ters: for either he will hate
the one and love the other, or else he will hold to the one and despise
the other." Let it be kept in mind, that our Lord was a _Jew_. The lost
sheep of the house of Israel were his flock. Wherever he went, they were
around him: whenever he spake, they were his auditors. His public
preaching and his private teaching and conversation, were full of
references to their own institutions, laws and usages, and of
illustrations drawn from them. In the verse quoted, he illustrates the
impossibility of their making choice of God as their portion, and
becoming his servants, while they chose the world, and were _its_
servants. To make this clear, he refers to one of their own
institutions, that of _domestic service_, with which, in all its
relations, incidents and usages, they were perfectly familiar. He
reminds them of the well-known impossibility of any person being the
servant of two masters, and declares the sole ground of that
impossibility to be, the fact that the servant _chooses_ the service of
the one, and _spurns_ that of the other. "He shall _hold to_ the one and
_despise_ (reject) the other." As though our Lord had said, "No one can
become the servant of another, when his will revolts from his service,
and when the conditions of it tend to make him hate the man." Since the
fact that the servant _spurns_ one of two masters, makes it impossible
for him to serve _that one_, if he spurned _both_ it would make it
impossible for him to serve _either_. So, also, if the fact that an
individual did not "hold to" or choose the service of another, proves
that he could not become his servant, then the question, whether or not
he should become the servant of another was suspended on _his own will_.
Further, the phraseology of the passage shows that the _choice_ of the
servant decided the question. "He will HOLD TO the one,"--hence there is
no difficulty in the way of his serving _him_; but "no servant can
serve" a master whom he does not "_hold to_," or _cleave_ to, whose
service he does not _choose_. This is the sole ground of the
impossibility asserted by our Lord.

The last clause of the verse furnishes an application of the principle
asserted in the former part, "Ye cannot serve God and mammon." Now in
what does the impossibility of serving both God and the world consist?
Solely in the fact that the will which chooses the one refuses the
other, and the affections which "hold to" the one, reject the