1. FORASMUCH as many have taken in hand to set forth in order a declaration of those 2 things which are most surely believed among us, even as they delivered them unto us, which 3 from the beginning were eyewitnesses, and ministers of the word; it seemed good to me 4 also, having had perfect understanding of all things from the very first, to write unto thee 5 in order, most excellent Theophilus, that thou mightest know the certainty of those things 6 wherein thou hast been instructed. 7 THERE was in the days of Herod, the king of Judea, a certain priest named Zacharias, 8 of the course of Abia: and his wife was of the daughters of Aaron, and her name was Elisa- 9 beth. And they were both righteous before God, walking in all the commandments and 10 ordinances of the Lord blameless. And they had no child, because that Elisabeth was 11 barren, and they both were now well stricken in years. 12 8 And it came to pass, that, while he executed the priest’s office before God in the order 13 9 of his course, according to the custom of the priest’s office, his lot was to burn incense 14 when he went into the temple of the Lord. And the whole multitude of the people were 15 praying without, at the time of incense. 16 11 And there appeared unto him an angel of the Lord standing on the right side of the altar 17 of incense. And when Zacharias saw him, he was troubled, and fear fell upon him. 18 But the angel said unto him, Fear not, Zacharias: for thy prayer is heard; and thy wife 19 Elisabeth shall bear thee a son, and thou shalt call his name John. And thou shalt have 20 joy and gladness, and many shall rejoice at his birth. For he shall be great in the sight of 21 the Lord, and shall drink neither wine nor strong drink; and he shall be filled with the 22 Holy Ghost, even from his mother’s womb. And many of the children of Israel shall he 23 turn to the Lord their God. And he shall go before him in the spirit and power of Elias, 24 to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of 25 the just; to make ready a people prepared for the Lord. 26 18 And Zacharias said unto the angel, Whereby shall I know this? for I am an old man, and 27 my wife well stricken in years. And the angel answering, said unto him, I am Gabriel, 28 that stand in the presence of God; and am sent to speak unto thee, and to show thee 29 these glad tidings. And behold, thou shalt be dumb, and not able to speak, until the day 30 that these things shall be performed, because thou believest not my words, which shall be 31 fulfilled in their season.

21. And the people waited for Zacharias, and marvelled that he tarried so long in the 22 temple. And when he came out he could not speak unto them: and they perceived that he had seen a vision in the temple: for he beckoned unto them, and remained speechless.

23. And it came to pass, that as soon as the days of his ministration were accomplished,

24 he departed to his own house. And after those days his wife Elisabeth conceived, and hid

25 herself five months, saying, Thus hath the Lord dealt with me in the days wherein he looked on me, to take away my reproach among men.

THE LIFE OF OUR LORD is the centre of the whole of the dispensations of God, the point to which all previous revelations converge, and whence light streams down to our own times. The Gospel may be called a biography; but it is a biography that illustrates and harmonizes ALL HISTORY, forms the basis of all evangelic truth, and sums up all previous disclosures of the divine will. It is a life, illimitable in duration, connection, and dependencies. The plans which it embodies were formed before the foundation of the earth; and the victories it achieved are, in their influence, everlasting. He is the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending. He is the subject of the first and of the latest promise. He begins and closes both dispensations; and his work and honor will form the theme of an eternal song. J. A.

The Gospel was no sudden or solitary message. Christianity is, in one sense, as ancient as the Crea- tion, resting on a foundation wide as the world and old as time. Step by step the groundwork of the Church was laid in the silent depths, and at last, when all was now ready, it rose above the earth, that all men might consciously combine to rear the spiritual temple of the living God. B. F. W.

The history of Jesus, his words and miracles, his crucifixion and resurrection, witnessed by the rulers and the people, friend and foe, related by his disciples with unmistakable simplicity and honesty, pro- claimed from Jerusalem to Rome, believed by contemporaries of every grade of culture, sealed by the blood of martyrs, producing the mightiest results, felt and demonstrated in its power from day to day wherever his name is known, is the best-authenticated history in the world.

Without Jesus of Nazareth history is an inextricable enigma, a chaos of facts without meaning, con- nection, and aim. With him it is a beautiful, harmonious revelation, the slow but sure unfolding of a plan of infinite wisdom and love; all ancient history converging to his coming, all modern history re- ceiving from him his higher life and impulse. He is the glory of the past, the life of the present, the hope of the future. We cannot even understand ourselves without him. According to an old Jewish proverb: “The secret of man is the secret of the Messiah.” He is the great central light of history as a whole, and at the same time the light of every soul; he alone can solve the mystery of our being, and fulfil our desires after truth, our aspirations after holiness, and the longing of our hearts after peace and happiness. P. S.

THE state of the world at the epoch when our Lord appeared was exactly that which, according to our mere human conceptions, might seem most fitted for the reception of Christianity. Judaism, on the one hand, had lost all those external glories and prerogatives which, at an earlier period, would have prevented any recognition of the Messiah, save as a national ruler and king. There would have been no Israel of God with chastened hearts and more spir- itualized expectancies waiting, as we know they now were, for a truer redemption of Israel. Heathenism, on the other hand, had now gained by its contact with Judaism truer conceptions of the unity of God; and many a proselyte of the gate was there who, like the centurion of Capernaum, loved well the na- tion that had taught him to kneel to the one God, and could bear to receive from that despised people a knowledge of his own and the world’s salvation. When we add to this the recent consolidation of the power of Rome, and recognize a political centraliza- tion, which could not but aid, however unwillingly and unwittingly, the pervasive influences of the new faith, we may well feel that the very appearance of Christianity, at the time when it did appear, is in itself an indirect evidence of its divine nature and truth. E.

Times of triumph and sorrow, the government of judges, kings, and priests, the open manifesta- tion of divine power and the brilliant display of human courage, the teaching of prophets and the teaching of experience, the concentration of East- ern meditation and the activity of Western thought, the skepticism of learning and the enthusiasm of hope, each form of discipline and each phase of speculation, had contributed to bring out into clear forms upon one narrow stage the spiritual capacities and aspirations of men. Everything was ready, and a brief space was sufficient for the prophetic work of Messiah. Disciples were waiting to recognize him; enemies had already rejected him. His words found everywhere a direct and characteristic application. His presence was an instantaneous test of all that was partial or transitory. The simple announcement of his advent was the gospel; the record of his works and words in various scenes and before various classes, the fulness of its special adaptations, not for one time only, but for all times. For the manifoldness of the elements which were combined in the Jewish people at Christ’s coming provided not only for the rapidity of its comprehension, but also for the typical completeness of its history. B. F. W.

1. It appears from the Acts of the Apostles and the Apostolic Epistles, that the earliest preaching of the gospel consisted of a brief summary of the facts of our Lord’s earthly history, with a few words of pointed application to the parties addressed. Of these astonishing facts, notes would voluntarily be taken and digests put into circulation. To such Luke here refers as narratives of what was believed surely among Christians, and drawn up from the testimony of eye-witnesses; and he puts in a virtual claim for his own gospel to supersede these “many” narrations. B.—All the evidence which can be gathered from the circumstances of the early Church, and the traditions of the origin of the gospels, has tended to establish the existence of an original oral gospel, definite in general outline and even in language, which was committed to writing in the lapse of time in various special shapes. The more exactly any one compares parallel passages of the gospels the more certainly he will feel that their likenesses are to be referred to the use of a common source, and not to the immediate influence of one gospel upon another. The general form is evidently derived from some one original type; the special elaboration of it is due to personal knowledge and apprehension of the events. The evidence of the evangelists is thus one and yet independent. They do not reproduce one uniform history; but give distinct histories according to the outlines of a comprehensive and common plan. In proportion as it can be shown that there is a distinctness of purpose, though most free from the marks of conscious design, in the several gospels, in proportion that there can be shown to exist in them significant differences consistent with absolute truth, there is a sure pledge of their plenary inspiration in the truest and noblest sense of the words. Nothing less than the constant presence of the Holy Spirit, if we can in any way apprehend the method of his working, could preserve perfect truthfulness with remarkable variations; a perfect plan with childly simplicity; an unbroken spiritual concord in independent histories. B. F. W.

5. The forerunner of Jesus was, by both his parents, of sacerdotal, just as Jesus himself was of royal, extraction, though at the same time also the great High Priest. Priestly descent was necessary for the forerunner, in order to secure for him when he appeared the respect of the people. C. B.—The descendants of Eleazar and Ithamar, the sons of Aaron, were exclusively called to the service of the sanctuary, and divided into four-and-twenty classes or orders, each of which ministered in the temple during a week. The descendants of Eleazar, the elder son, formed sixteen of these classes or courses; those of Ithamar, the younger, only eight—that of Abijah being (1 Chron. 24 : 10) the eighth. From the days of Solomon, these four-and-twenty courses relieved each other weekly in the temple service. Lange.

8,9. Every morning, before the break of day, the captain or chief officer of the temple guard opened the door of the court, where the priests “in residence” for the week had slept, and the procession of ten passed round the court in white robes and bare feet to kill the morning sacrifice. As the first rays of the rising sun struck upon the golden lamp above the porch, the trumpets sounded; and those of the priests who had drawn the lot entered the temple for the offering of incense. That was the moment for any preternatural visitation to the priests. Then they came out, and, having slain the lamb on the altar, they pronounced the benediction. A. P. S.

10. The people praying without at the time of the incense. As the daily sacrifice represented the sacrifice of Christ, and the incense the prayers of the saints, the incense was ordered to be burnt while the sacrifice was being offered, thus indicating that through the sacrifice of Christ they had access to God. Accordingly the sacrifices and incense, both morning and evening, were fitly accompanied with the prayers of the people, not in the temple only, but everywhere; and these hours were called the hours of prayer (Acts 3 : 1).—13. John. In the Hebrew language this name signifies the grace of God: hence it was fitly given to the Messiah’s forerunner. M.—17. Because during these four hundred years the Jewish people did not improve the direction furnished by the Scriptures of the Old Testament, and all the previous dealings of God—because the good spirit which had been evoked by the Babylonish captivity and the events of the Maccabean reign had again gone down in Pharisaism and Sadduceeism—it was necessary that a special forerunner, representing once more the truth and rigor of the Old Testament, should go before Christ. This, John, the son of Zacharias, was to be.

19. Gabriel.** The same angel appeared to Daniel (9 : 21), and foretold the time of Messiah. In the book of Daniel, Michael also is mentioned by name, as one of the highest angels. Elsewhere seven angels of the highest rank, who stand before God, are spoken of (Rev. 8 : 2). C. B.

Within the half century that embraced the life of Christ, we have more instances of angelic interposition than in all the foregoing centuries of the world’s history. At its opening and at its close angels appear as taking a special interest in events which had little of outward mark to distinguish them. H.

21,22. His appearance, at last, explained all. They could receive no blessing that day, and Zacharias could no longer minister in his course, for he was speechless; all he could do was to tell them by signs what had happened. Had they known it, his silence for the time was but the prelude to the lasting silence of the Law, of which he was a minister, now that Christ was about to come. G.

Section 2.—Annunciation to Mary.

26. And in the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God unto a city of Galilee, 27 named Nazareth, to a virgin espoused to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house 28 of David; and the virgin’s name was Mary. And the angel came in unto her, and said, Hail, thou that art highly favoured, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among 29 women. And when she saw him, she was troubled at his saying, and cast in her mind what manner of salutation this should be. 30 And the angel said unto her, Fear not, Mary: for thou hast found favour with God. 31 And behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and bring forth a son, and shalt call his 32 name JESUS. He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest; and the 33 Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David: and he shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever; and of his kingdom there shall be no end. 34, 35 Then said Mary unto the angel, How shall this be, seeing I know not a man? And the angel answered and said unto her, The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee: therefore also that holy thing which shall 36 be born of thee, shall be called the Son of God. And behold, thy cousin Elisabeth, she hath also conceived a son in her old age; and this is the sixth month with her who was 37 called barren. For with God nothing shall be impossible. 38 And Mary said, Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word. And the angel departed from her.

THE angel said to the virgin-mother, “Thou shalt call his name Jesus;” and that to-day has become the greatest of all names. Learning has labored for ages with loving delight to explain the far-reaching and gracious words which flowed from his lips. Poetry, inspired by the history of his life and death, the perfection of his character, and the genius of his gospel, has exerted all her powers to praise his holy name. The early Christians portrayed him in the Catacombs of Rome as “the good Shepherd” coming down from the hills of Judah, the shepherd’s staff in his hand, his hair wet with dew, and on his arm a helpless lamb. And from their time Art has exerted her highest powers to set forth the beauty and majesty of his form and character. Eloquence has woven her choicest garlands to crown his sacred head. Music has breathed her sweetest, loftiest notes in singing the glories of “the Messiah.” Children are taught to lisp his praise, and dying saints depart saying, “Lord Jesus, receive our spirits.” Countless multitudes, who believe in him, meet week after week on every side of the globe, in temples built to his name; and the burden of their worship is, “Thou art the King of Glory, O Christ. Thou art the everlasting Son of the Father.” “Unto him that loved us, and washed us from our sins in his own blood; and hath made us kings and priests unto God and his Father, to him be glory and dominion for ever.”

Great Name! Divine Name! Dear Name! Jesus Christ our Saviour! It is the Life of the Church, the Light of the world, and the Hope of humanity. As it was in the past, and is now, it shall be in the future. “His name shall endure for ever; his name shall be continued as long as the sun; and men shall be blessed in him; all nations shall call him blessed.” An.

26. The angel Gabriel.** It is remarkable that this annunciation is made by the same archangel Gabriel who had formerly appeared to the prophet Daniel (8 : 16 ; 9 : 21) and probably to the prophet Zechariah (2 : 1-4), and described to both so circumstantially the coming of Christ, his rejection by the Jews, and the final establishment of his kingdom. Hales.

34. The question, not of outwardly expressed doubt, like that of Zacharias, or of an inwardly felt sense of impossibility, like that of Abraham and Sarah, but of a childlike innocence that sought to realize to itself, in the very face of seeming impossibilities, the full assurance of its own blessedness. There was no lack of real faith in that question.

E.—35. Shall be called the Son of God. That Christ is the Son of God in his divine and eternal nature is clear from all the New Testament; yet here we see that Sonship efflorescing into human manifestation by his being born, through “the power of the Highest,” an infant of days. We must neither think of a double Sonship nor deny what is here plainly expressed, the connection between his human birth and his proper personal Sonship. B.

38. As if one so unworthy of the least of God’s mercies had no right or title to question his doings, however great a gift it pleased him to confer, she sinks all thought of self in thought of him, and says, “Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word.” A finer instance of humble, childlike, unbroken trust, we shall scarcely find in any record human or divine. H.

In no part is the singular simplicity of the gospel narrative more striking than in the relation of this incident. So early does this remarkable characteristic of the evangelic narrative develop itself: the manner in which they relate, in the same calm and equable tone, the most extraordinary and most trivial events; the apparent absence either of wonder in the writer, or the desire of producing a strong effect on the mind of the reader. H. M.

Section 3.—Mary visits Elisabeth.

39. And Mary arose in those days, and went into the hill country with haste, into a city 40, 41 of Juda, and entered into the house of Zacharias, and saluted Elisabeth. And it came to pass, that when Elisabeth heard the salutation of Mary, the babe leaped in her womb: 42 and Elisabeth was filled with the Holy Ghost. And she spake out with a loud voice 43 and said, Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb. And 44 whence is this to me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me? For lo, as soon as the voice of thy salutation sounded in my ears, the babe leaped in my womb for joy. 45 And blessed is she that believeth: for there shall be a performance of those things which were told her from the Lord. 46, 47 And Mary said, My soul doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit hath rejoiced in God 48 my Saviour. For he hath regarded the low estate of his handmaiden: for behold, from 49 henceforth all generations shall call me blessed. For he that is mighty hath done to me 50 great things; and holy is his name. And his mercy is on them that fear him, from 51 generation to generation. He hath shewed strength with his arm; he hath scattered 52 the proud in the imagination of their hearts. He hath put down the mighty from their 53 seats, and exalted them of low degree. He hath filled the hungry with good things, and

54 the rich he hath sent empty away. He hath holpen his servant Israel, in remembrance 55, 56 of his mercy; as he spake to our fathers, to Abraham, and to his seed, for ever. And Mary abode with her about three months, and returned to her own house.

A MAGNIFICENT canticle, in which the strain of Hannah’s ancient song, in like circumstances, is caught up, and slightly modified and sublimed. Is it unnatural to suppose that the spirit of the blessed Virgin had been drawn beforehand into mysterious sympathy with the ideas and the tone of this hymn, so that when the life and fire of inspiration penetrated her whole soul it spontaneously swept the chords of this song, enriching the Hymnal of the Church with that spirit-stirring canticle which has resounded ever since from its temple walls? In both songs, those holy women, filled with wonder to behold “the proud, the mighty, the rich,” passed by, and, in their persons, the lowliest chosen to usher in the greatest events, sing of this as no capricious movement, but a great law of the kingdom of God, by which he delights to “put down the mighty from their seats and exalt them of low degree.” In both songs the strain dies away on Christ; in Hannah’s, under the name of “Jehovah’s King”—to whom, through all his line, from David onward to himself, he will “give strength;” his “Anointed,” whose horn he will exalt; in the Virgin’s song, it is as the “Help” promised to Israel by all the prophets. B.

39. What were the thoughts of Mary in her solitary journey—for solitary she must have been, with such a secret in her heart, even if she travelled with a company? The intimation made to her was one which she could hardly grasp in its full significance. Her Son was to sit upon the throne of his father David, and reign over the house of Jacob, founding a kingdom which should endure forever. Long years after this she only partially realized the import of such words. In her Son’s youth she was perplexed to know what was meant by his answer, when he staid behind in the temple, and years after that she failed, once again, to realize her true relations to him. Nor does she seem to have risen to the full sublimity of her position, and of his, while he lived, though the deathless love of a mother for her child brought her to the foot of the cross. But in such slowness to believe, and such abidingly imperfect conceptions, she was only on a footing with those who enjoyed habitual intercourse with him, hearing his words and seeing his miracles, day by day; for even the disciples remained to the end Jewish peasants in their ideas respecting him, thinking that he was only a political deliverer of the nation. G.

43. That the mother of my Lord should come to me. If in Mary we have one of the rarest exhibitions of humility toward God, of entire acquiescence in his will, in Elisabeth we have as rare and beautiful an instance of humility toward others, the entire absence of all selfish and envious feelings. Elisabeth leaves out of sight all the outer distinctions between herself and her humble relative, forgets the difference of age and rank, recognizes at once, and ungrudgingly, the far higher distinction which had been conferred by God upon Mary. H.—My Lord. We shall never be able to see the propriety of calling an unborn child “Lord” but by supposing Elisabeth, like the prophets of old, enlightened to perceive the Messiah’s divine nature. O.—47, 48. My Saviour. Mary never dreamed, we see, of her own “immaculate conception” any more than of her own immaculate life. B.—Shall call. Or shall count me happy. In James 5 : 11 the word is the same. There is no allusion to a title to be given to her. A.

46-55. The high intellectual emotion and eloquence of the Magnificat reveal a nature of no common mould, as its intense religious fervor shows spiritual characteristics of the noblest type. But the strain throughout is strictly limited to what we might have expected in a Jewish maiden. It is intensely national when it is not personal. The whole hymn is a mosaic of Old Testament imagery and language, and shows a mind so colored by the sacred writings of her people that her whole utterance becomes, spontaneously, as by a second nature, an echo of that of prophets and saints. G.—Of the Virgin Mary very little is recorded, and that little is very different from what might have been expected. None of the inspired writers, except the evangelists, mention her name, and of these, but two record the conception of Christ. One of these, John, her adopted son, though, in all likelihood, he outlived her many years, does not record her death; nor does he give any particulars of her life; and yet he wrote to supply the omissions of the other evangelists. It is only incidentally mentioned that Jesus committed her to his care. Why this infrequent mention of her, but to guard against that superstitious veneration, to which, as experience has shown, there is naturally so strong a tendency in the minds of Christians? J. A.—The cultus or worship of the Virgin Mary is unquestionably of pagan origin. It is first mentioned by Epiphanius in the fifth century, who talks of a certain body of women who had transferred the rites of the pagan goddess Ceres to the Virgin. In different parts of the Roman Empire, where a like compromise was effected between paganism and Christianity, the worship formerly given to Cybele, the mother of the gods, according to the heathen mythology, was given to the Virgin Mary, and the festival of Hilaria, celebrated on the 25th of March in honor of Cybele, actually became “Lady-day” in honor of our Lord’s mother! Nor were the Greeks and Romans solitary in the worship of a divine mother of Divinity. The Egyptians worshipped the divine mother Isis, nursing her divine babe Horus; so the Scythians worshipped the divine mother Freya, and the Hindoos Maja, another divine mother; while the Phoenicians kissed the hand of adoration to the mooned Ashtaroth, “Queen of Heaven,” and “Mother of their God.” An.

Section 4—Birth of John the Baptist.

57. Now Elisabeth’s full time came that she should be delivered; and she brought forth 58 a son. And her neighbours and her cousins heard how the Lord had showed great mercy upon her; and they rejoiced with her. 59 And it came to pass, that on the eighth day they came to circumcise the child; and 60 they called him Zacharias, after the name of his father. And his mother answered and 61 said, Not so; but he shall be called John. And they said unto her, There is none of thy 62 kindred that is called by this name. And they made signs to his father, how he would 63 have him called. And he asked for a writing table, and wrote, saying, His name is 64 John. And they marvelled all. And his mouth was opened immediately, and his tongue loosed, and he spake, and praised God. 65 And fear came on all that dwelt round about them: and all these sayings were 66 noised abroad throughout all the hill country of Judea. And all they that heard them, laid them up in their hearts, saying, What manner of child shall this be! And the hand of the Lord was with him. 67 And his father Zacharias was filled with the Holy Ghost, and prophesied, saying, 68, 69 Blessed be the Lord God of Israel; for he hath visited and redeemed his people, and 70 hath raised up an horn of salvation for us, in the house of his servant David: as he 71 spake by the mouth of his holy prophets, which have been since the world began: that 72 we should be saved from our enemies, and from the hand of all that hate us; to per- 73 form the mercy promised to our fathers, and to remember his holy covenant; the oath 74 which he sware to our father Abraham, that he would grant unto us, that we, being 75 delivered out of the hand of our enemies, might serve him without fear, in holiness and righteousness before him, all the days of our life. 76 And thou, child, shalt be called the prophet of the Highest, for thou shalt go before 77 the face of the Lord to prepare his ways; to give knowledge of salvation unto his 78 people, by the remission of their sins, through the tender mercy of our God; whereby 79 the dayspring from on high hath visited us, to give light to them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace. 80 And the child grew, and waxed strong in spirit, and was in the deserts till the day of his showing unto Israel.

WHEN we take up that long line of predictions, extending over more than three thousand years, from the first dim intimation that the seed of the woman should bruise the head of the serpent, down to the last prophecy of Malachi, that the Lord, whom the Jews sought, should come suddenly to his temple as the Messenger of the Covenant, whom they delighted in; when we mark the growing brightness and fulness that characterize each succeeding prediction, as feature after feature in the life and character of the great Messiah is added to the picture; when we compare the actual events with the passages in those ancient writings, in which they were repeatedly foretold, what a strong confirmation is given thereby to our faith, that he, of whom all those things had been spoken so long beforehand, was indeed the Christ, the Son of the living God! H.

Although, in one sense, nothing can serve as a preparation to the incarnation of the eternal Word, the instruction contained in the books of the ancient covenant is nevertheless a progressive instruction, which, from epoch to epoch, leads us gradually forward toward the gospel. As prophet follows prophet, who sees not how the horizon is streaked with light, how the east is kindling up, and the first rays of the star of day darting from behind the hills? The sole object of grace is still absent, but he is already designated and characterized by prophecy. This new prophet is not yet called by his name. An articulate description is not yet given, either of all the circumstances of his advent or all the clauses of his covenant, but at length he is revealed as the prophet of grace, of love, and of free-will: as the deliverer, the founder of worship in Spirit and in truth; as, moreover, the messenger, the Son of God. He is heir at once of the miseries of man and of the love of God. The religion of love furnishes a foretaste; the air of liberty is already breathed; the depths of mercy are stirred, and the human heart begins to cherish unknown hopes. A. V.

No one can close the Old Testament and open the New without seeing that, during the interval, immense progress had been made in the unfolding of religious truth. The expectation of a Redeemer and a redemption had become clear and concentrated, and the belief in an eternal life, and in the resurrection, was held by many. Ker.

59. The naming of children at baptism has its origin in the Jewish custom at circumcision. The names of Abram and Sarai were changed at its first performance. B.—63. Is John. He meant that this name was already given him by the angel (ver. 13). A.—67. All discoursing on the mighty acts of God is in Scripture called prophesying. C. B.—68. In the O. T. God is said to “visit” chiefly for judgment; in the N. T., for mercy. 69. House of David. This shows that Mary must have been known to be of the royal line, independent of Joseph. B.

68–79. Zacharias’s song of praise consists of two parts. Of these we have the first in ver. 68–75; the second in ver. 76–79. In the first, Zacharias makes no mention of his son, overlooks at the outset all that is personal to him, and directs his view exclusively to the great salvation of the people, whose dawn the birth of his son prognosticated. In this part of his song he describes more the external aspect of the salvation which his people were now to experience, by being delivered from their enemies, and translated into a condition of perfect security and freedom from hostile assault. In the second part, he describes the conditions which must first be fulfilled before that period of outward prosperity can arrive. These are: knowledge of the ground of all salvation—viz., forgiveness of sins, and, consequently, the penitential seeking of it (which was to be the object of John’s ministry), and guiding the feet into the way of peace. Part first, accordingly, describes the temporal, and part second the spiritual, restitution of the people; and it is thus declared that the former cannot come without the latter—that it is for the sake of the latter that Christ appears—and that to coöperate toward it was also the vocation of John, as Christ’s forerunner. C. B.

70,71. Since the world began.** All the prophets, from Adam downward, spake of the salvation and deliverance from the power of Satan, to be accomplished by Christ, as foretold at Gen. 3: 15. J. L.—Of the civil liberty of the Jews, there was in the days in which Christ was born scarcely the shadow remaining. Degraded to a conquered province of the Romans, harassed by the arbitrary conduct of Herod, torn by internal dissension, the land of Judea was a scene of political wretchedness. The lofty courage of the Maccabean heroic age had long since departed. On the one hand was creeping baseness that bowed profoundly to Rome; on the other impotent rage that set itself constantly against Rome. Both exhibited their fatal operation, but inward and deep lived in the heart of the better disposed the desire for a prince of David’s house, who should redeem Israel “out of the hand of all his enemies.” Van O.

72. In the accomplishment of the prophecies, Zacharias recognizes the divine faithfulness and mercy as shown to the fathers, to whom these promises were made. These fathers he figures to himself (and with truth, for to God they all live) as still in existence, and taking an interest in the destinies of their nation. C. B.—76. The Highest: the Lord. John is here said to be the prophet of “the Highest,” and to go before the face of “the Lord.” But it was Christ, before whose face he was sent as a messenger, and whose prophet he was. Therefore Christ is “the Highest,” and “the Lord.” W. J.

77. The doctrine of salvation by the remission of sins, through faith in a Redeemer, was, from the beginning, the sum and substance of true religion, which subsisted in promise, prophecy, and figure, till John preached their accomplishment in the person of Jesus. Horne.—He preached repentance and baptized with the baptism of repentance, in order that men might understand what he meant when he pointed to the Lamb who taketh away the sins of the world.

78,79. Jesus, as the Sun of grace and the Sun of righteousness, is here compared to the rising sun illuminating our path and guiding our bewildered footsteps into the way of peace. C. B.—The blessed effects of the dayspring which then dawned from on high were: the dispersion of ignorance, which is the darkness of the intellectual world; the awakening of men from sin, which is the sleep of the soul; and the direction of their hearts into “the way of peace;” that is, of peace with God by the blood of Christ, peace with themselves by the answer of a conscience cleansed from sin, and peace with one another by mutual love. Horne.

80. And the child. A concluding paragraph, indicating, in strokes full of grandeur, the bodily and mental development of the Baptist; and bringing his life up to the period of his public appearance. O.—In the deserts—probably “the wilderness of Judea” whither he had retired early in life, in the Nazarite spirit, and where, free from rabbinical influences and alone with God, his spirit would be educated, like Moses in the desert, for his future high vocation, his showing unto Israel—the presentation of himself before his nation, as Messiah’s forerunner. B.

It was a time of transition, universal doubt, uncertainty, and expectation. The drama of ancient society had been played out; a vast empire had risen on the ruins of the nationalities that had, hitherto, kept men apart, and its triumphs had discredited the local gods, to whom men had everywhere looked for protection. A calm had followed ages of universal war between city and city, and state and state, and had revolutionized life. Corruption and oppression had followed in the wake of dominion, and had filled the world with vague longings for a higher morality, and the hopes of a nobler religion than the decayed systems around them. The very triumph of one power over all others had, indeed, before all things besides, opened the way for the new faith of Christ. The isolation of hostile races had been broken down, and the dim but magnificent conception of a brotherhood of men, though, as yet, only as subjects of a universal despotism, had risen in the mind of all peoples. The highways of Rome invited communication with all lands; her government and laws guaranteed order and safety, wherever they obtained; but, above all, she had prepared the world for a religion which should address all humanity, by levelling the innumerable barriers of rival nationality—with their jealousies and impenetrable prejudices, and linking all races into a single grand federation, with common sympathies, and as fellow-citizens of the same great dominion. It was amid such a state of things, when the fabric of society seemed dissolving, and the new world had not yet risen from the chaos of the old, that John, the destined herald of a new moral order, was born, apparently, in Hebron.

The wilderness to which John withdrew stretches, far and near, over the whole eastern part of Judea, beginning almost at Jerusalem, and reaching away, under different names, to the Dead Sea and the southern desert, as its distant limits. It is a dreary waste of rocky valleys; in some parts stern and terrible—the rocks cleft and shattered by earthquakes and convulsions into rifts and gorges sometimes a thousand feet in depth, though only thirty or forty in width; in others, stretching out in bare chalk-hills full of caves, or in white, flint-bound ridges, and winding, muddy wadys, with an occasional reservoir, hewn in the hard limestone, to supply water in a country destitute of springs. The whole district is, in fact, the slope of the midland chalk and limestone hills, from their highest point of nearly three thousand feet, near Hebron, to one thousand or fifteen hundred feet, at the valley of the Dead Sea. The Hebrews fitly call it Jeshimon—“the appalling desolation”—for it is not possible to conceive a more desolate region. On the northern side, valleys of great depth, sinking toward the Dead Sea, almost preclude travelling except in their troughs, and farther south the country is absolutely impassable. Huge perpendicular gorges, of from a thousand to fifteen hundred feet in depth, and in some places nearly a mile in width, have been hollowed out by the great torrents, rushing in winter over the precipices, toward the Dead Sea.

At what age he retired from Hebron to this hermit life we have no means of knowing; but his whole later bearing, his mode of life, his sad, passionate earnestness, and even his lofty resolve to come forth as a prophet, imply a long abode in the solemn freedom of the desert, far from the distracting and enfeebling tumult of life. John sought the wilderness to ponder over the mysteries of the long-delayed kingdom of God, and to aid in bringing about its accomplishment. Disdaining self-indulgent ease, his soul kindled under the influences of home, of the times, and of religion, into a fervent enthusiasm, which formed its loftiest conception of life in asceticism and joyful self-sacrifice. Feeling the pulses of the spiritual excitement which throbbed through the people around him: pondering their sufferings, their sins, and their hopes, John gave himself up, though born a priest, to the higher mission of a prophet, and devoted his life to the reform of the evils he so deeply deplored, and to the revival of the religion of his fathers. The struggles of soul, in all natures like his, were unspeakably real, and we cannot doubt that his days and nights saw him pleading, by long earnest prayer, with many tears and sore fasting, that God in his mercy would, at last, send the Messiah to his people. G.

Section 5.—The Genealogies: from Abraham, by Matthew; and from Adam, by Luke.