Matt, xi. 28. Co7ne unto me, all ye that labour, and are heavy- laden, and I tvill give you rest.
IT is thought by many, that the Gospel is a mere system of notions, which may be received without benefit, or rejected without loss. But it is rather proposed to us as a remedy for all the miseries, which sin has brought into the world. In it we are repre- sented as guilty and undone : but Christ is set before us as a Saviour, and is exhibited under every figure that can unfold his excellency, or endear him to our souls. Under the Old Testament, he is shadowed forth as a brazen serpent to heal the wounded, as a city of refuge to protect the man-slayer, and as a sacrifice to remove the sinner's guilt. In the New Testament, he speaks of himself as bread for the hungry, as living water for the thirsty, as a physician for the sick, and, to mention no more, as a kind and hospitable friend, who invites to him the weary and heavy-laden.
In the words here addressed to us, we may notice, I. Tlie characters invited —
Under the description of the weary and heavy-laden w^e must certainly include those, who groaned under the burthen of the Mosaic law —
[The ceremonial law required a great multitude of ritual observances, which, to those who saw not their typical use and tendency, must have appeared frivolous and arbitrary ; and, even to those who had some insight into their meaning, they were an irksome task, and an intolerable burthen. From this yoke however the Messiah was to deliver them; he was to annul the old covenant with all its ceremonies, and to establish a better covenant in its stead ^ When therefore our Lord proclaimed himself to be the Messiah, he invited to him all that were weary and heavy-laden with the Mosaic law, and assured them, that the yoke which he would impose upon them was light and easy.]
There is however a further reference to those who laboured under temporal afflictions —
[None are such strangers to the common lot of mortality, as not to know that mankind are subject to many grievous troubles. Indeed, such are the calamities incident to life, that few, who have been long in the world, can cordially " thank God for their creation." But more especially when the hand of God is heavy upon us, and we feel the weight of great and multiplied afflictions, we are ready to hate our very existence, and to " choose strangling rather than life." Many probably of those, to whom Jesus addressed himself, had drunk deep of the cup of sorrow : for their encouragement therefore he pro- mised that, whatever their trials were, whether in mind, or body, or estate, if only they would come to him, they should find a relief from all, or (what would be of equal value) support and comfort under their pressure.]
But doubtless we must principally understand by these terms those who are oppressed with a seme of sin —
[Though all are sinners, all do not feel the weight of sin, because they know not what tremendous evils it has brought upon them. But when any are awakened from their lethargic state, and see what a good and holy God they have oifended, they begin to tremble, lest the wrath of God should break forth upon them to consume them utterly. Perhaps they obtain a transient peace hij means of their repentance and reformation ; but their subsequent falls and backslidings rend open the wounds afresh, and make them feel how hopeless
a Heb. viii. 8, 13.