These verses give us other scenes, still illustrating, according to the way of our evangelist, matter of value to us.
The Lord. listens to two challenges from His enemies; for, in this world of ours, reproach was ever breaking His heart. But in the holy power of a great Teacher, as He was, He returns both these challenges on the head, or rather on the conscience, of His accusers. One said that He was allied to Satan in what He was doing; another, that at any rate He had not sufficiently proved that He was allied to God in it: "He casts out devils by Beelzebub," said the one; "Show us a sign from heaven," said the other. The Lord exposes such thoughts, and then lays open to them their condition, that they might learn that it was not in Him, but in themselves, this evil and this obscurity were to be found; for that He was the "Finger of God," and the "Candle set on the candlestick."
The Lord's reasoning here is beautifully simple and powerful. But I may observe, contrasting verse 26 with Matt. 12: 45, that He does not here, as there, expressly apply the lesson of "the unclean spirit" to the state of Israel. And this difference is quite in keeping with the stricter Jewish nature of Matthew's Gospel. So, His sentence upon the state of that generation is here delivered in the house, in one of the social hours of the Son of man; in Matthew a like sentence is pronounced from the seat of judgment in the authority of the Son of man (Matt. 23); a difference which vividly illustrates the style of the two Gospels.
The Lord, in His answer to the challenges of His enemies, leads to these thoughts. In the progress, however, of this scene, we have to notice an interruption. What He was saying seems to have borne, with moral power, on the heart of one who was listening; so that, "as He spake," she lifted up her voice, and said, "Blessed is the womb that bare Thee, and the paps which Thou hast sucked." This was a testimony to the power of the words of our divine Teacher, which is His glory in this Gospel. And a like testimony is given to Him in the next stage of this same scene, for again, "as He spake," a Pharisee who was present "besought Him to dine with him." That man had evidently been moved by the power of His words, but not perhaps with the same affection as the poor woman, and he invites Him to his house. And so again, when He enters the house, He continues to act as the Great Teacher still, rebuking the religious pride and dark hypocrisy which He found there, until a lawyer, who was present, feeling the righteous rebukes, interrupts Him in like manner, and says to Him, "Master, thus saying Thou reproachest us also." But the light abides faithful to its work, and goes on, still making manifest the darkness that was surrounding it, till the enmity of that darkness is fully raised, and scribes and Pharisees together begin so to urge Him, that He has to withdraw the light, the power of which had thus become intolerable.
