The Pulpit Commentary — Matthew — Volume 2 — Section 405

are tho good people?' They will be Moses and Joshua, but not Samuel. Ask in the times of Christ, and they will be all the former prophets with Samuel, but not Christ and bis aposLles." May the Lord save ue from this spirit of unworthy jealousy, and teach us to honour goodness, not only in the remote distance, which ie easy, but in immediate proximity to us, which is sometimep., alas for our miserable selfishness I very bard indeed. "Charity envieth not:" folio w after charity. LEssoNB. 1. Ch1i.st is an awful Judge, as well as a most loving Saviour. Take we heed unto ourselves. 2. His wrath must fall on those who oppose his blessed work. Let us help it with all our might. 3. Christ hates hypocrisy. Seek above a.II things to be real. 4. Party spirit is a poor substitute for true religion. Seek to save souls. 5. le your outward life blameless? It is well. But it is a small thing in compa.risCll with the infinite preciousness of purity of heart. Vere. 32-39.-PTophecy of thefr fuluTe. I. THEIR CONTINUANCE IN THE ems O-F TBEIB FATHERS. 1. PTediction of thefr keatment of (Jhri~s disciples. They would fill up the measure of their fathers; the Lord knew it in his Divine foreknowledge. They were still what John the Baptist had once called them-serpents," a generation of vipers." How were mch as they to escape from the condemnation of Gehenna? For hypocrisy hardens the heart. The state of the hypocrite is hopeless, perhspe, beyond that of most other sinners; self-satisfied BB he is, he will not repent and come to Christ. "Wherefore," the Lord said, "I send unto you prophets." Mark the majestic "I send;" it assert11 his authority, hie equality in the truth of his Divine nature with God the Father. Mark the solemn "wherefore;" it contains a depth of inscrutable meaning-meaning full of mercy on the one side, full of awful mystery on the other. He would send his messengers unto them. Then even now he cared for their souls, even now he sought to save them. But be knew in his Divine omniscience how they would treat his servants; they would persecute them, and scourge them in their synagogues; some they would kill and crucify. The mission or the apostles would increase the guilt of the Jews; the good tidings of salvation would be to them, not life, but death. The Divine foreknowledge is not inconsistent with human free-will. The Pharisees had the power to choose or to reject the Saviour. He would not have mocked them with the offer of an unattainable salvation, an inaccessible heaven. Yet he knew that they would reject him, for he was God, infinite in knowledge as in all other Divine attributes. That knowledge did not destroy theil' free agency; it did not remove their guilt. Here is one of those deep mysteries which human thought cannot penetrate; hereafter it shall be revealed. 2. The con.sequence to themselves. On them would come all the righteous blood shed upon the earth. It must be so; for they had inherited the guilt of their ancestors, and that accumulated inheritance of evil had hardened their hearts into very stone. It must be so; for it was in the course of God's awful justice. As he hardened the heart of Pharaoh, who first hardened his own heart; so now he sent his messengers to the hardened Pharisees, that upon them might come all the righteous blood shed upon the earth. It is the ordinance of God, the law or that human nature which is his work, that wilful sin wilfully persevered in should lead on to guilt deeper yet. It would be so in the case of these hard-hearted Jews. Their obstinate unbelief would soon lead to a crime greater than any which the world, wicked as it was, had seen from the very beginning. That awful crime would fill up the measure of the long catalogue of deeds of blood. It would all fall upon that generation, from the first murder that ever was to the last recorded in the Hebrew canon; for all the accumulated blood-guiltiness of mankind would be summed up in the tremendous guilt of those who were so soon about to cry, cc His blood be on us, and on our children I" "Verily I SR)' unto you, All these things must come upon this generation." We feel it must be so. We hear the dread sentence, and we bow in silent awe before the judgment of God. And yet we know and feel that Christ cued even for those hard-hearted sinners, and would have saved them in his tender pity. But, alas I they would not come to him, that they might have life. II. TIIE· LAMENT OVER JERUSALEM. 1. The Lurd's love. The stem language of most awful condemnation changes. We hear the tenderest accents of Divine pity, the sad wailing of disappointed love. The Lord had wept over Jerusalem. Now agl\io his sacred heart yearus with mighty compassion for the city which he loved su well.  4'10 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ST. MATTHEW. [cu. xxm. 1-39,