The Pulpit Commentary — Matthew — Volume 2 — Section 631

he bad saved anybody. To them his imposture and bis helplessness were llt onoe shown i.n this-" himself he cannot save." Those mockers were wrong every way. I. CHRIST DID BAVB OTHERS. Illustrate, by specimen cases, the following three points: 1. He did save from disability and disease. lie gave sight to the blind, ancl cleansed the leper. 2. He did save from death. He brought Lazarus back from the grave. 3. He did save from sin. Authoritatively saying to the paralytic, "Thy sins are forgiven thee." He did "save to the uttermost. n II. CHRIST COULD HAVE SAVED musELF. Had he so wished, he could have com- manded the service of" twelve legions of angels." "There was not a moment, from beginning to end of his human career, in which our bl888ed Lord might not have turned back from shame and suffering. At the very moment when these words were uttered, he had but to speak, and he would have been surrounded by the responsive hosts of heaven, end in one moment his pa.in would have been exchanged for triumph." Nails could not bold him age.inst bis will. He could have come down from the cross. III. CHRIST WOULD NOT BAVE HDrBELF. There is the mystery of the great self- sacrifice. Because he would save others, he would not savo himself. Relatively to the work which our blessed Lord had undertaken, it was necessary that he himself should not be saved. His mission required: I. That his submission to God's will should be fully tested. And the last test of a man is this-Can you die just when God pleases, just where God pleases, just how God pleases? 2. That mission required the surrender of a human life as a sacrifice for sin. Tho.t was the Divine plan for the redemption of men from sin; Jesus must offer that sacrifice, so he would not come down from the Cl'OIIS, Our Lord's own will gave the virtue to his sacrifice. He could have saved himself, bnt he would not. He meant to yield himself, in a voluntary act of obedience kl God. "By the which will we have been sanctified, through the offering of the body of Jesus once for all."-R. T, Ver. 46.-The mystery ojtheforsaking. Keble tenderly sings- " Is it not strange, the darkest hour That ever dawned on sinful earth Should touch the hean with softer power For comfort, than an angel's mirth? That to the cross the mourner's eye should turn, Sooner fuan where the stars of Christmas burn? " The confilct of Calvary reaches its climax in this text. It brings before us the sublimest moment of our Saviour's life. It is the moment in which our Champion closed with the spiritual foe of evil in the last death-strnggle. He spent his bodily life in the effort. He gained the soul-life of obedience and trust; that soul-victory was his triumph for ns. Watching with the Ga.l.i.lrean women, a little distance off, within sight of the cross, within sound of this great, this dying cry, what should be our first thought? L M..unFEBTLY THIS WAS THE DEATH OF A JIUN, It is singular that, in the early Church, no evident effort was made to maintain the truth of our Lord's Divinity; early controversy dealt with the reality of our Lord's h'll,manity. A~d an important part in the impression of that humanity was taken by the scenes of his death. These suffer- ings are a man's sufferings; these cries ar~ a m~n•s cri~s; this death is a man•~ death. The humanity is brought home to us by his dying a V1olent death, a death which was certified by a public officer. Our text, whatever else it may be, is certainly the cry of a dying man, the element of the flesh, the body, is now added to our Redeemer's struggle. Medical science tells us that the accounts of our Lord's dying accurately represent what occurs in a case of ruptured or br~k.en hear_t. The same spasm of dreadful pain. forcing a great cry, and the same flowmg of mmgled blood and water, when the bee.rt-sac is pierced. There is a very striking th~ng, further bringing out to view the real humann868 of the cry of the text. Our Lord did not make a new sentence, separating bis experience from that of men, but he used words spoken by a psalmist e.s e.n utterance of his own distress (see Ps. xxii. 1). Our Lord evidently intended to identify his struggle with that of man. It may be said that this text embodies and expresses the effect of intense bodily suffering, and of approaching death, on a man'• cu. nvn.1-66.J THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ST. MATTHEW. 637