had to deal with crafty opponents, utterly unsusceptible of instruction ?

Be that as it may, some of them came to him with the question, "Why do the disciples of John fast often, and make prayers, and likewise those of the Pharisees; but thine eat and drink?" Christ replies: "Can you make the companions of the bridegroom fast while the bridegroom is yet with them? Does fasting harmonize with the festal joy of a wedding? The time of fasting, indeed, will come of its own accord, when the bridegroom is gone, and the festal days are over."

So privations, suited to the time of mourning, would have been out of keeping with the joyous life in common of the disciples and their Lord-with those happy days when the object of their desire was yet present in their midst. Fasting would have been as foreign to their state of mind—as outward and

We follow Luke v. 33; Mark ii. 18, which have more internal probability than Matt. ix. 14. It is, indeed, possible that those disciples of John who adhered only one-sidedly to the views of their master may have taken offence, and expressed it, just as the Pharisees did. Probably, too, at a later period, there grew up a gradual opposition between the Christians and part of John's disciples; and the Jewish sect of μeрobaπriorai may have been no other than these (Hegesipp. in Euseb. iv. 22. Cf. the Clementines, Hom. ii. 23, 'Iwávvηg ýμερobαπтιOTHS.) But it is by no means as probable that they joined themselves with the Pharisees, their bitter enemies; they could have had no tendency to associate with men whom they could consider as having had a hand, at least, in the sacrifice of their master. The fact that the scribes had quoted the example of John's disciples may easily have passed into the report that the latter had come to Christ with the same question. This view is adopted, also, by Schleiermacher. De Wette's objections are sufficiently refuted by what has been said.

De Wette considers the mention of "prayer" (Luke v. 33) as out of place, and argues from it that Luke had departed from the original tradition. But certainly it was natural enough for the Pharisees thus to characterize the (to them) strikingly worldly life of the disciples; for the former made a show of sanctity, not only by fasting, but by repeated prayers; and, moreover, John had prescribed a form of prayer for his disciples (Luke xi. 1), which Christ as yet had not done. As the words "eating and drinking" are used in the question to designate the profane and carnal life, so "fasting and prayer" denote its opposite-the strict spiritual life. Now, had the word "prayers" originally existed in the passage, and been afterward lost in transmission, we might easily account for it because it might be thought that Christ's reply does not allude to "prayer," that such a depreciation of prayer (mistakenly imagined) would be a stumbling-block, and, besides, contradictory to Christ's own teaching in other places. But to account for its interpolation is quite different matter. As for Christ's not alluding to prayer in his reply, he had no cal. to do it; it was the spirit of outward and ascetic piety, as a whole, that bo rebukes.

as forced-as to the guests at a wedding. But as the days of the feast are followed by others when fasting is in place; so, when the joy of happy intercourse with Christ shall give place to mourning at separation from Him who is their all in all, in those sad days, indeed, the disciples will need no outward bidding to fast. Their mode of life will naturally change with their state of feeling; fasting will then be but the spontaneous token of their souls' grief.

Taken in this sense, it is clear that the words could not have been intended to apply to the whole life of the disciples after Christ should have been removed from them. The sad feelings here described were not intended to be permanent; the transitory pain of personal separation was to be followed by a more perfect joy in the consciousness of spiritual communion with Christ. Applying the passage, then, to this transition period of grief, we infer from it, as the rule of Christian ethics in regard to fasting, that it is neither enjoined nor recommended, but only justified, as the natural expression of certain states of feeling analogous to those of the disciples in the time of sadness referred to; e. g. the sense of separation from Christ, which may precede an experience of the most blissful communion with Him. In such states of the interior life, all outward signs of peace and joy, all participation in social intercourse and pleasure are unnatural and repugnant; although, when Christ is present in the soul, these social joys are sancti fied and transfigured by the inward communion with Him. The interior life and the outward expression should be in entire harmony with each other. Another glance at this sub

ject, however, after examining what follows, will afford us another view of it.

§ 138.-The Parable of the New Patch on the Old Garment, and of the New Wine in Old Bottles."

Christ added another illustration in the form of a parable. "No man putteth a piece of a new garment upon an old; if otherwise, then both the new maketh a rent, and the piece that was taken out of the new agreeth not with the old. And no man putteth new wine into old bottles (skins), else the new wine will burst the bottles and be spilled, and the bottles shall perish. But new wine must be put into new bottles, and both are preserved."

The old nature cannot be renewed by the imposition from without of the exercises of fasting and prayer; no outward and compulsory asceticism can change it. Individual points of Matt. ix. 16; Mark ii. 21; Luke v. 36

character are significant only so far as they are connected with the tendency of the whole life; a reformation in these, indeed, may be enforced, and the stamp and spirit of the life remain unchanged. A fragment of the higher spiritual life, thus broken off from its living connexion (destroyed in the fracture), and forced upon the nature of the old man, would not really improve it; but, on the other hand, by its utter want of adaptation, would worsen the rent in the old nature would tear it rudely away from its natural course of development. A mere renewal from without is at best an artificial, hypocritical thing. The new cloth is torn, and a patch laid upon the old that does not fit it. The new wine is lost, and the old skins perish.a

The premature imposition, therefore, of such exercises upon the disciples, instead of developing the new life within them, would have hindered it, by mutilating and crippling what they had. Separate branches of the spiritual life, apart from their

We deviate from the ordinary interpretation of this parable. Our explanation is not only adapted to the preceding context (Luke v. 33-35), but also fits the minute details of the comparison, which the one commonly given does not. According to the latter, the substance of the parable is, that the outward religious exercises of Judaism are not adapted to the higher stage, Christianity, for which the disciples were training. But Christ admits (verse 35) that fasting may be a good thing at the right time; which, he said, had not then come, but would come. Instead of taking up this point, and unfolding it in the parable in another aspect, as one might expect, the common interpretation introduces a new and entirely different thought, viz. that such exercises were unsuitable (not to their condition at that time, but) to Christianity at any time. Again, one would naturally think, from v. 34, 35, that the "new wine" and the " new cloth" of the parable were intended to represent the fasting, &c. of which Christ was speaking, viz. that fasting which the Apostles were to practise at a later period. But the usual interpretation, on the other hand, supposes fasting to be something defective in itself, and as belonging to that form of life which is represented by the "old garment.' The sense thus obtained contains a thought not true in itself; for, in the case of the Apostles, the new wine of Christianity was put into the old bottle of Judaism, and was intended to break it to pieces. If the prescribed fasting was to be disregarded by the Apostles as belonging to Jewish legalism, so also, on the same principle, the whole Jewish legalism would have to be done away by them, as foreign to the new spirit introduced by Christ.

It is remarkable that this obviously false interpretation should have kept so long in the back-ground the true one developed by Chrysostom, Hom. in Matt. xxx. § 4. Independently of my exposition, Wilke Las recently declared himself (in his Ürevangelisten) in favour of the view here given. De Wette styles it ": forced;" but how the term can apply to an interpretation so accurately fitting the details of the parable, I cannot imagine. I should be very glad to see the attention of interpreters directed to the views which I have set forth.

b Sincerum est nisi vas, quodcunque infundis, acescit.

connexion with the whole, cannot be grafted upon the stem of the old nature; that nature must be renewed from within in order to become a vessel of the Spirit. (In the case of the Apostles, the way was prepared for this by their personal intercourse with the Saviour.) The whole garment had to be new; the wine required new bottles. The new Spirit had of itself to create a new form of life.

Glancing back from this point to the words before spoken on fasting, we may refer them to the privations that lay before the Apostles in their course of duty-privations which they would joyously go to meet under the impulse of the new Spirit that was to animate them.

But although no outward impulses (no patches upon the old garment) might be needed when the interior life should freely guide, it might yet naturally be the case that "No man, having also drank old wine, straightway desireth new; for, he saith, the old is better." The disciples had to be weaned gradually from the old life and trained for the new-a law applicable in all ages of the Church, and which, if faithfully observed, might have saved her from many errors in Christian life and morals.

This example affords another illustration of the truth that individual parts of Christ's teaching cannot be rightly understood apart from their connexion with his whole system of truth.

§ 139.-Forms of Prayer.—The Lord's Prayer; its Occasion and Import.— Encouragements to Prayer; God gives no Stone for Bread.

We take up now a subject akin to that of which we have just treated, without implying (what, indeed, is of no importance) a chronological connexion between them.

He

We have seen that one thing which surprised the Pharisees was that Christ did not lay stress upon outward prayers. had not, like John the Baptist, prescribed forms of prayer for his disciples. In this respect, as well as others, their religious life was to develop itself from within. From intercourse with Christ, and intuition of his life, they were to learn how to pray. The mind which he imparted was to make prayer indispensable to them, and to teach them how to pray aright.

On a certain occasion, the desire arose in their hearts, from It is a proof of the originality and faithfulness of Luke's narrative, that this passage, so indubitably stamped with originality, and yet so closely connected with the context, is recorded by him alone.

d Pope Innocent III. understood and applied this passage correctly, in reference to the establishment of a mission in Prussia: "Cum veteres ateres vix novum vinum contineant." Epp. xv. 148. • Luke x..

beholding him pray, to be able to pray as he did; and one of them asked, "Lord, teach us how to pray, as John also taught his disciples."{

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Christ replied that they were not, in their prayers, to use 'many words," and to repeat details to GOD, who knew all their wants before they could be uttered. And then, in a prayer framed in the spirit of this injunction, he gave them a vivid illustration of the nature of Christian prayer, as referring to the one thing needful, and incorporating everything else with that. As prayer is no isolated thing in Christianity, but springs from the ground of the whole spiritual life, so this prayer, which forms a complete and organic whole, comprehends within itself the entire peculiar essence of Christianity.

"Our Father who art in Heaven." The form of the invocation corresponds to the nature of the Christian stand-point; our Father, because Christ has made us his children. We address GOD thus, not as individuals, but, in the fellowship of Christ, as members of a community which He has placed in this relation to the common Father. Side by side with this consciousness of communion as children, goes that of our distance as creatures; the GOD that dwells in his children is the God above the world (so that Christianity is equally far from

f We follow Luke xi. The passage in Matt. vi. 7-16, appears foreign to the original organism of the Sermon on the Mount, in which prayer, fasting, &c. were treated especially in contrast with the hypocrisy of the Pharisees. As that longer discourse was made a repertory for Christ's sayings, in which they were arranged according to their affinities, so perhaps it was with this. We may certainly conclude that Christ would not have sketched such a prayer for the disciples without a special occasion for it; for the wish to lay down forms of prayer was, as we have seen, remote from his spirit and object. But we cannot think it possible [with some] that Christ uttered this prayer as appropriate for himself, and that the disciples adopted it for that reason; it had no fitness to his position: he, at least, could not have prayed for the pardon of his sins. The occasion given by Luke was a very appropriate one; the form was drawn out by Christ at the request of the disciples. It was probable, moreover, from the nature of the case, that Christ, who did not wish to prescribe standing forms of prayer, would make use of such an occasion to explain further the nature of prayer itself [as he does in Luke xi. 5-13]. In the Sermon on the Mount, also (Matt. vii. 7), a passage similar [to Luke xi. 9] is found; and Matt. vi. 7, perhaps contains the beginning of Christ's reply to his disciples' request on the subject.

In the shorter form of the prayer given in Luke, the words uwv and Ev Tois ouρavois are omitted. It is probable that the original form of the prayer is that given by Matthew. Luke is more accurate in giving the chronological and historical connexion of Christ's discourses, but Matthew gives the discourses themselves cre in full.