The circumstances of his call, as narrated by himself, are represented
as occurring at or near Capernaum. “Jesus, passing out of the city,
saw a man named Matthew, sitting at the receipt of custom, and he said
to him,――‘Follow me.’ And he arose, and followed him.” This account
shows Matthew’s occupation, which is also known from the title of “the
tax-gatherer,” annexed to his name, in his own list of the apostles.
This was an occupation which, though unquestionably a source of great
profit to those employed in it, and consequently as much sought after
as such offices are in these days, and in this country, was always
connected with a great deal of popular odium, from the relation in
which they stood to the people, in this profitable business. The class
of collectors to which Matthew belonged, in particular, being the mere
toll-gatherers, sitting to collect the money, penny by penny, from the
unwilling people, whose national pride was every moment wounded by the
degrading _foreign_ exactions of the Romans, suffered under a peculiar
ignominy, and were supposed to have renounced all patriotism and
honor, in stooping, for the base purposes of pecuniary gain, to act
as instruments of such a galling form of servitude, and were therefore
visited with a universal popular hatred and scorn. A class of men thus
deprived of all character for honor and delicacy of feeling, would
naturally grow hardened, beyond all sense of shame; and this added
to the usual official impudence which characterizes all mean persons,
holding a place which gives them the power to annoy others, the
despised publicans would generally repay this spite, on every occasion,
which could enable them to be vexatious to those who came in contact
with them. Yet out of this hated class, Jesus did not disdain to take
at least one,――perhaps more,――of those whom he chose for the express
purpose of building up a pure faith, and of evangelizing the world. No
doubt, before the occasion of this call, Matthew had been a frequent
hearer of the words of truth which fell from the divinely eloquent
lips of the Redeemer,――words that had not been without a purifying and
exalting effect on the heart of the publican, though long so degraded
by daily and hourly familiarity with meanness and vice. And so weaned
was his soul from the love of the gainful pursuit to which he had been
devoted, that at the first call from Jesus, he arose from the place
of toll-gathering, and followed his summoner, to a duty for which his
previous occupation had but poorly prepared him. With such satisfaction
did he renounce his old vocation, for the discipleship of the Nazarene,
that he made it a great occasion of rejoicing, and celebrated the day
as a festival, calling in all his old friends as well as his new ones,
to share in the hospitable entertainment which he spread for all who
could join with him in the social circle. Nor did the holy Redeemer
despise the rough and indiscriminate company to which the grateful
joy of Matthew had invited him; but rejoicing in an opportunity
to do good to a class of people so seldom brought under the means
of grace, he unhesitatingly sat down to the entertainment with his
disciples,――Savior and sinners, toll-gatherers and apostles, all
thronging in one motley group, around the festive board. What a sight
was this for the eyes of the proud Pharisees who were spitefully
watching the conduct of the man who had lately taken upon himself the
exalted character of a teacher, and a reformer of the law! Passing
into the house with the throng who entered at the open doors of the
hospitable Matthew,――they saw the much glorified prophet of Nazareth,
sitting at the social table along with a parcel of low custom-house
collectors, toll-gatherers, tide-waiters and cheats, one of whose
honorable fraternity he had just adopted into the goodly fellowship
of his disciples, and was now eating and drinking with these outcast
villains, without repelling the familiar merriment even of the lowest
of them. At this spectacle, so degrading to such a dignity as they
considered most becoming in one who aspired to be a teacher of morals
and religion, the scribes and Pharisees sneeringly asked the disciples
of Jesus,――“Why eateth your Master with tax-gatherers and sinners?”
Jesus, hearing the malicious inquiry, answered it in such a tone of
irony as best suited its impertinence. “They that are whole, need not
a physician, but they that are sick. But go ye and learn what this
means,――‘I will have mercy, rather than sacrifice;’ for I am not come
to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.”