tality, that he so pertinaciously urges his request. Through this pertinacity he at length obtains, not merely the three which he asked, but

as many as he needeth," like that woman already referred to, from whom the Lord at first seemed to have shut up all his compassion, but to whom at last he opened the full treasure-house of his grace, and bid her to help herself, saying, "O woman, great is thy faith! be it unto thee even as thou wilt." Augustine too observes, that he who would not at first so much as send one of his house, himself now rises, and supplies all the wants of his friend; and adds on the return of prayers not being always immediate many excellent observations, as this, When sometimes God gives tardily, he commends his gifts, he does not deny them;-Things long desired, are more sweet in their obtainment; those quickly given, soon lose their value;—and again, God for a time withholds his gifts, that thou mayest learn to desire great things greatly. ‡-Faith, and patience, and humility, are all called into exercise by this temporary denial of a request. It is then scen who will pray always and not faint, and who will prove but as the leopard, which if it does not attain its prey at the first spring, turns sullenly back and cannot be induced to repeat the attempt. The parable concludes with words in which the same duty of prayer is commended, and now no longer in a figure, but plainly: "And I say unto you, Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you." The three repetitions of the command are more than mere repetitions; since to seek is more than to ask, and to knock than to seek; and thus in this ascending scale of earnestness, an exhortation is given, not merely to prayer, but to increas

* In the same manner Abraham's conversation with God (Gen. xviii. 23-33), which almost rises into a like åvaídea, is not the asking any thing for himself, but intercession for the people of Sodom.

† Augustine (Enarr. in Ps. cii. 5): Extorsit tædio quod non possit merito. The Jews have a proverb, Impudentia est regnum sine corona; and again they say, Impudentia etiam coram Deo proficit. Von Meyer (Blätter für höhere Wahrheit, v. 5, p. 45) has some interesting remarks on the avaídea of this petitioner, and how it is reconcilable with the humility which is praised in the publican. (Luke xviii. 13.) ‡ Cùm aliquando tardiùs dat, commendat dona, non negat.—Diù desiderata dulcius obtinentur, citò data vilescunt; and again, Ut discas magna magnè desiderare.

Stella: Sunt multi qui naturæ sunt et conditionis leonispardi, qui si primo saltu vel secundo non assequitur prædam, non amplius eam insequitur. Ita isti sunt qui prima oratione vel secundâ non exauditi, protinus ab oratione cessant, et impatientiæ notâ signantur.

Augustine (De Serm. Dom. in Mon., 1. 2, c. 21) had made only one of these three commands (Matt. vii. 7) to have direct reference to prayer, while the other two he referred to other forms of earnest striving after the kingdom of God;—but in his Retractations he says, no doubt more accurately: Ad instantissimam orationem omnia referuntur. Their position in relation to this parable leaves no doubt on the matter.

ing urgency in prayer, even till the suppliant carry away the blessing which he requires, and which God is only waiting for the due time to arrive that he may give him. All that we have here is indeed a commentary on words of our Lord spoken at another time, "The kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force."

* Augustine: Deus ad hoc se peti vult, ut capaces donorum ejus fiant, qui petunt; and again: Non dat nisi petenti, ne det non capienti.

In the midst of one of our Lord's most interesting discourses an interruption occurs. One of his hearers had so slight an interest in the spiritual truths which he was communicating, but had so much at heart the redressing of a wrong, which he believed himself to have sustained in his worldly interests, that, as would seem, he could not wait for a more convenient season, but broke in upon the Lord's teaching with that request which gave occasion for this parable, "Master, speak to my brother, that he divide the inheritance with me." It has been sometimes taken for granted, that this man who desired a division of the inheritance, had no right to what he was here claiming, and was only seeking to make an unfair use of the Saviour's influence. But how much does this supposition weaken the moral. All men, without any especial teaching, would condemn such unrighteousness as this. But that love of the world, which, keeping itself within limits of decency and legality, yet takes all the affections of the heart from God, and robs divine things of all their interest-against that men have need to be continually warned; and such a warning is here,—a warning, not against unrighteousness, but against covetousness; for this may display itself in the manner and temper in which we hold and reclaim our own as truly as in the undue snatching at that of others :-" "Take heed and beware of covetousness." From this man's confident appeal to Jesus, made in

*

* Not ἀδικία, but πλεονεξία. It is exactly opposed to the αὐτάρκεια, which has always enough, as the Tλeovegia has never.

In the Vulgate, Cavete ab omni avaritia. So Lachmann, and wáons wλeovečias. The emphasis on this "all" is strikingly brought out by Augustine (Serm. 107, c. 3), as though Christ were herein saying to each that stood by, Fortè tu avarum et cupidum diceres, si quæreret aliena; Ego autem dico cupidè et avarè non appetas nec tua.... Non solùm avarus est qui rapit aliena: sed et ille avarus est qui cupidè servat sua.

the presence of the whole multitude, it is probable that his brother did withhold from him a part of the patrimony, which fell justly to his share. But it was the extreme inopportuneness of the season which he chose for urging his claim, that showed him as one in whom the worldly prevailed to the danger of making him totally irreceptive of the spiritual, and that drew this warning from the lips of the Lord. For that he should have desired Christ as an umpire or arbitrator,-and such only the word in the original means (see Acts vii. 27, 35; Exod. ii. 14), such too the Lord, without publicly recognized authority, could only have been*—this in itself had nothing sinful. St. Paul himself recommended this manner of settling differences (1 Cor. vi. 1-6), and how weighty a burden this arbitration afterwards became to the bishops of the Church is well known.t

In the request itself there was nothing sinful, yet still the Lord absolutely refused to accede to it; he declined here, as in every other case, to interfere in the affairs of civil life. It was indeed most true, that his word and doctrine received into the hearts of men, would modify and change the whole framework of civil society, that his word and his life was the seed out of which a Christendom would evolve itself, but it was from the inward to the outward that he would work. His adversaries more than once sought to thrust upon him the exercise of a jurisdiction which he so carefully avoided, as in the case of the woman taken in adultery (supposing that passage to belong to the true Gospel of St. John),—as in that of the Roman tribute. But each time he avoided the snare which was laid for him, keeping himself within the limits of the moral and spiritual world, as that from which alone effectual improvements in the outer life of man could proceed.‡

* Grotius explains μeptors: Qui familiæ herciscundæ, communi dividundo, aut finibus regundis arbiter sumiter. Lachmann has admitted κpithy, in the place of dikaσThy, into his text.-See Tertullian (Adv. Marc., 1. 4, c. 28) for the reasons which moved the Lord here to use the very phrase with which the Israelite (Exod. ii. 14) put back the arbitration of Moses; and in Hammond's Paraphrase (in loc.).

† Augustine (Enarr. in Ps. cxviii. 115) complains of this distraction from spiritual objects, and that he was not allowed to say to those who came to him with cases for arbitration, "Who made me a judge or a divider over you?" And Bernard, writing to Pope Eugenius, especially warns him against this distraction of mind, arising from the multitude of these worldly causes which would be brought before him.

The latter part of ver. 15 is difficult, not that there is any difficulty in tracing the connection of thought, or the meaning, but that the sentence is more burdened with words than can be conveniently taken up into the construction. Euthymius, Theophylact, and others, and in modern times Paulus, would make this the meaning: When a man possesses much abundance, yet is not his (bodily) life one among his possessions; in short, A man, though he is rich, cannot live for ever,

The Lord having uttered a warning against covetousness, a sin which is always united with the trusting in uncertain riches (1 Tim. vi. 17), for who that did not trust in them as a source of good, as a means of blessedness, would be so eager in their accumulation?-he proceeds to show by a parable the folly of such trust,-how, though man is ever dreaming that these worldly goods are the source of happiness, and is thus drawn to trust in them, rather than in the living God, yet in truth they cannot constitute a man's blessedness. For, besides other reasons, that only is blessedness, which has in it security and endurance; but that earthly life, which is the necessary condition of drawing enjoyment out of worldly abundance, may come to an end at any moment, and then will ensue utter loss and destitution to him who has thus been laying up treasure for himself, instead of seeking to be rich toward God.

"The ground of a certain rich man brought forth plentifully." It was said long before, "The prosperity of fools shall destroy them" (Prov. i. 32), a truth to which this man sets his seal, for his prosperity ensnares him in a deeper worldliness, draws out the selfish propensities of his heart into stronger action.* In this respect how deep a knowledge of the human heart the warning of the Psalmist displays, "If riches increase, set not thy heart upon them." It might, at first sight, appear, that the time when we should be in chiefest danger of setting our heart upon riches, would be when we saw them escaping from our grasp, perishing

or, Riches will not lengthen his life. It may certainly be said in favor of this explanation, that it suits well enough with the parable which follows, and it might pass, if it were this kind of flat morality which our Lord were in the habit of inculcating, or if (wh were ever in Scripture degraded to this lower sense, and used to designate the mere soulish life, the uxh. It is much better to take Swý here in that deeper sense, which in Scripture it has ever, as man's true life,-his blessedness; and then with Shultz (üb. d. Parabel vom Vorwalter, p. 79) to put a comma before and after ev T❖ Teρioσevei Tul, and translate thus: When a man comes to have abundance (èv T. Tepiσ. Tv), his life (his true life.-his blessedness) does not grow out of his wordly goods. Thus will be preserved all the force of the preposition ex, expressing the springing up or the growing out of one thing from another (see Luke xvi. 9; Acts i. 18; John iii. 5, 6; xviii. 36, at which last place the Lord asserts, his kingdom grows not out of an earthly root), and then the parable is brought in cofirmation. The sudden taking away of the rich worldling's goods, or which comes to the same thing, his sudden taking away from them, shows that his life, his true blessedness, was not from them,-that he had made a fearful mistake in supposing that it was: since the very idea of blessedness involves that of permanence, not of something that may slip from under a man's feet at any moment, which a happiness linked to a merely earthly life, and dependent upon the duration of that life, is ever liable to do; and then, at the conclusion of the parable, a glimpse of the true (wh is opened to us as being a πλovтeîv eis eóv, a life, a blessedness, which is eternal as the God upon whom it is built.

* Ambrose: Dat tibi fœcunditatem Deus, ut aut vincat aut condemnet avaritiam tuam.