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And he made haste,

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must abide at thy house. and came down, and received Him joyfully." He could not but be surprised to hear a stranger to him addressing him by name, and proposing to abide at his house; but he obeyed the call, and admitted the Divine Visitant within his doors 1o. Of course this occasioned, as usual, a murmur, that He was gone to be a guest with a man that was a sinner." But Zaccheus, after he had received the Christ, said unto Him, Lord, I perceive that the people who attend Thee are very much offended at Thy coming to my house. They call me a sinner, and I confess I am a great one; but I beseech Thee not to disdain to remain my guest on that account; for, whatsoever sins I have hitherto committed, I now heartily repent of them, and resolve and promise, before Thee and them, that I will now reform my life. And to testify my sincerity herein, I will now relieve the poor as much as I ever oppressed them: for I will give them half my goods; and for whatever I have wrongfully taken from any man, I will restore four times the value'. One very particular and eminent fruit of true repentance is the making satisfaction and restitution to those whom we have injured. To God, indeed, we can never make compensation for the injuries we have done to Him by our sins. All that we can do Bishop Beveridge,

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Dr. Robinson.

1

is, to confess our sins to Him; to make acknowledgment of our miscarriages; to be heartily troubled for what we have done; and not to do the like again. But for injuries done to men, we may, in many cases, make reparation and satisfaction: and this, as it is one of the best proofs of a true repentance, so it is one of the most proper and genuine effects of it; for this is, as much as in us lies, to undo what we have done, and to unsin our sins 2.

It is probable that Zaccheus was a Jew; for native Jews were very much employed by the Romans in their civil offices; but all publicans were ranked as heathens by the Jews, on account of the odious nature of their office 3. And Jesus said unto him, This day is this family received into the gracious covenant of mercy and salvation, and to a share in all the promises of God I came to fulfil. For this man, by repentance, faith, and renewed obedience, is become truly and properly a son of Abraham, to all the purposes of religion and happiness; for a principal design of My coming into the world, is to reclaim such persons as these from the ways of sin and misery, to repentance and obedience, and the hopes of eternal life. It was the very purpose, He adds, for which even the Son of God came upon earth,-" to seek, and to save," to bring back those who had strayed away'.

2

Archbishop Tillotson.

'Dr. S. Clarke.

3 Mant and D'Oyly.

3

Bishop Mann.

SECT. CXV.-The Parable of the Ten Talents.—Matt. xxv. 14-30; Luke xix. 11-27.

It was the universal opinion of the Jews, that that very time wherein Christ did appear, was the time, according to their understanding of Daniel's prophecy, when the kingdom of the Messiah was to be expected. Being now arrived not far from Jerusalem, the royal city of the Jews, His disciples thought that He would immediately take upon Him the regal authority '. "They thought that the kingdom of God should immediately appear." This, then, was one of the many occasions on which our Lord corrects the errors of His disciples, and restrains their expectations. They perceived that He was stedfastly purposed to go up to Jerusalem; and they believed that His object was, not to purchase a kingdom, but to take possession; not to suffer, but to reign. They still hoped, probably, to reign with Him. So He explains by a parable the nature of God's dispensation; how a man is not crowned, till he has endured the contest; how the husbandman must first labour, before he is a partaker of his fruits .

Some of our Lord's parables appear to be almost true histories; and in their incidental circumstances have an evident regard to historic propriety. It appears that our Saviour took the foundation of the parable of “a certain nobleman, who went into a far country to re

ceive for himself a kingdom, and to return,' from a custom which was very familiar in the days when Judæa was subject to the Roman power. Those who were nominated to supreme office usually went to Rome, to have the kingdom confirmed to them by the Roman emperor, without whose permission and appointment they dared not enter upon the government. government. This had occurred in regard to Judæa, in the case of Herod the Great, and to his son and successor Archelaus'; to whom more particularly our Lord now very probably alluded, because it was true that a powerful party of Jews opposed his appointment at Rome: some were altogether adverse to the succession of any king whatever; and some were favourable to the claims of Herod Antipas, who afterwards became Tetrarch of Galilee, which gives a peculiar point to this passage. His citizens hated him, and sent a message after him, saying, We will not have this man to reign over us '." The parable is shortly this :-A nobleman or prince departed to a distant country to be invested with full powers for the possession of a kingdom, to which he was heir; and he proposed to return in the full possession of his government. For the present his dominion was not generally acknowledged. The prince left his ten servants behind him in the care of a certain portion of

Pictorial Bible.

money each, of which they were charged to make a diligent use during his absence. He returned in full possession of the sovereignty which he had expected, and strictly examined his servants as to the use that they had respectively made of the monies committed to their charge. Two of the number, by their fidelity and diligence, had made considerable improvement of their stock, though one of them much less than the other. The conduct of both was publicly approved and commended; and they were appointed to a state of exaltation and dignity proportioned to their respective exertions and usefulness in the service of their master. The third, however, had made no use at all of the money entrusted to him. He had not, indeed, squandered it away in dissipation; neither, however, had he traded with it: he had "laid it up in a napkin," that is, he neglected to improve it, but kept it safe, though unprofitable, against his lord's return. He pleads, as an excuse, that he knew his lord to be "an austere man," who exacted services he had no right to, and for which he gave neither compensation nor encouragement. His lord convicted this indolent servant "out of his own mouth," arguing that, even on his own principles, he ought to have made use of his money. This, therefore, was now taken from him, who was too slothful to improve it, and given as an