and covetous expectation,-it was one of the great causes for their rejecting him." This fellow, we know not whence he is," was the popular cry of one part;-and they who feemed to know whence he was, fcornfully turned it against him, by the repeated quere,-Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary, the brother of James and Jofes, and of Juda and Simon?-and are not his fifters here with us? -And they were offended at him. So that, though it was prepared by God to be the glory of his people Ifrael, yet the circumstances. of humility, in which he was manifested, were thought a scandal to them.-Strange !—that he who was born their king,-should be born of no other virgin than Mary,--the meaneft of their people;-(for he hath regarded the low eftate of his handmaiden)-and one of the poorest too-for fhe had not a lamb to offer, but was purified, as Mofes directed in fuch a cafe, by the oblation of a turtle-dove;-that the Saviour of their nation, whom they expected to be ushered amidst them with all the enfigns and apparatus of royalty, fhould be brought forth in a stable, and answerable to distress ;fubjected all his life to the loweft conditions of humanity :-that whilst he lived, he should not have a hole to put his head in, nor his corpfe in, when he died;-but his grave too, must be the gift of charity.-These were thwarting confiderations to those who waited for the redemption of Ifrael, and looked for it in no other shape, than the accomplishment of thofe golden dreams of temporal power and fovereignty, which had filled their imaginations.-The ideas were not to be reconciled ;and fo infuperable an obstacle was the prejudice on one fide, to their belief on the other, -that it literally fell out, as Simeon prophetically declared of the Meffiah,-that he was fet forth for the fall, as well as the rifing again, of many in Ifrael. This, though it was the cause of their infidelity, was however no excufe for it.-For whatever these mistakes were, the miracles which were wrought in contradiction to them, brought conviction enough to leave them without excufe;-and besides, it was natural for them to have concluded, had their prepossesfions given them leave,—that he who fed five thousand with five loaves and two fishes, could not want power to be great;--and therefore needed not to appear in the condition of poverty and meannefs, had it not, on other fcores, been more needful to confront the pride and vanity of the world,-and to fhew his followers what the temper of chriftianity was, by the temper of its first inftitutor;-who, tho' they were offered, and he could have commanded them,-despised the glories of the world;took upon him the form of a fervant;-and though equal with God,-yet made himself of no reputation,-that he might fettle, and be the example of fo holy and humble a religion, and thereby convince his difciples for ever, that neither his kingdom nor their happinefs were to be of this world. Thus the Jews might have eafily argued ;-but when there was nothing but reason to do it with one fide, and strong prejudices, backed with intereft, to maintain the dispute, upon the other, -we do not find the point is always so easily determined. Although the purity of our Saviour's doctrine, and the mighty works he wrought in it's fupport, were demonstratively ftronger arguments for his divinity, than the unrefpected lowlinefs of his condition could be against it ;—yet the prejudice continued strong; -they had been accustomed to temporal promifes;-fo bribed to do their duty, they could not endure to think of a religion that would not promife, as much as Mofes did, to fill their basket, and fet them high above all nations:-a religion whofe appearance was not great and fplendid, but looked thin and meagre ;-and whofe principles and promises, -like the curfes of their law,-called for fufferings, and promised persecutions. If we take this key along with us through the New Testament, it will let us into the spirit and meaning of many of our Saviour's replies in his conferences with his disciples, and others of the Jews;-fo particularly in this place, Matthew vi. when John had sent two of his disciples to enquire, Whether it was he that fhould come, or that they were to look for another?-Our Saviour, with a particular eye to this prejudice, and the general fcandal he knew had risen against his religion upon this worldly account,-after a recital to the meffengers of the many miracles he had wrought; as that-the blind received their fight, the lame walked,-the lepers were cleanfed, the dead raised;-all which characters, with their benevolent ends, fully demonftrated him to be the Meffiah that was promised them;-he closes up his answer to them with the words of the text,-And blessed is he that shall not be offended in me ;-bleffed is the man whose upright and honest heart will not be blended by worldly confiderations, or hearken to his lufts and prepoffeffions in a truth of this moment.-The like benediction is recorded in the 7th chapter of St. Luke, and in the 6th of St. John;-when Peter broke out in that warm confeffion of their belief Lord, we believe, we are fure that thou art Chrift, the fon of the living God.-The fame benediction is uttered, though couched in different words,-Blessed art thou, Simon Barjona;-for flesh and blood has not revealed it, but my father which is in heaven.-Flesh and blood, the natural workings of this carnal defire; the luft and love of the world have had no hand in this conviction of thine; but my father, and the works which I have wrought in his name,—in vindication of this faith,have established thee in it, against which the gates of hell fhall not prevail.— - |