reformation of the world. Spiritual things must be spiritually known. Only the godlike can comprehend the godlike.

28-30. This paragraph grows naturally out of the preceding verses. He had been speaking with a thankful exultation of the commission given him by the Father for the salvation of mankind. He now invites all, but especially the wearied and overburdened, to come and experience the life, liberty, and bliss of this salvation. His mind had been raised so high in the contemplation of his mission, that he breaks out into a beautiful apostrophe to the children of toil and sorrow, to come to him and experience the blessings of the Gospel. The imperative mode is here used less in the sense of command than of earnest supplication. O come

unto me.

28. Come unto me. Not physically, but spiritually. Those come unto Christ, who obey and love him. John vi. 35, vii. 37. — All ye that labor and are heavy laden. All without distinction are invited. Those who labored under the encumbrances of the Mosaic ritual, those who were heavy-laden with human traditions, those who groaned under the slavery of sin, and those who were oppressed with the nameless cares and trials of human existence, were addressed in this moving entreaty. Whatever be the toil or the suffering, rest is promised, on condition of going unto JeI will give you rest. Jesus would supersede burdensome ceremonies, with a simple, spiritual faith and practice. Acts xv. 10; Gal. v. i. He would overthrow the oppres

sus.

sive commandments of men, and vindicate in their power the laws of God. He would extract the sting from sorrow, sickness, and death, and give rest and gladness to the sons and daughters of grief. When the soul is directed to Jesus it finds peace, as the disturbed magnetic needle, pointing to its pole of attraction, straightway subsides, and becomes still. The knowledge of God which he communicates calms the agitated soul. The burdens he imposes, so far from wearying, renew the strength. The duties he enjoins promote present and future happiness. Here is found

"A sovereign balm for every wound,
A cordial for our fears.' "

29. Take my yoke, &c. A common figure. To follow or obey one is to wear his yoke; a metaphor from husbandry, to illustrate religion. The sense is without dispute, - Submit to my instruction, learn of me the truth of God, and obey it. For I am meek and lowly in heart. Jesus would be a mild, condescending teacher and guide, in contrast with the haughty Scribes and Pharisees, who treated the people at large with contempt; who put upon them burdens heavier than they could bear, and would not so much as touch them with one of their fingers. Matt. xxiii. 4; Luke xi. 46.Ye shall find rest. Fulfil the condition, and you shall receive the reward. Unto your souls. Jesus does not promise his followers exemption from the common, outward, physical ills of life. But he does promise that they shall have rest, where rest is of most value, in the soul. There shall be peace in the heart. In the virtues of the

Christian character, in purity, selfdenial, piety, and mercy, there is a quiet and tranquil happiness truly divine. The soul feels a conscious dignity and serene elevation, as if raised above the storms that sweep this lower world. "There is in man a higher than love of happiness; he can do without happiness, and instead thereof find blessedness. Let not the good grieve, if they have little of the gold, or honors, or pleasures of this world. Our Father does not pay his faith ful ones in things of so perishable a nature, but in the higher rewards of the spirit itself.

30. For my yoke is easy, &c. The Christian religion makes none but reasonable requirements, and imposes none but necessary restraints. It is free from the burdensome ceremonial of the Jews. It requires no arduous pilgrimages like Mahometanism, nor the bloody sacrifices and human offerings of pagan idolatry. It gives free course and noble gratifications to all the high, enduring faculties of the soul, and enjoins self-denial only in things hurtful, and where it brings joys far deeper and richer than those of any sensual or worldly nature. The Christian has found it to be so by experience. The yoke of Christ is easy, and his burden light to him. Take the whole checkered course of life through, and he has discovered only one thing suited alike to all states and all changes, and that is Religion; tempering and enhancing pleasures, soothing troubles, cheering difficulties, enriching pov

erty, smoothing the pillow of sickness, and glorifying the bed of death; and in all giving a peace that passeth understanding.

We have probably read these last paragraphs of the chapter so many times in a monotonous mood and the sluggish acquiescence of habit, that we have not considered the commanding and awful strain, as of the summons to judgment, fitted to make every heart quake, with which the responsibility of the hearers of Christ is sounded forth, or the inexpressible sweetness and winning grace with which he calls on the wearied, suffering, and sinful to come to him and to forget their woes in the bosom of his love. It is a passage to startle all the fears, and thrill with ecstasy all the hopes, that inhabit the human heart; a passage to be read with deep awe, with tears of penitence, and tears of joy. Muse upon it in thy heart till the fire burns.

CHAP. XII.

1-8. Mark ii. 23-28; Luke vi. 1-5.

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1. At that time. About that time. Luke specifies the time, though obscurely, as "the second Sabbath after the first," which is conjectured by Carpenter to mean the first Sabbath after Pentecost, in our month of May. Sabbath-day. Corresponding to our Saturday. - The corn. The fields of grain, probably barley or wheat. Indian corn was unknown till modern times. All kinds of grain were formerly called corn. - An hungered. An old English expression for hungry.

- The

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ears of corn. The heads of grain. Luke adds, they rubbed them in their hands, for the purpose, no doubt, of shelling out the kernels from the heads. Eat. This they were allowed to do by the law of Moses, Deut. xxiii. 25, but they were not to reap, or carry any away. 2. Thy disciples do that which is not lawful, i. e. do that which is forbidden by law. What they held to be forbidden was not the plucking and eating of the grain, but doing it on the Sabbath. Moses had enjoined abstinence from labor on that day. Ex. xx. 10, xxxv. 2, 3; Numb. xv. 32-36. And these rigid formalists carried his laws, relative to the day of rest, to such extremes, as to forbid even works of necessity and mercy. One teacher held that attendance on the sick was unlawful on that day. The following passage occurs in one of the Rabbinical books, which may explain the opinions of the time, and illustrate the text before us; that reaps on the Sabbath, though never so little, is guilty. And to pluck the ears of corn is a kind of reaping; and whosoever plucks any thing from the springing of his own fruit is guilty under the name of a reaper." The Pharisees nominally directed the charge of Sabbathbreaking against the disciples, but in reality they aimed their blow at Jesus himself. He answered it in this light. They appeared to have been actuated on this and other occasions, when the observance of the Sabbath was in question, by a union of superstition for outward ceremo

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nies, and of personal hostility to Christ. See Matt. xii. 10; Luke xiii. 14, xiv. 1-3; John v. 16, ix. 16. They gladly seized hold of any pretext to blacken his character. And his lofty independence, though tempered by gentleness and prudence, gave them frequent opportunities of misconstruing his words and actions.

3. What David did. Jesus defends himself and his disciples, first, by the example of David; an authority which the Jews very much respected. The history of the case referred to is contained in 1 Sam. xxi. 3-6.-An hungered. Hungry.

4. How he entered into the house of God. David seems, from the narration, not actually to have entered the house or tabernacle, the temple had not yet been built, - but to have met the priest elsewhere, probably in the court of the tabernacle.

The shew-bread. Lev. xxiv. 5–9. This bread was so called because it was placed on a table in the tabernacle, before the presence of God, as there manifested. It was the shown bread. Twelve fresh loaves,

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an emblem of the offerings of the Twelve Tribes," were put there weekly; the old bread being removed, and eaten by the priests alone. David, in his extremity, and by the permission of the priest, partook of this holy bread, contrary to the law, and gave it to his companions. But he was justified by the necessity of the case. He had been pursued by Saul, and had no time to provide for his journey. In violating therefore the letter of the law,

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he might be said not to have violated its living spirit. So the disciples were justified in their seeming transgression by the necessity of nature. We may suppose, perhaps, that Jesus does not admit that his disciples did break the Sabbath by plucking and eating of the grain, but that he reasoned with the Pharisees on their own ground, as the readiest way to silence their calumny.

5. In the law, i. e. of Moses. Numb. xxviii. 9, 10.— Profane the sabbath and are blameless. It was a Jewish saying, "There is no sabbatism at all in the temple." The labor of the priests was as much as on other days, in slaying and preparing, and offering up the victims. Yet they were blameless, because it was a law that sacrifices should be offered on the Sabbath. Thus the disciples were excusable, because, although they did that which according to the mere letter of the law might be called work, yet they obeyed the higher law of self-preservation. What the priests did in the temple, my disciples may do here. Thus far he has justified himself and them by the necessity of the case, and the example of David.

6. Is one greater. The original is in the neuter gender. Something greater than the temple. Jesus thus modestly expressed his claim to superiority. Greater than the temple may mean greater than those who serve in the temple, or greater than that system on account of which the temple was erected. He

had power to supersede that system and its laws, and establish one less ceremonial. What he allowed his disciples to do was justifiable, though contrary to the traditions of the elders. Their health and life were of more consequence than external observances. His second justication, therefore, is drawn from the fact of his superiority to Moses.

7. I will have mercy and not sacrifice. Hos. vi. 6; 1 Sam. xv. 22. A Hebrew idiom. The sense is not that God did not require sacrifice, but that he preferred acts of righteousness to mere external observances. He looks at the heart rather than at the hand. The verse may be paraphrased thus: "If you had considered the superiority of right affections over outward ceremonies, you would not have condemned the necessary violation of a ritual law, or perhaps a mere tradition." This is the third answer of Jesus to the accusation of the Pharisees.

8. The Son of Man is Lord, or Master, &c. By the Son of Man we are to understand Christ himself, as in verse 32. See note on Matt. viii. 20. Jesus was authorized to establish a system of religion, under which the Sabbath would be changed from a day of physical rest to one of spiritual awakening; from a day of offering material sacrifices to one of worshipping God in spirit and truth. In his church also the Sabbath has been transferred, in commemoration of his resurrection, from the seventh to the first day of the week. He

could therefore grant a freedom to his disciples unknown to the scrupulous Pharisees. This was his fourth justification. — Mark adds, ii. 27, "The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath; " which signified that the day would be truly kept, if made subservient to man's greatest good.

9-16. See Mark iii. 1-6, 12, Luke vi. 6-11.

9. He went into their synagogue. This was, according to Luke vi. 6, on another Sabbath-day. The two narratives are introduced together because they relate to the same subject. We see that by studying the parallel passages of the Evangelists we gain a more complete knowledge of the history of our Lord.

10. Which had his hand withered. Who had a withered hand. This was probably a species of palsy, of which there were several kinds; but which is never suddenly cured by natural means. Luke mentions that it was the right hand. Is it lawful, &c. It had been decided by some of the Jewish teachers, as we learn from their books, that it was not lawful to heal on the Sabbath-day, except in case of imminent danger. That they might accuse him. They asked questions not for information, but for accusation. How malignant must that hatred have been, which the quiet of the Sabbath_did not mitigate; which followed Jesus in his circuits

of doing good, only to slander and accuse, and which converted his acts of mercy into crimes of the deepest dye! Whilst, on the other hand, with what wisdom, patience, magnanimity, and calmness, did the divine Teacher meet all his difficulties! Who can look upon him and not love so noble a being? Who can love and not imitate him?

11. Pit. A cistern or well, at which cattle were watered. The Jews had carried their notions to such an extravagant length as to question whether it were lawful to rescue an animal from danger on the Sabbath day; but it had been decided in the affirmative, as we learn from the Rabbinical books. "If a beast fall into a ditch, or into a pool of water, let the owner bring him food in that place, if he can; but if he cannot, let him bring clothes and litters and bear up the beast, whence if he can come up, let him come up," &c. Jesus would therefore justify his conduct upon grounds of their own admission, and by their actual practice in relation to the inferior creation.

12. How much then is a man better than a sheep! Of how much more importance and value. Jesus intimates, that the restoration of the withered hand of a human being was of more consequence than the life of an animal; and as the Jews admitted that the one might be rescued, so they must also admit that the other might be healed.—It is