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in the Book of Common Prayer, the husband promises to worship his wife, to treat her with esteem and courtesy. As this acceptation, however, is nearly become obsolete, a much better and truer rendering of the Greek word, wherever it is applied to any person but God, would be, "do homage," or, "make obeisance." Such expressions, therefore, as the leper and others having worshipped Jesus, prove no more than that they yielded unto him the external posture of reverence, in that age universally bestowed on religious teachers. They do not at all countenance the modern practice, of presenting prayers to God's Anointed; they do not liberate us from imitation of the example and obedience to the commands of the Master, who himself prayed to the FATHER only, and has enjoined his followers to pray to the FATHER only; nor do they weaken the force or the truth of that emphatic declaration, "THE TRUE worshippers SHALL WORSHIP THE FATHER."

In the healing of this leper, of the centurion's servant, of Peter's mother-in-law, and many other diseased persons; in the rebuking of the winds and the sea; in the curing of those supposed to be possessed by demons; and in the other miracles detailed in this chapter, we have the first detail given by Matthew of the supernatural powers exercised by Jesus of Nazareth. What conclusion respecting him are we to draw from these wonderful works? That he is God, and therefore to be gifted with religious adoration? That he had these powers in himself, and underived? Not so. Moses, and Elijah, and Elisha, and Peter, and Paul, possessed the same power, the same in kind, but different in degree. They performed miracles as Jesus did, even to the restoring of the dead to life. But the exercise of their miraculous energy seems to have been restricted to certain great occasions, and to have been but sparingly manifested. Jesus performed miracles every day of his public ministry, when and where he listed. This difference in the exercise of the power, arose from a difference in the nature of the gift. of them had received their power from Jehovah; but to Moses, and Elijah, and Elisha, and to all the other prophets and apostles of God, the Spirit was given by measure; to Jesus, and to him alone, was it "given without

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measure." That Jesus, like them, received his miraculous powers from his Father and his God, he and his apostles concur in reiterating-" I, by the finger of God, cast out demons;" "the Father, which dwelleth in me, He doeth the works;""Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved of God among you, by miracles, and wonders, and signs, which God did by him." Miracles, then, do not prove the Deity of him who works them; but miracles seem essential to prove the Divinity of him who works them. The miracles of Moses, and Elijah, and Elisha, prove their divinity, the divinity of their mission, that they were really sent from God. The miracles of Jesus prove his Divinity, the divinity of his mission, that he was really sent from God. Nicodemus had come to a proper and correct opinion of this matter, when he said to the Messias, "Rabbi, we know that thou art a teacher come from God; for no man can do these miracles that thou doest, except God be with him." (John iii. 2.)

Judea

Verses 5-7: "And when Jesus was entered into Capernaum, there came unto him a centurion, beseeching him, and saying, Lord [Master or Sir], my servant lieth at home sick of the palsy, grievously tormented. And Jesus saith unto him, I will come and heal him." A centurion was a Roman officer, and as the title imports, the commander or captain of a hundred men. was at that time a province of the Roman Empire, and its cities and towns were garrisoned by Roman soldiery. Although the personal mission of the Christ was peculiarly, if not exclusively, to "the lost sheep of the house of Israel," yet he hesitates not to do an act of benevolence and mercy to a stranger. Yea, though he knows that stranger to be a pagan, an idolater, the enemy, the enslaver of his native land, he forgets all these circumstances, in the distress under which he finds him to labour because of the indisposition of a faithful servant. Accordingly, he promises to the centurion, "I will come and heal him."

The 8th and 9th verses contain a remarkable reply of the centurion:

"Sir, I am not worthy that thou shouldest come under my roof; but speak the word only, and my servant shall be healed. For I am a man under authority, having

soldiers under me: and I say to this man, Go, and he goeth; and to another, Come, and he cometh; and to my servant, Do this, and he doeth it." Fully to understand this saying, it is necessary to recollect, that in the Roman army there were gradations of rank and command. Consequently, the centurion, while he was the captain of a hundred men, was at the same time subject himself to the rule of his superior officers. His argument seems, therefore, to be this: “If I, who am a man under authority, who am subject to the direction and control of others, have yet such power over some parts of the army, that I can say to one man, Go, and he goeth, to another, Come, and he cometh, and to a third, Do this, and he doeth it; how much more canst thou, who art subject to no human rule, accomplish whatsoever thou desirest. With thy miraculous powers, it is not necessary thou shouldest come under my roof to see and touch my servant, or to be seen by him;" "but speak the word only, and my servant shall be healed." The Anointed was struck with astonishment at this expostulation; for we read in the next verse, "When Jesus heard it, he marvelled, and said to them that followed, Verily, I say unto you, I have not found so great faith, no, not in Israel." I have not discovered so great an instance of confidence in my power, among all the inhabitants of Judea, as is possessed by this Roman and Gentile.

After Jesus had commended the faith of the Roman centurion, he takes occasion to add, " And I say unto you, that many shall come from the east and west, and shall sit down with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, in the kingdom of heaven;" that is, multitudes who are not Jews, and, considering the person whose conduct elicited this declaration, multitudes who are heathens, shall be brought to a state of eternal felicity. The Greek word here rendered, to sit down, properly means, to sit down at meat. The Rabbis represent the blessedness of heaven under the similitude of a banquet; and this mode of delineation is frequently employed in the New Testament. This fact gives us a key to the exposition of the next verse, "But the children of the kingdom [the children of Israel] shall be cast into outer darkness; there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth." Feasts among

the Jews were generally held during the night, when their apartments were splendidly illuminated. This profusion of light in the festival halls would make the “outer darkness," or the darkness outside the house, still more gloomy and profound. Those who were excluded from the banquet-rooms, were not only put to shame, but also exposed to the pains of hunger and the inclemencies of the night season. They were cast into "outer darkness," the darkness outside the house of feasting; "there," that is, on the outside, "were weeping," either for shame, or for hunger, or for both; "and gnashing of teeth," from cold and resentment; which privations were rendered still more galling from a knowledge of the joy, and luscious fare, and genial warmth, that prevailed within. It is needless to add, that in proportion to the faith of the centurion, was the healing that befel his servant.

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Verse 20: "And Jesus saith unto them, The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man hath not where to lay his head." Here the epithet, "the Son of Man," is first applied to Jesus. The phrase is a Hebraism, signifying simply, a man. "In the oriental idiom," says Dr. Campbell, son of man and man are equivalent. The Son of Man' was a title in which nothing was claimed but what was enjoyed by all mankind.” A similar expression occurs in the book of Job: "Man that is born of a woman;" i.e. every man. We use, in writing and in speech, a phrase of like import: "Sons of Adam," meaning all mankind. The epithet, "Son of Man," is that by which the prophet Ezekiel is usually designated. In his book, it is applied to him about ninety times. Jesus is so denominated in the New Testament, about ten times less. There is nothing, then, mysterious or unintelligible in the title. It is perfectly synonymous with the word man; and the fact of Jesus being so called about eighty times in the Scriptures, must be deemed a powerful argument against that doctrine which teaches he is Jehovah, the Creator of the material universe; and against that other, which asserts his existence before his birth of Mary; and it affords, moreover, a mighty testimony to the running, constant, omnipresent teaching of the Gospel-the simple and proper humanity of Christ.

THE CHARACTER OF LUTHER: A DISCOURSE.

BY WILLIAM MACCALL.

"The mouth of a righteous man is a well of life."-PROV. x. 11.

THERE are four ways in which a great man should be considered-first, as a revelation of the Divinity; secondly, as a glorification of humanity; thirdly, as an historical personage; and lastly, as a social influence.

As a revelation of the Divinity, a great man is the embodiment of the true, the good, and the beautiful. He realises, as far as they can be realised, our conceptions of the attributes of God. He makes visible the infinite and the immortal. He individualises, by the products of his genius and the results of his energy, our vague and indefinite endeavours to grasp the lineaments of the Creator's power and glory. He is a wonder, a miracle, a living demonstration of the ideal and the mysterious, the sublime and luminous point in creation, that enables us to aggrandise our reverence into religion.

As a glorification of humanity, a great man is the emblem of its progressive and perfectible characteristics; of its moral value, its noble aspirings, and its generous sympathies; of its triumphant combats with passion, temptation, and worldliness; of its spirit of sacrifice, of heroism, and of martyrdom; of its indomitable faith, its bright hope, its universal charity; of its sanctification of the spiritual, and its yearnings for the eternal; of its obedience to conscience, its sacred fulfilment of duty, its devotion to a just cause, and its enthusiastic perseverance in a mission; of its artistic, poetic, prophetic, apostolic capabilities; of all that constitutes its gladness, its grandeur, and its praise.

As an historical personage, a great man comes before us in the features of his character and the incidents of his life. We contemplate him in all the various struggles of his self-education; in his dim gropings to seize the significance of some profound idea, or of some high purpose; of his gradual disruption of the bonds that chained him to prejudice and to error, and of his full and untrammelled entrance on the mighty objects of his career. We try to connect his inward and his outward existence, and by a comprehensive survey of what he did

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