as at other times before' against their enemies, being certain to be foiled whenever they encountered an enemy of peculiar malignity. And such they encountered here; for the phrase 'this kind' marks that there are orders of evil spirits, that as there is a hierarchy of heaven, so is there an inverted hierarchy of hell. The same is intimated in the mention of the unclean spirit going and taking 'seven other spirits more wicked than himself' (Matt. xii. 45); and at Ephes. vi. 12, there is probably a climax, mounting up from one degree of spiritual power and malignity to another. This kind,' He declares, 'goeth not out but by prayer and fasting.' The faith which shall be effectual against this must be a faith exercised in prayer, that has not relaxed itself by an habitual compliance with the demands of the lower nature, but has often girt itself up to an austerer rule, to rigour and selfdenial.

6

But as the secret of all weakness is in unbelief, so of all strength in faith: For verily I say unto you, If ye have faith as a grain of mustard-seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place, and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible unto you.' The image re-appears with some modifications, Luke xvii. 6; and St. Paul probably alludes to these words of his Lord, 1 Cor. xiii. 2. Many explain 'faith as a grain of mustard-seed' to mean lively faith, with allusion to the keen and biting powers of that grain. But it is not on this side that the comparison should be urged; rather, it is the smallest faith, with a tacit contrast between a grain of mustard-seed, a very small thing (Matt. xiii. 31, 32), and a mountain, a very great. That smallest shall be effectual to work on this largest. The least spiritual power, which is really such, shall be strong to overthrow the mightiest powers which are merely of this world.

1

1

Augustine (Serm. ccxlvi.): Modicum videtur granum sinapis; nihil contemtibilius adspectu, nihil fortius gustu. Quod quid est aliud, nisi maximus ardor et intima vis fidei in Ecclesiâ?

28. THE STATER IN THE FISH'S MOUTH.

MATT. xvii. 24-27.

O other Evangelist records this miracle but St. Matthew; and before we close our examination of it, it will be abundantly clear why, if we meet it in one Gospel only, then in that which is eminently the Gospel of the kingdom, of the King and the King's Son. It is a miracle full of the profoundest teaching; though its true depth and significance have not always been seized; have been sometimes lost and let go altogether; for indeed the entire transaction is emptied of all higher meaning when it is assumed that the tribute' here demanded of the Lord was a civil impost, owing, like the penny of a later occasion (Matt. xxii. 19), to the Roman emperor, and not a national and theocratic payment, due to the temple and the temple's God. But this is a matter which we must not anticipate.

Our Lord, we may presume, with Peter and other of his disciples, was returning, after one of his usual absences, to Capernaum, his own city. The collectors of the templedues may have been withheld by a certain awe from addressing Him, and He may have thus passed without question; but they detain Peter, who perhaps had lingered a little behind his Lord, and of him they ask, 'Doth not your Master pay tribute?' or, as I should much prefer to see it rendered, 'Doth not your Master pay the didrachms?' Tribute' is here on many accounts an unfor

1 See Greswell, Dissertations, vol. ii. p. 374, seq.

Tà didpaxua, with the article, as something perfectly well known: in

tunate rendering, upholding and indeed suggesting a misapprehension of the meaning of the whole incident; which, even without the inducement of this faulty rendering, has been often enough altogether misunderstood. Thus Clement of Alexandria,' Origen, Augustine,2 Jerome, Sedulius, all understand by this 'tribute' a civil payment; finding here the same lesson as at Rom. xiii. 1-7: 'Let every soul be subject to the higher powers.

3

Render therefore to all their dues, tribute to whom tribute is due,' the lesson, that is, of a willing obedience to the

civil power.

But these and others have gone astray, I am persuaded, more from not having the right interpretation before them, than from any deliberate preference of the wrong. For indeed the proofs that what is demanded here is not tribute to Cæsar, but dues to the temple, are such as ought to be convincing to every one before whom they are fairly brought. For, in the first place, this 'didrachm" which

the plural on the first occasion, to mark the number of didrachms that from the whole people were received, being one from each person; on the second, to mark the yearly repetition of the payment from each.

1 Τὸν στατῆρα τοῖς τελώναις δοὺς, τὰ Καίσαρος ἀποδοὺς τῷ Καίσαρι. 2 De Catechiz. Rud. 21: Ipse Dominus, ut nobis hujus sanæ doctrin præberet exemplum, pro capite hominis, quo erat indutus, tributum solvere non dedignatus est.

3 Tributum Cæsareum he calls it. Add to these Calvin, who however has a glimpse of the truth, and Maldonatus, for once consenting with him who is the great object of his polemical hate. Wolf in like manner (Curæ, in loc.) has the wrong interpretation; and Petitus (Crit. Sac. ix. 2566); Corn. a Lapide; and recently, after any further mistake seemed impossible, Wieseler (Chronol. Synopse, p. 265, seq.) has returned to the old error. The true meaning has been perfectly seized by Hilary (in loc.); by Ambrose (Ep. vii. ad Justum, 12); in the main by Chrysostom (In Matt. Hom. liv.) and Theophylact, who have yet both gone astray upon Num. iii. 40-51; by Theodoret (Quæst. in Num. Inter. 9); and in later times by Cameron (Crit. Sac. in loc.); by Freher (Ibid. vol. ix. p. 3633); by Jeremy Taylor (Life of Christ, part iii. § xiv. 13); by Hammond, Grotius, Lightfoot, Bengel, Michaëlis, Olshausen, Stier, Greswell (Dissert. vol. ii. p. 376), Alford, and Ellicott (Life of our Lord, p. 229).

4 In the Septuagint (Exod. xxx. 13) žμiov тov dièpáxμov, they express themselves, as naturally they would, according to the Alexandrian

the collectors here demand, was exactly the ransom of souls, the half shekel (Exod. xxx. 11-16) to be paid by every Israelite above twenty years old to the service and current expenses of the tabernacle, or, as it afterwards would be, of the temple. Certainly it does not appear at first as an annual payment, but only as payable on the occasions, not frequently recurring, of the numbering of the people. But it became annual, whether this had been the real intention from the first, or out of a later custom. Thus there are distinct notices of this payment in the time of the Jewish kings. Joash sets apart for the reparation of the temple funds to be derived from three sources (2 Kin. xii. 4) ; the first being this half shekel, the collection that Moses the servant of God laid upon Israel in the wilderness,' as it is called in the contemporary record in the Chronicles (2 Chron. xxiv. 9).2 At a later day, it is the third part of a

drachm, which was twice the value of the Attic (see Hammond, in loc.).

1 Before the Babylonian exile, the shekel was only a certain weight of silver, not a coin. The Maccabees, however (1 Macc. xv. 6), received the privilege, or won the right, from the kings of Syria of coining their own money; and the shekels, half shekels, and quarter shekels now in the cabinets of collectors are to be referred to their time. These growing scarce, and not being coined any more, it became the custom to estimate the temple-dues as two drachms (the didpaxpov here required), a sum actually somewhat larger than the half shekel, as shown by a comparison of existing specimens of each; thus Josephus (Antt. iii. 8. 2): 'O dè oirλoç, νόμισμα ̔Εβραίων ὢν, Αττικὰς δέχεται δραχμὰς τέσσαρας. As the produce of the miracle was to pay for two persons, the sum required was four drachms, or a whole shekel, and the orario found in the mouth of the fish, often called Terpaopaxμoç, is just that sum. Jerome: Siclus autem, id est stater, habet drachmas quatuor. This stater is not of course the gold coin more accurately so called, equivalent not to four, but to twenty, drachms; but the silver tetradrachm, which in later times of Greece was called a stater. That other stater, equal to the Persian daric, was worth something more than sixteen shillings of our money, three shillings and three pence (see the Dict. of Gr. and Rom. Antt. 8. Vv. Drachma and Stater; Winer, Realwörterbuch, s. v. Sekel; and the Dict. of the Bible, art. Money, vol. ii. p. 409). It is curious that Theophylact should be ignorant of what this stater is. Some think it, he says, a precious stone found in Syria.

this

2 So Dathe and Keil; Michaëlis (Mos. Recht, vol. iii. p. 202) questions or denies it.

shekel, and not the half, which the Jews impose upon themselves (Nehem. x. 32). This might suggest a doubt whether the same contribution is there intended; as they would scarcely have ventured to alter the amount of a divinely instituted payment. Yet the fact that it was yearly, and expressly for the service of God's house, will not allow us to suppose it any other; and they may have found in their present poverty and distress an excuse for the diminution of the charge. It was an annual payment in the time of Josephus. Philo attests the conscientious and ungrudging accuracy with which it was paid by the Jews of the Dispersion, so that in almost every city of the Empire, and in cities too beyond its limits, there was a sacred chest for the collection of these dues: the sum of which at stated times sacred messengers were selected from among the worthiest to bear to Jerusalem.2 It was Vespasian who diverted this capitation tax into the imperial fisc, but only after the city and the temple had been destroyed. Josephus is very distinct on this point; I quote his words, as the sole argument in favour of a secular and not a theocratic payment is, that before this time, as early as Pompeius, these moneys had been turned from their original destination, and made payable to the Roman exchequer. Of Vespasian he writes: He imposed a tribute on the Jews wheresoever they lived, requiring each 1 Antt. xviii. It should be paid between the 15th and 25th of the month Adar (March), that is, about the feast of the passover. Yet no secure chronological conclusions in regard to our Lord's ministry can be won from this; as, through his absence from Capernaum, the money might have been for some time due. Indeed, the feast of tabernacles was probably now at hand.

9. I.

* De Monarch. ii. 3: Ιεροπομποὶ τῶν χρημάτων ἀριστίνδην ἐπικριθέντες. The whole passage reminds one much of the collection, and the manner of the transmission, of the gifts of the faithful in Achaia to Jerusalem by the hands of Paul; cf. his Leg. ad Cai. § 31. We find from Cicero (Pro Flacco, 28), that one charge against Flaccus was that he prevented the transmission of these temple-dues to Jerusalem: Cum aurum, Judæorum nomine, quotannis ex Italiâ et ex omnibus vestris provinciis Hierosolymam exportari soleret, Flaccus sanxit edicto, ne ex Asiâ exportari liceret.