Expositions of Holy Scripture : St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIIIMaclaren, Alexander
Religion
Expositions of Holy Scripture : St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII
Maclaren, Alexander
Bible -- Commentaries; Bible. Matthew IX-XXVIII -- Commentaries
According to the words of my text, the larger number of the miracles
of our Lord were wrought in these three places. 'Cities,' our Bible
calls them; two of them were little fishing villages, the third a
somewhat considerable town. Where are these miracles recorded? Not
in our gospels. As for Chorazin, we never hear its name except in
this verse, and in the parallel in Luke's Gospel; and all that He
did there is swallowed up in oblivion. As for Bethsaida, there are a
couple of miracles, probably, recorded as having been wrought there,
though there is some obscurity in reference to the locality of at
least one of them. As for Capernaum, there are several miracles
recorded as having been performed in that place, and several others
referred to as having been done there. But there is nothing in the
four gospels that would suggest the statement of the text.
Now the inference (which has nothing to do with my present subject,
but which I just note in passing) is,--how extremely fragmentary and
incomplete these four gospels avowedly are! They harvest for us a
few ears plucked in the great waving cornfield,--and all the others
withered and died where they grew. The light falls upon one or two
groups in the crowd of miserables whom He helped, the rest lie in
dim shadow. You have to think of dozens, I suppose I should not be
exaggerating if I were to say hundreds, of miracles unrecorded but
known, lying behind the specimens that we have in the gospels. 'Many
other things truly did Jesus, which are not written in this book.'
Our Lord takes these two little fishing villages, and He parallels
and contrasts them with the two great maritime cities of Tyre and
Sidon, and says that these insignificant places have far more light
than those had. Then He isolates Capernaum, a place of more
importance, and His own usual settled residence; and, in like
manner, He contrasts it with the long-buried Sodom, and proclaims
the superiority of the illumination which fell on the more modern
three. Why were they so superior? Because they had Moses? because
they had the prophets, the law, the temple, the priesthood? By no
means. Because they had _Him_. So He sets Himself forth as
being the highest and clearest of all the revelations that God has
made to the world, and asserts that in Him, in His character, in His
deeds, men ought to find motives that should bow them in penitence
before God; motives sweeter, tenderer, stronger than any that the
world knows besides. There is no such light of the knowledge of the
glory of God anywhere else as there is in the face of Jesus Christ.
And oh! brother; no thoughts of the nobleness of rectitude, and the
imperfection of one's own life, no thoughts of a divine justice and
a divine punishment, will bow a man in penitence like having once
caught a glimpse of the perfect sweetness and perfect beauty of the
perfect Humanity that is revealed to us in Jesus Christ.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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