a better righteousness, even that “everlasting righteousness,” which Daniel and others of the prophets long years before had predicted as to be wrought out and brought in by Messiah. Such was probably the import of that instructive symbolic transaction, of which we read in the third chapter of Zechariah, when the filthy garments were taken away from Joshua the high priest; and when a fair mitre was set upon his head, and he was clothed with change of garments, as it is there written: ‘‘ Behold, I have caused thine iniquity to pass from thee, and I will clothe thee with change of raiment.” Such is the significance of the contrast between the righteousness of the Law and the righteous- ness of faith in the tenth chapter of the Epistle to the Romans: “ For Moses describeth the righteousness which is of the Law, ‘hat the man which doeth those things shall live by them... . If thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved, For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.’ 7. Trwe obedience inward and spiritual. When the young man had heard our Lord’s answer he looked upon the whole matter as a very simple thing, and possibly stood higher in his own estimation than he had done before, if that were possible. He seemed to say, If these be the commandments which you include in your direction, and if these be all, then have I obeyed them—every one of then— from my youth up, nay, from childhood till the present hour; they have been the rule of my life. Is there anything still wanting? Have you any new commandment to add? Is there anything needed to supplement those which I long since learnt from the Law, and to which I have duly conformed from the earliest dawn of reason? And though you have overlooked the traditions of the elders, I have neither forgotten them nor neglected them, but observed them most punctiliously. What then remains? What lack I yet? Ah, how little this young man knew of his own heart! how little of the spirituality of God’s Law! how little of the exceeding broadness of the commandment! In the Law of God, as in the love of God, there are a length and breadth and depth and height to which this ruler was entirely a stranger. He had not, we are sure, been one of the audience when our Lord preached his sermon on the mount; or, if he had, he must have failed entirely to comprehend the explanation of the Law as contained in that sermon. At all events, he remained apparently ignorant that the Law in its requirements extends to the heart as well as to the life; to the principles as well as to the practice; to the feelings as well as to the facts; to the internal passions as well as to the external acts; to the inmost thoughts as well as the outward deeds, This young man had, we doubt not, maintained an unblemished character before the eyes of men; he had been guiltless of such sins as are public and common in the world, and free from all notorious vices; he had kept the Law in the letter and as prohibiting outward acts of sin ; for the Saviour does not call his assertion in question. Besides, had he not been a young man of blameless conduct as well as of promising talents, he could not have attained, and at an early age, his honourable posi- tion as one of the rulers of a local synagogue, or perhaps @ member of the Sanhedrin, or great council of the nation, 8. The young man’s deficiency in his own department of morals. “ What lack I yet?” may be taken as a boast rather than a question for information or an inquiry about future duty. He lacked much, we are sure, even on the low ground of morality; for taking the Law in its spiritual sense, and as i
expounded it, he had no doubt offended at many times and in many ways; “for in many things we offend all.” Instead cf the self-righteous, self-sufficient assertion, “all these have I kept from my youth up,” had he looked inward he might, nay, he would, have found reason to say, “ All these have I broken;” for we have it on the authority of God’s own Word, that “ every imagination of the thoughts of man’s heart is only evil continually.” The first commandment which our Lord specified, according to the common order as given by St. Matthew, is, “Thou shalt do no murder.” The young ruler judged himself guiltless of any breach of this commandment, because his hands had been free from blood. He forgot that blood-guiltiness attaches to the heart as well as to the hand, to the tongue as well as to the arm that wields the deadly weapon. ‘The teeth, as we learn from the fifty-seventh psalm, may be murderous as “spears and arrows;” and the tongue may wound as mortally as “a sharp sword; * while “out of the heart,” as qur Lord himself has declared, “‘ proceed murders.” “ All these have I kept from my youth up.” And hast thoa never,O young man, been
om. x. 1—52.] THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ST. MARK. 105