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be found in filial love to God. And thus His fulfilment of the law consists in the fact that He places the detailed practical commandments in the light of these two inseparable commandments, and so discloses all their height and depth. The six examples of His exposition of the law which the Gospel of Matthew records in succession (v. 21-48), the discussion of murder and adultery, of divorce and swearing, of reward and the treatment of enemies, all concern individual precepts, which, though in themselves moral, become in the theocratic commonwealth more or less legal commandments, and therefore do not contain a full exhibition of those great fundamental commandments; they simply give a rough indication of their application. But He transforms them from legal back to moral; He leads them back from the sphere of commission or omission into what is the original moral sphere, the sphere of disposition, in order thus to make it evident that the gross transgression is the final outcome of a development in evil, and that the right doing He has required is simply the most elementary inclination to do the will of God. The disposition on which He falls back is everywhere love to God and our neighbour, which excludes malevolent wrath and the unchaste look, which makes marriage indissoluble, and the simple yea or nay as good as an oath, which does not reward like with like, but overcomes evil with good, and includes, in the notion of neighbour, not only friends and brethren, but even enemies. But in reference to the ritual commandments, it was impossible for Jesus to give such examples of His fulfilment of the law as He has given in this series of great moral and judicial precepts, without actually anticipating the abrogation of these commandments. In order to illustrate the fulfilment here He would have been compelled to anticipate a process of development which He foresaw in connection with the entrance of the heathen world into His community, and with the judgment of God on Jerusalem, the approaching destruction of the temple and its worship, and by so doing He would have prepared for His disciples a situation outwardly and inwardly impossible; He would have made them strangers among their own people, without being able as yet to communicate to them His own inner freedom (cf. John xvi. 12). He therefore satisfied

BEYSCHLAG.-I.

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Himself with making them feel, both through His teaching and His example, the relative worth of mercy and sacrifice, and thus prepared them for that inner freedom with which He Himself opposed everything that was not worship of God in spirit and in truth. It is abundantly clear, however, from two important sayings, one of which we owe to His friends, the other to His enemies, that He did intend and desire for His future community this very freedom: the saying about the new wine which should not be put into old skins (Mark ii. 22), and the prediction of the new temple not made with hands which He will set up in place of the old, which is to be broken down (Mark xiv. 58). In the first, He has expressed the impossibility of comprehending in the old customary forms of piety the new religious life which He has to communicate to His own. In the second, He has expressed the certainty that through Him will spring up, in place of the worship of God that has hitherto prevailed, one that is more inward in its nature-a worship in spirit and in truth.1

When Weiss understands both parables in Mark ii. 18-22, that of the New Cloth on the Old Garment, and that of the New Wine in the Old Skins, as a justification of the disciples of John in their fasting according to the law, the old error is simply reversed by which earlier exegetes explained both parables as a justification of the freedom from fasting of the disciples of Jesus. The first parable justifies the procedure of the Baptist with his disciples, the second that of Jesus with His. One cannot put a patch of New Testament freedom on the garment of a view that is still essentially pre-Messianic, but just as little can one enclose the new wine of the Messianic spirit in the old defective forms of Judaism. Cf. my Easter Programme, Die Fastengleichnisse Jesu, 1875. Weiss declares this antithetic interpretation of the two parables to be impossible on account of the connecting "and," and because the justification of the disciples had already been given in the image of the children of the bride-chamber. But quite apart from the fact that that "and" might be attributed to a tradition that was not clear about the meaning, an antithesis is made by a mere "and" elsewhere (for example, Matt. xii. 35). Certainly Jesus justified His disciples in the image of the children of the bride-chamber, but in the Parable of the Wine and the Skins He justifies Himself. How improbable it is that instead of doing this He should have applied to the Baptist a superfluous double justification, and indeed a most unsuitable second after a fitting first. For the comparison of a ritual freedom with new wine, and the disciples of John with old skins, would have been in the worst possible taste. As to the saying about pulling down and rebuilding the temple, Stephen at least understood it as referring to the break up of the Old Testament forms of worship in favour of the new (Acts vi. 14); and certainly this interpre

§ 5. THE LOVE OF OUR NEIGHBOUR

It is a necessary consequence of the practical character of Jesus' teaching, and His position of conflict with a professed zeal for God which lacked the simplest moral fruits in life, that in the closer statement of His doctrine of righteousness He should give the first place to love of our neighbour. But He has a twofold question to answer with regard to this. First, Who is my neighbour? and then, What have I to do to him? The first question was laid before Him by a scribe (Luke x. 29), who considered it a difficult one-probably because he had in his mind all kinds of narrow-hearted limitations for the idea of neighbour. Jesus answers with the story of the Good Samaritan; that is, He sets a picture of pure human compassion over against the picture of a man in need, a compassion which does not ask: Who is he? a countryman, or a stranger and enemy? but simply sets about relieving his distress. And then, in making the application, He does not ask which of those three, the priest, the Levite, and the Samaritan, was neighbour, but which of them became neighbour to him who fell among murderers? By so doing He undoubtedly means to say, Do not stand asking who is thy neighbour, but be on the outlook for him to whom thou canst be neighbour, that is, canst show goodness and mercy (Luke x. 23-37). What is here just indicated is directly expressed in Matt. v. 43-48: that the idea of neighbour includes even enemies, those by whom we are hated and persecuted. If the standpoint of righteousness hitherto has opposed neighbour and enemy to one another, and has therefore deduced from "thou shalt love thy neighbour" its converse," and hate thine enemy" (ver. 43), the righteousness of the kingdom of heaven is to love even enemies, and, in case they make all other proofs of love impossible, at least to pray for those who despitefully use and persecute us.1 This is demanded by the example of God the ever-merciful, who makes His sun to shine upon the evil and the good, and

tation has more in its favour than that of the evangelist John (ii. 19), who referred the words typologically to the death and resurrection of Jesus.

1 This is the true reading in Matthew; the fuller form of the saying is in Luke vi. 27, 28.

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sendeth rain upon the just and the unjust. The other question, What have I to do to my neighbour? Jesus answers most concisely, Matt. vii. 12: All that ye would that men should do to you, do ye also so to them." The human heart is so conditioned that it knows very well at all times what is due to it from others according to the law of love, while its own charitable duty is obscured by its natural selfishness. It has only therefore to change places, and ask itself what it would desire from others in a like case, in order to know what it should do in any instance. As this practical rule in a sense comprehends everything, so that He can add, "that is the law and the prophets," Jesus enters further into the meaning of the moral action. He does not proceed systematically, and with the intention of including everything, but by selection, and as the occasion required; He presupposes the Ten Commandments as constantly valid, and it is quite enough for Him to illustrate by individual examples what He meant by this continuous authority. Love to one's neighbour displays itself to Him above all in simple goodness, in doing good, and communicating, in giving without second thoughts, without counting on benefit or reward. "Give to him that asketh of thee; and from him that would borrow of thee turn thou not away" (Matt. v. 42; Luke vi. 34, 35). A speech at table, which must be taken as a parable (Luke xiv. 13, 14), exhorts: "When thou makest a feast, invite not thy friends, relations, and rich neighbours; lest they also bid thee, and a recompense be made thee. But rather invite the poor, the maimed, the lame, and the blind, who cannot recompense thee: and thou shalt be blessed." A picture which reminds us of those words of Jesus preserved by Paul, Acts xx. 35: "It is more blessed to give than to receive." To spend our earthly goods on the poor is to Him the best and most faithful management of them, to make to ourselves, as it is said in Luke xvi. 9, friends with the unrighteous Mammon. By the side of giving appears, with special emphasis, the duty of forgiving. The forgiveness of wrong is to be granted not only seven times, as Peter wished, but seventy times seven-that is, without limits (Matt. xviii. 21; Luke xvii, 3, 4). For, as stated in the fifth petition of the Lord's Prayer, and illustrated in the Parable of the Unfaithful

Servant (Matt. xviii. 23), the divine forgiveness which we so much need is conditioned by the human forgiveness which we exercise. He only belongs to the kingdom of love as a recipient, who also wishes to belong to it as an agent; he who proceeds according to cold justice has only strict justice. to expect. Not that this duty of placability and forgiveness excludes the duty of "rebuke" (λéyxew), that is, of urging to improvement. In fact, it goes hand in hand with forgiveness, especially when a brother in the narrower sense, a fellow-member in the Church of Christ, is concerned, in whose case such a step has most likelihood of success (Luke xvii. 3 ff.; Matt. xviii. 15-21). But the duty of love to forgive sincerely, and to remove every feeling of wrath and revenge, remains, even where there is no apology or change of mind, as is shown by the exhortation to the love of all enemies (Luke vi. 37, 38). zeal for improvement which true love is able to reform. men against judging and condemning, that is, against all loveless sentences on the defects of our neighbour, invading the functions of the eternal Judge (Matt. vii. 1 f.; Luke vi. 37). And because to reform, or rather to save a neighbour, to win him for the kingdom of God (Matt. xviii. 15), is certainly the last and highest aim of love, so love begins in personal reformation, in putting away all causes of offence; and love knows no more serious fault against a neighbour than to provoke him, that is, to give him offence, to make him stumble, and go astray on the way to God. "Thou hypocrite," cries our Lord therefore to the loveless and selfrighteous man who judges his neighbour, "first cast out the beam (the beam of heartless pride) from thine own eye, and then thou shalt see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye" (Matt. vii. 3-5; Luke vi. 41). And in this world full of offences He warns, in the strongest words, against giving offence even to the least, hurting or endangering one soul, whose angel, on that account, carries a complaint before God's presence: "It were better for that man that a millstone were hung about his neck, and he were cast into the depths of the sea" (Matt. xviii. 6, 7, 10). Finally, the means by which love may hope most surely to win a neigh

On the other hand, there is a is not the best, for nothing but Jesus therefore, above all, warns

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