of the water of life freely-but we must take it as the water of life with reverence, gratitude, and earnest expectation; we have the bread of God freely offered to us, but we must remember that it is given as the nourishment of a divine and holy life. When the king comes in to see the guests gathered in His reception room-the Church-He expects not indeed to see persons complete and perfect in Christian graces, but He expects to see men and women doing the best they can by obedience, watchfulness, and earnest prayer to walk worthy of the vocation wherewith they are called. If, on the contrary, He sees presumptuous triflers, conforming to religion as the fashion of their day and class, we may well fear lest the command should be given, "Bind them hand and foot, and take them away."

The parable concludes with the oft repeated warning, "Many are called, but few are chosen."

SECTION XLIX.

SNARES OF THE PHARISEES.

MATTHEW Xxii. 15-33; MARK xii. 13-27; LUKE XX. 21-40.

"THEN

HEN went the Pharisees, and took counsel how they might entangle Him in His talk."

The plan of the Pharisees now was to compromise the Saviour with the Roman governor. "And they sent out unto Him their disciples with the Herodians," -the supporters probably of a royalty in the family of Herod, as distinguished from a purely priestly, pro

fessedly theocratical, government,—"saying, 'Master, we know that Thou art true, and teachest the way of God in truth, neither carest Thou for any man; for Thou regardest not the person of men." Having, as they vainly supposed, taken Him off His guard by this flattery, and perhaps excited in Him a reluctance to forfeit their good opinion, they proceed to their question: "Is it lawful to give tribute unto Cæsar, or not? Shall we give, or shall we not give ?"* The snare was this. If He pronounced against its lawfulness-the way was plain-to denounce Him as teaching disaffection to the Roman government. If He decided for it, to undermine His popularity by representing Him as false to the patriotic cause. “But He, knowing their hypocrisy, said unto them, 'Why tempt ye Me? Bring Me a penny, that I may see it.' And they brought it. And He saith unto them, 'Whose is this image and superscription?' And they said unto Him, Cæsar's.' And Jesus answering said unto them, 'Render to Cæsar the things that are Cæsar's, and to God the things that are God's.'"§ The image of the Roman Emperor upon their current coin proved that he was their sovereign de facto, and so long as he was this, he had a right to the stipulated tribute. It was Cæsar's. It was the same lesson which St. Paul afterwards inculcated. The powers that be are ordained of God. Render to all their dues-tribute to whom

* Mark, ver. 14, 15.

+ See Luke xxiii. 2.

All who have ever seen Titian's picture, or even an engraving or photograph of it, will have it indelibly associated in their minds with this scene.

§ Mark, ver. 14—17.

tribute, custom to whom custom," and, therefore,what was right in respect of human rulers, was right in a far higher sense as regarded God,-" Render to God the things which are God's." Christ intimated to them in His answer, taking the two parts together,

"Render unto Cæsar the things which are Cæsar's, unto God the things which are God's"-that at this time the peculiar civil subjection implied in tribute was not one of the things which were God's. He had delegated it to Cæsar. He had for their sins subjected them to foreign rule. Yet they were God's. God had rights in them. Let them be careful, heartily, to render those to Him. Had they done this, they would have rendered allegiance to His Son, and He would have made them free indeed.

ourselves,

When we render to God His dues our souls, our bodies, all the dues of man fall into their right rank as instalments of our dues to God.

"And they marvelled at Him," says St. Mark. But now another party came forward to try their strength -the Sadducees, "which say there is no resurrection," looking upon this life, as the majority of the heathen world also did, as the whole of man. "And they asked Him, saying, 'Master, Moses wrote unto us, If a man's brother die, and leave his wife behind him, and leave no children, that his brother should take his wife, and raise up seed unto his brother. Now, there were seven brethren; and the first took a wife, dying left no seed. And the second took her, and died, neither left he any seed; and the third like

and

wise. And the seven had her, and left no seed. Last of all the woman died also. In the resurrection, therefore, when they shall rise, whose wife shall she be of them? for the seven had her to wife."" Their object in bringing forward this real or supposed case, was to make the notion of a resurrection and future state appear absurd, by the difficulty of adjusting its relations. "And Jesus answering

said unto them, 'Do ye not therefore err, because ye know not the scriptures, nor the power of God?” God is not tied to one order of things; He has infinite resources. "For when they shall rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage; but are as the angels in heaven." These purely social ties are of earth, and cease with earth.

Shall there then be no such thing as peculiar attachments, personal love, individual friendships, in the future state? There is no need to infer this, only that they shall be founded upon affinities of heart and character, not on mere accidental connexion. But shall, then, husbands and wives, parents and children, brothers and sisters, be nothing to each other hereafter? Not that either. For other things being equal, those who have had a life in common must have closer affinities, stronger bonds of affection, than those who in their human life were strangers, and so we trust that they shall but take up hereafter the thread where it is broken here. But all love is of God: and, living in Him, we shall assuredly have all the love our souls can desire.

Having scattered the objections the Sadducees

had been trying to raise, the Lord proceeds to a direct argument in favour of the great truth they had questioned. "Now that the dead are raised, even Moses showed at the bush, when he calleth the Lord the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. For He is not a God of the dead, but of the living: for all live unto Him."* A great and blessed truth! of which those can best feel the comfort who have seen death face to face, either in their own persons, or beside the coffins of those they love. Those who seem dead to us still live-live unto God; we ourselves, when we lie still, cold, and lifeless, before the eyes of our friends, shall yet be living-living unto God. "For to this end Christ both died, and rose, and revived, that He might be Lord both of the dead and the living."+

SECTION L.

QUESTION OF THE LAWYER-CHRIST'S OWN QUESTION. MATTHEW Xxii. 34-46 ; MARK xii. 28—37.

"BUT

UT when the Pharisees had heard that He had put the Sadducees to silence, they were gathered together."

Even the enmity of the Pharisees to our Lord could not prevent their feeling a sort of triumph, when they found that the Sadducees had been discomfited by Him. Party spirit was too strong in