PRINCETON, N. J. B S 2 555 . T 4 6^T8T9 Thomson, William, 1819-1890 Word, work, & will SAel/.. WORD, WORK, & WILL WORD, WORK, & WILL COLLECTED PAPERS By WILLIAM THOMSON, D.D. F. R. S., F. R. G. S. LORD ARCHBISHOP OF YORK The Synoptic Gospels Death of Christ. God Exists. Worth of Life. CONTENTS. Design in Nature. Sports and Pastimes. Emotions in Preaching. Defects in Missionary Work. Limits of Philosophical Enquiry. LONDON JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET 1879 Printed by R. & R. Ci.ark, Edinburgh. PREFACE. The Essays and Speeches collected in the present volume have all been published before, and many of them have been largely circulated. A desire expressed by many that the first Essay, an introduction to a volume of the Speakers Commentary^ should be acces- sible in a smaller volume, was the immediate cause of the present publication. The threefold title forms the slender thread of connection of a number of productions, various in argument and in occasion. About one-third of the volume is devoted to the examination of a part of God's Word ; another third to His Work for man's sal- vation ; and the remainder to the Divine Will, as guiding the search for truth and the promulgation of it, and the value and duties of life. It would have been a pleasure, as some may think it a duty, to have revised and re- written some of the papers, and to have tried to mould them into a more harmonious whole. Some repetitions would thus have been avoided ; and the results of much additional reading might have been brought into use. But the constant calls of a somewhat busy life forbade the attempt. The thanks of the Author are due to the Committee vi PREFACE. of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge for kindly allowing the republication of Essays III. VI. and VIII., of which they had acquired the copyright. Each of these has found a place in one of those collections of discourses by various authors by which that most active Society has endeavoured to guide the popular mind towards the highest subjects of thought. Signs are not wanting of a coming reaction against the overweening pretensions of mechanical and material philosophy. To hasten that reaction by some complete work would be a noble aspiration ; but the Author must be content with a slighter effort, with a few scattered remarks and suggestions. But the reaction will come. God, that infused into man a spirit, con- scious, aspiring, law-abiding, devout, will not leave him to grovel in the dust, and to deny the possession of that precious heritage and sacred trust. This belief has prompted many of the later pages of this volume. If the reader feels that it sometimes needs indulgence and pardon, there will be at least one point of agree- ment between him and the Author. W. E. October 9, 1879. TABLE OF CONT I. —THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. § I. The Four Gospels, page i. 2. Amount of Agreement, 3. 3. Agreement and Difference, 3. 4. Attempts at explanation, 7. 5. Theory of an Original Document, 8. 6. Objections, 10. 7. State of Literature in Palestine, 12. 8. Oral teaching as the source of the Gospels, 13. 9. Use of preceding Gospels by the Evangelists, 15. 10. Position of St. Mark, 16. 11. The Logia of Papias, 18. 12. De- pendence of St. Mark, 20. 13. Theory of frequent Recensions, 21. 14. Subject matter of the inquiiy, 23. 15. Exaggerated theories, 26. The Gospel according to St. Matthew. § 16. The Man, page 27. 17. Language of the Gospel, 29. 18. Objec- tions to Hebrew Original, 32. 19. General Conclusions, 34. 20. Language of Palestine, 35. 21. Date of the Gospel, before the Destruction of Jerusalem, 35. 22. Not long before, 38. 23. Is this the date of the Gospel as we have it ? 40. 24. The Postulate of Time, 41. 25. Character of the Work, 43. 26. Its Contents and Structure, 43. 27. Objection Answered, 45. 28. Internal Consistency, 46. 29. Old Testament Quota- tions, 48. 30. Authorship, 50. 31. Objections, 51. 32. Summaiy, 53. The Gospel according to St. Mark. § 33. John Mark; page 55. 34. St. Mark and St. Peter, 58. 35. The Gospel, 59. 36. Contents of the Gospel, 61. 37. Peculiar Features of the Gospel, 62. 38. Relation of this Gospel to St. Peter, 65. 39. Various Opinions on the Position of St. Mark's Gospel with reference to the others, 66. 40. St. Matthew and St. Mark, 68. The Gospel according to St. Luke. § 41. The Man, page 75. 42. Journey of St. Luke with St. Paul, 77. 43. The Introduction to the Gospel, 79. 44. Date of Gospel, 81. 45. The Place, 82. 46. Schleiermacher's View, 82. 47. Marcion, 84. TABLE OF CONTENTS. 48. Marcion's Gospel, 85. 49. St. Luke and St. Paul, 88. 50. Com- parison of Diction, 90. 51. Contents of St. Luke's Gospel, 92. 52. Summary, 94. 53. Divine Authority, 103. 54- Evidence from the Existence of the Church, 115. 55. The Supernatural in the Gospels, 117. 56. Evidence for the Gospel Collections, 119. 57. Summary, 129. 58. Use of the Gospels in Public Worship, 130. 59. Conclusion, 131. IL— THE DEATH OF CHRIST. The essay is addressed to those vi^ho attach some preternatural efficacy to the Redeemer's sufferings for men, but propose to alter the terms in which it is usually conveyed, page 139. I. — The Scripture doctrine, 140. I. In the three first Evangelists, 141. 2. Especially the Institution of the Last Supper, 142. 3. In St. John's Gospel, 143. 4. The Baptist, 146. 5. The Apostolic teaching, 147. 6. The Epistles in general, 148. 7. Epistle of St. James, 149. 8. Epistles of St. Peter, 150. 9. Epistles of St. John, 152. 10. Epistles of St. Paul, 152. 11. Epistles to the Hebrews, 154. 12. Harmony of Scripture upon the Atonement, 154. II. — I. The doctrine of Church writers, 156. 2. Atonement often implied in another doctrine, in controversies, 158. 3. Wrong account by modern writers of patristic teaching, 159. 4. Irenseus, 160. 5. Athan- asius, 162. 6. Other writers, 164. 7. Anselm, 165. 8. How far original, 168. 9. "Sacrifice" and "Satisfaction," 169. 10. Defects of Anselm's system, 171. 11. Summary, 172. III. — I. Modern repugnance to the doctrine, 172. 2. Guilt caused by others and cured by another, 173. 3. Sin revealed to lis by its crowning act — the death of the Lord, 176, 4. The wrath of God, 178. Did Christ bear it? 180. 6. Con- clusion, 186. III.— GOD EXISTS. General belief in God, page 193. Origin of it, 194. Argument from final causes, 1 97. Defect of the Mechanical Theory, 201. Argument from the law of Duty, 203. Other arguments, 204. Conclusion, 206. IV.— THE WORTH OF LIFE. Materialism, page 213. Schopenhauer and Hartmann, 214. Growth of Pessimism, 218. Pleasure and Pain, their true value, 220. Philo- sophy of the Unconscious, 223. Actions for and actions against the Divine Plan, 225. Professor Tyndall's View of Punishment, 226. Liberty and Chance, 228. TABLE OF CONTENTS. v.— DESIGN IN NATURE. FourKingdomsof Nature, page 236. Kingdom of Man, 239. Purpose in the Succession of Kingdoms, 247. The Hand of God, 251. The Un- knowable, 255. VI.— SPORTS AND PASTIMES. Scripture view of Sport, page 262. Amusement permissible, 263. Limitation, 264. Kinds of Amusement, 266. Cruelty, 267. Measure of Amusements, 269. VII.— ON THE EMOTIONS IN PREACHING. The Sermon, an act of persuasion, page 275. The Exordium should be brief and relevant, 277. The style elevated but without pretension, 277. Unction, 2S0. Eloquence should instruct, delight, and move, 282. "Love will draw when fear will not drive," 285. Sermon should be a message of hope, 286. Pathetic speaking, its risk, 288. VIIL— ON DEFECTS IN MISSIONARY WORK. Variety in races and culture, page 293. India, 295. Brahminism and Buddhism, 296. Danger of spurious creeds, 297. With savage races, civilisation and religion should go hand in hand, 300. Expenditure on Missions, 302. Careless life of travellers as a hindrance, 303. Home scepticism another, 304. Missions a test of a standing or falling Church, 304- IX.— LIMITS OF PHILOSOPHICAL ENQUIRY. Experimental Science, a sketch, 310. Difficulty of keeping within its lines, 313. Parallel between Positive Philosophy and the Greek Sophists, 314. Positive Science not inconsistent with belief in a Creator, 316. Nor with design in the creation, 321. Type, and power of interpreting the type, 322. Morality, 324. The mystery of pain, 327. Advice to Students of Philosophy, 330. THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. § I. The Four Gospels. — The Gospel of Jesus Christ is contained in four Books, each giving His Gospel " according to " a particular writer. The Books have come to be called in common speech the four Gospels. These works are very short : in a small Greek Testament the Gospel according to St. Matthew occu- pies 69 pages ; that according to St. Mark, 42 ; that of St. Luke, 74 ; and that of St. John, 54. It is evi- dent that a complete biography could not be included in such narrow limits ; and the most careless inspection would show that no attempt at a complete biography, in the modern sense of the word, has been made in any of these Books. Of the first thirty years of the Lord's life on earth, and of His training for His brief ministry in that time, there is hardly any record. Just one fact, recorded only by one Evangelist (St. Luke), offers a glimpse of a childhood sanctified by pious thoughts and by a divine purpose. It is evident that the three who omitted all such records, and the one who confined himself to this short story, did not consider that a continuous record of growth and training, of youthful aspirations and of self-consecration to a future work, belonged to their purpose. With the baptism of Jesus commences the more complete narrative of His life. But even here there are facts to explain which have occupied the critical faculty of theologians from the B 9 THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. first, and which, for more than a century, have been the ground of ardent controversy, not yet brought to an end. The Gospel according to St. John, touching the others at its beginning and at its close, and at a very few points in its middle course, pursues for the most part an independent path, as though the object of the writer had been to supply such facts and discourses as the others had omitted. In the first three Gospels the ministry of the Lord in Galilee is made prominent ; St. John gives a large place to His ministry in Judaea, passed over by St. Matthew almost in silence. Large discourses, and these of fundamental importance to the new " kingdom of heaven " that was come into the world, find due place in St. Matthew and St. Luke, and are not even mentioned by St. John : whilst this last gives place to words of greatest moment, not recorded elsewhere, and notably to the last discourse of Jesus ending with the 17th chapter of St. John. In a " Harmony of the Gospels," such as those which have been framed from the earliest times, the fourth Gospel, as to the chief parts of it, refuses to be included : it cannot be compared with the rest, for it occupies different ground. There is of course an explanation of this remarkable fact, which will be shown in its proper place. But in the meantime let it be remem- bered that the Gospels present a history of the salvation of mankind by Jesus Christ the Son of God, and not a minute and exact life of the Saviour. St. Luke, at the outset of his Gospel, ^proposes to give an accurate and orderly account of all that had taken place ; but he limits it to the things that were surely believed amongst the disciples, that Theophilus might know the certainty of those things wherein he had been instructed. Not a complete life ; but the life as it bore on the belief and convictions of the people of God. THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. § 2. Amount of Agreement. — In the first three Gospels there is a large amount of agreement as to the facts related and the language in which they are expressed. If the history be harmonised, and then divided into 89 sections (this number is arbitrary),^ it will be found that in 42 of these all the narratives coincide, that i 2 more are given by Matthew and Mark only, that 5 are common to Mark and Luke only, and that 14 are found in Matthew and Luke. To these should be added 5 peculiar to St. Matthew, 2 to St. Mark, and 9 to St. Luke, and the number is complete. This estimate, however, applies only to general coin- cidence as to the facts of the narrative ; the amount of precise verbal coincidence is much smaller. " We may make the valuation in a more exact manner," says Reuss,^ " by saying that the text of Matthew contains 330 verses which are not found elsewhere; that of Mark, 68 ; and that of Luke, 541. The two first have from 170 to 180 verses which are wanting in St. Luke ; the first and the third have about 230 or 240 which are wanting in St. Mark ; the two last have about 50 that are wanting in St. Matthew. The total number of verses common to all three is only from 330 to 370. These figures are partly approximative, because the verses in the second Gospel are generally shorter, which prevents an exact mathematical calculation." § 3. Agreement and Difference. — As regards the verbal agreement of the three writers, it may be said that in no other case would it be possible to find three writers so independent as to their matter, who showed such minute and abundant coincidences of expression ; and that no other three writers have shown such a care- ful adherence to the very same forms of expression, ^ Reuss {Histoire Evangilique, 1876) divides into 124 sections. 2 Ibid. THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. who have also shown so great an independence in the selection and omission of subjects. It is the combin- ation of these two elements which has made the subject of Gospel Harmony one of the most difficult problems of criticism. " By far the larger portion," says ProT fessor Andrews Norton {Genuineness, i. p. 240, 2d ed.), " of this verbal agreement is found in the recital of the words of others, and particularly in the words of Jesus. Thus, in Matthew's Gospel, the passages ver- bally coincident with one or both of the other two Gos- pels amount to less than a sixth part of its contents ; and of this about seven-eighths occur in the recital of the words of others, and only about one-eighth in what, by way of distinction, I may call mere narrative, in which the Evangelist, speaking in his own person, was unrestrained in the choice of his expressions. In Mark, the proportion of coincident passages to the whole con- tents of the Gospel is about one-sixth, of which not one- fifth occurs in the narrative. Luke has still less agree- ment of expression with the other Evangelists. The passages in which it is found amount only to about a tenth part of his Gospel ; and but an inconsiderable portion of it appears in the narrative — less than a twen- tieth part. The proportions should be further compared with those which the narrative part of each Gospel bears to that in which the words of others are professedly repeated. Matthew's narrative occupies about one-fourth of his Gospel, Mark's about one-half, and Luke's about one-third. It may easily be computed, therefore, that the proportion of verbal coincidence found in the nar^ rative part of each Gospel, compared with what exist? in the other part, is about in the following ratios : in Matthew as one to somewhat more than two, in Mark as one to four, and in Luke as one to ten." Examples of agreement are too numerous to offer much difficulty THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. in selection. But the question can only be minutely- examined by means of the original text ; and so it lies beyond the scope of the present work. The reader may, however, compare the following large sections of the three Gospels : Matt. iv. 12 Mark i. i Luke iii. i to to to Matt, xviii. 35. Mark xiii. Luke iv. 13 In these the order and arrangement are in remarkable harmony, although the sections consist for the most part of detached narratives, each in itself complete, and often isolated from the others by special words of in- troduction and conclusion. The Lord healed a great multitude of sick ; but the three always select the same cases for fuller record. The utterances of Jesus, in like manner, must have been very numerous ; but the Evangelists agree in reporting a certain selection. St. Matthew and St. Luke cite the Lord's denunciation against Chorazin and Bethsaida ; but agree also in omitting the fault which had brought down the sentence. When the Lord's teaching is associated with some circumstance of time and place, all the Evangelists con- cur in surrounding it with the proper accessories. Of verbal agreement the feeding of the 5000 (Matt. xiv. 19, 20 ; Mark vi. 41, 42 ; Luke ix. 16, 17), and the healing of the paralytic (Matt. ix. 1-8 ; Mark ii. 1-12 ; Luke V. 1 7-26), are examples. In translating the words of Jesus, who used, no doubt, the Aramaic language, the inspired writers coincide in points that have no- thing to do with fidelity of rendering ; thus, the Greek word for " hardly," which occurs nowhere in the New Testament except in this place and the two parallel places in Matt. xix. 23 ; the irregular form of the word for " are forgiven," in Matt. ix. 2, 5 ; the diminu- tive form for "ear" (Matt. xxvi. 5 i) ; a peculiar double THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. augment in "was restored" (Matt. xii. 13)/ all are re- peated exactly by the other Evangelists, whereas three writers, translating in entire independence of each other, and of common sources, would certainly have failed to light upon coincidences so many and so unlikely. There would of course be no wonder if the verbal correspondence were maintained throughout. The in- tention would then be manifest, to give narratives identical in all points. But the marks of independence are as manifest as the points of agreement. Thus, on comparing Matt. xi. 25-27 with Luke x. 21, 22, there appears an amount of agreement in reporting our Lord's words, minute, exact, such as no two writers rendering into Greek the same short discourses would have exhibited ; but, whilst the coincidence reaches down to the smallest words, there is an important variation. Instead of " knoweth the Son," Luke has " knoweth ■who the Son is!' The departure from St. Matthew's re- port is but as to three words : the agreement applies to more than fifty ; yet the former is sufficient to stamp each of the passages with the character of an independent report, and to put aside all question of mere copying. Such cases could be multiplied indefinitely.^ The general results of such an examination may be summed up as follows. The verbal and material agreement of the three first Evangelists is such as does not occur in any other authors who have written independently of each other. The verbal agreement is greater where the spoken words of others are cited than where facts are recorded ; ^ Au(rK6Xajs . . . acpiuvrai . . . thriov . . . aweKaTeaTadr). 2 The subject may be pursued by the help of Anger's Synopsis, or by the Harmonies of Tischendorf or Greswell. The little work of Clausen makes the process of examination easy, by drawing attention to evei7 variation of expression. See also Holtzmann, Die Syfioptischen Evangelien^ ch. i. THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. and greatest in quotations of the words of our Lord : and as these quotations are all translations from the Aramaic dialect, there is something more at work than the scrupulous exactness of a faithful reporter. But, in some leading events, as in the calling of the four first disciples, in the calling of Matthew, and in the account of the Transfiguration, the agreement even in expres- sion is remarkable. The narratives of our Lord's early life, in St. Matthew and St. Luke, have little in common ; while St. Mark does not include that part of the history in his plan. The agreement in the narrative portions of the Gospels begins with the baptism of John, and reaches its highest point in the account of the Passion of our Lord, and the facts that closely preceded it ; so that a direct ratio might almost be said to exist between the amount of agreement and the nearness of the facts related to the Passion. After this event, in the account of His burial and resurrection, the coincidences are few. The language of all three is Greek with Hebrew idioms ; these Hebraisms are most abundant in St. Mark, and fewest in St. Luke. S 4. Attempts at Explanation. — These facts exhibit the first three Gospels as three distinct accounts of the life and teaching of the Redeemer, but with a greater amount of agreement than three wholly independent and isolated accounts would be expected to manifest. The agreement would be no difficulty without the differences ; it would only show that all had agreed to give forth the Gospel in the same form of words, attributing these to the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. The difference of form and style without the agreement would present no difficulty, since there may be a substantial harmony between accounts that differ greatly in modes of expression ; and the very difference might be a guarantee of independence. The harmony and the THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. variety together form the problem, which has occupied Biblical critics for above a century. It may be possible now, after every line of research seems to have been eagerly followed and perhaps almost exhausted, to put some limits to these inquiries, and to sift the certain from that which must remain uncertain to the end. Those who desire to see vindicated the truth and historical character of the Gospels will not have cause, upon the whole, to regret that the controversy has taken place. § 5. Theory of an Original Doaunent. — One hypo- thesis to account for this state of facts is that of a common original document, now lost to us, from which all the Evangelists drew, treating it, however, as the materials for their narrations rather than as a document whose every detail they were bound to preserve. A passage from Epiphanius seems at first to give some colour to this {Hczres. ii. 51, 6), but in the expression which he employs, " from the same fountain," he refers to the inspiring Spirit from which the three drew their authority, and not to any earthly version, oral or written, of His divine message. The theory of Eichhorn, now pretty well exploded, was framed upon such a view. It appeared to him that the features common to all three Gospels were contained in a certain Gospel, which had been used in them all. Such a Gospel would naturally be written at first in the dialect of Palestine, the Syro-Chaldaic. He tries to show, from an exact com- parison of passages, that " the sections, whether great or small, which are common to St. Matthew and St. Mark but not to St. Luke, and which at the same time occupy places in the Gospels of St. Matthew and St. Mark which correspond to each other, were additions made in the copies used by St. Matthew and St. Mark, but not in the copy used by St. Luke ; and, in like THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. manner, that the sections found in the corresponding places of the Gospels of St. Mark and St. Luke, but which were not contained in the Gospel of St. Matthew, were additions made in the copies used by St. Mark and St. Luke" (p. 192). Thus Eichhorn considers him- self entitled to assume that he can reconstruct the original document, and also that there must have been four other documents to account for the phenomena of the text. He makes — 1. The original document. 2. An altered copy, which St. Matthew used. 3. An altered copy, which St. Luke used. 4. A third copy, made from the two preceding, used by St. Mark. 5. A fourth altered copy, used by St. Matthew and St. Luke in common. As there is no external evidence worth considering that this original or any of its numerous copies ever existed, the worth of this elaborate hypothesis must depend upon its furnishing the only explanation, and that a sufficient one, of the facts of the text. Bishop Marsh, however, finds it necessary, in order to complete the account of the text, to raise the number of docu- ments to eight, still without producing any external evidence for the existence of any of them ; and this, on one side, deprives Eichhorn's theory of the merit of completeness, and, on the other, presents a much broader surface to the obvious objections. Like the earlier astronomers, who, when the theory of cycles proved insufficient to explain the heavenly motions, did not fail to introduce epicycles to sustain the tottering theory, the English theologian enlarges the theory of his German predecessor. He assumes the existence of 1. A Hebrew original. 2. A Greek translation. THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. 3. A transcript of No. i, with alterations and addi- tions. 4. Another, with another set of alterations and additions. 5. Another, combining both the preceding, used by St. Mark, who also used No. 2. 6. Another, with the alterations and additions of No. 3, and with further additions, used by St. Matthew. 7. Another, with those of No. 4, and further additions, used by St. Luke, who also used No. 2. 8. A wholly distinct Hebrew document, in which our Lord's precepts, parables, and discourses were recorded, but not in chronological order ; used both by St. Matthew and St. Luke. To this it is added, that " as the Gospels of St. Mark and St. Luke contain Greek translations of Hebrew materials, which were incorporated into St. Matthew's Hebrew Gospel, the person who translated St. Matthew's Hebrew Gospel into Greek frequently derived assistance from the Gospel of St. Mark, where he had matter in connection with St. Matthew : and in those places, but in those places only, where St. Mark had no matter in connection with St. Matthew, he had frequently recourse to St. Luke's Gospel" (p. 361). One is hardly sur- prised after this to learn that Eichhorn now put forth a revised hypothesis {Einleitwig in das N. T., 1804), in which a supposed Greek translation of a supposed Aramaic original took a conspicuous part ; nor that Hug was able to point out that even the most liberal assumption of written documents had not provided for one case, that of the verbal agreement of St. Mark and St. Luke, to the exclusion of St. Matthew ; which, though of rare occurrence, would require, on Eichhorn's theory, an additional Greek version. S 6. Objections. — An additional Greek version could THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. have been supplied on demand, for it is the advantage of this theory, that its facts are all supplied from the mind, and, therefore, practically unlimited. It is as easy to supply eighty documents as eight. To assume for every new set of facts the existence of another complete edition and recension of the whole original work, seems a needless waste of assumptions ; it would have been enough to suppose that some memorials, more or less complete, had existed, such as St. Luke seems to allude to in the opening of his Gospel, which had been adopted by an Evangelist into his work. This original Gospel is supposed to have been of such authority as to be circulated everywhere ; yet so defec- tive, as to require and to receive annotation from almost any hand, and so little reverenced that almost no hand spared it. If all the Evangelists agreed to draw from it, in one or other of its forms, it must have been widely, if not universally, accepted in the Church ; and yet there is no record of its existence. Numerous apocryphal Gospels have floated down to us ; this, once the one Gospel of the Church, has vanquished quite. The force of this dilemma has been felt : if the work was of high authority, it would have been preserved, or at least mentioned and quoted ; if of lower authority, it could not have been the basis of the three canonical Gospels ; and various attempts have been made to escape from it. To give but one example, for it is needless to stir to the lowest strata the dead bones of this controversy, Bertholdt ingeniously argues^ that a Gospel written by St. Paul, and transmitted to the Christians in Pontus, was the basis of numerous Gospels; and assumes that it was also the " original Gospel," so that Marcion's Gospel would be a transcript some- what corrupted of the primitive document. But there ^ Einleitung, vol. iii. pp. 1208- 1223. THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. is no proof at all that St. Paul used any written Gospel, and it may now be taken as proved after a very full discussion that the opinion of Tertullian and Epiphanius was the true one, that the so-called Gospel of Marcion was not an independent work, but an abridged version of St. Luke's Gospel, altered by Marcion to suit his own heretical tenets. It would follow then that the assumed original Gospel had perished without a trace, and that the same fate had followed the recensions and translations, be they more or fewer in number. ^ 7. State of literature in Palestine. — But it may be asked whether the state of letters in Palestine at this time was such as to make this constant editing, trans- lating, annotating, and enriching of a history a natural and probable process .'' With the independence of the Jews their literature had declined ; from the time of Ezra and Nehemiah, if a writer in Palestine arose, his works became known, if at all, in Greek translations, through the Alexandrine Jews. The period of which we are now treating was, for the Jews, one of very little literary activity ; and, if this applies to all classes, it would be true of the humble and uneducated class from which the first converts came (Acts iv. 13 ; James ii. 5). Even the " second law," which grew up after the cap- tivity, and in which the knowledge of the learned class consisted, was handed down by tradition, and not reduced to writing. The theory of Eichhorn pre- supposes a people of literary habits, and a class amongst that people whose education was high, and who had much literary activity : here, however, the conditions are exactly the reverse.^ Perhaps Eichhorn hardly realised the fact that, in breaking with the traditionary account of the origin of the Gospels, he was abandoning, on the one hand, the best mode of proof for the origin ^ Gieseler, p. 59, et seq. THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. 13 of a book, and was opening a door, on the other hand, to a hundred theories, many of them, like that of Strauss, fatal to every feeling of reverence for the Books in which the Gospel of Peace is conveyed to us. But still to Eich- horn belongs the merit of having laid bare the whole of the problem now before us, and of having honestly attempted a solution of it, which, however, possesses for us now little more than an antiquarian interest.^ S 8. Oral teacJiing as the source of tJie Gospels. — There is another supposition, of which Gieseler may be accepted as the best expositor, to account for the relations of the three first Gospels. The written Gospels resemble each other so much, because the oral teaching of the Apostles had taken a settled form ; and there are differences in the midst of the agreement, because the writers were not bound to that oral teaching which yet they desired to preserve, and, for the most part, to follow. This hypothesis is worthy of consideration, both because it appears to possess at least a ground of truth, and because it seems at first sight difficult to realise. From the day of Pentecost, the Apostles began the work of preaching the Gospel, which was in a short time to overspread the world ; but it is certain that for many years not one of the four Gospels existed, out of which they might preach. So zealous were the Apostles in their work that they divested themselves of the labour of ministering to the poor, in order that they might " give themselves continually unto prayer and to the ministry of the word " (Acts vi.) Prayer and preach- ing were the business of their lives. Now their preach- ing must in great part have consisted, from the nature of the case, of a recital of the facts of the life of Jesus 1 For a fuller account might be consulted Marsh's Michaelis (see above) ; Holtzmann, pp. 17, et seq. ; Hilgenfeid, Evangelien, pp. 2, et seq. See also Smith, Dictionary of the Bible, article Gospels. 14 THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. Christ. They had been the eyewitnesses of a wonder- ful life, of acts and sufferings which it concerned the world to know. Many of their hearers had never heard of Jesus ; many others had received false accounts of One whom it suited the rulers of the Jews to denounce as an impostor. The ministry of the Lord had taken place chiefly in Galilee, but the first preaching was in Judaea, It would, therefore, be necessary to lay a groundwork of facts, before there could be inferences from, and applications of, those facts. The preaching would be more akin to the daily lessons in a modern service, than to the sermon. This view is confirmed by what we know of the Apostles' preaching from the Acts of the Apostles. Peter at Csesarea, and Paul at Antioch, preach alike the facts of the Redeemer's life and death. Now there would be a tendency to preserve one form and order in this historical preaching. The account of some miracle would be told again and again in one form of words, and the narrative of a journey would follow the same order of events, and the event selected would be always the same. Both teachers and hearers would have an interest in this : the teachers, from the wish that they should be as exact as possible ; and the hearers, in order that their want of instruction and cultivation should have as small a burden to bear as possible. To say that such an oral tradition could not grow up amongst ourselves, is hardly to the purpose. We never impose such a task on our memory, because we have at hand the more artificial support of written works for all that we have to learn. Plato does not fear to put before us an account of a long dialogue, not from the memory of the writer, but professing to be an account given to the writer of what some one had heard from some others ; and the hearer does not betray any wonder at efforts of memory so strange to us. THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. 15 There will be much difference of opinion as to the share to be assigned to this body of traditional teaching in the formation of our present Gospels, But there probably will be little difference of opinion as to the like- lihood of there having grown up a body and form of preaching, preserved, at first, only in the memory of those who preached and heard, of which the life and words of Jesus formed the subjects, and which tended to be, not merely in substance but in details, one and the same everywhere, with a resemblance closer and more marked in proportion as the words and events were more important. § 9. Use of preceding Gospels by ike Evangelists. — Is any of the canonical Gospels copied from any other .'' This might seem to be a question easy to answer by internal evidence, but it has not proved so. In order to examine it, let us look at the contents of the three Gospels. Each records the Baptism of Jesus, each the Passion. In each there is one intermediate event, the Transfiguration, carefully narrated, with all that precedes and follows it ; and it is clear that about the time of this event, the teaching of the Lord entered upon a new phase ; that " from that time forth " He began to unfold the plan of His sufferings and death.^ We shall not greatly err if we place this event about six months before the Crucifixion. The scale of treatment of the divisions by each Evangelist is this : — In St. Matthew the history up to the Transfiguration occupies rather more than one-half of the whole ; the history of the last six months, rather less than one - half ; and the history of the Passion, beginning from the entering into Jerusalem, about one-third. In St. Mark, the history up to the Transfiguration is almost exactly one-half; and the history of the Passion occupies ^ Matt. xvi. 21. i6 THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. about a third. In St. Luke, the first part of the history is a little more than one-third ; and the account of the Passion about one-fourth of the whole. The main reason of the difference between St. Matthew and St. Mark in point of length, is that the former contains many- discourses of the Lord that are wanting in the latter. And the main reason of the difference between St. Mark and St. Luke is, that St. Luke interposes between the Transfiguration and the Passion, a long section contain- ing acts and sayings of the Lord, which neither of the Evangelists have recorded. These figures may serve to illustrate the remark already made that the Evan- gelists do not intend to give a biography of the Lord in the common sense of the word : of a life extending to thirty-three years, the last six months occupy a half; and the last week a third or a fourth part. ^ lo. Position of St. Mark. — Now the question whether any of the Evangelists copied from the others will turn mainly upon the position that is assigned to St. Mark. His Gospel is the briefest : it lacks many of the discourses in St. Matthew ; and St. Luke has a long section of which St. Mark gives nothing. Of the matter common to all three St. Mark is chiefly composed. Or, to put it in another way, it is possible, by eliminating from St. Matthew and St. Luke the features peculiar to each, and those in which they agree, but do not corre- spond to St. Mark, to produce three narratives, contain- ing in the main the same events, told in the same manner, and often with a minute agreement as to modes of expression, that is quite inconsistent with the theory that three independent persons wrote down at different times and in their own manner three quite separate accounts of what they had seen and heard. ■^ The hypothesis that one made use of the other is the most ^ See Sabatier, Sur les Sources, etc. 1866. THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. 17 obvious one, at least until its difficulties are explored ; and the most obvious form of this would be that St. Mark's narrative, which contains the largest proportion of the matter common to all, was also the earliest ; and that the others used this as the source of all that portion which they possess in common. As regards St. Matthew and St. Mark, perhaps the most plausible form of the hypothesis would be that which several writers have lately adopted, which is thus described by Reuss :^ " That the first Gospel is a work proceeding from a second hand, and is substantially founded on two more ancient works : that the facts have been drawn for the most part from the Gospel of St. Mark, of which the order has been preserved, saving some changes caused by the special objects of the editor and his pragmatic method. The great agglomerations of sentences — the discourses — as well as some other elements wanting in St. Mark, have been drawn from a collection, of which we know the name of the author, and which may very probably have passed entire into the new edition. This supposition would explain how the name of the author of the collection has remained attached to the complete edition, to our existing Gospel of St. Matthew." However plausible this theory has appeared to some, it will not bear a closer criticism. It rests upon two suppositions ; that St. Matthew has followed the order and succession of historical events as given by St. Mark, and that there is clear evidence that St. Matthew made a collection of our Lord's discourses only, to which the historical narrative of St. Mark would be a desirable, a necessary, complement. But neither of these supposi- tions is well grounded. There are historical facts in Matthew which the Gospel of St. Mark does not contain ; as the sending to Jesus by John the Baptist (Matt. xi. ■* Histoire evangeliqtie, p. 73- C i8 THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. 2 ; Luke vii. i8) ; and the healing of the centurion's servant (Matt. viii. 5 ; Luke vii. i). Again, the omission by Matthew of the striking scene in the synagogue of Capernaum (Mark i. 21) cannot be accounted for on this supposition.^ Thus there is the double objection that if St, Matthew followed St. Mark he did not take all that he found there,^ and he also produced more than he found there. § 1 1. The Logia of Papias. — What is the proof that Matthew compiled a collection of the Lord's discourses only } None. Papias says, " Matthew wrote the oracles {logia) in the Hebrew dialect ; and every one interpreted them as he was able."^ Schleiermacher, explaining logia as " discourses," infers that this collec- tion made by St. Matthew consisted wholly or chiefly of discourses, to the exclusion of historical events. This translation of the word is not satisfactory ; but if it were, Papias, in the same passage, speaks of St. Mark in connection with " the Lord's discourses " {logons), where he explains that this includes " things said and doite."^ If in the one case discourses stand for the whole acts, why not in the other .-* Papias puts Mark and Matthew side by side ; if they were not both Gospels of a life, he would have mentioned this point of contrast clearly. It would be the most notable point ; an Apostle who had been with Jesus fails to write a life of Him, and one who was not an Apostle, writes, under the guidance of Peter, an account of what the Lord said and did. There can be no doubt that Papias speaks somewhat slightly of the Gospel of St. Mark, as to its historical completeness, from comparing ^ Comp. Holtzmann, p. 71. ^ The passages of St. Mark not found in St, Matthew are not numerous. They are — i. 21-28, 35-39 ; iv. 21, 24, 26-29 5 vii. 31-37 ; viii. 22-26 ; ix. 38-42 ; xii. 41-44; xiv. 51, 52. ^ See Eusebius, iii. 39. ^ Eusebius, as above. THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. 19 « . it with St. Matthew. Mark wrote " accurately what he remembered, but yet not in that order wherein Christ either spake or did them ... for he was neither a hearer of the Lord, nor His follower ;"^ but if, of these two, Mark had been the historian of events, and Matthew the compiler of discourses merely, it is incon- ceivable that the deficiency of Mark should have been spoken of, and not one word should have been said of the utter absence of historical data from St. Matthew. In short, the warrant for making " this cleft through the living body of the Gospel "^ is inadequate ; and there is only this questionable word logia to stand between us and the natural interpretation of what Papias says ; namely, that as Mark wrote a Gospel, so Matthew wrote one, and in the Hebrew tongue.^ Amid the chaos of opinions on this question, one shrinks from trusting to internal evidence. But it does seem that no book was ever less like a patchwork compijation from two different documents, than the existing Gospel of St. Matthew. Even Reville, who 1 Eusebius, Hist. iii. 39. 2 Keim, i. p. 57. * See Professor Lightfoot, Contemporary Review, 1875, PP- 39^"403) who has discussed this with great power. " St. Paul describes it as the special privilege of the Jews, that they had the keeping of the ' oracles of God' (Rom. iii. i). Can we suppose that he meant anything else but the Old Testament Scriptures by this expression ? Is it possible that he would exclude the books of Genesis, of Joshua, of Samuel and Kings, or only include such fragments of them as professed to give the direct saying^ of God ? Would he, or would he not, comprise under the term the account of the Creation and Fall (i Cor, xi. 8, et seq.), of the wanderings in the wilderness (i Cor. x. \, et seq.), of Sarah and Hagar (Gal. iv. 12, et sea.)} Does not the main part of his argument in the very next chapter (Rom. iv. ) depend much more on the narrative of God's dealings than of His words ? Again, when the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews i-efers to 'the first principles of the oracles of God' (v. 10), his meaning is explained by his practice, for he elicits the Divine teaching quite as much from the history as from the direct precepts of the Old Testament." He then goes on with an argument, equally cogent, from the works of Philo, Clement of Rome, Polycarp, Irenseus, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, and Basil. THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. sees an " editor " of the Gospel at every turn, admits that the tendency in the Church has always been to quote the sayings and parables of Jesus, by preference, from the first Gospel, even where there was the choice of two parallel accounts, " as if the Christian conscious- ness had found in it from the first the most adequate expression of its ideal, and the most worthy of Him who had the words of eternal life."^ Keim finds "the plan of the book careful, simple, transparent, and well sustained to the end."^ If there has been any editing, he thinks it has not injured the original character of the Gospel, which he finds to be the oldest and the simplest. Reville admits that the language has one stamp and character throughout. In a word, no one would have started the notion that this work was the production of successive editors, if it had come to our hands alone, with the force of Catholic traditions recommending it to us from the first. It is only from a supposed neces- sity of accounting for every part of the problem of the Gospel Harmony that this idea of copying has been started, amongst many other devices. Nor is it without wonder that we observe how a criticism, which spares nothing in the divine Word, has treated with deference a word of Papias, doubtful in itself, gathered by hearsay from John the Elder, by one whom Eusebius describes as " a man of very narrow understanding, as it may be conjectured from his books."^ § 12. Dependence of St. Mark. — Did St. Mark copy from St. Matthew .-' This question brings us into the presence of that opprobriuin criticorum — the true position of St Mark's Gospel. Up to this moment it is an undecided dispute whether the Gospel of Mark is the common source of those of Matthew and Luke, or an ^ St. Matthim, pp. i, 2. ^ Life of Jesus, i. 52. ^ Eusebius, Hist. iii. 39. THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. epitome or abridgment of these two ; whilst the old traditional opinion which places Mark between Matthew and Luke in point of time has not wanted defenders. And this is the very last word of critical science. Keim sees as clearly that the aim of Mark was to unite the two great Gospels, following in his first main division the guidance of Luke, and in his last that of Matthew ; as Reuss and Reville see that St. Mark has the true stamp of originality, and the marks of the companion and scribe of St. Peter. Hilgenfeld, however, is equally certain that the second Gospel is dependent on the first, and quite independent of the third. What conclusions can be drawn from such a variety of results, except that the method itself is at fault .'' In the hands of Holtzmann, Hilgenfeld, Weiss, and others, the minutest analysis of the texts has been made. The patience, the industry, the acuteness in details, demand our admiration. But it may almost be said of the modern school, as it was of Eichhorn and his followers, that their most conspicuous service has been that of laying bare, with the skill of the anatomist, all parts of the problem. Any solution worthy of the name of scientific, any which could command universal assent, as resting on grounds of argument which could be conveyed from one mind to another, seems as far off as ever. ^13. Theory of frequent Recensions. — But it is better to consider the question of priority and originality in connection with the theory that each Gospel has been the subject of successive recensions and alterations. For almost every one who claims for St. Matthew or for St. Mark the position of being original, demands also to be allowed to explain that a Gospel of Matthew or Mark, somewhat different from the existing book, is the original for which they contend. The marvellous degree of elaboration which this kind of theory has THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. reached, may appear from Wittichen,^ who thinks he has established the following : — When the need of a written record forced itself on the Church at Jerusalem, content hitherto with the traditional preaching of the Gospel, which had gradually grown up, three separate writings, embodying the traditional preaching, were drawn up in Palestine, the groundwork of the future Gospels. The earliest of those was probably the original of St. Mark's Gospel. Next to this, and partly dependent on it, the work which was used in common for our present Matthew and Luke ; and thirdly, a work used by John alone, and unknown to the compiler of the original Matthew. It is convenient to designate these as A, B, and C. The next step is, that some other writer in Palestine, just before the destruction of Jerusalem, composed a Gospel, by means of A as the groundwork, somewhat altered, however, as to its order, and with a few places omitted ; B being employed to furnish several insertions. This Gospel he calls Mat- thew I. Somewhat later, when Jerusalem had fallen, there was composed, outside of Palestine, a new Gospel, grounded on A, with numerous omissions, in combina- tion with B and C, not without a few additions of the compiler, and with a new introduction. This Wittichen would designate as Luke L : it is the fifth in the series of contributions. Somewhat later still, the first Mat- thew was altered in Palestine ; the first Luke in Rome. In this edition of Luke, use has been made of Matthew I., and also of the works of Josephus. Both received additions and alterations. Amongst these, a history of the childhood was added to each. The last editor of Luke was also the author of the Acts, and through him this Gospel was used over the districts where St. Paul's preaching had come. The short preface was added by ^ Leben Jesii, 1876, p. 42, et seq. THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. 23 the same hand. Thus our present Gospels according to Matthew and Luke came to completeness, and the number of documents mounts up to seven. Somewhat later, the writing marked A underwent the process of editing, in which a number of small adaptations to the now familiar expressions of Matthew 11. were made, and several explanations added. Hence our present Gospel of Mark, the eighth document in the series : happily also the last. The author is even able to assign to C a distinct Pauline tendency, reflected in the derived Luke L ; whereas he discerns in the latest editors of Matthew and Luke a tendency to Judaism, for they lay stress on the privileges of Israel in the new kingdom of grace. They put forward this version to the heathen of the original apostles (as in Matt, xxviii. 19 ; Luke xxiv. 47) ; and some alterations are made, of expressions having a contrary tendency. The latest Mark, on the other hand, has been treated with a contrary purpose ; the Jewish national consciousness recedes, the opposition between Christianity and Judaism becomes sharper, and the rights of the heathen Chris- tians in the new Church are emphatically arrested. This elaborate structure is only one amongst many. Hilgenfeld, Holtzmann, Weiss, Reville, Reuss, each has his system of development ; and we so far do injustice to them here that we are not able to find room for the analysis by which each arrives at his conclusions. Certainly nothing has been wanting which keen critical observation can do, to lay a foundation for these theories. The work of Holtzmann, in particular, is a remarkable monument of critical industry. So are the two works of Weiss, on Matthew and Mark. § 1 4. Subject matter of the inquiry. — But when we are asked to treat thus a work which has been regarded, for seventeen centuries, as the work of one sole and 24 THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. single hand, writing under the Divine guidance ; when the picture-cleaner pretends that he can remove the glazing and retouching, which the work received from a third hand at Rome, and then proceed to deal with the repainting bestowed upon it in Palestine, so as to give us at last the original in its simplicity and v^eracity, some curiosity about the process and the chemicals employed is more than pardonable ; it is demanded by the nature of the case. Here, then, is an example of the materials upon which, and through which, criticism has had to work. Mark i. 35. Luke iv. 42. And in the morning, rising up a And when it was day, he departed great while before day, he went out, and went into a desert place : and and departed into a solitary place, the people souglit him, and came and there prayed. unto him, and stayed him, that he 36. And Simon and they that should not depart from them, were with him followed after him. 43. And he said unto them, I 37. And when they had found must preach the kingdom of God him, they said unto him, All men to other cities also : for therefore am seek for thee. I sent. 38. And he said unto them. Let 44. And he preached in the us go into the next towns, that I synagogues of Galilee. may preach there also : for therefore came I forth. 39. And he preached in their synagogues throughout all Galilee, and cast out devils. There is no parallel passage of St. Matthew, Now these words of Mark contain several striking points. St. Luke says that the multitude sought Jesus ; St. Mark mentions that Simon and the dis- ciples pursued Him, told Him of the multitudes seeking Him, and pressed Him to return. The verb " followed " is in the singular in the best MSS., as though Peter followed, with the rest as mere companions ; but these, summed up as " the rest," were James, John, and Andrew. The very early rising, and the prayer which was the object of it, are in Mark alone. The proposal THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. 25 to make a circuit in Galilee, the completeness of the circuit, rest on St. Mark's narrative. Mark is very- graphic and distinct ; Luke more general, yet clear. Matthew is wholly silent. How will criticism deal with these differences .-• Holtzmann regards this as one of the most decisive proofs of the originality of Mark. He points out how the several points have been obscured in Luke. Wittichen regards the passage of St. Mark as original (in A of his scheme), omitted by St. Matthew as being needless after the Sermon on the Mount. Godet can understand' all the differences on the supposition that the two narratives had a common origin in traditional preaching, but not on the supposition that one copied from another. Ernest Bunsen ^ has no doubt that Mark copied from St. Luke, adding a few touches from St. Matthew (viii. 14 f) Bleek, quite gratuitously, casts a doubt on the accuracy of St. Mark, as though he made the next miracle, of healing a leper, take place in one of the synagogues ; for which we cannot find a word in St. Mark's text. He is confident that in the passages that precede and follow this, the healing of Simon's wife's mother, and the cleansing of the leper, Mark had before him the two other Gospels, and used them both.^ Meyer sees in the mention of Peter's name, the singular verb, and the omission of the other names, the ground of the idea of Peter's pre-eminence ; but refuses to see in it any sign of a " Petrine " tendency in the Evangelist.^ Lastly, Weiss sees an involuntary indication, in this mention of Peter, of the source whence the Evangelist drew his information ; whilst he finds clear tokens of the reflecting editor in St. Luke, who passes over the pursuit of the disciples, intensifies the expression of 1 Hidden Wisdom, ii. 258. ^ Einleitung, part i. § 94. "* Kommentar, Mark i. 29. 26 THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. duty, " must preach," and substitutes for the more ambiguous " came I forth," the clearer reference to the heavenly commission, in the words "am I sent."^ What are we to think of these varieties of opinion, but that the science which arrives at them has not yet reached sure ground ? All that is sure is that of two accounts, both exactly in harmony, one is graphic and full of detail, the other more general and with less minute handling. One says that the more general has been formed from throwing off something of the more full ; another thinks that in St. Mark we have a later hand, with more literary skill, filling up with skilful touches a narrative that requires this treatment for its literary interest. One hears the voice of Peter here, a living witness of the scene. Another, some mere epitomiser or editor, making his best of the materials at his command. All these cannot be true, and they discredit the method that issues in such confusion. This is but a small example. How complete is the divergence, may be gathered from comparing almost any two writers on the subject. Thus Volk- mar says, " The much sought for Gospels, ' original Matthew,' ' original Mark,' ' original Luke,' or ' book of sayings,' are mere fancies."^ Meyer, in his turn, warns us, not without reason, against Volkmar's idea that the Gospel of St. Mark was written as a protest against the Jewish reaction expressed in the Apocalypse ; that it combines honour for St. Paul and his doctrines with the scheme of Church government of Peter, and that from it came all other Evangelical narratives, nine in number. He justly characterises this as a mere critical extravagance.^ ^15. Exaggerated tJieories. — In truth, the search ^ Markus-Evangelium, in loc. 2 Evangelien, p. viii. ^ Markus, Introduction. THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS, 27 after " tendencies " of the Tubingen school, and the un- limited manufacture of " original " and " re-edited " Gospels, have obscured the historical facts. The former has magnified a dispute between Paul and Peter, of which perhaps we know as much as can be known, into a kind of moral convulsion of the Church lasting for two centuries. The latter assumes in the early- Church an indifference to written records and a disposi- tion to mend and change them, which are quite incon- sistent with any theory of inspiration, and which have really no other foundation than the fact that it is convenient to dispose of any passage, adverse to a theory about the book, by assigning it to a foreign hand. It was at one time believed that in Marcion's Gospel were the remains of the original Luke, and that the Gospel of the Hebrews was the original Matthew : but these views are now fully refuted. There remains to us much analysis, minute and skilful, of the sacred text ; the premises are abundant and admirable, if we may separate them from the fantastic conclusions ; and if we are asked how we dare to challenge conclusions founded on so much study, the answer is that they challenge one another, being con- tradictory. Another method seems to be needed ; one which shall deal reverently and carefully with facts, and shall be most parsimonious as to hypotheses. It will be necessary, before any general view is adopted, to examine the facts that concern each of the synoptic Gospels separately. The Gospel according to St. Matthew. § 16. The Man. — In the lists of the Apostles of Jesus (Matt. x. ; Mark iii. ; Luke vi. ; and Acts i.) there is an Apostle of the name of Matthew ; in Matt. x. 3 he 28 THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. is called a " publican." There is every probability that the account of the calling of Matthew (Matt. ix. 9) refers to the same person who bears the name of Levi (Mark ii. 14 ; Luke v. 27). The facts are the same, and occur in the same connection, in all three narratives. He may have been called Levi before he became an Apostle, and Matthew afterwards : there is nothing unusual in the assuming a new name on some important change of position ; Peter and Paul are examples of this.^ In Mark ii. 14 he is called " the son of Alphaeus," and as Alphseus was the name of the father of James the Less, some persons have thought that the two were identical. Others have identified him with Lebbseus, the brother of James ; and Credner, believing that one and the same Alphaeus was father of Matthew and of James, remarks that there was thus a near connection of family ties between the Lord and the Evangelists. For all this there is little historical ground. There is not a word about the later life and ministry of Matthew in the Acts of the Apostles, nor in any other part of the New Testament. Nor can reliance be placed on the accounts, some of them vague, and even contradictory, which are given of his labours by later writers. Cle- ment of Alexandria^ offers the most probable account ; that he was given to ascetic practices, and that he preached the Gospel to the Hebrews for fifteen years after the Ascension. Eusebius mentions that he then went to other parts of the world,^ Whither .-' Was it to Ethiopia, Macedonia, the country of the Euphrates, to the Persians, the Parthians, the Medes, or even to the Anthropophagi .-• All these find support ; "* all are ' Compare Fritzsche, note on Matt. ix. 9. 2 PcBdag., ii. I ; Strom., vi. 15. ^ Eusebius, iii. I. * The original passages are not given here. They may be found in Kirchhofer ; Glider, in Herzog's Cydopcedia ; Meyer, Kojunientar ; Morrison on St. Matthew. THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. 29 alike unhistorical. According to Clement of Alexandria, he did not suffer martyrdom. Later writers, less trust- worthy, have given him that honour. All this is very uncertain. He whose narrative of Jesus' life has become the language of the heart to thousands in every land, the first learnt lesson of the young and the last con- solation of the aged, has left no record of his own life, from the day that he rose from the publican's desk to follow Jesus. " Among the Evangelists, however, the publican stands first in order, and opens the banner of salvation, even as Mary Magdalene, who had been a sinner, was the first to bring tidings of the resurrec- tion." ^ ^ 1 7. Langiiage of the Gospel. — A very general tradition obtained that St. Matthew wrote a Gospel in the Hebrew or Aramaic dialect. At the head of the line of tradition stands Papias ; he was Bishop of Hierapolis, A.D. 1 1 8, and was the scholar of Polycarp, or even of St. John, though this is very doubtful. His testimony mounts higher than the date of his own life, since he professes to give what he had heard from older teachers, as Aristion and John the Presbyter. Eusebius says,^ " But concerning Matthew the following is said, ' Matthew, therefore, composed the oracles in the Hebrew tongue, and every one interpreted them as he was able.' " It is probable, from the position of this passage, that it is a quotation from Papias ; but this is not quite certain. There can be no doubt that the " interpreting " refers to the translating from the Hebrew into the better known Greek. The tense no doubt refers to the time when the Gospel was first composed in Hebrew ; all that is actually asserted is that when it was first written, each was obliged to translate it into Greek, there being no Greek version at that time. ^ Lange. 2 Eusebius, iii. 39. 30 THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. Professor Lightfoot carries this farther : " It implies the existence of a recognised Greek translation, when Papias wrote ;" an argument which puts upon this aorist more weight than it can bear.^ The presumption is that Papias would not have spoken at all of the difficulty of interpreting, if that had long passed away ; or at the weakest, that he would have mentioned the existence of an authoritative translation. Irenaeus asserts that the Gospel was written in Hebrew. We hesitate to say, with Hug, that he is only repeating the statement of Papias. Without multiplying citations, which can be found in Kirchhofer and Bleek, it is sufficient to say that from the first half of the second century down- wards, it was the general belief that Matthew wrote for his own people, a Jew for Jews, and that he wrote in the Aramaic, or late Hebrew, language. The testimony of Papias is somewhat tainted, if we admit that he was ignorant of the Greek Gospel according to Matthew, which must have existed, and have been well known in his time, since Justin the Martyr, writing about 140, appeals to that version as to a well-known authority. Probably Papias was on a wrong scent altogether, and shared the mistake of many later writers, of confounding the " Gospel of the Hebrews " with the Hebrew Version of St. Matthew (Hilgenfeld). But still the reasons must be strong, which we could set against the unanimou testimony of ancient writers, that this Gospel first ap- peared in a Hebrew, or Aramaic, form. The state of the case may be thus briefly made. For the Hebrew original, the arguments are, (i) The assertion of Papias, that Matthew wrote the divine oracles in Hebrew, but that every one interpreted them as he could. This is confirmed by Origen ^ (a.D. 185 to 254), ^ Contemporary Review, August 1875, p. 397. " Euscbius, vi. 25. THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. 31 that the EvangeHst " published it in Hebrew, for the use of converts from Judaism:" also by Cyril of Jerusalem^ (died A.D. 385 or 386), by Epiphanius^ (died 403), who remarks that Matthew alone wrote the Gospel in Hebrew. And by Jerome^ (A.D. 330 to 420), who adds that, " it was not very certain who had after- wards translated the Gospel into Greek." These are only some of the authorities, but enough to show a widespread belief (2.) It was supposed that this Gospel could be produced. Pantaenus, a Stoic, converted to Christ (died 2 1 2), travelled in the East, according to Eusebius, as far as to India. He found there the Gospel according to Matthew, in the Hebrew tongue, in the possession of the believers, with whom Bartholomew the Apostle had left it. Jerome mentions the Gospel according to the Hebrews, as used by the Nazarenes in his day, as being "the Gospel according to the Apostles," or, as most people suppose, the " Gospel according to Matthew," and he adds that it was preserved in the library of Caesarea.* Twenty years earlier, however, he had spoken more pointedly of the identity of this Gospel preserved at Caesarea :^ and between these two periods he had made a very remarkable statement. " In the Gospel which the Nazarenes and Ebionites use, and whicJi I lately translated into Greek from the Hebrew tongue, and which is called by most people the authentic Gospel of Matthew, the man who had the withered hand is described as a mason," ^ etc. Elsewhere, we are told by Jerome that he translated it both into Greek and Latin. A belief then prevailed that the original Gospel of Matthew, written in Hebrew, was still in existence amongst Ebionites and Nazarenes, under the name of 1 Catech. viii. 2 Jjcer. xxx. 3. * Catech. chap. iii. * Dialogue against the Pelagians, ii. ' De Vir. III. iii. ^ 6 On Matt. xii. 13. 32 THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. Gospel according to the Hebrews. These two positions may be taken to represent the ancient opinion and tradi- tion on the subject of the language of Matthew. (3.) It would seem to follow that the existing Gospel is a translation of that Hebrew original, the work of the hand, either of the Apostle himself, as many think, or of some one quite unknown. S 18. Objections to Hebrew Original. — There are, however, strong arguments that shake these positions : — I. Why did Jerome translate into Greek the Gospel of the Hebrews, at a time when the present Greek text undoubtedly existed } If it was the same as our canonical Gospel, a separate translation was needless ; if not the same, then a doubt would seem to be thrown on the canonical Matthew, a doubt, however, which no one thought of suggesting. It may be taken as proved, that Jerome found important differences between the two. 2. The quotations given by Jerome, and by other writers from the Gospel of the Hebrews, which have been carefully collected in several modern works, are quite different from our Gospel of Matthew ; and though we are bound to allow that points of difference were more likely to be quoted, than points of coincidence, it is clear that a great number of passages, of an apo- cryphal character, were to be found in the Gospel according to the Hebrews. 3. The passage of Papias, on which so much stress has been laid, and upon which, no doubt, several other passages of the Fathers are built, becomes very difficult when it is closely examined. If every one interpreted the Hebrew Gospel as he could, why was it written in Hebrew, since those who could interpret into Greek, could have read Greek .'' And if it was written in Hebrew for the Jews of Palestine, who knew that language best, it was needless to interpret it into another. It may be doubted whether this remark THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. 33 of Papias, gathered from an earlier informant, and altered in the gathering, meant more than this : that as this Gospel was in Hebrew, and the rest in Greek, those who wished to know it and compare it with the rest, must interpret it into Greek. 4. If the Gospel of the Hebrews were the original of St. Matthew, the whole theory of Schleiermacher, adopted since by so many, that the oracles {login) of St. Matthew meant the " say- ings " only of the Lord, must fall to the ground. No one pretends that the Gospel of the Hebrews was limited to sayings and discourses of Jesus ; and the fragments that remain are enough to show us that it was a history, like the rest.^ 5. There were two forms of the Gospel according to the Hebrews ; one, the Gospel accepted by the Nazaraeans, the other, that of the Ebionites. Epiphanius mentions both, and connects them both with St. Matthew.^ Each appears to have been some- what altered from the primitive text. 6. The opinion of Hilgenfeld, that the Gospel according to the Hebrews is itself a translation from a Greek original, rests on very ingenious arguments,^ which have since been abandoned by the author of them himself,* but cannot be set aside. If they prevail, the old Gospel according to the Hebrews may have been written by Matthew, and yet have been posterior to another writing of his in Greek ; a possible, if an improbable supposition. The Gospel of the NazarjEans, Holtzmann deems to be, in fact, nothing else than a translated and edited reproduction of ^ See the passages collected in Kirchhofer, chap, xxxvi. 2 Hcrr. xxix. 9, and xxx. 3. In Anger's admirable Synopsis, which every scholar should possess, the second index guides to all the passages from these two forms that remain to us. 3 Evaiigelicn, p. 117. Comp. Credner, Beitrdge, p. 345. * " Hebroeorum evangelium nobis evangeliorum originem investiganti- bus etiam nunc Archimedis punctum praebet, quod tot viri docti in evangelio secundum Marcum frustra quaesiverunt." — Hilg. , Evang. secundum Hebrceos, p. 13, 1866. D 34 THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. the Greek Matthew.^ " Hardly any one," says Keim, " now believes, with the ancient Church, that the treatise was originally written in Hebrew ; it is too decidedly Greek. Most of the quotations from the Old Testment are taken from the Greek, not from the Hebrew, version, and a certain Hebrew colouring is characteristic of most of the writers of the New Testament, in consequence of their Jewish extraction," The assertion is too sweeping. Holtzmann^ gives a long array of recent writers, who, differing much in their conclusions, are agreed that the Gospel, as it stands, cannot possibly be a translation from a Hebrew original.^ § 1 9. General Conclusions. — The general conclusions, then, that seem warranted at present are, That the ex- istence of a Gospel according to the Hebrews, attributed to St. Matthew, is assured by the general voice of ancient tradition ; that this Gospel was seen, in one of its two forms, by Jerome, and by him translated into Greek ; that the tradition as to its authorship is mainly traceable to Papias ; that, so far as this Gospel is known to us, it is not the same as our St. Matthew ; that it is prob- ably a secondary work, and possibly a translation from Greek sources ;* that, whatever be the case with the Hebrew Gospel, we have in the canonical St. Matthew a work that has been received from the earliest times as the writing of the Apostles, and that it is not ^ Page 267. 2 Page 268. ^ To that list, which includes Hug, Paulus, Fritzsche, Schott, Credner, Wilke, de Wette, Reuss, Bleek, Ewald, Weiss, Ritschl, Kostlin, Hilgenfeld, and Delitzsch, may be added the English names of Alford, EUicott, Roberts {Dissertations on the Gospels), and Davidson (on St. Matthew). * Lessing thought that the Gospel of the Hebrews was the primitive Gospel : Eichhorn thought it must be the nearest to it. Francke, Delitzsch, Ewald, Bleek, Holtzmann, Volkmar, Freytag, Anger, all regard this as a secondary production, and many of them as an adaptation of the canonical St. Matthew. Hilgenfeld, Evang. sec, Hebr. p. 12. Holtzmann, p. 267. THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. 35 a translation from any Hebrew source. The Gospel, then, was written in Greek. S 20. Language of Palestine. — We do not here dis- cuss the question so ably agitated by Hug and by Dr. Roberts as to the original language of our Lord and the Apostles ; but the opinion that Greek was in common use in Palestine is not to be dismissed as a mere paradox. Palestine was, like Wales, bilingual. Greek was the tongue of the educated, and Aramaic of the people. Some Englishmen would hesitate to describe precisely the amount of use of English and Welsh in Dolgelly, Bangor, Aberystwith, and Swansea. About the language of Jerusalem, Capernaum, Samaria, and Bethlehem, we should have greater difficulty. Only one of the New Testament books is alleged to have been written in Aramaic ; and the remark of Papias seems to indicate an impression that a Syro-Chaldaic book would always be needing an interpreter. But it is too much to say that the case has been made out for the popular use of Greek in Palestine. §21. Date of the Gospel, before the Destruction of ferusalem. — What date is to be assigned to this Gospel .-' The ancient authorities tell us that it was written while Peter and Paul preached in Rome (Irenaeus), and that Matthew wrote first of all (Origen, and Clement of Alexandria). Modern writers have altered their views on this subject. Baur, who loved to see in each work the slow product of two " tendencies," a Universalist cor- recting a Judaising, put the date at 130, without any authority, and without carrying conviction to others, Volkmar places it between 105 and 1 10. Other writers, flying to the opposite extreme, have placed the date very early indeed : Roberts, 3 7-4 1 ; Townson, in the beginning of 37. The later dates were fixed with a 36 THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. view to find room for the " tendencies," and the " edit- ings " and " re-editings," which the Gospel was said to exhibit, the problem being to take as much time out of the second century as the evidence for the early- existence of the Gospel could be supposed to suffer. Hilgenfeld^ and Bunsen go the farthest in holding that the Gospel underwent constant revision and alteration, and did not assume its final form until after the time of Justin Martyr (say 150). Of this "evangelic Proteus, with its constant metamorphosis,"^ there is no evidence. But a large class of witnesses begin to see that some time between the years 60 and 70 lies the date of the composition of our Gospel ; and the evidence for this is not mere guess-work. There is nothing in the Gospel to hint to us that Jerusalem had already fallen, that the temple was destroyed. The flight of the disciples (Matt. xxiv. 15-20) had not yet taken place. In the great prophecy of Jesus, wherein the typical destruction of Jerusalem appears hardly distin- guishable in point of " perspective of time " from the judgment of the whole world, there would surely be some word of comment from the Evangelist, if one great portion had been completed and had passed out of prophecy into history, whilst the other remained yet unfulfilled. Some of the sayings call for such comment. The prophecy that the end should come, when the gospel of the kingdom had been preached in all the world, for a witness unto all nations (xxiv. 14) ; the promise that this generation should not pass till all these things were fulfilled (xxiv. 34) ; the utter surprise with which those calamities should overtake men (xxiv. 36-5 i) ; — all these receive their most powerful comment when the city of 1 So in Evang-elien. But in his latest work he places it shortly after the fall of Jerusalem. Emleitung, p. 497. - Holtzmann. THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. 37 Jerusalem has fallen amidst the horrors of war, and the second scene, behind it, is disclosed to the expec- tation. Where were all the " able editors " who, accord- ing to the Tubingen school, were always at work repairing and trimming the first Gospel.? The answer seems to be that the work before us was written before the fulfilment of the prophecy, and whilst Jerusalem was still a city, and the Jews a nation, and the temple God's own house. There are those, indeed, who refuse to admit that Jesus can have prophesied the destruction of the temple, because they wish to exclude every supernatural element from His life. But history should not be pared down for a preconception of this kind. That a surmise or forebod- ing of the destruction of the temple hung about the early preaching of Christianity is very clear. The Lord used it as a figure of His own resurrection : " Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up" (John ii. 1 9) ; and this was made part of His accusation at the last (Matt. xxvi. 61 ; Mark xiv. 58). It was part of the indictment of Stephen also : " We have heard him say that Jesus shall destroy this place" (Acts vi. 14). They were false witnesses who said it, but there was some germ of truth in the accusation, as in the parallel one against the Lord. The destruction had been mentioned, to say the least. And what wonder .-• This whole prophecy, in both its parts, is but an ampler treatment of the picture drawn by Daniel long before : " After threescore and two weeks shall Messiah be cut off, but not for Himself: and the people of the Prince that shall come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary ; and the end thereof shall be with a flood. And He shall con- firm the covenant with many for one week : and in the midst of the week He shall cause the sacrifice and the oblation to cease, and for the overspreading of abomi- nations He shall make it desolate, even until the con- 38 THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. summation, and that determined shall be poured upon the desolate" (Dan. ix. 26, 27). Upon the whole, the opinion that the fall of Jerusalem was not accomplished when this Gospel was published, has gained ground, and become the general belief ; the only reserve being this, that many believe the first draft of the Gospel to have been in existence before A.D. 70, this being afterwards subjected to one or more revisions.^ I 22. Not long before. — On the other hand, it is prob- able that the destruction of the city was not far off. A considerable time between the events of the Lord's life and the writing must have elapsed, or there would be no force in the words, " until this day " (Matt, xxvii. 8 ; xxviii. 15). Whatever theory we incline to, of the origin of the Gospels, it seems agreed that some time must have elapsed between the Resurrection and the present narratives being prepared ; whether the theory of antecedent preaching or of written docu- ments find most favour. In the case of St. Luke, there can be no doubt. Many had taken in hand the history of Jesus (Luke i. i). The traditions on this point are scanty, and not much to be trusted. Irenaeus (iii. i) tells us that the Gospel of St. Matthew was written whilst Peter and Paul were at Rome ;^ but it has been justly remarked that this is given by Irenaeus, not as a contribution to chronology at all,^ and we must not lay too much stress on it. The tradition that Matthew re- mained in Palestine for fifteen years after the Ascension, and then departed, would be inconsistent with this. Upon the whole, we are pushed by probabilities on either side towards a date somewhere about 63-65. The social and political condition of Palestine at that time ^ Thus Schenkel places the date after 70, and Keim before 70, the difference being only that one will not admit an element of prophecy. ^ Comp. Eusebius, v. 8. •* Morrison. THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. 39 threatened a great crisis. Society was fast dissolving into anarchy, and there seemed no help from any quarter. There was cogent reason for desiring to secure in a permanent form, for the Jewish converts, the Gospel facts which had so long been preached to them, from oral tradition, and perhaps from separate and fragmentary narratives. After the death of Claudius, it needed no great foresight to discern the peril that beset the Jewish nation. Felix, to adopt the bitter conciseness of Tacitus, " amidst every kind of cruelty and lust, exercised the royal office with the soul and spirit of a slave."^ Mutual mistrust, long protracted, between the conquerors and a proud and sullen race, had made government almost impossible. Two years of honest endeavour on the part of Festus (a.D. 60-62) could do little to recall Judfea from this anarchy. His successor Albinus (62-64) was a mere robber, bent on getting gold from any quarter by any means. When he was recalled, he opened the doors of all the prisons, and " left the prisons empty, but the land filled with thieves" (Joseph. Aiitiq. xx. 9. 5). As the candle flame casts a shadow from the lime-light, so did the villany of Albinus appear dull by the light of his successor's misdeeds. Gessius Florus (A.D. 64-66) was a mere brigand, who had crept into the kingly seat. Josephus can hardly find words to describe his conduct. The misery of the people under this evil succession must have been great : their endurance taxed to the utmost. " How long, O Lord V It was impossible that this should last. The clouds were gathering so thick that they must at last explode in thunder, and the bolts of heaven must fall. It was probably in this time of feverish expectation that the Gospel before us was brought into a written shape. Parables and ^ Hist. V. 9. 40 THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. images of the great Judgment, not preserved by the other Evangelists, are grouped here by St. Matthew (xxiv. 43 ; xxv. 46). The words of Jesus, penned by St. Matthew alone, must have seemed strongly pro- phetic of this troublesome time : " Wherefore if ... . eagles be gathered together" (Matt. xxiv. 26-28). With a society about to part asunder, with the constant fear of persecution, the disciples must have become convinced that the precious deposit of the Gospel must no longer be trusted to tradition alone. Matthew is departing ; others have gone. And therefore the Apostle gathers into a Gospel the treasure of preaching that the Church possessed. How far did he use materials existing at the time ? and how many kinds of them were in existence .-* To answer these questions is absolutely impossible now. The general strain of Apostolic preaching, as Gieseler thinks, formed the groundwork : it was said, and said again until it had fallen into a fixed form of words. Special reports and written records of this discourse and that journey may have been available : but the attempt to disentangle them is vain, if indeed they are to be sought at all. S 23. Is tJiis the date of the Gospel as zve have it f — Is this approximate date to be considered that of the Greek Gospel, or that of the Hebrew Matthew, after- wards re-edited and translated .'' The answer is, that all the reasoning that makes it probable that this Gospel was written before the destruction of Jerusalem, excludes the notion of any subsequent editing, which would amount to a recasting and reconstruction of the Gospel. There would have been some re-arrangement of the eschatological predictions, so as to distinguish the fulfilled from that which still awaited fulfilment. And, once more, upon what does this theory of re-edit- ing rest, which has disturbed the vision of so many THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. 41 modern writers ? Upon two points. In an obscure quotation, logia is held to mean discourses ; and, there- fore, Matthew wrote the discourses of Jesus only, and the events were incorporated from St. Mark ; and since " every one interpreted " the Hebrew logia into Greek " as he was able," therefore, there was one later Greek translation of Matthew, different from the Hebrew in its substance, as embracing discourses and events too. But the word logia does not necessarily, nor even prob- ably, bear this meaning, and Papias evidently knew no difference between the staple of St. Matthew's Gospel and that of St. Mark ; both were Gospel histories of the same kind. And, so far as the remark about the interpreting the Hebrew Gospel is to be pressed, it must be meant to apply to a limited time, for, beyond all doubt the Gospel of St. Matthew, in its Greek form, was in existence when Papias lived. Meantime, we have a right to ask why, if there was all this editing and comparison, extending far into the second century, it was done in a manner so perfunctory. Any editor could have brought the three synoptic Gospels into far closer harmony, with very small trouble or intelligence. If the original Mark was used for the groundwork of St. Matthew's history, why has the later Mark departed from it in so many particulars } Every later hand would have aimed at greater conformity between two or more existing Gospels ; the differences that remain ought at least to guard us from the suspicion of a con- stant process of free editing and alteration. ^24. The Postulate of Time. — In the longer dis- courses given by St. Matthew, many sayings are gathered up which are recorded elsewhere in connection with events that gave rise to them (ch. v.-vii. x. xxiii.) This is consistent with the hypothesis of a separate col- lection of discourses, but it does not by any means 42 THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. demand it. Nor is it easy to understand how it would be possible to compose a volume of discourses without the framework of events on which the discourses were hung. Indeed, this difficulty has been frankly admitted. Nor has the element of time received sufficient con- sideration from those who follow theories of redaction. If, for example, the reasons be conclusive for supposing that the Gospel of St. Matthew was written before the fall of Jerusalem, any theory which supposes three or four stages of its composition will find itself pressed to death by the narrowness of the walls wherein it is con- fined. We require time for the composition (say) of a body of Discourses of the Lord, for in all probability they were used orally in preaching before any one undertook to reduce them to writing ; then more time is required for the collected work to gather weight of authority sufficient to enable it to be made the ground- work of a fresh book. Suppose that after this the new work, composed of the Discourses and of some histori- cal record of events, has been framed, it too will require time to gain a footing, and to supplant records older but less perfect. Then its Jewish tendency is supposed to require a certain correction from a fresh hand, prepared to present the universal, the Gentile, side of the Divine message. Is there time for all this in the limit of about thirty-five years ? Baur was right when he demanded far longer time for his scheme of development ; shorten the time, and the scheme is shaken. It is curious to notice that another theory of development is passing through the same trial, the theory of " natural selection " was based upon a postu- late of unlimited time ; but the researches of Thomson and others forbid the concession of unlimited time, and show some clear limitations ; and, that being so, the theory itself must share the fate of its fundamental postulate. THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. 43 § 25, Character of the Work. — But, after all, the real answer to any theory of redaction, whether by wa.y of fusing together a book of discourses with a book of events, or by way of correcting a strong Judaising " tendency " by the milder and less exclusive " tend- ency " towards universalism, lies in the character of the work itself. A book that had undergone such treat- ment as Hilgenfeld^ supposes the first Gospel to have received, would bear marks of being a mere compilation. A strong individuality and a clear purpose are incon- sistent with such patchwork. But the character of this Gospel is uniform, and very strongly marked. Its object, from beginning to end, is to show Jesus as the Messiah of the Jews, and to describe " the kingdom of heaven," which He came to found upon earth. The evangelist wishes his countrymen to recognise in Jesus Christ, in spite of the national rejection of Him, in spite of the darkness in which His ministry closed, the Person to whom the prophets looked, and who fulfilled their words in all that He did and underwent. The phrases " kingdom of heaven " (used thirty-two times), and, " that it might be fulfilled " (used nine or ten times), mark this purpose. I 26. Its Contents and Structure. — The work is carefully constructed. Apart from the account of the childhood, the ministry falls into two portions ; the oflficial life in Galilee, and the preparation for the crucifixion ; the Baptism being the introduction to one of these, and the Transfiguration to the other. Each of them begins with a formal announcement of the Evangelist ; " from that time Jesus began to preach, and to say, Repent : for the kingdom of heaven is at hand " (iv. 1 7) ; and " from that time forth began Jesus to shew unto His disciples, how that He must go unto ^ Evangelien, p. 106. 44 THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. Jerusalem, and suffer many things of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised again the third day" (xvi. 2 i ). The one of these stages leads natu- rally up to the other, Jesus teaches long, and works wonders of love, and then takes account with the Apostles of the result of all this activity before He un- folds the history of His suffering. " Whom do men say that I am ?" During the latter stage, that of the cross, the activity and the preaching recede before the shadow of the coming events. In the former stage the Sermon on the Mount is put out of its place (comp. Luke), and made the opening of the ministry, for it is the new law of the new " kingdom of heaven," and must be brought into the most prominent place. Then follow (viii. and ix.) proofs of His wonder-working power ; then the sending forth by the Shepherd of the people, the Apostles to the children of Israel, to whom the new kingdom was offered (x.) The effect of His work on various classes and places now shows itself: John is in doubt (xi. 1-6) ; the people are perverse (xi. 18, 19) ; Chorazin and Bethsaida are harder to convince than Tyre and Sidon (xi. 20-22) ; the Pharisees, cramped and confined by the glosses of the law, cannot under- stand the Gospel liberty even a little (xii.) Now a group of parables of the kingdom of God seems to be the opening of a fresh period ; the structure being somewhat the same. First, these parables, answer- ing to the Sermon on the Mount : then new miracles, and, even more conspicuous, the two feedings of the multitudes with a little bread (xiv. xv.) ; and lastly, a fresh account of the results of the teaching as shown by various minds : " Whom do men say that I the Son of Man am .? " (xvi. i 3) — " But whom say ye that I am ? " (ver. I 5). This second section has probably for its chief scene a new missionary circuit round Galilee. St. Luke THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. 45 places the parable of the sower in the beginning of such a journey, when, accompanied by the Twelve, and now by certain women also, who had been healed of evil spirits, He passed through the land, carrying with Him the glad tidings of God (Luke viii. i-S). Throughout the first great section (iv.-xvi.) the pur- pose never flags or changes : this kingdom of Messiah was preached to the Jews who were its heirs : thus it was preached, thus it was enforced, and thus received by the ungrateful people ; whilst, of the darker lessons of the second part, the disciples understood nothing at the end of the first. " Be it far from Thee, Lord : this shall not be unto Thee" (xvi. 22). The second section, opening with the Transfiguration and the witness from heaven, has its Sermon too ; but this time the circle is narrower to which it is addressed ; the disciples, who now learn the doctrine of suffering and the cross, are to learn the ethics of suffering also : in the child's humility (xviii. 3, 4) ; in the tender consideration for the smallest and weakest (xviii. 10-14) ; in the constant forgiveness of wrongs (vers. 21-35); the strength of His ministers would lie. Miracles follow (xix.-xx.), but they are not so prominent now in the narrative. Again and again the gloomy prophecy of His death is pressed home to the disciples (xvi. 22, xvii. 22, XX. 17-19, xxvi. I, 2) : until at last the fulfilment comes. All the world of Judaea passes, for a kind of judgment, before His judgment-seat; scribe and Phari- see, and the doomed Jerusalem, wherein these rule so perversely, are utterly condemned (xxiii.) : and through the smoke and fire of the city's destruction may be seen the grand lines of a greater judgment (xxiv. xxvi.) § 27. Objection Answered. — It may be thought that to ascribe to the Gospel a structure so artificial is to weaken its historical value ; that it changes the Gospel 46 THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. from a history into an apology. The answer to this is suppHed by a consideration of the Apostles' purpose, and of the mode in which it has been fulfilled. To provide complete memoirs of Jesus was not the intention of any of the sacred writers. " They did not intend to narrate the history of Jesus, but to proclaim the salva- tion which has appeared on the earth in the Person and the history of Jesus Christ."^ The Gosj^els were to be the apostolic preaching in a written shape. The first preaching of the Gospel turned on the facts of a life (Acts ii. 22) ; and so the facts would appear in the written books, wherein this preaching was fixed and preserved. But the facts were of use for the one common purpose of all the preaching and writing, that of causing men to repent and believe and embrace the Gospel of Jesus. Now, this general purpose is somewhat modified in Matthew, by the wish to turn the Jews to Christ : it is a Gospel written first of all that God's chosen people might believe and receive life from believing. The book is pervaded by this purpose : towards this it moves with a constant progress. The arrangement is not one of artifice ; but the whole is moulded by the earnest purpose of the writer. The events are not arranged by any exercise of literary skill ; but they fall into their natural places in the Gospel of the kingdom. S 28. Internal Consistency.- — There is, however, a fair test of the historical value of such a book. If the writer is all Jewish ; if from his Gospel are weeded out things connected with the future reception of the Gentiles into the sphere of God's love, which appear in other gospels ; then this bias will, no doubt, affect the estimate of the work. But this is confessedly not the case ; and Baur's whole system of interpretation rests on the pos- tulate that there is in our Gospel a universal as well as ^ Keil, p. 3. THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. 47 a Judaising element. The latter he seeks in the original " Gospel according to the Hebrews," and the former in the softening hand of the editor who is supposed to have developed the present Gospel out of it. Why it was necessary to assume that the two elements did not arise in the facts themselves, and why it should be a general principle that one writer can only represent one side of a subject, are questions not quite easy to answer. But at all events the fact is admitted that this Gospel sets forth Jesus as the King of the Jews, and also as the Saviour of the world. And this is one proof, to unprejudiced minds, of its historical character. "The preaching [of Jesus in this Gospel]" says Keim, whose testimony is the more striking from the free treat- ment of some parts of St. Matthew, " ever flows forward, from an approaching kingdom to one which has come, and which is to come, from an emphatic utterance of the law to a criticism which ever grows fuller, from the calling of all Israel to the calling of infants, from a calling of the Jews to a calling of the Gentiles, from a preaching of the Messiah to a preaching of the Son, and finally to a preaching of the Cross. The proclama- tion at Caesarea Philippi of the Messiah and of His suffering is more clearly arranged in all its parts than in any other Gospel. In the acts of Jesus, the gradations of the miraculous are not to be mistaken, from the first stage of the miracles after the Sermon on the Mount, to the third and fourth, in which thousands are fed. The disciples steadily advance from vague admiration to the grand acknowledgment finally made by Peter. The conflict with the people and their leaders is slowly begun : Jesus hopes, the people believe, the Pharisees are in suspense, and Jesus still bears with them ; but in the midst of His career, a deadly strife is declared on both sides ; and Jesus, understood by His THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. disciples, who support Him, but misunderstood, hated, and persecuted by the leaders of the nation, takes, in the name of God, His destiny of death. The consist- ency of this representation is plain and extremely simple."^ § 29. Old Testament Quotations. — There is one more test of the originality of this Gospel, namely, that which arises from a consideration of the Old Testament quotations. Here an excellent service has been rendered to biblical students by the Rev. D. M. Turpie, by his Old Testament in the Netv^ in which all the Old Testament passages found in the New Testament are compared with the Septuagint version, and with the Hebrew Bible. Of the 278 passages examined, about 41 are found in St. Matthew. We are not disposed to lay great stress on the argument to be gathered from those quotations as to the Hebrew or Greek origin of the Gospel. There is certainly no uniform nor exact following of the Hebrew original ; nor has that course been taken which a mere translator would have been tempted to prefer — of adopting the passages from the Septuagint that corresponded to the passages in the (supposed) Hebrew Gospel. There is a certain inde- pendent treatment of the quotations, to account for which we should have to consider what was the object of the citations, and what was the standard of accuracy aimed at. But Bleek and De Wette have made the important observation that in the citations that occur in the body of the narrative the Septuagint is used ; whilst, in those which the Evangelist introduces as part of his own reflections, there has been a recourse to the Hebrew. This, however, requires some reservation ; 1 Keim, i. 53. 2 London, 1868. Mr. Sanday allows himself to speak somewhat slightingly of Mr. Turpie's scholarship ; without apparent reason. It may be wished that we had more such labourers. THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. 49 the Septuagint has exercised its influence throughout, even where there has been a reference to the Hebrew. The reader may refer to i. 23 ; ii. i 5 ; ii. 18 ; ii. 23 ; iv. 15, 16; viii. 17; xii. 17-21 ; xiii. 35 ; xxi. 5 ; xxvii. 9. The last passage is a free treatment of the original, from which it departs widely, in words at least ; yet it is manifest that the Hebrew was used here, and the Septuagint declined. The inference, from a general consideration of these passages, is, that the writer of them is a Jew, to whom both the Hebrew and the Greek versions were accessible, and who adhered, with one or two exceptions, to the Hebrew text in preference.^ But the inference from this use of the Hebrew, taken with the prominence given to the Septuagint, in passages which occur in the body of the narrative, would seem to be that the narrative part, at least, is no translation from a Hebrew original. Two explanations seem to suggest themselves ; that of Hug and of Dr. Roberts — that Greek was the usual language of Palestine at that time, and that the citations were first made in Greek by Jesus and His disciples, who, though having the command of both tongues, were accustomed to hold intercourse in Greek ; and, as an alternative, that when Matthew composed the Gospel, the substance of the narrative had already taken a Greek form and shape, whether as oral preaching or as some written document. Either supposition is adverse to the theory of a prece- dent Hebrew version of our Gospel. The argument of Dr. Roberts on the subject of the language of Palestine seems inconclusive [see p. 35 above]. The Greek tongue was much diffused. Palestine was bilingual. The edu- cated classes had the command of both. But the question is, which would be used amongst themselves, •^ Holtzmann, p. 259. De Wette, Einleitung, pp. 198, 199. Kostlin, p. 38. Tuipie, passim. so THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. in familiar intercourse, by the children of the people. " We learn English, and can speak it," said a Welsh carpenter ; " but we never use a word of it in conversa- tion, except when some Englishman wishes to converse with us." This is a natural instinct, to keep the exotic speech for exotic use ; and in the case of the Jews the affinity of their speech with the language of their holy books would be a far stronger tie to their vernacular tongue. But thus far we may go, that if the present Gospel were but a translation, both classes of quotations — those which occur in the narrative, and those which are introduced in the writer's reflections — would be handled in the same way. § 30. Authorship. — The authorship of this Gospel has been assigned by the universal voice of antiquity to the Apostle Matthew. Modern criticism, led by Schulz,^ has brought doubts on this : and an opinion prevails in some quarters, that, though there may have been a Gospel written by the Apostle Matthew, which may have been used more or less in the composition of the present Gospel, the present work has not an Apostolic origin. The arguments of Schulz, well answered by Fritzsche,^ are somewhat fine-drawn. Why, for example, should not an Apostle have used such a general form as that in Matt. iv. 25 and that in ix. 35, in summing up a great mass of acts of Jesus, which he could not notice in detail ? The omission of a name or names, in Matt. xx. 30, is also thought to be a proof of the want of that knowledge which a companion would have had. But the name was of no importance to the purpose of the Gospel, and the supplying of a name or of other minor particulars is quite as much the mark of a later writer, trying to confirm and complete a history, as it is of the first writer. That events or sayings are ^ Die christliche Lehre vom heiliMU Abendmahl. ^ In Matt. THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. 51 twice repeated, that the chronological order is lost in general expressions, such as " in those days," " then," and names of persons lost in " a certain man," " a woman," and the like : these seem hardly relevant to the position that the Gospel was not written by an Apostle's hand. It is admitted that twenty or thirty years had elapsed ; and, if the matter is to be argued apart from all questions of inspiration, it might be pos- sible that some names were less remembered, and some names less worth recording, than had once been the case. The repetition of similar events is what actually occurs in any life : there is no wonder whatever that the Pharisees, who were much concerned about the claims of Jesus, should ask at one time for a " sign " and at another for "a sign from heaven" (Matt. xii. 38 ; xvi. i). And where the chronology seems to be at fault, the explanation seems to be that the general pur- pose of the Evangelist is to give a picture of Jesus rather than a chronicle of His life ; and that whilst the latter was neither present to his mind nor promised by his words, the former has been given with abundant brightness and clearness. S 31. Objections.— it is alleged, however, against the Apostolic origin of the Gospel, that marks of a change of purpose, or rather of two different purposes, are to be found in it. It is supposed that the older element in it was written when Christianity was offered to the Jews alone, and when Christ was conceived of as the Messiah of the Jews ; but that a newer element was incorporated, representing the wider view of the purpose of Christianity that prevailed after the preach- ing of Paul had taken effect, in which the rights of the Gentiles were recognised, and the fold of the Lord was opened to " all nations." In support of this view, the exhortation not to cast pearls before swine (vii. 6) ; the 52 THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. announcement that the Apostles should not have gone through the cities of Israel before the Son of Man should come (x. 23), are thought to belong to the Jewish element ; and the threats to the unbelieving Jews that the heathen should be called instead (xiii. 1 1 ; xxi. 43) ; the announcement of Christ's return after the Gospel should have been preached to all the world (xxiv. 14) ; and the express commission to the Apostles to baptize and admit people of all nations (xxviii. 19) ; are supposed to betoken the presence of a different hand, guided by- wider aims. The two accounts of the centurion from Capernaum (viii. 5) and of the woman of Canaan (xv. 21-28) are alleged to be opposed in the same way. But in order to support this view, we ought to maintain, as indeed Strauss does not hesitate to do, (i) that there are " contradictions " in the narrative which make some such hypothesis necessary. The mere fact that there are passages in a work in which opposite ideas are ex- pressed and contrasted is no surprise to us, for all history, all processes of thought, are made up of these anti- nomies — these opposing elements, which must find their conciliation in fact. Now the line of thought in St. Matthew is very clear and complete in itself. Jesus is the Messiah of the Jews ; He offers Himself to them as such, not in word alone, but in works of power, and signs and wonders. To the Jews, and to none other, belongs the inheritance of the kingdom, until they shall have had full time to accept or reject it. That time of probation begins with the preaching of the Apostles ; it ends with the rejection of the Jews, so pathetically deplored by Jesus (xxiii. 37) : but that rejection is made manifest when Jerusalem, abandoned by the Christ whom she has abandoned, is utterly destroyed. "You shall not have completed the circuit of the towns of Israel before the Lord shall come to judge Israel ;" THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. 53 this we take, with Schott, to be the meaning of Matt. X. 23. But with this offering to the Jews of the tidings of the kingdom, there must always have been present the idea of a possible rejection by the Jews, and of the consequences that must follow from that. That Messiah should be a blessing to all the nations was no new idea : it was the constant note of prophecy. He was to be- come so through the acceptance of the Jews ; but if they reject Him, God's purposes are not on that account to fail. And St. Matthew is as clear on the one point as on the other. Not until the " house is left unto her desolate" do the direct rights of the Gentiles to the word of salvation come into view. Since they cannot be saved through the Jews, they shall be saved without them. " Go ye, and teach all nations." The case of the centurion is not a happy selection of a fact to prove a Gentile " tendency " in this Gospel, for it is plain that he was treated as at least a friend of God's people : he had more than the faith of a Jew, to which Jesus Him- self bears witness : " I have not found so great faith, no not in Israel" (viii. lo); and he showed the works of a Jew, for " he loveth the nation, and hath built us a synagogue" (Luke vii. 5) : he was treated as a child of the kingdom. S 32. Summary. — In fact, it is by this wholeness of impression, this unity of purpose, this broad and vigor- ous picture of Jesus, as at once the Messiah of prophecy, and the loving, suffering Saviour of the world, that the authority of St. Matthew as an authentic history is vin- dicated. It is not pretended that this impression will prevail, with those who open the book with their minds pre-occupied with a theory of Login, or with a wondrous touchstone called tendency ; minds already in possession of these " idols of the cave " are not the best judges in such a matter. One sees in the baleful influence of that 54 THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. one idea of Schleiermacher, that Matthew compiled a work consisting of discourses of Jesus only, — a notion utterly strange to all Christian antiquity, and utterly destitute of modern evidence, — how deeply acute and learned minds may be biassed by preconceptions derived from those about them. This air-drawn theory haunts a succession of eminent writers, down to Reuss. One sees how necessary it may be to recommence the task of criticism by escaping from all theological preposses- sions, and by applying to the work in hand reverence, candour, and good sense. Leaving the closer air of the study and going out into the broad field of the Church, we find that this most ancient Gospel has acquired, and has kept, the confidence of the faithful in all ages ; and the test they have applied to it is, if a rough one, still decisive ; the Gospel shows us Jesus, whom we seek. What more can be said for a book than that it has been received universally by the Church as a production of the first age of Christianity, that it has been attributed unanimously to the author whose name it bears, and that its contents are a firm and complete tracing of the like- ness of the Lord of Life .'' Criticism is of course possible on all these points ; it may make work for itself any- where : nay, its work may be useful anywhere to a cer- tain degree. But perhaps one of its uses is to teach us what it cannot do : and here its witness agrees not to- gether. According to divers writers, Matthew is the oldest writer and not the oldest ; a Greek writer, but a Hebrew ; his work the foundation of the Gospel of Mark, but drawn from that earlier simpler record ; it is the work of an Apostle, but there are positive reasons against regarding it as from an Apostle's hand. Its line of teaching is clear and consistent ; yet with skilful knife we can dissect out the various fibres of tendencies which make it so manifold and so little consistent with THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. 55 itself. Its unity is self-evident ; and yet it never con- tinued for two decades the same, so active were the editors in making it afresh. Its inconsistencies with the other Gospels start out to careless eyes : and yet many hands were constantly at work bringing one Gospel to bear on another, and altering each by the light of the other. These being the results, we have a right to suspect the method : it is even allowable to doubt whether there can be any true principles on which results so discordant can be based. The Gospel according to St. Mark. § 3 3- JoJin Mark. — The name Mark {-^Haimner fY was the surname of John (Acts xii. 12) who is usually supposed to have been the author of this Gospel. Grotius maintains the contrary, on the ground that the earliest writers nowhere call the Evangelist by the name of John, and that they always describe him as the com- panion of Peter and not of Paul. But John was the Jewish name, and Mark, a name of frequent use amongst the Romans, was adopted afterwards, and gradually superseded the other. Indeed we can almost trace the process. The John Mark of Acts xii. 12, 25, and the John of Acts xiii. 5, 13, becomes Mark only in Acts XV. 39, Col. iv. 10, 2 Tim. iv. 11, Philem. 24. The change of John to Mark is analogous to that of Saul to Paul ; and the abandonment of the earlier for the later name is connected in both cases with the change of religion and the commencement of a new life. There is no inconsistency in the view that he may have ministered to two Apostles, Peter and Paul. His desertion of Paul, in his missionary journey, may have been caused partly by a wish to rejoin Peter 1 Morrison on Mark, who quotes Fick, Vergleich. IVbrterhtch. 56 THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. and the Apostles preaching in Palestine,^ partly by the fear of a perilous journey, partly by a sense of less fitness for the one kind of labour than for the other. That there was a connection between Peter and Mark is plain from Acts xii. 1 2, when Peter, freed from prison, is represented as going at once to the house of Mary the mother of John Mark, " where many were gathered together praying." The old writers are severe upon the motives of this desertion ; but St. Paul assigns none, though he evidently blames the turning back; and we are justified in supposing that the motives in this case, as indeed in most others, were mixed. Probably John Mark was converted by Peter, from meeting him at some time in his mother's house, for he speaks of " Marcus my son " (Col. iv. i o).^ John Mark was the son of one Mary, who dwelt at Jerusalem. There he was probably born (Acts xii. 12). He was the cousin of Barnabas (Col. iv. 10). The theory that he was one of the seventy disciples has no warrant. Another theory, that an event of the night of our Lord's betrayal, related by Mark alone, is one which befell himself (Olshausen, Lange) may be worthy of mention ; though Casaubon warns us that it is curious and vain to seek a name which the Evangelist himself has not preserved. " There followed Him a certain young man having a linen cloth cast about his naked body ; and the young men laid hold on him, and he left the linen cloth, and fled from them naked " (Mark xiv. 51, 52). This may have been recorded by Mark with a deep private interest, as marking a night which was a turning-point in his own life : but then it may be only one of those additional touches in which the ^ Kuinol in loco. 2 Some, as Credner, suggest that this should be taken to apply to natural relationship : this is improbable. THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. 57 narrative of Mark abounds, introduced to show that the persecutions were so keen and pressing that, after the flight of the Apostles, they tried to seize even a chance bystander. All we can venture to say is that if the name of Mark be but supplied here, the transaction receives a clear explanation ; and that John (John i. 40, xix. 26) introduces himself in a like unobtrusive fashion, as also perhaps Luke (Luke xxiv. 1 8). Mary the mother of Mark seems to have been a person of some means and influence, and her house a rallying-point for Christians in those dangerous days. Her young son, already an inquirer, would soon become more anxious to work for Christ. He went with Paul and Barnabas as their " minister " on their first journey ; but at Perga, as we have mentioned, he turned back (Acts xii. 25, xiii. i 3). On the second journey St. Paul would not accept him again as a companion, but Barnabas his kinsman was more indulgent ; and thus he became the cause of the memorable " sharp contention " between them (Acts xv. 36-40J. Whatever were the reasons for Mark's infirmity of purpose, they did not separate him for ever from Paul, for we find him at the side of that Apostle in his first imprisonment at Rome (Col. iv. 10 ; Philem. 24). St. Paul speaks of a possible journey of Mark to Asia. Somewhat later he is with St. Peter at Babylon (i Peter v. 13). Some have considered Babylon to be a name given here to Rome, in a mystical sense : surely without reason, since the date of a letter is not the place to look for a figure of speech. Of the journey to Babylon we have no more evidence ; of its date, causes, results, we know nothing. It may be con- jectured that Mark journeyed to Asia Minor (ch. iv. 10), and thence went on to join Peter at Babylon. On his return to Asia he seems to have been with Timothy at Ephesus when Paul wrote to him, during his second 58 THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. imprisonment, and Paul was anxious for his return to Rome (2 Tim. iv. 1 1). When we leave the ground of Holy Scripture, we find the facts doubtful and even inconsistent. If Papias be trusted (quoted in Eusebius, H. E. iii. 39), Mark never was a personal follower of our Lord ; which he probably infers from i Pet. v. 13. Epiphanius, on the other hand, adopts the tradition that he was one of the seventy, who turned back from Jesus at the hard saying in John vi.^ The same had been said of St. Luke. The relation of Mark to Peter is of great im- portance for an estimate of this Gospel. § 34. St. Mark and St. Peter. — Ancient writers, with one consent, make the Evangelist the interpreter (Jtermeneutes) of the Apostle Peter.^ Some explain this word to mean that the office of Mark was to translate into the Greek tongue the Aramaic discourses of the Apostle f whilst others adopt the view that Mark wrote a Gospel, which conformed more exactly than the others to Peter's preaching, and thus " interpreted " it to the Church at large.* Probably the word " interpreter " means here what it usually means, that the person so called came between a speaker in a foreign tongue and his hearers : and Bleek well remarks that Latin was probably the language which Mark possessed and Peter lacked, so that Mark, having acquired it in his attend- ance on Paul, was able to interpret for Peter when he came to Rome, in the language of the people. The words of Papias, quoted in Eusebius, do not dispose of this question. " This also [John] the Elder said : Mark, being the interpreter of Peter, wrote down 1 Co)tt. Har. t. i. 6, p. 457. Ed. Dindorf. 2 Papias in Euseb. //. E. iii. 39. Irenjeus, Ha:}-, iii. i ; iii. lo, 6 ; Tertullian, c. Marc. iv. 5 ? Jerome ad Hedib. ch. xi. ^ Eichhom, Bertholdt, etc. ^ Valesius. Alford, Lange, Fritzsche, Meyer. THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. S9 exactly whatever things he remembered, but yet not in the order in which Christ either spoke or did them : for he was neither a hearer nor a follower of the Lord's, but he was afterwards, as I \_Papias\ said, a. follower of Peter." The words in italics refer to the word " inter- preter " above. Some confusion has arisen from sup- posing that Papias means to describe the writing of a Gospel as the mode in which the interpreter's duties were performed : but this is not so. Papias rather means " Mark, as Peter's interpreter, had opportunities of hearing and knowing what he taught, and wrote it down accordingly." The report that Mark was the companion of Peter, at Rome, is no doubt of great antiquity. Clement of Alexandria is quoted by Euse- bius as giving it for " a tradition which he had received of the Eiders from the first." ^ But some have suspected that this tradition rests on a misunderstanding of i Pet. V. 13, Babylon being wrongly taken for a typical name of Rome.^ Sent on a mission to Egypt by Peter, Mark there founded the church of Alexandria, and preached in various places ; then returned to Alexandria, of which church he was bishop, and suffered a martyr's death. But none of these details rests on a sufficiently sound authority.^ § 35. The Gospel. — Entering upon a consideration of the Gospel which bears St. Mark's name, we are con- fronted at once by the great controversy about the Gospels — what is the position of St. Mark towards the rest .'' If we set aside Christian tradition, this question must be answered by internal evidence ; of all evidence the most slippery and tempting. Not without use is Meyer's caution,* that in examining single passages to 1 H. E. vi. 14 ; Clem. Alex. Hyp. 6. 2 Eusebius, H. E. ii. 15 ; Hieron. de Vir. III. 8. 2 Epiphanius Har. 51, 6, p. 457, Dindorf : Eusebius, H. E. ii. 16; Hieron. dc. Vir. III. 8 ; Niceph. H. E. ii. 43. * Markiis, p. 7. 6o THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. prove the dependence of Mark, or his independence of the others, the greatest caution is required, lest we only find in the passages what we bring to them from our own critical point of view. He points to the modern controversy in proof of this ; the passages on which one relies in support of his view are just those which the next opponent turns against him, according to the subjective colouring that each can throw on the passage. Perhaps the wildest excursions of this subjective fancy are in connection with the theory that there were two Marks, an " Original Gospel " and our present Gospel. If there were the slightest historical evidence that there had ever been a second, or rather an earlier Mark, we should be bound to examine it. In the case of St. Matthew there is the statement of Papias that there was a Hebrew Gospel, confronting the fact that only a Greek Gospel exists : there is nothing of the kind in the case of St. Mark. History tells of one Mark, not of two ; if the existence of a second is to be proved, and its nature and contents indicated, there is nothing to rely on, save internal evidence. But the same internal evidence enables Ewald, Weisse, and Holtzmann to construct an original Mark, richer and fuller than the present Gospel ; whereas, in the hands of Weiszacker it contracts the original document to narrower limits than the present Gospel. When this point is arrived at of relying on evidence that can prove black or white, the time has come for confessing that the limit of discussion is reached and the time for wise silence has arrived. In the meanwhile there is another form of internal evi- dence, far less subtle and far more trusty, and more popular, which tells us that the Gospel of St. Mark has a clear and well-marked unity of its own, quite exclud- ing the notion that it is a mere compendium of some richer Gospel or an expansion of some briefer. Our THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. 6l business then is with the Gospel before us, and not with some document that has never been produced, and of which all history denies the existence. S 36. Contents of the Gospel. — The contents of the Gospel may be divided generally into four sections : I. The Introduction, i. 1-13. 11. The works of Jesus, the Son of God, in Galilee, i. 14, ix, 50. III. A journey to Jerusalem and residence there, x. i, xiii. "^j . IV. The sufferings, death, resurrection, and ascension of the Lord. When this Gospel is compared with St. Matthew the difference of treatment is very manifest. The constant reference to the fulfilment of prophecy, the long and frequent discourses of Jesus, have disappeared. No one could maintain that the first object of this Evangelist was to display Jesus as the Messiah of the Jews. The Sermon on the Mount, a kind of giving of a new law on a new Sinai, is omitted. Written for Gentile readers, as it is admitted to have been, words that might seem to limit salvation to the children of Abraham find no place; and passages of an opposite kind come into prominence. The omissions of facts and words are both numerous and important. The gene- alogy and history of the birth ; the strong rebuke by the Baptist (Matt. iii. 7-10) ; the Sermon on the Mount (v.-vii.) ; the centurion at Capernaum (Matt. viii. 5-13) ; the calling of certain disciples (Matt. viii. 19-22) ; the healing of the two blind men, and of the dumb de- moniac (Matt. ix. 27-34) ; a- great portion of the com- mission to the Apostles (Matt. x. 15-42) ; the embassy of the Baptist to Jesus, with the Lord's discourse there- upon (Matt, xi.) ; the asking of a sign (Matt. xii. 38-45) ; several parables (Matt. xiii. 14-17, 24-30 ; "^-^^ 35-52); some miracles of healing in the neighbourhood of Gennesaret (Matt, xiv, 34-36) ; the tribute money (Matt. xvii. 24-27) ; the discourse about offences (Matt. 62 THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. xviii. 10-35) > the parable of the labourers (Matt. xx. I- 1 6) ; the miracles of healing in the Temple (Matt. xxi. 14-16) ; the parable of the two sons (Matt. xxi. 28-32) ; of the marriage feast (Matt. xxii. 1-14) ; the discourse upon the Pharisees, almost entirely (Matt, xxiii.) ; the discourse upon future judgments, in great part (Matt. xxiv. 37 to xxv. 46, except xxiv. 42-44) ; the fate of Judas the betrayer (Matt, xxvii. 3-10) ; the setting a watch at the grave (Matt, xxvii. 62-66, xxviii. 11-15); the promised appearance of the risen Lord in Galilee (Matt, xxviii. 16-20); — all these are omitted by Mark. What he has retained, however, is rather lengthened than abridged ; so that the mere wish for brevity cannot account for the variations. On the other hand, there is a kind of compensation for these omis- sions, in the frequent touches of a more minute or vivid description, which he introduces even where in other respects his narrative coincides minutely with that of St. Matthew. Names omitted by the one are supplied by the other (as v. 22, x. 46, xv. 21, 40) ; looks and expressions of countenance of the Lord are mentioned (as Mark iii. 5, vii. 34, viii. 12). Numbers are minutely specified (as v. 13, vi. 37, xiv. 15). It has always been supposed, that there was some connection between the Apostle Peter and the Evangelist ; and it may well be that many of these touches are reminiscences of the preaching of Peter, which Mark had been so often called to interpret. However that may be, they do invest his Gospel with a stamp and features of its own. With very little of independent subject-matter, there is an independence of treatment ; and those who maintain that Mark had one or both the other Gospels before him must confess that he is no mere abbreviator ot existing narratives. § 3 7. Peculiar Features of the Gospel. — Indeed the THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. 63 key to this Gospel seems to be that the writer was minded to write an account of the wonderful life and power of Jesus the Son of God.^ He conveys, and in a marked manner, the shortness of the time in which all was transacted, and the rapidity and wonderful activity of this great life. Doctrinal discourses are foreign to this purpose. The relation of Jesus to the Jewish Scriptures is likewise made less prominent. The word " straightway " or " immediately " is used forty-one times in this shortest Gospel ; a marked peculiarity. The wonder-working Son of God^ sweeps over His kingdom, swiftly and meteor-like : and men are to wonder and adore. His course is sometimes represented as abrupt, mysterious, awful to the disciples : He leaves them at night ; conceals Himself from them on a journey. The disciples are amazed and afraid (x. 24, 3 2). And the Evangelist means the same impression of awe to be imparted to the reader. Periods of solitude and rest are interposed in this stormy, hurried life. " The Evangelist makes the histories more effective by the contrast between the hurried progress .... and the contemplative stillness in which he paints the scenery with a thousand touches — the house, the sea, the fol- lowers, the growing throng, the persons by name, the numbers of men, of beasts, of coins, the green grass, the pillow on the stern of the boat on Gennesareth, all described with the ready use of softening diminutives, and with words of time that denote the present."^ He seems to say, " Behold the Son of God ! See His 1 As St. Paul says that the Gospel was not a new philosophy, but " the power of God " (Rom. i. 16), so Mark shows with what a manifest- ation of "power" and "authority" it took its rise (i. 22, 27; ii. 10; V. 30 ; vi. 2 ; vi. 5). See Grau, i. p. 125. 2 We must not forget that the words "Son of God" in the beginning of this Gospel are not in the Sinaitic MS. They may not be genuine ; but they do not affect this argument. 3 Keim. 64 THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. work, His power, His authority, and believe on Him." Thus it comes that the EvangeHst whose subject-matter is so occupied by other writers that a few verses suffice to contain what is peculiar to him, vindicates to himself a special place and purpose, and his own tones blend into the fourfold hymn of praise, distinct yet harmoni- ous with the rest. It is true that some speak slightly of this picture of what is called a " restless " career, and contrast it with the calmer and more sculpture-like representation which they pretend to find in St. Matthew. But are we not obliged to see that the sketch in the second Gospel must be true to history .'' The constant persecutions, from which it was needful to flee, even sometimes be- yond the bounds of Herod's kingdom, to Tyre, or to some solitary spot on the sea-shore ; the crowds that followed Him in wonder, forgetful of food and shelter, that they might see with eyes what others told in their ears ; the pitiable cases of sickness and mutilation from which that loving eye is never turned away ; the constant presence of the twelve disciples, with all their doubts, and crude beliefs, and problems to solve : a life made up of such elements must have been one of constant pressure, not indeed of " hurry " in the usual sense of the word ; for if there is one truth more than another that we may learn from the lives of those who have lived by the Spirit of God, it is that the soul may be kept in peace in the midst of great outward pressure. Hence, whether this Gospel is pronounced an early or a late work, wholly dependent or partly derived, it does appear that its representation is true and faithful, if only it be granted that Jesus lived, and that in a ministry of three years He went about teaching, and preaching, and healing, the object of constant persecution, yet never abating His zeal on account of His enemies. THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. 65 ^ 38. Relation of this Gospel to St. Peter. — What was the relation of the Evangelist to St. Peter ? The passage of tapias, quoted by Eusebius, is : " Mark, being the interpreter of Peter, wrote accurately, though not in exact order, what he remembered of the things that Christ either spoke or did."^ This certainly does not mean that he acted as amanuensis of Peter, writing down a Gospel at his dictation : the phrase " what he remembered," is against that view. Nor does the pass- age bind us to believe that the Gospel was written in Peter's lifetime ; the probability is that it was not. Many have argued that the phrase " not in exact order " is inapplicable to our Gospel, which is as orderly in arrangement of events as the rest. But the meaning of Papias is apparent from what follows : " for he was neither a hearer of the Lord, nor had he ever been His follower ; but, as I said, he was the follower of Peter at a later time, who used to preach his instructions with a practical purpose, and not for the purpose of making a collection of the Lord's discourses. So that Mark was not in fault in writing down some things as he re- membered them : for he was careful about this one thing, namely, to omit nothing that he had heard, and not to let anything false be mixed with them." It seems from this report of Papias — not in truth a very clear reporter at any time — that Mark acted as inter- preter for Peter (see p. 58), which gave him oppor- tunities of hearing Peter's preaching. His preaching was practical, and was not framed for any purpose of writing a complete Gospel ; but it taught Mark many things, and he undertook to write them down ; but not a complete Gospel, from which nothing was omitted, though an exact and accurate document in regard to the things which he did narrate. Without attempting to ^ Euseb. iii. 39. F 66 THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. go over the passages of the Fathers which establish the existence of the tradition as to Mark's connection with Peter, we may glance at the well-known passage of Justin Martyr [about 140-1 50], where he records that the Lord changed the name of the Apostle to Peter, adding that this is recorded in " his Memoirs." But the word " his" may refer either to the name of our Lord or to that of Peter : if to Peter, then the Gospel in which alone this change of name is recorded, would be described, not as connected with Peter, but as " his ;" if, as seems rather more probable, to the Lord Himself (who is called " Him " just before in the same sentence), then the interest of the passage for us is that it is a quotation in Justin from St. Mark. The circumstances of St. Mark's life make this connection with St. Peter very probable. If there was also a belief in ancient times that Mark was a companion of, and influenced by, Paul and Bar- nabas, there does not seem to be contrariety between these two traditions. But for the belief in the connec- tion of Mark with an Apostle, the ancient Church would have hesitated to admit this Gospel into the canon of Holy Scripture. There does not appear to be any reason to doubt that the tradition which connects Peter and Mark, and which assigns to the former some in- fluence upon the Gospel, is well founded.^ ^ 39. Various Opinions on the Position of St. Mark's Gospel with reference to the others. — What was the amount of influence ? That question can hardly be answered without an attempt to ascertain the ^ The passages of the Fathers are collected in Kirchhofer. See also Fritzsche on St. Mark, Pi-olcgome7ia. It must be remembered that the tradition of Peter's preaching in Rome is connected with the supposi- tion that "Babylon" is used as a name for "Rome" (i Pet. v. 13; conf. Revel, xiv. 8). " Peter mentions Mark in his former epistle, which, as they say, was written at Rome. Peter himself intimates thus much, calling Rome in a figure Babylon." Eusebius, //. E. ii. 14 ; so also Nicephorus, H. E. ii. 15; and Hieron. dc Vir. III. 8. THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. 67 position of the second Gospel with reference to others. How great the difficulty of this question is, may be gathered from the conflicting results that have been reached. Taking up two of the most recent works on the subject, we read from Hilgenfeld,^ " the through- going dependence of the Gospel of Mark on the Gospel of Matthew as we have it, is undeniable ;" and from Reuss," " We think we have shown by the analysis of all the texts that we have cited hitherto that those of Mark have everywhere the stamp of originality, whilst those of Matthew present numerous and various signs of the revision of a second hand." Keim finds that the Gospel of Mark aims at uniting the two great Gospels ; that in his first main division Mark chiefly takes Luke for his foundation ; in the second, Matthew.^ Volkmar, who begins his work on the Gospels by laying as his foundation " the text of the oldest of the four great Gospels, that of Mark,"* sees that the second Gospel is a work of a Pauline spirit and tendency, aimed against the Judaic tendency of the Apocalypse. Hil- genfeld^ strongly denies this, points out the passages which show the Jewish side of this Gospel, and insists that, so far from its being the expression of the one tendency or the other, it is rather a conciliation and harmony of the two principles, represented by Peter and Paul, of Christianity for the Jews and Christianity for the heathen, and that it marks the solution of that con- troversy which began with the dispute between Peter and Paul (Gal. ii. 11) on the treatment of the heathen converts. The natural conclusion from such passages is that writers have mistaken the nature of the evidence, and that what appears to them conclusive ought not to have ^ Einlcitiing, p. 505. 2 Hisloire evangclique. ^ LelmtJcSH, vol. i. ^ Evangelim, Introd. p. xii. " P. 518. 68 THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. been so regarded. Science, whether physical or histori- cal, arrives at sure results. There are, it is true, periods of controversy in which the evidence on one side or the other is assailed, doubted, refuted ; but to such contro- versies succeed times of conviction, in which it becomes admitted on all sides that a definite result has been reached, or at least that there is before it a problem which cannot be resolved at all upon the evidence. Criticism has not reached that stage ; it goes on still, over-rating the evidence, insisting on the universality of its own partial inductions, and too often trying to com- pensate the felt weakness of the arguments by wrath and hard words. § 40. Sf. Mattheiv and St. Mark. — The problem then is — How far does the Gospel of St. Mark, as it is, show the influence of either of the other two Synoptic Gospels, as they are ? " Sources," " recensions," " original Marks," cannot be compared, because in fact none of them exist, and in imagination far too many. As to St. Matthew, it is admitted, even by Keim, that any later alterations in it must be few and insignificant, and that the Gospel as we have it was composed before the destruction of Jerusalem. Is there anything in this Gospel, and in St. Mark, which proves that one must be dependent on the other .'' First, as to the historical order : in the first part of the history Mark coincides with St. Luke, whereas Matthew, in the position of the Sermon on the Mount, and that of some miracles, has an order of his own. In the second part of the history Mark has the same order as Matthew. The coincidences of language are so great between the two Evangelists, that it is difficult to believe that the written records are entirely independent of each other, and only possess a common oral ground-work. And of the various theories to account for these resemblances, that which seems the THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. 69 least difficult is that which, assigning to Mark the middle place in chronological order, regards his Gospel as founded on that of St. Matthew and not on that of St. Luke. To develop this at length would require a volume ; Weiss and Volkmar have each devoted a volume to St. Mark, arriving, however, at different con- clusions from ours, and each conclusion differing from the other. The point of view of St. Matthew throughout his Gospel is that Christ the Lord is the Messiah of the Jews, and also the Saviour of the world ; the message of salvation was to the Jews first, but not to the exclu- sion of the heathen. Those who pretend that it is a polemical book for the Judaising view of Christianity, or a work created by altering such a book, and by infus- ing a milder element, have not reason on their side, and they do in fact answer one another. Now in St. Mark there is a different point of view — admiration for the wonder-working Lord and Son of God. This is faith- fully and consistently preserved. Comments on the fulfilment of prophecy now become fewer, or almost disappear. The position of the chosen people is less insisted on ; the work to be done has more reference to the world at large. The difference of object, how- ever, in the Gospels is by no means wholly due to a chronological interval, and to a consequent develop- ment of the plan of the Holy Spirit for the Church : if it be supposed that this Gospel was written at Rome, and for the use of Gentiles chiefly — and the explana- tions of Jewish customs and the free use of Latin words make this probable — then much of the difference of treatment would be accounted for. The intercourse of St. Mark with St. Paul, for whom, it is plain, he had a deep regard, would tend in the same way. Under these conditions it would be no violent supposition that two Gospels written in the same year, the one at Rome for 70 THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. Gentiles, by one who had followed the footsteps of the Apostle of the Gentiles, and the other in Palestine, for Jews, by a Jewish Apostle, might exhibit even greater marks of difference than the two Gospels before us. Still it is upon the whole probable that the Gospel of Mark is somewhat later than that of St. Matthew ; and the coincidences of language and of matter are so minute and striking that probably no theory of oral tradition will account for them : and thus we are drawn to con- sider that St. Mark had access to the Greek Gospel of St. Matthew, and made use of it. The great difficulty in such a theory is the omission of some of the discourses which form so large a portion of St. Matthew, and the selection of parts only of others, as for example, of the great eschatological discourse. But, once more, the dominant purpose of the Gospel was to inspire admiration for the wonder-working Lord ; and the omission of some things that might seem to retard the rapid march of the narration of the wonderful acts of His life, may be thus accounted for. A few of the passages that are thought to bear upon this question of the influence of St. Matthew's Gospel on that of St. Mark are here given. They will indicate the difficulty of the subject. Mark i. 2, 3. " As it is written in [Isaiah the prophet] Behold, I send my messenger before thy face, which shall prepare thy way before thee. The voice of one crying in the wilderness. Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make His paths straight." Here the quotation from Isaiah xl. 3 is given word for word, as in St. Matthew iii. 3 ; whereas the Hebrew and the Septuagint give for " his " the important words "for our God." It is clear then that the two Evangelists are in some way connected, for they agree together, and differ somewhat from both sources. But St. Mark THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. 71 interposes a passage from Malachi iii. i : " Behold, I send my messenger before thy face, which shall prepare thy way before thee." The English Version, following the Textus Receptus, reads "in the Prophets." If, as most editors suppose, the true reading is, " in Isaiah the Prophet," the explanation would seem to be that Mark, with the passage of Matthew before him, interposed a quotation of the same purport, but did not alter the for- mula of quotation, so that both passages appear to be given to Isaiah. The passage from Malachi was meant by St. Mark to be a gloss or note upon the closely parallel passage of Isaiah : " I send my messenger," interprets and limits to a person, the more indefinite, " the voice of one crying," etc.: but as the words of Isaiah are intended to be the emphatic part of his quotation, he puts them last. (Klostermann.) Mark ii. 10, 1 1 " . . . . He saith to the sick of the palsy, I say unto thee. Arise," etc. In the parallel. Matt, ix. 6, the phrase, " I say unto thee " is wanting, and the introduction of it without, at the same time, taking out the words, " He saith to the sick of the palsy," leaves a tautology, from which the narrative of St. Matthew is free. Here the probability is that St. Mark has trans- cribed and slightly amplified. Mark ix, 2-6. " And after six days Jesus taketh with him Peter, and James, and John, and leadeth them up into an high mountain apart by themselves : and He was transfigured before them. And His raiment became shining, exceeding white as snow ; so as no fuller on earth can white them. And there appeared unto them Elias with Moses : and they were talking with Jesus. And Peter answered and said to Jesus, Master, it is good for us to be here : and let us make three tabernacles ; one for thee, and one for Moses, and one for Elias. For he zuist not zvhat to say ; for they luere sore afraid. 72 THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. In the whole passage, except the words here marked with italics, there is the closest similarity of expression to St. Matthew (xvii. 1-4) : but there is an omission of the words " His face did shine as the sun " (Matt. xvii. 2). The additions are the word " alone " (E. V. " by themselves "), the " shining," and the allusion to the fuller, where two words occur that are found nowhere else in the New Testament, and one which occurs but once.^ Then there is the remark on Peter's words, " For he wist not what to say ; for they were sore afraid." The words of Peter do not at first appear to need this apology ; they were not wholly unnatural. The peace that he found there he wished to retain. That they were " sore afraid " of the glory of their Master's appearance is not perhaps intended : rather, with Volkmar, we may refer the words to the condition of the disciples' minds for the last six days, ever since the announcement of the Passion. It is absolutely certain that the two passages must have some common origin : and perhaps the more probable account is that Mark, with the Gospel of St. Matthew before him, and another source of information also, made the additions. That other source of information may well have been the preaching of Peter : " We were alone — not even another disciple with us. His garb was white and glittering ; but with a whiteness no earthly garment could show. We were amazed and terrified, and the words that I spoke were hasty and rash." It is safest not to go beyond the assertion that there is a higher probability that the words were added by Mark from Peter's preach- ing, than that they were present to St. Matthew, and ^ Sr/X/Soi'Ta, 'yva(f)e'js, here only ; \mKavai, here and in Rev. vii. 14. The words "as snow" (tlis X"^") are doubtful. They are omitted by Tischendorf, Tregelles, Buttmann, and Hort ; retained by Meyer. Of uncial MSS. the Sinaitic, the Vatican, the Codex Ephr. omit : whilst the Alexandrine and the Codex Bezce contain. THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. 73 by him were designedly struck out. Such is the kind of difficult and delicate evidence upon which this question turns. It is discussed at great length by Weiss, Hilgenfeld, Holtzmann, Volkmar, Klostermann, and many others, and with varying results. Dismissing as untenable the supposition that Mark acted as the amanuensis of Peter, we may well seek for traces of the influence of Peter upon this Gospel. If Mark was the interpreter of Peter in his preaching, he would treasure up its leading features, and try to repro- duce them. Now, whatever be the source of it, there is a certain vividness, a power of describing for the eye, pervading it all. This is even more manifest in single words interjected, than in longer passages. Jesus "looked round about upon them with anger, being grieved for the hardness of their hearts " (iii, 5, comp. v. 34) : He " took the child in His arms" (ix. 36, x. 16) ; He "sat down" (ix. 35) ; even words that described inward feeling are intended to convey an idea of the outward expres- sion of the feeling, as when He is " moved with com- passion " (i. 41). The inclination to minute description (i- 35-37, vi. 33, vii. 31-37, ix. 3); the change from the aorist to the direct present, as in i. 12, 2 i :^ the use of " straightway " ^ more than forty times ; the very frequent use of diminutives for child, damsel, daughter, fish, dog, and ear, which gives a popular character to the style ; the fulness and circumstantial treatment of the narrative, of which the transaction between Herod and Herodias' daughter is a forcible example (vi. 22-25) ; all these are characteristic of the second Gospel. We are not warranted in connecting all these features with St. Peter ; but there are some other passages, not the ^ Sometimes the present and aorist are combined in tlie same verse ; Mark vi. i, ix. 2, xi. 15. 2 evdiuis, or evQus, only fifteen times in St. Matthew, and eight in St. Luke. 74 THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. less cogent because they are not so obvious, which are best explained on the supposition that Peter had some- thing to do with them. In i. 36 (which has already- been mentioned), " Simon and they that were with him followed after Him ;" and it may be asked why Simon alone is mentioned, and the other disciples are thrown together in a nameless group, even the verb " followed " being in the singular number : to which the answer may be that very likely this is the record of a remark of Peter, " I followed after Him with the rest." Another passage of this kind, only more striking, is, " And Simon He sur- named Peter "^ (iii. 16) in the list of the Apostles. The Evangelist does not say, " He called Simon, whom He surnamed Peter ;" the calling of Simon is actually not mentioned. But if this, too, is a reproduction of a direct remark, in the first person, then the awkward construc- tion is explained. " He ordained its twelve that zue should be with Him .... and me He surnamed Peter." ^ The same account may be given of the words, " Peter calling to remembrance, saith unto Him, Master, behold the fig-tree which thou cursedst is withered away" (xi. 21); it is not natural to say of another that he called to remembrance, for that would be implied in the remark which he made in consequence, but it is very natural to say, " Then it came into my mind, that the tree had been cursed," etc. The same applies to the verse on St. Peter in this account of the Transfiguration, already mentioned. We dare not speak with certainty, but the more this peculiar character of the Gospel is considered, its vivid, minute, graphic, popular descriptions, the more we shall be inclined to account for it in the simplest manner, namely, that the old tradition is true, and that Mark was not only the interpreter of Peter, but a diligent hearer and preserver of his preaching ; so that ^ Klostermann. THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. 75 this Gospel not only contains the work of Christ, His power and might and wonders, but also in the background a picture of His favoured messenger. On this rock the Church was to be built, and we see what manner of stones and what plan of building were employed. The Gospel according to St. Luke. S 41. The Man. — Universal tradition assigns the third Gospel to Luke as its author, and even M. Renan admits that there is no grave reason to question the truth of this.^ The name Lucas (Luke) is an abbrevi- ated form of Lucanus or Lucilius ; it is not to be confounded with Lucius (Acts xiii. i ; Rom, xvi. 21), nor can it be derived from that. The name occurs three times in the New Testament ; all three probably refer to the Evangelist (Col. iv. 14 ; 2 Tim. iv. 11 ; Philem. v. 24). To the Colossians he is described as " the beloved physician," having been known to them in that faculty. Timothy does not need this mark of identification : to him the words are " only Luke is with me." To Philemon Luke sends his salutation, in common with other " fellow-labourers " of St. Paul. As the Evangelist is evidently the author of the Acts of the Apostles also, we should expect to find some explanations in that book of the connection between St. Paul and the writer. The name of St. Luke does not occur in the Acts, but probably under the pronoun " we " there are many references to him. Combining the witness of tradition with that of Holy Scripture, the uncertain with the certain, we are able to trace the outline of this disciple's life. He was born at Antioch in Syria,^ in what condition of life is uncertain. That he was trained to be a " physician " ^ Evangiles, p. 252. - Eusebius, E. H. iii. 4. 76 THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. does not prove that he was of higher birth or station than the rest of the disciples. The well-known tradition that Luke was also a painter, and of no mean skill, who painted portraits of the Lord, of Mary, and of the chief Apostles, rests on the statements of Nicephorus ;"^ of the Menology of the Emperor Basil, drawn up in 980, and of other late writers : but none of them are of historical authority, and the Acts and Epistles are wholly silent upon a point so likely to be mentioned. " Perhaps it arose from confounding some later Christian painter who bore the name of Luke, and who made pictures of Christ or of Mary, with the Evangelist."^ He was not born a Jew, for he was not reckoned by St. Paul among them "of the circumcision" (Col. iv. 1 1, 14) ; but the tradition is probable, that before his conversion to Christianity, he had adopted Judaism as a " proselyte of the Gate ;" who would join in Jewish worship and recognise the Jewish law, but would not be circumcised.^ The date of his conversion is uncertain. He was not indeed " an eye-witness and minister of the word from the beginning" (Luke i. 2), or he would have rested his claim as an Evangelist on that strong ground. Still he may have been converted by the Lord Himself, some time before His departure ; and the statement of Epiphanius^ and others, that he was one of the seventy disciples, has nothing very improbable in it. Theophy- lact^ mentions the opinion that he was one of the two disciples who journeyed to Emmaus and met Jesus by the way. Tertullian appears to assume that the con- version of Luke is to be ascribed to St. Paul.*" ^ Nicephorus, ii. 43. - Bleek, Einleitung. ^ Isidor. Hisp. De vita et obitii sancloniiii, ch. Ixxxii. "Lucas .... natione Syrus, arte medicus, Grreco eloquio eruditus, quern plerique tradunt proselytum fuisse, et Hebrreas literas ignorasse." * Cont. Hirr. li. II. •'' On Luke xxiv. ^ Adv. Marcion. iv. 2. " Lucas, non apostolus sed apostolicus ; non THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. 77 § 42. Journey of St. Liikc with St. Paul. — The first ray of historical light falls on the Evangelist when he joins St. Paul at Troas, and shares his journey into Macedonia. The sudden transition to the first person plural in Acts xvi. 9 is most naturally explained, after all the objections that have been urged, by supposing that Luke formed one of St. Paul's company from this point. Against any other hypothesis the objections are manifold. It is said that the " we " might mark the place where Timothy comes in, and that we have from this point a memoir or narrative from the pen of Timothy ; but there is no sort of break or change in the style, at the point where this incorporation begins^ and if the Evangelist could re-cast and assimilate to his style, why should this pronoun alone be left outstanding } Still more cogent is the remark that the " we " does not begin when Timothy first appears, and that he con- tinues with Paul after the " we " has ceased to be used. The same remark applies to Silas. The conversion of St. Luke must have taken place before, and he had probably known Paul and his work, since he silently, and with this abrupt and unexplained change of person, takes his place among the great Apostle's followers without a hint that this is his first admission to the knowledge and ministry of Christ. He may have found his way to Troas to preach the Gospel, sent possibly by St. Paul himself. As far as Philippi the Evangelist journeyed with the Apostle; and then (xvii. i) the third person is renewed. St. Luke was left behind. During the rest of the second missionary journey we hear of him no more ; but in the third journey the same indication reminds us that Luke is again of the company, having apparently joined it at Philippi, where he had magister, sed discipulus, utique magistro minor, certe tanto posterior quanto posterioris Apostoli sectator, Pauli sine dubio." . 78 THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. been left (xx. 5). With the Apostle he passed through Miletus, Tyre, and Caesarea, to Jerusalem (xx. 5, xxi. 18). Between the two visits of Paul to Philippi seven years had elapsed (a.d. 5 i-a.d. 58), which the Evangelist may have spent in Philippi and its neighbourhood, preaching the Gospel. In the Second Epistle to the Corinthians we read (viii. 1 8), " We have sent with him " {i.e. with Titus) " the brother, whose praise is in the Gospel throughout all the churches." The subscription of the Epistle sets out that it was " written from Philippi, a city of Macedonia, by Titus and Lucas." It would seem then that during the " three months " of Paul's sojourn at Philippi (Acts xx. 3) Luke was sent from that place to Corinth on this errand ; and the words " whose praise is in the Gospel throughout all the churches " enable us to estimate his activity during the interval in which he has not been mentioned. It is somewhat of a lesson to all critics and students of the Bible ; between these two points, at neither of which does the name of Luke occur, is latent a seven years' career of glorious missionary work, and the workman does not so much as mention his own name by way of vindicating his claim to that " praise in the Gospel " to which all the churches witnessed.^ He again appears, in the company of Paul, in the memorable journey to Rome (Acts xxvii. i) ; he re- mained at his side during his first imprisonment (Col. iv. 14 ; Philem. 24), and if it is to be supposed that the Second Epistle to Timothy was written during the second imprisonment, then the testimony of that Epistle (iv. 1 1) shows that he continued faithful to the Apostle to the end of his afflictions. ^ The praise lay in the activity with which he preached the Gospel, and not, as Jerome supposes, in his being the author of a written Gospel ! De Viris III. ch. 7. THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. 79 After St. Paul's death the acts of his beloved com- panion are hopelessly obscure to us. In the well-known passage of Epiphanius^ we read that he preached in Dalmatia, Gallia, Italy, and Macedonia ; but the author reads " Crescens in Gallia " for in Galatia, in 2 Tim. iv. 10. Eusebius is silent, and the later writers have nothing to tell that need be recorded. It is Gregory Nazianzen who first ranks Luke amongst the martyrs.^' Nicephorus records that whilst ministering in Greece he was hanged upon an olive-tree.^ That he died a martyr between the years 75 and 100 would seem to have the balance of suffrages in its favour, and such an end to an active Christian career was the most likely in itself It is sufficient for this examination of St. Luke's Gospel to bear in mind that the writer was the tried and constant friend of the Apostle Paul. ^43. The Introduction to the Gospel. — The Gospel according to St. Luke commences with a kind of epistolary address or dedication, a form unusual in Jewish writings, but comparable with the dedication by Josephus to Epaphroditus.* In this preface the scope of the work is indicated : — " Forasmuch as many have taken in hand to set forth in order a declaration of those things which are most surely believed among us, even as they delivered them to us, which from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word ; it seemed good to me also, having had perfect understanding of all things from the very first, to write unto thee in order, most excellent Theophilus, that thou mightest know the certainty of those things, wherein thou hast been instructed." From this we learn that there were already in existence a number of attempts to write the Gospel ^ Cont. HiTr. li. 11, vol. ii. 464, ed. Dindorf. - 07-at. in. adv. yiiliaiutiu. ^ E. H. ii. 43. * Renan, Evangiles, 255. 8o THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. history ; and it is at least hinted that, on the whole, the attempts had not been conclusively successful. The materials were abundant, and St. Luke does not give us to understand that he will not employ them ; on the contrary, he puts himself on a level with those inquirers by the words " to me too," as to his general purpose, and will enquire into the traditions which have come from the apostolic eyewitnesses, and his enquiries will doubtless embrace those former records. This is the first indication of written materials for the Gospel ; and though no sound argument as to the chronology can be founded on this alone, it is clear that the third stage of development has been reached. P'irst came the eye- witnesses, delivering in their preaching the tidings of the facts they had witnessed ; then came a variety of efforts, and these more or less incomplete from the greatness of the task ; and, thirdly, came the present stage, of writing a regular and orderly history, in which use should be made of all the materials at command. Against that natural shock to the feelings that attends the first attempts to analyse the growth of those Gospels, which one has never before, perhaps, contemplated ex- cept as beautiful and complete wholes, one may set the fact that one of the Evangelists has himself called our attention to his method and to the materials which he had before him. Nor does he make any claim higher than this : that he had followed with careful attention, from first to last, what the holy Apostles had told. Who were the " many " .-* The expression could not apply to Matthew and Mark ; two are not " many," and their labours would have been mentioned in a dif- ferent way. It points rather to a multitude of attempts, most of them probably partial, to rescue from the treacherous custody of memory and to fix in a perma- nent form the things which the writers had heard in THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. 8i preaching. Some of the apocryphal Gospels may have been of this number, notably that Gospel of the Hebrews, so much discussed ; but the greater part have passed away. More than one have contributed something to the Gospel before us, and probably that large section, peculiar to St. Luke, commencing with Luke ix. 51, and ending with xviii. 14, was in substance one of these documents, some faithful enquirer having chosen for his special subject one particular journey and all that took place in it. § 44. Date of Gospel. — When was the third Gospel written .'' At first sight the concluding passage in the Acts seems to prescribe a limit of time later than which the date of the Gospel cannot be, " Paul dwelt two whole years in his own hired house, and received all that came to him" (Acts xxviii. 30). It is argued that if the later events of St. Paul's career had then transpired, the Evangelist, who had been relating, with remarkable fulness, the preceding events, would have continued to treat the following incidents in the same manner. This would give for the Acts the date of about A.D. 64, i.e. about the end of the second year of St. Paul's imprisonment ; and that of the Gospel might perhaps be placed about A.D. 62. This, however, cannot be sustained. It would place St. Luke earlier than the rest, whereas there is reason to believe that, as St. Mark made use of St. Matthew, so did St. Luke of St. Mark ; and if the date of the first Gospel be about 65, the third must be separated from it by a considerable interval. There is, besides, some reason to think that as the first Gospel was written on the eve of the destruction of Jerusalem, so the third was written after that event had been consummated. The writer seems to recall words of our Lord about this event, by the light of their literal fulfilment ; the trench is cast about the beleaguered city : G 82 THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. the armies that encompass it shall enter in ; there shall be terror and flight ; great distress and wrath ; the people slain or captured, to be made slaves in foreign lands ; and Jerusalem trodden down by the Gentiles.^ All this is very vivid ; nothing is added to the words of Jesus, but His words are recalled and selected by the light of a fearful history. Besides, it is only in St. Luke that we learn anything of the copious literature that had already begun to accumulate ; and this would require time, and certainly one would not expect to find in the earliest of these books an intimation of this kind, more suitable to the later. All these con- siderations point to a later date, to some point perhaps between 75 and 80 as the approximate date. For the abrupt termination of the Book of the Acts some other cause than a chronological one would have to be found. It is no doubt difficult to explain ; but on the other hypothesis as to the date, the silence of the writer, as to many things that he must have known concerning the Lord, is not easier to understand." ^45. TJie Place. — The places in which the Gospel was written may well have been " Achaia and Boeotia," according to Jerome's tradition.^ What is clearest is that the writer was far removed from Judsea, nor are the Jewish laws, customs, or places known to him in the same way as to St. Matthew. Keim leans to a Roman origin, on account of the connection with the Acts of the Apostles and with St. Mark's Gospel. S 46. SchleiermacJier s Viezv. — The supposition that the third Gospel is chiefly a compilation of fragmentary documents which the writer found already in existence, is 1 Luke xix. 43, 44 ; xxi. 20-24. 2 Euseb. H. E. vi. 14. Godet is inclined to give weight to the tradi- tion preserved by Clement of Alexandria, that the Gospels containing the genealogies (Matthew and Luke) were composed before the others. 3 De Vir. III. 7. THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. 83 thus stated by Schleiermacher :^ — " When I review the investigation which has thus been carried on step by step, and sum up the whole, it seems to me that though several of the details may be more or less liable to objection, still the main position is firmly established, that Luke, in this part of his work, is neither an inde- pendent writer, nor has made a compilation from works which extended over the whole course of the life of Jesus. For we meet with too many isolated pieces which have no relation to the rest, and the character of the several parts is too different, to admit of either sup- position. He is from beginning to end no more than the compiler and arranger of documents which he found in existence, and which he allows to pass unaltered through his hands. His merit in this capacity is two- fold : first, that of the arrangement ; this, however, is the slighter of the two. For as he found much already connected, not only is the correctness of his arrange- ment dependent on his predecessors, and much may be assigned to a wrong place without fault of his, but also the arrangement was by this rendered much easier than if he had found all the parts separate. But the far greater merit is this, that he has admitted scarcely any pieces but what are peculiarly genuine and good ; for this was certainly not the effect of accident, but the fruit of a judiciously-instituted investigation and a well- weighed choice." Notwithstanding this faint praise, the place here assigned to the Evangelist is such as to leave us without any reasonable account of the reverence in which this work has been held since the middle of the second century. A mere compiler could not have attained to such consideration. The Evangelist says in his preface that he intends to have in view, and not to put wholly on one side, the traditions and the literature ^ Essay on St. Luke. Bp. ThirlwalFs Translation, p. 313. THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. that existed already. That he had access to some sources of information which neither St. Matthew nor St. Mark had used, is probable ; it may even be conceded that passages may have been adopted, as they were found in the documents employed. But as a complete account of the Gospel, this hypothesis is quite inadmissible. It might more plausibly be argued, as Keim has done, that its chief source was a complete Gospel of an Ebionite type, than that he had used mere fragmentary materials. The peculiar emphasis on the danger of riches and the advantage of poverty recurs again and again throughout : God favours the lowly and poor, and repels the mighty and the wealthy (i, 52, 53 ; ii. 7, 24 ; vi. 20) ; wealth is a snare (xi. 41 ; xii. 33, 15, 20) ; the parable of the unjust steward and of the rich man and Lazarus (xvi.) ; all these are of one tendency and bearing. The Gospels of St. Matthew and St. Mark were probably known to St. Luke ; the agreements in word and arrangement are too strong to allow this possibility to be excluded. In the long section of the Gospel which has no parallel passages in the two former Gospels, it would seem that St. Luke has had access to some old and authentic source, the language of which, however, he has treated as an independent writer would do in fusing together the materials at his command. ^47. Marcion. — A question of great importance is, What is the relation of the Gospel of St. Luke to the Gospel used by Marcion .^ Marcion of Sinope, who flourished before the middle of the second century, framed a scheme of Christianity of his own : he adopted with all his heart the ideas of redemption and forgive- ness by the Gospel ; and the attacks on his sincerity are to be regarded as belonging to the rhetoric of con- troversy, and are to be received with the greatest caution. But his system was one of dualism. The Old THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. 85 Testament he regards, not as a preparation for the Gospel, and a schoolmaster to train the world for Christ, but as something unlike in spirit to the Gospel. The God of the Old Testament he regarded as a being cruel and jealous. The heretic Cerdo had already taught that the just and severe God of the Law and the Prophets was not the same as the merciful Father of the Lord Jesus Christ. Marcion carried this further still, and blasphemously argued that the God of the Old Testament was represented as doing evil, and as delight- ing in strife, as repenting of His decrees, and inconsistent with Himself.^ In Marcion's strange system the God of the Old Testament was a lower being, a Demiurgus, engaged in a continual conflict with matter, over which he was not able to gain a complete victory. But the holy and eternal God, perfect in goodness and love, does not come into contact with matter, and creates only what is like to and cognate with Himself. In the Old Testament we see the Demiurgus ; in the scheme of redemption in the New Testament we see the work- ing of the one true God. That not one of our existing Gospels would fit such a system as this is quite obvious, for in each of them, the Old Testament is recognised as the soil and germ of the New. Marcion regarded Paul as the only apostle who had remained faithful to his calling. He admitted into his canon of Scripture the Pauline Epistles, and a Gospel which he regarded as Pauline ; and he rejected the rest of the New Testament, not from any idea that the works M^ere not genuine, but because he considered them as the genuine productions of men who were not faithful expositors of the Gospel which they had received. § 48. Marcion's Gospel. — What was the Gospel ^ See Irenasus I. xxvii. i and 2, p. 256. Stieren. 86 THE SYNOPTIC CxOSPELS. that Marcion used ? The ancient testimony on this point is strong and clear. He took the Gospel of Luke, and altered it to suit his peculiar system.^ This view was maintained without question throughout the Church until Semler threw out a doubt, the prolific seed of a long controversy. He thought that instead of being an abridgment of St. Luke, the Gospel of Marcion was drawn from the same source as St. Luke, each being in fact a re-editing of some one common original document. We do not follow this controversy here r the conclu- sive reasoning of Volkmar has re-established the account given by the Fathers. Marcion has used, and has altered for his purpose, the Gospel of St, Luke. " The old opinion," says Dr. Davidson, " will not be seriously disturbed again, as long as the treatise of Volkmar exists."^ ^ Irenceus, I. xxvii. 2 ; Tertullian, Cojit. Mcur. iv. 2 ; Origen, Cont. Cels. ii. 27 ; Epiphanius, Uar. xlii. 1 1 ; Theodoret, Htrret Fab. i. 24 ; Marcion, however, did not call his Gospel after Luke's name, but only the Gospel of Christ. 2 See Bible Diciionary. St. Luke. ^ Introduction, p. 51. Dr. Davidson did not know how powerless the logic of Volkmar would be against the indurated integument of the "unprejudiced person," that ideal creation of the author of Snpenintnral /Religion. After very frequent reference to Volkmar, the author of that work concludes, " If we except the Gospel according to the Hebrews, however, Marcion's Gospel is the oldest Evangelical work of which we hear anything, and it ranks far above our third Synoptic [Luke] in this respect. There is no evidence that it was not one of the numerous Gospels in circulation before our third Synoptic was written, and out of which that Gospel itself grew" (vol. ii. p. 139). The former of these statements, that Marcion's Gospel is the oldest Evangelical -work of which we have anything, is supported by several references to Volkmar, Holtz- mann, Hilgenfeld, etc. On turning to the first reference to Volkmar, it proves that he says nothing of this kind ; but that the testimony to the existence of Marcion's Gospel is older than that to the existence of our Gospels, because Marcion's Gospel is proved to exist before 130, whilst the clear testimony for the other dates about the middle of the century. Volkmar's whole contention is that St. I^ike is older than Marcion's Gospel, the latter being taken from the former ; and here he is quoted as the authority for Marcion's being " the oldest Evangelical work." Volkmar, THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. 87 Holtzmann, too, considers the priority of St. Luke to Marcion a settled question. Indeed, if after all the discussion, any unprejudiced person was still at liberty to treat the whole question as open, this would be a complete reductio ad absiirdum for critical science. The result is very important. Marcion, writing about A.D. 130, needs a history of Jesus for his basis, and he finds our Gospel of St. Luke already in existence, and adapts it to his purpose. Thus the earliest complete witness to any Gospel in an ancient writer attaches to that which is probably third in order of time. If that be so, the Gospel of Marcion is a complete barrier to those who would place all three Gospels later than the middle of the second century, since that one which appears to be the latest was established already in the beginning- of it.^ Ev. Alanion's, p. i. Another reference is equally astonishing (to p. 257 of Volkmar), where a remark of \'olkmar to the effect that we are indebted in a few places to Marcion for preserving the oldest text of St. Luke, is used as an authority for asserting that Marcion's was "the oldest Evange- lical work," and, therefore, quite incapable of giving us the best readings of a Gospel of Luke that did not exist. Hilgenfeld, in the place quoted, comes to the result " that it is true that Marcion knew and re-edited the Gospel of Luke, but that the latter, in its present condition, has also passed through a revision, though a slight one" [Evang. Justin'' s, p. 474). Holtzmann's (p. 402) is quoted also ; he says, " In any case Marcion offers the oldest testimony for Luke." That is to say, he affirms exactly the opposite of what he is quoted to support ; for he says that Luke is older than Marcion, so the latter cannot be the oldest. The difference is great, one would think, between the oldest testimony to a work not the oldest, and " the oldest Evangelical work." The reference to Westcott is equally delusive : this and one to Schwegler, which cannot at this moment be verified, make up the list. We do not charge the writer with intentional perversion : but the last paragraph of his account of Marcion shows the motive of the whole, which has prevented him from a fair survey of the evidence. "At the very best, even if the hypothesis that Marcion's Gospel was a mutilated Luke were established, Marcion affords no evidence in favour of the authenticity or trustworthy character of our third Synoptic." To that conclusion we should have come at last, we suspect, had twenty Volkmars barred the way. ^ The author of Supernatural Religion makes much of the fact that there are some discrepancies of readings between Marcion and the Gospel THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. ^ 49. St. Luke and St. Paul. — The old tradition that St. Luke wrote his Gospel under the direct influ- ence of St. Paul, comes to us on the authority of Irenaeus, Tertullian, Origen, and Eusebius. The two first assert that we have in St. Luke the Gospel preached by Paul.^ Origen calls it " the Gospel quoted by Paul," alluding to Romans ii. 16." Eusebius refers St. Paul's words " according to my Gospel " (2 Tim. ii. 8) to that of St. Luke,^ in which Jerome concurs.* The preface to the Gospel is quite inconsistent with the notion that the Gospel was compiled under the direc- tions, or even the influence, of any one man ; the claim made by the Evangelist to an independent his- torical position is too definite. Yet if we compare St. Paul's account of the institution of the Lord's Supper (i Cor. xi. 23-25) with that of St. Luke (xxii. 19, 20), we shall not think the verbal coincidences accidental. A less obvious parallel between i Cor. xv. 3 and Luke xxiv. 26, 27, which lies more in thought than in ex- pression, tends the same way : but is much less conclu- sive. The coincidence in the two accounts of the Last Supper is not so much a sign of connection with St. Paul as of the antiquity of St. Luke's account. The date of the 1st Epistle to the Corinthians is about A.D, 57, and here is an accidental proof that a Gospel, perhaps composed much later, has preserved the very as we have it. Volkmar finds this to be the case in about six places ; namely, x. 21, 22 ; xi. 2 ; xii. 38 ; xvii. 2 ; xviii. 19. Of four other places he speaks more doubtfully; these are vi. 17; xii. 32; xvii. 12; xxiii. 2. So that in ten verses at most Marcion has different readings from those of the accessible MSS. of St. Luke ; in other words, in these few verses we are able to look over Marcion's shoulder at the MS. that he was using. This is not wonderful. If these deviations make the Gospel of Luke another Gospel, then we must have as many Lukes as there are MSS. ; for between M.SS. the discrepancies are numerous. ^ Iren. Cont. Har. iii. i ; Tert. Cont. Alarc. iv. 5. « Eusebius, E. H. \\. 2^. 3 e. H. iii. 4. < De Vir. III. 7. THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. 89 words of the old account. There is, however, a deep affinity between this Gospel and the preaching of St. Paul, which is of more importance for this question. This is the Gospel from which shines most brightly the light of redemption, forgiveness, restoration, for all the human race. The two earlier Gospels are illuminated with the same light, for it is the light of the Spirit of Christ : but if differences are to be noticed at all, this is one of the most distinctly marked. The parables of the prodigal son, of the good Samaritan, of the lost piece of money, are all peculiar to St. Luke, and they furnish the preacher with some of his most moving arguments for repentance. The parable of the lost sheep is common to St. Matthew and St. Luke ;^ but the difference of treatment is considerable ; and pro- bably the two accounts relate to distinct occasions. In St. Matthew the finder " rejoiceth more of that sheep than of the ninety and nine which went not astray," and the Lord adds, " It is not the will of your Father which is in heaven that one of these little ones should perish : " in St. Luke, " he calleth his friends and neighbours together, saying unto them. Rejoice with me, for I have found the sheep which was lost," and adds that "joy shall be in heaven over one sinner that repenteth." The conversion of the thief on the cross, the prayer of Jesus for His murderers, the relations of the Lord with the Samaritans,^ and the account of the good Samaritan, perhaps a parable with an historical ground, and of the Samaritan leper,^ the account of a journey in Samaria, all lead the minds of his readers to understand the infinite love and pity of Jesus which led Him to seek and save in every region and class. Before this love all questions of class break down. The door ^ Matt, xxiii. 12-14; Luke xv. 3-7 ; also ch. xv. and xvi. 2 Luke ix. 51-56. ^ Luke x. 33, xvii. 16. 90 THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. of redemption is opened wide : the Pharisee fails of forgiveness, and the penitent Publican secures it. The Priest and Levite pass on the other side, but the good Samaritan tends the wounded man. Simon the Phari- see, the host of Jesus, learns a new lesson from our Lord when the sinful woman is allowed to draw near and to wash the feet of Jesus.^ All this points to a breaking down of all legal privileges and distinctions of class, and to the admission of all sinners alike to the mercy of the Lord upon their repentance. God " hath put down the mighty from their seat, and hath exalted them of low degree."^ The genealogy of Jesus in Luke reaches back to Adam ; so that he is placed in relation to the whole human race. The evils that should befall the Jewish nation are the consequence of their rejection of Christ.'* In all these points there is a certain correspondence between the Gospel teaching of St, Paul, which might be expressed by saying that had St. Paul been disposed to select one Gospel out of the rest upon which to found his teaching, he would have found St. Luke somewhat more suitable to his purpose. But this must not be pushed too far. Even those who call this a Pauline Gospel have sought to account for its impartial tone by the assumption that it is composed from various documents, Ebionite and Samaritan. Critics like Ritschl, Zeller, and Schwegler have come to the result that there are two lines of direction to be traced in this Gospel, the one that of Jewish Christian thought, and the other of Pauline, which the Evange- list harmonises and conciliates. If so, the "polemical" tendency so often insisted on must indeed be weak. S 50. Comparison of Diction. — A comparison of the diction of St. Luke with that of the Pauline Epistles ' Luke vii. 36-50. " Luke i. 52. ^ xix. 44, xxi. 24, xxiii. 27. THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. 91 shows an amount of agreement such as would of itself prove that some relation had existed between the two suspected writers. Holtzmann has elaborated this com- parison with great care/ if at times he uses too much refinement. But the inferences from this resemblance must be cautiously drawn. It does not prove that St. Luke copied from St. Paul, any more than it indicates the converse process. For example, the account of the Last Supper is common to the two writers, and the Epistle in which it finds place was written before the Gospel — at least the Gospel as a whole ; but whether St. Paul found St. Luke already in possession of this account from some older source, and accepted and used it, or St. Luke shaped the words of his narrative into a certain conformity with the passage of St. Paul, can- not be resolved by internal evidence, though the former theory may seem more probable. So far as St, Paul and St. Luke were friends and loving fellow-workers in the same great task, each would help *and influence the other. Words that were used only by these two, or almost exclusively by them, of which the number is very great, indicate much foregoing intercourse between the two writers, rather than a studious following of the writings of one by the other. The resemblances being admitted, and the fact that the Apostle and the Evan- gelist were friends being also admitted, we are not in a position to pursue the subject to the length of showing in each case of resemblance which was the original and which the follower. It is confessed on all hands that the Evangelist has not confined his Gospel to the Apostle's teaching, as a mere disciple would have done ; to take a single example, the sending of the seventy is generally regarded as one of the indications of the ^ Dr. Davidson, in his Inty-oduction, adopts Holtzmann's laborious analysis without any specific acknowledgment. 92 THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. universalist spirit of the third Gospel, for the number seventy was typical of the Gentiles, as the number twelve of the tribes of the chosen people ; but those who talk of a wish to depreciate the labours of the twelve Apostles in the interest of St. Paul, must shut their eyes to the passages like Luke ix. lo, omitted in St. Matthew, in which the success of the twelve is made prominent. Any fair judge will agree with Zeller,^ that the notion of a hostility of St. Luke against the original Apostles is refuted by the two facts that he introduces matter that might seem to do them honour, where St. Matthew has omitted it, and that he has let fall out of his narrative things that might seem to place them in an unfavourable light, §51. Contents of St. Lukes Gospel. — The contents of St. Luke's Gospel may be briefly indicated. Fulfil- ling the promise of the Prologue to this Gospel,^ this Evangelist proceeds to give an account of all that relates to Jesus of Nazareth from first to last, and in a certain order. Accordingly he goes back to the first word of the tidings of salvation — to the conception and birth of Christ, and even of John the Baptist, and connects the birth of the Lord with the history of the world (i. 5, ii. I, iii, i), thus implying that events which concerned all mankind were about to be transacted.^ As St. Matthew had traced the genealogy of the Lord from Abraham, in order to connect the Messiah of the Jews with the chosen people ; St. Luke, in order to connect the Saviour of the world with the whole of the saved race, traces the descent up to Adam " the son of God." With ch. iii. commences a group of events and discourses in Galilee, and chiefly in Capernaum, which are common to the three Evangelists, and which in St. ' ApostelgescJi. p. 450. - See notes thereon. ^ Keil, Matthaus, p. 6. THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. 93 Luke are apparently arranged in order of time. This section ends with ch. ix. 50. The next section, ix. 5 i to xviii. 14, contains many events and discourses peculiar to St. Luke.^ Some have thought that this section is all to be taken as the record of a particular journey to Jerusalem, with the mention of which it commences. This, however, is untenable ; the transi- tions of place are against it. The Lord is in Bethany, X. 38 ; then in some other part, journeying towards Jerusalem, xiii. 22; then back in Galilee, xiii. 31 ; then in Samaria and Galilee, journeying, xvii. i i ; again on a journey to Jerusalem, xviii. 31, whilst, in verse 35 of the same chapter, He is again in the neighbourhood of Bethany, and not on the straight road to Jerusalem, but " nigh unto Jericho." Attempts are made to ex- plain these transitions, consistently with the historical order ; but a more natural and consistent explanation is that the chronological order is here put aside, to make way for the topical order. As in St. Matthew, in the Sermon on the Mount, the actual order of the history gives way to the Evangelist's purpose of placing before the hearers the teaching of Jesus as one whole ; so here some words of reproof, as to a cure wrought on the Sabbath day, introduce a large group of parables, ch. XV the general drift of which is that a feel- ing of want and misery is requisite to salvation through Christ, and that salvation requires also decision and a purpose and a choice. It may be that these teachings are massed into one place on account of their having been preserved in one written document ; but on this it would be difficult to pronounce. With the last section, that of the Passion, St. Luke again takes his place among the Synoptic Gospels, not, however, without passages that show him as an independent witness. ^ Compare note at the end of chap. ix. 94 THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. ^52. Summary. — It is time now to consider the relative weight of the several factors, in the important problem of the origin of the Gospels. I. There probably were in existence at the time of the composition of the three Gospels, many documents, some of more and some of less authority and extent, in which the sayings and acts of Jesus were recorded. Indeed, St. Luke almost says this in his preface. The two genealogies were probably of this kind ; and the discourses in St. Luke may also have come from a distinct account, of which St. Luke alone of the three had knowledge. There may well have been many others, nor is there any reason to think, after the words of St. Luke, that such materials would have been passed over by the Evangelists. But the attempts to separate them have all issued in great confusion ; at first sight the task of restoring from the common material which all three Gospels contain, a primitive or fundamental Gospel, has appeared so easy as to be a mere mechanical exercise; but on grappling with the labour, its diffi- culties have proved insurmountable. Since the time of Schleiermacher, the recovery of the original Icgia, the supposed book of discourses of St. Matthew, has been thought a fitting task for critical science ; but unfortu- nately for this attempt, St. Luke, as well as St. Matthew, presents the phenomenon of a mass of discourses, inwoven with the narrative; and a doubt has actually been raised whether the true hiding-place of the logia of St. Matthew be not the existing Gospel of St. Luke ; a doubt, how- ever, which yields to the stronger doubt, already dis- cussed, whether a separate book of discourses is at all intended in the word login. We are obliged, then, in admitting that there must have been some documents in existence, to confess that they are for us irrecoverable by any process of separation. THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. 95 2. Equally certain does it appear that oral tradi- tional preaching must have grown up even earlier than the written documents. The companions of the Lord were few in number ; the followers whom they attracted afterwards were many. The Apostles must have been called upon from the very day of Pentecost to preach to eager enquirers, daily and hourly, the facts which they had witnessed and the rest had not. The story often told would be told in the same words, and the different teachers would find the advantage of conform- ing their narrative to one type, as to language and order. The notion of repeating, always in the same words, a story that must be often told, is repugnant to modern tastes ; but we are not the best judges in that matter, because we have the benefit of a fixed standard in our printed books, whereas the Jewish expositors of the law aimed at a fixed standard by the very means of constant repetition. The authors of the Mishna, called the Tannaites or repeaters, were those who pre- served the lore which was not yet reduced to writing in the Talmud : from the time of the destruction of Jerusalem, to the end of the second century, that strange collection subsisted only in the memory of these teachers. The existence of this phenomenon, side by side almost with the formation of the Gospels, throws a light upon the mode of that formation.^ To the method of in- struction by means of fixed forms, the Jews would have no objection on the score of taste, and usage was quite in its favour. On the other hand, as Gieseler argues, the literary activity of the Jews at this time was at its very lowest. The terrible oppression to which they were subject, under the later governors, was too severe 1 See the historical works of Jost and Gratz ; also a paper by A. Reville on the "History of the Jews after the fall of Jerusalem," in Revue des deux Mondcs, November, 1867; also Gieseler, E7itstehtmg, p. 53. '^i- 96 THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. to allow them to think of anything but deliverance from their wrongs, and the same cause brought about a decline of the means of culture, whilst Greece and Rome were still alive with literary activity. Thus we must first conceive a state of things in which a book would not be likely to be thought of, and a fixed form of oral tradition would be likely, in order to judge this question. In both respects the condition in which we live is exactly opposite to this. But under those conditions, it was very probable that a fixed body of historical teaching would form itself, would become day by day more con- solidated and more uniform, for the use of an assembly that took an interest in preserving, not only the con- tents, but also the fixed form of the narration. The books would be formed afterwards, and no doubt the near prospect of dispersion and overthrow would quicken the desire for written records, in lieu of the traditions, which required a settled community for their safe custody. The probability then is great that Gieseler's position is so far true, that the Gospel was first fixed in oral teaching before it passed into written books. This oral teaching is the cause of the uniformity of plan and expression, which belongs to a large section of all the three Gospels. But a number of questions spring up which will not readily be resolved. Was there another and separate source for the discourses of the Lord .'' If so, does St. Matthew or St. Luke come nearest to it ? Was there yet another cycle of tradition, to preserve for us the large section of St. Luke, ch. ix. to ch. xviii. ? This is another of the mysteries with which the growth of the Gospel is surrounded ; and we must know where to stop. But there will be no danger in accepting as the second factor in the calculation, the growth of an oral tradition. ^. The time of the formation of these materials THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. 97 would probably extend from the Day of Pentecost to the year 63. During the next ten or twelve years the three Gospels before us were published. At what time they became known to the whole Church and generally adopted will require a separate enquiry ; but the condi- tion of the Church during the first thirty years of its existence will have an important bearing on the question of the formation of the Gospels. M. Renan figures to himself a Church in which historical facts were of small interest, amid a people which never gave itself much trouble about accuracy of fact, but only concerned itself with ideas. No doubt such a frame of mind would have been favourable to the formation of mythical narratives : no doubt, also, the frame of mind has been invented to account for the supposed myths. The preaching of the Apostles was always founded on facts of history — on the facts of the life of Jesus — and never on ideas. There would be temptation enough towards an opposite course. Ebionite views of poverty would be attractive to the Jewish people ; political aspirations for the coming of an earthly kingdom would have secured a hearing from every class of Jews ; the seeming defeat of Jesus, by His death, would give an inducement to cast into a seemly shade the acts of His career, and to bring into prominence moral teachings so beautiful that, with whatsoever name allied, the world would never suffer them to die. In Corinth or in Rome the preaching of the fact of the Crucifixion was a mere peril and inconvenience : to the Jews a stumbling-block, and to the Greeks foolishness. All this makes more remark- able the tenacity of the first preachers in holding up the cross at all times and to all peoples. There is hardly a discourse which does not at once accept the fact most likely to offend. A crucified Lord, and a Saviour raised from the dead, is the first word and the last. Chris- H THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. tianity was bound up with the facts that Jesus Christ died and rose again. If these were not true, the preaching was all vain, and the hopes raised by Christianity were quite delusive. Of the efficacy of such teaching the Christians had no doubt. A great number of the Jews at Rome had become Christians. Many Gentiles, who had first become Jewish proselytes, had proceeded to embrace the new Gospel. When Claudius banished the Jews, it was because " at the instigation of a certain Chrestus they excited ceaseless disturbances." They are spoken of as if the living Christ was visible among them still. Much obscurity hangs over the cradle of the infant Church at Rome. Who was its founder .'' Was it a Gentile com- munity chiefly, or a Jewish .-* Whence came St. Paul's accurate knowledge, not only of the condition of the Church in general, but of the very persons who were most prominent in it .'* However these questions are answered, it is sure that the ground on which St. Paul met them in the great Epistle, written to them as early as A.D. 5S, was the historical ground of the death and resurrection of Christ. The person of the Founder was the religion of the Church. The person of the Founder was the source of its power, not merely over those of His nation, but over Greek and Roman too. The Gospels arose out of the yearning of the Christian society to know fully the Master in whose name they were able to conquer principalities and powers, and whose cross was the anchor of hope for a ruined world, 4. Whatever the view that is taken of the common origin of the Gospels, it must include the admission that the works in question are all independent books in respect of the distinct character and purposes of each. The writers are not like modern literary workmen, who THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. 99 from a few books thrown down on their table construct an epitome or an abridgment. (Keil.) The Gospel of St. Matthew has always held the first place, not merely in the list of books, but in the mind of the Church. It was the prominent Gospel in the mind of Justin Martyr ; it has been quoted more often than any other ever since. Interposed, as it were, between the old Testa- ment and the New, published just before the Holy City was destroyed, it revealed the relation of the old to the new. " It was the ultimatum of Jehovah to His ancient people— Believe or prepare for destruction ! Recognise in Jesus your Messiah, or expect Him as your Judge ! The book which contains this supreme summons is the close of the Old Testament and the opening of the New. It has the place marked for it in the archives of the kingdom of God upon earth, the Bible, precisely at the point which was assigned to it by the religious sentiment of the Church,"^ To the marked character of the Gospel, writers like Keim and Renan bear witness. Even the opinion that it is a translation from the Hebrew is giving way to the conviction of its originality, although the internal evidence for the latter has to overcome the positive testimony of Papias for the former view. Upon a superficial examination it might seem that at least the Gospel of St. Mark must be excepted from any claim to originality made for the Gospels. It has but a few verses that are wholly new and peculiar to it, but its character is as marked as that of the others. The exact and minute touches of description, which seem to come from an eyewitness, and which Klostermann and others have tried to connect with St. Peter, and as it seems successfully, would alone vindicate for this Gospel an independent place. But there is something deeper. To display the power and ^ Godet, Etudes Bibliques, p. 25. THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. might of Christ in healing and in conquering evil is the object of the Evangelist. The miraculous power of the Lord is brought into the front, and for this end the discourses, which the writer must have known, are either passed over, or only introduced where they heighten the main impression of the work. Nowhere else is the conflict with evil spirits so strongly brought out as in St. Mark. The teaching of the Evangelist is, that into the midst of a sick and dying world a new Power had entered for its salvation, and he calls on all to watch the strong mysterious^march of this Power and to adore with him. This Power is the Son of God Himself.^ The Third Gospel was written, as Holtzmann admits, a few years later than that of St. Matthew ; but in some parts it seems to bear marks of a greater antiquity. The more marked vindication of the poor against the rich, the so-called Ebionite element of some critics, may possibly be no more than the consequence of an earlier reduction to writing of some parts of the Lord's teach- ing, in which that which had reference to the existing social condition of the people of Jerusalem, their woes and sufferings, was preserved ; whilst later writers seeing the approaching dissolution of the Jewish polity, were guided to write rather the truths which belonged to the whole world. The superior place that seems to be assigned to poverty as such, in the account of the rich man and Lazarus, may have been, without any of the usual glosses and reserves, true of the Jewish people, 1 Grau, Schrifthiun, i. 125 ; Luthardt, Evangclien, p. 15 ; Keil, Matt. p. 4. The omission of the words " Son of God," " Son of the living God, " in Mark viii. 9 (see Matt. xvi. 16), and the doubtful words " Son of God " in i. I, which are not found in the Sinaitic Codex, may seem to call this in question ; but compare Luke iv. 41, with Mark iii. 11 ; and l>uke viii. 28 with Mark v. 7 ; also Matt. xxvi. ()T, with Mark iv, 61 ; and Luke xxiii. 47 with Mark xv. 39. THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. in SO far as the eye of Jesus saw that among the very- poor was the most hearty love of God and the most meek spirit of obedience to a higher law. But a different condition of things might be found elsewhere ; for there is no immunity of poverty from great sin, and so the " Blessed be ye poor " of Luke is really equivalent to the " Blessed are the poor in spirit " of St. Matthew, if indeed " ye poor " are those poor whose spirit is humble like their condition : the godless and murderous communist, poor enough, has no part or lot in those words of Jesus. Akin to this feature is that which is the chief character of the Third Gospel ; it is the Gospel of free grace, of equal forgiveness to a whole sinful world. This has contributed to the belief that some connection between St. Paul and the Evangelist existed ; as regards the other Gospels, it is a feature which stamps it with the seal of originality. Of smaller concern to us here is the greater literary skill of style and construction on which Keim, Renan, and so many others, have descanted. Enough to remark that whatever has been discovered or surmised, as to the common root of the Gospels, will leave behind, or rather will bring into view, the inde- pendence of each work, considered as a whole. The discussions upon the Gospels, so fruitful in details, so disappointing as regards the main problem, have arisen from the endeavour, by the help of these factors, to analyse the very source and composition of every part of the works. This will never be. One of the notable features of this problem is that the hypotheses which are used to account for the resemblance of the Gospels, only make more difficult of explanation the differences, and vice versa. If it be argued that a coincidence, not merely of thought, but of expression, even to the identity in irregular augments and use of cases, indicates that the Evangelists had access to each other's works in THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. whatsoever order, then the differences of arrangement and even of events, of the number of persons here and the scene of action there, lose their natural explanation. It is probable that St. Mark saw the Gospel of St. Matthew ; but in that case the omission of the great discourses becomes hard to understand. Much of the later criticism has the tendency to explain the resem- blances, but to leave the differences on one side. The time seems almost come when with a hundred volumes before us, each with its own explanation, and each with weapons of destruction ready for every other, we may admit that the explanation will never be forthcoming. Indeed the complications are so great, and the collateral witnesses so few, that the failure is not surprising. As easy would it be for some chemical disciple of Mulder or of Regnault, who came to the subject armed with the knowledge of all the elements that compose a tree, and with all the laws of vegetable physiology, to pretend to trace to its source every particle of the oldest oak in Windsor Forest, and to show the amount of effect of every storm that visited it for thirty winters of its early progress, and the precise result of the shadow of neigh- bouring trees, and of the mosses round its roots, and the springs that made dank the soil beneath, and the fungoid growths that soon began to feed upon its super- fluity of life. This is beyond science. The first efforts are excusable, if they are vain. But there comes a time for separating the sure from the doubtful, the materials of science from the food of mere conjecture ; and here we may venture to say that criticism has failed, and that the time has come for making this separation. There is another resemblance between the oak and the Gospel. The further examination is not needful, in the one case or the other, for the full use and enjoyment of the truth and of the tree. Whatever THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. the exact share of each cause, the tree has grown to a goodly height ; the fowls of the air lodge in the branches of it, the cattle seek shade beneath it, with its mast the birds are fed whilst it is growing and the swine when it has fallen. And in the meantime a great trunk is gathering girth and density, until the time come for the axe being laid at the root, and for the new destiny to which God may have raised the senseless wood ; and the acorn thrown by the careless hand of some swine- herd in the time of the Tudors, may have grown to carry the flag of England of to-day, with the mimic thunders of her armament, into the Indian seas, to maintain her imperial sway. So with the books ; what- ever their root and mode of growth, they were the seed of a mighty tree, of the great church of God. Nor may we complain that we cannot see every step of its growth, if indeed its present stature and beauty are proofs enough that it is divine. ^ 53. Divine Authority. — The discussion of the Gospels from a critical point of view must always seem to derogate from their claim to divine authority, their inspiration, unless the claim of the Gospels is in some measure defined. At first it should be observed that there are some things which they do not claim. Not completeness of detail : St. John expressly says (xx. 30, 31 ; xxi. 25) that this is not to be looked for in a work of so limited an extent. Not exemption from the ordinary conditions of historical research ; some of these, St. Luke (i. 1-4) accepts ; and the most striking feature of that remarkable preface is the modesty of its claim. Nor do they profess to offer what we should call a biography of Jesus Christ. St. Matthew offers no account of the general scope of his work. St. Mark is writing " the Gospel of the Jesus Christ the Son of God." St. Luke has for his subject the things that I04 THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. are surely believed, and in which Theophilus has been instructed — a description which has more to do with a creed than a biography. It is evident that each intends to bring us Christ, but that not one intends to give us every incident in the life that He lived on earth. And they have redeemed the one promise, expressed or im- plied ; they have not attempted the other. One or two illustrations will make this plainer. The genealogy in St. Matthew omits three names, Ahaziah, Joash, and Amaziah. Now, if a promise, expressed or implied, has been made to record every step in the descent, then this is a fault in the history ; but it is urged that St. Matthew does not profess to record in his list the full number of successions to the throne of David, but only to exhibit the royal pedigree of Jesus Christ ; that this genealogy is in all probability a document distinct from the Gospel though incorporated in it, and that like omissions are found in like documents, and elsewhere in Jewish history.^ If these arguments hold good, then anything like the reproach which writers like Strauss bring against the Gospel on this ground is turned back. In two Gospels there are two " sermons " of Jesus, alike, yet different in many things. The probability is that they are the same sermon. Now, if St. Matthew is bound by any promise not to put the Sermon on the Mount out of its historical place, and not to add to it one word which Jesus did not on that occasion actually deliver, then we should follow the comments of ordinary criticism with exquisite pain, for the sermon is appa- rently placed earlier than the place assigned by St. Luke, and many matters are introduced which were apparently spoken by the Lord at other times and in other connec- ^ See Maclellan, NclU Test. p. 411, who compares 2 Chron. xxii. 9, where son of Jehoshaphat means grandson ; also i Chron. vi. 3-15 with Ezek, vii. 1-5, where seven generations are omitted. THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. 105 tions. But if the main purpose of St. Matthew be best answered by the arrangement which he has adopted, and if the wish to place the new law of the Kingdom of Heaven at the very threshold, and to exhibit it in complete form, has caused him to adopt an order less usual to us, then we should not judge the Gospel by a rule of our own making. That which the critic wishes to extenuate as an imperfection, is in fact a step in the march which the Evangelist means to tread. In what, then, consists the inspiration of the Gospels .'' Here the proper answer will not be by a theory, but by an examination of the facts of the Holy Scripture itself Our Lord on four occasions promised to the Apostles a Divine guidance of some kind. He says (Matt. x. 19) : "When they deliver you up, take no thought how or what ye shall speak : for it shall be given you in that same hour what ye shall speak. For it is not ye that speak, but the Spirit of your Father which speaketh in you." In St. Luke the same promise is given : " The Holy Ghost shall teach you in the same hour what ye ought to say" (Luke xii. 12). In St. Mark, on another occasion, the same is repeated : " Whatsoever shall be given you in that hour, that speak ye ; for it is not ye that speak, but the Holy Ghost " (Mark xiii. 11). In the great discourse of St. John, the form of the promise is different. " The Comforter . . . shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you " (xiv. 26). " He will guide you into all truth, for He shall not speak of Himself; but whatsoever He shall hear, that shall He speak, and He will shew you things to come " (xvi. 1 3). Of these promises, the three first are all of one kind ; the disciples were to be endowed with a power not their own, in order to face and to answer their persecutors. The last promise is more io6 THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. general : it is a promise of union with God through His Spirit, by which guidance in truth and wisdom shall be given the Apostles, not merely in the crisis of peril, but at all times without limitation. It is not necessary to go minutely into the interpretation of these passages ; their general meaning is clear, and whatever that mean- ing includes, it is certain that it must include the power to give a true picture of the Lord of life and sal- vation, to' those who should listen to the Apostles' preaching. This was their work on earth ; this was given them by the Lord to do, and if the guidance did not extend to this, the promise would be delusive. From the history of the Church we know that the Divine guidance of the Spirit has extended to many others besides the Apostles in different ways and measures. But all we are now concerned with is the position of the Apostles. If the promise of Christ was true, they were divinely guided for their work. Now it could not be maintained for a moment that the aid which was given them for their preaching was withdrawn from them when they reduced to writing the same preaching. In point of fact, it is most probable that the teaching and the written book were the same. At any rate, the one and the other were undertaken in strict fulfilment of the commission given to the Apo- stles to preach the Gospel to every creature. This posi- tion is only applicable exactly to the two Gospels of St. Matthew and St. John. It is notable, however, that the early Church has always believed that St. Peter was connected with St. Mark's Gospel, as St. Paul was supposed to be with that of St. Luke. But whether these two were within the scope of the Lord's promise will not depend on the theory that they were connected with two Apostles, though the Church evidently attached much importance to that ; the witness of the Church THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. 107 is of greater importance here. She had before her these two Gospels, among a swarm of apocryphal writings, professing to make Christ known ; and she fixed on the four and excluded all others, treating these with a peculiar reverence, from which we may infer this, that the Gospels of Mark and Luke, albeit connected with the names of those who were not Apostles, pre- sented the image of the same Christ as the other two, and pointed the same way of salvation. In cleaving to the four, and rejecting the rest, the Church was not guided by any exact theory of inspiration ; many theories have been constructed, but they are mainly the work of theologians in later times. What she believed was that in these books there was the truth, and that it was written under divine guidance, and this was sufficient. One of the oldest theories of inspiration is that each writer was an instrument in the hand of the Almighty, uttering the sounds which the player moved it to utter, and contributing no more to the divine music than does the flute or pipe to the air that the musician makes. With this theory any degrees of inspiration would be incompatible. Now the Jewish writers always seem to have recognised degrees : from the " Bath Kol," " Daughter of the Voice," up to the prophetic Vision, and to the high and peculiar inspiration enjoyed by Moses, there were several grades.^ But are there not traces in the New Testament of the Doctrine of Degrees } When St. Paul is advising on the subject of marriage, he says, " She is happier if she so abide, after my judgment ; and I think also that I have the spirit of God" (i Cor. vii. 40). This would hardly be con- sistent with the position that St. Paul knew himself to be as an instrument played on by the hand of the 1 'b&Q.'\i:A\Xi'S>m\'CtC'i Select Discoitrses 071 Propht'cy,'^. 252. (Cambridge, 1673-) io8 THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. Almighty. He seems to assume that he is using his own judgment, with a strong impression at the same time that it is a judgment in accordance with the mind of Christ. In another passage he says, " That which I speak, I speak it not after the Lord, but as it were fooHshly, in the confidence of boasting" (2 Cor. xi. 17). These passages are quite consistent with the old Jewish view of inspiration : that God inspired the prophet through his reason and mind, and that the more the prophet was left in the possession of his natural powers and reason, the higher the grade of inspiration ; but they are not consistent with the mere mechanical view that God took possession of every faculty, suspending and superseding it in order to use as a mouthpiece or amanuensis, the chosen writer.^ Nor can this last view be reconciled with any of the conclusions of criticism, seeing that a single peculiarity of any kind in one of the writers would be inconsistent with it. Nor could any question of small and great be admitted to alter the case ; want of harmony, even in a single word, would overthrow the theory as effectually as greater deviations. Nor is such a form of inspiration the ■'■ "The ancients, indeed, were accustomed to say, . . . that the sacred writers were as pens in the hand of the Spirit, or as harps, from which He drew what sounds He pleased. These representations were, however, intended simply to illustrate one point, namely, that the words uttered or recorded by inspired men, were the words of God. The Church has never held what has been stigmatised as the mechanical theoiy of in- spiration. The sacred writers were not machines. Their self-conscious- ness was not suspended ; nor were their intellectual powers superseded. Holy men spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost. It was men, not machines ; not unconscious instruments, but living, thinking, willing minds, whom the Spirit used as His organs. Nor did inspiration interfere with the free exercise of the distinctive mental characteristics of the individual. If a Hebrew was inspired, he spake Hebrew ; if a Greek, he spake Greek ; if an educated man, he spake as a man of culture ; if uneducated, he spake as such a man is wont to speak. If his mind was logical, he reasoned, as Paul did ; if emotional, he wrote as John wrote. All this is involved in the fact that God uses His instruments according to their nature." — Hodge, Systctttatic Theology, vol. i. p. 156. THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. 109 highest, according to the Jewish view of the Old Testa- ment writers. The inspiration which, leaving the faculties of the inspired speaker in their force and fulness, added to him a light and zeal and knowledge, such as exceed all that he could have shown without the divine aid, has seemed to the old doctors of the law, of a higher kind. And such an inspiration seems best to agree with the facts of the New Testament. That St. Matthew exhibits one kind of character in his Gospel, and St. John another, is admitted by all critics of every school ; and this must arise from the two being of different natures and gifts, and placed in different circumstances when they wrote. The Holy Spirit is one and unchangeable, but He acts on divers natures in different ways, and uses them according to their faculties of reason and oppor- tunities of knowledge. The Apostles felt this when they resolved (Acts i.) to choose into the vacant place of an Apostle one who had companied with them all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among them : such a one would be a qualified witness, and the Holy Spirit would give him the light which he needed. On the other view, that this inspired teacher was a mechan- ical instrument, the less he had seen of the Lord, the more remarkable would his evidence have been ; and one who had never seen Him, would have furnished the most striking proof of the miraculous power of the Spirit. But it has pleased God to act in another manner, and to select those who, both by their past knowledge and by the aid of the divine light, might make the news of salvation known. The writings of St. Paul are still more difficult to explain on the other hypothesis. Not only are they full of marks of individual character, but the Apostle himself calls attention to the fact that his love, his confidence, what he calls his " boasting," his hopes of an eternal crown, are truly his, separable from. THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. and in some cases actually separated from, the light of the Divine Spirit, the actual presence of which with him, to guide and enlighten his life, he never for one hour forgets. In the Old Testament, the counterpart of St. Paul is David ; and no reader of the Psalms can doubt that many of their words and incidents are from David's personal life ; no one can doubt that this is what gives the book its deepest value. If the fifty-first Psalm is the real outpouring of David's penitence for a sin all too real, it is full of meaning for all sinners. If, on the other hand, which no Jewish commentary sup- poses, it is but the impassive utterance of the Holy Spirit, to which David furnishes only the subservient mouth or the mechanical hand of the scribe, then it must be read in a new sense, and with a different atti- tude from that in which the Church has ever regarded it. No doubt the words of the Lord to the Apostles, in St. Matthew and St. Mark, as quoted above, are such as to seem at first to give colour to the view of dictation. They belong, however, to a well-known class of negative sentences, in which the first member is a denial, made in order to give rhetorical force to the second. " He that believeth on Me, believeth not on Me, but on Him that sent Me " (John xii. 44). This cannot mean that a believer is not a believer ; the sense is brought out by the comment, " He that believeth on Me is not to be thought of as believing on Me, but on Him that sent Me." In like manner, " Thou hast not lied unto men, but unto God," cannot mean that there had been no lie unto men ; the facts show the contrary ; but that the lie unto men is not to be thought of in comparison to the lie to God. The negative is one of thought rather than of things : " Do not think of . . . but of . . ." etc.^ ^ See Winer, iVeio Test. Diet. 3, sect. 55 ; Luke x. 20, is a case of the same kind. THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. Upon the whole, the Scripture passages are consistent with the view of a divine assistance, complete for its purpose, which the divine writers enjoyed ; but they do not give the means of constructing a precise theory of the mode and measure of the inspiration. The practical question for the Church is, Why do we believe that the Evangelists enjoyed a divine light in the work which they performed ? The answer would be : i , That we are told in the New Testament that not only the Apostles but the Seventy, and the brethren at large, did in fact enjoy and exercise this divine gift in many ways. And if it is said that it is arguing in a circle to prove the Gospels by the witness of the Gospels, the testimony of St. Paul (i Cor. xii. 9, 10) makes it clear that the existence of some supernatural gifts in his time is a matter beyond argument. He speaks of them as calmly as he would of the collection for the saints, or the fact of his imprisonment. Now it is impossible to think that these gifts were shed abroad in such profusion and such diversity, and yet withheld from those on whose work the whole of the future preachingof the Church must needs depend. 2. That it was not so withheld was the generalbelief of the whole Church ; it may be assumed here that by the year 150 or thereabouts the Four Gos- pels had taken their place as the accredited accounts of the life of the Lord. 3. But the first place in the evidence will always belong to the contents of the Gospels. They bring before us Christ ; and He is Divine. This argument has prevailed with some who would not have yielded to any other. "Jewish writers," says Rousseau, "would never have invented that tone — that morality. And the Gospel has marks of truth so great and striking, so perfectly inimitable, that the inventor of them would be more astonishing even than the hero."^ If it could ^ Em He. THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. be seriously apprehended that the Church and mankind would ever allow itself to be robbed of the Divine picture and presentment of Christ, because of some real or fancied discrepancy between the four Evangelists ; that it would part with the precious substance of harmony, for the sake of some shadow of harmony, never to be found in any books, and never promised to us in these ; then we might tremble for the future of religion. But they have come down to us so far, not upon the strength of a historical argument that they were indeed what they are supposed to be, but upon the inward force, by which they first show us Christ, and then lead us captive to Christ. Never man spake like this Man ; never was love like this love ; never such a life was seen on earth before ; never did the dream of poet, never the instinct of hero-worship imagine such a Being with such wisdom on His lips, such love in His heart, with a character so balanced and complete, with claims so outspoken and so lofty, joined to so profound a humility and so gentle a kindness towards the gainsayer. If, indeed, as Geiger and others tell us. He is but a disciple of Hillel, follow- ing exactly in His master's footsteps, let us see this Hillel brought forth, that we may admire another, also divine ! Every one knows, and Delitzsch has taken the trouble to show,^ that there is indeed no comparison possible. The two genealogies may be difficult ; the taxing of Cyrenius a perpetual problem ; the day of the last Passover may exercise critics to the end. But do or do not the Four Gospels conduct us into the presence of the same Jesus ? This is the real issue. The Church has long since settled her conviction on this point ; in the Gospels, each and all, she has known Christ. And if the life and character of Jesus transcend the power of man's invention, then there must be some ^ Jcsiis and Hillel. THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. 113 cause higher than man's invention for such a portrait : if the hand is not human that drew it, then it must be something more than human. But we may go farther. The claim for greater evidence for the Gospels, and a more exact agreement in every detail, is purely artificial and arbitrary. No other books among those which we read with undoubting faith in their genuineness, have such evidence to show for their descent. Let any one think how he would set about the proof that Virgil wrote the ^neid as we have it, or Plato his Republic, and he will hardly be able to make a first step, Justin Martyr, about the middle of the second century, has quoted the Gospels so freely, that we are assured of their existence at that time and of the substance of their contents. His quotations are not indeed verbally exact ; but if we try to evade the admission that he quotes our Gospels, on the ground of these verbal differences, then the alternative emerges of a fifth witness to the main facts of the Gospel, including all those which place our Redeemer on the throne of Divine Sonship, in the Gospel by Justin.^ If Justin did indeed compose a Gospel for himself out of the materials that had come down to him, then those materials become new evi- dence. It is, however, certain that Justin knew the histories of the Lord's life, which we call the Gospels. But we are asked to apply to these histories a test of perfect verbal agreement, which would not apply to any other histories. Why should we expect it to apply here .-' It is answered, " Because these books are divine ;" but why should an amount of agreement, which would be servile imitation in ordinary writers, be an appropriate attribute of inspiration .-' The Jews, who were not wanting in reverence for their sacred books, recognised ^ See an ingenious argument, which forms the substance of Mr. Sadler's work, The Lost Gospel. I 114 THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. various degrees of inspiration, and the lowest was that in which the ear alone was engaged, and an external voice was the source ; the next was the dream, in which the mind and not the ear received the inspiration, whilst the bodily and mental powers were in abeyance ; the next was the waking vision, in which the mind that re- ceived the divine impression was awake and active : whilst the highest of all, vouchsafed to Moses alone, was that in which there was not even a vision, but a direct communication from God to the soul and spirit of His servant. But in the Church some writers have inverted this order, and they demand for their concep- tion of the highest inspiration a complete overruling of the faculties of the writers. The Old Testament and the New are alike inspired : and it is not certain that Maimonides is wrong and the Christian theorist right. For neither theory can the express declaration of Holy Scripture be claimed : if it could, the question would be decided. With regard to the need of verbal agree- ment, Tholuck has shown that no other histories exhibit it, or are expected to do so. Does St. Mark omit the Sermon on the Mount .'' Curtius relates the vengeance which Alexander the Great took on the Branchidae, because the family from which they descended had be- trayed the Temple of Apollo, at Miletus, to Xerxes : Arrian says nothing about it. The first inclination would be to think that what the credulous Curtius re- lates, and the more trustworthy Arrian passes over, never took place. But Strabo also records it, and quotes Callisthenes in illustration ; why then is Arrian silent ? No account can be given of the silence. When did Alexander the Great die .-• On the evening of the eleventh of June, say Eumenes and Diodotus : on the thirteenth of June, witness Aristobulus and Ptolemy, who were beside his deathbed. How long had THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. 115 he reigned? Aristobulus makes 1 2 years; Cornelius Nepos and Livy, 13 ; while Justin gives 35 years and a month. S 54. Evidence from the Existence of the CJuircJi, — The modern theories of the Gospels are all framed to give a more natural explanation of the existence of the Gospels than that which the Church has always held. But the explanations only seem to make the difficulties greater. That the Apostles, consciously or unconsciously, invented the character of Jesus and His life, and then persuaded a man like St. Paul to stake his life, to unsay all his former beliefs, to compass sea and land to preach the Gospel, upon the faith of this life and character, which were, according to Strauss and others, no more real than the character of Hamlet, is not credible. St. Paul lived at the time of these events, and was full of prejudice against the innovation of Christianity ; and yet it is supposed that the growth of many Gospels, to which somehow every fresh work- man added something from his own hand, took place under his very eyes, and that out of the slenderest his- torical basis the living Christ was evolved, to be the wonder and the love of all succeeding ages ; and yet that St. Paul could not discover this, either by his own religious tact or by ordinary enquiry ; that he preached the resurrection of a Christ not risen, and the Divine Sonship of a Galilean artisan, and the eternal conse- quence of a revelation which, when inspected at its source, would be found to be hatched out of the accumulated dreams of a little fanatical sect. This satisfied Strauss ; and another theory, equally unsub- stantial, satisfied Baur ; but each has its own difficulties, and we must be pardoned for thinking the old account the simplest and the best. Let the argument be ex- tended a little further. How can the existence of the Christian Church be accounted for on the theory of Ii6 THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. myths or of " tendency " ? Christ risen, Christ Divine : such is the sum of the ancient creed. From the first day to the present this was preached without stint ; the sacrament which gave a peculiar and miraculous value to the death of Jesus was celebrated from the death of Jesus onward. And did the people who thus believed and thus celebrated know, one with another, that the miraculous part of the records was their own work ? Did they watch the Gospel growing as a plant under their watering and their increasing ? Incredible self- deceit ! which cannot be made respectable, though it is made more wonderful, by the fact that it was sealed in their blood. The presence of Christ, such as we know Him, in the Gospels and in the heart of the Church, is a fact that should be accounted for, and in attenuating to almost nothing the basis of true history, modern criticism has gone far to make the fact utterly unintel- ligible. The words of Theodore Parker, who did not accept the Gospel history, place this difficulty in its most startling form : " Try Him as we try other teachers. They deliver their word : find a few waiting for the consolation, who accept the new tidings, follow the new method ; and some go beyond their teacher, though less mighty minds than He. . . . Eighteen centuries have passed since the tide of humanity rose so high in Jesus. What man, what sect, what Church has mastered His thought, com- prehended His method, and so fully applied it to life .-* Let the world answer in its cry of anguish. Men have parted His raiment among them, cast lots for His seam- less coat ; but that spirit which toiled so manfully in a world of sin and death, which died and suffered and over- came the world — is that found, possessed, understood.-'"^ ^ la Scliaff's Person of Christ the testimony of many unbelievers is collected, pp. 251-370. THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. 117 S 55. The Supernatural in the Gospels. — The im- possible task has been often lately undertaken, to clear the life and the person of Jesus Christ of all supernatural elements. From whatever side we view the sacred history, the supernatural part of it strikes us the first. Of written testimony St. Paul's Epistles are the earliest. St. Paul preaches Jesus and the Resurrection, and knows no other foundation of the faith. The Synoptic Gospels are full of His miracles, leading up to the crowning miracle of the Resurrection. The Fourth Gospel opens with a passage that assigns Divine power and pre-exist- ence to the Lord, the Word. In the Apocalypse the glorified Redeemer is seen clothed with Divine attributes (Rev. i. 8 ; iv, 8 ; i. 1 1, 17 ; ii. 8 ; xxii. 13). Pliny the Younger reports to Trajan that the Christians wor- shipped Christ as God. From the Epistle of Clement of Rome the supernatural character of Christ could not be erased so as to leave anything coherent and intelligible behind. It is plain that all historical Christianity contains the supernatural element : a Christianity without it would be, not a history, but a speculation. Moreover, the Resurrection of the Lord is a fact of such a kind as to carry with it many of the other facts of the Gospel, and to make minute discussions about them of less moment. If Christ did rise indeed, then He revealed Himself thereby as supernatural ; and that being granted, the question in which the old Rationalists were so much interested, whether some of the miracles ought not to be accounted for by natural causes, loses its interest. The life of Christ is a supernatural revelation to us, for He who rose from the dead is not as other men, but is Divine. If so, then it is not at all surprising that these miracles fell from Him : it helps no one to explain them away ; the wonder would be if one who could work that ffreat wonder should work no others. Ii8 THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. It has often been remarked that miracles, when they come to be read as history, long after they took place, have lost some of their value as evidences ; because they do not appeal to the witness of the eye and ear, but have come to depend upon historical testimony, which itself may want evidence to support it. But there always was a certain risk in appealing to miracles alone. The Lord, when He wrought the miracles with His power, bade the witnesses to keep silence about them. That His person and His works should both be seen, and seen together, was the meaning probably of this reserve. Since Christ is the Son of God, there must be connected with Him miracle and prophecy : to suppose otherwise would be to suppose a supernatural Being, who was tied to act and speak in a manner not supernatural : and on the other hand, the natural phi- losopher would accept this challenge and would say, " It is because I do not admit the existence of any supernatural Being in the garb and veil of flesh, that I wish to get rid of prophecy, which is supernatural utter- ance, and of miracle, which is supernatural action." It is clear, then, that the controversy about miracles is knit up with the controversy about Christ. If the works testified of Christ, as they did, Christ also, in some sense, testifies to the works. It is supposed that " the laws of nature " do not leave place for miracles. But one may say, with Rothe, that this phrase " laws of nature," held up as a head of Medusa before us at every turn, has no terrors for us ; that God in imposing laws on nature, has not submitted to them His almighty will ; that we should need to know far more of the laws of nature, before we attributed to them, as some people do, a rigid inflexibility, in which the idea of God is extinguished, and man becomes a machine. The argu- ment that miracles are, not so much impossible, as THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. 119 unlikely, that the testimony needs to be very strong to overcome the antecedent improbability of a miracle, has just this much truth in it, that where everything betokens that nature is running her ordinary course, the inter- position of an isolated or aimless miracle could not be looked for, or readily believed. But when Jesus was born in Bethlehem, when Jesus died on Calvary, things were not in their ordinary course. A wonderful life, and the promise of a wonderful work for man, were accompanied by wonders wrought for men. It was unlikely that lepers should be cleansed, and the lame should walk, and the dead should rise : but then it was unlikely that Christ should come. Who came but once and for ever. Hence we revert to the same point ; the whole of revelation should be known and studied to- gether. Christ should be seen in and with His works, in order to appreciate the works and the doer of them. Modern science has not made the belief in miracles one whit more difficult : the pantheist and the materialist cannot accept them, and they never could, for one makes the world his God, and the other, instead of a god, takes the " laws of nature " for his fetish. But now, as always, the believer in God can believe in miracles, for this last belief is only the tenet that God is free to work in His own world.^ § 56. Evidence for the Gospel Collections. — The change of opinion in recent times, as to the date of the Gospels, has been already alluded to. The theory of the Tubingen School, that the Gospels were gradually evolved by the Church, through a series of alterations, prompted by the " tendency " towards the teaching of St. Peter or St. Paul, between whom a fierce rivalry 1 Many works on this subject have lately appeared. The lamented Professor Mozley's Lectures ; Mr. Row's recent Bampton Lectures, and his Supernatural in the Gospels, are among them. Also L. Bonnet, Miracle dans la Vie du Sauveur, Paris, 1867. THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. was assumed to exist, required a long time for its main condition. Accordingly it was thought that the Gospels, as we know them, were not in existence before the close of the second century. Hardly any one now holds a conclusion which, but for the needs of a theory, would never have found a friend among the learned. It is desirable to indicate here the evidence for the time of the acceptance of the Gospel collection in the Church. Irenseus was bishop of Lyons from 178, and suffered martyrdom under Septimius Severus in 202. His great work was written before the close of the second century. It contains about 400 quotations from the Gospels, of which 80 are from the Gospel of St. John, The document called the " Muratorian Fragment " was pro- bably prepared about i/o ; it is mutilated in the portion relating to the Gospels, but it mentions Luke as the third, and John as the fourth. The ancient version of the New Testament into Latin, known as the " Versio Itala," was in existence by the end of the second century ; for both Tertullian in his quotations from Irenaeus, and the early translator of Irenaeus make use of it. This Latin version, as well as the Peshito, a Syriac version, which bears date perhaps a little later, after the close of the second century, place at the beginning, and in the present order, the four Gospels. None of these authorities is to be regarded as a mere isolated date. Irenaeus would not quote hundreds of passages from works which had just been put into his hands. He witnesses, not only to the fact that he himself possessed them, but to the fact — more important for us — that they were known and in use with others, and already carried high authority and weight. The " Muratorian Fragment," in like manner, is a list of works already known. The " Versio Itala " is a testimony to the fact that a Latin translation of the New Testament collection THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. had become needed in the second century; therefore the works that compose it must have already come into notice and have acquired authority. This remark applies to what Irenasus tells of the number of the Gospels :^ the Ebionites, the Nazareans, and Marcion, had each one Gospel only. Irenaeus has many reasons for the exact number four. There are four quarters of the world, therefore four Gospels. The Cherubim were of four forms, and so are the Gospels. The Gospel is the support of the Church, and it has four columns. In the section just before, he assumes that the Heretics, whilst choosing to employ only one of the Gospels, might have access to the whole ; and it does not appear to him that he need limit the time when this began to be the case. He knew the Gospels, and never knew a time when they were not known.^ Thus the testi- mony is not to a fact of the date of i8o or 190, but it is retrospective. A step backwards conducts us to the works of Justin the Martyr. Born about the beginning of the second century at Flavia Neapolis, a Roman colony, nearly on the site of the ancient Sichem, he tried to satisfy his craving for knowledge, first from a Stoic teacher, and then from a Peripatetic, and lastly from a Platonist. A chance encounter, as it seemed, led him to seek wisdom of Christ alone. In teaching and in writing he strove zealously to spread the knowledge of the true Christ ; and we still possess three books which are the genuine productions of his pen — the two Apolo- gies and the Dialogue with Trypho.^ The dates of these must be about the middle of the century ; Justin suf- fered martyrdom about 166. In these books quotations ^ See Cont. Har. III. ii. 8, 9, ed. Stieren. ^ Olshausen, Aechtheit, p. 272. 3 The edition of Otto is the best. A good translation is found in the Library of the Fathers (Oxford). THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. of Holy Scripture abound, but certain peculiarities have made them the cause of much controversy. It would be impossible to discuss them here in detail ; a volume would hardly suffice for the purpose. But some results may be stated, upon which con- siderable reliance may be placed: i. The quotations of Justin from the Gospels are very numerous ; about no from St. Matthew, 14 from St. Mark, 57 from St. Luke, and 29 from St. John — in all more than 200. 2. These are of every class ; the exact verbal reproduc- tion, the quotation with verbal agreement accompanied with some variations, the mere allusion with little or no verbal agreement. 3. The predominant mode of quo- tation is somewhat inexact, as though the quotations were from memory. But this applies to the Old Testament quotations as well as to the New ; and it cannot therefore be inferred that the passages that resemble New Testament quotations are taken in reality from some other books, such as apocryphal Gospels, or from oral tradition. 4. The quotations are for the most part anonymous : some of them purport to be given from the general source — the Memoii's of the Apostles, where we should expect a reference to St. Matthew or to St. Luke. But the actual reference even to this general source is only made about seven times. The practice, however, of quoting New Testament writings without reference to the name of the writer is very frequent in later Apologists ; in Tatian, Athena- goras, Theophilus. In Tertullian and Clement of Alexandria, both of whom quote the Evangelists fre- quently by name, the same anonymous mode of quota- tion is found in certain apologetic works ; and this may be accounted for by the fact that apologetic works are addressed to those with whom names of authors would carry no weight, 5. The historical events that Justin THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. 123 quotes are such as our Gospels contain. In the history of the childhood, he does not introduce apocryphal matter, such as certain spurious Gospels would have abundantly supplied. Of the middle portion of the life of the Lord he records nothing. To the close the same remark applies ; his events are those of our Gospels. 6. If the variations from our written Gospels are many, there is no written Gospel in existence to which these variations can, with the slightest probability, be referred. 7. That they are to be referred, in part at least, to failure of memory is evident from the fact that the same passages are quoted more than once, but with variations which would be inconsistent with the theory of another written document, quite as much as with the supposition that our Gospels are used. Of the seven passages where direct reference is made to the Me- moirs as the source. Professor Westcott^ reckons that five are in verbal agreement with St. Matthew or St. Luke ; the sixth is " He called Himself the Son of God: let Him come down, «;/Y>- 10 1, seq.) all the citations from the Gospels. Norton (Geittiineness) has dis- cussed them, but less fully. See Credner (Kanon), Sanday {Gospels in the Second Centtoy), Westcott [Canon, also Introduction to Gospels), 126 THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. it probable that the date given by Irenaeus is too late by many years. We have no means of knowing whether he revised the third Gospel at the beginning of his career, or at some late point in it : that his dogmatic precon- ceptions were in some measure formed, is plain from the nature of the revision itself, and from the rejection of the Gospels of Matthew and John, which were also known to Marcion. Some time between 130 and 150 the date of the revision would be found. Now Marcion is the first of whom it is known that he determined a Canon of the New Testament : it contained the Gospel and ten of the Epistles of St. Paul. A mutilated list, it is true : but it is of no small importance that ten epistles, which must have been written before a.d. 65, were recognised at that time. Still more important, however, is the fact that St. Luke's Gospel was found in use, and of such authority as to be the foundation of the Gospel, at the time when this heretic wrote. From this second stage, the period of Justin and Marcion, a further step backward places us in the close of the first century. Here the traces of the Gospels are far more scanty and indistinct. The works of Ignatius are the subject of too much controversy to serve the present purpose.^ In the earliest form, the words " Be wise as a serpent in all things, and harmless as a dove," recall Matt. x. 16. Another allusion to "a star" is too obscure in the shorter or " Curetonian" form of the epistles, to build any comparison upon. Thus there is but one quotation, and that from St. Matthew. But it is quite as remarkable that there are none from the Old Testament. Of the epistles of Clement of Rome the first alone can be pronounced genuine : its date may be safely ^ The controversy is excellently examined by Professor Lightfoot, Contemporary Revieiv, Feb. 1875. THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. ' 127 fixed as lying between A.D. 93 and A.D. 97 ; in this the great majority of good opinions would agree. A more precise date cannot be assigned, nor is it needed for the present purpose.^ The recent discovery of a second MS. of this document has lent a new interest to the study of it. Of verbal coincidences with St. Paul's writings, of the tendency in this Epistle to combine into one the elements of Christian truth, which in the inspired Epistles had been left in contrast, as in the case of the doctrine of faith and works in St. Paul and in St. James ; of the traces of moods of thought fashioned after St. John ; of the beginnings of church organisation and liturgical service in this document, it is not possible to speak here. Only the most certain elements are available to those who have not space to discuss and defend the less certain.^ There are, how- ever, two passages in which the Gospels appear to be expressly quoted ; the former of which is as follows : " Remembering especially the words of the Lord Jesus which He spoke to inculcate meekness and long-suffer- ing. For thus He spoke : Show pity, that ye may be pitied ; forgive, that it may be forgiven unto you ; as ye do, so shall it be done unto you ; as ye give, so shall it be given unto you ; as ye judge, so shall ye be judged ; as ye shew kindness, so shall kindnes be shewn unto you ; with what measure ye mete, in that it shall be measured to you again " (ch. xiii.) It is obvious that this passage agrees exactly with no passage in St. Matthew or St. Luke ; but it is also plain, on comparing the Greek texts, that the whole of it, except the words 1 See the new edition of Clement by Gebhardt and Hamack {Prolego- nietta), Leipsic, 1876, wliere all the dates are brought together; also Lightfoot's second volume and Appendix. ^ See Lightfoot, Clement of Rome ; Westcott, History of Canon ; Sanday, Gospels in the Second Century ; and especially the new edition of Clement above referred to. 128 THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. " as ye shew kindness, so shall kindness be shewn unto you," is found in substance in these passages. Matt. 5. 7 ; vi. 14; vii. 2, 12 ; Luke vi. 31, 36, 37, 38. And though the words " as ye shew kindness," etc., have no exact counterpart in the Gospels, yet they are so close to the spirit of the whole passage that a person quoting from memory would find it not unnatural to interpolate them. A certain class of writers who, strongly preju- diced, like to write in the character of " an unprejudiced person," seize on the small differences to prove that "an uncanonical Gospel" is here quoted. Which un- canonical Gospel .? We possess a great many ; and this passage is not like any of them. It is very like two canonical Gospels ; it is just what a person quoting from recollection, and more anxious to exhibit at one view the Lord's teaching than to direct His utterances by a reference to books which, though known to his readers from public instruction, were not perhaps in their hands, would be likely to write. It is poor logic to say, " This is not quite like the canonical Gospels, and therefore it must be quite like some uncanonical Gospel that no one now can find." The resemblance to our Gospels is greater here than the resemblance to the Old Testament in an allusion to Rahab just before. (LiGHTFOOT.) The second passage is as follows : — " For He [Jesus] said. Woe to that man : it were good for him that he had not been born, rather than that he should offend one of my elect : it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about him and he drowned in the sea, rather than that he should offend one of my little ones " (ch. xlvi.) The substance of this is contained in Matt, xxvi. 24, xviii. 6 ; Mark ix. 42 ; Luke xvii. 2 ; but it does not reproduce any one of these places exactly. The " unprejudiced person " will at once resort to an THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. 129 "uncanonical Gospel," of which, however, no trace can be produced ; but those whose ideas are less emancipated may resort to the common-sense solution, that the author is quoting from memory, and that from that point of view he has excellently given the spirit of the passages. In the words " offend," " millstone," " drowned," " little ones," he has followed one or other of the three Gospels ; and as the three Gospels do not verbally agree, there is some room for the remark that " Clement does not differ from the Synoptics more than they differ from each other." (Sanday.) § 57. Sinnviary. — These glimpses into various periods of the Church give some very important results. There is no attempt here to survey the whole of the literature.^ The various steps are as follow : — In the last quarter of the second century the four Gospels were established and recognised, and held a place that was refused to all other memoirs of the Lord. At the end of the second quarter they were quoted largely, though not very exactly ; but the authors' names were not made prominent ; they were " memoirs," they were " the Gospel," and the like. At the opening of the second century the words of the Lord were quoted with unmis- takable resemblance to passages of our Gospels which, however, are quoted loosely, without any reference to names of authors, and with a throwing together of the passages from all three Gospels. In Barnabas (a.D. 100-125) and the short (" Curetonian ") Ignatius (A.D. 1 07- 1 1 5), there is a lack of distinct quotation from the Gospels ; and even in the later Hermas (A.D. 134-140) there are no quotations from either Old or New Testament, ^ C. Tischendorfs tract, IVann 'wurden, u. s. w., has been translated into English, When iva-e our Gospels written ? It is an argument that has not been refuted. Mr. .Sanday, Gospels in the Second Century, p. 382, gives a useful and analytical catalogue of the chief writings of the first two centuries. K 130 THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. ^ 58. Use of the Gospels in Public Worship. — The public worship of the Church was the means, no doubt, of the gradual establishment of the four Gospels in their place of eminence. The records are few, but they are significant. The first brethren (Acts ii. 42) com- menced at once a systematic form of worship, of which the doctrine of the Apostles, the sacramental breaking of bread, and prayers, were the components. The apostolic doctrine, at that time nowhere reduced to writing, must have consisted of the narratives of the Apostles as to things they had witnessed, or of those who had heard them, repeating their testimony at second hand. Clement of Rome speaks of the offerings and service to be performed to God at stated times and hours (I. xl.), as appointed by God : but from these general words we cannot gather what place the apostolic teaching held in this worship. Worship, however, there was, and it was a divinely appointed duty : and we may believe that " doctrine " had not ceased to form part of it. From Pliny's letter to Trajan {Letters, b. x. 97), it is clear that in the first decade of the second century, the worship of Christ as God, in prayer and sacrament, was continued, and that it had so spread that the very temples had become deserted : the preaching is not mentioned, but it seems to be implied. Justin Martyr is a witness whose explicitness leaves nothing to be desired : " On the day which is called Sunday, there is an assembly in the same place of all who live in cities or in country districts, and the records of the Apostles, or the writings of the Prophets, are read as long as we have time" {Apol. i. Gy). The rest of this account is so dis- tinct that we can reproduce every part of the public worship of A.D. 140. The records of the Apostles are here put upon the same footing as the inspired books of the Old Testament ; a great advance. Brief as are THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. 131 these data, they suffice to show the general course of growth of canonical authority. First the oral doctrine of Apostles, or of those whom they deputed ; then the reading of such written records of apostolic doctrine as each church might have within its reach : and then the gradual overshadowing of the other records by the four canonical Gospels, so that all the rest disappeared, and were remitted by the Church to a far lower level. '• We cannot," writes Bleek,^ " exactly say when, or how, it came to pass that the Church considered the collection of canonical Gospels closed with these four alone. The conclusion seems to have been formed and established gradually, without any express conferences or decisions of councils, and without the judgment and practice of any one church being considered as authoritative and regulative for the rest. On this account we have all the more reason to recognise the hand of Providence in the matter, and to believe that the Church was led to a right decision, there having been no other Gospels extant in the end of the second century, of similar worth, or in similar esteem with our four. We are confirmed in this by a comparison of the other gospel histories which have come down to us with the four canonical Gospels. Though they present affinities, especially with our Synoptic Gospels, there is more or less of what is strange and foreign, and they evidently fail to give us the gospel history so faithfully and unaltered as do these four." § 59. Conclusion. — Let not the faith of any be per- plexed that God has wrought by this method — that He has given the Gospels their position, not suddenly, but by growth. It was the mode in which Christ Himself overcame, and He whose worship had emptied the temples in Pliny's time, was, seventy years earlier, the ^ Einleitiing, § 242. THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. leader of a small band of fishermen on the Galilsean lake. As fissures in the old temple began to gape and fore- show its ruin, the stones of the new and spiritual temple took shape and hardened. The same yearning sense of need which had demanded the books, found for them by degrees, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, their places as corner-stones of the spiritual house. Some preconceptions may be shaken by the sight of this gradual growth, but upon reflection we may find in it fresh ground of admiration — a fresh proof of the harmony and unity that marks the divine plan. As the marvel of vegetable life was wrought upon the mineral globe by growth and by slow degrees at God's command ; as the marvel of animal life was superinduced by the same Power upon a world clothed with trees for shelter and with plants for food by a gradual process ; so did the true teaching of the Holy Ghost, in a space of about a century and a half, by gradual conquest, from its in- herent power, and not by signs from heaven or testifying portents, take its place throughout the Churches ; and the less authentic accounts, or the traditions that grew daily paler, disappeared as mists before the Sun of Righteousness, and long before the second century closed there were four Gospels only, and in them one Christ. WORKS REFERRED TO. 133 The following works have been referred to, amongst others, in the preparation of this Introduction. Andrews, Life of our Lord. New York, 1863. Baumgarten, Gcschichte Jesii. Brunswick, 1859. Beard, Voices of Church in reply to Strauss. 1845. Birks, Difficulties of Belief . London, 1876. Bleek, Einleitnng. Berlin, 1862. Bleek, ErkUiriing. Leipsic, 1862. Bruder's edition of Schmidt's Conco7-daiice. Leipsic, 1842. Bunsen, Hidden Wisdom of Christ. London, 1S65. 2 vols. Caspar!, Leben jfesn. Hamburg, 1869. Clausen, TabulcE Synoptiac. 1829. Clemens Romanus, by Gebhardt and Harnack. Leipsic, 1S76, Cohen, Fharisiens. Paris, 1877. 2 vols. Colani, Croyances messianiqiies. Strasburg, 1864. Contemporary Review. 1874, 1875. Cotelerius, Patres Apostolici, ed. J. Clericus. Amsterdam, 1724. 2 vols, folio. Cowper, Apocryphal Gospels. London, 1867. Credner, Einleitnng. Halle, 1 832. Credner, Geschichte des Kanon. Halle, 1847. Davidson, Ijitroduction to Ncw Testament. 2 vols. Deichtal, ^vangiles. Paris, 1863. Delitzsch, Apologetik. Leipsic, 1869. Delitzsch, Handwerkerleben s. Zeit Jesn. Derenbourg, Geographie de la Palestine. Paris, 1867. De Wette, Leh^-biuh, etc., des Neiien Testaments. Berlin, i860. Dollinger, First Age of Churc/i, translated by Oxenham. London, 1866. Dressel, Patirs Apostolici. Ebrard, Ar/VZ/Cv/. Evang. Geschichte. Erlangen, 1850. Fritzsche, Ev. Matthdi nnd Ev. Marci. Leipsic, 1826. ¥ nizsc\iQ, Libri Apocryphi. Leipsic, 187 1. Gess, Lehre V, d. Person Christi. Basel, 1856. G^mictx, yahrhundert des Heils. Stuttgart, 1838. Gieseler, Evangelien, Leipsic, 18 18. Godet, Etudes bibliqiies. Paris, 1873, 1874. Godet, On St. Luke. Grabe, Spicilegium. Oxford, 1698. 2 vols. Grau, Entivickelungsgeschichte. Gutersloh, 1871. 2 vols. Hartwig, Tabellen. Berlin. Hausrath, Neutestamentliche Zeitgeschichte. Heidelberg, 1873. 134 WORKS REFERRED TO. Herzog, Real Cydopadie. Hilgenfeld, Evangelien yiistin's. Halle, 1 850. Hilgenfeld, Evangelien. Leipsic, 1854. Hilgenfeld, Messias yiuhwriim, Leipsic, 1869. Hilgenfeld, Kanon. Halle, 1863. Hilgenfeld, Zeitschrift. Various numbers. Hoffman, Leben JesJi. Leipsic, 185 1. ao\izvL\a,nn, Die Synopiischen Evangelien. Leipsic, 1863. Holtzmann, yudenthum u. Christenthum. Leipsic, 1867. Irenaeus, ed. Stieren. Jacobson, Bishop, Patres Apostolici. Oxford, 1863. Justin Martyr, ed. Otto. Keil, MaltliiiiLs. Leipsic, 1877. Keim, Der Gesehichtliehe Christtts. Zurich, 1865. Keim, Jesii von Nazara. Zurich, 1871. Kirchhofer, Qiiellensammlung. Zurich, 1844. Klostermann, Alarctisevangelinm. Gottingen, 1867. Kiihn, Leben Jesu. Mayence, 1838. ist vol. only. Kuinol, Neio Testament. Leipsic, 181 7. Lange, Bibchoerk. Lange, Leben Jesti. Heidelberg, 1844. Lardner's Works. Lee, 0)1 Lnspiration. London, 1857. Lewin, St. Paid. London, 1875. 2 vols. Lightfoot (Professor), " Review of Supernatural Religion," in the Contemporary Pevi,.w. Maclellan, Afeiv Testament. Vol. i. Meyer, Matthdus, Markits iind Liikas. Gottingen. Morrison, St. Matthe^v. London, 1 870. Morrison, St. Mark. London. Munk, Palestine. Paris, 1845. Neander, Life of Christ. Nicolas, A., Divinite de Jesiis-Ch-ist. Paris, 1864. Nicolas, M., Etudes critiques. Paris, 1864. Nicolas, M., Evangiles apocryphes. 1866. Nicolas, Doctrines religieicses ties fuifs. Paris, 1867. Oehler, Tertnlliati. Leipsic, 1853. Olshausen, Aechthcit, etc. Oosterzee, Bild Christi. Hamburg, 1864. Otto, Corpus Apologetaruin. Jena, various years. In this series Justin Martyr is included. WORKS REFERRED TO. 135 Peyrat, Histoire de yhiis. Paris, 1664. Pressense, De Jesus Christ. Paris. Renan, Evangiles. Renan, St. Paul. Renan, Vie tie Jesus. Reuss, TJiiologie chretienne. Strasburg, i860. Reuss, Histoire du Canon. Strasburg, 1863. Reville, Matthieu. Leyden, 1862. Revue de Theologie, Strasburg. Various numbers, Riggenbach, Life of tJie Lord Jesus. Ritschl, Evangelium Alarcioii's. Tubingen, 1846. Ritschl, Altkat/iol. Kirche. Bonn, 1857. Roberts, Discussions on Gospels. Londc^n, 1862. Rothe, Afifdnge d. Christ. liirche. Wittenberg, 1837. Rothe, Zur Dogmatik. Gotha, 1863. Rothe, Theologische Ethik. Wittenberg, 1871. Rougemont, Christ et ses Temoiiis. Paris, 1856. 2 vols. Row, Evidences. Bampton Lectures, 1877. Row, Supernatural in New Testament. Sabatier, Sources de la Vie de Jesus, Paris, 1 866. Sanday, Gospels in Second Century. London, 1876. Schaff, Person of Christ. New York, 1866. Schenkel, Charakterbild Jesu. Wiesbaden, 1864. Schleiermacher, St. Ltike. Bishop Thirlwall's Translation. London, 1825. Schmid, Theologie d. N. Test. Stuttgart, 1859. Sc\io\ien, Das Aelteste EvangeliuDi. Elberfeld, 1869. Schwarz, Geschichte d. N. Theologie. Leipsic, 1856. Sepp, Leben Christi. Regensburg, 1843. iit\\x\, Synoptische Erkld}-ung. Wiesbaden, 1873. Smitli (John), Select Discourses. Cambridge, 1673. Strauss, Christus des Glaubens, etc. BerHn, 1865. Strauss, LJfe of Jesus ; also Neiu Life of Jesus. Stroud's Harmony of Gospels. London, 1853. Supernatural Religion. London, 1874. 2 vols. Thiersch, Herstellung des LListorischen .Standpunkt. Erlangen, 1845. Tholuck, Das A. Test, im JV. Testament. Gotha, 1868. Thomson, La7id and Book. London, 1861. Tischendorf, Evangelia Apocrypha. Leipsic, 1853. Tischendorf, Synopsis. Leipsic, 1854. Tischendorf, Wannimirden unsere Evangclienverfasst? Leipsic, 1865. Uhlhorn, Darstellungen. des Leh'tis Jesu. Hanover, 1 866. Voigt, Fundamentaldogmatik. Gotha, 1874. Volkmar, Evangelium Marcion's. Leipsic, 1852. 136 WORKS REFERRED TO. Volkmar, Religion Jesu. Leipsic, 1857. Volkmar, Die Ursprting nns. Evangelien. Zurich, 1866. Volkmar, Marcus. Second Edition. Zurich, 1876. Weiss, Matthdusevatigcliiim. Halle, 1876. Weiss, MarcHsevangeJiuin. Berlin, 1872. Weiszacker, Evang. Geschichte. Gotha, 1864. Weisse, Evangelienfrage. Leipsic, 1856. Westcott, Introduction to Gospels. London. Westcott, History of Neiu Testament Canon. London. Wichelhaus, Evangeliiini Matthiii. Halle, 1876. Wieseler, Chrouologische Synopsis. Hamburg, 1843. -^^so English translation by Venables. Wieseler, Bcitriige. Gotha, 1869. Winer, Rcahu'&rterbuch. Leipsic, 1847. Winer, Granvnar of New Testament. Transla.tion. Edinburgh, 1 861. Wittichen, Lcbcn Jesu, Jeaa, 1876. 11. THE DEATH OF CHRIST THE DEATH OF CHRIST. Jesus, the Son of God, died on the Cross to redeem mankind from sin and death. This is the truth which for eighteen centuries has been preached to Jew and Gentile ; the truth which the Apostles took in their mouths when they went to teach Christianity to nations who had never heard of Christ before. The doctrine of Reconciliation has not escaped the fate of other Christian truths : it has done and is doing its work in converting the world, and consoling many a crushed heart ; but at the same time the terms in which it should be set forth have been disputed, and sometimes the doctrine itself denied. Recent writers have discussed the subject, avowing for the most part the wish to pre- serve the tenet itself ; but in some cases dealing so hardly with the evidence on which it rests, as to leave an impression that the doctrine of the Atonement is a modern invention, which can well be dispensed with in teaching Christianity ; and some even speak of it as a dishonour to God the Father, in that it represents Him as accepting the sufferings of the innocent for the guilty. The present Essay is directed to those who profess to attach to the sufferings of the Redeemer some preter- natural efficacy, beyond that of mere example, yet who would substitute for the received account of their effect some other doctrine. With those who utterly deny the doctrine of Atonement we have nothing here to do, I40 THE DEATH OF CHRIST. except to wish them an increased consciousness of the need of a purgation from sin : for when Christ is needed, then, and not sooner. He will be found ; when man sees the serpent twining round his limbs, and feels serpent- poison beating in his blood, and sees over all his beauty and glory the serpent's defiling trail, he will look to the Son of man lifted up, and be healed. But the promise that the doctrine shall in spirit be preserved, but heightened and spiritualised, has much attraction for the enquiring. In approaching them with the key of a profounder gnosis, men profess to give to the well-worn pages of the Bible the freshness and originality which is all they need. And the attempt in this Essay will be to show that the doctrine of the Atonement, although a mystery, is made known to us in the Bible in certain strong and definite touches which allow of no mistake ; that this doctrine has been, in fact, continuously held and taught in the Church, altering from to time in form, but in substance neither gaining anything nor losing anything ; and that the difficulties, which beset this as they do other mysteries, are not at all lightened by the remedies pro- posed on behalf of human reason, but rather increased. I. Much has been made of the supposed silence of our Lord as to the atoning virtue of His death ; and it has even been hinted that in this respect the words of Jesus are at variance with those of His Apostles.^ If this were so, the question would bear no discussion ; and much else would fall to the ground at the same time. The only proof of it which we are offered is, that Christ Himself " never uses the word sacrifice "^ as 1 Professor Jowett On the Epistles, ii. 356. " In [the words of Christ] is contained the inner life of mankind and of the Church ; there too the individual beholds, as in a glass, the image of a goodness which is not of this world. To rank their authority below that of Apostles and Evangelists is to give up the last hope of reuniting Christendom in itself, and of making Christianity an universal religion." ^ Ibid. THE DEATH OF CHRIST. 141 applied to His own life or death. But this is a purely- artificial test. It remains still to enquire what the Lord does say of that death ; for such is the copiousness of language, that an act which has the nature of a sacrifice may be described without the use of that particular word. When He speaks of " My blood of the new Covenant," no doubt the word sacrifice is dispensed with ; but there must be very few, we should hope, who cannot discern in such words the " sacrificial allusion." I. The three first Evangelists, as we know, agree in showing that Jesus unfolded His message to the disciples by degrees. He wrought the miracles that were to be the credentials of the Messiah ; He laid down the great principles of the Gospel morality until He had established in the minds of the Twelve the conviction that He was the Christ of God. Then, as the clouds of doom grew darker, and the malice of the Jews became more intense, He turned a new page in His teaching. Drawing from His disciples the confes- sion of their faith in Him as Christ, He then passed abruptly, so to speak, to the truth that remained to be learned in the last few months of His ministry, that His work included suffering as well as teaching.^ He was instant in pressing this unpalatable doctrine home to His disciples, from this time to the end. Four occa- sions when He prophesied His bitter death are on record, and they are probably only examples out of many more.^ We grant that in none of these places does the word sacrifice occur ; and that the mode of speaking is somewhat obscure, as addressed to minds unprepared, even then, to bear the full weight of a doctrine so repugnant to their hopes. But that He must (Bet) go and meet death ; that the powers of sin and of this world are let loose against Him for a time, so that 1 Matt. xvi. 20, 21. 2 Matt. xvi. 21. 142 THE DEATH OF CHRIST. He shall be betrayed to the Jews, rejected, delivered by them to the Gentiles, and by them mocked and scourged, crucified and slain ; and that all this was done to achieve a foreseen work, and accomplish all things written of Him by the prophets — these we do certainly find. They invest the death of Jesus with a pecuHar significance ; they set the mind enquiring what the meaning can be of this hard necessity that is laid on Him. For the answer we look to other places ; but at least there is here no contradiction to the doctrine of sacrifice, though the Lord does not yet say, "I bear the wrath of God against your sins in your stead ; I become a curse for you." Of the two sides of this mysterious doctrine, — that Jesus dies for us willingly, and that he dies to bear a doom laid on Him as of necessity, because some one must bear it, — it is the latter side that is made prominent. In all the passages it pleases Jesus to speak not of His desire to die, but of the burden laid on Him, and the power given to others against Him. 2. Had the doctrine been explained no farther, there would have been much to wait for. But the series of announcements in these passages leads up to one more definite and complete. It cannot be denied that the words of the institution of the Lord's Supper speak most distinctly of a sacrifice. " Drink ye all of this, for this is My blood of the new covenant," or, to follow St. Luke, " the new covenant in My blood." We are carried back by these words to the first covenant, to the altar with twelve pillars, and the burnt-offerings and peace-offerings of oxen, and the blood of the victims sprinkled on the altar and on the people, and the words of Moses as he sprinkled it : " Behold the blood of the covenant which the Lord hath made with you concerning all these words." ^ No interpreter has ever failed to ^ Exod. xxiv. THE DEATH OF CHRIST. 143 draw from these passages the true meaning : " When My sacrifice is accomphshed, My blood shall be the sanction of the new covenant." The word sacrifice is wanting ; but sacrifice and nothing else is described. And the words are no mere figure used for illustration, and laid aside when they have served that turn, " Do this in remembrance of Me." They are the words in which the Church is to interpret the act of Jesus to the end of time. They are reproduced exactly by St. Paul.^ Then, as now. Christians met together, and by a solemn act declared that they counted the blood of Jesus as a sacrifice wherein a new covenant was sealed ; and of the blood of that sacrifice they partook by faith, professing themselves thereby willing to enter the covenant and be sprinkled with the blood. 3. So far we have examined the three "synoptic" Gospels. They follow a historical order. In the early chapters of all three the doctrine of our Lord's sacrifice is not found, because He will first answer the question about Himself, "Who is this.''" before He shows them "What is His work.?" But at length the announce- ment is made, enforced, repeated ; until, when the feet of the betrayer are ready for their wicked errand, a command is given which secures that the death of Jesus shall be described for ever as a sacrifice and nothing else, sealing a new covenant, and carrying good to many. Lest the doctrine of Atonement should seem to be an afterthought, as indeed De Wette has tried to represent it, St. John preserves the conversation with Nicodemus, which took place early in the ministry ; and there, under the figure of the brazen serpent lifted up, the atoning virtue of the Lord's death is fully set forth. " As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up ; that whosoever 1 I Cor. xi. 25. 144 THE DEATH OF CHRIST. believeth in Him should not perish, but have eternal life."^ As in this intercessory act, the image of the deadly, hateful, and accursed ^ reptile became by God's decree the means of health to all who looked on it ear- nestly, so does Jesus in the form of sinful man, of a deceiver of the people,^ of Antichrist,"* of one accursed,^ become the means of our salvation ; so that whoever fastens the earnest gaze of faith on Him shall not perish, but have eternal life. There is even a significance in the word " lifted up ;" the Lord used probably the word ^i?T, which in older Hebrew meant to lift up in the widest sense, but began in the Aramaic to have the restricted meaning of lifting up for punishment.*^ With Christ the lifting up was a seeming disgrace, a true triumph and elevation. But the context in which these verses occur is as important as the verses themselves. Nicodemus comes as an enquirer ; he is told that man must be born again, and then he is directed to the death of Jesus as the means of that regeneration. The earnest gaze of the wounded soul is to be the condition of its cure ; and that gaze is to be turned not to Jesus on the moun- tain, or in the temple, but on the Cross. This, then, is no passing allusion, but it is the substance of the Chris- tian teaching addressed to an earnest seeker after truth. Another passage claims a reverent attention — " If any man eat of this bread, he shall live for ever: and the bread that I will give is My flesh, which I will give for the life of the world." ^ He is the bread ; and He will give the bread.^ If His presence on earth were the 1 John iii. 14, 15. ^ Gen. iii. 14, 15. 3 Matt, xxvii. 63. * Matt. xii. 24. ' Gal. iii. 13. ^ Ezra vi. II. So Tholuck and Knapp, Opiisada, p. 217. The treatise of Knapp on this discourse is valuable throughout. 7 John vi. 51. * Some, omitting ^v iyw Suktw, would read, "And my flesh is the THE DEATH OF CHRIST. 145 expected food, it was given already ; but would He speak of " drinking His blood " (ver. 53), which can only refer to the dead ? It is on the cross that He will afford this food to His disciples. We grant that this whole passage has occasioned as much disputing among Chris- tian commentators as it did among the Jews who heard it ; and for the same reason, — for the hardness of the saying. But there stands the saying ; and no candid person can refuse to see a reference in it to the death of Him that speaks. In that discourse, which has well been called the Prayer of Consecration offered by our High Priest, there is another passage which cannot be alleged as evidence to one who thinks that any word applied by Jesus to His disciples and Himself must bear in both cases precisely the same sense, but which is really per- tinent to this inquiry : — " Sanctify them through Thy truth : Thy word is truth. As Thou hast sent Me into the world, even so have I also sent them into the world. And for their sakes I sanctify Myself, that they also might be sanctified through the truth." ^ The word dyid^eiv, " sanctify," " consecrate," is used in the Septu- agint for the offering of sacrifice,^ and for the dedication of a man to the Divine service.^ Here the present tense, " I consecrate," used in a discourse in which our Lord says He is " no more in the world," is conclusive against the interpretation, " I dedicate My /i/e to thee ;" for life is over. No self-dedication, except that by death, can now be spoken of as present. " I dedicate Myself to Thee, in My death, that these may be a people conse- crated to Thee :" such is the great thought in this sub- bread that I will give for the life of the world." So Tertullian seems to have read " Panis quern ego dedero pro salute .mundi caro mea est." The sense is the same with the omission ; but the received reading may be successfully defended. ^ John xvii. 17-19. ^ Levit. xxii. 2. ^ Numb. iii. 15. 146 THE DEATH OF CHRIST. lime passage, which suits well with His other declaration, that the blood of His sacrifice sprinkles them for a new covenant with God. To the great majority of expositors, from Chrysostom and Cyril, the doctrine of reconciliation through the death of Jesus is asserted in these verses. The Redeemer has already described Himself as the Good Shepherd who lays down His life for the sheep,^ taking care to distinguish His death from that of one who dies against his will in striving to compass some other aim : " Therefore doth My Father love Me, because I lay down My life, that I might take it again. No man taketh it from Me, but I lay it down of Myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again." Other passages that relate to His death will occur to the memory of any Bible reader. The corn of wheat that dies in the ground to bear much fruit,^ is explained by His own words elsewhere, where He says that He came " to minister, and to give His life a ransom for many."^ 4. Thus, then, speaks Jesus of Himself. What say His witnesses of Him } " Behold the Lamb of God," says the Baptist, " which taketh away the sin of the world." ^ Commentators differ about the allusion implied in that name. But take any one of their opinions, and a sacrifice is implied. Is it the Paschal lamb that is referred to i* — Is it the lamb of the daily sacrifice ? Either way, the death of the victim is brought before us. But the allusion in all probability is to the well-known prophecy of Isaiah (liii,), to the lamb brought to the slaughter, who bore our griefs and carried our sorrows.^ 1 John X. II, 17, 18. 2 John xii. 24. 3 Matt. XX. 28. * John i. 29. * See tliis passage discussed fully in the notes of Meyer, Lange {Bide/werh'), and Alfoid. The reference to the Paschal Lamb finds favour with Grotius and others ; the reference to Isaiah is approved by THE DEATH OF CHRIST. 147 5. The Apostles after the Resurrection preach no moral system, but a behef in and love of Christ, the crucified and risen Lord, through whom, if they repent, men shall obtain salvation. This was Peter's preaching on the day of Pentecost ;^ and he appealed boldly to the Prophets on the ground of an expectation of a suffering Messiah.^ Philip traced out for the Eunuch, in that picture of suffering holiness in the well-known chapter of Isaiah, the lineaments of Jesus of Nazareth.^ The first sermon to a Gentile household proclaimed Christ slain and risen, and added " that through His name whosoever believeth in Him shall receive remission of sins."* Paul at Antioch preaches "a Saviour, Jesus ;"^ " through this Man is preached unto you the forgiveness of sins : and by Him all that believe are justified from all things, from which ye could not be justified by the law of Moses." "^ At Thessalonica all that we learn of this Apostle's preaching is " that Christ must needs have suffered and risen again from the dead ; and this Jesus, whom I preach unto you, is Christ." '^ Before Agrippa he declared that he had preached always " that Christ should suffer, and that He should be the first that should rise from the dead ;"^ it was this declaration that con- vinced the pagan Festus that he was a crazed fanatic. The account of the first founding of the Church in the Acts of the Apostles is concise and fragmentary ; and sometimes we have hardly any means of judging what place the sufferings of Jesus held in the teaching of the Apostles ; but when we read that they " preached Jesus," Chrysostom and many others. The taking away of sin (aipeiv) of the Baptist, and the bearing it {(pepeiv, Sept.) of Isaiah, have one meaning, and answer to the Hebrew word ^^^. To take the sins on himself is to remove them from the sinners ; and how can this be through his death except in the way of expiation by that death itself? 1 Acts ii. 2 j^j-fs iii_ i8_ 3 A.cts viii. ; Isa. liii. * Acts X. ^ Acts xiii. 23. ^ Acts xiii. 38, 39. ^ Acts xvii. 3. s Acts xxvi. 23. THE DEATH OF CHRIST. or the like, it is only fair to infer from other passages that the Cross of Christ was never concealed, whether Jews, or Greeks, or barbarians were the listeners. And this very- pertinacity shows how much weight they attached to the facts of the life of our Lord. They did not merely repeat in each new place the pure morality of Jesus as He uttered it in the Sermon on the Mount : of such lessons we have no record. They took in their hands, as the strongest weapon, the fact that a certain Jew crucified afar off in Jerusalem was the Son of God, who had died to save men from their sins ; and they offered to all alike an interest, through faith, in the resurrection from the dead of this outcast of His own people. No wonder that Jews and Greeks, judging in their worldly way, thought this strain of preaching came of folly or madness, and turned from what they thought unmeaning jargon. 6. We are able to complete from the Epistles our account of the teaching of the Apostles on the Doctrine of Atonement. "The Man Christ Jesus" is the medi- ator between God and man, for in Him the human nature in its sinless purity is lifted up to the Divine, so that He, exempt from guilt, can plead for the guilty.^ Thus He is the second Adam that shall redeem the sin of the first ; the interests of men are bound up in Him, since He has power to take them all into Himself.^ This salvation was provided by the Father, to " reconcile us to Himself;"^ to whom the name of " Saviour" thus belongs;* and our redemption is a signal proof of the love of God to us.^ Not less is it a proof of the love of Jesus, since He freely lays down His life for us — offers it as a precious gift, capable of purchasing all the lost.^ But ^ I Tim. ii. 5 ; I John ii. I, 2 ; Heb. vii. 25. 2 Eph. V. 29, 30 ; Rom. xii. 5 ; i Cor. xv. 22 ; Rom. v. 12, 1 7. 2 2 Cor. V. 18. * Luke i. 47. ^ i John iv. 10. ^ I Tim. ii. 6; Tit. ii. 14; Eph. i. 7. Compare Matt. xx. 28. THE DEATH OF CHRIST. 149 there is another side of the truth more painful to our natural reason. How came this exhibition of Divine love to be needed } Because wrath had already gone out against man. The clouds of God's anger gathered thick over the whole human race ; they discharged themselves on Jesus only. God has made Him to be sin for us who knew no sin ;^ He is made " a curse " (a thing accursed) for us, that the curse that hangs over us may be removed ;^ He bore our sins in His own body on the tree.^ There are those who would see on the page of the Bible only the sunshine of the Divine love ; but the muttering thunders of Divine wrath against sin are heard there also ; and He who alone was no child of wrath meets the shock of the thunderstorm, becomes a curse for us, and a vessel of wrath ; and the rays of love break out of that thunder-gloom and shine on the bowed head of Him who hangs oa the Cross, dead for our sins. We have spoken, and advisedly, as if the New Testament were, as to this doctrine, one book in harmony with itself. That there are in the New Testa- ment different types of the one true doctrine, may be admitted without peril to the doctrine. The principal types are four in number. 7. In the Epistle of James there is a remarkable absence of all explanations of the doctrine of the Atonement. But this admission does not amount to so much as may at first appear. True, the key-note of the Epistle is that the Gospel .is the Law made perfect, and that it is a practical moral system, in which man finds himself free to keep the Divine law. But with him Christ is no mere lawgiver appointed to impart the Jewish system. He knows that Elias is a man like himself ; but of the Person of Christ he speaks in ^ 2 Cor. V. 21. 2 Gal. iii. 13. 3 j Ye.\.. ii. 24. is© THE DEATH OF CHRIST. a different spirit. He calls himself " a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ," who is " the Lord of Glory." He speaks of the Word of Truth, of which Jesus has been the utterer. He knows that faith in the Lord of Glory is inconsistent with time-serving and "respect of persons."^ "There is one lawgiver," he says, "who is able to save and to destroy ;"^ and this refers no doubt to Jesus, whose second coming he holds up as a motive to obedience.^ These and like expres- sions remove this Epistle far out of the sphere of Ebionitish teaching. The inspired writer sees the Saviour, in the Father's glory, preparing to return to judge the quick and dead. He puts forth Christ as Prophet and King, for He makes Him teacher and judge of the world ; but the office of the Priest he does not dwell on. Far be it from us to say that he knows it not. Something must have taken place before he could treat them with confidence, as free creatures, able to resist temptations, and even to meet temptations with joy. He treats " your faith " as something founded already, not to be prepared by this epistle.^ His pur- pose is a purely practical one. There is no intention to unfold a Christology, such as that which makes the Epistle to the Romans so valuable. Assuming that Jesus has manifested Himself, and begotten anew the human race, he seeks to make them pray with undivided hearts, and be considerate to the poor, and strive with lusts, for which they and not God are responsible ; and bridle their tongues, and show their fruits by their works.^ 8. In the teaching of St. Peter the doctrine of the Person of our Lord is connected strictly with that of ^ James i. i ; ii. I. - James iv. 12. ^ James v. 7-9. * James i. 2, 3, 21. ^ See Neander, Fflanzung, b. vi. c. 3 ; Schmid, Thcologie der N. T., part ii. ; and Domer, Christologie, vol. i. p. 95. THE DEATH OF CHRIST. 151 His work as Saviour and Messiah. The frequent men- tion of His sufferings shows the prominent place he would give them ; and he puts forward as the ground of his own right to teach, that he was " a witness of the sufferings of Christ."^ The atoning virtue of those sufferings he dwells on with peculiar emphasis ; and not less so on the purifying influence of the Atonement on the hearts of believers. He repeats again and again that Christ died for us ;^ that He bare our sins in His own body on the tree.^ He bare them ; and what does this phrase suggest, but the goat that " shall bear " the iniquities of the people off into the land that was not inhabited.'''^ or else the feeling the consequences o{ sin, as the word is used elsewhere }^ We have to choose between the cognate ideas of sacrifice and substitution. Closely connected with these statements are those which connect moral reformation with the death of Jesus. He bare our sins that we might live unto righteousness. His death is our life. We are not to be content with a self-satisfied contemplation of our redeemed state, but to live a life worthy of it.*' In these passages the whole Gospel is contained ; we are justified by the death of Jesus, who bore our sins that we might be sanctified and renewed to a life of godliness. And from this Apostle we hear again the name of " the Lamb," as well as from John the Baptist : and the passage of Isaiah comes back upon us with unmistak- able clearness. We are redeemed " with the precious blood of Christ as of a lamb without blemish and with- out spot."*^ Every word carries us back to the Old ^ I Pet. V. I. 2 J -pei. ii. 21 ; iii. 18; iv. I. 3 I Pet. ii. 24. If there were any doubt that "for us" [vtrkp i7^wf) means "in our stead" (see verse 21), this 24th verse, which explains the former, would set it at rest. * Lev. xvi. 22. ^ Lev. xx. 17, 19. ** i Pet. ii. 21-25; "i- ^S'lS. 7 I Pet. i. 18, 19, with Isaiah hii. 7. 152 THE DEATH OF CHRIST. Testament and its sacrificial system: the spotless victim, the release from sin by its blood (elsewhere, i. 2, by the sprinkling of its blood), are here ; not the type and shadow but the truth of them ; not a ceremonial pur- gation, but an effectual reconcilement of man and God. 9. In the inspired writings of John we are struck at once with the emphatic statements as to the Divine and human natures of Christ. A right belief in the incar- nation is the test of a Christian man ;^ we must believe that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh, and that He is manifested to destroy the works of the devil.^ And, on the other hand. He who has come in the flesh is the One who alone has been in the bosom of the Father, seen the things which human eyes have never seen, and has come to declare them unto us.^ This Person, at once divine and human, is " the propitiation for our sins," our " advocate with the Father," sent into the world " that we might live through Him ;" and the means was His laying down His life for us, which should make us ready -to lay down our lives for the brethren.* And the moral effect of His redemption is, that " the blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth us from all sin."^ The intimate connection between His work and our holiness is the main subject of his first Epistle : " Whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin."^ As with St. Peter, so with St. John, every point of the doctrine of the Atonement comes out with abundant clearness. The substitution of another who can bear our sins, for us who cannot ; the sufferings and death as the means of our redemp- tion, our justification thereby, and our progress in holi- ness as the result of our justification. 10. To follow out as fully in the more voluminous ^ I John iv. 2 ; John i. 14 ; 2 John 7. "^ \ John iii. 8. ^ I John i. 2; iv. 14; John i. 14-18. * I John ii. I, 2 ; iv. 9, 10 ; V. 11-13 ; iii. 16 ; v. 6; i. 7; John xi. 51. * I John i. 7. *• I John iii. 9. THE DEATH OF CHRIST. 153 writings of St. Paul the passages that speak of our sal- vation would far transgress the limits of our space. Man, according to this Apostle, is a transgressor of the law. His conscience tells him that he cannot act up to that law which, the same conscience admits is divine, and binding upon him. Through the old dispensations man remained in this condition. Even the law of Moses could not justify him : it only by its strict behests held up a mirror to conscience that its frailness might be seen. Christ came, sent by the mercy of our Father who had never forgotten us ; given to, not deserved by us. He came to reconcile men and God, by dying on the Cross for them and bearing their punishment in their stead.^ He is " a propitiation through faith in his blood :"^ words which most people will find unintelli- gible except in reference to the Old Testament and its sacrifices. He is the ransom, or price paid, for the redemption of man from all iniquity.^ The wrath of God was against man ; but it did not fall on man. God made His Son to be sin for us " though He knew no sin ; and Jesus suffered though men had sinned. By this act God and man were reconciled.^ On the side of man trust and love and hope take the place of fear and of an evil conscience ; on the side of God, that terrible wrath of His, which is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, is turned away.^ The question whether we are reconciled to God only, or God is also reconciled to us, might be discussed on deep metaphysical grounds : but we pur- ^ 2 Cor. V. 14-21 ; Rom. v. 6-8. These two passages are decisive as to the fact of substitution ; they might be fortified with many others. 2 Rom. iii. 25, 26. Compare Levit. xvi. 15. 'WacTTjpLov means " victim for expiation." 3 Titus ii. 14. Still stronger in I Tim. ii. 6, " ransom instead of " [a.vTL\vTpov). Also Eph. i. 7 {diroXvTpwcns) ; I Cor. vi. 20 ; vii. 23. * Rom. v. 10 ; 2 Cor. v. 18-20; Eph. ii. 16; Col. i. 21. ^ Rom. i. 18; v. 9 ; i Thess. i. 10. 154 THE DEATH OF CHRIST. posely leave that on one side at present, content to show that at all events the intention of God to punish man is averted by this " propitiation " and " reconcilement." 1 1. Different views are held about the authorship of the Epistle to the Hebrews, by modern critics. But its numerous points of contact with the other Epistles of St. Paul must be recognised. In both the incomplete- ness of Judaism is dwelt on ; redemption from sin and guilt is what religion has to do for men, and this the law failed to secure. In both, reconciliation and forgiveness and a new moral power in the believers are the fruits of the work of Jesus. In the Epistle to the Romans, Paul shows that the Law failed to justify ; and that faith in the blood of Jesus must be the ground of justification. In the Epistle to the Hebrews the same result follows from an argument rather different ; all that the Jewish system aimed to do is accomplished in Christ in a far more perfect manner. The Gospel has a better Priest, more effectual sacrifices, a more profound peace. In the one Epistle the Law seems set aside wholly for the system of faith ; in the other the Law is exalted and glorified in its Gospel shape. But the aim is precisely the same, to show the weakness of the Law and the effectual fruit of the Gospel. 12. We are now in a position to see how far the teaching of the New Testament on the effects of the death of Jesus is continuous and consistent. Are the declarations of our Lord about Himself the same as those of James and Peter, John and Paul ? and are those of the Apostles consistent with each other ? The several points of this mysterious transaction may be thus roughly described : — (i.) God sent His Son into the world to redeem lost and ruined man from sin and death, and the Son will- ingly took upon Him the form of a servant for this THE DEATH OF CHRIST. 155 purpose ; and thus the Father and the Son manifested their love for us. (2,) God the Father laid upon His Son the weight of the sins of the whole world, so that He bare in His own body the wrath which men must else have borne, because there was no other way of escape for them ; and thus the Atonement was a manifestation of Divine justice. (3.) The effect of the Atonement thus wrought is, that man is placed in a new position, freed from the dominion of sin, and able to follow holiness ; and thus the doctrine of the Atonement ought to work in all the hearers a sense of love, of obedience, and of self-sacrifice. In shorter words, the sacrifice of the death of Christ is a proof of Divine love, and of Divine justice, and is for us a document of obedience. Of the four great writers of the New Testament, Peter, Paul, and John set forth every one of these points. Peter, the " witness of the sufferings of Christ," tells us that we are redeemed with the blood of Jesus, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot ; says that Christ bare our sins in His own body on the tree. If we " have tasted that the Lord is gracious,"^ we must not rest satisfied with a contemplation of our redeemed state, but must live a life worthy of it. No one can well doubt, who reads the two Epistles, that the love of God and Christ, and the justice of God, and the duties thereby laid on us, all have their value in them ; but the love is less dwelt on than the justice, whilst the most prominent idea of all is the moral and practical working of the Cross of Christ upon the lives of men. With St. John, again, all three points find place. That Jesus willingly laid down His life for us, and is an advocate with the Father ; that He is also the propitiation, the suffering sacrifice, for our sins ; and ^ I Pet. ii. 3. t56 THE DEATH OF CHRIST. that the blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth us from all sin, for that whoever is born of God doth not commit sin ; all are put forward. The death of Christ is both justice and love, both a propitiation and an act of loving self- surrender ; but the moral effect upon us is more promi- nent even than these. In the Epistles of Paul the three elements are all present. In such expressions as a ransom, a propitiation, who was " made sin for us," the wrath of God against sin, and the mode in which it was turned away, are presented to us. Yet not wrath alone. " The love of Christ constraineth us ; because we thus judge, that if one died for all, then were all dead : and that He died for all, that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto Him which died for them, and rose again." ^ Love in Him begets love in us, and in our reconciled state the holiness which we could not practise before becomes easy. The reasons for not finding from St. James similar evidence, we have spoken of already. Now in which of these points is there the semblance of contradiction between the Apostles and their Master.? In none of them. In the Gospels, as in the Epistles, Jesus is held up as the sacrifice and victim, quaffing a cup from which His human nature shrank, feeling in Him a sense of desolation such as we fail utterly to comprehend on a theory of human motives. Yet no one takes from Him His precious redeeming life ; He lays it down of Himself, out of His great love for men. But men are to deny themselves, and take up their cross and tread in His steps. They are His friends only if they keep His commands and follow His footsteps. II. We must consider it proved that these three points or moments are the doctrine of the whole New ^ 2 Cor. V. 14, 15. THE DEATH OF CHRIST. 157 Testament. What is there about this teaching that has provoked in times past and present so much disputation .-• Not the hardness of the doctrine, — for none of the theories put in its place are any easier, — but its want of logical completeness. Sketched out for us in a few broad lines, it tempts the fancy to fill it in and lend it colour ; and we do not always remember that the hands that attempt this are trying to make a mystery into a theory, an infinite truth into a finite one, and to reduce the great things of God into the narrow limits of our little field of view. To whom was the ransom paid ? What was Satan's share of the transaction ? How can one suffer for another ? How could the Redeemer be miserable when He was conscious that His work was one which could bring happiness to the whole human race .'* Yet this condition of indefiniteness is one which is imposed on us in the reception of every mystery ; prayer, the incarnation, the immortality of the soul, are all subjects that pass far beyond our range of thought. And here we see the wisdom of God in connecting so closely our redemption with our reformation. If the object were to give us a complete theory of salvation, no doubt there would be in the Bible much to seek. The theory is gathered by fragments out of many an exhortation and warning ; nowhere does it stand out entire, and without logical flaw. But if we assume that the New Testament is written for the guidance of sinful hearts, we find a wonderful aptness for that particular end. Jesus is proclaimed as the solace of our fears, as the founder of our moral life, as the restorer of our lost relation with our Father. If He had a cross, there is a cross for us ; if He pleased not Himself, let us deny our- selves ; if He suffered for sin, let us hate sin. And the question ought not to be. What do all these mysteries mean .-' but. Are these thoughts really such as will serve 158 THE DEATH OF CHRIST. to guide our life and to assuage our terrors in the hour of death ? The answer is twofold — one from history and one from experience. The preaching of the Cross of the Lord, even in this simple fashion, converted the world. The same doctrine is now the ground of any definite hope that we find in ourselves, of forgiveness of sins and of everlasting life. Now, in examining the history of the Doctrine we shall expect to find, as in the case of other doctrines, that attempts have been made to force from Scripture a clearer and more definite statement than is found there at first sight. We should also expect that these attempts at greater precision had been accompanied often, if not always, with the loss of some element on which the Bible insists. But we are told at the outset that the position which this doctrine holds in the history of early con- troversies is far from being so prominent as that which we assign it now. The answer is, that in the first ages the disputes which prevailed about the Person of Jesus superseded the discussion of the Atonement, because they contained and implied it. More than once, when the ostensible argument was the nature of the Redeemer, Athanasius insisted that if the Son of God had been such a one as Arians and Sabellians dreamed of, He could not have redeemed the world. How could a man who was only one among other men have power to redeem them all ? It needed the Son of God, who had power over all men, to redeem them.^ And Arians, conscious of this, rested the redemption of men, not on any power inherent in the Saviour's nature, but on the simple declaration of God that the curse was removed." Cyril objects to Nestorius that his doctrine makes the ^ CotiL Arian. i. § 49. Comp. i. §§ 19, 37 ; ii. § 14, 20. ^ Cont. Arian. ii. § 68. THE DEATH OF CHRIST. 159 Atonement meaningless, for it refers it, not to one who is God and man, but to a man, whose relation to God the Word is only external.^ When the whole doctrine of the Person of Christ was the subject of searching controversy, the doctrine of Atonement did not emerge as the subject of a separate dispute ; but we may be sure that it was never far off. And it may be that this is the clue to our present discussions about the Atonement. As of old it was involved in another con- troversy, so now the subject of that other controversy is involved in this ; and when we are invited to discuss whether one man can ever bear the sins of another, and whether vicarious punishment could ever be agreeable to God's justice, we cannot but notice that the divine nature of Christ is never strongly asserted on that side, or assumed as an element in the argument. The death of Jesus is discussed as the death of a mere man. The most incautious rhetorical flights of orthodox sermons are selected for assault, in which a substitution of the innocent for the guilty is spoken of under the forms and phrases of human law, in the very points where human law is not applicable ; and the more deliberate expositions of faith are put on one side. We are accused of making'that the corner-stone of the Christian faith which no creed fully defines. The necessity of our position compels us to make the Atonement prominent. But all the faith is involved in the discussion. When the views of Socinus on the Atonement are brought forth again, his notions as to the Redeemer's person are probably not far off. In modern writers who have touched the subject, an undue prominence is given to one feature of the patristic teaching, the notion that the ransom paid by our Lord was paid to the Devil, into whose power man had ^ Adv. Nestor, iii. 2. i6o THE DEATH OF CHRIST. passed through sin.^ Thus what is for the most part rhetorical playing with words, is put forward as if it were the sole and the serious belief of these writers. The story bears a very different telling. There is not space for it here ; but a few quotations may be useful. The old Epistle to Diognetus ^ tells how God gave His Son a ransom for us ; and we are to rejoice that the Holy One died for the evil-doers, the sinless for the sinful ; for what was there, short of His righteousness, that would cover our sins .-* Clement of Rome^ sees the truth not less clearly. According to Ignatius,* we owe our salvation to Christ crucified for us in the fleshy and to His " God-blessed passion." To the Jewish objection that the cross is accursed, and therefore unworthy of Messiah, Justin Martyr retorts that this is matter for those to be ashamed of who inflicted the death, when the Father of all had " willed that His Christ should take the curses of all for the whole race of man, know- ing that He would raise Him up after He had been crucified and put to death." ^ By Irenaeus the Scrip- tural accounts of the Redemption are prominently put forward. As a man caused the fall, a man must cause the restoration ; he must be a man able to sum up {reca- pitulare) all the human species in himself, so as to bear the punishment of all, and to render an obedience that will compensate for their innumerable acts of disobe- dience. It suits not with the Divine nature to effect His will by force, but rather by love and influence ; hence came the voluntary self-sacrifice, out of exceeding love, of the divine Son of man, who is truly God and man ; and hence, too, men are not dragged, but drawn back to God from sin, embracing by an act of their will the offers 1 Professor Jowett, ii. 572. Mr. Garden (p. 4) devotes seventeen lines to the subject of the Fathers, and this theory occupies the whole of them ; as if there were no other opinions worth mentioning. 2 Ch. ix. 3 ch. 1. * Ad. Sinyrn., ch. i. ^ Dial. Tryph., % 95. THE DEATH OF CHRIST. i6i of mercy made them through Christ. But, combined with these statements, there are indications at least of the idea that Christ died to redeem men from a real objective power which Satan had acquired over them, so that the redeeming price was paid, not so much by way of debt due to the righteousness and justice of God, as by way of ransom to release them from a conqueror, and to restore them to God, to whom they originally belonged. " Since," says he, " the apostasy [the Devil] unjustly got the dominion over us, and, though we belonged by nature to the omnipotent God, alienated us against nature and made us his own disciples, the Word of God [Christ], powerful in all things and perfect in justice, acted justly in regard to the apostasy [the Devil], redeeming from it that which was His own ; not by force in the way that it got dominion over us in the beginning, when it carried off insatiably that which belonged not to it, but by persuasion {seciuidiini sjtadelam), as it became God to receive what He would, by the use of persuasion, not of force, that justice should not be infringed, nor yet that which God created of old should perish."^ Some have supposed that the words "by persuasion " mean by a way which the Devil himself must be convinced was right and reasonable, but this would be strangely inconsistent with the general views of the writer. The apostate spirit, as he says in another place, persuaded men to transgress, but he used fraud and wrong to compass his purpose ; and here Irenaeus contrasts with this false persuasion, which he calls force and injustice, the fair and just persuasion by which the Son of man who has been lifted up draws all men back to Him. The persuasion is addressed to lost men, and not to Satan. With Irenaeus the redemption was not a friendly treaty between two powers for the release of ^ Adv. Har. v. i. I. M i62 THE DEATH OF CHRIST. prisoners ; he says that Christ contended with, repulsed, conquered, despoiled, and bound the enemy of God and man. The point on which he lays most stress is cer- tainly not the power which Satan has acquired, but the power that belongs inherently to our Redeemer, of sum- ming up in Himself the interests of the whole human race. He sees that to offer a sacrifice for all mankind is a privilege that can belong only to man on one side, for man's fault is in question ; only to the Divine Son of God on the other, for only He can control the destinies of all men. If the " persuasion " has been rightly referred to man, and not to Satan (and Dorner seems to have clearly established it^), then Irenseus goes very little beyond Holy Scripture in his attempt to explain the mystery of the power of the Evil One over us. In both we are to be redeemed from Satan and from death ; in both the offering of One whose power over the human race is unlimited shall procure deliverance. The doctrine of the Atonement is knit up with that of the Incarnation ; and he does not ask whether one man can suffer for another, but what manner of person He must be whose sufferings can have power over all others to save them. The doctrine of Athanasius will furnish another sample of patristic teaching. Man fell through sin, says this great teacher ; and the righteousness of God was thus brought into conflict with His goodness. According to His righteousness and truth. He who has given the law must inflict the allotted punishment on those who break it : but then His goodness could not suffer that man, made in His own image, should perish through the deceit of the Devil and his angels. It were better he had not been created. How shall this con- ^ Perso7i Christi, vol. i. p. 479, note against Baiir, Versohnung, p. 35. Compare note in Thomson's Bampton Lectures, p. 2S7. THE DEATH OF CHRIST. 163 tradiction be solved ? By man's repentance ? Simple repentance would be insufficient on two grounds; because the Divine veracity, which had promised death, would not have been satisfied, and because this would not free man from the physical corruption (77 Kara ^vcrtv (pOopd) which he had incurred. The Word of God, the Son, who created the world, can alone restore it. He is above all, and can suffer and satisfy for all, and free all from their natural corruption ; for He indeed created them at first, and so can re-create. In order to this restoration. He, the incorporeal and incorruptible Word, made for Himself a temple, a house, in a human form and flesh. Now and then the expressions of Athanasius savour of Apollinarian views, as though Christ were the nature of God in the form of man, the human mind being left out of the account ; but in other places no one has more strongly expressed himself against this very error, and his comment on the words " Let this cup pass from Me," and on " The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak," is that they reveal two wills in man, — the human, that is of the flesh, and the Divine, which is from God. The analogy between the creation and the restoration of man is closely pursued by Athanasius. He describes the redemption more as a mere renewal than as a development and completion of the creation of man ; and here lies the peculiarity of his system. The curse of death is taken away ; but more than this, the Word becomes, through the Holy Ghost, a living principle, diffused through the hearts of men, freeing them from the power of sin, and enduing them with immortality. What part the death of the Lord bears in our restoration will appear from such expressions as these. His death is " a sacrifice offered on behalf of all and instead of all ;"^ and it reconciles us to the Father,^ ^ I?e Incar. 20. 2 _^^ Deer. 14. i64 THE DEATH OF CHRIST. for in it Jesus took on Him the punishments to which we were liable, and, by suffering in His own body our punishment, conferred salvation on us.^ His death paid a debt," and was a ransom for us.^ As our High Priest He brought Himself as an offering to the Father, to purge us from our sins by His own blood."^ The power of this sacrifice to reconcile for the whole human species arose from the position in which Jesus stands to us all : He is the Creator, and again He is the Ruler of all the world and of mankind, and so nothing that He does but must influence all. When a king comes into a great city, and takes up his dwelling in a single house of it, the honour of the visit is reflected on all the city ; enemies and robbers desist from their work, and, through the presence in one house, the whole city is protected. So it is with the presence of our King.^ Who can fail to see in this system all the Scriptural elements of the Atonement faithfully preserved .-* More than this might be proved if space and time allowed : the anxious recurrence to Holy Writ as the rule of faith, the correction by the light of Scripture of state- ments that run perilously close to error. In the Fathers the various representations of the work of the Lord, — the ransom, the sacrifice, the conflict with Satan, — all have reference to His death. We have seen this in Athanasius. Tertullian uses the phrase that Christ is " the universal Priest of God,'"" in reference to His offering of Himself for men. No doubt the theories on this subject were indefinite and incomplete ; but a greater mistake could not be made than to suppose that the doctrine of satisfaction and substitution was absent from the patristic writings, and lay dormant till the voice of Anselm woke it. Origen, who is often said 1 Cont. Ar. i. 6o. ^ Qp„t_ ^;._ j; 55^ 3 Cont. Apol. ii. 12. * Cont. Ar. ii. 7. * De Incar. ix. " Cont. Mair. iv. 9. THE DEATH OF CHRIST. 165 to know nothing of the substitutive sufferings of the Lord, asserts them expressly in several passages.^ Cyril of Jerusalem not less so : — " We were enemies of God through sin, and God had appointed the sinner to die. One of two things, therefore, must needs have happened, — that God, keeping His word, should destroy all men, or that in His loving kindness He should cancel the sentence. But behold the wisdom of God ; He preserved both the truth of His sentence and the exercise of His loving kindness. Christ took our sins in His own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sin, should live to righteousness."^ So Cyril of Alexandria : — "Since they who were the servants of sin were made subject to the punishment of sin, He who was free from sin, and had trod the paths of all righteousness, underwent the punishment of sinners, destroying by His Cross the sentence of the old curse . . . ' being made a curse for us.'"^ The same doctrine is found in Augustine, Hilary of Poiters, and Ambrose. None of these writers worked out into a system the doctrine of the substitutive sacri- fice of Christ ; but it is absurd to pretend, with these passages before us, that Anselm was the inventor of the doctrine, and the destroyer of another which is supposed to have usurped dominion over the minds of all the Fathers. 7. But it is time to pass to Anselm, the reputed parent of our modern teaching ; and we ought to be thoroughly satisfied upon the question whether he has or has not supplanted the Bible in our pulpits and ^ Cont. Cels. ii. 23, and vol. xviii. 14. Explan. in Epist. ad Rom. iii. 8. Compare Mohler, Symbolik, p. 247. 2 Catech. xiii. 33. ' De Incarnationc, ch. xxv. in Mai's Patrum Bibliotheca. It is doubtful whether this work is Cyril's, but it is of about the same date, and other passages as express are quoted from Cyril's acknowledged works. i66 THE DEATH OF CHRIST. treatises, and in our thoughts. The Ciir Dens Homo, of this great and truly humble writer, is an attempt to answer the question, Why was it requisite for man's salvation that God should become man ? Considering the Divine omnipotence, we might expect that the mere fiat of His will, or the acceptance of some lower sacrifice than that of the only begotten Son of God, might have sufficed to effect the reconciliation. The incidents of the Incarnation and the Crucifixion seem derogatory to God ; the Infinite Spirit clothing Himself with a finite nature, and allowing finite men and the power of evil to assail and triumph over Him, — these are repre- sentations that may shock our reverence. If redemption was required at all, why was it not effected by means of a sinless man who was no more than man .^ A mere man caused the fall, a mere man might have sufficed for the restoration. Anselm replies that this would not have procured man's perfect restoration, for it would have left men dependent on one of themselves ; he to whom they owed redemption would have been in some sense their master instead of God. But why, it may be urged, was there any need of redemption at all .? When we speak of God's anger, we mean neither more nor less than His will to punish. The moment that will is withdrawn, there is neither anger nor punishment to fear ; and so it might appear that a mere revocation of the will to punish would of itself constitute salvation. The argument that God gave His Son as a ransom for man from the power of Satan, because it was right and just to recover by fair means a race who had freely and voluntarily given themselves over to his power, is at once dismissed : for the true reasons, namely, that the Devil cannot properly have either merit or power or right over man ; that the power which in one sense he exerts against mankind was only permissive, and that THE DEATH OF CHRIST. 167 it expired when the permission was withdrawn. He then proceeds to estabhsh the need of redemption on purer grounds. Every creature that can will and act owes to God an entire obedience, as the honour due to Him. All sin, then, is a wrong done to His honour, of what kind soever the offence is. Punishment must attach to sin invariably, in order to mark the difference between sin and holiness ; it would not only encourage sin, if men thought that the Almighty were blind to it, but would obscure and distort our views of the Divine nature itself, if we conceived of Him as one to whom sin and its opposite are both alike. We should thus regard God as admitting sin into the order of the universe without dissent or protest, whereas we know that the very nature of sin is disorder. God, however, cannot suffer disorder ; for though sin could not really detract from His power and dignity, its aim and intent are to dishonour and deface, as far as may be, the beauty of the Divine government. If it may do this and yet draw at plea- sure on the Divine but free forgiveness, unrighteousness is more free and unshackled than obedience. Now no man can render for his brethren the full obedience required : " a sinner cannot justify a sinner." Even if a man with his heart full of love and contrition were to renounce all earthly solaces, and in labour and abstinence to strive to obey God in all things, and to do good to all and forgive all, he would only be doing his duty. But he is unable to do even this ; and it is his misery that he cannot plead his inability as an excuse, because that proceeds from sin. He must be of the same nature as those for whom he renders the obedience, in order that it may be accepted as theirs ; and yet, if the satis- faction is to be complete, he must be able to render to God something greater than every created thing, for among men pure righteousness is not to be found ; and l68 * THE DEATH OF CHRIST. if SO, he must be God, for what is there above the creature but God Himself? Therefore he must be God and man, whose life, far exalted above all created things, must be infinitely valuable. As to the manner of this redemption, Anselm uses these words, which bear on a controverted point in his theory : — " If man sinned for pleasure, is it not consistent that he should make satis- faction by hardness ? And if he were most easily over- come by the Devil, so as to dishonour God by sin, is it not just that man, making satisfaction to God for sin, should conquer the Devil, for the honour of God, in the most difficult manner?" If he departed from God com- pletely by sin, the mode of making satisfaction should be by a complete devotion to God. Now man can undergo nothing harder or more difificult, for the honour of God, than death ; nor can he devote himself to God more completely than when he delivers himself to death for His honour.^ But Anselm insists more on the life of obedience which was acted out by Jesus, and which no other could have rendered, as the satisfaction which was rendered to God. He made atonement for men, by rendering through life a perfect obedience, in lieu of theirs, and by a death which, as sinless. He did not owe, and as God He might have escaped. Thus is the Divine mercy, which seems to be excluded when we think of the Divine justice and of the infinite amount of sin, brought into perfect harmony with justice, so that the reason can discern that no better scheme of redemption could have been devised. 8. This is a rough sketch of the system to which, ■^ ii. II. I find in this passage the doctrine of vicarious retribution, which Baur fails to find in the Cur Dens Homo. Mr. Garden (p. 5), in deciding between us on this point, thinks it enough to quote a passage in the next chapter (ii. 12) which is supposed to preclude the doctrine. The passage, however, seems to me wliolly irrelevant, referring merely to the question whether what one does willingly can be the cause of misery. THE DEATH OF CHRIST. 169 as we are often told, modern theology is indebted for the theory of satisfaction which it teaches. We are supposed by naany to owe the doctrine of the Cross to a pious Christian writer as late as the eleventh century. Let us sift the claim. The foundation of Anselm's theory is found in Athanasius. Both these writers view the Atonement habitually as a transaction before the bar of Divine justice in heaven ; both seek the explanation of its possibility in the divine nature of Him who atones ; both conceive it as the payment of a debt due to God. It would have been equally hard for both to admit the force of the modern objection that it is not lawful for one man to be punished for another ; for while the perfect human nature of the Lord was essential to com- plete the Atonement, the human nature is dwelt in by the divine, and the will that chooses to suffer for man is divine. With both these writers the great moment of the Atonement is found in the Incarnation ; in the presence in human flesh of one able to act for men. What we owe to Anselm is not so much the general plan of salvation as the minute and careful delineation of it. Nowhere else is there such logical precision, such a continuous chain of deduction. This is the kind of originality which we ought to attribute to him. 9. Anselm has indeed introduced a word, which has ever since been associated with the dog-ma of the Atonement — the word satisfaction. But a new word is not necessarily an innovation in thought. The legal sense of the word satisfaction is the appeasing a creditor on the subject of his debt, not necessarily by the pay- ment of it (solutio), but by any means that he will accept. It is used more than once by Tertullian, but not in the sense of vicarious satisfaction ; in that sense, no doubt, it owes its currency to Anselm. It has gone 176 THE DEATH OF CHRIST. far to replace the word sacrifice. But the fundamental ideas of the two words are not so far apart as is often assumed. Sacrifice, in the usage of the Bible, is the appointed rite by which a Jewish citizen who has broken the law and forfeited thereby his position within the pale of the Covenant, is enabled to procure his restora- tion. It is a Jewish word, and belongs to the positive provisions of the Jewish polity, and not to general ethics. Still, as the Jewish constitution reflected the general dealings of God with all the world, the term sacrifice applies to the restoration of all men who have strayed from God by their sins. With thankful hearts we may look up to Christ as the lamb of our paschal sacrifice ; since by His death and resurrection, and without any merit or effort of our own, we are restored to the place before God which we had lost. The word satisfaction, on the other hand, implies a debt which we have not the means of paying, a debt of punishment in conse- quence of our sins, or of obedience to compensate former disobedience. Both terms imply a restoration through something which is not us nor ours. Whether we speak of it as a sacrifice or a payment, the same thought may be present to our minds ; a reconcilement of God and us, wrought not by us but by our Redeemer. It is a gain to us, as sacrificial usages become forgotten, to acquire a term which expresses the same idea appealing to the principles of general ethics. But facts, and not words, are the subject of revelation ; what we believe is that the death of the Redeemer purchased our life, our reconciliation, that without His obedience our sins would have borne their natural fruit of death. And whether we call this act a sacrifice, on account of its being an offering to appease the Divine wrath, or a satisfaction, as it is a mode of payment which God accepts instead of the debt of obedience that we cannot THE DEATH OF CHRIST. 171 render, is of less importance than might at first appear. So long as we believe that the wrath of God because of our disobedience fell in the shape of affliction on Him who alone had so acted as to please God, the terms in which it may be expressed may be suffered to vary. 10. The system of Anselm is indeed open to criticism, but not for the introduction of the word sacrifice. So far is it from being an undue develop- ment of Holy Writ, that it falls far short of it in the completeness of its statements. As the Atonement transcends all our means of exposition, it must needs be that, the more exactly it is fitted to any analogous human affairs, the more entirely will some of its complex elements be omitted from the description. Hence, for example, there is the danger lest the Atonement degenerate into a transaction between a righteous Father on the one side, and a loving Saviour on the other, because in the human transaction from which the analogy is drawn two distinct parties are concerned ; whereas in the plan of salvation one will operates, and in the Father and the Son alike justice and love are reconciled. Again, the reconciliation effected by Christ appears rather as a bringing God into harmony with Himself, His mercy with His justice, than as a recon- ciliation of man with God. The passages of Scripture that speak of the wrath of God against man are not explicable by Anselm's system. The exclamation of the Baptist, that Jesus is the Lamb of God, that taketh away the sin of the world ; the prophecy of His suffer- ings by Isaiah (ch. liii.) ; the words of Peter that He " His own self bare our sins in His own body on the tree ;"^ and the passages of like import in St. Paul's writings,^ can only find place with Anselm by a very 1 I Pet. ii. 24. 2 Q^i iii_ 13 ; 2 Cor. v. 21. 172 THE DEATH OF CHRIST. forced interpretation. His scheme is mainly this, that the merit of the perfect obedience of Jesus was so great as to deserve a great reward, and that in answer to the prayer of the Lord this reward was given in the form of the salvation of His brethren. But Christ does not appear in this system as groaning and suffering under the curse of the world, as He does in Holy Scripture. Until the time of Anselm the doctrine of the Atonement had within certain limits fluctuated with the change of teachers ; the doctrine itself was one and the same, but this or that aspect of it had been made prominent. Anselm aimed at fixing in one system the scattered truths ; and the result has been that he, like his prede- cessors, made some parts of the truth conspicuous to the prejudice of the rest. I I. Looking fairly at the whole period from Ignatius to Anselm, we are obliged to own that the efficacy of the death of the Lord was always believed, and that of the three parts or moments of this doctrine, the love, and the justice, and the practical obedience, not one fell to the ground. The theory of a victory over Satan, gained by deceit, shrinks into its proper proportions ; it is an excrescence on the truth, and not a leprosy turning all the truth into corruption. HL I. Holy Scripture contains the doctrine, and the Church has always taught it. Whence, then, the re- pugnance to it which some persons of serious and devout minds have expressed .-' The objections for the most part take the form of a denial that it is possible that one man should suffer for the sin of another ; that the wrath of God could be appeased by the sacrifice of one who had done no sin in the place of the sinful. A thoroughgoing sense of man's responsibility for his own acts, and a reluctance to own that the sufferings of the just can ever be the consequence of the sins of others. THE DEATH OF CHRIST. 173 are the two principal motives at work. How can these be most easily dealt with .-' 2. All the difficulties that belong to this question are introduced prior to it by a consideration of sin itself. The conscience of man admits that there is such a thing as guilt ; and so strong, decided, and constant is its witness, that there is no fear that mankind in the long run will attempt to explain away the fact that sin exists. But when I am asked to believe that it is against the Divine plan that any other being should take away from me any of the consequences of my guilt, I think myself entitled to say that it is the correlative of this proposition that no one should have brought upon me any of the guilt and its consequences. It is surely not more repugnant to God's justice that another should bear my guilt than that I should be guilty because of another ; nay. Divine justice will be more readily reconciled with a plan in which One who is entirely willing to bear my sin should take off its intolerable burden from me who am earnestly desirous to get rid of it, than with a plan in which sinfulness devolves from one who did not mean his own faults to do me harm, upon me who by no means wished to inherit them. But this kind of devolution, or transmission, is a fact of constant occurrence of which no man can be ignorant. By a powerful materialistic school such importance is given to the influence on moral habits of hereditary transmission, of age, sex, maladies, mode of living, and climate, that the doctrine of individual responsibility seems for the moment to be in peril. We need to retire within, and take counsel of conscience, in order to resist the invitation to believe " that what we call free- will is nothing but our being conscious of a will, without being conscious of the antecedents that determine its mode of action," which, translated into plainer nonsense, 174 THE DEATH OF CHRIST. would mean — being conscious of our will without being conscious that we did not possess one. But all are agreed that outward circumstances and inward constitu- tion, derived from parents and ancestors by physical laws, have a great influence upon the character of men. In extreme cases this may be true to the extent of paralysing the will altogether. If a young man has sprung from parents of intemperate habits, who lived by stealing, and has been brought up among companions of the same sort, we shall hardly look to find him any better than the soil in which he grew ; and any efforts to amend him and call forth his moral nature would be preceded by the effort to transplant him. Alike in the good and evil qualities of men the effect of hereditary transmission comes under daily notice. And since we are always invited in this question to discuss it in forensic language, and are told that no man can be allowed before a human tribunal to take upon himself the position of the criminal and suffer the punishment of another, because every one arraigned there must bear his own burden, we must remark that, if every one did actually bear his own burden there, human justice would have attained a perfection which it has never yet boasted. In graduated punishments for the same offence there is a rough attempt to take into account the antecedents of the criminal and the amount of his temptation ; but these palliations are not proved in evidence, and it is by a rough guess only that an equitable apportionment of punishment is attempted. In defining the line at which mental imbecility extinguishes all sense of responsibility laws have utterly failed, and tribunals have stultified themselves by conflicting decisions. But the arguments on these cases prove that all believe in a class of minds where guilt is just imputable and no more, — where the mental debility, often congenital. THE DEATH OF CHRIST. 175 all but extinguishes the moral offence. In cases of such nice difficulty, mistakes must be made ; punishment must fall on the wrong man. Nor is this mere specu- lation ; a man has been decided insane at one place for a crime for which another man at another place has been hanged, according as the judge and jury made prominent in their minds the safety of society or con- sideration for the supposed criminal. Capital punish- ment has fallen upon men who, upon the same facts before a different tribunal, would have been judged to have exercised no choice at all, but to have acted out the course to which birth and disease and the like compelled them. Absolute compulsion' of this kind is no doubt rare ; but absolute freedom is more than rare, it is impossible. Men enter this world the heirs of passions, perhaps cultivated in the last generation to an unnatural height ; they are nurtured on bad examples and a low morality, so that they cannot do the things that they would. And it is the rule, and not the exception, that men's moral actions are tinctured with the colour of the actions of others before and around them, which they could not possibly have caused. Now, if these facts are admitted, — if, instead of that perfect isolation of responsibility which some insist on, a joint responsibility is the universal rule, — with what show of reason can they pretend that it is on this ground that the Christian scheme • is untenable .-* Look into the black London alleys teeming with igno- rance, improvidence, and vice ; do you not see written in those faces, eloquent in wretchedness, " We did not place ourselves here : were the choice given us freely, we would not be as we are " ? Then what do we think of the consistency of those who see guilt brought on by others, but think it revolting that another should take it off.'' Living comments upon the words "In Adam 176 THE DEATH OF CHRIST. all die " abound, and cannot be blotted out : it ought not then to revolt our moral sense that those other words are added, " In Christ shall all be made alive." The latter words, in fact, go far to solve the mystery of the former. For the constant transmission of sinful- ness, the heritage of sins bequeathed from the fathers to their children, is revolting to the moral sense when severed from the thought of a Deliverer. The message of Heaven to us is, " Ye are all of one family, partakers of the family heritage of sin, and wretchedness, and ruin ; and yet every one of you driven by the stimulus of conscience to protest against the ruin, and to erect yourselves above it. Ye are accustomed to this derived destruction, this hereditary partnership in guilt ; lift your eyes one step farther back, to that common Father from whom ye sprang, from whom ye have lived in separation. By taking your nature I will re-establish that lost connection, I will make the Father's lost favour accessible to you again. I will undo the curse, by placing myself under it. I will sanctify the flesh, which the sin of generations has made unclean. For I am partaker of the Father's nature, and the power over you which belongs to Him is mine also ; and I am partaker of your nature in all save in the sin of it ; and thus I am the Mediator between God and man." 3. There is then nothing new or startling in the revelation of a great moral good bestowed on us with- out our effort ; it is in harmony with the system under which we live, as members of a great family having common interest even in things belonging to the soul. But, beside the general fact, the mode of our redemption, mysterious as it must be, should still be in harmony with our mental constitution ; it should be such as not to shock our natural expectation. We cannot possibly hope to understand it ; but it must not be such that we THE DEATH OF CHRIST. 177 can understand it ought not to be. The question — Why should Jesus have died for our sins instead of simply declaring forgiveness ? Why was not He the ambassador of forgiveness instead of the artificer of it ? — will obtrude even upon submissive minds. Now the death of Jesus, after such a life as His, was the crown- ing act and achievement of sin ; and so showed to man the extent of his own corruption. Here was one whose every act went to deserve the titles of " the Holy One, and the Just," whose love for His own people gushed forth through the openings of a hundred miracles wrought for their good ; whose speech was meek, and whose life could provoke no jealousy, nor threaten the foundations of any lawful power ; who had fed, or healed, or taught, many thousands of the people that ought to have been ready witnesses in His behalf; whose doctrines seldom failed to produce on the hearers a profound impression in favour of a teacher different from and far above all others ; yet whose goodness quickened the hatred of those in authority, and was the direct cause of reviling, persecution, and death. By how much the example of the sinless Jesus is conspicuous, by so much is the sin of His persecution and death intensi- fied. Had there been in the Lord (the supposition must be pardoned) one trace of human folly or sin, high-priest and Pharisee would have been more tolerant, because the contrast that rebuked them would have been less violent. But that shining armour showed no flaw nor stain. Their hatred was pure hatred of goodness ; their sentence of death was passed because there was no crime ; the death itself was the first death that was the wages of no sin. And so the Apostles, in preaching the Gospel, wanted no better arguments for condemning sin : that men had imbrued their hands in the blood of One who was sinless and who loved them, was enough to N 178 THE DEATH OF CHRIST. abase any candid spirit. As when some man of doubt- ful repute becomes suddenly recognised as the author of some enormous crime, and all his fellows recoil from him, and will not give him a cup of water lest they seem to countenance his evil deed ; so, when rnankind saw that the blood of the sinless Jesus was red on the hand of the rulers and the people, they were pricked to the heart by the spectacle, and fled from a haunt of guilt too horrible for them to live in longer. " Men and brethren, what shall we do .'' Save yourselves from this untoward generation."-^ In the death of Jesus sin stood revealed to itself In that deed it first reached its full height ; it brought forth into act all the potential consequences of ages of lust and malice. The devil was a liar and a murderer from the beginning, and men obeyed him in all falsehood and wrong. But he never showed what he was capable of till he murdered the sinless Redeemer in the name of God. And with that crowning act his power was scattered and overthrown. We are almost tempted to recur to the language of the Fathers, as to the delusion into which Satan was betrayed. Satan as lightning fell from heaven, just as he stood upon the highest heap of ruin. And out of the discord and the darkness of that hour, the most terrible in human history, was heard a voice proclaiming peace to man, just when Satan's foot was planted most firmly on his neck. 4. " But," it is answered, " what we object to is the use of such words as imply that Jesus fell under the wrath of God and became a curse for us. These can- not be applied properly to our Lord ; but if at all only in a loose and figurative way." Now, what are the tokens of the curse under which man labours ?^ It shows itself in his social relations, in his relation to nature, and in his relation to God. 1 Acts ii. 37, 40. 2 gee Gess, Lehre, v. d. Versuhnung. THE DEATH OF CHRIST. 179 The contrast between our aspirations after social progress and the actual state of society marks strongly the effect of sin and wrath upon it. Whilst we sigh after a reign of industry and peace and love, the thun- ders of a causeless and profitless war mutter again in the air, and portend the loss of the fruits of fifty years of progress to the devoted nations engaged in it. We would befriend and raise the poor, but the necessities of their position are a chain round them that seems to make us and them helpless for good. For want of a little more food . and a little more room in their dwell- ings, the sublimest truths fall dead upon their ears. Every great step of social progress, however plainly good and just, has had its battlefields or its scaffolds. Doubt, and suffering, and selfishness abound. Com- mercial speculations, founded in sheer fraud, collapse and bury the trusting multitude in their ruins. Life must be for most of our population a constant struggle against starvation. The complaints against our present social condition come not from Christian writers only, but from social reformers of every degree and creed.^ The relations of man to nature are likewise " out of joint." The high purposes that the soul is able to con- ceive are thwarted by the body. Hereditary indolence, or temper, or desire, stands across the path ; and men despair when they measure their meagre performance with their high promise, and find too often the evil habit growing on them and checking their pace, as the cheetah pulls down the running deer. And the bodily organism, crippled at the outset with faults perhaps of a former generation, breaks down prematurely ; and " the night when no man can work " overtakes the pilgrim when morn has scarcely passed. 1 For example, see the opening chapter of Buchez, Science de VHistoire. On modern pessimist views, see the essay below on " The Worth of Life. " i8o THE DEATH OF CHRIST. But the third effect of the curse is worse than these ; the relation between God and man is broken by sin. " Sin is a great ditch and wall, dividing us from God."^ The law of God is lost, and the soul becomes dark and self-seeking, and without purposes of good. Sometimes extravagant and nameless horrors of vice show what man without God may be capable of ;^ but always the want of God has been accompanied by want of love and of good purposes and of self-government. And the wages of sin have been death ; a death of the spirit in men that seemed to live. • 5. Now it is idle to discuss whether we ought to say that our Lord became a curse for us, if we have not exhausted the direct evidence of what He became and suffered for us. Did He or did He not put His neck under the yoke of this curse, and bear His share of it .'' Did He claim any social exemption } He accepted the evils of poverty ; it followed Him from the manger to the carpenter's workshop, to the wilderness. For thirty years He dwelt with a family that did not under- stand Him, in a city that despised Him and would rebel against His first efforts to teach. His conversation was not among scholars^ nor statesmen ; but with lepers and lunatics, with halt and maimed, with men afflicted and possessed. All the sufferings of our social state, all that makes the aspect of society painful to a feeling heart, were brought around Him, and He showed no repug- nance. The twelve whom He chose for His friends, to receive His constant teaching, were dull scholars, who knew Him not, even to the end. At last a disciple betrayed Him ; the priest of His Father pronounced that it was good that He should die for the people ; the Prince of the chosen people was delivered up by ^ Theophylact. in Liic. 14. ^ Rom. i. 28. Gal. v. 19. ^ Luke iv. 22. THE DEATH OF CHRIST. them to the Gentiles, and put to death ; and His dis- ciples fled in terror from His side. But it is to be observed that, even if the death of our Lord had not taken place, even if He had ascended in glory without being put to death in shame, it would have been true that He became a curse for us. In point of justice there would be no question of degree ; and even if there had been no death, that Jesus should have suffered even one look of scorn from some proud Naza- rene who knew Him as the carpenter's son, and this on our account, would involve the whole discussion of the Divine justice. The sinless and the just has suffered something which He did not deserve, be it little or great. If we are so rash as to impugn the Divine justice at all, understanding it so little, we must begin before the Cross, with the first indignity, with the first pressure of earthly want. It is, perhaps, natural that the shocking discrepancy between the Divine Sufferer and the mode of His death should shock our sense of justice more than all that had gone before ; because death awakens our sympathies more powerfully than the less harrowing incidents of a life of hardship. But if we are to appeal to a metaphysical theory of Divine justice, we must analyse our facts more exactly ; and then one of our first admissions must be, that if it is unjust to slay, it is unjust to smite or to degrade. And in order to set our theory going, we shall have to soften with docetic glosses not only the account of the passion, but that of the whole life of the Redeemer. But He tastes also the bitterness of death. Death came by disobedience ; and the fear of death, and of all the possible consequences of death, has been one of the burdens of the human race ever since. " Through fear of death " men "were all their lifetime subject unto THE DEATH OF CHRIST. bondage."^ One who should be exempt from the fear of death would not bear the whole burden of man's condition. How far was the Redeemer partaker of this fear ? Perhaps it is difficult to sever the dread of death from the burden of sin which was in death to be borne ; but towards the close of the history we see the Redeemer girding Himself for the terrible suffering, " steadfastly setting His face to go to Jerusalem,"^ expressing His state of pain until the baptism that He must be baptized with could be accomplished.'^ Tears had fallen from His eyes at seeing the stroke of death take effect on Lazarus His friend; and from the thought of His own death there was that shrinking which belongs to a man. He shared our curse in tasting the bitterness of death. And with the thought of death must have mingled a still more gloomy thought — the sense of the weight of sin. It is at this point that some will cease to go along with us. That any true feeling of sin, as of a burden on His own spirit, can ever have belonged to Jesus, is what some, careful for the honour of their Lord, will not admit. Let us refrain from theories on such a subject on both sides. But there are two places of the Gospel history that cannot be understood except on the supposition that sin and the power of darkness were suffered to press upon Him with a terrible weight. The scene in Gethsemane is one which Christians would fain keep out of their disputes ;■* yet it is described for our instruction, and we must venture to enter there. And ^ Heb. ii. 15. - Luke ix. 51. ^ Luke xii. 50. * "A feeling always seizes me," says Krummacher, "as if it were unbecoming to act as a spy on the Son of the living God in His last secret transactions with His heavenly Father ; and that a sinful eye ventures too much in daring to look upon a scene in which the Lord appears in such a state of weakness and abandonment that places Him on the same footing with the most miserable among men." THE DEATH OF CHRIST. 183 it seems that those who would place all the import of the Lord's death in its being a heroic termina- tion of a heroic and devout life, and an example of a faith true to itself even in extremity, receive under these olive-trees their most complete refutation. For, first, the Redeemer here appears harrowed by a misery which many a martyr has been free from, utterly per- turbed by a prospect which a Stephen, a Polycarp, a Ridley viewed without dismay. If no more than death is in question, we should expect an example of calm reliance on the present help of God. But we find the unaccountable agony, the bloody sweat, the prayer for deliverance : all fortifying and calming influences seem withdrawn for a time from Him who through His life so constantly enjoyed them. We are astonished that the curse of our race should be suffered to press in all its terrible reality upon the sinless and divine Son. Yet there is the description of His great struggle. We cannot refuse to see that it relates to One utterly broken down for a time in a wretchedness beyond our conception, a prey to thoughts which, judging by their outward effects, were far darker than those of the felon the night before his execution, when he counts the quarters of each hour, and hears the hammers that are busy at his scaffold. If our salvation is to be made an easier work, if the price paid is to be abated, we must forget Gethsemane or deny it. But if we believe with the Apostle that " God hath made Him to be sin for us who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him,"^ then the terror and the agony become accountable. All the inner horror of sin is revealed to Him. Sin in its nakedness is more horrible than death. And He sees it as it is ; the blasphemous self-worship that it is, the revolt against ^ 2 Cor. V. 21. i84 THE DEATH OF CHRIST. God, the violation of order, the death in hfe. And all this sin is His, though He is sinless of it : for He has thrown in His lot with men, and has proposed to Him- self the task of breaking down this foul and destroying tyranny. The mystery of that agency lies in the completeness of His humanity. He is no bystander, watching how men sin. He is one of themselves, but with the power of God over them to make their interests His own. In Him, as God, they live, and move, and have their being : and now the power of darkness is let loose to show Him all the sin and misery, and defiance of God, that He, by clothing Himself with human nature, has taken into His bosom. The words of the Lord upon the cross are an echo from the garden of agony : " Why hast Thou forsaken me .''" These words from the twenty-second Psalm, uttered at such a moment, are of course no mere ejaculation of pain ; they recall a Psalm which, as any one may see, contains matter that can apply to Messiah only. But the words them- selves express a sense of desertion by God : they can have no other meaning. Vain would it be to attempt to explain how He, one with the Father, and never severed from Him by spot or stain of guilt, could have admitted such a feeling. But there are the words : we dare not deny them. They belong to Him, not as Son; of God, but as burdened with the sins of the world. They express perhaps the complete separation which sin makes between man and God. He is now the Advocate of all mankind ; and their separation from God because of sin extends itself to Him for a season. It appears, then, that the question whether the wrath of God can be said to have fallen upon the Son, who has done no sin, is no verbal question, but a question of fact. Jesus did suffer all those things which are the evident tokens of wrath against us. He tried the THE DEATH OF CHRIST. 185 sufifenngs of our disjointed social state ; He knew the fear of death, and the anguish of sin, which separates from God. The motives of those who would protect His name from the supposed contamination of sin, are not unworthy of respect. "Be it far from thee, Lord !" came from one who loved his Lord sincerely ; but "Get thee behind me, Satan!" was the answer he received. When the Son of God is minded, of His own free will and His exceeding love towards our race, to come down from heaven, and in the form of a ser- vant to explore all the secrets of our vile condition, it is more reverent in us to observe and love His con- descension, than to say, out of some private text-book of morality, "This shall not be unto thee!" The mystery of evil is far beyond our rules and measures. There must be a cause when such a great act of con- descension had to be done. But done it was ; and when all the vials of wrath were poured out upon His head, and when He did not shrink from receiving them, it is idle to discuss whether this shall be called wrath or love ; when He smarted under all that we call punish- ment, it is idle to say that it must have another name. But you that are so jealous lest the name of sin should attach to the sinless One, carry the jealousy another step. When the Pharisees revile and the Priests entrap the Lord, and when the scourging, and the buffets, and the spitting, mangle and defile His innocent frame, you think that nature itself should give tokens of indignation. And yet, how close to God sin has ever come ! how sins have ever polluted and defiled the world, which is His temple ! and you have not conceived of the sins in that light, as sins that touch Him. When a man slays his brother, or pollutes the virtue of a woman — and each is dear to the Almighty Maker — does not the murderer smite God, and the betrayer spit upon THE DEATH OF CHRIST. Him ? and the long-suffering Ruler of the world bears, as in His bosom, all our wayward sins, and weaves them into the web of His providence, and contrives an order of things in which these evil elements may work and not destroy. Jealous of the Son's contact with sin, can we not, by a larger reach of the same morality, conceive that the Father's contact with, and permission of sin, is a profound mystery } Can you not see in this fact a greater hideousness in evil, since every day that it is permitted seems to impugn the justice or the power of Him who could abolish every sin, with the doers of it, by the breath of His mouth ? If so, let us at least assent to the position that a disease so utterly past our comprehension may require means to cure it that shock the ordinary conclusions of our conscience ; and that a wider view, if we could stand high enough to take it, might correct our crude impressions. 6. The doctrine of Atonement is many-sided, as all mysteries are when we try to express them in the forms of human thought. And no doctrine has suifered so much, on the part both of friend and foe, from a one- sided treatment. " It has been said, that this doctrine represents the Almighty as moved with fury at the insults offered to His Supreme Majesty, as impatient to pour forth His fury upon some being, as indifferent whether that being deserves it or not, and as perfectly appeased upon finding an object of vengeance in His own innocent Son. It has been said, that a doctrine which represents the Almighty as sternly demanding a full equivalent for that which was due to Him, and as receiving that equivalent in the sufferings of His Son, transfers all the affection and gratitude of the human race from an inexorable Being, who did not remit any part of His right, to another being who satisfied His claim. It has been said, that a translation of guilt is THE DEATH OF CHRIST. 187 impossible, because guilt is personal ; and that a doctrine which represents the innocent as punished instead of the guilty, and the guilty as escaping by this punish- ment, contradicts the first principles of justice, subverts all our ideas of a righteous government, and, by holding forth an example of reward and punishment dispensed by Heaven, without any regard to the character of those who receive them, does encourage men to live as they please."^ So the objections were summed up many years since, and there is little to alter after the recent controversy. Now, most of these objections have arisen from a crude and one-sided way of stating the doctrine on the part of its friends, and disappear when all the elements of the truth are taken in. Sin exists ; and therewith must enter a host of contradictions. Sin is that which turns the love of God into wrath ; not into the passion of wrath as men feel it, but to the intention of visiting with punishment. With sin, the face of God is altered against us and turned away. We know the theological objections to this mode of speaking, but there is no other open to us. God cannot change ; but yet His purpose towards us is changed in its workings by ourselves. And this enormous power all classes of Christians assign to sin, that it can dam up and divert the current of Divine love, that sets so strongly towards us. We are obliged to pick our expressions, whenever we touch the subject, lest sin itself should be laid to the account of Him who is the governor of the world, and suffers sin in the world. Sin turns love to wrath, the life of our souls to the death of them, our light to darkness, our free adherence to God to enmity against Him. From this view of sin, as something which is suffered to thwart the free workings of God's love, and which casts shadows as of the darkness of Gethsemane ^ Rev. Dr. Hill's Lectures, b. iv., ch. 3, quoted by Dr. Candlish. THE DEATH OF CHRIST. over all the scenes of history, where evil is suffered to come in and overcloud the good, there is no escape except in the pantheistic view, which reads all sin and evil as good in a transition state. And against that view conscience will ever protest ; for it is the best proof of our still retaining vestiges of good that conscience finds all the suggestions of physiological materialists, and of metaphysical pantheists, powerless to lull to sleep the sense of individual guilt, which yet she has so strong an interest in getting rid of. To remove sin and its consequences God sent His Son, the Eternal Word of the Father, to become truly man as He was truly God, and to mediate between men and Him for their relief. It is not true, whatever friend or foe shall say it, that God looked forth on His works to find some innocent man able and willing to bear the weight of His wrath, and found Jesus and punished Him. It is all false, because it is only half true. The Son of God took our nature upon Him, and therewith the sins of it, at least in their consequences ; not because He became one man among many, but because when God takes man's nature He still has divine right and power over all, and so manhood is taken into God. That sinfulness should press upon the Son of God, in any of its consequences, revolts us at first ; nay, it was intended to revolt us and thereby to secure our repent- ance : and jealous for His honour we protest that of sin He shall know nothing. Yes ; but we have been flaunting our sins in the face of the Father, to His displeasure, ever since we were born ; using the limbs He makes and keeps strong, for purposes of lust and violence ; quickening the pulses that He controls, with draughts of passionate excitement : in a word, sinning before God's face and under His hand. Is it less shocking that sin should be in the world which is God's, THE DEATH OF CHRIST. 1S9 than that it should be in the manhood which is Christ's? No : both before and after the incarnation sin is a con- tradiction ; and it is less difficult to conceive sin taken by the Son upon Himself for a time and by way of remedy, than it is to understand it as suffered by the Father always as a permitted destruction. The punish- ment in this transaction falls on the innocent. And we are told that such a doctrine is cruel, unjust, and useless : cruel, because it punishes where it could for- give ; useless, because it misses the true end of punish- ment in striking the guiltless, which can never deter from guilt ; and unjust, because it falls on one who knows no sin. But it is not cruel, if it thereby marks for ever the enormity of sin which needed such a sacri- fice ; it is not useless, if it changed the relation of man to God, and if in fact it has ever since been turning men to holiness and "drawing all men unto" Jesus ;^ and it is not unjust, because the Father's will to punish never outstripped the Son's to suffer, and because His death was a solemn offering of Himself in love, for man's redemption. Nor can there be any tendency to transfer from the severe Father to the loving Son the love we owe to both ; for the mode of our redemption was designed by both, and the Son adopts the Father's just sentence, and the Father sanctions the Son's loving self-sacrifice. Nor is there the least pretext for saying that this doctrine encourages men to live as they please, by holding forth the spectacle of rewards earned for those who do not deserve them and punishments warded off from those who deserve them well : since the blood of the Redeemer, all-sufficient as it is to cleanse the sins of the world, saves from wrath only those who repent and turn to Him. The power of the doctrine of the Atonement has been felt wherever the Gospel ^ John xii. 32. igo THE DEATH OF CHRIST. has come. It has carried comfort to sinners where nothing else could do so. Wherever the conviction of sin has been deepest, the power of the Cross has been most conspicuous ; and this in the face of objections which it was not left to modern times to suggest, against such a punishment for such a deliverer. Let it still be preached ; and our lesson from these controversies be that we preach the whole of it, so far as Scripture informs and our mind comprehends. Let us not so exalt the justice of God that we seem to record the harshness of a tyrant, and not the device of a Father seeking to bring His children back. Let us not so dwell on the love of Christ as to forget that one great moral purpose of this sacrifice was to set the mark of God's indignation upon sin. Let us not so offer the benefits of the Cross to our people as to lose sight of it as a means of their crucifying their own flesh and dying to their own sins. He bare our sins in His own body on the tree ; He is our ransom, our propitiation ; He is made sin for us ; because God is just. He laid down His life for the sheep, out of love, and God so loved the world that He gave Him for this labour ; because God is love : and we are to run with patience the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus the Author and Finisher of our faith ; because the work of justice and love has restored us to our position of moral freedom and moral life, and we must live as the redeemed servants of our Lord. III. GOD EXISTS GOD EXISTS. The Power that brought into existence a world that seems to us full of beauty and purpose, and a race of men capable of thought and of worship, and of a law of duty, is a Power that possesses thought and wisdom, and that does not regard with indifference the actions of men. Such is the thesis of the present paper ; and I regard it as equivalent to the statement that God is a personal Being, and not an impersonal force. The word " personal" will seldom be employed, because it is desirable to avoid any term which might give rise to a verbal dispute, in the narrow limits of an address like this. The one question to which I invite your atten- tion is this : Ought we to allow our minds to connect with the beauty of nature and with the symmetry of nature's laws, and with the dictates of conscience, the thought of a Being who has caused all these ; or ought we to seek nothing beyond the facts themselves, and to dismiss all thought of a wise and loving Being whom we have not seen, as unscientific, and as belonging to the vague region of metaphysics ? All will admit that mankind has shown itself religious, Man and man alone is a religious animal. The exceptions alleged are these : that some savages are so low in condition that they do not seem capable of worship, the condition of the few who are in this plight being miserable to the last degree ; and in the O 194 GOD EXISTS. second place, that Buddhism, a system embracing millions of votaries, is an atheistic system. But as to the savage, it may be observed that the statement seems to be that men who have lost all the worth and dignity of men in other things have parted with religion too, and, so far, this goes to confirm the view that men are religious, if the less they are men the less they are religious. And as to the much more difficult problem of Buddhism, it may be said that Cakya-Mouni, the founder of that profound system, taught that men should die to all worldly interests — to pain and joy and love and life — and thus attain Nirvana, annihilation — and that this involved a withdrawal from God also and a dying to God ; since how could man hope to attain Nirvana so long as the potent motive of religion was left active in his heart .'' Of Buddha you must say that, in abdicating manhood and all human interests, he abdicated the thought of God : as of the savage you say that, being below the level of manhood, he had not attained to manhood's privilege of worshipping God. Neither of these exceptions prevents us from saying that man is the religious animal, and that the more vigorous the manhood of any tribe or nation, the more marked is the part that religion plays in its action and destiny. Many of the accounts of the origin of this belief are framed to detract from the marvel of this universal impression. " Primus in orbe deos fecit tinior," says Lucretius. " But who," says Lichtenberg, " implanted this overmastering fear.?" And how can fear of the gods have made the gods that it presupposes .-• To hide from the thunder when it seems to shake the very heavens, to keep close to the shore in tempests, and to be wary and brave against an enemy in battle, these are natural impulses or circumspect precautions ; but to pro- GOD EXISTS. 195 pitiate Jove because of thunder, or Neptune against the storm at sea, is different in kind. It goes beyond the things it sees, to some Hving powers supposed to produce them. That is exactly the point that constitutes a religion. To bend in terror before the lightning flash is one thing ; to assign it to a potent being that no one has seen is a further step of thought. Experience does not warrant that further step ; but yet the mind does not hesitate to take it. " Fear first made gods ;" this cannot be exact. Fear does not make : it is fear of what is made. The mind conceives gods, and then fears them. Some one tells us that that which we wonder at in' nature is force : another says it is will^ a third calls it nature. But force that is not the force of something or of some person, is an incomplete concep- tion ; and we know no zvill that is not some one's will ; and as for nature, the fancies of men were never content until they had peopled nature with gods. Nymphs were in every fountain ; and every gentle breeze that blew breathed from the syrinx of the god Pan ; and no storm swept through the woodland that did not suggest the wild hunts and dances of the Satyrs. Observe, then, the first point that appears to be gained. Man is religious, and needs no help in arriving at the belief that something divine exists. And when thinkers, believing that this kind of conception is not for man's good, invite him to substitute something else, called force, or will, or universe, we feel that these ideas must have something behind them : they are not final. The new conception which is meant to be the background of all our thoughts proves to be a thin screen through which the awful shadow appears of Him whom we seek to know. Another remedy has been devised to save men the trouble of believing. It is that of askinsf them not to 196 GOD EXISTS. deal with metaphysical problems at all. The study of facts, the facts of nature, is the sufficient and satisfac- tory occupation of the human mind ; what lies beyond is hopeless of approach ; for its study we must desert the sure rules of experience and of science, and adopt methods which are no methods. " Let us then," says Science, " do our day's work here honestly and well, and take no account of the wages, if any, nor of the honour, if any, nor of the question whether the spirit that we employ is eternal or ephemeral. The proper study of mankind is facts ; and there are no means of reaching facts except through the senses. Here let us rest, seeking nothing beyond : for doubt and danger lie in the further region." The defect of this philosophy is that it is an artificial limitation of the powers and instincts of man, to which mankind can never be expected to submit. To see on the horizon of life great realities, for the search after which some of the noblest of men have set out, leaving all other aims, is to conceive the wish that we too should essay the same problems and seek the solution of the same mysteries. Our methods may be bad ; but we must employ such as we possess. Our labour may be in vain ; but where would have been the thought of the world, and where would science herself have been, if a timorous appre- hension of waste had kept her from research .-' Nor need we be reminded that when science holds her carnival in this country once every year, that time, consecrated to the exact study of laws, is usually marked by a sudden revival of metaphysical controversy, and from the chair of the president, answered by echoes from all pulpits, resounds the world-old controversy about divine truths ; — of fate and freedom, of creation and development, of the soul's dependence on matter or independence of it, of the purpose of God, of the power GOD EXISTS. 197 of prayer, of the boundaries of knowledge ; and all the old vehemence is there, and much of the old argument which the Greeks bequeathed us. Man's nature has not altered much, and he will not accept limitations and re- strictions on his knowledge. He will grapple with hard things ; he will put forth vague hands into the region that may seem darkest; and the harder the task and the darker the outlook, the more earnestly will he strive and peer. Here let us sum up what we have gained so far. Man is prone to seek some knowledge of God ; and whether this was given him as an intuition or is worked out by a course of reasoning we need not for our present purpose enquire. We see, too, that some at least of the attempts to substitute another notion for that of God, or to restrain the mind from thinking of God, fail in that they are incomplete, and only stimulate the enquiry that they are meant to restrain. Let us now proceed to examine one or two of the lines of thought in which light is thrown upon the nature of God, I. The study of final causes has fallen lately into great disrepute, and not without some reason. All things are created with a purpose, an object ; but we are not bound to know and define the purposes of every- thing. If science is forced upon this attempt, she is likely to fall into mistakes and absurdities. Physical science has long since broken with the doctrine of final causes on this account. Lucretius denied it ;^ Spinoza dismisses it as a figment of the imagination ;^ Kant describes it as an argument entitled to great respect as the oldest, the clearest, and the most suitable to the human mind,^ but he denies its cogency as a demon- stration. J iv. 8^5. .< AT-i JNil natum est in corpore, ut uti Possemus, sed quod natum est, id procieat usum." 2 Ethics, Part I., Appendix. 3 Critique of Piwe Reason. 198 GOD EXISTS. The world is full of facts which, in the case of any human works of like kind, would be conclusive evidence of an intelligent maker : and therefore the mind hastens to the conclusion that intelligence is at work here. Such marks of design are very numerous ; they extend over long times ; they are found equally in the most vast and in the minutest phenomena. For the fulfil- ment of these apparent purposes the wills of men and the facts of nature are bent and overruled in a wonder- ful degree. If it could be shown that there is no being in ex- istence to whom this work of wise design could be attributed, then we might be bound to mistrust our own inferences, and to seek some other hypothesis than that of an intelligent Creator. As this cannot be shown, and as no one denies that it is possible that God exists, then the attraction in our minds between the idea of God and the intelligence that presides in creation is so powerful, that we shall not hesitate to attribute the creation to God, and to admit that His work as Creator is a just title to our admiration and our love. But in deciphering the characters in which God has written His purpose on the ancient page of the world's history, we must be cautious not to attribute to Him our own limited views and partial fancies. With that one caution I believe that the argument from design is just as powerful to persuade as it has ever been, and deserves a consideration as careful. That which brought it into just disrepute was, that people spoke of the creation as if it were all made for man's convenience and profit ; and dreamed not that those things which man found so much to his advantage could have any other use in creation except to subserve his wants. This complacent egotism was capable of an easy answer both by argu- ment and by ridicule : it was answered by both. If the GOD EXISTS. 199 cinchona-tree was created for the cure of men's agues and fevers, what was its use when it waved through centuries, unknown and unvalued, until the Jesuits found out its healing power, whilst the men that it might have cured continued to quake under their ailments ? Fenelon, in his beautiful treatise, says that the fleece of the sheep is a superfluity that invites man to shear it every year, and notes with satisfaction that the animals which man slays for food are far more fruitful than the wild beasts which he cannot use ; we kill many sheep and oxen and few lions, yet there are far more sheep and oxen than there are lions. " Man," says Gothe, " is naturally disposed to consider himself as the centre and the object of all creation, and to regard all the creatures that surround him as ordained to serve his personal profit. He gets into his possession all the animal and vegetable kingdoms ; he devours them, and glorifies God whose fatherly goodness has prepared the table for his feast. He takes the milk from the cow, and the honey from the bee, and the fleece from the sheep ; and because he uses these animals to his profit, he imagines that they have been created only for his use. He cannot conceive that the least blade of grass was created for any purpose but for him," The laughing comment of Montaigne on that kind of argument has had its weight ; he describes a humble goose as using the same argument, and assigns to man his place in nature as that of sheltering and feeding geese. ^ Perhaps, after all, not use but beauty and harmony are the chief ends of created things. We may one day understand that already one great end of creation was answered when " God saw that it was good." All created things are ends as well as means. The fragrant rose, the leaping brook, the spotted leopard, are^ because it is ^ Janet, Causes Finales. 1876, GOD EXISTS. good that they should be ; and though no man shall ever inhale the perfume of the flower, or drink of the brook in the way, or possess the flecked and glossy skin — they shall not have been made in vain. How, then, does it stand with the argument from design at present .'' Science tells us that the earth was once a globe of white fire, without life upon it of plant or beast. Long ages passed over : it became a dwelling for Homer and Aristotle, for Dante and Shakspeare. As no one alleges a change of purpose in the world's upbuilding, we must assume that in that liquid ball of scathing fire all the beauty of nature, all noble deeds and great thoughts of mankind, and mankind itself, were potentially contained. That was the fiery bud, this is the expanded flower. There was in that no life of plant or animal, no wise discourse, no moral order ; and yet the germ of them all must have been there, undiscernible. Geology writes, as well as she can, the first chapter of the account of that growth. Then history takes up the wondrous tale — history, which Augustine calls a beautiful poem, decked out by God's own hand for man — the most wonderful epic of creation, full of grand surprises, of patient waiting, of skilful construction, of glorious adornment. Each stage of growth was wonderful, until the next surpassed it. Each had in itself some completeness, yet each laid the foundation for higher forms of beauty and for fresh races of living beings. Of the cause of this growth there are but two opinions, to speak broadly and roughly: one of which is, that a Being of infinite wisdom con- trived and effected it ; and the other is, that it evolved itself with no thought or contrivance at all, and that the thought that can understand and appreciate its marvels came first into being when man appeared — that, in a word, there is no conscious thought or wisdom but in man. GOD EXISTS. Now I will ask you to give your attention and to decide between these two. Thought and all that it includes place man at the head of creation, and consti- tute his true nobility. A thinking man, as Pascal finely says,^ amid the brute and senseless forces of nature, feels superiority to those forces even whilst they crush him ; for he can understand them and think them. Is he, then, the only thinking being that exists .-* Did something or other — call it fate, call it nature, call it energy — make thought, having itself no thought .'' Did the blind make eyes, and the deaf ears .'' Were con- science and duty evolved by themselves, without assist- ance, out of seething slime ? I am challenged to demonstrate the contrary. From this one argument of the wisdom of creation I confess I cannot demonstrate. There was Kant's success. He proved that the argu- ment from design could not amount to a demonstration. But there, too, his success ended. We are free to decide what is probable, what is practical. Well, it is not probable that the world was prepared for life by a power that knew not life ; for thought, by a power that could not think ; for law and duty and love of God, by a force to which those ideas are as alien as they are to the weathered brows of the stony Memnon whose sight- less balls pretend to look over the Egyptian waste. Did I say probable .'* Here is one of the incon- sistencies of the modern scientific method. Those who reject the conception of God sometimes accept this mechanical view of the universe, which is not only not an induction from facts, but is so strangely at variance with them that the mind can hardly get the idea before it in a shape for judging whether it is probable or not. It requires a special metaphysical training to form a notion of life from the lifeless — conscience from mechan- ^ Fensees, Edition of Astie, ii. p. 177. GOD EXISTS. ism — thought from that which cannot think. If experi- ence would lend us first some facts to make this miracle conceivable ; if yonder windmill, trusted with corn, would grind out diamonds and rubies ; if canvas, woven in a loom, rolled forth with Raffaelle's pictures covering it ; in a word, if we could be children again, and revel in fairy tales, the last new tale, that a great blind idol changed into this wonderful world, would be more easy to accept. But science is especially severe on all such tales. All new and gratuitous assumption she holds in disesteem. She holds it matter of conscience not to go beyond the data of observation. This is not only not observed, but it is hard even to be conceived, and utterh' at variance with all that we have observed. And what would be the practical effect .-* If thought is the highest thing that man alone has thought, man is a god in himself. The poet, borne down by the mystery of creation, says, — " I falter where I firmly trod, And fall with all my weight of cares Upon the great world's altar stairs That slope through darkness up to God." Arise, O friend, and do not consider it so seriously. The altar-stairs are but a part of the machinery ; all is blind but you. Ask no counsel save of your own mind ; there is no other mind to dominate, to lead, to comfort you. You — you alone — exist. Tread firmly once more. The blind clod of earth on which you stand, you may spurn it : it has nothing Divine. It is only a round pedestal for your Divine foot, king of creation — for so you are ; ruling it with the unique sceptre of your thought. Oh misery ! I cannot play the god. You have brought us round at last to that to which all misbelief does lead : Man " as God, sitteth in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God " (2 Thess. ii. 4). GOD EXISTS. 203 II. Obliged by the limits of time to select and to abridge, I will only speak in detail of one other of the arguments for the personal existence of God. It is not difficult to read the general purpose that pervades the government of the world. The race of man is to be preserved, order and mutual love are to prevail, the laws of nations are to be framed for this end, arts are to be cultivated which will make the world more fit for man's habitation and will remove obstacles out of the way. A man born into this system, conceives the wish to act so that he shall further, and not hinder, the intentions of the divine government under which he lives. This we call the law, or principle, of duty. It seems to make no difference as to the truth of this conception, that it is arrived at gradually, that it is dependent on public opinion in some measure, that it makes mistakes about what is right and wrong. I do not pretend that it needs no education, nor that it is unerring in its deci- sions. I only say that men in all ages try to act according to their notions of right, and thus become a law to themselves. Now the more we think about it the more we perceive, that a law coercive of our will, and regulating our life, must be something more than a mere balance of calculations. Right and wrong are so in themselves ; if a heroic enterprise or a life of self- denial is right, it is right as such. A sudden change in public opinion would not make it other than it was before the change took effect. Christianity, the religion of all the highest nations of the modern world, is founded on a life, and that life was founded on the maxim, " I must work the works of Him that sent Me, while it is day." We take no advantage of this at present, except to show how the world has been able to understand and revere a life devoted to the highest duty. Now the law of duty can be no higher than the lawgiver 204 GOD EXISTS. that prescribes it. If, as some say, there is no right or wrong, but what is pleasurable to the enlightened mind, or none but what is useful to the community, the standard of conduct and of aim will fluctuate with the supposed pleasure or advantage. A good man could not hold his own against the ridicule and the example of others, against the hindrances that nature Opposes to him, but for the faith in some being beyond him and above him, to whose perfect nature he draws nearer by his endeavours to love and obey His will. Thus conscience is a witness to a higher power, and that higher power must also know and observe us, otherwise it would cease to give us any motive for good ; it must also be able in some way to reward us for the effort we make to draw near it : in short, that power is God, and the conscience of man bears witness, by its struggles and its judgments on itself, to the truth that God exists. I do not pretend with Kant that this is a demonstration, though it is remarkable that he leaves standing this mode of proof when all the rest are laid low before his criticism. I do not like the word demonstration as applied to religion. Conscience is not a demonstration of God ; it is something better and higher — a way to God. " If any man is willing to do His will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God." It may be said of all the arguments for the exist- ence of a living God who knows, sees, and loves us, that they are all good ; but that they are not separate demonstrations. The universal consent of mankind, the need of some end of the chain of causes, the abhor- rence of an infinite series, the signs of love and wisdom and goodness in creation, the law of duty, the idea in our minds of an absolute eternal being, on whom may rest all that we see that is relative and changing, all GOD EXISTS. 205 these make up the bundle of rods which no metaphysi- cal strength can break up whilst they are united ; but which never should be offered as separately indestruc- tible. These so-called proofs are rather descriptions of what the human mind knows already about God. Even that which is called the ontological proof, the logical fault of which is so obvious, is but a too formal expres- sion of an intuitive conviction. " Our idea of God includes all perfections, now existence is necessary for perfection — therefore God exists." Anselm and Des- cartes knew the formal fault of that argument as well as you and I. But it is not with this idea as with others. The mind, when it recognises the idea, knows that it must have its counterpart in fact. The fact that it is within us, joined to the impossibility of having learnt it from experience, persuades us that it was given for a purpose. God exists ; and if so, to Him must belong the wisdom that we see in the world, and the law that is written in our conscience. God exists ; and from His hand must have commenced the motion that has caused the universe. He exists ; and the mind, tracing back the chain of causation, stops in its search when it reaches Him — the First Cause. Thus this idea gathers to itself the scattered lights that flash across the spirit to show it God. God exists ; but who is He, and what is His power ? He must be wise and good, for He made the world and all that there is in it of beauty and of love. He must be Judge of all the earth, for already, in the sphere of conscience, He judges men. He must be Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end ; for in the facts that I see there are no signs that the world is eternal, but many proofs that it is tending to rest and to an end. Thus the vaunted proofs of God's existence, of the Schools, deposed from the posi- tion of demonstrations, have still an important place : 2o6 GOD EXISTS. they help us to think out with clearness the common- sense intuitions of mankind upon this subject. It is sometimes made a reproach to us that these theistic ideas are only popular notions or impressions, and are unworthy to be considered on that ground. But if science is bound to study facts, it must be a fault in her that she despises any facts: and the common- sense view of the world about religion is well entitled to be weighed, and the more so because it is common or general If it were only true that the nations of the world believe in God and have some forms of worship, it would be noteworthy. But the religion that they profess reaches much deeper than that : it is inwoven with the life of the peoples, it is the strength of their strength, it is the cause of their activity. There is a short treatise by De Laveleye ^ on the future destiny of Catholic nations, in which the writer, a most compe- tent witness, tries to measure the future of the peoples of the world by their religious condition, and shows how their position, not merely as to piety and internal con- duct, but as to prosperity and power and influence in the commonwealth of the world, is determined by their religious life. The philosophic historian comes round at last, in other words, to the old prophetic utterance, " Not by might, nor by power, but by My Spirit, saith the Lord of Hosts " (Zech. iv. 6). And will you then pluck them out, these oldest, deepest-rooted impressions of the mind, which have been at the bottom of all great deeds, and which have lent intensity to all the fiercest struggles of our race 1 Will you disregard these com- mon-sense ideas which now, in the full nineteenth century, with all material improvements and enlighten- ments, beat in the pulses of the people, and mix with ^ Le Protestaiitisme et le Catholicisme dans /curs Rapports avec la Liberie et la Prosperite des Peiiples. Brussels, 1876. GOD EXISTS. 207 the air they breathe, which excite when they are men- tioned, an interest more intense, and passions more fierce, than any other topic ? I venture to tell you that this shall never be. Nay : it is answered, there is no inten- tion to pluck them out, but to replace them with more scientific views. We have glanced over that modern armoury of scientific views ; and of its weapons we make bold to say, that they offend by the very defects they were intended to remedy. They deal in ideas such as Science should not originate and cannot verify. Infinite time, illimitable space, eternal matter : " Where learnt you that heroic measure .-'" Science has never seen the infinite or eternal. These are not inductions ; they are metaphysical idols, and Science, if true to her own principles, should have gathered up her skirts in order not to touch them. Common sense has its defects : but surely it is not a commendation of a philosopy that we must part with the results of common sense when we approach its gates. The riddle of creation may seem hard, but the interpretations that are offered us are harder far. Change, it seems, comes from the unchangeable, corruption from the imperishable, motion from absolute rest, life from the dead, sense from the senseless, purpose from causes that act blindly, intelli- gence from that which has none, spirit from what is no spirit. We cannot learn these new conceptions, nor abandon what we must resign to accept them. For the sacrifices that we must make are immense. It seemed to us that we saw God's purpose sweeping over the creation, as the wind is seen ruffling its path over some calm summer sea. Here a young man, with great powers, is bending them all to the attainment of a safe hearth and home, where he may know the sweetness of domestic love. There a young mother, turning aside from the brilliant circle which she adorns, and unfasten- 2o8 GOD EXISTS. ing the jewel from her neck and casting down the shimmering robe, sits a patient watcher at a sick babe's cradle ; for indeed that little cradle holds her star of life, her hope, her deepest joy. We really thought that God had ordered this that the world might still be peopled ; and we ventured to admire the loving wisdom that had adorned with love and sweetness the hard task of rearing a fresh generation to succeed us : so that it seemed the best end of life to an ambitious youth to enclose for himself, within that sweet hedge called home, the treasure of wife and child ; so that it seemed sweetest to a mature woman to focus all her powers of thought, affection, and devotion, on a helpless creature that repaid her motherly care with vague touches and some rudiments of a smile. There was no purpose at all in this. Wonderful it may be ; but it is only the grist of the inexorable mill of destiny, grinding as it may. Prayer, too, must be hushed ; and praise is foolish, and intercession utterly vain. Yet, in the last thirty-eight years, one English county has spent more than two millions sterling " in building fanes of fruit- less prayer ;" and now must learn that they are fruit- less. Duty, too, must part with her best sanctions : the poor martyr, upborne at the supreme hour of tor- ment by the vision of blessedness ; the friend of men, pursuing some good object, and schooling himself for the sake of it " to scorn delights and live laborious days ;" the vision and the good object are delusions. And the future life, to which we look, for which we long for the redress of this one, science refuses the seal of her sanctions to this too. The personality, the unity, will be finished at death, and what remains of us will be sealed up in the earth, or blown about in dust, or fixed out of the air into fresh life and vegetation. What a sacrifice of the old for the sake of what kind of GOD EXISTS. 209 new ! No worship, no religious duty, no future hope, no providence, no God ! Preach this new gospel, or pass this death-sentence, on some other race of men made with different souls from ours. We have gone much astray : but we are men still, and when God drave us from His presence He did not leave us quite without a witness in us : He did not leave us quite without His law in our souls. In order to unteach us so much, you must pluck out soul and all. Pardon us, O Lord, the speaker and the hearers, if in thinking of Thee and Thy presence we have allowed our thoughts or words to offend Thee. We know that Thou livest, and art mighty to save. In many a former age men's thoughts have wandered from Thee, and they have denied Thee or forgotten ; and yet they have returned to Thee again. For the soul of man that came out from Thee never has found true peace but in returning to Thee and resting in Thee. For Thou art the Living God and steadfast for ever, and Thy Kingdom that which shall not be destroyed, and Thy dominion shall be even unto the end. IV. THE WORTH OF LIFE THE WORTH OF LIFE. The course of human thought is like that of the storm upon the sea : it seems to move in a straight Hne of progress, and it really sweeps round and round in eddying circles. At present, as at some former periods of history, the wind sets from the quarter of science, and men turn with impatience from speculative philo- sophy. The material world is the great object of study, and the methods of study are thought sufficient if they are adjusted to that object. The sum of the natural forces being constant, incapable of addition as of loss, there would seem to be no room for a human will ; and the laws of these forces can be studied in the phenomena themselves, and therefore do not re- quire that we should seek the first cause of the chain of causes, nor the absolute ground of what is pheno- menal and relative. The results of this philosophy, presented in the vulgar tongue, are that man cannot know anything about God, and that if he thinks he has any power of free moral action, he is much mis- taken. It is worthy of note that this line of specula- tion, which seems, in depriving men of their freedom of action in this life, and in cutting off all speculations about another life, to abase them to an almost brutal level, has its place in an age when wealth is great, and arts have triumphed over natural obstacles, and luxu- 214 THE WORTH OF LIFE. rious living has been carried farther, and is more general, than in any previous time. Under these conditions there have sprung up in many minds a strange, profound discontent and dis- couragement, which, whatever be the causes of them — and I will not pretend to have explored them all — are spreading among the cultivated classes, and threaten to exercise a deep influence on the coming generation. Such feelings have existed before in the world's his- tory. But they have been associated either with re- ligion or with some historical crisis. The peculiarity of their present development is that for the first time 'hey have taken their place in philosophy ; and are beholden neither to the force of religious aspirations after a higher world and life, nor to the storm and stress of a trying period, for the influence that they have obtained. I will sketch, in a few words, the opinions to which I refer, as they appear in the writings of Schopenhauer and Hartmann, without attempting, in so brief a space, to discriminate between these two thinkers, in their many points of difference. When the balance of pleasures and pains in life is struck, it is greatly on the side of pains. The profound and incurable melancholy of life is written upon every face, even upon the aspect of nature itself. If a man were asked whether he would accept a renewal of his waning life, upon condition that he was to enter upon some lower form of being, as that of the horse or the dog, he would refuse the offer, because he knows the weak points of that lower form of existence, and no illusion stands in the way. He ought to be prepared to make the same answer as to accepting a renewal of his own life, for he would know, if he were a fair judge, that his past days have been full of profound sadness and melancholy. But here several illusions come in, and THE WORTH OF LIFE. 215 hinder a true survey of the past. In the first place, sorrows are readily forgotten, and the hopes of youth from the future expel the recollections of severe pain and suffering in the past. A certain pride forbids us to admit a failure. Moreover, nature means to pre- serve us until our task is done, and lulls our discontent to sleep with the illusions which she breathes over us. We do not, from whatever cause, admit that our life has been a failure, that a veil of sorrow hangs over it all, and that deliverance from it would be a sweet rest. Leibniz and others have endeavoured to show that evil is purely negative — the want of good ; but this might be said more truly of the pleasures of life. They are a mere negation or cessation of pain. Plea- sures are generally below our expectation, whilst our pains are above it. The wretchedness of the people, to which much attention is now directed, lies in this discovery — that all the strife against misery can only procure a cessation of pain. Their misery is thus in- creased by their intelligence. There was a time when the wretchedness, ten times greater than at present, was borne in silence, because unconsciously. At every turn we are the subjects of illusions ; the man of thought and reflection can see that he is made the puppet or the instrument of a greater purpose. For this the individual life must be prolonged, and the victim of destiny, so to speak, must not be allowed to step aside out of the course, and to escape out of his profound disappointment by an act of suicide, or by the ascetic self-destruction of a Cakya Mouni, until his task is done and his work can be dispensed with. Accordingly, he feeds contentedly upon petty plea- sures, and thinks the feast divine. He forgets his dis- appointments, and dissembles his misery. Nature intends him to found a home, wherein to rear those 2i6 THE WORTH OF LIFE. that are to take his place after his own share of work is completed ; and as this task requires long years of unselfish effort from which many would shrink, nature surrounds it with the most elaborate network of illu- sions. The heart bows down with chivalrous devotion, as before the peerless queen of humanity, in the pre- sence of the one, in whom the rest of the world sees nothing quite divine, and the touch of the dimpled, waxen fingers of the babe draws from every fibre of the mother's being, as from a well-tuned lute, a music too sweet to be compared to any earthly strain. At the bed of a sick child the most frivolous mother becomes fervid in her devotion. Casting aside the bracelets from her wrists and the tiara from her brow, and letting fall the robe of silk, all so carefully endued but two hours since, she passes without a thought of reluctance into the mere nurse. All this time, father and mother, and child alike, seen without the glamour of love by the calm eyes of bystanders, are of very ordinary mould ; but each bystander suspects that in his own home he owes something to the same glamour, and is therefore indulgent to the common illusion. Then, as to the freedom of the will, without which there could be no morality, there is an illusion here. A man says : " I can turn to the left or to the right if I will. When I have turned to the right, I know that I could have turned to the left if I had willed to do so." This is true, no doubt ; but the difficulty begins higher up, with those causes working obscurely within you, which have already decided what your will in this matter shall be, and which forbade you effectually to turn to the left, although it was true that your limbs would have obeyed your will by turning to the left, if you had not been bound to act otherwise by a secret train of causes. Life being a matter of practice and THE WORTH OF LIFE. 217 not of metaphysics, we are ready to seize on the fact that we can act what we will, and are very reluctant to go through the hard reasoning which tells us that our will is but the outcome of causes hidden within us, which are as inexorable as the path of the stars. Schopenhauer lays stress upon the will being in its natiwe free, whilst as a phenomenon it is bound ; which means, whatever else it may mean, that our apparent acts are all bound hand and foot ; and the occult metaphysical consolation which may lie in that phrase, " in its nature free," will not be of much practical use. Intelligence, then, reveals to us that the world which is our scene of action is illusory ; that every effort of will frustrated is a pain ; that life is full of such frus- trations ; that the affections are the seat of illusion ; and that freedom of action has no existence. " Count o'er the joys thine hours have seen, Count o'er thy days from anguish free, And know, whatever thou hast been, 'Tis something better not to be." — {Byron.) It is not alone in man and his fortunes that this pre- dominance of misery is seen. Nature is full of it. In the American forest — so rich with all life and beauty — the clinging lia7ia strangles the noblest trees, and the clicsia, growing on the tree itself, smothers and destroys it. Storm and blight sweep off the marks of cultivation in our fairest fields. The locust in his march leaves a broad track of ruin behind him. At this moment we are trembling for the advent of a little striped beetle, before whom one of the staple articles of food for the whole nation is expected to go down. Warfare every- where ; the very plants war against each other like Russian and Turk. In the animal kingdom war is universal. The bird impales upon a thorn alive the insects that it may want within the next few days. 2i8 THE WORTH OF LIFE. The wall-wasp brings to each of its grubs ten or twelve little caterpillars, wounded, but living, to be eaten one each day, until the grub passes into the state of a chrysalis. In a vast district of Africa the cattle cannot live because of the Tsetse, an ordinary looking fly. " No one," says Perthes, " has yet attempted to bring before the mind of the present age a lively picture of the horrors of nature, and the cruelty of her operations; and to show that they who would infer the existence of God, from the goodness and wisdom therein displayed, must needs fail unless they would be satisfied with mere rhetoric." But why, you will ask, should these painful and dispiriting views be brought before us .'' They are drawn from exotic systems that will never find root upon English ground. Let Schopenhauer and Hart- mann air their ideas in a country where wild ideas are plentiful as wild blackberries ; and let us go on in our own line of practical progress. My answer must be that, in choosing for my subject to-night the Worth of Life, I was met by the growing prevalence of a so-called pessimism. The principal work of Schopenhauer, published just 58 years ago, lay dead upon the shelves of its publishers for a score of years. It is now widely known, and that kind of second publication which quickens a still-born book into an authority cannot be the work of the author. It is a measure of the public interest in the subject. Of Hartmann's work the fate is still more remarkable. He is now only 35 years old. His work was published eight years ago, and it has now reached its seventh edition — a rare distinction in a country where scholars and thinkers are too much engaged in printing their own books to buy those of others. A whole literature has gathered round these two important works. Mr. THE WORTH OF LIFE. 219 Sully, in his volume on Pessimism, has lately brought the knowledge of them nearer to us ; and M. Nolen has translated Hartmann into French. The cyclones of human thought commence by an agitation in the upper strata of the air ; and there is no great rashness in sup- posing that a system which is occupying so great a share of attention amongst the leaders of thought, will soon penetrate to lower regions. But this is not all. The sense of despair is oftener associated with well-being and prosperity than with times of struggle, even the sorest. It was a king who said, "I the Preacher was king over Israel in Jerusalem I have seen all the works that are done under the sun ; and, behold, all is vanity and vexation of spirit. That which is crooked cannot be made straight ; and that which is wanting cannot be numbered."^ In the story of Cakya Mouni, the founder of Buddhism, it is a prince of heroic achieve- ments in the games, of great culture, beloved of a fair wife, heir to a sure throne, upon whom the sense of the pain and misery and futility of the world breaks with full force, and drives him from riches, and wife, and crown. In the midst of the prosperity of the age of Augustus, when the great empire threatened to fall asunder by its own weight, a strange, restless lassitude fell upon Roman society. " That extravagant expense, those wild debaucheries, that research for comfort, that delicate taste, that refinement of luxury, that excess of every kind, to which an unlimited prosperity tempts, are not only a public danger, they become from time to time an intolerable fatigue, and for those who can no longer dispense with them they become at last as painful as they are ruinous."'^ The author whom I quote goes on to describe the restlessness which is one of the com- ^ Eccles. i. 2 Gaston Boissier, Religion Homaine, i. 243. THE WORTH OF LIFE. monest symptoms of this ailment, and which he finds in the Augustan age. But these conditions, the luxury, and the extravagance, and the self-pampering, the rest- lessness that scatters our people over every hill-top, and through every difficult district, all meet in us, at present. If the weariness of life has not reasoned itself out into a philosophy amongst us, the soil in which such a philosophy might grow is at least prepared. Add to this, the promises of much social progress that have been held out to us by science, by political economy, promises doomed in a large measure to fail of perform- ance ; add, besides, the consideration that for some time past a materialistic philosophy has prevailed, of which it may be said that it reduces the world and even man to as very a machine as those which you employ in your own workshops, and that the reality of man's will is formally denied ; and it is difficult to doubt that we are preparing for ourselves, one way and another, a condition of profound discouragement. In France it already pre- vails. Its works of fiction from Balzac to Zola are, with many bright exceptions, a cynical display of human follies, crimes, and miseries — drawn without love, with- out a tear of sympathy, without the flush of indignation, without a ray of hope. It is to this condition of the mind that one would be glad to give some word of succour. And there is a need. Worn out with theories of necessity, of mate- rialism, which not only claim to explain nature but to replace all other philosophy, many are inclined to give up all search for truth, and to limit their self-education to the pursuit by which they win their bread. Low aims bring low performance, and the happiness of man depends far more upon what he aspires to than upon what he achieves. First, then, it is dangerous to estimate the value of THE WORTH OF LIFE. life by what are usually called pleasures and pains. The system of Schopenhauer is built upon the argu- ment that as all life is an effort, and all effort in its nature is painful, the pains of life must preponderate. But it would be more true to say that pleasure of some sort accompanies and completes all natural activity, and that there is no real pleasure that is not part of an active condition. A man who finds himself in pleasant quarters, with all the means of indulgence at command, is smitten with a desire to climb a mountain, high, dangerous, almost inaccessible. His task commences at sunrise ; before it is half done he is forced to rest by the wayside, panting, exhausted, footsore, craving for water. Does it occur to him that he would have done well to have spent his hours lounging in a garden full of shade and breezes, in pleasant company or with a pleasant book, with a cunning draught for his thirst, and the accustomed incense rising from his lips in rings of smoke .■* No, he has chosen his own good, and a few passing inconveniences do not take it away from him. He knows that an effort such as he is making is a present delight, and will give material for a delightful retrospect. He knows that the other pleasures that he has put aside are sure to turn sour and corrupt from standing still. In short, from every effort that a man freely undertakes, he hopes for some satisfaction which, whether it is classed with what are usually called pleasures or not, must swell the balance of good. Activity is the cause of all the best satisfactions of life. What may be called the more active pleasures — I mean those on which the mind bestows more effort — are those which last the longest, which strengthen the nature, which bring no self-reproach ; whilst the less active, such as we consider mere indulgences, bring satiety, require to be stimulated with stronger doses of THE WORTH OF LIFE. provocation, and carry with them a sense of shame. The love of life, which persists even in the midst of deepest pain and degradation, is a wish to conserve our means of activity. Schopenhauer was bound by his own principles to seize the first opportunity that fairly offered of " shuffling off this mortal coil," and, indeed, his reasons for condemning suicide are lame and incon- sistent. The cholera came to Berlin : here was a door to nirvana — cessation of existence — open before him. He packed his portmanteau like the veriest optimist, and found in safer quarters renewed pleasure in the activity of denouncing all activity as pain. He is not the first philosopher who has refuted ambidando his own theories. History has nothing fairer to show us, nothing more ennobling, than the spectacle of some hero, charged with high duties, engrossing alike all the time and all the powers, borne down by age and suffering, able almost to number the sand -grains that yet remain in the hour-glass of life, yet striving, labour- ing, watching, as in days when there were youth and hope to hold up a guiding light on either hand. It is a brave spectacle, but surely not a spectacle of misery. Milton, describing to Cyriac Skinner his blindness, says : — " Yet I argue not Against Heaven's hand or will, nor bate a jot Of heart or hope ; but still bear up and steer Right onward. What supports me, dost thou ask ? The conscience, friend, to have lost them overplied In liberty's defence." I do not address you to-night as a theologian ; but no one doubts that the strength of Christianity in attract- ing the world lies in that self-denying Cross reared at the end of a vista of pain and sorrow. Then, when the pains were greatest, the love for man was also greatest ; THE WORTH OF LIFE. 223 and who would dare to say that the misery prevailed above the joy over a saved world ? If you shrink from that analysis, St. Paul has made it for you in his own case. He gives you a manly estimate of all that he has undergone, of the outcast position of the Apostles. But he tells you as plainly that joy and peace are consistent with such troubles. He does not whine for release, though the prize stands clear before him when his work shall be done. "What I shall choose I wot not. For I am in a strait betwixt two, having a desire to de- part, and be with Christ ; which is far better : neverthe- less to abide in the flesh is more needful for you."^ Upon the whole, it appears that in making the world the scene of our activity, the Creator opened out to us a field of enjoyment arising from, and part of, the activity itself, and that even serious annoyances and failures are not enough to deprive of this satisfaction. It may also be said that the higher and more engrossing the pursuit, the greater is its power to lift us over lower troubles ; so that a life might appear to be full of suffer- ing to careless eyes, which was, in fact, so filled with noble efforts for the general good that the sorrows went almost unperceived. In one point this new philosophy may happen to render great service. It presents to us a power external to us, guided by a far-seeing purpose, using men and things for that purpose, persuading and compelling them to take up even with delight and earnestness the pur- suits that are requisite for its end, and making pain seem pleasure, and sordid things seem lovely in our eyes, to induce us to persevere. The preservation of the man, the succession of the species, the progress of the race in knowledge and civilisation — all these we are doing, when we think we are only following our own ^ Phil. i. 22, 23. 224 THE WORTH OF LIFE. bent, and trying to make the most of our life. The picture which Von Hartmann draws of the marks of purpose in the world is very forcible ; his book rightly used is an armoury of arguments for design and final causes. No one discourses more eloquently of the eternal purpose that runs through the ages. But he calls his work TJie Philosophy of the Unconscious, and thus escapes from the recognition of this guiding intelligence as God. His own method of enquiry does not give him the means of affirming that the supreme intelligence is or is not "conscious;" for he draws all that he knows of the world from the impressions that it makes upon us, and this metaphysical nicety can certainly not be inferred from the phenomena of ex- perience. But supposing that there is some ground for saying that the divine intelligence is " unconscious " in the sense of having a different kind of knowledge from that of created human beings, the question is, as M. Janet puts it, whether the supreme intelligence is some- thing higher or lower than our consciousness. If lower, then the world is a mere machine, and could not be other than it is. Complaints against it, whether a philosopher or poet complain, are as foolish as the act of the infant who whips the floor that it falls down upon for hurting it. If, on the other hand, as Von Hartmann would probably admit, the supreme know- ledge is something far higher than our consciousness, then the protest of the pessimist is as impious as it is blind, for what is it but the outcry of the lesser intelli- gence against the greater ; of the narrow and limited against that whose experience is boundless as the eternity behind it, and whose foresight is unlimited as the eternity before .'' The only answer that it can receive is a command to wait ; for " now it sees through a glass darkly, but hereafter face to face." THE WORTH OF LIFE. 225 But I will take from this new philosophy so much as it is in a condition to prove, that a power greater than our own, and proceeding on the lines of a fixed plan, before which all our small plans are bent and wrought up into the greater purpose, exists in the world, and acts constantly with us and on us. By this light we can divide the acts of life into two kinds : those which are and those which are not in accord with the divine plan. Whether we are able to pursue this division into its details is another matter. There must be such a division in point of fact, and a life which con- sists in furthering the great plan will differ from one that is passed in preventing it, inasmuch as it is on the side of the eternal, and its work shall endure ; whilst the other is against the good, and shall be crushed as a mere impediment in the working out of the divine will. And when we are assured that the creation and progress of the race are the intention of the supreme will, we cannot doubt as to the broad and general lines of duty which tend to the furtherance of this great design. That a man should cultivate that part of him which he has as man, at the expense of the lower parts of him which he shares with the lower creatures, has been thought by M. Francisque Bouillier^ to constitute an intelligible and universal principle of duty. I do not feel content with this as complete ; but self-restraint, and thrift, and the pure and chaste home, and love and help to the weak, and national industry, and peace be- tween nations — all these are of God, for they are on the side of that great design which we read upon the world's record. To work for God, and no longer against Him, is more than a rule of life : it is an emancipation. Any life — the humblest — is dignified by it, and stamped with something divine. That I ^ Revue Philosophique. Q 226 THE WORTH OF LIFE. have power left me to act — that I know I am acting on the side of good — these are thoughts to dry up all hysterical tears from the cheek ; nay, they give strength to bear the real, as distinct from the ideal, sorrows of life. The sighing and the mourning over the hardness of our fate belong mainly to literature and to certain phases of life where there are many vague longings, and the path of duty has not been found ; but you cannot act and weep at the same time. The poet's words are trite by this time, but they are profoundly true : — " Not enjoyment and not sorrow Is our destined end or way ; But to act that each to-morrow Finds us further than to-day. Trust no future, howe'er pleasant ; Let the dead past bury its dead ! Act, act, in the living present. Heart within and God o'erhead." Our life is precious to us for the activity that we are capable of, and still more because that activity may be so adjusted as to give us the consciousness of acting in harmony with the Divine mind. There is yet a third condition : We must be free to act. That brilliant speaker, Professor Tyndall, lecturing at Birmingham the other day, adopted frankly the theory of necessity, and in the name of science dismissed free-will from all civilised society. To the obvious remonstrance of the murderer against his punishment, that we hang him for what he could not help, the Pro- fessor answers : " We entertain no malice against you, but simply with a view to our own safety and purifica- tion we are determined that you and such as you shall not enjoy liberty of evil action in our midst. You who have behaved as a wild beast, we claim the right to cage and kill you as we would a wild beast. You THE WORTH OF LIFE. 227 offend, because you cannot help offending, to the public detriment. We punish, because we cannot help punishing, for the public good." Whether such reason- ing would have a moral effect on a murderer or not, I will own that it carries no persuasion to me. You have no right to kill a man for doing what he could not help, simply because you dislike his ways, or because they threaten society. That is only answering murder by murder. On those terms one does not know where it may stop. It may be extended to bores. " You have bored me at my house and at my club ; you waste my time ; your opinions are antiquated, and therefore un- endurable ; you are of no use to anybody, and very much in the way of the spread of a refined materialism. * The public safety ' — (here I revert to the Professor's own words) — ' is a matter of more importance than the very limited chance of your moral renovation, while the knowledge that you have been hanged by the neck may furnish to other ' bores ' the precise motive that may hold them back.' " " But," says the unhappy bore, " by what right .''" "The reply is," says Professor Tyndall, " the right of society to protect itself against aggressive and injurious forces, whether they be bond or free, forces of nature or forces of man." Of course the neck of this bore is safe in the Professor's hands, who is much kinder than his own truculent logic. But the answer is — No responsibility, no guilt ; no guilt, no punish- ment ; punishment without guilt is blind revenge or warfare. Let not my hearers fear that I shall ask them at this late hour to join the select band of those that " Reasoned high Of providence, foreknowledge, will, and fate, Fixed fate, free-will, foreknowledge absolute ; And found no end, in wandering mazes lost." 228 THE WORTH OF LIFE. But the Times newspaper, in an admirable article on that lecture, showed that between the scientific portion and the metaphysical there was a wide differ- ence of treatment ; that the one rested on reasoning, and the other only on persuasion ; and I wish to illustrate that. The lecturer speaks of " the iron necessity seen everywhere reigning in physical science," an expression which goes far — very far, beyond the principle of the conservation of energy, that all the forces which make up any phenomenon are to be found in antecedent phenomena. It is one thing to say that what we see comes from a chain of causes ; it is another to say that all the causes at work in the past could not by other combinations have produced any- thing different from what we see. M. Cournot's specu- lations on chance are at least worthy of a careful con- sideration. He admits the strict dependence of each phenomenon upon its own line of causes, but doubts whether there is a necessary lateral connection between the various lines of causes. The strict succession of cause and effect being admitted in any given line, the intrusion of other causes belonging to some other line may not be actually necessary, and this gives a place for what we are used to call chance. " Thus," he says, " chance would not be, as is so often repeated, a phan- tom created by us to disguise our own ignorance from ourselves, nor an idea that has relation to the variable and always imperfect state of our knowledge, but is, on the contrary, the notion of a fact, true in itself, of the mutual independence of several series of causes and effects, which fortuitously concur to produce a given phenomenon, to bring about a given encounter, or to determine a given event." I do not venture to say that this independence can be proved ; but I venture to say that it has not been disproved, whilst the dis- THE WORTH OF LIFE. 229 proof of it is indispensable to establish the " iron necessity " in which we are supposed to be bound.^ In the power to make the independent streams of causes meet may lie the power of the will of man. In the power to make them meet, and afterwards so to harmonise the results that the progress of the whole shall suffer no interruption, may consist the voluntary power and function of the supreme Mind. But if this " iron necessity " is an unreasoned imagination or figure of speech, and not a scientific fact, shall we surrender for it that belief in freedom which is a fact of constant observation .-* Our deliberations on what is best to do, our self-content at a successful act of ours, our shame at failure, our precepts and lessons to our children, our rewards and punishments, the laws that we make, the judgment-seat that enforces them, the scaffold that punishes the breach of them, the prayers to God wherein we offer Him mind and will and obedience — all suppose that man is free.- Time forbids us to follow up this tempting theme. The will is the man. To become convinced that one is a link in the chain of a blind necessity is to lose all self-respect — even personality itself It is death to the better part of us. Would you be assured of your own freedom .'' Love God and live upon His laws. That activity which we are in search of, an activity according to the divine purpose, gives man back to himself and makes him free. " Liberty," it has been finely said, " is a kind of natural sovereignty which God has given us over our- selves, to govern ourselves according to His orders."^ This search after God is order, peace, and love ; in that region the will knows that it is free. It sees the ^ See Coumot, Idees Fo7idamentales, with Renouvier's able criticism, Logiqtie Generale, vol. ii. 2 See J. Simon, Le Devoir. 2 Andre, Ed. Cousin. 230 THE WORTH OF LIFE. good and chooses it, and is enabled to follow it, and to love it. All these are acts of a will : we know the truth, and it makes us free. Outside this path all is passion, confusion, selfishness, darkness ; no wonder that the will is doubted, where it is not used, where the personality is abdicated, and the soul finds no guidance.^ We have reached the conclusion of this most im- perfect sketch. The worth of our life is to be mea- sured by its opportunities for activity in the path of the divine laws and purposes ; and in that path free- dom is found, the freedom without which there is no real life for the man. The measure of the worth of life is not the joy or misery found in the world, but the satisfaction that follows free and right activity. Pain and misery abound in the world ; and we know not why they should exist at all. But amongst these thorns grow flowers of beauty for brave hands to pluck ; and valour and humility and succouring love may be learned in the school of sorrow. Amid the jangle of many systems which rise and fall, each having many critics, and not one thorough-going disciple, the practical spirit may at some time observe how the morality of Christ gives scope to free activity, to love divine and human. Lange, the able historian of materialism, admits that in the tragic passion of the Son of God " there is an element of the true religious life, and one more essential than all the rest." This Institution bears witness to your love of knowledge and improvement ; and I venture to bid you fearlessly to follow that noble inclination. It is not science that is dangerous, but science using false methods and holding out excessive pretensions. Science painfully reading the world to us ^ See Secretan, Philosopliie de la Liberte, 1866 ; Fouillee, Liberie ct Determiiiisfne, 1872. THE WORTH OF LIFE. 231 will bring us truth ; and with an intelligence enlarged by means of it our activity may be greater and more fruitful. Science tricked out in the old clothes of an antique materialism, pretending to tell us that there is nothing but matter, and no God, whilst she confesses in the same breath that she has no method of knowing more than she actually sees, we will not respect ; nor that philosophy which, by denouncing the world as bad and foolish, exposes its own presumption. But we will not answer system by system. Out from the school, made sultry with too much wrangling, we will go to breathe inspirations deep and sweet of the wholesome air of practice and of obedience. Religion does not grudge you the results of science. Take them, and open and read ; but read aright. There is another word, however, paramount to the word science ; it is the word duty. Science is for the few ; duty is uni- versal. Science shall adorn and delight some leisure hours ; but duty is about us at every step. " The primal duties shine aloft like stars ; The charities that soothe and heal and bless Are scattered at the feet of man like flowers." V. DESIGN IN NATURE DESIGN IN NATURE. " All things are full of God," said the father of Greek philosophy. " We have no need of the hypothesis of God," said a modern French astronomer. It is with the latter saying, which is descriptive of the attitude of modern science at this time, that the present address will hav e to do. Atheism no doubt exists ; but far more common is the mode of thinking which would dispense with all questions about the Divine nature in dealing with the world and its phenomena ; which con- siders that the introduction of the name of God into scientific research, complicates what is simple, obscures the rules of observation, introduces controversies that are useless to science, restrains the free course of inductive reasoning by an apprehension of consequences, and en- tangles physical enquiry which leads to sure and clear results, with mental and with spiritual enquiry which has produced nothing but disputation. Those who hold such views would think it unphilosophical to deny, just as they would regard it to affirm, the existence of God. But the popular mind is not equal to nice dis- tinctions ; and it seems almost the same thing to most people to deny the existence of God as to exclude the thought of Him when exploring His creation. I am not without hope that a few words delivered here upon " the argument from design," as it is called, may tend to diminish the growing estrangement between 236 DESIGN IN NATURE. science and religion, and at the same time to revindicate for religion her legitimate share in matters of scientific interest. I may undertake that the subject, however unworthily treated in other respects, shall be discussed without bitterness, and with a fitting respect for those who have done so much for physical science during the present generation. It is necessary to sketch in a few sentences that field of creation with which the argument from design has to do. The world presents to us four kingdoms or classes of facts. One of these, and the first in point of order, is the mineral kingdom. A few so-called elements, as metals, earthy bases, and the like, acted upon by certain forces, known to us as gravitation, motion, heat, electricity, magnetism, chemical affinity, have formed the mountain and the valley, the wind and the clouds, the sea margin and the cave ; in a word, all the grand substructure on which the higher kingdoms are to take their places. Modern science has discovered, however, that these physico-chemical forces are interchangeable or convertible ; that retarded motion turns to heat, as in the railway brake, that heat generates electricity, and the electric current magnetises the iron round which it passes. Not only this, but each force generates a cer- tain equivalent of another — so much and no more ; and no force is lost, though a force may pass from an active to a potential state. For example, two tons of water are raised by evaporation from the sea, and one of them falls in rain in a valley drained by a river, and in its downward motion back to the sea it will turn the water- wheel, lift the tilt-hammer, bear the barge swiftly in its current, leap over the rocky ledge a foaming cataract, and in all these it is only rendering back a portion of the force which was spent upon its evaporation ; and DESIGN IN NATURE.- 237 the real source of all this work is, and must be, the sun's heat. And ere the water rests again in the sea, it will have accounted for the whole of the force, neither less nor more, that had operated upon it ; part of it in friction on its bed and in consequent heat ; part of it in tasks imposed by human skill. The other ton of water shall fall into some land-locked tarn, high in the hills, where it cannot at once render back its force in work or duty, but the force is there, held in suspense or in reserve. Water lifted from the sea-level to the valley of the Engadine, a mile higher, has used much of the sun's heat : it will restore that heat or some equivalent force, as soon as you make a way for it to the sea-level again ; and it will have parted with all the force, neither more nor less, which raised it to that height. That forces are convertible, and that whether converted or not they are conserved, so that nothing is lost, are propositions demonstrated. It is not, I believe, demonstrated, but it is a probable supposition, that all forces are but one force manifested in different modes. Then as to the material elements on which these forces work — the hydrogen, carbon, iron, calcium, and the like — the name of elements must be held to mean no more than that they have not as yet been resolved into simpler substances. Of their ultimate composition we know nothing. They may be so many modifications of an ultimate matter; but whether this ultimate matter exists, whether it be; as modern materialists tell us with such confidence, eternal and indestructible, whether im- penetrability be one of its properties, whether it be not a kind of polar opposite to the physico-chemical forces, and engendered with them, so that in a different universe, with other forces at work, there must have been differ- ent elements, these are all questions of mere speculation, incapable of proof The physical enquirer has bound 238 DESIGN IN NATURE. himself to consider only the facts which he can observe ; and when he tells us that matter is eternal, and that therefore creation is impossible, he is deserting the ground where alone he is strong. Bishop Berkeley's and Collier's denial that matter truly exists is quite as probable as this affirmation. But both alike are specu- lative guesses and not science. There is a second kingdom to add to the first. The world is not a mere agglomeration of rocks and mountains, seas and lakes. Before the physical forces had completed their work, a new force had been added to them ; that of life. The bare rocks became clothed with living moss. In marshy places, warm and moist, a rich vegetation grew and decayed. Along the slopes the interlacing roots of grasses detained the particles of soil which would otherwise have been washed down to some lower bed. The vegetable world, with thou- sands of varieties, clothed and adorned the stony earth. England's greatness in the present was taken order for in those ages when her coal measures were formed out of the forests which grew rank and died, in a climate different in all respects from that which forms the sub- ject of our daily animadversion. Third in order comes the Animal Kingdom. I do not attempt to define life, whether animal or vegetable, with exactness. Every one has failed in that attempt. As a rough description of animal life, it may, perhaps, suffice to say that the living being is one endowed with sensation and spontaneous motion, of which each of the parts contributes something to the continuance of the whole, and is in turn preserved or defended by the whole. If those who find fault with this, look for another definition in Dr. Whewell's comprehensive work,^ they will find my excuse in the variety and the 1 Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences, DESIGN IN NATURE. 239 inadequacy of the definitions there collected. The animal life spread out over the globe from the first is profuse, is beautiful and various. The oolitic limestone and the white chalk are almost wholly made up of shells of Foraminifera. On the river Columbia is a bed of clay 500 feet thick, which consists largely of the shells of Diatoms, if, indeed, these are to be ranked in the animal kingdom. The shells of the Foramini- fera, which can only be examined by the microscope, exhibit wonderful variety and beauty. Still more re- markable in this respect are the Polycystina, whose shells, as figured in Mr. Ponton's book, recall censers and vases, jewelled crosses and stars, pendants and tripods, such as a London goldsmith would do well to reproduce. Until the microscope was invented, no eye can have explored this wonderful dust. The shells of both these humble tribes, the Foraminifera and Polycystina resemble the shells of other animals much higher in the scale of organisation ; but, nearly as they are related in organisation to each other, the forms are very different, and each in itself presents a wonderful diversity of forms. In higher families of animals there are the same characters. The globe teems with life in earth and air and water. If you will permit me, so early in my argument, to speak of the Maker of them all, I will say that the creative power is inexhaustible in invention, both of useful and beautiful parts. And in the ceaseless activity of these creatures, great and small, we recognise the physical happiness which accompanies so much life. It is a chorus of thanksgiving and praise, from pool and jungle, from tree-top and soft grass, from the creatures that revel in the life that God has given them. In demanding the right to regard man as the fourth kingdom of nature, I am aware that some may demur 240 DESIGN IN NATURE. to the claim. No doubt he must take rank in the kingdom of the animals, by reason of his identity with animals in all the vital functions. Disparaging things have been said of his brain ; and Moleschott has remarked, I think, that all its finest things are but modified phosphorus after all. " No phosphorus, no thinking !" The slight projection on the outer margin of the ear has lately assumed portentous proportions. The possession of that precious relic, which has turned up suddenly like the locket of the long lost child in a stimulating novel, proves our kinship to the Simian race, from some balder specimens of which we are sup- posed to have descended, and gives us a place on an unsuspected family tree. But, after all that has been said by the naturalists to teach us humility, there do remain some facts, which entitle man to a separate place, to one at least of which the modern school have given greater prominence than before. They are these. Man can control nature. He can read nature and un- derstand it. He has a power of self-regulation, which we call conscience. And he can and does think much about God. As to the power of men to control nature, I prefer to employ the words of Mr. Wallace, one of the first to put forward what is called " the law of natural selec- tion," who will not be suspected of claiming any tran- scendental place or privilege for man. " With a naked and unprotected body," he says, man's intelligence " gave him clothing against the varying inclemencies of the seasons. Though unable to compete with the deer in swiftness, or with the wild bull in strength, it has given him weapons wherewith to capture and overcome both. Though less capable than most other animals of living on the herbs and the fruits which unaided nature supplies, this wonderful faculty taught him to DESIGN IN NATURE. 241 govern and direct nature to his own benefit, and to make her produce food for him when and where he pleased. From the moment when the first skin was used as a covering, when the first rude spear was formed to assist in the chase, the first seed sown, or root planted, a grand revolution was effected in nature, a revolution which in all the previous ages of the world had had no parallel, for a being had arisen who was no longer necessarily subject to change with the changing universe, a being who was, in some degree, superior to nature, inasmuch as he knew how to control and regu- late her action, and could keep himself in harmony with her, not by a change in body, but by an advance in mind. Here, then, we see the true grandeur and dignity of man. On this view of his special attributes we may admit that even those who claim for him a position and an order, a class or a sub-kingdom by himself, have some reason on their side. He is, indeed, a being apart, since he is not influenced by the great laws which irresistibly modify all other organic beings. Nay, more, this victory which he has gained for him- self, gives him a directing influence over other exist- ences. Man has not only escaped natural selection himself, but he is actually able to take away some of that power from nature which before his appearance she universally exercised. We can anticipate the time when the earth will produce only cultivated plants and domestic animals ; when man's selection shall have supplanted natural selection ; and when the ocean will be the only domain in which that power can be exerted, which for countless cycles of ages ruled supreme over the earth," ^ Thus eloquently and forcibly speaks Mr. Wallace ; ^ Mr. Wallace, in the Anthropological Journal, 1864; see also Lub- bock's Prehistoric Times, last chapter. 242 DESIGN IN NATURE. and I do not stop now to criticise the exaggeration of language which treats the law of natural selection as supreme ruler of the earth. Let me say a few words next upon man's power to reflect on and to understand nature. For this was the second mark by which man was distinguished from the animal creation, with which he has so much in common. Man alone is capable of an unselfish interest in the world around him ; that is, an interest that does not bear immediately on his bodily wants. How far he has carried this interest, let modern science bear witness. The common feat of foretelling all the eclipses of sun and moon for a given year is performed for our almanack yearly, without exciting surprise or gratitude. Yet it means that man can so follow the heavenly bodies in their path, for years and years to come, for all the years that are gone, that he can tell, without fear of error, on what day the cone of shadow thrown by the sun-lighted earth into space, shall sweep over the face of the moon and blot out her light, com- pletely or a little. But this is an old triumph, hardly worth quoting, but for its aptness to impress all kinds of minds. A clerk in one of our public offices, using only such leisure as official work allowed, has told us lately wonders about the composition of the sun ; and here in London, armed with a little instrument (the spectroscope), this distinguished man has been able to ascertain that in yonder photosphere the same elements are found which the chemist seeks and finds in the crust of our little earth. What proofs can be more convincing of the fitness of man to play his part in the scene in which he is placed ? His senses are adapted to the facts he is to observe ; his eye to light, his ear to sonorous vibrations, his touch to resistance and to weight. But the naked organ soon falls short of his DESIGN IN NATURE. 243 wishes. And soon the microscope unfolds the beautiful forms of the Polycystina shells, the minute fibril of the muscle, and the components of the blood of life. The telescope brings near the world of stars, and resolves the bright mist into clusters of distinct orbs. The balance weighs quantities of matter too small for the touch to appreciate. And lastly, the spectroscope takes the picture, so to speak, of chemical phenomena too distant to be realised by these means ; and so the composition of the heavenly bodies, about which the most sanguine observer twenty years ago would have admitted that we should never know anything firmer than conjecture, is already the subject of exact obser- vation. The names of Homer, Plato, and Shakspeare, re- mind us how marvellously the world is imaged and reproduced in the minds of some great men, and of the share which we smaller men can take in their work by an admiring sympathy. A production of art, whether literary, pictorial, or plastic, is a creation. The things of Troy were not so touching nor so grand in their reality as they became in the form which the poet gave them. Legend enters largely into the stories of Mac- beth and Hamlet. The histories are shadowy, but the plays are substantial ; they contain some touch of truth. Old and young read them, and lend to the author all their feelings to work on as he will. Weigh this fact well. It seems to me to show so plainly that man's constitution has been fitted by foresight and preparation for the place in earth that he was to fill. Supposing that Moleschott was right in his start- ling aphorism, " Without phosphorus there is no thought," what a wonder are we forced to recognise here. The rage of Achilles, the death of Socrates, the 244 DESIGN IN NATURE. resolute wickedness of Lady Macbeth, the character of her husband, so weak in his crime, so grand in his remorse and ruin ; the refined and gentle Hamlet, forced by a preternatural command to assume the character of an avenger ; to all these the presence of phosphorus in the brain is indispensable. How comes so small a cause to work such grand effects ? It is sufficiently wonderful to hear Joachim discourse elo- quent music upon the simplest of instruments, a violin ; take away the violin and substitute a bit of wood ; if the music still continues, what was before a wonderful exercise of skill is now miraculous. If great thoughts are but phosphorus burnt in the closed stove of a poet's brain, I am more ready than ever to admire that crea- tive wisdom which could bring this out of that, which could so dispense with ordinary means in His highest productions. But the aphorism is not true as it stands. I believe there is no free phosphorus in the brain. " Without lime, no thought ; without oxygen, no thought ; without water, no thought." All these are true, and they import a well-known fact, that man who thinks is a creature in a material world, and that cer- tain forms of matter are needful to his existence as an organised being.^ " Two things are awful to me," said Kant, " the starry firmament and the sense of responsibility in man." In his Metapliysic of Ethics he has treated this sense of responsibility with singular logical power. It is one of the marks that separate man from all other creatures. No doubt this principle has allowed men to come to very wrong and absurd conclusions. Be- cause the savage practises cannibalism, and knows no rules of chastity but those which flow from the husband's ^ Moleschott, Circulation of Life: Letter XVIII., with Liebig's opinion there quoted. DESIGN IN NATURE. 245 right of property in the wife, it is inferred that the savage has no moral sense. It would be as fair to infer that because England once traded in slaves, fought cocks, baited bulls, and oppressed the native races in India and her colonies, therefore there was no sense of right and wrong in England. It is for the existence of the principle that we contend, and not for its perfect education and enlightenment. The principle is that something is right to will and to do, and something is not right. The existence of the principle is proved if the poor savage of whom I spoke would consider his manhood disgraced by fleeing, even for his life's sake, before the foe, or by suffering one cry to escape him under the tortures wherewith his captors are doing him to death. The education of this principle is a different matter ; no one could say that even now his conscience was completely educated. " So act that your principle of action would bear to be made a law for the whole world," ^ is a noble maxim ; but it requires knowledge and light, as well as right intention. If you twit us with the fact that men have been cruel, impure, capri- cious, and absurd in their conduct, we answer that they had still a right and a wrong. One who has the sense of sight may find himself compelled to live in some narrow cleft or ravine, where there is little to see, but the sense is there still. The bathing-men at Pfeffers, with the earth closed almost over their heads, see little of the scenery of Switzerland : but they have eyes not the less. We are claiming for men now, not the fine sweep of moral prospect, but the moral sense of sight ; and this is never wanting. Upon this sense every artifice has been used to make it look like something else ;^ for until it can be so transformed, it is a power- ^ Kant, Metaphysic of Ethics. 2 See, for example, Renouvier, Science de la Morale, 1869. 246 DESIGN IN NATURE. ful witness for another world than this. The com- monest explanation is that it is only a principle of enlightened self-interest. Study it for yourself in the savage, in the little child ; you will find that these two principles run on different lines. The last mark of man that distinguishes him from all animals is, that he believes in God. One half the human race at this moment professes some creed in which God is the great first cause, the Creator and Governor of the world. Of the other half, hardly any are quite without religion. " Obliged as I am," says M. Quatre- fages, in words which I have had occasion to quote elsewhere,^ " even by my education, to pass in review the races of men, I have sought for atheism in the lowest and in the highest, but nowhere have I met with it, except in an individual, or at most in some school of men, more or less known, as we have seen in Europe in the last century, and as we see at the pre- sent day. Everywhere and always the masses of the people have escaped it." But for my present argument it is not necessary to insist that a right belief in God prevails. There is a belief in God, and it cannot have come from experience or observation of visible facts. You may lower the position of man by comparing him to the apes, and by chemical analysis of his brain ; all the more wonderful is it that a creature in such sorry case should pretend to hold communion with the divine. His feet are in the earthy clay, but his head is lifted up towards heaven. Heir to a hundred maladies, the sport of a hundred passions, holding on this life, so chequered in its complexion, but for a few days, this creature cries out of his trouble : " God exists ; and He can see and hear me." Man, if I have proved my position, stands quite 1 Limits of Philosophical Eitquiry ; see below. DESIGN IN NATURE. 247 alone at the head of the kingdoms of nature, alone in his power of controlling it, alone in his appreciation of its beauty, alone in the self-government of conscience, the first of all the creatures of God, to pronounce the name of Him who had made all things, in a world which for ages had been blind to its Maker, and thankless because blind. Now it has become, and will probably continue to be, a question of the deepest interest to mankind, how these four kingdoms came into being. And at present there is a tendency towards a theory purely material and mechanical. It is so in Germany, the country of Biichner, Vogt, and Moleschott ; it is so in France, where Comte and Littre have written ; it is so here in England, where it is needless to quote distinguished names. I purpose, in the remainder of this lecture, to attempt an interpretation of the facts before us, quite different from this prevalent notion ; and also to show how vicious and how inadequate in a scientific point of view the system known as materialism appears to be. The time is all too short for such a purpose : but any address like this can only aim to scatter germs of thought, not to present a system. That the creation was gradual appears alike from the account of the Bible and from scientific observation. Matter and motion must have existed before the ball of earth was formed ; and the physico-chemical forces must have been in full play when the first lichen clothed the rocks, or the first plants were formed in the sea. The first appearance of life on the globe was a mighty step in creation, and from this point the question of design becomes a very urgent one. Observe : the plant world is a new world, with a series of wonders all its own. There was nothing in the heat of the sun, nor in the earth's motion or magnetic currents, to give any DESIGN IN NATURE. promise or presage of the marvels of the forest. Sup- posing that we admit that these were evolved by law, that is to say, that as a matter of fact plants only ap- peared where certain conditions of light and heat and moisture combined to favour them, and that wherever these conditions were combined they never failed to appear, the question next arises whether matter and force evolved them from their own inherent nature, or force and matter were created with the intention to pro- duce them, so that the plant was intended and prepared then when the other forces began to stir the formless void. Is the plant world the accidental or necessary outcome of the forces that made the mineral world ? or must we say that it bears marks of design ? Here we must observe that it is a wider and richer world than that which preceded it ; more full by far of forms of beauty and grace, each of them sustained by a vascular system of which the mineral world affords no parallel. You stand before the gnarled and twisted oak that rises out of the feathering ferns ; you never think that this giant of two centuries, endued with a certain power of self-protection against the storms of two hundred years, is an accidental product. It is so grandly strong, so richly clothed with a myriad leaves, alike but yet in something different each from each. The cattle count upon its friendly shade ; the fowls of the air make it their resting-place. This a result of certain motions in the universe and certain properties of matter, not designed at all, foreseen by no eye .'' To no one would such a thought naturally occur. The world full in its first stage of marks of order and purpose, shows more of the same marks in its second and more complicated state. The change that has taken place is not towards confusion and exhaustion from unforeseen defects . in mechanism, but a higher development. The mineral DESIGN IN NATURE. 249 kingdom was wonderful ; that it should be able to clothe itself with a mantle of verdure, and pass into another kingdom much more complex, heightens the wonder. But then comes the further change, the pour- ing out of animal life upon the globe. Was this, too, an inevitable consequence of physical forces } All the animal creation teems with marks of purpose. Con- sider only some of the contrivances by which the fowls of the air are fitted for their peculiar life. Describing a night of extreme coldness, the poet says, " The owl, for all her feathers, is a-cold." That warm covering of the bird must be portable as well as warm ; it weighs about an ounce and a half. But the covering of birds would be useless to them if the showers to which they must be exposed were ab- sorbed by the plumage, so that it became a heavy, clinging mass. An oily secretion makes it waterproof ; we have all seen the duck free itself by one shake from every trace of its recent bath. The heavy skeleton that befits pedestrian creatures, would disable the bird from flight ; so it is provided with tubes of thin bone, sur- rounding a cavity filled with air. Its pinions must be light as well as strong ; observe how the light barbs of the feather have roughened edges, so that they form one strong continuous surface, almost impervious to the air which they strike. The air in the bones of birds and in other cavities of the body, heated, too, by an inner warmth much greater than that of man, contri- butes something to their buoyancy. Their speed and endurance are enormous. It is said that the swallow's flight is ninety miles an hour. One long stretch across the North Sea brings the sea-fowl from Norway to Flamborough Head ; they rest for a short time after this flight, and pass inland, not the worse for their 250 DESIGN IN NATURE. exploit. You may infer from the beak of a bird its habits and its food. The bill of a woodpecker is a pointed tool, tipped with hardest horn, to break open the bark of the tree for insects. The flat bill of the duck has plates of horn at the side ; an excellent instrument for straining off the water and retaining the food. The bill of the snipe is long, and narrow, and sensitive, to pierce the marshy ground and feel after its food. We might go on for hours multi- plying such instances, and from every part of the field of creation. Now, any mind in its natural state knows that in human works such adaptations could only proceed from contrivance, and is willing to regard these in the same way as proofs of design in creation. The physicist has to tutor himself to a different view. All these things are evolutions, under pressure of circumstances, of the original forces of creation. For example, out of certain birds tenanting marshy places, one has a somewhat larger beak, and this gives him an advantage in piercing the ground for food ; and so his share of food is larger, and his strength and courage greater, and he has a freer choice of a mate ; and so the long beak grows longer in the next generation, and the grandson's beak is longer than the son's, from the same causes ; and thus the law works, until in course of time there stands confessed a new species — a perfect snipe. Is the scientific theory better in this case than the popular .-' It is not. It does not account for the facts so well. But is not our belief that God made the fowl of the air with fitting instruments for a peculiar life because He saw that it was good, and wished all portions of His varied earth to be the scene of the joy and energy of appropriate tenants, a mere hypothesis ? The worship of God is universal, and exists without any explicit DESIGN IN NATURE. 251 Opinion that He is the Creator, the first Cause. Be- cause you are able to conceive of Him, and are willing to accept Him as the Ruler of your will and conscience, He must exist. Does this seem too rapid an assump- tion } Consider the alternative. If He exists not, the sound of worship has gone up from all lands in vain, and in vain have all good men consecrated their lives to an obedience to the law of duty. Were such deceit felt to be possible, a darkness that might be felt would settle upon our spirits, and the hands would indeed hang down, and the feeble knees be paralysed, and a strict silence on all moral subjects become us best. But we must see with such eyes as God has given us ; and scepticism about faith and conscience is perhaps as un- profitable as scepticism about touch and sight. God exists, then ; it is assured to us by the common faith of mankind, by the highest law within ourselves. And as He exists, to Him, and to no other, must we assign the place of Creator. There cannot be two Gods. I can- not give my conscience to one as its guide, and adore another for the wisdom of the universe. God exists, then, and His existence is not merely assumed in order to account for marks of design in nature. And we maintain that the easier supposition is also the truer. These marks of purpose are what they appear to be, tokens of the wisdom of God, " Thou hast made heaven, the heaven of heavens with all their host, the earth and all things that are therein, the sea and all that is therein, and thou preservest them all."^ If I were to venture to express in a few sentences the belief of a man of ordinary education upon this sub- ject, I should say that God alone is and can be the first cause of this universe, the mover of its motion, the giver of its life. The wise purposes which shine forth for us ^ Nehem, ix. 6. 252 DESIGN IN NATURE. in nature, were in the mind of God from the first act of creation. In saying that He has wrought by laws, we do not detract from His power ; we seem rather to enhance it to our minds in attributing to Him con- stancy as well as wisdom. A law is not a restraint ; it is a fixed manner of working. To say of a painter that he never produces any but fine works, does not affirm that he is less free than an inferior artist ; just because producing bad work is no power or privilege, but a defect. And so, when we admit that God works by law, and expect to find the same spectrum from the sun's rays, which we have once made with our own prism, at every time and in every place where the sun's light shines, and so on, we do not narrow the power of the Great Artificer, unless it can be shown that caprice is a privilege and a good. The subject of miracles is not here to be discussed ; I will only observe that they are presented to us as parts of a great purpose for the good of man ; and that our Lord refused, when He was tempted, to work wonders out of wilfulness, or only to astonish. The extreme jealousy of scientific men of admitting any allusion to theology, in connection with the course of nature, proceeds from erroneous concep- tions of God. Mr. Wallace, whom I have already quoted with respect, is ready to admit that the Creator works in the beginning as the founder of the laws on which the world is to proceed ; but he is afraid of admitting that there has been continual interference and re-arrangemeet of details.^ But this eminent naturalist attributes to us a conception of the Most High which we do not hold, nay, which we energetically reject. If the laws were wise and good, whence would come the need of interference or re-arrangement .-' -Who are we that we should bid God speak once, and forbid Him ^ See Duke of Arj^^U's Reign of Law. DESIGN IN NATURE. 253 twice to speak ? The laws of nature are God's laws, and God's laws are His utterance of Himself through the speech of nature. God is the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever ; and so His laws remain the same. They are, if I may say so without irreverence, the veil and vesture over the form of God, too bright in itself for us to look on ; they take their outline from Him who is beneath them. You may continue your re- searches in full confidence that the laws will stand sure, not because you have the slightest guarantee as a man of science that these laws will never be interfered with ; such a guarantee you have on your own principles no right to ask. You are to observe that the facts are so ; that they shall eternally be so is not for you, for that is all beyond experience. But the wisdom that made the laws needs not to revise its work, and erase and insert and amend its code. In the days of creation God saw that it was good ; the eye that so approved it changes not. Until the purpose that runs through the ages is completed the laws will stand sure. But each new kingdom of nature has introduced a change amounting to a revolution, which neither the theologian nor the naturalist regards as an interference or a caprice. When the principle of plant-life was introduced, the mineral world became the material on which the plant-life worked ; it gathered into itself the lower elements, car- bon, silica, nitrogen, and used them as means of its own organic life. The plant partook of the nature of the class below it, whilst it dominated and used that class. This same took place when animal life was introduced. The beautiful plants become the material whereon the animal life worked, the food whereby it sustained itself. It was the same when man was added, in whom instinct is replaced by reason, and ethical action supervenes over action by impulse and appetite. Each of these king- 254 DESIGN IN NATURE. doms has much in common with that which is below it. The animal is in many respects a plant ; for the diato- maceous creatures one knows hardly in which kingdom to find their place. The man is an animal in much, and perhaps his animal instincts play a larger part in the world's history and in his own development than we are wont to allow. But each higher step brings in something wholly new. " An animal," says Hegel, " is a miracle for the vegetable world." Each step is a revolution in one point of view ; but then the lower state prepared itself for the higher, prophesied, so to speak, of its coming, and the higher seated itself so easily on the throne prepared for it, that we do not wonder to find it there. You call it evolution ; we call it a creative act. We think that God exists, and if He acts anywhere it must be in this, the universe of things. 'E^ €vovo. Ci)e il?etjp Cestament. VOL I. 1 8s. {Published.) General Introduction . Wm. Thomson, D.D., Archbishop of York. St. Matthew and St. \H. Longueville Mansel, D.D., late Dean of St. Paul's, Mark * and the Editor St. Luke .... W. Basil Jones, D.D., Bishop of St. David's. VOL. II. (Nearly Ready.) St. John . . . . B. F. Westcott, D.D., Canon of Peterborough, and Regius Professor of Divinity at Cambridge. The Acts .... W. J ACOBSON, D.D., Bishop of Chester. VOL III. /E. H. GiFFORD, D.D., Hon. Canon of Worcester, Rector Romans 1 °^ Much Hadham, and Examining Chaplain to the Bishop V of London. /T. S. Evans, Canon of Durham, and Professor of Greek in Corinthians . . . .\ Durham University. ' J. Waite, M.A., Vicar of Norham, Northumberland. Galatians .... J. S. Howson, D.D., Dean of Chester. Philippians, Ephesians,\ J. A. Jeremie, D.D., late Dean of Lincoln. Colossians, Thessalo- [-Canon Westcott, D.D., and nians, and Philemon .•' Wm. Alexander, D.D., Bishop of Derry and Raphoe. Pastoral Epistles . . John Jackson, D.D., Bishop of London. Hebrews . . . . W. Kay, I).D. Epistle of St. James Epistle of St. John . St. Peter and St. Jude . Revelation of St. John , VOL IV. Robert Scott, D.D., Dean of Rochester. Wm. Alexander, D.D., Bishop of Derry and Raphoe. J. R. LuMBV, D.D., Norrisian Professor of Divinity at Cambridge. Wm. Lee, D.D., Archdeacon of Dublin. 50, Albemarle SrEriar, London, May, 1878. MR. MUEIUY'S GENERAL LIST OF WORKS. ABINGER'S (Lord Chief Baron) Life. By the Hon. P. Campbell Scarlett. Portrait. Svo. 15s. ALBERT MEMORIAL, A Descriptive and Illustrated Account of the National Monument erected to the PRINCE CONSORT at Kensington. Illustrated by Engravings of its Architecture, Decora- tions, Sculptured Groups, Statues, Mosaics, Metalwork, &c. With Descriptive Text. By Doyne C. Bell. With 24 Plates. Folio. 12Z. 12*. Handbook TO. Post Svo. Is.; or Illus- trated Edition, 2i. Qd. (Prince) Speeches and Addresses, with an In- troduction, giving some outline of his Character. With Portrait. Svo. , 6rf. ; or Popular Edition, fcap. Svo. Is. ALBERT DilRER ; his Life, with a History of his Art. By Dr. Thadsing, Keeper of Archduke Albert's Art Collection at Vienna. Translated from the German. With Portrait and Illustrations. 2 vols. Svo. [In the Preas. ABBOTT (Rev. J.). Memoirs of a Church of England Missionary in the North American Colonies. Post Svo. 2s, ABERCROMBIE (John). Enquiries concerning the Intellectual Powers and the Investigation of Truth. Fcap. Svo. 3s. 6d. Philosophy of the Moral Feelings. Fcap. Svo. 2s. 6i.i. ACLAND (Rev. Charles). Popular Account of the Manners and Customs of India. Post Svo. 2s. iESOP'S FABLES. A New Version. With Historical Preface. By Rev. Thomas James. With 100 Woodcuts, by Tenxiel and Wolf. Post Svo. 23. 6d. AGRICULTURAL (Rotal) JOURNAL. (Published haJf-yearly.) AIDS TO FAITH : a Series of Es.says on Miracles ; Evidences of Christianity; Prophecy & Mosaic Record of Creation ; Ideology and Subscription; The Pentateuch; Inspiration; Death of Christ; Scripture and its Interpretation. By various Authors. 8vo. 9s. AMBERrWITCH (The). A most interesting Trial for Witch- craft. Translated by Lady Duff Gordon. Post Svo. 2s. ARMY LIST (The). Published Monthly by Authority. ARTHUR'S (Little) History of England. By Ladt Callcott. New Edition, continued to 1872. With 36 Woodcuts. Fcap. Svo. Is. 6d. ATKINSON (Dr. E.) Vie de Seint Auban. A Poem in Norman- French. Ascribed to Matthew Paris. With Concordance, Glos sary and Notes. Small 4to, 10s. Qd. AUSTIN (John). Lectures on General Jurisprudence ; or, the Philosophy of Positive Law. Edited by Robert Campbell. 2 Vols. Svo. 32s. Student's Edition, compiled from the above work, by ROPKKT Campbell. Post Svo. 12s. — Analysis of. By Gordon Campbell. Post Svo. 65. LIST OF WORKS ADMIRALTY PUBLICATIONS ; Issued by direction of the Lorda Commissioners of the Admiralty: — A MANUAL OF SCIENTIFIC ENQUIRY, for the Use of Travellers. Fourth Edition. Edited by Kobebt Main, M.A. Woodcuts. Post 8vo. 3s. ed. GREENWICH ASTRONOMICAL OBSERVATIONS, 1841 to 1847 and 1847 to 1871. Royal 4to. 20s. each. BEENWICH OBSERVATIONS. 1848 to 1855. 20s. each. MAGNETICAL AND METEOROLOGICAL OBSERVATIONS. 1844 to 1847. Royal 4to. 20s. each. APPENDICES TO OBSERVATIONS. 1837. Logarithms of Sines and Cosines in Time. 3s. 1842. Catalogue of 1439 Stars, from Observations made in 1836 1841. 4s. 1P45. Longitude of Valentia (Chronoraetrical). 3s. 1847. Description of Altazimuth. 3s. Twelve Years' Catalogue of Stars, from Observations made in 1836 to 1847. 4s. Description of Photographic Apparatus. 2s. 1851. Maskelyne's Ledger of Stars. 3s. 1852. I. Description of the Transit Circle. 3s. 1853. Refracition Tables. 3s. 1854. Description of the Zenith Tube. 3*. Six Years' Catalogue of Starf, from Observations. 1848 to 1833. 4s. Plan of Ground Buildings. .3s. Longitude of Valentia (Galvanic). 2s. 1864. Moon's Semid. from Occnltations. -23. Planetary Observations, 1831 to 1835. 2s. 1868. Corrections of Elemeuts of Jupiter and Saturn. 2s, Second Seven Years' Catalogue of 2760 Stars for 1861 to 1S67. 4s. Descriplion of the Great Equatorial, 3s. 1856. Descriptive Chronograph. 3s. 1860. Reduction of Deep Thermometer Observations. 2». 1871. History and Description of Water Telescope. 3s. 1873. Regulations of the Royal Observatory. 2.s. Cape of Good Hope Observations (Star Ledgers) : 1856 to 1863. 2s. 1856. 5s. Astronomical Results. 1857 to 1858. 5s. Cape Catalogue of 1159 Stars, reduced to the Epoch 1860. .3.?. Cape of Good Hope Astronomical Results. 1859 to 1860. 5s. 1871 to 1873. 5s. 1874. 5s. Report on Teneriffe Astronomical Experiment. 1856. 5s. Paramatta Catalogue of 7385 Stars. 1822 to 1826. 4s. STRONOMICAL RESULTS. 1847 to 1875. 4to. 3s. each. MAGNETICAL AND METEOROLOGICAL RESULTS. 184S to REDUCTION OF THE OBSERVATIONS OF PLANETS. 1750 to 1830, Royal 4to. 20s. each. ■ LUNAR OBSERVATIONS, 1750 to 1830. 2 Vols. Royal 4to. 20s. each. 1831 to 1851. 4to. 10s. each. BERNOULLI'S SEXCENTENARY TABLE. 1779. 4to. 5s. BESSEL'S AUXILIARY TABLES FOR HIS METHOD OF CLEAR- ING LUNAR DISTANCES. 8vo. 2s. ENCKE'S BERLINER JAHRBUCH, for 830. Berlin, 1828. Svo. 9«. HANSEN'S TABLES DE LA LUNE. 4to. 20s. LAX'S TABLES FOR FINDING THE LATITUDE AND LONGI- TUDE. 1821. Svo. 10s. LUNAR OBSERVATIONS at GREENWICH. 1788 to 1819. Compared with the Tables, 1«21. 4to. 7s. 6d. MACLEAR ON LACAILLE'S ARC OF MERIDIAN. 2 Vols. 20s. each. PUBLISHED BY MR. MURRAY. Admiralty Publications — continued. MAYER'S DISTANCES of the MOON'S CENTRE from the PLANETS. 1S22, a*.; 1S23, 4j. M. 1324tolS.35. Svi. 4*. each TABULA MOTUUM SOLIS ET LUN^. 1770. 5s. ■ ASTRONOMICAL OBSERVATIONS MADE AT GOT- TINGEN, from 1756 to 1761. 1826. Folio, it. dd. NAUTICAL ALMANACS, from 1767 to 1877, SO*. 2s. 6d. each. SELECTIONS FROM, up to 1812. Svo. 5s. 2s. each. SUPPLEMENTS, 1S28 to 1833, 1837 and 1838. TABLE requisite to he used with the N.A. 1781. Svo. 5s. SABINE'S PENDULUM EXPERIMENTS to DETEEMnrB the Fig^s OK THE Eakth. 1825. 4to. 40«. SHEPHERD'S TABLES for Cobeectino Ldkab Distasces. 1772 Royal 4to. 21s. — TABLES, GENERAL, of the MOON'S DISTANCE from the SUN, and 10 STARS. 1787. Folio. 5s.6d. TAYLOR'S SEXAGESIMAL TABLE. 1780. 4to. 15*. TABLES OF LOGARITHMS. 4to. 60*. TIARK'S ASTRONOMICAL OBSERVATIONS for the LosaiTtroE of Madeira. 1822. 4to. 5s. CHRONOMETRICAL OBSERVATIONS for Diffebences of Longitude between Doveb, Poetsmouth, and Falmouth. 823. 4to. 5s. VENUS and JUPITER: Obsekvatioxs of, compared with the Tables London, 1822. 4to. 2s. WALES AND BAYLY'S ASTRONOMICAL OBSERVATIONS 1777. 4to. 21s. REDUCTION OF ASTRONOMICAL OBSERVATIONS MADE IN THE SOUTHERN Hehisfhebe. 1764—1771. 1788. 4to 10s. 6i. BAEBAULD (Mrs.), Hymns in Prose for Children. "With Illustrations. Crown Svo. BARCLAY (JOSEPH, LL.D.). Selected Extracts from the Tal- mud, chiffly illustrating the Teaching of the Bible. With an Intro- dnction. Illustntions. Svo. 14s. BAEKLEY (H. C). Five Years among the Bulgarians and Turks between the Danube and the Black Sea. Post Svo. 10s. 6i. Bulgaria Before the War ; during a Seven Years' Experience of European Turkey and its Inhabitants. Post Svo. 10s. 6r7. — lly Boyhood : a Tru3 Story. A Book for School- boys and others. With Illustrations. Post Svo. 6s. BAREOW (Sir John). Autobiographical Memoir, from Early Life to Advanced A ?e. Portrait. Svo. 16*. (John) Life, Exploits, and Voyage.9 of Sir Francis Drake. Post Svo. 2s. BAEEY (Sir Charles). Life and Works. By Canon Barrt. With Portrait and Illustrations. Medium Svo. 15s. BATES (H. W.) Records of a Naturalist on the River Amazons during eleven years of Adventure and Travel. Illustrations. Post Svo. 7.«. '6d. BAX (Capt. R.N.). RussianTarfary, Eastern Siberia, China, Japan, and Formosa. A Narrative of a' Cruise in the Eastern Seas. With Map and lUustrations. Crown Svo. 12s. BELCHER (Lady). Account of the Mutineers of the 'Bonnty,' and their Descendants: with th^^r rettlements in Pitcaim and Norfolk Islands. With Hiustrarions. I'osl Svo. 12s. BELL (Sir Chas.). Familiar Letters. Portrait. Post Svo. 12s. LIST OF WORKS BELL (DoTNE C). Notices of the Historic Persons buried in tlic Chapel of St. Peter ad Vincula, in the Tower of London, with an account of the discovery of the supposed remains of Queen Anne Boleyn . With Illustrations. Crown 8vo. 14?. BELT (Thos.). The Naturalist in Nicaragua, including a Residence at the Gold Mines of Chontales ; with Journeys in the Savannahs and Forests; and Observations on Animals and Plants. Illustrations. PostSvo. 12s. BERTRAM (Jas. G.). Harvest of the Sea : an Account of British Food Fishes, including sketches of Fisheries and Fisher Folk. With 50 Illustrations. 8vo. 9s. BIBLE COMMENTARY, The Old Testament. Explanatory and CRiTifiAL. With a Revision of the Translation-. By BISHOPS and CLERGY of the ANGLICAN CHURCH. Edited by F. C.Cook, M.A., Canon of Exeter. 6 Vols. Medium 8vo. 61. 15s. Vol. : 30s. (Genesis. Exodus. Leviticus. Numbers. Deuteronomt V la TT f Joshua, Judges, Ruth, vois. II. g^jiuEL, Kings, Chro- I NicLES, Ezra, Nehemiah, ^ Esther. and III. 36s. Vol. I. ISs. Vol. II. {Introduction. St. Matthew. St. Mark. St. Luke. St. John. Acts. Job. Psalms. Proverbs. Ecclesiastes. Song of Solomon. AIAH. eremiah. ( EZEKIEL, < Daniel. (.Minor Prophets. The New Testament. 4 Vols. Medium 8vo. /'Romans, Corinthians, I Galatians, Philitpians Vol. IV. 24s. Vol. V. 20s. Vol. VI. 25s. (Isi 1 Je: Vol TIT J EphESIANS, CoLOSSIANS, vol. 111. •<; XHESSALONlAX.=i, PhILE- I MON, Pastoral Epistles, (^Hebrews. ( St. James, St. John, St. Vol. IV. -i Peter, St. Jude, Reve- ( LATION. BIGG-WITHER (T. P.). Pioneering in South Brazil; three years of forest and prairie life in the province of Parana. Map and Illustrations. 2 vols. Crown 8vo. 24s. BIRCH (Samuel). A History of Ancient Pottery and Porcelain : Egyptian, Assyrian, Greek, Roman, and Etruscan. With Coloured Plates and 200 Illustrations. Medium 8vo. 42s. BIRD (Isabella). The Hawaiian Archipelago; or Six Months among the Palm Groves, Coral Reefs, and Volcanoes of the Sandwich Islands. With Illustrations. Crown 8vo. 7s. 6d.i BISSET (General Sir John). Sport and War in South Africa from 1S34 to 1867, with a Narrative of the Duke of Edinburgh's Visit. With Map and Illustrations. Crown 8vo. 14s. BLACKSTONE'S COMMENTARIES; adapted to the Present State of the Law. By R. Malcolm Kerr, LL.D. Revised Editioyi, incorporating all the Recent Changes in the Law. 4 vols. 8vo. 60s. BLUNT (Rev. J. J.). Undesigned Coincidences in the Writings of the Old and NewTestaments, an Argument of their Veracity : containing the Books of Moses, Historical and Prophetical Scriptui-es, and the Gospels and Acts. Post 8vo. 6s, History of the Church in the First Three Centuries. Post 8vo. 6s. Parish Priest; His Duties, Acquirements and Obliga- tions. Post 8vo. 6s. University Sermons. Post 8vo. 6$. Plain Sermons. 2 vols. Post 8vo. 12>s, PUBLISHED BY MR. MURRAY. BOSAYELL'S Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. Including the Tour to the Hebrides. Edited by Mr. Cbokkb. Seventh Edition. Portraits. 1 vol. Medium 8vo. 12s, BKACE (C. L.). Manual of Ethnology ; or the Kaces of the Old World. Post 8vo. 6«. BOOK OP COMMON PRAYER. Illustrated with Coloured Borders, Initial Letters, and Woodcuts. 8vo. ISs. BORROW (George). Bible in Spain; or the Journeys, Adventures, and Imprisonments of an Englishman in an Attempt to circulate the Scriptures in the Peninsula. Post 8vo. bs. Gypsies of Spain; their Manners, Customs, Re- ligion, and Language. With Portrait. Post Svo. 5s. Lavengro ; The Scholar — The Gypsy — and the Priest. Post Svo. 5s. Romany Rye — a Sequel to " Lavengro." Post Svo. 5s. Wild Wales : its People, Language, and Scenerj-. Post 8vo. 5s. Romano Lavo-Lil ; Word-Book of the Romany, or English Gypsy Language; with Specimens of their Poetry, and an account of certain Gypsyries, Post Svo. 10s. 6cZ. BRAY (Mrs.). Life of Thomas Stothard, R.A. With Portrait and 60 Woodcuts. 4to. 21s. BRITISH ASSOCIATION REPORTS. York and Oxford, 1831-32, 13s. Qd. Cambridge, 1833, 12s. Edinburgh, 1834, 15s. Dublin, 1S35, 13s. 6d. Bristol, 1836, 12s. Liverpool, 1837. 16s. Gd. Newcastle, 1838, 15s. Birmingham, 1839, 13s. ^d. Glasgow, 1840, 15s. Plymouth, 1841, 13s. 6d. Manchester, 1842, 10s. 6i. Cork, 1843, 12s. York, 1844, 20s. Cambridge, 1845, 12s. Southampton, 1846, 15s. Oxford, 1847, 18s. Swansea, 1848, 9s. Birmingham, 1849, 10s. Edinburgh, 1850, 15s. Ipswich, 1851, 16s. 6d. Belfast, 1S52, 15s. Hull, 1853, 10s. Qd. Liverpool, 1854, 18s. 8vo. Glasgow, 1855, 15s. Cheltenham, 1856, 18s. Dublin, 1S57, 15s. Leeds, 1858, 20*. Aberdeen, 1859, 15s. Oxford, 1860, 25s. Manchester, 1861, 15s. Cambridge, 1862, 20s. Newcastle, 1863, 25s. Bath, 1864, 18s. Birmingham, 1865, 25* Nottingham, 1866, 24s. Dundee, 1867, 263. Norwich, 186S, 25s. Exeter, 1S69, 22s. Liverpool, 1870, 18s. Edinburgh, 1871, 16s. Brighton, 1872, 24s. Bradford, 1873, 25s. Belfast, 1874. -lbs, Bristol, 1875, 25s. Glasgow, 1876, 25s. BROUGHTON (Lord). A Journey through Albania, Turkey in Europe and Asia, to Constantinople. Illustrations. 2 Vols. Svo. 30». Visits to Italy. 2 Vols. Post Svo. ISs. BRUGSCH (Professor). A History of Egypt, from the earliest period. Derived from Monuments and Inscriptions. New Edition. Trans- lated by the late H. Daxbit Seymour. 2 vols. Svo. [Nearly Read>j. BUCKLEY (Arabella B.). A Short History of Natural Science, and the Progress of Discovery from the time of the Greeks to the present day, for Schools and youug Persons, Illustrations. Post Svo. 9s. LIST OF WORKS BITRQON (Rev. J. W.), Christian Gentleman; or, Memoir of Patrick Fraser Tytler. Post bvo. Ss. BURN (Col.). Dictionary of Naval and Military Technical Terms, English and French— French and English. Crown bvo. 15«. BUXTON (Charles). Memoirs of Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton, Bart. With Selections from his Correspondence. Portrait. 8to. 16s. I'opular Edition. Fcap. bvo. 5s. Ideas of the Day. 8vo. 6s. BURCKHARDT'S (Dr. Jacob) Cicerone ; or Art Guide to Paint- ing in Italy. Translated irom the German by Mrs. A. Clough. Post 8vo. 66'. BYLES (Sir John). Foundations of Religion in the Mind and Heart of Man. Post 8vo. 6s. BYRON'S (Lord) LIFE AND WORKS :— Life, Letters, and Journals. By Thomas Moore. Cabinet Edition. Plates. 6 Vols. Fcap. Svo. IBs. ; or One Volume, Portraits, liojal 8(^0., 7*. 6d. Life and Poetical Works. Popular Edition. Portraits. 2 vols. Koyal Svo. 15s. Poetical Works. Library Edition. Portrait. 6 Vols. Svo. 45s. Poetical Works. Cabinet Edition. Plates. 10 Vols. 12mo. 30s. Poetical Works. Pocket Ed. 8 Vols. 16mo, In a case. 21s. Poetical Works. Popular Edition. Plates. Royal Svo. 7s. &d. Poetical AVorks. Pearl Edition. Crown 8vo. 2s. 6d. Childe Harold. With 80 Engravings. Crown Svo. 12s. Childe Harold. 16mo, 2s. &d. Childe Harold. Vignettes. 16mo. Is. Childe Harold. Portrait. 16mo. Qd. Tales and Poems. 16mo. 2s. &d. Miscellaneous. 2 Vols. 16mo. 6s. Dramas and Plays. 2 Vols. 16mo. 5«. Don Juan and Beppo. 2 Vols. 16mo. 6s. Beauties. Poetry and Proge. Portrait. Fcap. Svo. 3s. 6d. BUTTMANN'S Lexilogus; a Critical Examination of the Meaning of numerous Greek Words, cUieily in Homer and Hesiod. By Kev. J. R. Fishlake. Svo. 12s. __ — . Irregular Greek Verbs. With all the Tenses extant — their Formation, Meaning, and Usage, with Kotes, hy Kev. J. R. Fishlake. Post Svo. 65. CALLCOTT (Lady). Little Arthur's History of England. Htw Edition, Irouc/ht down to 1872. With Woodcuts. Fcap. Svo. Is. 6d. CARNARVON (Lord). Portugal, Gallicia, and the Basqu Provinces. Post Svo. 3s. 6d. CARTWRIGHT (W. C). The Jesuits: their Constitution and Teaching. An Historical Sketch. 8vo. Ss. PUBLISHED BY MR. MURRAY. CAMPBELL (Lord). Lord CbaEcellors and Keepers of the Great Seal of England. From the Earliest Times to the Death of Lord Eldon in 1838. 10 Vols. Crown 8vo. 6«. each. Chief Justices of England. From the NormaD Conquest to the Death of Lord Tenterden. 4 Vols. Crown 8vo. 6s. each. Lives of Ljndhurst and Brougham. 8vo. 16s. Lord Bacon. Fcap. 8vo. 2s. did. (Sir George) Handy-Book on the Eastern Ques- tion; being a Very Recent View of Turkey. With Map. Post 8vo. 6s. (Tho8.) Eissay on English Poetry.^ With Short Lives of the British Poets. Post 8vo. 3s. 6d. CAVALCASELLE and CROWE'S History of Painting in North Italy, from the 14th to the 16th Century. "With Illustrations, 2 Vols. &V0. i2s. Early Flemish Painters, their Lives and (Vorks. Illustrations. PostSvo. 10s. 6^. ; or Large Paper, 8vo. 15s. Life and Times of Titian, with some Account of his Family. With Portrait and lilustrdtions. 2 vols. 8vo. 42s. CESNOLA (Gen. L. P. di). Cyprus; its Ancient Cities, Tombs, and Temples. A Karrative of Eesearches and Excavations during Ten Years' Kesidence in that Island. With Map and 400 Illustra'.ions. Medium 8vo. 50s. CHILD (Chaplin). Benedicite ; or, Song of the Three Children ; being Illustrations of the Power, Beneficence, and Desigu manifested by the Creator in his works. Post 8vo. 6s. CHISHOLM (Mrs.). Perils of the Polar Seas; True Stories of Arctic Discovery and Adventure. Illustrations, Post 8vo. 6*. CHURTON (Archdeacon). Poetical Remains, Translations and Imitations. Portrait. Post 8vo. 7s. 6rf. New Testament. Edited with a Plain Practical Commentary for Families and General Eeaders. With 100 Panoramic and other Views, from Sketches made on the Spot. 2 vols. 8vo. 2ls. CLASSIC PREACHERS OP THE EKGLISH CHURCH> St. James's Lectures, 1877. By Cacon Lightfuot, Prof. Wace, Dead of Durham, Rev. Y,'. K. Chuk, Cacon Fairar, and Dean of ISorwitb. With an Intrtductiouhy J. t. Kempe, M.A-, Rector. Post&vo. 7s. ed. CLIVE'S (Lord) Life. By Rev. G. R. Gleig. PostSvo. 3a. 6d. CLODE (C. M.). Military Forces of the Crown ; their Administra- tion and Government. 2 Vols. &vo. 21s. each. —— Administration of Justice under Military and Martial Law, as applicable to the Army, ^avy, Marine, and Auxiliaiy Forces. 8vo. lis. COLERIDGE'S (Samuel Taylor) Tahle-Talk. Portrait. 12mo. 3s. 6c?. COLONIAL LIBRARY. [See Home and Colonial Library.] COMPANIONS FOR THE DEVOUT LIFE. St. James' Lec- tures, 1875 — 6. DeimitationeChristi. Canon Farrar. ' Theologia Geemasica. Can Pb>'!^£es of Blaise Pascal. Deau Ashwell. Church. I FiiNELON's CEuvbes Si'ikituelles. S. Fkan?0I3 de Sales. Dean ' Rev. T. T.Carter. Goulburn. I Andeewes' Devotions. Bishop of Baxtkr's Saints' Rest. Archbishop ; Ely. - of Dublin. Chhistia Yeab. Canon Barry. S. Augustine's CoNFESSiOKS. Bishop Paradise Lost. Rev. E. H. Bicker- of Deny. I steth. Jeremy Tatlor's Holy Living anb ' Pilgrim's Pkogkess. Dean Howsou. Dying. Rev. Dr. Humphry. i Prayeb Book. Deau Burgou. With Preface by J. E. Kempe, Rector. Crown Svo. 6s. COOK (Canon). Sermons Preached at Lincoln's Inn. 8vo. 9s. COOKE (E. W.). Leaves from my Sketch-Book. Being a selec- tion frcm tkeUhes made (iuring many tours. With DescriiHive Text. 50 Plates. 2 vols. Small folio. 31s. 6d. each. COOKERY (Modern Domestic). Founded on Principles of Economy and Practical Knowledge. By a Lady. Woodcuts. Fcap. 8vo. 5s. COOPER (T. T.). Travels of a Pioneer of Commerce on an Overland Journey from Cliina towards India. Illustrations. 8vo. 16s. CRABBE (Rev. George). Life and Poetical Works. With Illus- trations. Eoyal 8vo. 7s. CRAWFORD & BALCARRES (Earl of). Etruscan Inscriptions. Analyzed, Translated, and Commented upon. Svo. 12s. CEIPPS (Wilfred). Old English Plate : Ecclesiastical, Decorative, and Domestic, its makers and marks. Ilhistraticus. JlediumSvo. 21s. CROKER (J, W.). Progressive Geography for Children. ISmo. Is. 6wn the Tigris and Euphrates to Nineveh and Pabylun, and across the Desert to Palmyra. Translated by Chas, Heneaoe. Illustrations. 2 Vols Post Svo. 18s. THOMS (W. J.). Longevity of Man : its Facts and its Fiction. Including Observations on the mure Remarkable Instances. Post Svo. 10s. 6d. THOMSON (Archbishop). Lincoln's Inn Sermons. Svo. 10s. 6d. Life in the Light of God's Word. Post Svo. 5s. TITIAN'S LIFE AND TIMES. With some account of his Family, chiefly from new and unpubli-hed Kecords. By Crowe and Cavalcaselle. With Portrait and Illustrations. 2 Vols. Svo. 42», TOCQUE VILLE'S State of Society in France before the Eevolution, 1789, and on the C;iuses which led to that Event. Translated by Henry Keevk. Svo. 14s. TOMLINSON (Charles); The Sonnet; Its Origin, Structure, and Place in Poetry. With translations from Dante, Petrarch, &c. Post Svo. 9s. TOZER (Rev. H. F.) Highlands of Turkey, with Visits to Mounts Ida, Athos, Olympus, and Felion. 2 Vols. Crown Svo. 24*. —— Lectures on the Geography of Greece. Map. Post Svo. 9s. TRISTEAM (Canon) Great Sahara. Illustrations. Crown Svo. 15s. — Land of Moab ; Travels and Discoveries on the East Side of the Dead Sea and the Jordan. Illustrations. Crown Svo. 15s. 32 LIST OF WORKS PUBLISHED BY MR. MURRAY. TWENTY YEARS' RESIDENCE among the Greeks, Albanians, Turks, Armenians, and Bulgarians. By an English Lady. Edited by Stanley Lane Poole. 2 Vols. Crown 8vo. TWISLETON (Edward). The Tongue not Essential to Speech, with Illustrations of the Power of Speech in the case of the African Confessors. PostSvo, 6*. TWISS' (Hoeace) Life of Lord Eldon. 2 Vols. Post 8vo. 21s. TYLOR (E, B.) Early History of Mankind, and Development of Civilization. 8vo. 12s. Primitive Culture ; the Development of Mythology, Philosophy, Religion, Art, and Custom. 2 Vols. 8vo. 24s. VAMBERY (Arminius) Travels from Teheran across the Turko- man Desert on the Eastern Shore of the Caspian. Illustrations. 8vo. 21s. VAN LENNEP (Henry J.) Travels in Asia Minor. With Ilhistrations of Biblical Literature, and Archaeology. With 'Woodcuts. 2 Vols. Post 8vo. 2is. Modern Customs and Manners of Bible Lands, in illustration of Scripture. With Maps and 300 Illustrations. 2 Vols. 8vo. 21s. VIRCHOW (Professor). The Freedom of Science in the Modern State. Fcap. 8vo, 2s. WELLINGTON'S Despatches during his Campaigns in India, Denmark, Portugal, Spain, the Low Countries, and France. 8 Vols. 8vo. 20s. each. Supplementary Despatches, relating to India, Ireland, Denmark, Spanish America, Spain, Portugal, France, Con- gress of Vienna, Waterloo and Paris. 14 Vols. 8vo. 20». each. * * An Index. 8vo. 20s. Civil and Political Correspondence. Vols. I. to VII. 8vo. 20s. each. Speeches in Parliament. 2 Vols. 8vo. 425. WHEELER (G.). Choice of a Dwelling ; a Practical Handbook of Useful Information on Building a House. Plans. Post 8vo. 7s. Gd. WHITE (W. H.). Manual of Naval Architecture, for the use of Naval Officers, Shipo^raers, Shipbuilders, and Yachtsmen. Illustra- tions. 8vo. 24s. WILBERFORCE'S (Bishop) Life of William Wilberforce. Portrait. Crown 8vo. 6s. WILKINSON (Sir J. G.). Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians, their Private Life, Government, Laws, Arts, Manu- factures, Religion, &c. A new edition, with additions by the late Author. Edited by Samuel Bikch, LL.D. Illustrations. 3 Vols 8vo. — — Popular Account of the Ancient Egyptians. With 500 Woodcuts. 2 Vols. PostSvo. 12s. WOOD'S (Captain) Source of the Oxus. With the Geography of the Valley of the Oxus. By Col. Yule. Map. Svo. 12s. WORDS OF HUMAN WISDOM. Collected and Arranged by E. S. With a Preface by Canon Liddon. Fcap. Svo. Ss. 6d. WORDSWORTH'S (Bishop) Athens and Attica. Plates. Svo. 5s. YULE'S (Colonel) Book of Marco Polo. Illustrated by the Light of Oriental Writers and Modem Travels. With Maps and 80 Plates. 2 Vols. Medium Svo. 63s. BRADBURY, AGNEV?, & CO., PRINTERS, WHITEFEIAKS. Princeton Theological Seminary Libraries 1 1012 01235 8331 OATEOUfe GAYLORD ^J^^^.^'''^^, .♦♦:•■'» iii > ii ; i jiv ) U »<^SSiSi««S«SS^^S$J$S5S^§S^S5MSsss^^