them, O generation of vipers, who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come.

8. Bring forth therefore fruits meet for repen

tance.

9. And think not to say within yourselves, we have Abraham to our father; for I say unto you, that God is able of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham.

Fulfilled by Gentiles, hitherto sterile of spiritual vegetation as stones, becoming incorporated into the apostolic and permanently episcopal church, which was formed at first of Jewish converts.

And it would be perhaps wise above what was written to insist, that there have not been many more hearers, believers, and partakers of the faith which was in Abraham, although never in this world visibly incorporated into such church; nor, peradventure, healthy plants, raised within the enclosures of schism, who were neither accusers of fellow-Christians nor lovers of separation or schism.

* A term not to be repelled as preposterously unsuitable to crowds that are equally forward to conform to all the ordinances of the church of Christ; as though the old serpent, that deceiveth the whole world, must find it impossible to beget sinful evasions in such, of the duty and work of their sacred calling.

10. And now also the axe is laid to the root of the trees: therefore every tree which bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire.

Just as, some forty years from that time, the tree of the Jewish nation, for its unbelief, was to be laid low. A tree is employed in the Holy Scripture for communities (Ezek. xvii. 23), for a unit of such (Ps. i. 3) and for either (Dan. iv. 10, 22, and Mat. xiii. 32); for a nation, a church, or a man.

Holy Ghost, and with fire.

Are these two one? The cause perhaps and the effect under the similitude of fire or heat loosening the torpidity of trees in the spring?

12. Whose fan* is in his hand, and he will throughly purge his floor, and gather his wheat into the garner; but he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.

The wondrous accompaniments of Jesus' baptism are next narrated, when John had

*Greek πTÚOV. There is a word till lately known in Lincolnshire to express the wearing of strong bodily exertion, perhaps akin to this, viz., "ptew," "ptewed," if it may be so spelt. "I am fine and ptewed," agitated, beat backwards and forwards, as by a fan or winnowing instrument.

declared his need to be baptized of Him, and was not, that we know; but Jesus was baptized of John, to fulfil all righteousness. John, in the case supposed, would have shared the promises, with his holy predecessor saints, of the old covenant, of whom Christ's declaration ranks him behind none (xi. 11).

CHAPTER IV.

1. Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilderness, to be tempted of the Devil.

As it were on purpose, by this one trial of strength with the winning champion in Eden, to reverse that ancient victory.

That the same divine Person especially determines both time and place, where the followers of Jesus shall severally encounter the Devil's fiercest efforts against them, may deserve consideration.

2. And when he had fasted forty days and forty nights, he was afterward an hungered.

This fast must be presumed, in absence of testimony to the contrary, to have been longer than the natural strength could have preserved life through. Still it is objectionable to compare

Christ's state after his forty days' fast, as to physical exhaustion, to the effect upon Daniel and his companions, after their abstemious diet instead of the king's meat and wine (Dan. ii. 15). This example of Christ's fast might not, taken alone, prove to all that fasting was a duty. There might be alleged in it, as in his circumcision, a fulfilment of the law. Oh, for the other remaining triumphs of that King who should reign and prosper! Oh, for that judgment and justice which He should set up, for the poor to be delivered when he cried, for fasts to cease jarring with feasts, and feasts to cease insulting privation, for fasts being displaced by victorious praise, and joy becoming less out of time!

In verses 3 to 10 inclusive, the manner of the Devil's approach to Christ is described, which doubtless presents Christ's followers with a fair warning against similar approaches to themselves. As Christ would not, at Satan's bidding, either perform a miracle to satisfy his hunger, or make a miracle necessary to his preservation, in an act attempted for popular notice of him, or fall down and worship Satan to be sovereign over the nations a day sooner; so will refusal be necessary by Christ's followers to act upon impulses from within, from advice

from without, or with assistance offered; towards gaining objects, albeit those of their most cherished and even laudable ambition, until every test has been put in requisition.

The "Paradise Regained," of Milton, is grounded upon Christ's temptation, and is, perhaps, a superior production to that eminent poet's "Paradise Lost." But let the reader of Milton be his own guide as to doctrine.

12. Now when Jesus had heard that John was cast into prison, he departed into Galilee;

13. And leaving Nazareth, he came and dwelt in Capernaum.

Not further off from, but near to, John's enemies, occupied a house there. The expenses of his own and disciples' maintenance, together with the calls for aiding poor friends to the cause, would have been considerable. It might be conjectured that some means came to that common purse which Judas carried, from sale of property, previously private, to the inmates of that Capernaum mission station, and was next replenished by those thoughtful hearers, whose gifts were accepted, and afterwards by many others' gifts; after it became understood that Christ was establishing the principle by example, that the labourer in the cause that he then represented was worthy of his hire.