I. Consider first what is implied by the denunciation of Capernaum as exalted unto heaven. The Bible finds man in a garden, it leaves him in a city. We cannot but think that it is here intimated to us that the highest kind of life is social life; that man, in the noblest development of his gifts, is not a creature meant to live in any degree by or for himself, but to dwell in close contact with his brethren, in a condition in which both his happiness and his sanctification are to be increased by, and to find scope in, mutual sympathy and mutual subjection. We take it, therefore, to be a very shallow view of things which considers a great town as a great evil, and a town life in its nature inferior to a country life in moral and religious excellence. But whilst this is so, we may not shut our eyes to the fact that city life has temptations peculiar to itself. Our Lord speaks of Capernaum as exalted to heaven; and it is this precise self-exaltation which is the snare of every man who is one of a great community. The concourse of men together has a tendency to put God at a distance. Men come gradually to trust to themselves, to do without God. Now it is this self-exaltation, which grows up so gradually and so naturally in great cities, which Christ in the text threatens with the doom of being cast down. And we thus arrive at a lesson profitable for all, that if we would lead a life safe from the casting down of shame and care, we must keep steadily before us, as a rule and motive, the thought of an ever-present, personal God.
II. But it is not only the being independent of God which our Lord charges upon Capernaum. He speaks of it as being in an especial degree insensible to His own wonder-working power. And here, again, Christ appears to us to lay bare another fault to which large and flourishing communities are peculiarly liable, namely, insensibility to religious impressions. There are various ways in which this insensibility shows itself. Perhaps, amongst ourselves, it is chiefly proved by the small proportion of the population who attend the public services or partake of the Lord's supper. The root of the neglect is what Christ mentions in the text, an insensibility to all religious impressions, a half disbelief in any real operations of God amongst us. It is the spirit of independence and insensibility whose final casting down our Lord foretells.
Bishop Woodford, Occasional Sermons,vol. ii., p. 135.
Reference: Matthew 11:23. H. Melvill, Penny Pulpit,No. 2,510.