It is true, if this instruction of our Lord and Master had concerned only the preachers of the word, I might have found a fitter place and occasion for a discourse upon it. But the case is much otherwise; and it concerns all the faithful to understand what the duty of those is, who are intrusted to dispense the word of life, lest they take offence at the ministry, without cause, and so deprive themselves of the fruit which they might otherwise reap from it.
Let me therefore lay before you some plain considerations on the aphorism in the text; and submit it to yourselves how far they may deserve the notice of all Christians.
It would be ridiculous, no doubt, to torture a meer figure of speech; and to pursue a metaphor through all the minute applications, which an ordinary imagination might find or invent for it. But I shall not be suspected of trifling in this sort, when I only conclude, from the comparison of a Christian Scribe to the Jewish Householder;
I. That all the treasures of knowledge, which the minister of the Gospel may have laid up in his mind, are destined, not to the purposes of vanity, but to the use of his charge; for such must have been the intention of a reasonable Householder, in the stock of provisions he had so carefully collected:
II. That such use must be estimated from the apparent wants of those, to whom this knowledge is dispensed; for so the frugal householder expends his provisions on those who evidently stand in need of them: And
III. Lastly, That among these wants, some, at certain conjunctures, may be more general, or more pressing, than ordinary; and then his first care must be to relieve these, though other real, and perhaps considerable wants, be, for the present, neglected by him: just, again, as the discreet householder is anxious to provide against an uncommon distress that befalls his whole family, or the greater part of it, or that threatens the immediate destruction of those whom it befalls, though he suspend his care, for a season, of particular, or less momentous distresses.
In these THREE respects, then, I propose to illustrate and enforce the comparison of the Text, without any apprehension of being thought to do violence to it.
I. The knowledge of a well-instructed Scribe must be directed to the edification of his charge, and not at all to the gratification of his own vanity.
This conclusion results immediately from the subject of the comparison. For the Christian Scribe is not compared to a prince, who is allowed, and even expected, to consult his own state and magnificence; or, to one of those popular magistrates in ancient times, whose office it was to exhibit splendid shews, and furnish expensive entertainments, to their fellow-citizens: but to a plain Jewish householder, who had nothing to regard beyond the necessary, or, at most, decent accommodation of his family.
And the comparison is aptly made, as we shall see if we consider, either the end of a preacher’s office, or the decorum of his character.