As bidden by Christ, Zacchæus made haste and came down.' Under the gracious influence of the Holy Ghost he received Him rejoicing.' Nothing was as yet clear to him, and yet all was joyous within his soul. In that dim twilight of the new day, and at this new creation, the Angels sang and the Sons of God shouted together, and all was melody and harmony in his heart. But a few steps farther, and they were at the house of the Chief Publican. Strange hostelry this for the Lord; yet not stranger in that Life of absolute contrasts than that first hostelry, the same, even as regards its designation in the Gospel, [5009] as when the manager had been His cradle; not so strange, as at the Sabbath-feast of the Pharisee Rulers of the Synagogue. But now the murmur of disappointment and anger ran through the accompanying crowd - which perhaps had not before heard what had passed between Jesus and the Publican, certainly, had not understood, or else not believed its import - because He was gone to be guest with a man that was a sinner. Oh, terribly fatal misunderstanding of all that was characteristic of the Mission of the Christ! oh, terribly fatal blindness and jealousy! But it was this sudden shock of opposition which awoke Zacchæus to full consciousness. The hands so rudely and profanely thrust forward only served to rend the veil. It often needs some such sudden shock of opposition, some sudden sharp contest, to waken the new convert to full consciousness, to bring before him, in clear outline, alike the past and the present. In that moment Zacchæus saw it all: what his past had been, what his present was, what his future must be. Standing forth, not so much before the crowd as before the Lord, and not ashamed, nay, scarcely conscious of the confession it implied - so much is the sorrow of the past in true repentance swallowed up by the joy of the present - Zacchæus vowed fourfold restoration, as by a thief, [5010] of what had become his through false accusation, [5011] as well as the half of all his goods to the poor. And so the whole current of his life had been turned, in those few moments, through his joyous reception of Christ, the Saviour of sinners; and Zacchæus the public robber, the rich Chief of the Publicans, had become an almsgiver.
It was then, when it had been all done in silence, as mostly all God's great works, that Jesus spake it to him, for his endless comfort, and in the hearing of all, for their and our teaching: This day became - arose - there salvation to this house,' forasmuch as,' truly and spiritually, this one also is a son of Abraham.' And, as regards this man, and all men, so long as time endureth: For the Son of Man came to seek and to save that which was lost.'
The Evangelistic record passes with significant silence over that night in the house of Zacchæus. It forms not part of the public history of the Kingdom of God, but of that joy with which a stranger intermeddleth not. It was in the morning, when the journey in company with His disciples was resumed, that the next public incident occurred in the healing of the blind by the wayside. [5012] The small divergences in the narratives of the three Evangelists are well known. It may have been that, as St. Matthew relates, there were two blind men sitting by the wayside, and that St. Luke and St. Mark mention only one - the latter by name as Bar Timæus' - because he was the spokesman. But, in regard to the other divergence, trifling as it is, that St. Luke places the incident at the arrival, the other two Evangelists at the departure of Jesus from Jericho, it is better to admit our inability to conciliate these differing notes of time, than to make clumsy attempts at harmonising them. We can readily believe that there may have been circumstances unknown to us, which might show these statements to be not really diverging. And, if it were otherwise, it would in no way affect the narrative itself. Historical information could only have been derived from local sources; and we have already seen reason to infer that St. Luke had gathered his from personal inquiry on the spot. And it may have been, either that the time was not noted, or wrongly noted, or that this miracle, as the only one in Jericho, may have been reported to him before mention was made of the reception by Christ of Zacchæus. In any case, it shows the independence of the account of St. Luke from that of the other two Evangelists.