THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ST. MATTHEW.

INTRODUCTION.

THE Gospel of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ is the most directly, if not also the most deeply, interesting and instructive portion of the Divine Word. It records the greatest of all earthly events-the manifestation of God in the flesh. It unfolds the mystery of redemption, and shows us the way in which we must be saved. It brings to light the immortality of the soul, and the nature of the future life. It shows us our nearness to and connection with the eternal world, and the influences which act upon us both from the kingdom of light and the kingdom of darkness. It exhibits before us humanity in its widest possible contrasts, in its greatest moral beauty in the person of the Saviour, and in its greatest moral deformity in the persons of those he came to seek and to save. It supplies us with the purest lessons of spiritual wisdom and the highest example of practical goodness in the teaching and life of our blessed Lord; in whose sufferings and death we have the most perfect pattern of patient endurance and forgiving love, and in whose resurrection and ascension we have the highest hope of spiritual life and eternal glory.

The word of the Old Testament is not silent on these all-important subjects. Predictions of the Lord's coming are numerous, and some of them are unmistakably plain and singularly graphic. Still, like every future event, his advent was seen as through a glass darkly. So were all the subjects of the kingdom he came on earth to establish. It is only when the light of the New Testament is shed back upon the predictions and doctrines of the Old, that they stand out in their proper distinctness, and that their high import is clearly and fully understood.

The Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, thus combined, contain the knowledge of that great salvation which the Lord, in his infinite mercy, has wrought out for, and now freely offers to all his people. Faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, and a life according to his commandments, are the sum and substance of the Christian

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religion, the essential means and conditions of salvation; and these are set before us in the very letter with so much plainness that he may run that readeth.

But within the literal there is a spiritual sense, which exalts all the truths of the Word, and intensifies all the means of salvation. God has stored up in his Word, as he has in his Works, inexhaustible treasures of wisdom and knowledge; and has only, when the time has come, to open the seals of his Sacred Volume, which is written within and on the back side, and to unrol it before the nations, that

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they may come and see the wonders which have lain hid in its

recesses, from the time of its revelation, till men were prepared, by a higher development of their faculties, to perceive and acknowledge them.

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During the past ages of the church the Word has been understood in its literal sense only. The existence of a spiritual sense has always indeed been acknowledged in the church, although little success has attended the numerous attempts that have been made to unfold it. was important that a belief in the existence of an inner sense in the Scriptures should be preserved, though the time for its manifestation was not yet come. The literal sense was adapted to the genius and adequate to the wants of the church of the Lord's first advent; the spiritual sense is revealed for the use of the church of his second advent. His first coming was in feebleness and obscurity; his second coming is with power and great glory. As it is from the literal sense of the Word that we acquire a knowledge of the Lord's coming in the flesh, it is from the spiritual sense that we acquire a knowledge of his coming in the spirit. The time of the Lord's second coming-a coming not in person but in power-having now arrived, the spiritual sense of the Word, which reveals it, is now made known, and may be understood, because the event and the revelation are the correlatives of each other.

The use of this inner sense of the Holy Word consists chiefly in its unfolding two great subjects—the glorification of the Lord's humanity, and the regeneration of man. These two works are related to each other as cause and effect. The Lord's glorification is the origin and pattern of man's regeneration. It is because the Lord was glorified that man can be regenerated. By glorification the Lord became a Saviour; by regeneration we become saved. Glorification and regeneration are the same in their nature; they differ only in degree. By glorification the Lord made his humanity Divine; by regeneration he makes man spiritual. These two works,

which are the beginning and the end of the Incarnation, are the leading subjects of the inner sense of the Holy Word. The inmost or celestial sense treats of the Lord's glorification, the internal or spiritual sense treats of man's regeneration. As the subject of regeneration has the nearest, because an immediate personal interest for us, and comes more within the scope of our apprehension, it will chiefly engage our attention, and will most conduce to our edification. There is one other subject treated of in the inner sense of the Word-the church or religious dispensation, whose states both of advancement and retrogression form the subject of "the internal historical" or "proximate" sense, which is nearest to the sense of the letter.

In explaining the Word it may be useful at times to consider it as it refers to the Lord, or to man, or to the church, leaving the reader to trace out its other applications, which he may readily do, since there is a correspondence between them.

One word of caution for those who are not acquainted with the spiritual interpretation of the Word. It may be supposed that the spiritual sense supersedes the literal sense. This is by no means

the case. There are some parts of the Word that are not to be literally understood. With the exception of these, the literal sense is at least as much believed in and reverenced by us as if no spiritual sense existed. All doctrine is to be drawn from the literal sense of the Word; and all spiritual truth rests upon it as its necessary foundation.

It is only necessary to add, that as the Holy Word, in which the fulness of wisdom dwells, is sufficient for the supply of all our spiritual wants, we have only to go to it earnestly and in a teachable spirit, looking to Him who is the Light itself for illumination, to derive from its sacred pages whatever is most suitable to our spiritual states, and most conducive to our eternal welfare.

CHAPTER I.

THE Old Testament begins with "the generations of the heavens and the earth," and the New Testament begins with "the generation" of him by whom the heavens and the earth were created. In the Incarnation the Creator took upon himself by birth that nature which had originally derived its birth from him. He by whom man was made was himself made man. God assumed man's nature to effect what

man was designed but had failed to accomplish. As the world came from God, it was designed to return to him again, and to return through man, for whose sake it was created, and in whose spiritual and eternal happiness alone the purpose of its creation would be realized. God could have no other end in view in creating the world -the universe itself-than to form from the human race a heaven of immortal beings, to whom he might impart a measure of his own infinite blessedness, and in whose ever-increasing numbers and perfection he might behold a not unworthy image of his own immensity and glory. The fall of man threatened the frustration of this beneficent end. The catastrophe could only be averted and the breach repaired by God becoming man, and in the humanity he assumed restoring what man had lost in himself. In the Lord's humanity at the ascension creation returned to him from whom it originally came. The link in the chain of connection between the Creator and his creature was more than supplied by man's Restorer. By his Divine Humanity God has connected his creation in this and all other worlds with himself; and by a new and living way, which he has consecrated through the veil, that is to say, his flesh, man has for ever access to him, and he to man.

The Incarnation was thus the beginning of a new creation. Jesus is therefore called the Beginning of the creation of God; the Firstborn of every creature. He is the beginning of that new and spiritual creation which is to consist of those who become "new creatures;" he is the first-begotten and the head of that new generation which is to consist of those who are "born again” of him. The Lord has become the second Adam, the Father of a new and endless race of regenerate beings. In him what was God's imperfect image has become man's perfect Exemplar.

It is, in fact, this spiritual creation which the Genesis of the Word describess—a creation which made primeval man a spiritual image and likeness of his Maker. This image of the Divine properly constitutes humanity, for we are truly human only so far as we are images of God as to his moral perfections. It was this image that was lost by the fall, and which the Creator came to restore by the Incarnation,—that transcendently glorious event which forms the theme of the Gospel of peace, the beginning of which announces the birth of the Saviour,—the glad tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.

1-17. The book of the generation of Jesus Christ comprehends in it much more than an enumeration of his natural progenitors; and its