I. The lesson that is here commended to us —
Our blessed Lord, after callmg Matthew the pub- lican to the apostleship, condescended to attend a feast which his new disciple had prepared for him. To this feast many publicans and sinners were in- vited ; and our Lord did not disdain to sit down to meat in their company, and to converse familiarly with them. For this he was blamed by the Pharisees, who thought such a condescension, on his part, a violation of his duty both to God and man : to God, who bids us "not to sit with the wicked*';" and to man, to whom it must appear an encouragement to vice. But our Lord vindicates himself, by shewing, that such persons were most likely to profit from his instructions, as the sick are from the physician ; and that his conduct was in perfect accordance with their own Scriptures, wherein this lesson was plainly in- culcated, " I will have mercy, and not sacrifice." The import of this he bade them learn : " Go ye, and learn what that meaneth."
Now, the meaning of it is,
1. That moral duties are more excellent than those which are merely ritual —
[To this the whole Scriptures bear witness. You will find the utmost contempt poured on ritual observances, when devoid of piety ^: but in all the Bible you will not find one real exercise of grace despised. The smallest good imaginable you will see commended®, and the will accepted for the deed^. In moral duties there is a real and inherent excellence : in every one of them there is, what I may justly call, a conformity to God himself, to " whose image we attain by the universal exercise of righteousness and true holiness^." They are good at all times, and under all circumstances : whereas ritual observances have nothing valuable in them, except as being appointed of God for his honour, and as being made use of by God for our good. For instance, what is there in the seventh day of the week, or the seventh part of our time ? As far as regards the morality of that appointment, it might as well have been a third or a tenth or a twentieth part of our time. And what is there in sacrifices ? The killing of a bullock is in itself
•^ Ps, xxvi. 5. ^ Isai. i. 11 — 15. « i Kings xiv. 13.
f 1 Kings viii. 18. g Eph. iv. 24.