are our own, not something merely without us, but which become a part of our very selves, assimilating to our truest life. Thus the Lord at once casts a slight on the things worldly and temporal, while yet at the same time he magnifies the importance of a right administration of them; since in the dispensing of these,-which he declares to be the least, to be false and without any intrinsic worth, to be alien from man's essential being, he yet also declares that a man may prove his fidelity, will inevitably show what is in him, and whether he be fit to be intrusted with that which has a true and enduring value, with a ministration in the kingdom of God. And in ver. 13 he further states what the fidelity is, which in this stewardship is required:-it is a choosing of God instead of mammon for our lord. For in this world we are in the condition of servants from whom two masters are claiming allegiance one is God, man's rightful lord, the other is this unrighteous mammon, which was given to be our servant, to be wielded by us in God's interests, and in itself to be considered by us as something slight, transient, and another's-but which has, in a sinful world, erected itself into a lord, and now demands obedience from us, which if we yield, we can be no longer faithful servants and stewards of God's. We shall no longer lay out according to his will that which he indeed gave us to be merely a thing beneath us, but which we have allowed to have a will and a voice of its own, and to speak to us in accents of command. We cannot any longer be faithful servants of God, for that upstart lord has a will so different from his will, gives commands so opposite to his, that occasions must speedily arise when one or other will have to be slighted, despised, and disobeyed, if the other be regarded, honored, and served;†-God, for instance, will command a scattering, when mammon will urge to a further heaping and gathering; God will require spending upon others, when mammon, or the world, a spending upon our own lusts. Therefore, these two lords having characters so different, and giving commands so opposite, it will be impossible to reconcile their service (Jam. iv. 4), one must be despised, if the other is

* The Jews have various sayings and parables concerning the manner in which God proves men in little things, to try whether they are worthy to be intrusted with great. Thus they say of David, that God tried him first with "those few sheep in the wilderness," which because he faithfully and boldly kept (1 Sam. xvii. 34-36), therefore God "took him from the sheepfolds to feed Jacob his people, and Israel his inheritance" (Ps. lxxviii. 70, 71). See SCHOETTGEN'S Hor. Heb. v. 1, p. 300.

↑ Stella has a lively comparison in illustration of this: Si duobus hominibus aliquâ viâ incedentibus canis sequitur, non facilè judicare poteris uter illorum Dominus ejus sit. Cæterùm si alter ab altero discedat, statim apparet clarissimè quis Dominus sit. Canis enim, ignoto relicto, ad notum accedit, eumque Dominum esse suum clarè ostendit.

held to; the only faithfulness to the one is to break with the other; "Ye cannot serve God and mammon." Such appears to me to be the connection between ver. 13 and the preceding verses, and between the whole of these verses and the parable of which they surely are intended to give the moral.†

* Aovλevew, to which word its full force is to be given, a force which Chrysostom excellently brings out, when after noting how Abraham and Job were rich, and yet found favor with God, he goes on to observe that it was because each of these though rich, οὐκ ἐδούλεσε τῷ μαμμωνᾷ, ἀλλ ̓ εἶχεν αὐτὸν καὶ ἐκράτει καὶ δεσπότης [αὐτοῦ] οὐ δούλος ἦν. See also SUICER, S. V. δουλεύω.

† Among the many strange explanations to which this parable has given birth, perhaps one of the strangest is recorded by Jerome (Ad Algas., Ep. 121, qu. 6), who quotes it from the Commentaries of Theophilus, bishop of Antioch. According to this, the unjust steward is the apostle Paul, who was forcibly thrust out by God of his Judaism, and being so, made himself a reception in many hearts, through the declaring the Gospel of the grace of God,-of the remission of sins; and for this had praise, that he had well done, "being changed from the austerity of the Law to the clemency of the Gospel." But I see that elsewhere (De Script. Eccles.) Jerome doubts the genuineness of the Commentaries extant in his time under the name of Theophilus. This is only outdone by a modern writer mentioned by Unger (De Par. Jes. Nat., p. 85), who affirms the Lord to have meant himself by the unjust steward! It sounds almost irreverent to mention in immediate juxtaposition with this, that Pontius Pilate and Judas Iscariot have been proposed as the persons by him represented. But the meanest and most grovelling of all expositions is given by Hartmann (Comm. de Econ. Improbo, Lips. 1830) of which it will suffice to say that the author explains ver. 9 to mean this: Make to yourselves friends of those that are rich in this world (this is his interpretation of 'EK T. μаμ. T. àdık.), that when through any mishap you get low in the world, you may be sure of a retreat for the remainder of your days. In WOLF's Cure, and KÖCHER'S Analecta, other extravagant interpretations may be found, which it would be little worth while to repeat.

XXVI.

THE RICH MAN AND LAZARUS.

LUKE XVI. 19-31.

Ir must be acknowledged that the connection of verses 15-18 with one another, and of all with this parable, is not easy to trace, while yet to say, as Hammond and others do, that St. Luke has here thrown together various sayings of our Lord's, uttered on very different occasions, is a most unsatisfactory explanation;-for what should they do here? or how have they come to be here introduced? But however loosely strung together, at first sight, verses 15-18 may appear, there is a thread of connection running through them all, and afterwards joining them with the parable, there is one leading thought throughout, namely, that in all is contained rebuke and threatening for the Pharisees. They had heard the Lord's exhortation to a large and liberal bounty, his warning to his disciples that they should not attempt to serve at once God and the world, and they testified by look and gesture, and it may be also openly in words, their dislike of the doctrine, and scorn of the teacher; "The Pharisees also, who were covetous, heard all these things, and they derided him."* Whereupon he turned and addressed to them the discourse, which had hitherto been to the disciples, and rebuked, first their hypocrisy-while they were covetous, that is, while their hearts were secretly given to the world, they yet would be accounted to love God above all things, they sought a reputation for holiness and righteousness before men; but he proceeds, highly esteemed as they were among men, they and their pretences were abomination before God, who knoweth the hearts. It is then announced to them (ver. 16) how that dispensation, of which they were the stewards and administrators,

* Ἐξεμυκτήριζον αὐτόν.

+ The piλapupíu here attributed to the Pharisees is to be taken in that widest and deepest sense, in which it is the þíŝa návτwv tŵv kakŵv (1 Tim. vi. 10), the dependence upon and trust in the world rather than in God.

was passing away; "The law and the prophets were unto John;" their stewardship is coming to an end, and a larger dispensation, in which they shall no more have the "key of knowledge" to admit or to exclude, is begun: "The kingdom of God is preached, and every man presseth into it." Yet not that the law itself was to be abolished, for that would be eternal as the God that gave it (ver. 17), being the expression of his perfections and holy will: which when it was so, how great was their guilt, who, while they pretended to be zealous for its honor, the guardians of its purity, were continually tampering with it in some of its most sacred enactments, as in those concerning marriage (ver. 18), and relaxing its obligations; and thereupon the parable follows.

But that being evidently addressed to the Pharisees, a difficulty at once presents itself. They were, indeed, "covetous" (ver. 14), lovers of money, but prodigal excess in living, like that of the rich man, is nowhere, either in history or in Scripture, imputed to them. On the contrary, we learn from contemporary historical sources, that they were remarkably sparing and abstemious in their manner of life, many of them rigid ascetics: and among all the severe rebukes which our Lord addressed to them, the sin of luxury and prodigal excess is nowhere laid to their charge. Their sins were in the main spiritual, and what other sins they had were such as were compatible with a high reputation for spirituality, which covetousness is, but a profuse self-indulgence and an eminently luxurious living is not. Mosheim feels the difficulty so strongly, that he supposes the parable to have been directed against the Sadducees,† of whose selfish indulgence of themselves, and hard-hearted contempt for the needs of others (for they had wrought into their very religious scheme that poverty was a crime, or at least an evidence of the displeasure of God), he says we shall then have an exact description. But the parable cannot be for them, there is nothing to make it probable that Sadducees were present, neither can there be any change between ver. 18 and 19 in the persons addressed; this will appear yet more evident in the original than in our version, which has omitted the particle which marks the continuity and unbroken tenor of the discourse, and to give the force of which, the parable ought to begin not simply, "There was," but, "Now there was a certain rich man."

The explanation, however, seems to be the following. While it is quite true that covetousness was the sin of the Pharisees, and not prodi

*Josephus (Antt., xviii. 1, 3) says of them, Thy díaiтav ¿¿evTeλíčovow, ovdév és τὸ μαλακώτερον ἐνδιδόντες, and that the Sadducees mocked them for their fasts and austerities.

† De Reb. Christ. ante Const., p. 49. So also Wetstein, who says of the Pharisees, jejunabant crebrò, modestius vestiebantur. This frequent fasting (Luke xviii. 12), could not be reconciled with the faring sumptuously every day.

gal excess in living, while it was rather an undue gathering, than an undue spending, yet hoarding and squandering so entirely grow out of the same evil root, are so equally the consequences of unbelief in God and in God's word-of trust in the creature rather than in the Creator, are so equally a serving of mammon (though the form of the service may be different), that when the Lord would rebuke their sin, which was the love of the world and trust in the world rather than in the living God, there was nothing to hinder his taking his example from a sin opposite in appearance to theirs-which yet was one springing out of exactly the same evil condition of heart,-by which to condemn them. For it ought never to be left out of sight or forgotten, that it is not the primary purpose of the parable to teach the fearful consequences which will follow on the abuse of wealth and on the hard-hearted contempt of the poor, this only subordinately, but the fearful consequences of unbelief, of having the heart set on this world, and refusing to give credence to the invisible world which is here known only to faith, until by a miserable and too late experience, the existence of such an unseen world has been discovered. The sin of Dives in its root is unbelief: hard-hearted contempt of the poor, luxurious squandering on self, are only the forms which it takes; the seat of the disease is within, these are but the running sores which witness for the inward plague. He who believes not in an invisible world of righteousness and truth and spiritual joy, must of necessity place his hope in the things which he sees, which he can touch, and taste, and smell,--will come to trust in them, and to look to them for his blessedness, for he knows of no other: it is not of the essence of the matter, whether he hoards or squanders, in either case he sets his hope on the world. He who believes not in a God delighting in mercy and loving-kindness, and that will be an abundant rewarder of them that have showed mercy, and severe punisher of all that have refused to show it, will soon come to shut up his bowels of compassion from his brethren, whether that so he may place more money in his chest, or have more to spend upon his own lusts. This was the sin of Dives and the origin of all his other sins, that he believed not in this higher world, which is apprehended by faith,—a world not merely beyond the grave, but a kingdom of God, a kingdom of truth and love existing even in the midst of this cruel and wicked world; and this too was the sin of the worldly-minded Pharisees: and his punishment was, that he made the discovery of the existence of that truer state of things only to his own unutterable and irremediable loss. His unbelief shows itself again in his supposing that his brethren would give heed to a ghost, while they refused to give heed to the sure word of God,-to Moses and the prophets. For it is of the very essence of unbelief, that it gives that credence to portents and prodigies which it refuses to the truth of God.