and you know what bottles were and to this day are used in the East?" "Bottles of skin," said Ellen. "So that when they were old they would become hard and rotten, and unable to stretch, and be liable to burst," said Cecilia, "if wine, still fermenting, was put in." "I believe the meaning is, that the new dispensation of Christ's gospel could not be made to fit into the old ritual of Jewish laws, worn out and corrupted as it was. To destroy the oneness of His doctrine by attempting to incorporate it into the teaching of the Pharisees would be as unwise as to take a piece out of a new garment for the sake of mending an old. The mischief that was done by attempting this is brought out in St Paul's remonstrances to the Judaising Christians." "And does the parable of the bottles mean the same thing?" "Very nearly; it is a different aspect of the same instruction. The new wine means, I believe, Christ's new doctrine; the old bottles, unfit as yet to receive it, are the disciples, who, called from their daily occupations, would have been driven away if any austerities had been imposed upon them, or any very difficult truths taught them at first; but the very same disciples, when renewed and strengthened by the Spirit, were able to do and bear what the self-supported strength of the Pharisees, or even the more earnest will of John's disciples, would have shrunk from. You remember St Paul's account of his own sufferings for the cause of Christ in the 11th chapter of the Second Corinthians; but that was not the hardest part of their labours. The subjection of every thought to the obedience of Christ is a harder task than any bodily exertion or suffering, and that was not only their own state, but the constant burden of their teaching. The last verse, which is peculiar to this gospel, has something of the same meaning that men are more inclined to continue in their old religion, though it be imperfect and insufficient, rather than change to a better religion which is strange to them, in the same way as they naturally like that wine which they are accustomed to, and cannot readily adapt themselves to what is new." "The word 'new cloth' is not the same in Matthew and Mark," said Alfred; "it means undressed, raw, not yet fit for use." "The simile will, in that case, not be quite the same, but it all falls in with the lesson which we are to learn from all those parables-the necessity of teaching and enforcing, not only that which is good, but that which is suitable, and biding time and opportunity respecting the state of mind, the prejudices, the previous training of others, and dealing tenderly with them, and not demanding from them, or even from ourselves, sorrow and mourning when God gives us a time of holy joy, or expecting spiritual rejoicing when God sends us trouble; nor, again, feeding babes in Christ with strong meat, teaching difficult doctrines to, and expecting the highest, most perfect Christian actions from, those who are as yet only beginners in Christ. And now we must leave off; we have been already longer than usual." CHAPTER VII. ST LUKE VI. 1-11; ST MATTHEW XII. 1-13; "WHAT does the second Sabbath after the first mean?" said Cecilia, when the party were assembled. "The word stands literally, the second first Sabbath," said Alfred; "do you know what it means, mother?" "No, I do not understand; there are various explanations offered, some referring it to the sabbatical cycle of years, others to the reckoning from the Passover; but neither you nor I can judge which is most likely to be correct." “The Pharisees do not seem to have objected to the disciples gathering the corn on any other ground but because it was the Sabbath-day," said May. 66 No; the act was allowed by their law, as you will see if you look in the end of the 23d of Deuteronomy; but they considered it a profanation of the Sabbath. Christ justifies it by an appeal to the conduct of David, their own beloved king and leader; and of the priest who, when David came to him faint and exhausted, as he probably was, and with no other means of support, gave him the shewbread to eat, which was not lawful to eat but for the priests." "I do not now quite understand what made David's action so right that our Lord could sanction it," said May. "Hunger, and the impossibility of procuring in any other way the food necessary to support life. The lawfulness of infringing even the strictest letter of God's commands in a case of real necessity, is a very delicate matter, and as inclination is sure to lead us one way, we must be very careful not to give way to it too readily. In the present case the disciples had the same justification, if it were needed, which is very doubtful. Some who are very conversant with the minute points of the Jewish interpretation of the law, say that the Pharisees did not object to their plucking the ears of corn, but to their rubbing them in their hands, as that was labour, but this seems too overstrained even for them." "Anyhow it was very poor food for hungry men," said Alfred. 66 Yes," rejoined Cecilia; "I think one would have been inclined rather to give them something more worth eating than to quarrel with them for eating what they could get." "The words recorded by all three Evangelists, that the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath,' seem to me not only to refer to the declaration that the Sabbath was made for man,' but to have a prophetic meaning. Can you tell me what I allude to? In what special way did Christ show His dominion over the Sabbath?" "Do you mean," said May, "by changing the day, from the seventh to the first?" "Yes; since the time when He rose from the dead, and sanctified that day, it became the sacred day of Christians, and the Jewish Sabbath gradually fell into disuse. St Paul speaks of it, among other Jewish observances, as a matter of indifference. (Col. ii. 16.) Can you tell me what we know of the consecration of the first day of the week?" "Christ appeared to His apostles on the day of His resurrection, and not again till the first day of the next week," said Cecilia. "And the descent of the Holy Ghost from heaven was on that day," said May. "Was it so ?" said Alfred. F Probably it took place on that day, but it is not quite certain whether it was on the last or the first day of the week, and I cannot enter into the question now.* Christ's revelation of Himself to His beloved disciple, and the foreshowing of the future struggles and glorious triumph of His Church, were given, in part at least, on the Lord's-day; and besides, we meet with allusions to the first day in the Acts and the Epistles" (Acts xx. 7; 1 Cor. xvi. 1, 2; Rev. i. 10). "The history of the man with a withered hand is recorded to have taken place on another Sabbath, perhaps the following one." "There can be no doubt now," said Alfred, "what the object of the Pharisees was. This is the first time we hear of their actually laying wait for Him. Their malice and fury against Him seem to have gradually gathered strength, and continued to increase." "Their question was ingeniously put. Is it lawful to heal on the day on which it is commanded to do no work?' but Christ answers it by one, raising the whole subject to a higher point, at the same time convicting them, if they had any honesty of conscience left: Is it lawful to do well on the Sabbath-day? Is it lawful to do good or to do evil, to save life or destroy it?' They were breaking the Sabbath in a far worse manner than could have been done by any labour." "I wonder the man could put forth his hand," said Ellen, "if it was withered." "It was by our Saviour's power that he was enabled to stretch it forth; his attempting to do so showed his faith in the Healer," continued Mrs Dalton, "and, like many other miracles, this has a spiritual meaning; we are by nature just as helpless as this man, and as the mere effort to obey Christ's command was rewarded with strength sufficient, so it is with us; as He gives us the command, He gives us strength to fulfil it, and though we feel our "Dictionary of the Bible," art. Pentecost. * |