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 (symbolic) punishment of the unfruitful tree at a 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 fruit; 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 Epistle to the Romans supplies the 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, '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' (Ezek. xvii. 24), 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 promise 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 (Num. xvii. 8). Henceforth the Jewish synagogue is stricken with a perpetual barrenness. Once it was everything, 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

6

1 Some have thought that our Lord alludes to this work of his, when He asks, 'If they do these things in a green tree, what shall be done in the dry?' (Luke xxiii. 31). If thus it fared with Him, 'a green tree,' full of sap, full of life, if He were thus bruised and put to grief, how should it fare with Israel after the flesh, 'the dry' tree, withered under the curse which He had spoken against it ?

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

upon it, that no man henceforward shall eat fruit of it for ever.1

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 favours 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 age, 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' (Hos. xiv. 8), 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

1 Augustine brings out often and well the figurative character of this miracle ;-though, with most expositors, he misses the chief stress of this tree's (symbolic) guilt, namely, its running before its time, and by its leaves proclaiming it had fruit; when its true part and that which the season justified, would have been to present itself with neither. He makes its real barrenness, contrasted with its pomp of leaves, to be the stress of its fault, leaving 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. lxxvii. 5: Etiam ipsa quæ a Domino facta sunt, aliquid significantia erant, quasi verba, si dici potest, visibilia et aliquid significantia. Quod maxime 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; primo quæsisse poma in illâ arbore, quando tempus non erat ut essent in ullâ arbore: deinde si pomorum janı tempus esset, non habere poma quæ culpa arboris esset? Sed quia significabat, quærere se non solum folia, sed et fructum, id est, non solum verba, sed et facta hominum, arefaciendo ubi sola folia invenit, significavit eorum pœnam, qui loqui bona possunt, facere bona nolunt. Cf. Serm. xcviii. 3: Christus nesciebat, quod rusticus sciebat? quod noverat arboris cultor, non noverat arboris creator? Cum 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. Cf. Con. Faust. xxii. 25.

sign of the breaking in of the new æon: 'Now learn a parable of the fig-tree. When his branch is yet 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 of the utter perishing of the tree, which was now 'dried up from the roots;' whereupon Peter calling to remembrance, saith unto Him: Master, behold, the fig-tree which Thou cursedst is withered away.' He will not let the occasion go by without its further lesson. What He had done, they might do the same and more. Faith in God would place them in relation with the same powers which He wielded, so that they might do mightier things even than this at which they marvelled so much.

THE

32. THE HEALING OF MALCHUS' EAR

LUKE Xxii. 49-51.

HE blow struck by a disciple, who would fain have fought for his Master, that He should not be delivered to the Jews, is recorded 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 injury which his disciple had inflicted, touched and restored the ear which he had cut off. It is possible that a double interest may have specially moved this Evangelist to include in his narrative this work of grace and power. 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, further, nothing lay nearer to his heart, or cohered more intimately with the purpose of his Gospel, than the portraying of the Lord on the side of his gentleness, his mercy, his benignity; and of all these there was an eminent manifestation in this gracious work wrought on behalf of one who was in arms against his life.

St. Luke, no doubt, knew very well, though he did not think good to set it down in his narrative, whose hand it was that struck this blow,-whether that the deed might still have brought him into trouble, though this appears an exceedingly improbable explanation, or from some other The two earlier Evangelists preserve a like silence on this head, and are content with generally designating

cause.

aim,-St. Matthew as one of them who were with Jesus,' St. Mark as one of them which stood by.' It is only from St. John we learn, what perhaps we might otherwise have surmised, but could not certainly have known, that it was Peter who struck this only blow stricken in defence of the Lord. He also tells us what perhaps the other Evangelists did not know, the name of the High Priest's servant who was wounded; the servant's name was Malchus.'' It is in entire consistency with all else which we read, that this fact should have come within the circle of St. John's knowledge, who had, in some way that is not explained to us, acquaintance with the High Priest (John xviii. 15), and so accurate a knowledge of the constitution of his household that he is able to tell us of one, who later in the night provoked Peter to his denial of Christ, that he was 'his kinsman whose ear Peter cut off' (ver. 26).

The whole incident is singularly characteristic; the word-bearer for the rest of the Apostles proves, when occasion requires, the sword-bearer also-not indeed in this altogether of a different temper from the others, but showing himself prompter and more daring in action than them all. While they are inquiring, 'Lord, shall we smite with the sword?' (Luke xxiii. 38) perplexed between the natural instinct of defence, with love to their perilled Lord, on the one side, and his precepts that they should not resist the evil, on the other, he waits not for the answer; but impelled by the natural courage of his heart,' and careless of the odds against him, aims a blow at one, probably the foremost of the band, the first that was daring to lay profane hands on the sacred person of his Lord. This was a servant of the High Priest,' one therefore who, according to the proverb, like master like man,'

2

1 Josephus twice mentions an Arabian king of this name, B. J. i. 14. 1; Antiqq. xiii. 5. 1. Malchus, which means king, was the proper name of Porphyry, the Neoplatonic philosopher. Longinus, rendering it into Greek, called him Пoppupeos, or the Purple-wearer.

Josephus characterizes the Galilæans as μαχίμους.