kindness, our privileges and means of instruction and improvement? Or, like certain vines in the land of Palestine, which, as we read in Scripture, produced poisonous herries, are we bearing fruit of similar poisonous quality? It may be that, instead of grapes, good grapes and proper fruit, we may be bearing grapee—wild grapes, not only inferior in quality, but poisonous in their nature. Our lips, instead of being instruments of righteousness, may be polluted and polluting with falsehood and deceit and evil-speaking; with corrupt communication, levity, and profanity. Our lite, instead of a living epistle, seen and legible to all, may be an exhibition of bitterness and wrath and anger; of envy, pride, injustice, and uncharitableness; of sensuality and sinfulness. Our heart, which is the fountain-head and source of all, may, by remaining unrenewed and unpurified, continue the wellspring of evil thoughts, vile affections, and corrupt desires. If this be the case with any of us—which may Heaven forfend!—how great must be the disappointment of the Lord of the vineyard! how base our ingratitude! how awful the doom! how swiftly and suddenly destruction may come! 6. Fatal error. Delay is not deliverance. Many flatter themselves, as Agag, that the bitterness of death is past, at the very moment that vengeance is on the road and ready to overtake them. Some regard warnings as words of course, and conseguently worthless. Others, like the Jews of old, treat shamefully the messengers of Divine mercy; and neglect, or despise and make light of, or speak evil of, the ministers of religion, forgetting the fact that whoso despiseth the messenger despiseth vne Master that sent him. Thank God but few reach this bad eminence in their enmity to God, and the things of God, and the servants of God! We may neglect ordinances and abuse privileges, but, in doing so, we treasure up for ourselves “ wrath against the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God ;” we may despise the terrors of the Lord, and turn a deaf ear to the voice of warning ; we may disappoint the reasonable expectations of ministers and members of the Church; we may defraud the great Proprietor of the fruits which his grace was calculated to produce, and which he had every reason to expect; and God may not take vengeance on our evil works speedily ; yet that vengeance will be aggravated by delay, and more fearful when it comes, Those guilty of such sinful neglect and abuse of privileges shall in the day of Divine vengeance be swept as with the besom of destruction, or thrown as into a furnace seven times heated, and that for ever and ever. Let us beware of the pro- gressive nature of sin; for if we forget instruction, that forgetfulness will cause us to neglect it ; that neglect, again, will lead us to despise it; that contempt for instruction will beget dislike of our spiritual teachers who impart it; and this dislike will engender hatred of the truth in general; and the end, the fearful end, will be destruction irreme- diable and terrible from the presence of the Lord and the glory of his power. “ And thou, Capernaum, which art exalted unto heaven, shalt be brought down to hell.”—
Vers. 13—17. Parallel passages: Matt. xxii. 15—22 ; Luke xx. 20—36.— Question of the tribute money. I. A SNARE LAID. This tribute money (xjveos) was the poll or capitation tax payable to the Roman Government, from the time Judwa became subject to the Roman power. Judas of Galilee headed a revolt against this tax, but perished with nis followers. If our Lord allowed the lawfulness of paying tribute to Osesar, it would have compromised him with the Jewish nationalists, who would not have been siow to charge him with contempt of the Law of Moses for the words of Deut. xvii. 15, “Thou mayest not set a stranger over thee,” were explained by them as forbidding the payment of tribute to a foreign power. If he acknowledged the unlaw- fulness of such payment, he came into direct collision with the Roman authorities, In the one case, he offended the Judean patriots and his own Galilean followers; in the other, he incensed the Herodian royalists who acquiesced in Roman rule. On the one tide, it was treachery to national and patriotic aspirations and Messianic prospects ; on the other, it was treason against the Roman Cmsar and Pilate his governor. Such was the snare laid for him; such was the trap they set in order to catch him. Thus they thought to entangle him, rather, ensnare (wxayiSebowow) him, in his talk, as a fowler ensnares a bird.
Ii, THE SUBTLETY WITH WHIOH THE SNARE 18 LAID. 1, They put the question in such a categorical form as seemed to them to necessitate a simple “yea” or “nay; ” thug,
| \
} I on. xi, 1—44.] THE GOSP/L ACCORDING TO ST. MARK. 191