Ford gives a quotation from Perkins which deserves reading, " The common opinion is, that if a man die quietly, and go away like a lamh, (which in some diseases, as consumption, any man may do,) then he goes straight to heaven. But if the violence of the disease stirs up impatience, and causes frantic hehaviour, then men use to say, * There is a judgment of God, serving either to discover a hypocrite or to plague a wicked man.' But the truth is otherwise. — A man may die like a lamb, and yet go to hell ; and one dying in exceeding torment and strange behavi- our of body, may go to heaven." — (PerhM Salve for a Sick . Man.)
S. — [Ye shdU aU UketvUe perish.] It is highly probable that these words were spoken with a propbetic meaning, and that our Lord had in view the tremendous slaughter of the Jews by tbe Boman army under Titus, which was to take place in a few years at the siege of Jerusalem.
4. — [Those eighteen,,, tower in Siloam.] We know nothing about the circumstance which our Lord here mentions. It is probable it was something which had lately happened, and was the com- mon subject of conversation among dwellers in Jerusalem, just as any great accident is among ourselves at the present day.
The word translated " sinners " in this verse, means literally, " debtors."
5. — [Eoscept ye repent, dc.'] The repetition of this sentence shows the general importance of repentance, and the great need in which the Jews in particular stood of it. Ford quotes a saying of Philip Henry's, which is worth reading : " Some people do not like to hear much of repentance. But I think it so necessair, that if I should die in the pulpit, I should desire to die preach- ing repentance, and if I should die out of the pulpit, I should desire to die practising it."
LUKE Xin. 6-9.
6 He spake also this parable : A oertain man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard : and he came and sought fruit thereon, and found none.
7 Then said he unto the dresser of his vineyard, Behold, these three years I come seeking fruit on this fig tree, and find none : cut it down ;
why cumbereth it the ground ?
8 And he answering said unto him, Lord, let it alone this year also, till shall dig about it, and dung it :
9 And if it bear fruit, well : and if not, then after that thou shalt cut it down.
The parable we have now read is peculiarly humbling and heart-searching. The Christia,n who can heair it»