all the other trees, challenged the passer-by that he should come and refresh himself with its fruit. Yet when the Lord accepted its challenge, and drew near, it proved to be but as the others, without fruit as they; for indeed, as the Evangelist observes, the time of figs had not yet arrived, its fault, if one may use the word, lying in its pretension, in its making a show to run before the rest, when it did not so indeed. It was condemned, not so much for having no fruit, as for this, that not having fruit, it clothed itself abundantly with leaves, with the foliage which, being there, did, according to the natural order of the tree's development, give pledge and promise that fruit should be found on it, if sought.

And this will then exactly answer to the sin of Israel, which under this tree was symbolized,—that sin being not so much that they were without fruit, as that they boasted of so much. Their true fruit, the true fruit of any people before the Incarnation, would have been to own that they had no fruit, that without Christ, without the incarnate Son of God, they could do nothing; to have presented themselves before God, bare and naked and empty altogether. But this was exactly what Israel refused to do. Other nations might have nothing to boast of, but they by their own showing had much.* And yet on closer inspection, the reality of righteousness was as much wanting on their part as any where besides.

And how should it have been otherwise? "for the time of figs was not yet;"—the time for the bare stock and stem of humanity to array itself in bud and blossom, with leaf and fruit, had not come, till its ingrafting on the nobler stock of the true Man. All which anticipated this, which would say that it could be any thing or do any thing other wise than in him and by him, was deceitful and premature. The other trees had nothing, but they did not pretend to have any thing; this tree had nothing, but it gave out that it had much. So was it severally with Gentile and with Jew. The Gentiles were bare of all fruits of righteousness, but they owned it; the Jews were bare, but they vaunted that they were full. The Gentiles were sinners, but they hypocrites and pretenders to boot, and by so much further from the kingdom of God, and more nigh unto a curse. Their guilt was not that they had not the perfect fruits of faith, for it was not the season for such; the time of these

* It is not a little remarkable that it was with the fig-leaves that in Paradise Adam attempted to deny his nakedness, and to present himself as other than a sinner before God. (Gen. iii. 7.)

Witsius (Meletem. Leiden, p. 415): Folia sunt jactatio Legis, templi, cultûs, cærimoniarum, pietatis denique et sanctimoniæ, quarum se specie valdè efferebant. Fructus sunt resipiscentia, fides, sanctitas, quibus carebant,

was not yet; but that, not having, they so boastfully gave out that they had, not that they were not healed, but that, being unhealed, they counted themselves whole. The Law would have done its work, the very work for which God ordained it, if it had stripped them of these boastful leaves, or rather had prevented them from ever putting them forth.

Here, then, according to this explanation, there is no difficulty either in the Lord's going to the tree at that unseasonable time, he would not have gone, but for those deceitful leaves which announced that fruit was there,-nor in the (symbolical) punishment of the unfruitful tree at this season of the year, when according to the natural order it could not have had any. It was punished not for being without fruit, but for proclaiming by the voice of those leaves that it had such,—not for being barren, but for being false. And this was the guilt of Israel, a guilt so much deeper than the guilt of the nations. The attentive study of the epistle to the Romans supplies the true key to the right understanding of this miracle; such passages especially as ii. 3, 17–27; x. 3, 4, 21; xi. 7, 10. Nor should that remarkable parallel, Ezek. xvii. 24: "And all the trees of the field shall know that I the Lord. . . have dried up the green tree and made the dry tree to flourish," be left out of account.* And then the sentence, "No man eat fruit of thee hereafter for ever,” will be just the reversal of the blessing that in them all nations of the earth should be blessed-the symbolic counterstroke to the ratification of the Levitical priesthood, through the putting forth, by Aaron's rod, of bud and blossom and fruit in a night. Henceforth the Jewish synagogue is stricken with a perpetual barrenness;† it once was every thing, but now it is nothing, to the world; it stands apart, like a thing forbid; what little it has, it communicates to none; the curse has come upon it, that no man henceforward shall eat fruit of it for ever.

*It is possible, and some have thought, that our Lord has another allusion to what here he had done in those other words of his, "If they do these things in a green tree, what shall be done in the dry?" (Luke xxiii. 31;) if God so dealt with him "a green tree," full of sap, full of life, if he thus bruised and put him to pain, how should he deal with Israel after the flesh, a "dry" tree, withered and dried up under the power of that curse which had been spoken against it?

+ Witsius (Meletem. Leiden., p. 415): Parabolica ficûs maledictio significavit, futurum esse ut populus Israëliticus, justâ Dei indignatione, omni vigore et succo spiritualis fœcunditatis privetur, et quia fructus bonorum operum proferre isthoc temporenoluit, dein nec possit. Ac veluti maledictionis sententiam ficûs arefactio protinus excepit, sic et Judæorum natio, mox post spretum protervé Messiam, exaruit.

Augustine brings out often and very strikingly the figurative character of this miracle;-though, with most other expositors, he misses what seems to me the chief stress of this tree's (symbolic) guilt, and that which drew on it the curse, namely, its

And yet this "for ever" has its merciful limitation, when we come to transfer the curse from the tree to that of which the tree was as a living parable; a limitation which the word itself* favors and allows; which lies hidden in it, to be revealed in due time. None shall eat fruit of that tree to the end of the present æon, not until these "times of the Gentiles" are fulfilled. A day indeed will come when Israel, which now says, "I am a dry tree," shall consent to that word of its true Lord, which of old it denied, "From me is thy fruit found," and shall be arrayed with the richest foliage and fruit of all the trees of the field. The Lord, in his great discourse upon the last things (Matt. xxiv.) implies this, when he gives this commencing conversion of the Jews under the image of the re-clothing of the bare and withered fig-tree with leaf and bud, as the sign of the breaking in of the new æon, which he does, saying, "Now learn a parable of the fig tree. When his branch is yett tender, and putteth forth leaves, ye know that summer is nigh: so likewise ye, when ye shall see all these things, know that it is near, even at the doors." (ver. 32, 33.)

It would appear from St. Matthew that some beginnings of the threatened withering began to show themselves, almost as soon as the word of the Lord was spoken; a shuddering fear may have run through all the leaves of the tree, which was thus stricken at its heart. But it was not till the next morning, as the disciples returned, that they took note

running before its time, and by its leaves proclaiming it had fruit, when its true part and that which the season would have justified, would have been to present itself with neither. He, in the following quotations, otherwise so admirable, makes its barrenness, contrasted with its pomp of leaves, to be the stress of its fault, putting out of sight the untimeliness of those leaves and of that pretence of fruit which is the most important element in the whole. Thus (Serm. 77, c. 5): Etiam ipsa quæ à Domino facta sunt, aliquid significantia erant, quasi verba, si dici potest, visibilia et aliquid significantia. Quod maximè apparet in eo quod præter tempus poma quæsivit in arbore, et quia non invenit, arbori maledicens aridam fecit. Hoc factum nisi figuratum accipiatur, stultum invenitur; primò quæsisse poma in illâ arbore, quando tempus non erat ut essent in ullâ arbore: deinde si pomorum jam tempus esset, non habere poma quæ culpa arboris esset? Sed quia significabat, quærere se non solùm folia, sed et fructum, id est, non solùm verba, sed et facta hominum, arefaciendo ubi sola folia invenit, significavit eorum pœnam, qui loqui bona possunt, facere bona nolunt. Cf Serm. 98, c. 3: Christus nesciebat, quod rusticus sciebat? quod noverat arboris cultor, non noverat arboris creator? Cùm ergo esuriens poma quæsivit in arbore, significavit se aliquid esurire, et aliquid aliud quærere; et arborem illam sine fructu foliis plenam reperit, et maledixit; et aruit. Quid arbor fecerat fructum non afferendo ? Quæ culpa arboris infecunditas? Sed sunt qui fructum voluntate dare non possunt Illorum est culpa sterilitas, quorum fecunditas est voluntas.

* Εἰς τὸν αἰῶνα.

+ Or rather "is now," nôn.

of the utter perishing of the tree, which had followed upon that word spoken, so that it was "dried up from the roots," and called their Lord's attention to the same: (6 Master, behold the fig-tree which thou cursedst, is withered away."* The Lord will not let the occasion go by without its further lesson. What he had done, they might do the same and Faith in God would place them in relation with the same power which he wielded, so that they might do mightier things even than this at which they marvelled so much.

more.

In the tone in which this observation was made, an interrogation was implied; they would observe that it was so, and ask of him how it was so. This is yet more evident in St. Matthew's "How soon is the fig-tree withered away !" by many made an interrogation; thus in Bishop Lloyd's edition, who prints πç πapaxpñμa ¿§npúvon houкn; but in that s there is not an express question, only an interrogative exclamation.

XXXII.

THE HEALING OF MALCHUS'S EAR.

LUKE Xxii. 49-51.

THE cutting off the ear of the servant of the high priest by one of the disciples, who would fain have fought for his Master that he should not be delivered to the Jews, is related by all four Evangelists, (Matt. xxvi. 51; Mark xiv. 47; Luke xxii. 50; John xviii. 10;) but the miracle belongs only to St. Luke, for he only tells how the Lord made good the wrong which his disciple had inflicted. And we may trace, perhaps, in this Evangelist a double interest which might have specially moved him to the including in his Gospel this work of grace. As a physician, this cure, the only one of its kind which we know of our Lord's performing, the only miraculous healing of a wound inflicted by external violence, would attract his special attention. And then, besides, there was nothing nearer to St. Luke's heart, or that cohered more intimately with the purpose of his Gospel, than the portraying of the Lord on the side of his gentleness, his mercy, and benignity; all which so gloriously shone out in this gracious work in favor of one who was in arms against his life.

The Evangelist, no doubt, knew very well, but has not thought good to tell us, who it was that struck this blow,-whether the deed might still have brought him into trouble, though that appears an exceedingly improbable explanation, or from some other cause. St. Matthew and St. Mark equally preserve silence on this head, and are content with generally designating him, Matthew as one of them who were with Jesus," Mark as "one of them which stood by." And it is only from St. John that we learn, what perhaps otherwise we might have guessed, but could not certainly have known, that it was St. Peter, who in this way sought to deliver his imperilled Lord. He also alone gives us the