St. Matthew, 67. Owen (J. W.), Some Australian Sermons, 88. Peabody (F. G.), Mornings in the College Cliapel, i. 41. Plummer (A.), An Exegetical Commentary on the Gospel according to
St. Matthew, 74. Shuttleworth (II. C), in Lombard Street in Lent, 199. Smith (W. C), TJie Sermon on the Mount, 52. Southouse (A. J.), Men of the Beatitudes, 23. Tait (A.), The Charter of Christianity, 129. Thome (H.), Notahle Sayings of the Great Teacher, 54. Watson (J.), The Inspiration of Our Faith, 147. Wilson (J. M.), in The Anglican Pulpit of To-Day, 356. British Weekly Pulpit, iii. 468 (A. F. Kiikpatrick).
"4
A Conservative Reformer.
Think not that I came to destroy the law or the prophets : I came not to destroy, but to fulfil.— Matt. v. 17.
Christ, the new Prophet and Teacher, has gone up upon the Mount and is about to speak to the people. He is sitting down to preach. The villages will be empty soon, for the news has gone abroad and great excitement has seized the people. What new thing will He tell them? What daring message is this Revolutionary about to give them ? They throng the slopes ; they hang upon His words ; there is the silence of a great expecta- tion upon the multitude. And Christ begins to preach. What is His subject ? What is He saying ?
Not a syllable about what they called religion, law, and Sabbath, and temple worship, and fasts; simply the Beati- tudes, the inner virtues of the heart, the duty to show light. He moves the conscience of the people by bringing them straight into the presence of their Father. He recalls them to the conscious- ness of God, whom they are forgetting. His words move them as nothing had ever moved them before. They feel for an instant the pressure and the nearness of God Himself. At such a moment, in presence of a higher religion, what to them were law, and ceremonial, and priest ? The murmur goes round that old things have passed away ; it is a new world ; away with remnants of exploded superstition and bygone forms of worship ! It is to meet this inarticulate thought that Christ stops and says, " Think not that I came to destroy the law or the prophets : I came not to destroy, but to fulfil." There is to be entire continuity with the past.
With absolute decisiveness He states the purpose of His coming. He knows the meaning of His own work, which so few of us do, and it is safe to take His own account of what He intends, as we so seldom do. His opening declaration is singularly com-
n6 A CONSERVATIVE REFORMER
posed of blended humility and majesty. Its humility lies in His placing Himself, as it were, in line with previous messengers, and representing Himself as carrying on the sequence of Divine revela- tion. It would not have been humble for anybody but Him to say that, but it was so for Him. Its majesty lies in His claim to " fulfil " all former utterances from God.
^| My love of, and trust in, our Lord, after I had seen Him in a vision, began to grow, for my converse with Him was so con- tinual. I saw that, though He was God, He was man also ; that He is not surprised at the frailties of men, that He understands our miserable nature, liable to fall continually, because of the first sin, for the reparation of which He had come. I could speak to Him as to a friend, though He is my Lord. ... 0 my Lord ! 0 my King ! who can describe Thy Majesty ? It is impossible not to see that Thou art Thyself the great Ruler of all, that the beholding of Thy Majesty fills men with awe. But I am filled with greater awe, 0 my Lord, when I consider Thy humility, and the love Thou hast for such as I am. We can converse and speak with Thee about everything whenever we will ; and when we lose our first fear and awe at the vision of Thy Majesty, we have a greater dread of offending Thee, — not arising out of the fear of punishment, 0 my Lord, for that is as nothing in comparison with the loss of Thee ! l
Christ the Revolutionary.
After the multitude had heard those wonderful teachings con- tained in the Beatitudes, most of which were new and startling, one might well suppose that the question uppermost in every heart would be, Are those laws and institutions which have lasted for two thousand years now to undergo complete change — are they to be superseded by those precepts which we have now just heard propounded by this Great Teacher, who seems to be the Founder of an entirely new law; for what Jewish Rabbi ever gave utterance to such precepts as the proclaiming of blessedness to the poor in spirit, the meek, the humble, the mourning, the persecuted ? In the text the Saviour corrects this view. 1 The Life of St. Teresa of Jents (trans, by D. Lewis), 367.
ST. MATTHEW v. 17 n7
1. " Think not," He says, " that I came to destroy." It is noticeable at once that Christ uses a word for " destroy " which seems to be merely an echo of some confused popular sayings about the Messiah. It is indeed not easy to state clearly what is meant by destroying a law or a set of laws, still less easy to say what would be the meaning of " destroying the prophets." Laws may no doubt be repealed, but it is not conceivable that any clear- headed man anticipated that the Messiah would repeal the Ten Commandments, or was going to forbid the Old Testament to be read. Strictly speaking, this is the only rational sense which attaches itself to the words. It is probable that Christ was here merely putting on one side a rough popular description of the role which He was supposed to be going to play.