CHAP. IV. how God caused the sun to shine, and the rain to descend upon the fields and gardens, even of the wicked and ungrateful. And he continued to convey his doctrine to them under rural images, speaking of good trees and corrupt trees of wolves in sheep's clothing-of grapes not growing upon thorns, nor figs on thistles of the folly of casting precious things to dogs and swine of good measure pressed down, and shaken together, and runing over. Speaking at the same time to the people, many of whom were fishermen and lived much upon fish, he says, What man of you will give his son a serpent, if he ask a fish? Therefore when he said in the same discourse to his disciples, Ye are the light of the world; a city that is set on a hill, and cannot be hid, it is probable that he pointed to a city within their view, situated upon the brow of a hill. And when he called them the salt of the earth, he alluded, perhaps, to the husbandmen, who were manuring the ground: and when he compared every person who observed his precepts, to a man who built a house upon a rock, which stood firm; and every one who slighted his word, to a man who built a house upon the sand, which was thrown down by the winds and floods when he used this comparison, 'tis not improbable that he had before his eyes houses standing upon high ground, and houses standing in the valley in a ruinous condition, which had been destroyed by inundations.” * * Jortin's Discourses. The above is quoted and the idea is followed out at greater length and with equal beauty in Bishop Law's Reflections on the Life of Christ, at the end of his Theory of Religion. * IV. on the of Christian It was on his return to Capernaum, either at the CHAP. close of the present or of a later progress through Galilee, that among the multitudes who had Sermon gathered around him from all quarters, he ascended Mount. an eminence, and delivered in a long continuous address the memorable Sermon on the Mount. It is not our design to enter at length on the trite, though in our opinion by no means exhausted, subject of Christian morality. We con- Principles tent ourselves with indicating some of those cha- morality. racteristic points which belong, as it were, to the historical development of the new religion, and cannot be distinctly comprehended unless in relation to the circumstances of the times: 1. The morality of Jesus was not in unison with the temper or the feelings of his age. II. It was universal morality, adapted for the whole human race, and for every period of civilisation. III. It was morality grounded on broad and simple principles, which had hitherto never been laid down as the basis of human action. I. The great principle of the Mosaic theocracy was the strict apportionment of temporal happiness or calamity, at least to the nation, if not to the individual, according to his obedience or his rebellion * Scarcely any passage is more perplexing to the harmonist of the Gospels than the Sermon on the Mount, which appears to be inserted at two different places by St. Matthew and St. Luke. That the same striking truths should be delivered more than once in nearly the same language, or even that the same commanding situation, should be more than once selected, from which to address the people, appears not altogether improbable; but the difficulty lies in the accom panying incidents, which are al- 1. Not in unison with the age. IV. CHAP. against the divine laws. The natural consequence of this doctrine seemed to be, that prosperity was the invariable sign of the divine approval, adversity of disfavour. And this, in the time of Jesus, appears to have been carried to such an extreme, that every malady, every infirmity, was an evidence of sin in the individual, or a punishment inherited from his guilty forefathers. The only question which arose about the man born blind was, whether his affliction was the consequence of his own or his parents' criminality: he bore in his calamity the hateful evidence that he was accursed of God. This principle was perpetually struggling with the belief in a future state, and an equitable adjustment of the apparent inequalities in the present life, to which the Jewish mind had gradually expanded; and with the natural humanity, inculcated by the spirit of the Mosaic law, towards their own brethren. But if the miseries of this life were an evidence of the divine anger, the blessings were likewise of his favour.* Hence the prosperous, the wealthy, those exempt from human suffering and calamity, were accustomed to draw even a more false and dangerous line of demarcation than in ordinary cases, between themselves and their humble and afflicted brethren. The natural haughtiness which belonged to such superiority, acquired, as it were, a divine sanction; nor was any vice in the * Compare Mosheim, ii. 12. He considers this feeling almost exclusively prevalent among the Sadducees; but from many passages of our Lord's discourses with the Pharisees, it should seem to have been almost universal. Pauperes et miseros existimare debebant Deum criminibus et peccatis offendisse, justamque ejus ultionem sentire. IV. Jewish character more strongly reproved by Jesus, CHAP. or more hostile to his reception as the Messiah. For when the kingdom of Heaven should come when the theocracy should be restored in more than its former splendour-who so secure of its inestimable blessings as those who were already marked and designated by the divine favour? Among the higher orders the expectation of a more than ordinary share in the promised blessings might practically be checked from imprudently betraying itself, by the natural timidity of those who have much to lose, and by their reluctance to hazard any political convulsion. Yet nothing could be more inexplicable, or more contrary to the universal sentiment, than that Jesus should disregard the concurrence, and make no particular advances towards those who formed the spiritual as well as the temporal aristocracy of the nation. those whose possession of the highest station seemed, in a great degree, to prove their designation for such eminence by the Almighty. "Have any of the rulers believed in him?" * was the contemptuous, and, as they conceived, conclusive argument against his claims, adduced by the Pharisees. Jesus not only did not condescend to favour, he ran directly counter to this prevailing notion. He announced that the kingdom of Heaven was peculiarly prepared for the humble and the afflicted; his disciples were chosen from the lowest order; and it was not obscurely intimated, that his ranks would be chiefly filled by those who were undistinguished by worldly prosperity. Yet, on the other hand, * John, vii. 48. IV. there was nothing in his language to conciliate the |
