Trinity Cathedral by teh.
Notes of a Sermon in Hol Text: St. Matthew x 3, Matthew, the publican.
Strange that the name of an insignificant Jew, who collected taxes in Capernaum in the first century, should be honoured throughout Christendom to-day.
"And as Jesus passed, he saw a man named Matthew, sitting at the receipt of custom, and he saith unto him 'Follow Me': and he arose and followed him." That is the sum of his autobiography. A sudden conversion? Possibly; but what seems a sudden conversion, is sometimes found to be the suddenly manifested crisis of mental and spiritual processes which have been going on secretly, perhaps scarcely consciously, for considerable time. A momentous decision, an irresistible conviction, a moment of inspired vision, often seem too vivi and compelling to be the product of our own mental operation. We seem to be seized and swayed by forees greater than ourselves. Ps; chologists call it "an uprush of the subliminal self." It is thought by many that this subconscious region is the sphere of the operation of divine grace in our lives. It is at the very roots of our personality that we come most closely into touch with the divine life. The human spirit is akin to the divine Spirit, and it is in the "inner man" that we are strengthened by grace. Saul's conversion on the way to Damascus may scorn sudden, but there are not lacking signs that it had its preparation. The sight. of the martyr Stephen, praying for his murderers even while they bruised him with their stones, was not without its effect. It had made Saul reconsider his estimate of the heretic cal Nazarene. His subsequent violence was perhaps a vain effort to evade the growing conviction that he was in the wrong. The mental struggle gathered in intensity as he drew nearer Damascus and reached its climax when the city came in sight. He could no longer "'kick against the pricks." Had the apparently sudden change from Levi the tax-gatherer to Matthew the Apostle similar hit tory! Let us see.
The great road of eastern commerce, which joined Damascus to the ports of the Mediterranean, skirted the sea of Galilee near to Capernam. On the frontier, between the territory of Philip the Tetrarch and Herod Antipas, there stood a customs house. Levi was customs officer. He belonged to a class hated and scorned by hie compatriots; scorned, because publicans were Jews who had sunk to the level of collecting tolls for a heathen Caesar; hated, because of the cruel exactions and petty tyranny for which they were noted. A lawbreaker, for he must work on the Sabbath, he could not attend the Temple feasts, and in numerous other ways could not live as do the Jews; excommunicated because he was employed by their hated oppressors, to the Jews such a man as Levi was the very embodiment of anti-nationalism, and the very symbol of sin.
Capornaum was the city where the new Prophet had His home. Sitting before his custom house, Levi must frequently have heard Him, as He taught the multitudes by the seashore. Few had better opportunity for hearing and quietly thinking over the words of Jesus. As Levi poad.ced, a new idea of God, and as a result of it a new view of life, was quietly shaping itself in hie mind. The new Teacher was so unlike other Rabbis. He had none of the separatist spirit which pub such a barrier between the Pharisee and the publican. Nor was His teaching like that of the scribes, academic und argumentative. He taught with authority, spoke with a spontaneity and sincerity most con-vineing. Levi saw the mixed multiening breathless; saw among sinners and suspects Original fro
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.