The
Epistles tell us what sort of men we ought to be, both clergy and
people, because He has come and will come again. The Collects pray
that the Spirit of God would make us fit to live and die in a world
into which Christ has come, and in which He is ruling now, and to
which He will come again. The text which I have taken this morning,
you just heard in this Sunday's Gospel. St. Matthew tells you that
Jesus Christ fulfilled it by riding into Jerusalem in state upon an
ass's colt; and St. Matthew surely speaks truth. Let us consider
what the prophecy is, and how Jesus Christ fulfilled it. Then we
shall see and believe from the Epistle what effect the knowledge of
it ought to have upon our own souls, and hearts, and daily conduct.
Now this prophecy, "Behold, thy king cometh unto thee," etc., you
will find in your Bibles, in the ninth verse of the ninth chapter of
the book of Zechariah. But I do not think that Zechariah wrote it.
St. Matthew does not say he wrote it; he merely calls it that which
was spoken by the prophet, without mentioning his name. Provided it
is an inspired word from God, which it is, it perhaps does not matter
to us so much who wrote it: but I think it was written by the
prophet Jeremiah, perhaps in the beginning of the reign of the good
king Josiah; for the chapter in which this text is, and the two or
three chapters which follow, are not at all like the rest of
Zechariah's writings, but exactly like Jeremiah's.
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