salute under this holy name the first one willing to use it in restoring their nationality. It was for this reason, while Jesus proclaims himself the Son of God,in Jerusalem before the Scribes and Pharisees who do nothing, but contradict him, (John 5:17—) he avoids manifesting himself in the same way among the populations of Galilee, who would rise up at the news that Christ is come, and, as S. John (615) shows, struck with his miracles, they would run to take him and make him king.

See also note on S. Mark 8:30.

The rebuke of Peter rouses our Lord here to a passionate declaration of what all true discipleship of himself must be. And in doing this he naturally falls again into parellelism.

17:1-13. "He was transformed before them."

See notes on S. Mark 9: 2, and S. Luke 9: 31, 35.

17:16. "I brought him to your disciples and they could not cure him."

"All the authors who have written on epilepsy or falling sickness are of one mind," says Dr. Passati, “in regarding this malady as inexplicable." *** "It is so extraordinary," wrote Esquirol, "so beyond all knowledge and all explanation, that the ancients believed it to depend upon the wrath of the Gods."

The causes of epilepsy can be quite different.-Emotions, fear, the crisis of puberty, intestinal worms. One of the frequent causes in young people is the vice of im purity.

17: 20. "You will say to this mountain.” See note on S. Mark 11:23.

18:3. "If you do not turn," etc.

In this discourse of Jesus on who is greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven we find three main divisions of parallel stanzas, and each division subdivided again into three stanzas each.

18:5.

Whoever shall receive one such little child in my name receives me."

This saying of our Lord has given birth to thousands of asylums, orphanages, schools, etc.

18:6.

"One of these little ones who believe in me."

The Greek, which above used the word "child," here and in verse ten, uses the word mikros, “little one." Our Lord deals no longer with children but with the poor people whom the world despises and depraves by its sayings, by its examples, by its offenses, these poor people whose faith nevertheless is their only inheritance, their only hope. Our Lord passes from the littleness of childhood to social littleness. And after having spoken here of the little ones who believe, he goes on at once to speak of those who are wandering, and to the search of whom the Good Shepherd gives himself up that not one of them perish.

18:10.

ones.

"See that you do not despise one of these little

Jesus is treating of those whom the world calls "mean people, miserable people " in the full sense of the term, which means material or moral poverty. Let no one despise, either the poor or the criminals of that great forsaken class who are called "the little ones." The burden of life they carry so heavily while the rich live in idleness is for

them a constant prayer imploring favor, and so their angels always behold the face of their Father in heaven.

It is precisely because our Lord treats here of mean and miserable people that he adds: "For the Son of Man is come to save the lost," a saying inapplicable to children just as the whole of what follows is.

Gain of some kind, aimed at or wrongfully withheld, is a common source of disputes and going to law. Our Lord points out a more excellent method of gain, and a nobler object. Sacrifice the lower. Attain the higher. Win for God and yourself the brother with whom you have been at variance.

18:20.

my name."

"Where two or three are gathered together in

The true meaning of these words is embodied in the well known patristic axiom, Ubi tres, ibi Ecclesia, (" Where three are, there is the Church ").

The strength of the Church is not to be measured by numbers. The presence of Christ is as true and mighty, his communion with his own is as real when they form but a remnant, as when they are gathered together in the greatest numbers.

The use of symbolic numbers in this place with their idea of completeness is designed to lead the mind altogether away from any numerical standard whatsoever. There is no such limit to God's forgiveness of us, neither should there be any such limit of our forgiveness of one another.

18.23. slaves."

"Who wished to have an accounting with his

"With his slaves," is the word for word translation of the Greek. But this does not at all give the full meaning of the Greek. For while it is to be remembered that in Oriental monarchies, in our Lord's time especially, all men in the King's service as office-holders, etc., were as much in his power so far as life and death and imprisonment were concerned as the most degraded menial that was actually bought and sold as so much personal property, yet in addition to this thought, it is evident from the text that it is referring to one who has been handling some part of the king's income as a holder of office, from the immense debt he owes. Only a man in such a position could in those days owe the king what would now be equivalent to about fifty million dollars.

18:24. lars."

"One * * * who owed him fifty million dol

The talent, as so much silver, is equivalent to about a thousand dollars of our money, but valued by its purchasing power in the days of our Lord, it is equivalent to five times that amount. Hence our rendering.

This sum, prodigious for an individual, tends to give us to understand that our debts are incalculable in God's · sight.

18:25. "His wife and children and all he had."

According to an old law of ancient times a creditor could sell his insolvent debtors and their families or reduce them to slavery.

18:
: 28.

"But that slave went out," etc.

It is altogether too possible for a man to be under the objective reign of grace and to have a certain appreciation

of its value and yet at the same time so regulate his relations to his brethren as in reality to live only under the strict rule of law. Let the slightest opposition be offered to the immediate execution of such a man's selfish will and his legal bias of mind becomes aggravated by the superadded horrors of a violent temper and the unrelenting cruelty of brutal passion.

How many self-deceiving followers of Christ rise up from the Lord's Table on a Sunday to go forth on Monday to the perpetration of such atrocities as this in connection with their everyday affairs? The sin of merciless hardness of heart is one easily besetting us all. Instead of asking with Hazael the Syrian, therefore: "Is thy servant a dog that he should do such a thing?" It were far better for each of us to ask ourselves plainly and decisively: "Is it I?" The sum for which mercy is here refused is altogether insignificant compared with the enormous amount already forgiven this merciless one. This makes it evident to the most casual reader how as nothing are the offenses we receive from our fellows, compared with our sins against God's gracious goodness.

For the rendering of one hundred dollars instead of one hundred pence, see note on chapter 20: 2, and S. Mark 14:5, 6.

18:31.

"They were exceedingly sorry."

Sorrow rather than anger is always the mood of the true disciple of Christ as he witnesses the sins against love which are the scandals of Christianity.

18:34.

"Delivered him to the tormentors."

These tormentors should be looked upon as the symbols of whatever agencies God employs in the work of righteous retribution. They are the stings of remorse, the scourges