which speaketh in you.

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judices, but subtle objections. They might naturally therefore be anxious, lest, in such circumstances, through fear, they might lose their self-possession, and through hurry of spirit injure both the truth and themselves. The promise of our Lord was therefore designed to remove all anxiety in this respect. It assured them of special assistance, both as to WHAT and How they should speak, which two particulars comprehend everything in a suitable and truly eloquent discourse. The matter and the manner both were to be under divine suggestion; but the latter is not to be understood of the graces of delivery, but of" the spirit and power" of their addresses. Such is the import of the promise made to the apostles; but it contains no more than all true Christians in all ages may expect, when called upon in any way to bear their testimony to the truth; for new revelations are not at all intended in the text, and in fact do not appear to have been ever made to the first preachers in such circumstances. What is promised is the power to give a clear, convincing, energetic statement of what had been already revealed; an assistance which was suggest the fittest topics, and the most appropriate manner of stating them. Why then should we be told, that other Christians have no authority to look up to Christ their Master with the same confidence? Those who have descanted on the fanaticism of looking for new revelations on the authority of this text, do not themselves understand its meaning, which implies, not the revelation of new truth, but the power of stating effectually that which had been communicated. Let the private Christian, then, when placed in difficult circumstances, and yet is called upon to speak concerning his religion, rely

to

upon the promise of his Master, both to aid his THOUGHTS, and influence his SPIRIT and manner; and let ministers also have the same holy confidence in divine help in their great though regular employment of PREACHING the gospel. Nor did it follow from this promise, that the apostles were not previously to study their religion, or to revolve in their minds the points on which they might be interrogated: they were not to be careless as to the matter, but simply not anxious and distracted; for that is the import of un MegurηONTE, the words used. This also is applicable to the ordinary exercise of the ministry. After all the previous thought which may have been employed, the dependence, as to the statement of truth in a proper and influential manner, is to be placed upon Christ; and if prayer for divine aid means anything, that aid must be similar to the assistance here promised to the apostles when they had to give a reason of the hope within them" before governors and kings. Like them, too, all true ministers of Christ are authorized to dismiss distracting anxiety, as to what or how they shall speak, and to make their preaching a work of faith," as well as a labour of love." Those who choose to write their sermons at full length, and read or repeat them from memory, of course, give up all claim in this promise.

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Verse 20. For it is not you that speak, &c.-You alone do not speak; or, you speak not without special and direct assistance; but the Spirit of your Father speaketh in you, by ordering your thoughts, and giving you "utterance." And He who made man's mouth" to be his instrument, is still with the mouth" of his faithful servants to this day.

Verse 21. Children shall rise up.-That

The words

is, if the term be taken forensically, as witnesses in the courts in which their believing parents shall be prosecuted; but it need not be so restricted. intimate that religious hatred should sever the tenderest bonds of natural affection, and overcome and pervert the strongest instincts of human nature. This declaration is to be regarded in the light of a prediction which, in many subsequent ages, has been most fully accomplished; and who but He that "knew what was in man," and whose omniscient eye could search the depths of the future, could have so accurately traced this repulsive feature in the dark history of religious persecutions? The experience of past ages afforded little aid to conjecture here. That persecution "for righteousness' sake," in which the highest degree of truth and holiness uniformly provoked the most diabolical enmity, arising from an unmixed hatred of truth and holiness themselves, which, since Christianity was first introduced into our world, has been practised in almost every age and place, both by Jews, Pagans, and hypocritical Christians, had no parallel in the ancient world. To foresee this extraordinary moral phenomenon, and to foretel it, was, in the proper sense, to utter a prophecy, every part of which has been exactly and a thousand times exemplified.

Verse 22. Endureth to the end, &c.Some have explained the end, to mean the time of the destruction of Jerusalem; and the salvation here promised to the enduring, to be deliverance from the calamities which should befal the Jews; but this is too limited and secular an interpretation. The end is the termination of the sufferings and trials of each individual, which would not, however, in all its forms cease but with the life of the faithful disciple; and the salvation is deliverance from eternal wrath, to which every one who should be ashamed of confessing Christ would be inevitably

doomed. "Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life," may be taken as our Lord's own comment upon these words, in his message to one of the persecuted churches of Asia Minor The practice of many commentators to refer so many of the allusions in the discourses of John the Baptist, and those of our Lord, to the destruction of Jerusalem, and the deliverance of the Christians, has destroyed the force of many of the most impressive passages in both. This misapplication, in many instances, is absurd; in others it corrupts the sense of scripture, and destroys its spirituality. In the present instance, the promise, that he that endureth to the end shall be saved, can have no important meaning when considered as a part of a discourse which contains solemn directions to the apostles, as to the exercise of their ministry to the end of their life, and through them to all ministers. What appositeness to this great design would there have been in saying, He that continues a Christian until Jerusalem is besieged by the Romans, shall escape being shut up within its walls?" a danger to which not more than one or two, if any, of the apostles were exposed, they being for the most part absent from Judea; but, if otherwise, it has no correspondence with the labours, sufferings, and rewards of the faithful, enduring minister of Christ, as set forth in other passages, which connect them all with the interests of the soul, and the solemnities and glories of eternity. These remarks are made to guard the reader against those false and generally debasing interpretations of scripture, which often occur even among learned commentators, both domestic and foreign, who, not being spiritual men themselves, or prone largely to sacrifice the sense of particular passages to some favourite theory or principle of interpretation, greatly mislead the inattentive and incautious.

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have followed the Vulgate in writing this name Beelzebub, instead of Beelzebul, which is undoubtedly the true reading. Baalzebub was an Ekronite or Philistine idol 212, mentioned 2 Kings, i. 2, and this in Greek is written BeeλGEBOUλ, Beelzebul, the 8 being changed into λ, because no word in Greek in found to end in 8. The same idol is meant by each appellation; and as this was a chief deity among the pagan nations which surrounded the Jews, and as the latter believed all the false deities of the heathens to be evil spirits, the name was transferred to Satan, and commonly used as a name for "the prince of devils." Baalzebub signifies the Lord of flies, this deity being probably the object of special trust for deliverance from hornets, locusts, and other winged insects, the scourge of those countries; but with the Jews of our Lord's time it was merely employed as one of the names of Satan. The notion of Lightfoot that Baalzebub was altered by the Jews into Beelzebul, from 11 Zebul, DUNG, in order to express their contempt of this and other idols invented by them, and that it was in this contemptuous sense that it was applied to our Lord by the Pharisees, appears to be no better than an ingenious conjecture; for the Syriac, Ethiopic, and Arabic versions agree with the Vulgate, which indicates that the oriental name was Beelzebub. If Beelzebul be the same as Beelzebub, the change in the final letter when expressed in Greek, is sufficiently accounted for above; and if Beelzebul were a different deity from Beelzebub, the word may mean the Lord of heaven, or the celestial habitation, 5121, Zebul having that signification and this was probably the same deity whom the Phenicians, neighbours of the Ekronites, worshipped under

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the name of tow by, Baal Shemin, Lord of the heavens. Besides this, the name of Beelzebub or Beelzebul was not given to our Lord with reference to these idols at all, but to Satan himself. It was not, therefore, so much a name of jeering contempt as of deep malignant blasphemy. They called him, in fact, a devil, a chief devil, or, as when speaking out fully on another occasion, "Thou hast a DEVIL, and art mad."

Verse 26. There is nothing covered, &c.— As our Lord had been just referring to the gross and malicious slanders with which his disciples should be assailed, and as he here fortifies their minds against the fear of calumniators, it is most natural to refer these words to that ultimate justification of their characters and motives which divine Providence would bring about; so that these words also have a prophetic character. For a time obloquy "covered" and "hid" the faith, the charity, and the purity of the first preachers of the gospel; and in place of these virtues the worst motives were attributed to them. They were regarded "as the filth and offscouring of all things, and not fit to live,"

men that turned the world upside down," "pestilent fellows, and movers of sedition; " but what was thus covered and hid has been revealed. How truly has" the righteousness" of these men, who laid character as well as life upon the altar of sacrifice," been brought forth as brightness, and their judgment as the noon-day!" What honours, true and grateful honours, have been for ages rendered to the apostles, evangelists, and prophets of primitive Christianity, whilst the names of their revilers have perished in the dust, or been preserved only on the records of infamy! And the hallowed fame of these heroic men still extends;

new nations every year learn their history, read their writings, derive life and salvation from the truth for which they suffered and died; and pronounce, and to the end of time shall pronounce, with admiration, affection, and the joyful hope of seeing them in person, these names once cast out as evil, and which were joyfully surrendered to be a "proverb and a byeword" for the sake of Christ, and for the salvation of the world. Thus also has constancy in suffering in a righteous cause been often since their day rewarded; and those great imitators of apostolic zeal and patience, by whose efforts fallen truth has so often been raised up in the church, and the kingdom of darkness successfully assailed, and who long were objects of popular abuse, or the hatred of proud persecutors, have either outlived every calumny, or left a name, the reputation of which God himself has so cared for, as to cause it to be embalmed in the grateful homage of succeeding generations.

Verse 27. What I tell you in darkness. This duty is urged by the preceding consideration: if God will take care of the interest and reputation of those who suffer reproach for the sake of Christ, let this animate you to the great duty of openly and fearlessly proclaiming the gospel. Darkness here means privacy; for to his disciples alone, partially before, and especially after, his resurrection, our Lord opened the full and perfect system of his religion; but not for themselves only, for they were thus made "stewards," dispensers," of the mysteries of God."

What ye hear in the ear, &c.-This allusion is to a practice in the Jewish synagogues. After the return from the captivity the pure Hebrew was no longer the vernacular tongue of the Jews, yet the law

continued to be read in that language; but that its sense might be conveyed to the people, an interpreter, called Targumista, was attached to every synagogue, into whose ear the doctor in a soft voice read the Hebrew text, and the interpreter pronounced it aloud in the common dialect.

The Jewish doctors too employed interpreters, from notions of dignity, into whose ear they whispered their instructions in the Hebrew tongue; and they declared them to the multitude in their own dialect. But our Lord gives stronger emphasis to the open and earnest publication of the truths he should privately teach his disciples, by enjoining that they should preach them upon the house tops. The Jewish houses had flat roofs, and so also had their public buildings, from which proclamations were made to the people. The publication of the gospel is therefore to be a PUBLIC OFFICIAL PROCLAMATION to all ranks of people. This custom appears to explain the words of Christ better than that of sounding a trumpet from the roof by the minister of the synagogue to announce the approach of the sabbath.

Verse 28. Are not able to kill the soul.— Thus our Lord at once declares the soul's immortality, and shows how limited is the power of tyrannous persecutors: their malignant arm reaches not the soul; it can neither destroy its peace here, nor its happy existence hereafter. This text also furnishes a decisive argument in favour of the conscious existence of the soul in a separate state. For, not to urge that we cannot conceive of the existence of the soul at all without consciousness; yet, if by the death of the body it were deprived of perception and thought, of activity and enjoyment, though all these should be restored at the last day, it would be as