The Pulpit Commentary — Matthew — Volume 1 — Section 377

to hea.r the grea.t Preacher, to know what his doctrine was; often from worse motives- to criticize, to judge, to condemn. They sought not bis counsel. He could do theu,_ no good in their present frame of mind. Dut these publicans nnd sinners needed him• they were sick spiritually. Others knew it, and they knew it too; it was this vei,,1 consciousness of sin and danger that brought them to Christ. Therefore he came t<) Matthew's feast. He sat down to eat with publicans and sinners, to draw them to himself, to teach and to save. The true disciple will follow Christ's example. Hr will try to obey the apostle's precept-whether we eat or drink, to do all to the glorl, of God. The true Christian may do much good in the freedom of social intercourse, he may thus sometimes reach men who cannot be touched by more formal ministra- tions ; but it needs a true disciple, a man full of wisdom and of the Holy Ghost, thus to follow Christ. (2) He quotes the Scriptures. Mercy is better than sacrifice; love is holier than external obedience; outward forms, intellectual orthodoxy, will not avail for our salvation, if we have not that blessed grace of charity, without which all our doings are nothing worth. "Go ye and learn what that meaneth," the Lord said. They were teachers; they knew well the letter of the Scripture. They had missed itu inner meaning. That meaning has been lost sight of again and again through the long range of history. The Christian must, by the grace of the Holy Spirit, keep that inner meaning steadily before his mind. The first of the commandments is love; all i5 vanity if we have not love. (3) This was the very purpose of the Lord's coming. It; was not to call righteous men. His great act of Divine self-sacrifice would not have been necessary if men had been righteous. But "there is none righteous, no, no(J ilne." There were some who "trusted in themselves that they were righteous;" none who were such in the sight of God. He came to call sinners;. therefore he sought them, he talked with them, he sat at meat with them. His perfect purity could not be marred by their companionship; rather he would cleanse ,them from their sins. Could he shun them, like the Pharisees? It would frustrate the very end of his incarnation. He was come to seek and to eave that which was lost. 4. The disciples of John. They came with the Pharisees (Mark ii. 18); they, too, were startled by the Saviour's conduct, but especially by the absence of asceticism from his life and teaching. John came neither eating nor drinking; his disciples lived a life of rigid abstinence like their master. And now (1) they ask the Lord a question. They make their own practice a rule for others; a common mistake, the mistake against which St. Paul argues so strongly in Rom. xiv. and elsewhere. They thought so much of their frequent fa.stings that they even ranged themselves with tbe Pharisees in opposition to our Lord, or at least in distinction from his practice-a strange departure from their :Master's teaching. Bow often men magnify small outward differences, to the disregard of deep and important agreement! (2) The Lord's reply. He does not answer the first part of the question, why they and the Pharisees fasted; he leaves that to their own conscience. He defends his own disciples. There could be no fasting among the festivities of a wedding. He was the heavenly Dridegroom. r.ome to take to himself a bride-the Church which he so greatly loved. Hie disciF<"~ were the friends of the Bridegroom, attending him as he came to fetch the bride. They could not fast while he was with them. But even now, in the midst of success and popularity, he saw the shadow of the cross. The Bridegroom would not always be with his friends; he would be taken from them. It is the first allusion in St. Matthew's Gospel to the coming end; it is very touching in its calm simplicity. They will fast then. Fasting is meanin11less without mourning; outward self-denials are worthless if they are not the expression of inner sorrow. They will sorrow for the absent Bridegroom, mourning for the sins which have separated them from him. The soul that bath found Christ cannot but rejoice--in his presence is fulness of joy ; but there must be seasons of sorrow even in the highest Cbrutian life, when the burden of our sins is grievous unto llB, and the remembrance of them is intolerable. 'J'hen shall they fast in those days ; but their fasting will not be like the formal fasts of the Pharisees, but such as the Lord commended in the sermon on the mount. (3) 'l'wo similes. (a) An old garm~nt must not be patched with new, unfulled cloth. The new piece is too strong for the worn garment; it will shrink, too, and rend it. Christ's religion is not merely Judaism with a few additions and improvements; it is a new dispensation. It comes from the same u,.xi: b~t it ill fr011r.i,r, etr~nlJ(lr thAn thfl old. 'l'he old was good in its day, but no\P en, rx. 1-38.J THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO BT. MATTHEW. 3i '3