the spirit and power of Elias." Luke i. 17. Thus the prophecy is also interpreted by our Lord, not of Elijah, but of John. Some of the fathers, and others since, have, however, held that Elijah should really appear before the second advent of Christ; but if in the original prophecy, John the Baptist, not Elijah, was intended, then John the Baptist must come again; but for what end, no one surely can devise, since the least preacher in the kingdom of heaven is " 'greater" in his office "than he." The notion seems to have arisen from a misapprehension of Malachi's prophecy, which speaks of Elijah coming before

the great and dreadful day of the Lord;" which they erroneously apply to the day of Christ's second coming to judge the world. That indeed will be a great and dreadful day of the Lord; but it is not the day meant by the prophet; and, as we have seen, the whole prediction is restricted, by the angel who announced to Zacharias the birth, character, and office of his honoured son, to him alone. The resemblance of John to Elijah the Tishbite was very striking; and one can scarcely think of the inflexible and awakening preacher in the wilderness of Jordan, without being reminded of him who was exceeding jealous for the Lord of Hosts;" whilst Elijah's boldness before Ahab and Jezebel has a striking parallel in the bold manner in which John reproved the incestuous intercourse of Herod and Herodias.

Verse 15. He that hath ears to hear, &c. -This is a solemn form of calling the attention to some point of great consequence, to be considered and well understood. Such was this whole discourse concerning John, and especially the pro

phecies respecting him which Christ had pointed out, because their accomplishment gave the strongest testimony to the claims of Christ, whose forerunner he

was.

Verses 16, 17. But whereunto shall I liken, &c.-This was one of the usual forms of introducing a comparison or parable, both of which were favourite modes of speaking among the orientals; and especially, says St. Jerom, were familiar to the inhabitants of Syria and Palestine: Familiare est Syris, et maxime Palestinis, ad omnem sermonem suum parabolas jungere. Την γενεαν ταυτην, this race, meaning the perverse scribes and Pharisees, and their followers, a generation or race descended from others of like 'spirit, and likely to transmit the same pride, prejudice, and captiousness to those who should succeed them; men who united the malignity of persecutors with the perverse pettishness of children, refusing to be pleased with the sports proposed by their fellows. To such children, therefore, in the markets, ev ayogais, marketplaces, squares, or any open spaces of a city, imitating in their plays the dances at a feast, or the lamentations at funerals, our Lord compares them. The Jews used pipes, tibiæ, to lead up the dance on festive occasions; and, as noted above, they employed them also at funerals, to lead the funeral dirge, in which all the mourners joined. We have piped in cheerful strains unto you, and ye have not danced; we have mourned unto you, played the sorrowful funeral dirge, and ye have not lamented, ye have not joined us in the sad strain, singing and beating your breasts. The meaning is, as appears from the next verse, that neither the affa

children

h

ble familiarity with which Christ had mingled in their society, nor the secluded austerity of John, had succeeded to win their attention, or to soften their morose

ness.

Verse 18. For John came neither eating nor drinking, &c.-That is, he did not live a social life, nor attended any of their domestic feasts; and they, the scribes and Pharisees, say, He hath a devil, he is possessed by a demon, which drives him into solitude, and overwhelms him with melancholy. The Son of Man came eating and drinking; he lived with men in cities, and only retired occasionally into the wilderness; when invited, he attended marriages and other feasts, to sanctify the cheerfulness of family meetings, to engage the attention of the guests to his heavenly doctrine, to overcome their prejudices by his mild condescensions, to make the customs of social life the means of conveying instruction by founding parables upon them, and in these respects, as well as once literally, to turn THE WATER INTO

sees, and Jewish Doctors, to peevish, illtempered children in the market-places, was sufficiently humbling to their pride.

Verse 19. But wisdom is justified of her children. The ka here is properly taken by our translators in the sense of axa, but; for these words are not, as some understand them, a continuation of the censorious remarks attributed to the Pharisees, which would force a sense upon the verb which it never bears in the New Testament, or in the Septuagint; but they contain the meek but pointed answer which our Lord gives to all the slanders of his enemies. Wisdom is personified; and by the children of Wisdom he evidently intends John the Baptist and himself; whilst the term justified is to be taken in its usual sense of "acquitted from blame." The sense therefore is, that the heavenly wisdom or doctrine which both John and Christ had been commissioned to teach, so far from having been criminated by their conduct, as though it led on the one hand to a morose contempt of mankind, or on the other to any sanction of their vices, had been illustrated, honoured, and raised above all censure. The spirit and the conduct of each had declared that the doctrine they taught was the wisdom from above. This remark of our Lord is, however, a general truth of large application. The true "children of wisdom," in every age, are all those who receive and hold

the truth of Christ's doctrine; and they will "justify" it, clear it of all the charges which ignorant and unbelieving men may direct against it, by their prudent and holy life and conversation. By this "the mouth of gainsayers" is most effectually stopped," and the truth of Christianity most effectually demonstrated before the world. Let the professed "children of wisdom," therefore, always recollect this as a motive to maintain a conduct in all respects consonant with the truth which they have received, that they are charged with the very character and credit of Christianity, and that it depends upon them to extend or to diminish its influence upon all with whom they are surrounded. They are thus to justify it as the wisdom of God before the world.

Verses 1,2. Woe unto thee, Chorazin, &c. -Ova is sometimes an interjection of pity and grief, but of malediction also; for it was in this spirit that our Saviour pronounced his woes against these favoured cities, and against Jerusalem itself, but it was pity reluctantly giving place to righteous wrath. Chorazin is placed by Jerom within two miles of Capernaum. Out of Chorazin as well as Bethsaida many disciples had doubtless been raised up; but the body of the people remained impenitent; and their guilt was aggravated by the mighty works which Christ had done among them, in attestation of his mission, and in the neighbouring country; for our Lord spent most of his public life on the shores of the Sea of Galilee, in Capernaum, and Bethsaida, frequently itinerating through the other cities and towns of the adjoining districts. Tyre and Sidon, on the Mediterranean coast of Syria or Palestine, were the most celebrated maritime cities of antiquity, and as remarkable for their power and opulence, as for the greatness of their fall; their pride, luxury, and idolatry having brought upon them those tremendous judgments, which left them signal monuments of desolation to future ages. What previous warnings they might

have from God, we know not; but certainly they had none enforced by such "mighty works" as our Lord had wrought in the cities of Galilee. The peculiar hardness of the hearts of the inhabitants of the latter was therefore rendered the more conspicuous and inexcusable; and for them a sorer punishment was reserved. As to this life, indeed, Chorazin, Bethsaida, and Capernaum had a similar fate to theirs they were utterly destroyed by the Romans; and they lie, even to this day, in a state of as utter ruin. Yet a future judgment awaits both the inhabitants of the Syrian and Galilean cities; and in that day it shall be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon, and Sodom, than for them, because their sin will be punished according to its exact desert, as aggravated by the superior religious advantages which they enjoyed and slighted.

Repented long ago, waλa, "in old time," in sackcloth and ashes.-To put on a garment of hair-cloth, and sprinkle ashes upon the head, was the custom of mourners and deep penitents. They would have repented as the Ninevites at the preaching of Jonas, and with much feebler evidences of his having a divine commission. Whether this repentance would have been one produced by concern for their spiritual interests, or by terror at approaching temporal judgments, our Lord does not say. That of the Ninevites was obviously the latter; and God had respect to it as an acknowledgment of him, in the same manner as he had respect to the public and deep humiliation of Ahab, which also was excited by a threatened external punishment. Our Lord seems to have intended chiefly to say, that, with all their wickedness, those ancient cities were not so obstinately set to resist supernatural evidences of truth as the cities he reproves. Determined infidelity, the result of false reasoning and pride and self-righteousness, was not their sin; and in such cases his preaching to them, enforced by

such mighty works, would have produced an impression which it did not upon the inhabitants of Capernaum, Chorazin, and Bethsaida. Still let it be remembered, that they had SUFFICIENT warnings, instructtions, and mercies to render them GUILTLESS; and they could have no ground to complain of severity, much less of injustice. All have not equal favours, but all are dealt with in perfect equity.

Verse 23. Capernaum.—Capernaum, as having been the residence of our Lord, is reproved distinctly; and the impenitence and obduracy of its people are more strongly marked by being contrasted, not with Tyre and Sidon, but with the infamous Sodom;-even Sodom would have repented, and remained to this day, had the mighty works been done in that devoted city as in thee, Capernaum!

Brought down to hell.-The word here used is aōns, not yeevva, the place of future punishment, and is to be taken figuratively. Exalted to heaven may express the flourishing condition of the city, or its pride; (Isaiah xiv. 11 ;) and to be brought down to hell means, therefore, its utter destruction; to express which adŋs is used, a word which generally signifies the invisible world of disembodied spirits, but also answering to the Nw of the Hebrews, which has often the sense of destruction. In the phrase, exalted to heaven, some think there might be a figurative reference to the lofty and commanding situation of Capernaum, on one of the hills of that mountainous region. But the exact site of this devoted city does not seem to have been certainly discovered by the most

recent travellers, who conjecture only that certain ruins may be the remains of what was once Capernaum, but without any sufficient evidence of the identity. So completely have the words of our Lord been fulfilled as to the temporal punishment of this once favoured place! As the grave covers her inhabitants, so her very ruins are brought down to that region, and lie covered up in silence and darkness as the bodies of her slain. The punishment of the inhabitants, in the future life, is threatened in the next verse: "In the day of judgment it shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom," that is, the inhabitants of the land of Sodom, " than for thee." Our Lord also intended to teach the righteous apportionment of punishment to the degree of guilt. By how much more terrible was the destruction of the land of Sodom by a tempest of fire than the destruction of Tyre and Sidon, by so much shall the punishment of the inhabitants of Capernaum at the day of judgment be than that of the inhabitants of Chorazin and Bethsaida, as more guilty even than they: the penalty, terrible as to all, shall be righteously distributed in its more intense degree. Let all deeply meditate upon these alarming passages, who abuse the superior privileges and opportunities of instruction which they enjoy, and be awakened to this conviction, that the greatest guilt of man is to slight and reject the offered salvation of the gospel.

Verses 25, 26. At that time Jesus answered, &c.-To answer is not in the Gospels always used in the sense of to

reply to some previous question, opinion, or objection, but often expresses the commencement of a discourse, or of some new branch of discourse. One reason of this mode of speaking, in some cases, seems to be, that our Lord being surrounded with hearers still hanging on his lips, and anxious to hear his further observations, they were tacitly regarded under the view of inquirers; and he is said to answer when he adapts his discourse to the various doubts, or to the questions which might be rising up, though indistinctly, in their minds. This is a striking character of the perfection of his teaching, that, knowing as he did the very thoughts and secret difficulties and prejudices of his hearers, he could adapt his discourses to them, as though they had been formally propounded as questions

That thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, &c.-The things refer red to are "the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven," in which he was training up his disciples. It has been thought that the time when our Lord spoke these words was not that in which he uttered the predictions respecting the cities of Galilee, in the preceding verses, because in St. Luke we find them in connexion with the return of the seventy; to which circumstance, it is therefore said, they properly belong: but they were probably spoken on two occasions; on which supposition we may establish the connexion thus. The scribes and Pharisees, the professed wise and prudent, or learned of the Jewish nation, had been the main cause of fostering the unbelief of the devoted cities our Lord had been just reproving; and with reference to them he utters this solemn thanksgiving to his Father: not that he thanks God for their blindness and unbelief; but that, as these mysteries were hidden from them, through their own guilty pride and folly, God had not left himself without instruments to teach them to the world, and those more suitable for

the work, as having themselves received the truth in simplicity and humbleness of mind. In other words, the subject of our Lord's thanksgiving is, that since the scribes and Pharisees had been justly left without the special revelations of his doctrine, because of their hatred of the truth in the general form in which it was first proposed to them, he had chosen men esteemed neither "wise nor learned," men not skilled in the traditions and literature of their country, to be the depositaries of his revelations, and to render them by his teaching "wise and learned" above all the most celebrated Rabbins of the Jews, and philosophers of the Gentiles. Thus "the excellency of the power" was

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seen to be of God, not of man," because the administration of truths infinitely transcending the power of the highest and most cultivated human intellects to discover, was itself a proof that they were all "taught of God." The disciples are called babes both because of their unacquaintance with human learning, and more especially because of their docility and humility. Modestly distrustful of themselves, they awaited their Master's instructions with submissive, though often with perplexed, minds.

Verse 26. Good in thy sight.—The word evdokia corresponds with the Hebrew ¡¬, and denotes the decision of the divine will; but we are not to conceive of the will of God as arbitrary, but as founded upon REASONS of the highest wisdom and goodness. The WISDOM of the appointment, in this case, appears from the character of the agents chosen, whose want of human learning made the divine teaching in them the more conspicuous, and more visibly stamped their doctrine as a revelation from God; as well as better provided for its pure communication to others. These were men less likely to AFFECT either reasoning or eloquence, and were therefore better fitted channels to convey truth in its simple majesty. And