Matthew the Exalted

There is nothing more striking in the Christian Gallery than the variety in its modes of redemption. Christ produces a revolution in every soul with which He comes into contact; and yet in no two cases is the revolution precisely the same. Human weakness is as varied in iti forms as human virtue; therefore the cure of human weakness must be also varied. In the figures which have already passed before us we must have been struck beyond everything with the absence of uniformity in their disease and its treatment. We have not found any two of them alike in the symptoms which needed to be healed. There is no analogy between the original defect of John the Baptist and the original defect of John the Evangelist; the one is

the narrowness of personal zeal, the other the 175 narrowness of personal pride. There is no resemblance between the imperfect views of Nathanael and the imperfect views of Nicodemus; the former come from rustic simplicity, the latter from scholarly culture. There is no parallel between the cloud in the mind of Peter and the cloud in the mind of Thomas; the one comes from want of courage, the other purely from want of hope.

I am now approaching a figure of the group whose prominent feature is just the fact of his redemption — Matthew the Publican. Our first impression is that we must expect to find this man without any special weakness, but encrusted with a mass of sin all over. We can put our hand upon the error which signalised the Baptist. We can point to the fault which distinguished the evangelist John. We can indicate the weakness which marred the progress of Peter. We can tell the besetting frailties which lent struggle to the lives of Philip and Thomas and Nicodemus. But if we were asked to specialise the fault of Matthew, I think we should say, ‘You might as well ask me to specialise the fault of a quagmire! ‘We look on this man, not as one with a besetting sin, but as one who had sin for his very essence. I went into a country church one day and heard the character of Matthew expounded as if his badness were a truism. He was everything that was wicked — an extortioner, a cheat, a defrauder, a liar, a man dishonest in thought and word and deed. Here was a character with no specially besetting sin. You could not label him. You could label Peter or John or Thomas, but not Matthew; he was a quagmire — he was pollution all round.

Now, let me say at once that this is not the view I have taken of the matter. I think Matthew was a man with a special defect — not with pollution all over. The latter supposition is negatived partly by the fact of his call and mainly by his immediate response to that call. It was a call, not to mere mercy, but to the height of apostolic dignity. I could understand a man like Judas becoming depraved subsequent to ordination; but I cannot understand a man called to ordination at a time when he was already depraved. And if I am reminded how the heart can conceal its vices, still less can I understand how a heart with such vices could care for such ordination — how a man of extortion, of fraud, of covetousness, of avarice without principle and greed without justice, could in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, give up his entire world and join the ranks of poverty. I have already said, in speaking of the transition into a new life, that the actual plunge is ever sudden; but I have also said that there is a long walk to the river-side. A conversion like this would have been to Matthew an experience of the plunge without the walk.

And what is the evidence on which rests the unqualified badness of Matthew.’’ It is the obloquy attached to his profession. The preacher says: * This man was a publican — one of those who farmed the taxes for the Roman government. Those who farmed the taxes were selected from the lowest social strata. They were originally poor, hungry, ill-clad. The occupation, therefore, to which they were chosen placed them in a sphere of strong temptation. They had every inducement to be unjust, to overreach, to exact, to falsify, to become the instruments for bribery and corruption. And Matthew was one of these. He was a member of this fraternity, immersed in a trade which held out a prospect of gain to the unscrupulous and offered a life of comfort to him who did not resist the tempter. Surely a record like his could have only one issue! ’

The logic of this is deplorable. It is equivalent to saying that, if a man belongs to a calling which involves a particular temptation, he must be held guilty of having yielded to that temptation. Consider for a moment. There is no profession known to me which does not involve its own special temptation. The clerical calling tempts to narrowness, the medical to materialism, the legal to the loss of sentiment, the literary to a spirit of selfishness. Yet one of the broadest men I ever knew was a sincerely orthodox cleric; one of the most assured Christians I ever knew was a leading physician; one of the most kindly sympathisers I ever knew was a legal practitioner; one of the most sacrificing lives I ever knew was a highly successful writer. We must protest against attributing to any man the special sin of his calling. It is unfair; it is negatived by a thousand facts. There was nothing in Roman tax - gathering which made vice in that calling a necessary thing. In point of fact, the vice came from the outside. The master-puhlicsins were men of rank and credit; but they put their work into the hands of subordinates who were often taken from the slums. The vices these exhibited in their profession were brought with them tnto their profession; they came from the previous corruptions of human nature, and no trade is chargeable with them. We cannot morally label Matthew by calling him ‘Matthew the Publican. ’

The truth is, the obloquy with which Matthew was regarded by his countrymen did not proceed from the fear that he was a bad man, but from the certainty that he was a bad Jew. The most galling fact to the Israel of later days was the fact that she paid tribute to another land. Ideally, she claimed to be the mistress of the world — the nation into whose treasury all tribute should flow. To the proud eye of the prophet Isaiah, she had been the mountain estabUshed on the top of the hills, and toward her height the other lands had looked, wondering. That such a nation should pay taxes to a foreign people, a Gentile people, was an awful thought. It was a pain worse than laceration, more cruel than a blow. But there was the possibility of a pain more poignant still. It was bad enough that the tribute of homage from Israel should be collected by a Roman. But what if the man who gathered it should be a son of Israel herself — a scion of her race, an heir to her promises, a nursling of her prophets! What if the man who taunted her with her misfortunes should be one born within her pale, bred within her precincts, sheltered within her privileges — one from whom was due the veneration for her sanctuary and the reverence for her God! Would it not seem to her as if all her calamities had culminated and as if the cloud of her sorrow had deepened into starless night!

Now, this often happened; and it happened in the case of Matthew. Here was a Jew who had lost the last shred of patriotism! He had forgotten the traditions of his ancestors — forgotten the parted waters of the Red Sea, and the burning bush, and the pillars of cloud and fire! He had become oblivious that he was the son of a race which claimed the ultimate dominion over all the world! He had not only accepted without a blush the domination by the stranger; he had taken part with the stranger in his domination! He had attached himself to the enemies of his country — had become a collector of their tribute from his own conquered land! This was hard upon that land. The man who acted thus was bound to be execrated by his race. He was execrated on that ground alone. No amount of personal vices would in the eyes of his countrymen have added to the enormity of his sin, and no amount of personal virtues would in the slightest degree have minimised that sin. His deed was itself to them the acme of all iniquity, from which nothing could detract and which nothing could intensify. The blackness of Matthew’s character in the eyes of the Jew was the fact of his apostasy.

But the question is, What is its blackness in our eyes? We sympathise much with the feeling of his countrymen; yet, after all, that is a local matter, and the question should be viewed apart from local considerations. We must ask ourselves, Where lay the precise fault in this absence of patriotism? When we have answered that, we shall have found the real weak point in the character of Matthew — the point which made him an object for Christ’s compassion, and the point which suggested Christ’s mode of cure.

It is quite evident to me that a defect in Jewish patriotism always proceeded from one definite defect in character — a want of self-respect. I do not say that every man who has lost his patriotism has lost his self-respect, for every man’s country is not meant to be identical with his own soul. But the Jew’s was. I have already said in speaking of Nicodemus that in the Jewish community the nation and the individual were one. A man’s loves and fears were for his native land. His land was a part of himself — the largest part; its preservation was his main motive for living. A Jew could only forget his country by ceasing to care for himself — by losing self-respect. All in him that was personal was national — his feasts, his sacrifices, his family, his hopes, his sins, his sorrows, his very aspirings after immortality. To destroy within his heart the care for his country was to destroy within his heart all care for anything.

Here, then, is the real source of Matthew’s want of patriotism; it is want of self-respect. His defect is the extreme opposite of that which we found in the original nature of the evangelist John. John, as I have indicated, had too big a mirror; Matthew had no mirror at all. John saw his youthful figure at an exaggerated height; Matthew beheld no reflection of himself whatever. John required to have his glass smashed; Matthew needed to have a glass constructed. John had too much pride; Matthew had too little. It would be difficult to say which of the extremes is the more fraught with danger — the excess of self-respect or the absence of self-respect. Too steadfast a gaze at self has slain its thousands; but it may be doubted if iho. failure to see one’s self has not produced as many victims. Pride is a positive state; want of self-respect is a negative state. But I think the mind suffers as much by its moments of negation as by its moments of positive evil. The heart filled with personal vanity is not safe; but the heart unfilled by any personal interest is no safer. There are in my opinion as many young men led astray by the want of a looking-glass as by the over-prominence of a looking-glass. It is a dangerous thing when we express a real truth by the words, ‘I do not care.’

I have said that the want of self-respect is in itself a negative quality. I wish to emphasise the point, because it is often mistaken for things from which it is quite different. For instance, we associate this quality with meanness. Yet the mean man is never without his mirror. He errs, not by want of self-respect, but by a low ideal of what in the self is respectable. He sees himself in the glass adorned in purple and fine linen and faring sumptuously every day. He says, ‘This is “to live,” this is “to prosper,” this is “to be respected”!’ Then follows the conclusion, ‘This is the only thing worth striving for; let me work for nothing else, aim at nothing else, dream of nothing else; let me seek wealth at all times and by all means! ’

Will any man say that such a soul is in want of a mirror! Does its meanness not come from its mirror — from the sight of a false ideal of what it is to be great! Such a soul has reached its dishonesties, its frauds, its extortions, its unjust dealings, by nothing else than a mode of self-contemplation — by gazing into a glass which paints the little as if it were the grand. If Matthew had lost his Jewish patriotism, he was not that man, for he who lost his Jewish patriotism lost his glass too, and had no longer an aim in life either high or low.

Again. We often associate want of self-respect with abjectness. By abjectness I mean one’s feeling that he is a poor creature — that he is a worm and no man. And yet this condition is also incompatible with the loss of the mirror. It is itself a looking into the glass. It is by the reflection in that glass I come to the conclusion that I am a poor creature. The word ‘self-respect’ literally means self - regarding, self-beholding. In the case of the crushed or abject man, he beholds himself as an object of compassion, as a thing worthy to win pity, as one who deserved a better fate. The man who has lost his mirror cannot be an abject man. That would be a contradiction in terms; he would have no shadow of himself to look at, and so could not grieve over it. Matthew was not an abject man. Not even after his call does he sit in sackcloth and ashes over the memory of his past. On the contrary, he makes a great feast in his own house and invites his fellow-publicans. The act could never have proceeded from one beholding his natural face in a glass.

What, then, is the bane of having no mirror .!* It is being down without knowing it. It is the living by the day — without a plan, without a principle. It is a vegetable life. It is the absence of all desire to look forward to anything, to look backward to anything, to look upward to anything. It is the enclosure within the moment. It is the experience of a state of mind which may not always be doing harm, but which is never doing good. It may keep the precepts, ‘Thou shalt not kill, ’ * Thou shalt not steal, ’ * Thou shalt not bear false witness ‘; but it will have no impulse to seek and to save, no bosom on which to lay the burdens of humanity.

What, therefore, did Matthew need.-’ It was a mirror — a sense of exaltation. It is not enough that a man has no depression; he must have exaltation. I will go further. I think that in spiritual matters the valley is nearer to the mountain than is the plain. I believe that a life of conscious depression will sooner reach the sense of a height than a life of commonplace prosaic routine which looks neither up nor down. Matthew was a man of the plain. He was not, like Thomas, a man of the valley. Thomas had depression, in other words, he saw himself in a glass and pitied himself. But Matthew had no depression. His was not a valley experience. He lived on level ground without depths or heights. He never saw himself — liQ. had no mirror. To have a mirror you must be either on the mountain or in the vale;

Matthew’s was as yet a plant’s life. Jesus said, ‘I must give this man a sight of his higher self, of his possible self. ‘He felt that what Matthew needed was a stimulus — something to lift him up. There were those to whom He came with a cross — those who, like the woman of Samaria, had to be wakened to their own shame. But to this man He came with a crown. What Matthew needed to feel was his own importance. Let him be lifted up to the mountain — suddenly, drastically, unexpectedly. Let him get a sight of his future self, what he is coming to, what is coming to him. Let him see himself as God meant him to be — a man of dignity, a man of power. That was what Jesus did to Matthew the Publican. He came without warning, without preparation. He stood before him at the receipt of custom. He ignored all the crowd assembled there. He fixed His gaze upon him alone — apart from his fellows, apart from the yielders of his tribute. He addressed him without preamble, without title — as if He were summing up a long process of reasoning; He said, bluntly and boldly, ‘Follow Me! ’

For the first time in his life Matthew found himself a man — a man of importance, a man of mark. He awoke to find himself famous — an object of interest, a centre of attraction. He had the novel experience of standing with a mirror in his hand looking at his own person. So novel was the experience that it carried him away. Surprise overmastered him. That Christ should choose him — the cipher, the nobody, the man who had forfeited his right to call himself a son of Israel — this was a startling thing. That he, who had never been dignified enough to care what the world might think of him, should be suddenly called to stand before the world as an example, was a thought almost weird in its strangeness. The newness of the sensation quite conquered him. ‘Follow Me! ’ said the voice; and he lingered not a moment. He did not wait for enlightenment; he had got the one light whose absence had made him ignoble — self-respect. His exodus came with his exaltation. The instant he said, ‘I am somebody,’ he rose and left Egypt. He went out from the receipt of custom and passed over into the Christian land. Like Israel, he made his ’ passover ’ a subject of congratulation. Our last glimpse of him but one is at that banquet which he spread as a farewell to the old and an inauguration of the new.

But there is one glimpse more, and it is to me the most suggestive of all. The next time we see Matthew he has a pen in his hand; he is writing a gospel. Volumes have been multiplied on that gospel. Discussions have been reiterated as to the source of its materials and the origin of its information. Commentaries have been accumulated exhausting every possible meaning of his words and embodying every thought involved in his teaching. It would seem as if the subject were at last threadbare. And yet there is one fact about this gospel which, so far as I know, has never been spoken — its connection with Matthew’s call. We are in the habit of regarding it as a purely impersonal piece of writing — without any note of autobiography or incidental emergence of the author’s memory. The truth, as I believe, is that the very central idea of the book is itself a note of autobiography. What is that central idea? It is the spirit of patriotism. The Gospel of Matthew is the most patriotic of all the gospels. His Christ is the Christ of Israel — born king: of the Jews. All that He does is made to echo the glories of Matthew’s native land. Everything about Him is the flowering of Israel’s prophecies, is done ‘that it might be fulfilled which was spoken.’ The glory of Messiah is that He has glorified this favoured nation — proved that she was right in her aspirations and in her dreams. This patriotism of the First Gospel is of course known to every schoolboy. But have we considered what it means in relation to the character of Matthew himself.!* Nothing less than a moral revolution. This man’s defect had all along been a want of patriotism. He had ignored the claims of his country, he had disregarded the ties of his people. But, when for the last time our eyes rest upon him, he is a man transformed. He has become rich just where he was poor, overflowing just where he was deficient. He is a patriot of the patriots. His country which yesterday was nothing is to-day all in all. He has put on the arms of his race — is prepared to fight for it, to die for it. He has declared himself a son of Israel and is ready to lavish on her all his praise.

And I think there is something very grand and very beautiful in this final glimpse which we receive of Matthew the Publican. It is our glimpse of one who has got back his self-respect and longs to atone. He has been for years denuding his country of her due. He now says, ‘I must make it up to her at last, though late; I must compensate her for the gifts I have withheld! ‘I say there is something fine in this man’s light at evening-time. Though it is evening, though the day is far spent, though many golden hours and golden opportunities have been lost, he will not despair of undoing his past. He will concentrate into the evening sky what he should have spread over the whole day. He will bestow his gifts in double measure. He will assign to his native land a glory which he could not, even if he would, have given in his morning hours. For now the Christ

has come — Judah has received her latest flower. 13

He can tell her of that flower, can tell her of her share in its production. He can tell her how she has been justified, glorified, raised out of the category of vain dreamers and proclaimed to be a nation which has a star in heaven. That is why Matthew in the evening writes his life of Jesus.

LORD, teach me the dignity of my own soul! Many have warned me of the pride of life; and it is evil and harmful indeed. But I think an equal danger has come from my hours of recklessness. I think I have never been further from Thee than in the moment when I have said, * Life is a worthless thing! ‘Whenever I go out without my mirror I am very near temptation. When I say in my heart, ‘It will be all the same a hundred years hence,’ I am perilously close to the precipice. In that moment I have broken my mirror — have lost sight of life’s magnitude, life’s value. When I lose the sight of life’s value, I begin to value lower things; when I break my mirror, I look into the muddy pool. My Father, I think it is for idle hearts that Satan finds mischief. Save me from an idle heart — a heart that has nothing to love! If my heart has its mirror, yea, even its mirror of care, I shall not touch the miry clay. All idleness is the heart’s idleness — the heart ceasing to vibrate. Though my hands be folded, though my lips be silent, though my feet be resting, though my fancy be reposing, yet, if my heart be carrying its mirror, I am not idle. Keep that glass undimmed, O my Father! Whatever else I lose, let me never lose my love — the sense that life holds something dear! Let no cloud curtain it! Let no storm sink it! Let no waters wash it away! May every beam brighten it! May every hope hallow it! May every fear freshen it! May every dream deepen it! May every cross crown it! May every rock rivet it! May every struggle strengthen it! May every providence purify it! May it be my star in night, my song in stillness, my flower in winter, my rainbow in tears, my help in sorrow, my home in exile, my youth in autumn, my island in the sea! Never let my heart drop the mirror of its glory!