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entailed upon them, is producing, more slowly, the same results in Jamaica, which possesses more abundant resources than any other of the British colonies.

While the foregoing observations and extracts reveal the true causes and the long progress of West India declension, and vindicate the noble act of emancipation from all participation therein, they also exhibit, in an impressive point of view, the unprofitable character of slavery, and illustrate the tendency it has to bring ruin upon all who are concerned in it. When the slave-carrying trade was in full operation, sanctioned by the home government, and the planters, able to obtain an unlimited supply of human chattels from Africa, could act fully upon the maxim often quoted among them, "It is cheaper to buy than to breed;" when they enjoyed a monopoly of the sugar market, and the whole British nation were slumbering in insensibility or ignorance concerning the murderous system of oppression prevailing in the colonies, so that none interfered with or called in question their right in their human property; even at that period declension, embarrassment, and insolvency were complained of as the only results to the proprietors. And so, after the African slave market was closed against them, with the sanction of British law, and under the protection of the British flag, they held eight hundred thousand human beings in absolute bondage, and drove and wrought them at their pleasure, extorting all that could be wrung out of the blood and bones and sinews of men and women by the terror of the cart-whip, the bilboes, and the dungeon; the effect was the same; the process of ruin went on, and they advanced without check to bankruptcy, beggary, and want. The whole history of the British West India slave colonies is conclusive as to the fact that slavery involves an unnatural condition of society, which has rottenness at its very core, and justifies the strong and expressive language of the Rev. Dr. Adam Clarke, when he denounced it as "a system which is cursed at both ends, while the blast of God is on its middle."

In another paper it will be shown that those who seek to uphold slavery by representing the British colonies as ruined by emancipation, are as much mistaken concerning their present condition and prospects, under the operation of freedom, as they are with regard to the circumstances of their past history.

ART. IV. OUR LORD'S SERMON ON THE MOUNT.

So many difficulties beset the question of time and place of our Lord's Sermon on the Mount, that Alford, in his critical Commentary, without attempting a solution of them, simply states the different views respecting the identity or otherwise of the sermon in Matthew with that given in Luke vi, 12-49, as follows:

"There is, I. The view that they are identical. This is generally taken by ordinary readers of Scripture, from their similarity in many points. It is also taken by most of the modern German commentators, who uniformly reject every attempt at harmonizing by supposing the same or similar words to have been twice uttered. This view is, however, beset by difficulties. For, (a,) the sermon in Luke is expressly said to have been delivered after the selection of the apostles, whereas that in the text is as expressly, by continual consecutive notes of time, extending to the call of Matthew, (before which the apostles cannot have been chosen,) placed before that event. And it is wholly unlikely that Matthew, assuming him the author of our Gospel, would have made a discourse, which he must have heard immediately after his call as an apostle, to take place before that call. Then, (b,) this discourse was spoken on a mountain; that, after descending from a mountain, in the plain; for that is the only admissible sense of the words. And again, (g,) the two discourses are, though containing much common matter, widely different. Of one hundred and seven verses in Matthew, Luke contains only thirty; his four beatitudes are balanced by as many woes; and in his text, parts of the sermon are introduced by sayings which do not precede them in Matthew, (for example, Luke vi, 39-45,) but which naturally connect with them. II. Luke epitomized this discourse, leaving out whatever was unsuitable for his Gentile readers; for example, Matt. v, 17-42. But this is improbable; for Luke in several verses is fuller than Matthew, and the whole discourse, as related by him, is connected and consecutive. III. The two discourses are wholly distinct. This view is maintained by Greswell, and principally from the arguments above noticed. But it also is not without grave difficulties, especially if we suppose, as Greswell does, that Luke had the Gospel of Matthew before him. That two discourses wholly distinct should contain so much in common, seems unlikely and unnatural. It is hardly credible that two great public special occasions should be selected by the Lord near the commencement of his ministry, and two discourses delivered to the same audience, not identical, which might have been very probable, and impressive from that very circumstance; nor consecutive nor explanatory the one of the other, but only coinciding in fragments, and not even as two different reports at the distance of some years might be expected to do. Add to this, that those parts of the discourses in which Luke and Matthew agree, occur in both in almost the same order, and that the beginning and conclusion of both are the same. IV. Matthew gives a general compendium of the sayings of our Lord during this part of his ministry, of which Luke's discourse formed a portion, or perhaps was another shorter compendium. But the last stated objection applies with still greater force to this hypothesis, and renders it indeed quite untenable. Besides, it labors under the chronological difficulty in all its bearings. And to one who has observed throughout the close contextual connection of the parts in this discourse, it will be quite incredible that they should be a mere collection of sayings set down at hazard. V. The apparent discrepancies are sometimes reconciled by remembering that there is no fixed time mentioned in any Evangelist for

the special ordination of the apostles, and that it is very doubtful whether they were at any set moment so ordained all together. Thus Matthew may have been a usual hearer of our Lord, and present with the whole of the apostles, as related in Luke, though not yet formally summoned as related in Matt. ix, 9. The introduction of the discourse in Luke by the words ¿yéveto de ev rais hμspais raúrais, (which I maintain to be, on Luke vi, 12, not only possibly, but expressly indefinite, and to indicate that the event so introduced may have happened at any time during the current great period of our Lord's ministry before, during, or after those last narrated,) allows us great latitude in assigning Luke's discourse at any precise time. This, however, leaves the difficulties (above stated under I) in supposing the discourses identical, in force, except the chronological one. With regard to the many sayings of this sermon, which occur, dispersed up and down, in Luke, see notes in their respective places, which will explain my view as to their connection and original times of utterance in each several instance."

Let us bring all these different views under one stand-point by examining and answering the objections which are made against the identity of the two discourses in Matthew and Luke. They can be summed up under three heads:

I. It is contended "that the variance between Matthew and Luke, if we assume them to report the same discourse, is so great as to be incompatible with their being inspired writers. Nor could the difference be satisfactorily explained by regarding Luke's report as an epitome of Matthew, for while he passes over a large part of the discourse reported by Matthew, he adds much which the latter has omitted, and brings some of the sayings of our Lord into a different connection."

The objection with regard to the inspired character of the document must indeed be an insuperable one to those who hold to verbal inspiration in the strictest sense, namely, that the Holy Ghost constrained the evangelists at all times to report the events and the discourses to their full extent, and in every particular, and in the most exact order, just as they took place or were spoken. "This theory, however," Alford remarks, "uniformly gives way before an accurate examination of the Scriptures; even by those who hold it, it is never carried fairly through, but in detail abandoned. Hardly a single instance of parallelism arises between the evangelists, where they do not relate the same thing indeed in substance, but expressed in terms which, if literally taken, are incompatible with each other. To cite only one obvious instance. The title over the cross was written in Greek. According to the verbal inspiration theory each evangelist has recorded the exact words of the inscription, not the general sense, but the inscription itself, not a letter less or more. This is absolutely necessary to the theory. Its advocates must not be allowed, with convenient inconsistency, to take refuge in a common-sense view of the matter, wherever their theory fails them, and

still to uphold it in the main." Dispensing with the theory of verbal, and holding to such plenary inspiration as prevented the evangelists from attributing to the Lord any words of their own imagination, and enabled them to record, in the freedom of the Holy Spirit, not in the bondage of the letter, the sayings of our Lord, we shall find no difficulty in accounting for their variance in their report of the Sermon on the Mount.

Matthew as well as Luke give us our Lord's discourse in an abbreviated form, with this difference, that the former gives a much fuller epitome than the latter. The evangelists wrote independently of each other. The selection and arrangement of the subject matter was left to human agency under divine guidance, and corresponded with the special object which each evangelist had in view. There is, moreover, this difference between the two evangelists. What the eye and ear witness Matthew has recorded, we may assume as having been more immediately presented to his mind by the promised Spirit (John xiv, 26; xvi, 14) than the record of Luke; who was dependent on the authentic but human testimony of others, and who, in the preface to his Gospel, does not lay claim to a supernatural revelation of what he records, but to the care and accuracy of a faithful and honest historian. In giving the result of his investigation, and forming a connected whole out of the several parts, we may expect that his report of the discourse was not so exact and full, and received a different form from that of Matthew, while at the same time he was preserved by the Spirit of truth from imputing to the Lord anything he did not say.

While we however concede freely so much to human agency in the inspired records, we must utterly reject the supposition of Matthew or Luke having collected into a systematic discourse many sayings of our Lord spoken on different occasions. Such a supposition would be inconsistent not only with their inspiration but with their honesty; and apart from this consideration there are internal evidences against such a hypothesis as is conceded even by rationalistic writers, like Baur, who says "that the discourse, breathing throughout the spirit of vital polemic against the Pharisees, makes undoubtedly the impression of being original and immediate." With regard to the objection "that many parts of the sermon, as recorded by Matthew, are found in Mark and Luke, connected with quite different occasions," Stier remarks very properly: "It was in every respect worthy of the Great Teacher, and in accordance with his divine wisdom and human condescension, that our Lord chose to repeat his sententious sayings on different occasions, and," he adds, "this custom of our Lord should make some preachers blush, who are vain

enough to think it is incumbent upon them, whenever they speak in public, to say something new."

II. The difference in the order of time, assigned by Matthew and Luke, is urged against the identity of the two discourses. According to Luke it follows the selection of the twelve apostles, while in Matthew it seems to have preceded it. How improbable, it is said, that Matthew should report this most important discourse prior to his own call to the apostleship, if indeed our Lord had delivered the Sermon on the Mount after the selection of his apostles!

In answer to this second objection we reply, it is a matter of fact, which cannot be refuted, that Matthew, for some reason or other, does not mention his call to the apostleship in the proper chronological order, as Mark and Luke do. He does not in general bind himself to a precise chronological order, rather arranging his subject matter in groups, according to the nature of the subjects narrated, as, for instance, the group of parables shows. That he should assign so early a place in his Gospel to that sermon in which our Lord for the first time fully developed the fundamental principles of his kingdom, need not surprise us. And that our Lord delivered this discourse not before the middle of his ministry is indicated also by Matthew's remark, (iv, 23–25,) and by the open manner in which Jesus attacks the Pharisees and declares himself to be the Messiah.

III. Against the identity of the two discourses, there is further urged the difference of some local circumstances attending the delivery of the discourse. According to Matthew's report, Jesus went up into a mountain and was sitting in delivering his sermon; but Luke says he came down from the mountain and stood in the plain. These variances however may easily be reconciled. By "mountain" we are most probably to understand one of the high plains so common in Palestine; and the descending refers to a hill, overhanging this high plain, to which he had before ascended for solitary prayer, a circumstance not mentioned by Matthew. As regards the position of Jesus while delivering his discourse, the standing may have occurred a few moments before he commenced his regular discourse, while the multitude was pressing around him. Even if we had not the statement of Matthew respecting our Lord's sitting down to teach, we would have to complete the statement of Luke by supposing that Jesus, standing at the beginning, soon after sat down, because the Jewish teachers usually delivered their instructions sitting.

From the difference of the above-mentioned local circumstances, Lange draws the following inference: That Matthew reports a discourse which Jesus held on the top of a mountain, in the secluded

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