It was a journey of deepest interest and importance. For, it was decisive not only as
regarded the Master, but those who followed Him. Henceforth it must not be, as in
former times, but wholly and exclusively, as into suffering and death. It is thus that we
view the next three incidents of the way. Two of them find, also, a place in the Gospel
by St. Matthew,37 although in a different connection, in accordance with the plan of that
Gospel, which groups together the Teaching of Christ, with but secondary attention to
chronological succession.
37. St. Matt. viii. 19-22.
It seems that, as, after the rebuff of these Samaritans, they 'were going' towards
another, and a Jewish village, 'one'38 of the company, and, as we learn from St.
Matthew, 'a Scribe,' in the generous enthusiasm of the moment - perhaps, stimulated by
the wrong of the Samaritans, perhaps, touched by the love which would rebuke the zeal
of the disciples, but had no word of blame for the unkindness of others - broke into a
spontaneous declaration of readiness to follow Him absolutely and everywhere. Like the
benediction of the woman who heard Him,39 it was one of these outbursts of an
enthusiasm which His Presence awakened in every susceptible heart. But there was
one eventuality which that Scribe, and all of like enthusiasm, reckoned not with - the
utter homelessness of the Christ in this world - and this, not from accidental
circumstances, but because He was 'the Son of Man.'40 And there is here also material
for still deeper thought in the fact that this man was 'a Scribe,' and yet had not gone up
to the Feast, but tarried near Christ - was 'one' of those that followed Him now, and was
capable of such feelings! 41 How many whom we regard as Scribes, may be in
analogous relation to the Christ, and yet how much of fair promise has failed to ripen
into reality in view of the homelessness of Christ and Christianity in this world - the
stranger ship of suffering which it involves to those who would follow, not somewhere,
but absolutely, and everywhere?
38. The word τις, here designates a certain one - one, viz., of the company. The
arrangement of the words undoubtedly is, 'one of the company said unto Him by the way,'
and not as either in the A.V. or R.V. Comp. Canon Cook , ad loc. in the 'Speaker's
Commentary.'
39. St. Luke xi. 27.
40. We mark, that the designation 'Son of Man' is here for the first time applied to Christ
by St. Matthew. May this history have been inserted in the First Gospel in that particular
connection for the purpose of pointing out this contrast in the treatment of the Son of Man
by the sons of men - as if to say: Learn the meaning of the representative title: Son of
Man, in a world of men who would not receive Him? It is the more marked, that it
immediately precedes the first application on the part of men of the title 'Son of God' to
Christ in this Gospel (St. Matt. vii. 29).
41. It is scarcely necessary to discuss the suggestion, that the first two referred to in the
narrative were either Bartholomew and Philip, or else Judas Iscariot and Thomas.
The intenseness of the self -denial involved in following Christ, and its contrariety to all
that was commonly received among men, was, purposely, immediately further brought