its
affiance, great in the humility with which it was accompanied. Such a
faith He seeks as the thirsty traveller seeks grapes in the wilderness,
and when He finds it growing in our hearts, then He is satisfied and
glad.

Still further, there is brought out the dignity of faith as being not
only the great desire of Christ's heart for each of us, but also as
being the one means of admission into the kingdom. 'I say unto you, many
shall come from the east and the west, and shall sit down with Abraham
and Isaac and Jacob, in the Kingdom of Heaven; but the children of the
Kingdom shall be cast out into outer darkness.' Strange that Matthew's,
the Jewish gospel, should record that saying. Strange that Luke's, the
universal human gospel, should omit it. But it was relevant to Matthew's
great purpose to make very plain this truth--which the nation were
forgetting, and which was gall and wormwood to them,--that hereditary
descent and outward privileges had no power to open the door of Christ's
Kingdom to any man, and that the one thing which had, was the one thing
which the centurion possessed and the Jews did not, a simple trust in
that divine Lord.

My brethren, there are many of us who attach precisely the same value as
these Jews did, in slightly different forms, to external connection with
religion and religious institutions. What blunts the sharpest words that
come from pulpits, and prevents them from getting to hearts and
consciences, is just that pestilent old Jewish error, that because men
have always had a kind of outward hold on the Kingdom, therefore they do
not need the teaching that the publicans and the harlots want.

My dear friend, nothing binds a man to Christ but trust. Nothing opens
the doors of His Kingdom, either here on earth or yonder, but reliance
upon Him. And although you were steeped to the eye-brows in religious
privileges, and high in place in His church, it would avail nothing. The
Kingdom of Christ is a Kingdom into which faith, and faith only, admits
a man. Therefore from the furthest corners of the world Christ's sad
prescience saw the Gentiles flocking, and the Jews who trusted in
externals, cast out.

I need not dwell on the two halves of the picture here, the radiant glow
of the one, the tragic darkness of the other. The feast expresses
abundance, joy, rest, companionship. 'They shall come' says Christ; then
He is there, and sitting at the head of the table; and the Master's
welcome ma