The Pulpit Commentary — Matthew — Volume 1 — Section 513

plexed by it. In • Adam Bede' Mrs. Poyser can only account for Dinah Morris's preaching enthusiasm by supposing that her niece has "a maggot" in her brain. To Jesus the misapprehension of his family must have been most acutely painful because be lo-red sympathy. In his distress, however, he was not embittered; but his large heart turned to a greater kinship. I. THR CONDITIONS OF BROTHERHOOD WITH CHRIST. 1. It is not merely natural, but spiritual. Jesus did not deny the claims of nature. In the agony of death he thought of his mother, and committed her to the charge of the beloved disciple. But it was the pain of his life that the happy family union which is the source of earth's deepest joy was broken by the unique destiny he was following. Christ has kinship with men in their higher natures. 2. It is determined, not by opinuma, but by conduct. They are not Christ's brethren who understand most; but the deeds of life determine relation- ship with Christ. It is possible to be very orthodox and yet not be owned by Christ ; the poor heretic, hounded to death by pious persecutors, may be owned as our Lord's brother-not because he is a heretic, as some people seem to think, but because in spite of his heresy his conduct pleases Christ. 3. It i, not conditioned by religious obser- vances, but by the doing of God's will. The condition is wide, and it may embrace many sects and creeds. Yet in another sense it is narrow. While Christ is good to all, he only owns brotherhood with those who are obedient to God. Obedience is the tie of kinship. It marks men as of the family of God, of which Jesus is the elder Brother, the type of obedience, and its inspiriog influence. II. THE PBIVlLEGEB OF BROTHERHOOD WITH CHBIBT. 1. It is a joy to CJhrist. The sympathy he could not find among his own kindred he met in the larger family of God's obedient sons and daughters. Thus it is possible to contribute to the joy of Christ. This cannot but be a privilege to those who are his true brethren. 2. It secures his full ,ympathy. He is not like those selfish sufferers who demand unlimited sympathy with their own woes, but offer no sympathy with others in return. His life is utterly unselfish, a perpetual expenditure of himself for his brethren. 3. It bring, the confidence of family union. One of the happiest features of home-life is the complete mutual confidence of the members of the family. This Christ permits between himself and his people. He does not stand off from them in kingly isolation. "He is not ashamed to call them brethren" (Heh. ii. 11). 4. It secures a lasting heritage. Christ's brethren are his fellow-heirs. Kings' families may come to sad endings. It is better to be a Christian than a Stuart or a Bourbon.-W. F. A. Vers. 1-8 (see also Mark ii. 23-28; Luke vi. 1-6).-The sabbath made for man: Note in introduction that the chiefest interest of this passage centres in the last verses of it, and in their combined moral aspects. 'l'he occasion of these must be esteemed, with certain other passages of the Gospel, as one of no lesser import, recorded as it is by all of the three evangelists. That occasion arose not out of the direct course and tenor of the conduct of Christ, but out of that of his disciples. Nevertheless, his own use of the siffibath day for works of mercy originates more than once the similar sharp criticism of his shallow enemies. 'l'he conduct in question of the disciples, nature.I enough on the very face of it, might have been more easily open to exception if the sabbath day had been habitually found to confer some exemption from the experience of hunger. By the very dictate of nature we should be content to justify it, which proclaims everywhere so much universal love, free hospitality. But beside this, the permission was specially accoided to the Jew (Deut. xxiii. 25), and something more also, viz. the free appropriation for the occasion of the clusters of grapes. 'l'h, objection of the captious critics now, however, concerned the point that the discipla took of these ears of corn on the sabbath, which still remo'l"es their inconsistency only one step further, For was there any qualifying addendum to the permissions quoted above, such e.g. that men should not walk through the fields at all on the sabbath, or if they did that they must beware of the corn-field and vineyard, and though they hungered, must on that day bear their hunger? No, but "this and many other like things they had put in their traditions." It was equally a sign of their presumption and of the alienation of their heart from the true Word of God. Chri8t, therefore, not -arguing in any detail, but instancing two well-known precedents (1 Sam. xxi. 1-7; uii. 22), conclude11 the matter by tll.e clearest statement of the true principle on which 510 TllE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ST. MATTHEW. [ou. xu. 1-50.