ach' of course means, literally, to proclaim as a
herald does. It is remarkable that this earliest phase of our Lord's
teaching is described in the same words as John's preaching. The stern
voice was silenced. Instead of the free wilderness, John had now the
gloomy walls of Machaeus for the bound of his activity. But Jesus takes
up his message, though with a difference. The severe imagery of the axe,
the fan, the fire, is not repeated, as it would seem. Sterner words than
John's could fall hot from the lips into which grace was poured; but the
time for these was not yet come. It may seem singular that Christ should
have spoken of the kingdom, and been silent concerning the King. But
such silence was only of a piece with the reticence which marked His
whole teaching, and was a sign of His wise adaptation of His words to
the capacity of His hearers, as well as of His lowliness. He veiled His
royalty by deigning to be His own herald; by substituting the
proclamation of the abstract, the kingdom, for the concrete, the King;
by seeming to careless hearers to be but the continuer of the
forerunner's message; by the simple, remote region which He chose for
His earliest work. The belief that the kingdom was at hand was equally
necessary, and repentance equally indispensable as preparation for it,
whoever the King might be. The same law of congruity between message and
hearers, which He enjoined on His followers, when He bade them be
careful where they flung their pearls, and which governed His own
fullest final revelations to His truest friends, when He said, 'I have
yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot carry them now,' moulded
His first words to the excited but ignorant crowds.

II. The King's mandate summoning His servants. The call of the first
four disciples is so told as to make prominent these points: the
brotherhood of the two pairs; their occupation at the moment of their
call; the brief, authoritative word of Christ; His investiture of them
with new functions, which yet in some sense were the prolongation of the
old; their unhesitating, instantaneous obedience and willing abandonment
of their all. These points all help the impression of regal power, and
do something to explain the nature of the kingdom and the heart of the
King. Matthew does not seem to have known of the previous intercourse of
the four with Jesus, as recorded In John 1. His narrative, taken alone,
would lay stress on the strange influence wie