THE GOSPEL

ACCORDING TO

S. MATTHEW

WITH EXPLANATORY NOTES

For the Use of Teachers

BY

HENRY HERBERT WYATT, M.A.

PRINCIPAL OF BRIGHTON TRAINING COLLEGE, AND VICAR OF BOLNEY, SUSSEX

AUTHOR OF

PRINCIPAL HERESIES RELATING TO OUR LORD'S INCARNATION'

WITH COMMENDATORY PREFACE

BY THE

ARCHBISHOPS' INSPECTOR OF TRAINING COLLEGES

RIVINGTONS

WATERLOO PLACE, LONDON

MDCCCLXXXIV

1016. f.9

INTRODUCTION.

HAVING been asked to write a short commendation

of the following Notes, it is a genuine pleasure

to do so. They are the result of careful weighing of the thoughts of many minds, and while they are brief they are suggestive. They are clear and to the point, reverent in tone, and sound. The students in our Training Colleges will find them very useful, as will our pupil-teachers, and all who desire to learn without distraction the meaning of the Holy Bible. It will be refreshing to have the mind turned from the setting to the jewel which the setting is intended to shew; for the prevalent mode of dealing with Holy Writ is tending to direct thought to the accessories rather than to the essence of the truth revealed in Christ. This book, the work of a student who without display uses his knowledge of the subject and of the minds for whose

benefit he writes, seems all through its pages to lead us to the Person in Whom the Revelation of God is found. May the intention be fulfilled and abundantly blessed!

JOHN L. DARBY,

Archdeacon of Chester.

Is

PREFACE.

there need of another Commentary of any kind on S. Matthew's Gospel? Is there anything new to be said?

Originality is an idea often misconceived of; it would be supposed (if anywhere) in Shakespeare; yet his materials, and even his language, are found in Sir Thomas North's translation from the French of Jacques Angot, Bishop of Auxerre, of Plutarch's Lives; and the correspondence between Shakespeare and North is close, especially in "Coriolanus." The speech of

Brutus, Act iii. Scene iii. 320 seq., is almost word for word from Plutarch.

And of ancient ecclesiastical writers, Theophylact in his Commentaries draws largely from S. Chrysostom.

There is a just observation on the subject of originality in a modern writer:1 "The heat of political passion afterwards induced a bitter critic to accuse Sir Robert Peel of lack of originality, because he assimilated readily and turned to account the ideas of other Not merely the criticism, but the principle on which it was founded, was altogether wrong. It ought

men.

1 History of our own Times, by Justin M'Carthy, vol. i. p. 44.