The same sun that hardens the clay softens the wax.

It is the grace of God, that shows and condemns the sin that humbles us.

The grand obstacle to the salvation of the scribes and Pharisees was their pride, vanity and self-love. They lived on each other's praise. If they had acknowledged Christ as the only good teacher, they must have given up the good opinion of the multitude; and they chose rather to lose their souls than to forfeit their reputation among men!

Even papists could not see that a moral evil was detained in the soul through its physical connection with the body; and that it required the dissolution of this physical connection before the moral contagion could be removed.

Verse 11. (They presented unto Him gifts). The people of the east never approach the presence of kings and great personages, without a present in their hands. The custom is often noticed in the Old Testament, and still prevails in the east, and in some of the newly discovered South Sea Islands.

However, all gifts seem now to be absorbed in one and a man must be either a Preacher or nothing.

Remember that the word of God is not sent to particular persons, as if by name; and do not think you have no part in it, because you are not named there.