distribute, willing to communicate, laying up in store for themselves a good foundation against the time to come, that they may lay hold on eternal life*."

This striking charge to the rich is pregnant with most important and wholesome counsel, and is an admirable comment on that very passage, which has so long engaged our attention. It seems, indeed, to allude and refer to it, and points out all those distinctions, which tend to explain away its seeming harshness, and ascertain its true spirit and meaning.

It cautions the rich men of the world not to trust in uncertain riches: the very expression made use of by our Lord, and the very circumstance, which renders it so hard for them to enter into the kingdom of heaven. They are enjoined to place their trust in THE LIVING GOD. They are to be rich in a far brighter treasure than gold and silver, in faith and in good works; and if they are, they will " lay a good foundation against the time to come, and will lay hold on eternal life." This entirely does away all the terror, all the dismay, which our Lord's denunciation might tend to produce in the minds of the wealthy and the great: it proves, that the way to heaven is as open to them, as to all other ranks and conditions of men, and it points out to them the very means by which they may arrive there. These means are, trust in the living God, dedication of themselves to his service and his glory, zeal in every good work, and more particularly the appropriation of a large part of that very wealth, which constitutes their danger, to the purposes of piety, charity, and beneficence. These are the steps by which they must, through the merits of their Redeemer, ascend to Heaven. Those riches, which are their natural enemies, must be converted into allies and friends. They must, as the Scripture expresses it, make to themselves "friends of the mammon of unrighteousness +;" they must be rich towards God; they must turn that wealth, which is too often the cause of their perdition, into an instrument of salvation, into an instrument, by which they may lay hold, as the apostle expresses it, on eternal life.

Before I quit this interesting passage, it may be of use to observe, that while it furnishes a lesson of great caution, vigilance, and circumspection to the rich, it affords

1 Tim. vi, 17-19.

† Luke xvi, 9.

also no small degree of consolation to the poor. If they are less bountifully provided than the rich, with the materials of happiness for the present life, let them, however, be thankful to Providence, that they have fewer difficulties to contend with, fewer temptations to combat, and fewer obstacles to surmount in their way to the life which is to come. They have fortunately no means of indulging themselves in that luxury and dissipation, those extravagances and excesses, which sometimes disgrace the wealthy and the great; and they are preserved from many follies, imprudences, and sins, equally injurious to present comfort and future happiness. If they are destitute of all the elegances, and many of the conveniences and accommodations of life, they are also exempt from those cares and anxieties, which frequently corrode the heart, and perhaps more than balance the enjoyments of their superiors. The inferiority of their condition secures them from all the dangers and all the torments of ambition and pride; it produces in them generally that meekness and lowliness of mind, which is the chief constituent of a true evangelical temper, and one of the most essential qualifications for the kingdom of heaven.

Jesus having made these observations on the conduct of the young ruler, who refused to part with his wealth and follow him, Peter thought this a fair opportunity of asking our Lord what reward should be given to him and the other apostles, who had actually done what the young ruler had not the courage and the virtue to do. "Then answered Peter and said unto him, Lo! we have forsaken all, and followed thee; what shall we have therefore?" It is true the apostles had no wealth to relinquish, but what little they had they cheerfully parted with; they gave up their all, they took up their cross and followed Christ. Surely after such a sacrifice they might well be allowed to ask what recompense they might expect, and nothing can be more natural and affecting than their appeal to their Divine Master: "Behold, we have forsaken all, and followed thee; what shall we have therefore?" Our Lord felt the force and the justice of this appeal, and immediately gave them this most gracious and consolatory answer: "Verily I say unto you, that ye, which have followed me in the regeneration, when the Son of Man shall sit in the throne of his glory, ye also shall sit upon twelve thrones, judg

ing the twelve tribes of Israel: and every one that hath forsaken houses, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my name's sake, shall receive an hundred-fold, and shall inherit everlasting life."

Our translators, by connecting the word regeneration with the preceding words, "ye which have followed me in the regeneration," evidently supposed that word to relate to the first preaching of the Gospel, when those who heard and received it were to be regenerated, or made new creatures.

But most of the ancient fathers, as well as the best modern commentators, refer that expression to the words that follow it, "in the regeneration, when the Son of Man shall sit in the throne of his glory;" by which is meant the day of judgment and of recompense, when all mankind shall be as it were regenerated or born again, by rising from their graves; and when, as St. Matthew tells us, in the twenty-fifth chapter (making use of the very same phrase that he does here), the Son of Man shall sit on the throne of his glory. At that solemn hour Jesus tells his apostles, that they shall also sit upon twelve thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel. This is an allusion to the custom of princes having their great men ranged around them as assessors and advisers when they sit in council or in judgment; or more probably to the Jewish sanhedrim, in which the high priest sat surrounded by the principal rulers, chief priests, and doctors of the law; and it was meant only to express, in these figurative terms, that the apostles should in the kingdom of heaven have a distinguished pre-eminence of glory and reward, and a place of honour assigned them near the person of our Lord himself.

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Jesus then goes on to say, every one, that hath forsaken houses, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my name's sake, shall receive an hundred-fold, and shall inherit everlasting life." It is plain, both from the construction of this verse, and from the express words of St. Mark in the parallel passage, that the reward here promised to the apostles, whatever it might be, was to be bestowed in the present world; besides which they were to inherit everlasting life.

What, then, it may be asked, is this recompense, which was to take place in the present life, and was to

be an hundred-fold? It certainly cannot be an hundredfold of those worldly advantages, which are supposed to be relinquished for the sake of Christ and his religion; for a multiplication of several of these things, instead of a reward, would have been an incumbrance. And we know in fact the apostles never did abound in worldly possessions, but were for the most part destitute and poor. The recompense, then, here promised must have been of a very different nature; it is that internal content and satisfaction of mind, that peace of God, which passeth all understanding, those delights of a pure conscience and an upright heart, that affectionate support of all good men, those consolations of the Holy Spirit, that trust and confidence in God, that consciousness of the Divine favour and approbation, those reviving hopes of everlasting glory, which every good man and sincere Christian never fails to experience in the discharge of his duty. These are the things, which will cheer his heart and sustain his spirits, amidst all the discouragements he meets with, under the pressure of want, of poverty, of affliction, of calumny, of ridicule, of persecution, and even under the terrors of death itself, which will recompense him an hundred-fold for all the sacrifices he has made to Christ and his religion, and impart to him a degree of comfort, and tranquillity, and happiness, far beyond any thing, that all the wealth and splendour of this world can bestow. That this is not a mere ideal representation, we may see in the example of those very persons to whom this discourse of our Saviour was addressed. We may see a picture of the felicity here described, drawn by the masterly hand of St. Paul, in his Second Epistle to the Corinthians: "We are,' says he (speaking of himself and his fellow-labourers in the Gospel), we are approving ourselves in much patience, in afflictions, in necessities, in distresses, in stripes, in imprisonments, in tumults, in labours, in watchings, in fastings; by pureness, by knowledge, by long-suffering, by kindness, by the Holy Ghost, by love unfeigned, by the word of truth, by the power of God, by the armour of righteousness on the right hand and on the left, by honour and dishonour, by evil report and good report; as deceivers, and yet true; as unknown, and yet well known; as dying, and, behold, we live; as chastened, and not killed; as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having no

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thing, and yet possessing all things." We have here a portrait, not merely of patience and fortitude, but of cheerfulness and joy under the acutest sufferings, which is nowhere to be met with in the writings of the most celebrated heathen philosophers. The utmost that they pretended to was a contempt of pain, a determination not to be subdued by it, and not even to acknowledge that it was an evil; but we never hear them expressing that cheerfulness and joy under suffering, which we here see in the apostles and first disciples of Christ. Indeed it was impossible, that they should rise to these extraordinary exertions of the human mind, since they wanted all those supports, which bore up the apostles under the severest calamities, and raised them above all the common weaknesses and infirmities of their nature; namely, the consciousness of being embarked in the greatest and noblest undertaking that ever engaged the mind of man, an unbounded trust and confidence in the protection of Heaven, a large participation of the divine influences and consolations of the Holy Spirit, and a firm and well-grounded hope of an eternal reward in another life, which would infinitely overpay all their labour and their sorrows in this. These were the sources of that content and cheerfulness, that vigour and vivacity of mind, under the severest afflictions, which nothing could depress, and which nothing but Christian philosophy could produce.

Here, then, we have a full explanation of our Lord's promise in the passage before us, that every one, who had forsaken houses, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for his name's sake, should receive an hundred-fold, should receive abundant recompense in the comfort of their own minds, as described in the corresponding passage of St. Paul, just cited; which may be considered, not only as an admirable comment on our Lord's declaration, but as an exact fulfilment of the prediction contained in it. For that declaration is plainly prophetic; it foretels the persecution his disciples would meet with in the discharge of their duty; and foretels also, that in the midst of these persecutions they would be undaunted and joyful. And there cannot be a more perfect completion of any prophecy, than that which St. Paul's description sets before us with respect to this.

But we must not confine this promise of our Saviour's