26 His lord answered and said unto him, Thou wicked and slothful servant, thou knewest that I reap where I sowed not, and 27 gather where I have not strawed; thou oughtest therefore to have put my money to the exchangers, and then at my coming 28 I should have received mine own with usury. Take therefore the talent from him, and give it unto him which hath ten talents. 29 For unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance; but from him that hath not shall be taken away 30 even that which he hath. And cast ye the unprofitable servant into outer darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

31

When the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his 32 glory, and before him shall be gathered all nations; and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth 33 his sheep from the goats; and he shall set the sheep on his 34 right hand, but the goats on the left. Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of 35 the world. For I was an hungered, and ye gave me meat;

I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink; I was a stranger, and ye 36 took me in; naked, and ye clothed me; I was sick, and ye 37 visited me; I was in prison, and ye came unto me. Then

the ones who complain most of the hardness of their lot and of the conduct of God towards them.

26. thou knewest that I reap where I sowed not] The slothful servant is answered on his own ground. This is made a little more explicit in Luke xix. 22: "Out of thine own mouth will I judge thee."

29. unto every one that hath shall be given] A great law of our nature, filling out as its complement the other law announced (v. 3, 6; Luke vi. 20, 21), that in proportion as we feel our want, will be the supply that is granted. To him that hath the disposition and the ability to use will be given, that he may have the more abundantly; and at the same time they who feel their wants, and in lowliness of spirit are hungering and thirsting after righteousness, will be filled, and theirs

will be the kingdom of heaven.

33.

but from him that hath not] He had had it; but yet, as he had made no use of it, it was as if he had it not. 30. into outer darkness] the outer darkness. A reference again to the feast and joy within, the darkness and sorrow without. Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you] But not, 41, ye cursed of my Father; the curse they had brought upon themselves. Neither is it, 41, depart into eternal fire prepared for you, but prepared for the devil and his angels, i. e. prepared, in the very nature of things, for what is evil as its natural fruit. Not a punishment purposely and arbitrarily prepared by God, but growing as a necessary consequence out of the life which they had lived, and the characters they

shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord when saw we thee an hungered, and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee drink? when saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? or 38 naked, and clothed thee? or when saw we thee sick, or in 39 prison, and came unto thee? And the King shall answer and 40 say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me. Then shall he say also unto them on the left 41 hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was an hungered, 42 and ye gave me no meat; I was thirsty, and ye gave me no drink; I was a stranger, and ye took me not in; naked, and 43 ye clothed me not; sick, and in prison, and ye visited me not. Then shall they also answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we 44 thee an hungered, or athirst, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not minister unto thee? Then shall he 45

had formed.
41. for the
devil and his angels] We have
already given quite as much space
to the subject of demonology as its
importance demands, and would re-
fer the reader interested in such
things to the remarks which may
be found in chapters iv., viii., and
xiii. The expression here may de-
note a personal being and his agents,
or it may be used only as a personi-
fication of evil, — sin, and those who
are employed as its messengers to
disseminate it. Go
Go ye into the sor-
rows which have been prepared
not for you- but for sin and its
agents, as its natural and necessary
results. In partaking of sin you
must partake also of the bitter
fruits which it bears. The neces-
sary and awful connection between
sin and sorrow, so that those who
engage in the former must also be
involved in the latter, unless they
repent and leave their wickedness
behind, is the terrible fact which is
here announced as a part of the
great system of things. The doc-
trine of demons, or of a personal
devil, is not found in the old He-
brew Scriptures; though the word
Satan, an adversary or enemy, is
sometimes used, as in Numbers

xxii. 22; 1 Sam. xxix. 4; 1 Kings
xi. 14. In 1 Chron. xxi. 1 and
Zech. iii. 1, 2, is the first appear-
ance in the Old Testament of Satan
as the evil one, and both these writ-
ings belong probably to a period
not antecedent to the Babylonian
captivity. During the period of
more than five centuries which in-
tervened between that captivity and
the birth of Christ, the minds of the
Jews became imbued with the idea
of demons and a prince of demons,
such as we find in the New Testa-
ment. Traces of these notions may
be found in some of the apocry-
phal writings, but the fullest devel-
opment of the doctrine is seen in the
Apocalypse of Enoch, a work which
belonged to that period, which was
known and quoted from by some
of the New Testament writers
(2 Peter, and Jude 14), but which
was unknown in the Christian
Church for nearly a
thousand
years. In 1773 Bruce the trav-
eller brought three copies of it
from Abyssinia, and in 1821
translation of it into English was
made by Richard Laurence, after-
wards Archbishop of Cashel. See
Christian Examiner for May, 1859,
Art. The History and Doctrine of

a

answer them, saying, Verily, I say unto you, inasmuch as ye 46 did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me. And these shall go away into everlasting punishment; but the righteous into life eternal.

CHAPTER XXVI.

1-17. THE SUPPER AT BETHANY.-Judas.

1-2. It was now (see introduction to chap. xxi.) late on Tuesday evening, which, according to the Jewish method of reckoning, was the beginning of Wednesday. The expression "after two days is the Passover" would place that event on Thursday. 3-5. Here the scene changes, and the writer recurs to deliberations previously held by the chief priests and elders in regard to the best way of getting Jesus into their hands by subtlety or deceit, and putting him to death. They had concluded that it would not be expedient. to do this during the festival. 6-13. The writer then, without explicitly stating his object, proceeds to show how their purpose came to be altered by the proposal of Judas to put Jesus into their hands. And in order to give what stood in his own mind as the immediate occasion of the traitor's proposal, he goes back four days (John xii. 1), and gives an account of a supper at Bethany, where an event had occurred which, with the comment of Jesus upon it, exasperated Judas, and hastened him on in his work of treachery. The passage is worthy of remark, as showing how, in the narrative of an unpractised writer like Matthew, the true order of events is departed from without notice being given, and how the object which is foremost in the mind of the writer may be left so obscurely indicated by his words, that we can discover what it is only by comparing his narrative with that which has come to us from another source. No mention is made of Judas in the account of the supper by Matthew, but at the close of the account he says, 14-16, 'Then one of the twelve, called Judas Iscariot, went unto the

chief priests," as if his going were in some way dependent on what had just been described. John, on the other hand, in his more precise and circumstantial detail of events (xii. 1-8), singles out Judas as the one most prominent in complaining of the waste. Judas, therefore, must have been the one who was most excited by the indignation which Matthew mentions, and who would feel most keenly the rebuke implied in the language of Jesus. Indignant, therefore, and exasperated, he sought an interview with the chief priests. The same avaricious spirit which had caused his indignation at the supper manifests itself in the offer which he made to the priests. "This might have been sold for two hundred pence," were his words when he saw the precious ointment poured upon the head and feet of Jesus; and now his question is, "What will you give me if I will give him up to you?" There is no formal connection between these two expressions in Matthew. He does not even tell us that the questions were both put by the same man. It is only by the help of John's Gospel that we discover this, and by his aid we see, not only how perfectly the two narratives, apparently different, harmonize with each other, but how important in its place the apparently irrelevant account of the supper at Bethany is in the Gospel before us. Where a man's mind is full of a subject, and he sees as an actual witness the relation of all its parts to one another, he is very apt to state facts as they lie in his mind in their true relation to one another, but without the explanatory clauses which a reader not conversant with the facts needs in order to understand their connection, and which a writer not personally familiar with the facts would hardly fail to put in.

17-29. THE LAST SUPPER.

17-19. The writer now returns to Jesus. It was the first day of unleavened bread when the disciples asked Jesus where they should prepare the Passover. There is nothing