These two men, then, represent the two opposite poles of weakness, the one too swift, the other too slow, to take a decisive step.  And Christ’s treatment of them is, in like manner, a representation of the two opposite methods which He adopts for curing opposite diseases, and bringing both back to the same state of health.  He stimulates the too sluggish, He represses the too willing (if such a paradox may be allowed).  His treatment is at once spur and bridle.  To the one man He administers a sobering representation of what he is undertaking with so light a heart; to the other He gives the commandment that sounds so stern:  ’Leave the highest duty, if you cannot do it without conflicting with your higher to Me.’

And so I think that Matthew’s arrangement of this pair of companion pictures is to be preferred to that which we find in Luke, who localises the incident in a different part of our Lord’s ministry, and on a different occasion.  I deal now only with the first of these two contrasted pictures, and consider the lightly-made vow, and Christ’s sobering treatment of it.

I. The too lightly uttered vow.

There is a certain almost jaunty air of self-complacence about the man and his facile promise.  What he promised was no more than what Christ requires from each of us, no more than what Christ was infinitely glad to have laid at His feet.  And he promised it with absolute sincerity, meaning every word that he said, and believing that he could fulfil it all.  What was the fault?  There were three:  taking counsel of a transitory feeling; making a vow with a very slight knowledge of what it meant; and relying with foolish confidence on his own strength.

Vows which rest on no firmer foundation than these are sure to sink and topple over into ruin.  Discipleship which is the result of mere emotion must be evanescent, for all emotion is so.  Effervescence cannot last, and when the cause ceases the effect ceases too.  Discipleship which enlists in Christ’s army, in ignorance of the hard marching and fighting which have to be gone through, will very soon be skulking in the rear or deserting the flag altogether.  Discipleship which offers faithful following because it relies on its own fervour and force will, sooner or later, feel its unthinkingly undertaken obligations too heavy, and be glad to shake off the yoke which it was so eager to put on.

These three things, singly or combined, are the explanations, as they are the causes, of half the stagnant Christianity that chokes our churches.  Men have vowed, and did not know what they were vowing, pledging themselves, in a moment of excitement, to what after years discover to them to be a hard and uncongenial course of life.  They have been carried into the position of professed disciples on the top of a wave of emotion which has long since broken and retreated, leaving them stranded and motionless in a place where they have no business to be.  Every community of professing Christians