could not fabricate it, except at the risk of their lives. The circumstances were of a kind to demand belief, however reluctantly that belief may have been entertained. Every thing connected with the appearance of the watch tended at once to impress the minds of the chief priests and scribes with the truthfulness of the account. We are surprised at the notions of dignity attached by some commentators to the college of chief priests and elders. In the unjust and cruel measures they took against the Saviour, they little consulted their dignity. Determined to crush the Nazarene and his cause, they did not hesitate about the means by which their purpose might be accomplished. Dignity, decorum, propriety, weighed nothing in their estimation, when set over against any proceeding which presented a possibility of success. The phrase ovu Boúλiov λaßóvтes (xxviii. 12) does not necessarily imply the idea of a formal, deliberate sitting. The circumstances were such as to bring them together hastily; and the resolution to bribe the soldiers was the only one they could have adopted consistently with the exigency of the case. To affirm that the falsehood could not have escaped Pilate, is to assume that he took more interest in the matter than his whole character justifies. All his anxiety must have coincided with the measures already taken against the person of Christ, in which he had reluctantly involved himself. And as the story told him by the chief priests and scribes must have been more welcome than the real account of the case would have been, he naturally believed it, and took no further trouble. Had he heard the true circumstances attendant on Jesus rising from the dead, his fears would have been excited, and his conscience rendered doubly uneasy. Such tidings must have been disagreeable to his agitated spirit. But when he learned that the body had been stolen by the disciples at night, his fears had not been allayed, nor were his superstitious feelings to be quieted. He felt that the part he had taken in putting Christ to death was unattended by the guilt and impiety in which it must have presented itself, had Jesus proved himself the Son of God by rising from the dead. Thus the information given by the Sanhedrim to Pilate, false though it was, found a welcome reception. Had he even suspected its truth, he would not have instituted a process of inquiry. Whether Joseph of Arimathea, Nicodemus, and Gamaliel were present at the meeting of the Sanhedrim, is a point that cannot be ascertained. They may or may not have been there. The record is silent on the matter. And if they were present, had they the moral courage to object? Did they possess the boldness necessary to confront the body of the chief priests and elders? And suppose they did protest against the unworthy resolution, was it incumbent on the historian to relate the fact? The decision of the majority is the decision of a council. The dissent of a small minority is not usually given. Hence the record is perfectly consistent with the idea of a few persons refusing to sanction the open dissemination of a falsehood.'-pp. 79-83.

The linguistic peculiarities of Matthew's Gospel are learnedly and clearly pointed out by Dr. Davidson, in his section Characteristic Peculiarities. From this section we make the following extract respecting Matthew's Mode of Narration :—

'We do not affirm that Matthew's Gospel is always irregular, nor even the greater part of it. A considerable portion of it appears, from a comparison with the Gospels of Mark and Luke, to stand in proper order, agreeably to the natural consecution of events. But the writer had an important object in view, which could not be accomplished in the best manner by confining himself throughout to the regular series of succession. He has therefore neglected chronological arrangement in various places. Hence his Gospel should not be made the basis of a harmony, as is done by Kaiser. Mark and Luke should not be brought into rigid conformity with Matthew, else violence will be done them.

'But it is argued by Marsh, that Matthew "being an apostle and eye-witness of the facts he has recorded, must in general have known the time in which each of them happened, but which St. Mark and St. Luke, who were not eye-witnesses, could not always know." In answer to this it may be remarked, that chronological arrangement may not have been of so much importance in the eyes of Matthew as to induce him to follow it, when the chief purpose for which he wrote might be better

better fulfilled by neglecting it. Besides, as Greswell well remarks, “one like St. Luke or St. Mark, who, though not an eye-witness of the events recorded by St. Matthew, yet proposed to write an account of them, it might naturally be supposed, even humanly speaking, would take so much the greater pains to remedy this defect, both by acquiring a perfect knowledge of his subject, and by verifying in every instance the order of his facts."

The manner of narration peculiar to the apostle is such as might be expected from an eye-witness, or from one deriving his information from eye-witnesses. The impressions made upon his mind by scenes and circumstances, are recorded with artlessness-without any apparent aim at effect. His sentences are constructed without the roundness which bespeaks reflection and research. There is a want of picturesqueness and vivid painting. The writer does not go into circumstantial details, except in the discourses and moral instructions of Christ, which are described with great distinctness and particularity. But he narrates with unstudied clearness things which he saw, or of which he had been informed by others, placing them in such order as might best exhibit the greatness of the Redeemer as a teacher and prophet. The higher and more spiritual aspects of the Saviour's person are not presented. Here that distinguished Being is depicted as the great descendant of David, on whom Jewish expectation was centered—as the substance of type and prophecy in the ancient dispensation. We see a marvellous character, whose perfect acquaintance with the Jewish economy, and striking power of attesting his mission, announce the prophet greater than Moses. Still, however, he is invested with the temporal and the Jewish, rather than the divine and the

eternal.

The diction of Matthew partakes of a strongly Hebraised character. The Hebraisms of it are more marked than those of the other Gospels. It is unnecessary to adduce proofs of this assertion, because they are so abundant. The style bears some similarity to that of Mark, as was long since remarked by Erasmus, so that Greswell ventures to infer, that Mark was the translator of the Hebrew Gospel. But the occurrence of Latin terms in the Gospel of Matthew will be reckoned no presumption that it was translated at Rome when it is remembered, that Matthew, as a tax-gatherer for the Roman government, must have come in contact, by the very nature of his office, with persons using the Latin language. Neither does the coincidence between the Gospels of Matthew and Mark, in the use of such remarkable words as ἀγγαρεῦσαι—φραγελλῶσαι—κολοβῶσαι, afford any argument, by which it is rendered probable that the translator of the one, and the author of the other, were the same person; because this phenomenon may be equally explained by the circumstance, that the Greek translator of Matthew's Gospel made use of Mark's, retaining his very words in some instances.'—pp. 54-56.

Next to the question of the original language of St. Matthew's Gospel, there is perhaps none of greater interest and importance than that which has been raised with regard to the authenticity of its first two chapters. As our author states, these chapters were considered as an integral part of the Gospel till the middle of the eighteenth century, when Williams attacked their authenticity. He was followed by Stroth, Hess, Ammon, Eichhorn, Schleiermacher, Bertholdt, Priestley, Norton, etc., who, if they did not absolutely reject, threw out doubts at least of the apostolic origin of the two chapters. The portion, however, has not wanted advocates, such as Fleming, Velthusen, Theiss, Rau, Geo. Ph. Schmidt, Piper, Greisbach, Schubert, Müller, Hug, Credner, Paulus, Fritzsche, Kuinoel, and others. It was to be expected that this was a question on which Dr. Davidson would put forth the strength of his great resources, and we therefore turned with some eagerness to his section on the Integrity of Matthew's Gospel. We were not disappointed; the subject is very thoroughly examined, and upon the whole we scarcely know where the reader can find a more complete explana

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tion of all the principal difficulties which these chapters have been thought to present. The author admits that most, if not all, the positive arguments in favour of the authenticity of this portion of Matthew's Gospel prove nothing more than that they always formed a part of the Greek document;' and he is aware that hence some au- ' thors, as Norton and Kuhn, oppose the authenticity as regards the Hebrew Gospel of Matthew, while they allow it as regards the present Greek Gospel.' He somewhat curtly disposes of this by the remark: "We have already endeavoured to prove that the Greek Gospel has all the claims to our reverent attention which the Hebrew document could ever have presented, so that it is sufficient for our purpose to show that the Greek had always the two chapters in question." In fact the author must, here and elsewhere, have felt encumbered by his own hypothesis as to the origin of the Greek document, for which, nevertheless, he is constrained to claim a degree of authority which every one will not be prepared to concede to a document which according to that hypothesis is a free translation by an unknown and later hand from the original Hebrew, and which, on that ground, he is obliged to allow is not immediately and directly authentic."

This hypothesis, it must be seen, presents difficulties in dealing with the question of the authenticity of the first two chapters, which are not felt by either those who uphold the present Greek text as the original, or by those who think there were two originals—the lost Hebrew and the existing Greek.

Apart from this, the pages devoted by Dr. Davidson to the examination of this question form one of the most interesting portions of this highly interesting and most important volume.

In answer to the argument derived from the alleged discrepancies between the genealogies of Matthew and Luke, the author remarks that this argument derives all its force from the assumption that these genealogies are absolutely irreconcileable :

'We admit that there are perplexing difficulties connected with them, which cannot perhaps be satisfactorily solved at the present day; but an absolute and direct contradiction between them cannot be allowed. The assertion has been frequently made, but never proved. The two genealogies are different, arranged on different principles, and written for different purposes; but they are not on that account contradictory and irreconcilable. The fact that Luke, supposing him to have written after Matthew, did not add some explanatory statement which might serve to render the contrariety less apparent, so far from militating against the apostolie origin of the first Gospel, is rather confirmatory of it, as showing that no difficulties were felt at that time. No contradiction was then thought of. The Jews brought no objection against Jesus' descent from David while he was on earth; and yet it is the object of the genealogies to show that he did spring from that illustrious king, as had been foretold in the Old Testament. In the hearing of his adversaries he was frequently called the Son of David, and they never disputed the fact. Neither was any objection made to the apostles when they referred his origin to the same personage. Our ignorance of the genealogical principles and rules of the Hebrews, and the remoteness of the period in which we live, create perplexity, when there was none to Christ's contemporaries, or to his apostles.'-pp. 115, 116.

The objections drawn from the alleged differences between the accounts of the Lord's nativity in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, are very satisfactorily disposed of:

'The

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The first contradiction, it is affirmed, consists in the accounts of Joseph's place of abode. According to Matthew, Joseph dwells at first in Bethlehem. This, indeed, he does not state expressly, but in relating that Jesus was born at Bethlehem (ii. 1), and that Joseph, on his return from Egypt, had been divinely warned not to go to Judea, but into Galilee, and had therefore settled in Nazareth (ii. 22 f.), the historian obviously takes it for granted. According to Luke, on the contrary, Joseph, as well as Mary (i. 26), dwells in Nazareth, comes to Bethlehem only incidentally, and returns to his place of residence. Here every attempt to reconcile the accounts is impossible." These are the words of De Wette, coinciding very nearly with those of Schleiermacher.

'It will be observed, that Matthew, who was less attentive to chronology and geographical circumstances, omits whatever was not conducive to his leading purpose in writing the Gospel. The parents of Jesus taking him from Bethlehem to the temple, and performing the rites prescribed by the law of Moses, returned from Jerusalem to Bethlehem, where the Magi visited the newly-born child; thence they fled into Egypt, and after their return dwelt in Nazareth. In the account of Joseph's return from Egypt, the writer of the two chapters supposes Bethlehem to have been his previous habitation, whereas Luke writes: "when they had performed all things according to the law of the Lord, they returned into Galilee to their own city, Nazareth." These words of the evangelist, in connection with his previous statements, exclude, it is said, the idea of Joseph returning to Bethlehem. He went to Bethlehem solely on account of the registry. Mary was subjected there to much inconvenience, and both must have been reluctant to undergo the fatigues of a double journey. Schleiermacher, goes so far as to say, that "no ground for the supposition, either of employment in Bethlehem or of an intention to settle there, is afforded by Luke's narrative, or even consistent with it; and all his vividness is destroyed if we imagine that Joseph's return to Bethlehem was merely omitted."

'We are unable to perceive the propriety or force of these remarks. Too much stress is laid on the inconveniences to which Mary and Joseph were subjected at Bethlehem. It is not said or implied that they were obliged to suffer them during the entire time of their stay, but only before and at the birth of Jesus. Luke's narrative does not presuppose that they could find no accommodation in the inn until they set out for Jerusalem, forty days after the child had been born. If it were possible to extract fairly from the account, that their situation was so uncomfortable for forty days, Schleiermacher's statement might be probable; but as there is nothing to indicate that, there is room for supposing that Joseph's temporary visit to Bethlehem may have led him to select it as his future abode in preference to Nazareth, especially as the circumstances of Mary's situation must have caused him to remain in the place for a time. He was bound to Nazareth by no special tie. He was poor, and would readily take up his abode where he found the best means of employment. During his visit to Bethlehem, it is highly probable he resolved to make it the place of his permanent abode. That he obtained employment during the time of his second residence there, may be inferred from his being found in an oikla (Matt. ii. 11). When he first went to Bethlehem to be taxed, he lodged in an inn, or rather in the stable connected with it; but when visited by the Magi, he was in an oikia, not a κатάλνμα. On the contrary, it is never hinted that he had been the possessor of a house at Nazareth. Indeed, all the circumstances of the case, as related by the writer of the first Gospel, unite in rendering it probable that Joseph, according to his own purpose, had permanently settled in Bethlehem, although he may have gone to it originally with no other intention than that of returning to Nazareth. Hence he would have returned thither, after leaving Egypt, had he not been divinely warned of danger. The reason why Matthew passes over the previous abode at Nazareth obviously is, because mention of it would have contributed nothing to his object in writing for the Jews; whereas the birth of Jesus at Bethlehem was a fact of importance to him, because it had been predicted in the Old Testament that Messiah should be born there. Luke begins at a point of time prior to that with which Matthew commences. It lay directly in the way of his leading design to specify the abode of the child's parents; but he omits the sojourn of Joseph and Mary in Bethlehem, the visit of the Magi, the flight into Egypt, the sanguinary proceedings of Herod, and the return from Egypt. Hence

he

he might the more readily conclude his general and rapid survey of the infancy of Christ, by characterising the settlement of Joseph at Nazareth as a return to the place; especially as his description appears to have been composed without respect to that of Matthew, and without the appearance of solicitude in regard to discrepancy. The abode at Bethlehem became eventually brief, having been interrupted by the flight into Egypt; and therefore the words in question might properly be employed as a concluding formula to the narrative of Luke. Those who press the words of the historian, understand immediate succession, as though the return to Nazareth followed the presentation of the child in the temple immediately. But the words should be understood generally. They need not be insisted on as rigidly accurate. As well might it be inferred from Acts ix. 26, 27, that Saul went immediately from Damascus to Jerusulem; whereas it is known from the Epistle to the Galatians, that he went first into Arabia, and abode there three years.'-pp.

116-119.

Dr. Davidson then proceeds to investigate the difficulties connected with the appearance of the star, and the visit of the Eastern magi to Jerusalem. He is not insensible of these difficulties, but believing as he does in the supernatural and the miraculous, he leaves the attempt at precise explanation to those who take the ground of the rational: 'The whole matter appears to contain something extraordinary. It lies in part beyond the common course of events. Many perplexing questions may be raised concerning it which we are utterly unable to solve. What was the nature of the ȧorp? Was it an angel, as some fathers imagined; or a meteor, or a constellation, or a comet? How did the magi know that it had reference to the Messiah? Was it by astrology, or by its appearance in the quarter of the heavens above Judea, or by a divine intimation?'

Without underrating or pretending to solve the difficulties involved in these questions, our author apprehends that the air of the entire narrative does not accord with an ordinary fixed star, or a comet as adjunct of a conjunction of planets, or with a mere conjunction itself. He is therefore disposed to think that the dorp was a meteor or luminous appearance; and if this be correct, it was created for a certain purpose, important indeed, but transitory.' He supposes that the magi shared in the expectation which prevailed about this time, that a mighty temporal prince was about to appear. When the extraordinary star was seen in the heavens, their attention would immediately be drawn to it, especially if they were addicted to astrology. And in referring it to the Messiah with so much certainty, we may well suppose them to have been influenced by a higher agency than their own. Other circumstances combined to induce them to associate the phenomenon with the Messiah; but these circumstances would probably have been insufficient, without supernatural influence, to create a settled conviction of the connection, whence these wise men were led to undertake a lengthened journey to Judea. This is in accordance with the fact that they were afterwards divinely warned (xpnuario ÉVTEC Kar' ovap) to return to their own country by another way.'

It is justly urged by our author, that there is no reason for asserting that the magi distrusted the guidance of the star because they asked at Jerusalem, Where is he that is born king of the Jews?' They had travelled to Judea, and its capital Jerusalem, in consequence of the

remarkable