let us forget that this conception of religion is more than a negative responsibility; it reveals a positive duty, that of actual submission to Christ's authority if we deal with authority as something which is to illuminate our intelligence, and not command our will, it is a peril and a poison. But if we remit our soul to the Christ for His commanding word, and when we hear that commanding word obey it, then are we fulfilling our positive duty.

This fact that One is our Father, lays upon us the positive duty of the practice of fellowship with God. If indeed His life be in our soul, then our life in all its externality is to be ordered by the fact of the impulse of that indwelling life. We are to have fellowship with Him, not merely on the morning of the first day of the week in assembling for worship, but in all the acts and attitudes of everyday life. We are to remember that the only constraining force to which one must yield oneself is the force of the life of God in. the soul.

Finally, if indeed we are determined that we will suffer no interference in matters of conduct, we must be equally determined that we will remit every matter of conduct to the arbitration of the Christ. We have no right to have anything in our business that we have not asked His will concerning. We have no right to have anything in our recreation that we are not quite sure He approves. We have no right to have anything in our attitudes towards civic, or national, or world-wide interests, that we have not held up in the light of His present and immediate interpretation. This is religion. It is the bringing of the individual soul into direct relationship with God; the answer of the soul to the lonely authority of Christ; and the testing of the life in the presence of Christ, and by His will and His will alone. May God lead us into these deepest things of religion.

THIS passage contains the most terrible words which ever fell from the lips of the King. At the commencement of His ministry, in enunciating the laws of the Kingdom to His own disciples, He declared that their righteousness must exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, and now as we follow these woes through, we discover that He was elaborating that comparison, showing how the righteousness of these men had failed, how it had come short. His sentence was but a ratification of the definite choices which these men had made. Here, as everywhere, we may do strange violence to the very spirit of the King by missing His tone, and failing to discover the pity which is evident throughout the whole of these strange and undoubtedly terrible words. The final impression of the reading of this passage is that of the severity of Jesus, and His unbending loyalty to righteousness. But while that is true, it is impossible to read this carefully without discovering that the method was the method of tears, that from beginning to end there was evidence of sorrow; that there is a wail running throughout the whole of this discourse, as well as the thunder of denunciation. It is only as we catch these two tones that we shall understand all the meaning of this passage.

The severity of Jesus is discovered in the words He made use of; in the repetition of the word "hypocrites," in the use of the words " fools and blind," in the one terrible sentence that appals as we read it, in which He called them "serpents" and "offspring of vipers," in that most fearful illustration suggested by His use of the term the "judgment of Gehenna." All these are terms which indicate the severity of Christ. We cannot cancel these terms, they are as surely here as anything else in the passage.

And yet not to discover the other tone is to miss much. There were tears in His voice; there was sorrow in His heart. These things are not merely manifest in the last lamentation, "Oh Jerusalem, Jerusalem," but in all the woes. We do violence to the spirit of the Christ, and to the genius of the whole passage, if we put into the reading of the word "woe" nothing but thunder. It was a wail of compassion as well as a message of strong and severe denunciation. Yet even this compassion was denunciatory, for in every case He declared that the woe was unto these men.

We have in this passage; first, the King's judicial verdict, His findings concerning the people to whom He was addressing Himself; and, secondly, His judicial sentence.

In the Manifesto, the King had said to His disciples; "For I say unto you, Except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no wise enter into the Kingdom of heaven" (chap. v. 20) [Mat 5:20]. Those words were spoken in the first section of the Manifesto. Immediately following we read, "Ye have heard that it was said to them of old time, Thou shalt not kill: and whosoever shall kill shall be in danger of the judgment:" He took up the law under which these people had been living, and so far from abrogating it, emphasized its binding nature by interpreting its inner meaning. But He indicated the failure of the scribes and Pharisees by this declaration of requirement. This comparison between that righteousness of which He had come to teach men the necessity, and that of the Pharisees must be interpreted in the light of the Beatitudes, those words in which Jesus revealed the character which is necessary in His Kingdom. We go back to that because we are now at the end of the Master's ministry. That is how He opened it. We have now come to the passage in which He closed it; and the verdict which He found, as addressing the scribes and Pharisees directly, in the presence of the multitudes, is an elaboration of the suggestion He made at the beginning. They stood before Him, in character the direct opposite of that which He described at the beginning of His ministry.

While not desiring unduly to press the comparison between the Beatitudes and the woes, this at least is true, that if we get the view of the whole character revealed in those Beatitudes, and then the view of the whole character revealed in the woes, the contrast is patent; they stand in direct opposition to each other.

Let us place the Beatitudes side by side with the woes, and we shall see how the King said in effect; I came to bring you face to face with God's ideal of righteousness; you have rejected the "blessed" with which I opened My ministry; there is nothing for it, therefore, but that I should utter the "woe" that must inevitably result from the rejection of the blessing.

The first blessing pronounced was upon poverty of spirit, "Blessed are the poor in spirit." And the resulting blessing from that attitude was possession; "theirs is the Kingdom of heaven." Now mark the first woe of Jesus. "Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! because ye shut the Kingdom of heaven against men." Poverty of spirit results in possession of the Kingdom. Pride of spirit results in the closing of the door against such as would strive to enter in, by men who refuse to enter in themselves.

"Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted." "Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye compass sea and land to make one proselyte; and when he is become so, ye make him twofold more a son of hell than yourselves." In the first place penitence, the mourning which issues in the comfort of God. In the next place the things which are against the Kingdom of God, they attempt to make a man proselyte, for which Jesus says in fine scorn, "Ye compass sea and land." And the issue, "Ye make him twofold more a son of hell than yourselves." The expression, "the son of Gehenna,

"Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth." Over against meekness we have the woe against the blind guides, the exposure of the subtle casuistry which characterized the age in which Christ lived, which is the very essence of iniquity, the very opposite of meekness, the final expression of that pride of heart which is in revolt against God and issues in profanation.

"Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled." That is followed by the woe against men who were tithing mint, anise, and cummin, and were leaving undone weightier matters. This is a contrast between spiritual health and spiritual disease. On the one hand is the healthy hunger after righteousness; and on the other hand the fastidiousness of disease, which is particular about the small external things of no matter, and feels no hunger after righteousness; the neglect of the weighty matters of law, which attempts to atone for itself by all the minutiae of the tithing of small things. Christ was careful to say that these things also should be attended to, but that the weightier things should not be neglected.

"Blessed are the merciful; for they shall obtain mercy." The next woe was that upon such as veil internal vice by external profession. We do not touch the heart of it until we read these words, "full from extortion and excess," two things that stand exactly opposite to the merciful spirit.

"Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God." Standing "opposite to that is the woe that describes these men. Mark it carefully, outwardly beautiful, but inwardly full of dead men's bones and uncleanness! The contrast is striking between purity of heart, and the uncleanness of the inner life.

And, finally over against the blessing pronounced upon the peacemakers who are the sons of God is the woe against men who "build the sepulchers of the prophets" while yet they are the sons mark-the contrast-of the men who slay the prophets.

If in this contrast we do not find every woe set in direct contrast to every blessing, we at least discover that the character which our Lord described in that sevenfold Beatitude of the Manifesto, is in absolute opposition to the character which He described in this sevenfold woe of the final denunciation. We might continue the contrast further, for in the fifth chapter there is the added and double Beatitude upon persons who suffer for righteousness' sake; and when we turn over to the twenty-third chapter we find Him saying to these men, referring to the ministry which should follow His own crucifixion, "I send unto you prophets, and wise men, and scribes; some of them shall ye kill and . . . scourge, and persecute." At the beginning o the ministry in the Manifesto, He said to the disciples gathered about Him who would enter into the suffering as they proclaimed that Manifesto, "Blessed are ye when men shall . . . persecute you." At the close of it He drew attention to the fact that the men of opposite character would be the men who would inflict the suffering, afflicting and scourging and crucifying those who should stand for righteousness.

Our Lord in uttering these severe words revealed first of all their absolute justice. If we agree with the blessing of the character upon which He commenced His ministry, we must of necessity agree with the woe upon the character revealed in the men whom He denounced. He had spoken the words of abiding truth and righteousness, and' every woe is but the other side of every blessing. The blessing was upon character, the woe was upon character; and the character upon which the blessing rested, was the exact opposite of the character upon which His final woe was pronounced.

The judicial sentence was a declaration of sequence. "Wherefore ye witness to yourselves, that ye are the sons of them that slew the prophets. Fill ye up then the measure of your fathers." One sometimes feels as though that word can hardly be understood by the Western mind. It is peculiarly Eastern. We Westerners have broken away more and more from the consciousness of relationship to our fathers. These men were perpetually boasting of their relationship to Abraham. They said one day, "Our father is Abraham." He said, You make your boast in your fathers, in your relationship to the past, you refuse to stand on the plane of isolated responsibility, "fill ye up then the measure of your fathers," be true to the thing you boast, and do not now by the garnishing of the tombs of the prophets attempt to dissociate yourselves from the sins of your fathers. You are still of their spirit, you are still rejecting the right, as they rejected the right; you are still persecuting and will continue to do so. We cannot believe that Jesus Christ was pronouncing sentence save as He was indicating the sequence. He was showing them what they would do, He was showing them what the issue of it would be; for mark what immediately follows the words, "Fill ye up then the measure of your fathers," "Ye serpents, ye offspring of vipers, how shall ye escape the judgment of Gehenna?"

When John the Baptist opened his ministry as the herald of the King, when these selfsame men came to him, he said with a touch of irony and scorn, "Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?" Now at the close of His ministry Jesus took up the word and used it differently, with no irony, but with the terrible revelation of a necessary sequence, How can ye escape? "Fill up the measure of your fathers," you are the sons of the men who slew the prophets, you also have refused the righteousness of God. Carry this out to the end, and what then? There at the beginning are the Beatitudes, the words indicating the Master's purpose and intention for His people, accompanied by the conditions of righteousness upon which happiness must depend. Here He was talking to the men who had refused the conditions, and He asked, "How shall ye escape the judgment of Gehenna?" Thus our Lord declared that the judgment of hell is the inevitable issue of refusal to submit to the truth of which the inward conscience has been convinced, for that is the meaning of His word hypocrites; hypocrites are men who play the part that is not true in the externalities of righteousness, while within they are evil. And there is a deeper significance; they are men who remain evil in their inner life, in spite of profound conviction. It was His declaration of sequence, His declaration that hell is the inevitable harvest of a man's own sowing.

He then proceeded in the terms of His great lamentation to show that this is the result of their own deliberate choice, "How often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not!" That is the very heart of sin-"Ye would not;" the human will set up against the will of God. The human will set up against the will which had interpreted righteousness, and had expressed to men God's desire for human happiness and blessedness. "Blessed" is the word which revealed the purpose of the King. "I would have gathered you." Incidentally we have here another of those illustrations of the startling claims of Christ. Mark the magnificence of it. He personified the nation in the city, as the prophets of the past had so often done. "Oh Jerusalem, Jerusalem, that killeth the prophets, and stoneth them that are sent unto her I how often would I" the Galilean peasant, Jesus of Nazareth. "How often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings." His claim was that had they but come to Him; He could have gathered the whole of them from the impending judgment of evil. It is an exquisite figure; simple, but more than simple. It is the coming out in the simplicity of truth, of all the great underlying fact of the Motherhood of God as well as that of His Fatherhood. He said, "I would have gathered." Just that one Man, just a Galilean carpenter? A thousand times no; infinitely more, God incarnate! In these last words, standing there as the One Who had uttered the Manifesto, and the One presently to be rejected and cast out, He was gathering up all the brooding tenderness of the old revelation of God, and expressing it in that sobbing word of lamentation, "I would." His purpose was not to pronounce a curse but to bring a blessing; not to wail in woe over failure, but to sing over men. We remember the mother-figure of Zephaniah, "Jehovah thy God is in the midst of thee, a mighty One Who will save: He will rejoice over thee with joy, He will be silent in His love, He will joy over thee with singing." This was His purpose, "I would;" and this was their sin, "Ye would not."

Then He pronounced the sentence. "Behold, your house is left unto you desolate." Some of the ancient manuscripts omit that word "desolate," but the consensus of opinion is in favour of its retention. Probably He was referring to the Temple as the centre of their life, the place to which they had looked from long distances and to which He came at the commencement of His ministry, cleansing it and saying, "It is written, Make not My Father's house a house of merchandise." He came and cleansed the Temple again and said, "My house shall be called a house of prayer." Now He said, "Your house is left unto you;" to you hypocrites, blind, fools, men in whom there is uncleanness, men who have rejected the throne of God, the righteousness of God, the mercy of God, and the will of God.

And yet once again, notice most carefully His claim. "Your house is left unto you desolate. For I say unto you, Ye shall not see Me henceforth." The desolateness of the house is created by the absence of the Master of the house. And in the next chapter He said, "There shall not be left here one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down." "Desolate."

But look at the King. His sorrow we have spoken of, His judgment we have heard pronounced. What is this last word?" For I say unto you, Ye shall not see Me henceforth, till ye shall say, Blessed is He that cometh in the name of the Lord." Who shall interpret that? It is interesting to see how many interpretations there are, and how eager and anxious some are to adapt the word of Jesus, so that it can fit their own philosophy. We do know what He meant as to local application, and local fulfillment of that Scripture; but we need to see, that even here, as He pronounced the final judgment upon a nation, a city; even as He spoke of their house being left desolate, hope was in His heart; and looking forward, He saw some hour in which they should say, "Blessed is He that cometh in the name of the Lord."

After that survey of this passage let us notice two things. First, that its study has meant an almost terrific revelation of the appalling issue of dishonesty. The word hypocrisy is the revealing one. The action of these men had been willfully wicked. Even their external cleanness was proof of their consciousness of the beauty of holiness, and their inward pollution was of choice. "Ye would not." At last that attitude must work out to its own issue. In the words of Jesus, men become the sons of Gehenna, they pass to the judgment of Gehenna. This has nothing at all to do with the men who have never heard the message. This has nothing whatever to do with the men who have never confronted this Christ of God, this King of kings. It has everything to do with us. Standing in the presence of this Teacher and Lord, remember and know assuredly that any hypocrisy must issue in the harvest of hell. There is nothing else for it. If we who heard the "blessed" will not obey the condition, then we take our own way of set purpose toward the "woe," and there can be no escape.

Behold the King! What a solemn revelation we have of Him here. How gracious and yet how just. In these words there is a revelation of His passion for righteousness, and also of His compassion for the worst and most degraded. His passion for righteousness never destroys His compassion for the worst. His compassion for the worst never destroys His passion for righteousness. It is well that our hearts should be warned by these solemn woes. The work of the King is not the work of excusing a man who persists in unrighteousness, and presently admitting him to the presence of God and the heaven of light. Naught that defileth can ever enter there, and the man, who, in spite of all His ministry of infinite grace, persists in disobedience, passes to the judgment of Gehenna; there can be no escape. The deepest and profoundest passion of the King, is the passion for the Kingship of God and righteousness, and if He must pronounce a doom it will be with tears, but it will be pronounced. So let us ever bring ourselves to His judgment, and as we yield to that, pray for that, which He will supply, grace to obey.