The Pulpit Commentary — Luke — Volume 2 — Section 166

contro,crsics over mere pin-points, exclaims, "Maste1, which is tl:.e great commnnd- ment in the Law?" (Matt. xxii. 35). In the school to which he belonued, the precepts of the moral and ceremonial law were reckoned to be more than six h~ndred, although the great Rabbi Hille! reminded his pupils that, after all, the word, " Do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with God," is the essence of the Law, the rest being only commentary. "Which commandment," asks this lawyer, "is the greatest, Master? What sayest thou?" Let us thank the tempting jurist whose question evoked the golden wisdom of the empliatic enforcement of the two sentences to which all obedience returns and from which all worthy conduct departs-the first commandment bidding us love God with all the heart, and the second, which is like to it, biddinu us love our neighbour as ourselves (Matt. xxii. 37--40). Pharisee, Sadducee, and s;ribe ha"e all been defeated in their trial of Jesus. It is his tum to try them. He will not let them go until he has shown them the slowness of their minds, and left with them a question to be afterwards inwardly digested. He puts the query, "What think ye of Christ?" (Matt. xxii. 42). And when they answer, "He is the Son of David," he reminds them (,·ers. 41--44) of the language of the psalmist, implying that there is another than the merely filial relation: "If David call him Lord, how is he then his Sou?" Who can abide the thrusts of Jesus? No more questions are asked. No; and pointing to his discomfited tormentors, he preaches the terrible denunciation epito- mized in vcrs. 45--47, 11iven at fuller length in the eight crushing woes of Matt. xxiii. It is a scene that beggars description-the grandest moment in the ministry of Christ, the Prophet and King. The evangelist, guided, perhaps, by the sense of fitness to that scene, represents the tone of the speech a.s changing, at the close of the commina.tion, from indignation hot and strong to the moaning, saddened cry of a. heart breaking with grief-the cry, already considered, over impenitent, hard-hearted Jerusalem. So the Lord moves towards the gate of the temple. It is on his way thither that he observes ( eh. xxi. 1--4) the action of the poor widow, who cast into one of the chests which were placed in the temple courts her poor little all How calm was the soul which, even in the heat of that day of temptation, could pause, observe, and speak of a deed apparently so insignificant! It is observable that the last word of Christ in the temple should be one concerning the love and the love-offering, which a.re better than formal sacrifices. Ever to be remembered, too, is the sentence," He looked up, and saw the gifts cast into the treasury." The gifts that men and women furtively cast, thinking that none will observe the meanness, or the ostentatiously cast money expecting that all will applaud the munificence, he sees. He is always looking to the treasury ; he estimates the real value of the offering. What is the principle of the commendation? "One coin," says an old Father, " out of a little is better than a treasure out of much_; for it is not con- sidered how much is given, but how much remains behind." "He went out and departed from the temple." It is the" !cha.bod," the departing of the glory. Thirty-five years later the holy and beautiful house was left desolate; the prediction (ver. 6) a.s to the great costly stones was fulfilled. 'l'he ploughshare of a fearful retribution was driven through Israel's palace, a.s through Israel itself. The quitting of the temple by the Son of God was the beginning of the end. Thenceforth it was the whited sepulchre, beau- tiful in appearance, but within full of the dead bones of religion and all spiritual uncleanness. Lo! the house is left to these Pharisees desolate. As the closing fea.tnre of that great Tuesday, we behold Christ and his apostles seated on the slope of_ Olivet. The golden radiance of the setting sun is flung over the glorious city. The pmna.cles of the temple, the pa.laces, and massive buildings and endless houses of the Jews are, one by one, bathed in the georgeous reflection. There, in the va.lu below, a.re Gethsemane and the Kedron, and around a.re the well-known features of tho landscape so dcn.r to the Israelite. It is with this prospect full in his view that Jesus gives the instruction as to the end of the age in those mysterious intimations in which the do~n~all ?f the city of the great King is so blended with other and greater catastrophe~ that 1t 1s difficult to distinguish what relates specially to the one and what relates specially to the others. Oh, how urgent the exhortation to vigilance I How real and solemn for all .the injunction "to pray always, that we may be accounted worth,Y to escape all these thmgs tba.t shall come to pass, and to stand before the Son of man '(ver. 36) I au. xx. 1-47.] THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ST. LUKE. 173