malignant effects of sin, which introduced misery and death, might draw from him this expression of his grief for the calamities of human life. It has likewise been suggested that Christ might lament the inefficacy of his heavenly lessons in comforting his disciples under the temporary loss of those who were most dear to them. But the principal cause of his tears seems to have been, his experience of unbelief in the Jews and in his disciples. On other occasions he was grieved at hardness of heart; he sighed deeply in spirit when the Pharisees sought of him a sign from heaven, tempting him; and he expressed himself pathetically at want of rational faith in that power which he so wonderfully "displayed: "O faithless and perverse generation, how long shall I be with you? how long shall I suffer you ?" alluding to the original want of faith which he immediately perceived in the father of the demoniac, and which the man soon expressed when he said, "But if thou canst do any thing, help us :" and also referring to the want of confidence in God's assistance betrayed by his disciples, who, not having attained that entire belief in God which was the result of prayer and fasting, were unable to cast out the demon. Thus in the passage before us, Jesus seems to have groaned in spirit, to have been troubled, and to have wept, chiefly because his former power, repeatedly evidenced in raising the dead, had so little effect on the Jews, on the sisters of Lazarus, and on his apostles.

Mark iii. 5. viii. 12,

ib. ix. 19, &c. and p. p.

This

is intimated to us by the evangelist. Some of the Jews said, "Could not he, who opened the eyes of the blind, have caused that this man also should not have died? On which St. John observes, "Jesus therefore, again groaning in himself, cometh to the grave."

W

SECTION IV.

OF OUR LORD'S JUSTICE.

C

WHEN St. Peter calls our Lord the Just One, and when that title is elsewhere attributed to him, it is meant that he was universally righteous and good. It is no where said of him that he was just in the usual sense of the word justice, as it consists in rendering to all men their due. Indeed justice, as defined by moral writers, is a virtue in our intercourse with others which is the lowest part of a great character. Our Lord was more than just;

w John xi. 37, 8. See also v. 16. v. 32. Matt. xxvii. 19, 24. Luke xxiii. 47. 1 Pet. iii. 18. 1 John ii. 1.

Acts xxii. 14.

*Acts iii. 14,

James v. 6.

See Matt. iii. 15. i. 19. ix. 13.

xxv. 46. Luke xxiii. 50. and Rom v. 7, where the latter part of the verse is a correction of the former: "Yet I will allow that for a good or righteous man [the words fixas and dyabis being equivalent] some will even dare to die." See also Eurip. Iph. in Aul. 1. 1033. Εἰ δ ̓ εἰσὶ Θεοὶ, δίκαιος ὢν ἀνὴρ συ γε,

Εσθλῶν κυρήσεις.

If there be Gods, you, as an upright man,

Will gain a happy lot.

d Rom. xiii. 7.

he rendered to men more than their due, and overflowed to them in an unbounded degree of love.

Nor has he delivered direct and special precepts on this subject though he commended just servants and stewards; though 'judgment, which may well import a public and private dispensing of justice, is ranked by him with that primary duty the love of God; and the same & virtue and fidelity in our words and actions, are elsewhere mentioned by him among the weightier matters of the law and though he condemned the opposite vice, when he described an unjust judge who feared not God nor regarded man, when he taught that moral pollution was contracted by theft and deceit, and when he denounced a wo on the Scribes and Pharisees for cleansing the outside of the cup and dish when within they were full from rapine and injustice.

In the parable of the steward who was accused to the rich man his master as wasting his substance, our Lord selected a single circumstance from his conduct, which he proposed to the imitation of his disciples in prosecuting their great end, the attainment of an eternal reward. In the course of the narration the steward is expressly called "unjust; and his injustice was branded by his dismission. What his master praised was his wisdom and foresight, his subtle and ingenious management, in securing to himself friends. He punished his dishonesty,

• Matt. xxiv. 45.

8 Matt. xxiii 23.

XXV. 21. Luke xii. 42. xix. 17. Luke xi. 42. h Luke xviii. 2, 6. See also c. xii. 46. xvi. 10.

Mark vii. 22. See also John x. 1, 10. Matt. xix. 18. * Matt. xxiii. 25 The true reading is ἀδικίας, not ἀκρασίας.

1 Thess. v. 5.

1 Luke xvi.

but acknowledged his art and cunning. What our Lord himself observed on this parable was, that in general worldly men were wiser in conducting their temporal affairs than good men with respect to their spiritual concerns: in which remark he has ranked the unjust steward among those whose views began and ended with this life; and has opposed his character to that of men whose actions will bear the "light, and who will inherit the glorious reward of the saints in light. And his P exhortation to his disciples was, that they would make a prudent use of riches, which generally administered to unrightcousness, and deserved not the name of a true and solid acquisition; and would be faithful stewards of them, so as finally to gain the friendship of God by rightly dispensing them. Thus, on another occasion, our Lord did not require of his followers that they should imitate the impious, unjust and shameless judge described by him, or that they should be overcome by mere importunity; but the moral of his parable was, that men should pray always and not faint; particularly in those times of persecution, And it is very observable that the application of these parables is made for us; and that our Lord is unusually large in explaining the uses of the former, and thus guarding it from misconstruction.

" Luke xvi. 8. 1 Thess. v. 5.

• Col. i. 12.

૧

P There is an opposition between the beginning of v. 9. and that of v. 8. in Luke xvi. 1 Lake xviii. 1-8.

SECTION V.

OF OUR LORD'S TEMPERANCE,

IT is observable of Christ that he did not aim at striking the people by an austerity of appearance and conduct. He came "acating and drinking;" in contradistinction to the solitariness and abstinence of his harbinger, John the Baptist: a conduct on which the Jews put a perverse interpretation, and were neither pleased with the rigour of the Baptist, nor with our Lord's familiar and conversible manner; though the wisdom of such a deportment, in him who cb came to seek and to save that which was lost,” carried its own justification with it to the well disposed and considerate. The calumny advanced by the inconsistent Jews of our Lord's time was a general one, confuted by facts: it was as groundless as their assertion, that he was a friend to publicans and sinners; when he conversed with them, only to reclaim them. It was truly remarked by d Origen that, amidst numberless accusations and falsehoods, none could object to him the least act of casual self indulgence. He appeared in a state of poverty, and endured the inconveniences incident to it: some of his followers ministered to him of their substance;

and he had not where to lay his head.

a Matt. xi. 19.

Luke xix. 10.

< Matt. xi. 19.

Compare Luke v. 33. with Matt. ix. 14. Mark ii. 18. d Contra Cels. 1. 3. § 36. Οὗ μηδὲ οἱ μύρια κατηγορήσαντες, καὶ ψευδῆ ὅσα περὶ αὐτῷ λέγοντες, δεδύνηντα κατειπειν, ὡς κάν τὸ τυχὸν ἀκολασίας κἂν ἐπ' ὀλίγον γευσαμένο.