xvin. THE BUFFET-GAME. 327 



the Father to them. In this vile mimicry they were 

 acting over again the part of Ishmael when he mocked 

 and made sport of Isaac instead of sharing in the joy 

 of the household ; and the apostle shows that this con- 

 duct was typical of the ridicule that should be heaped 

 upon the righteous by, the self-righteous in every age 

 and nation. The whole circumstances of the buffet- 

 game show how true were the Lord's own touching 

 words regarding the Jews : " I have nourished and 

 brought up children, and they have rebelled against 

 me ; " how utterly wanting, in spite of all their long- 

 continued divine training and teaching, they were in 

 moral earnestness and the sense and love of truth ; 

 how ripe as a nation they had become for rejection 

 and destruction. 



What made our Lord the subject of vulgar and pro- 

 fane sport to the Jews was the seeming incongruity be- 

 tween His lowly position and His lofty claims. It was 

 the dwelling in His person of the fulness of the God- 

 head in the tabernacle of our flesh, and the consequent 

 conjunction in Him of the vast extremes of heaven and 

 earth, that exposed Him to the misconception and ridi- 

 cule of those who knew Him not. And it is the per- 

 ception of a similar incongruous mixture of things 

 actually unsuitable and disproportionate to each other 

 that causes fools everywhere to make a mock at sin. 

 There is a disruption in human nature ; the flesh lusteth 

 against the spirit, and there is a law in the members 

 that warreth against the law of the mind. It is in this 

 antagonism and contrast that the source of the ludi- 



