Mk.12 AFTER that, he appeared in another form unto two of them, as they walked, and went into the country.

L. 13 And behold, two of them went that same day to a village called Emmaus, which was from Jerusalem about threescore furlongs. And they talked together of all these things which had happened. And it came to pass, that, while they communed together, and reasoned, Jesus himself drew near, and went with them. But their eyes were holden, that they should not know him.

17. And he said unto them, What manner of communications are these that ye have one to another, as ye walk, and are sad? And the one of them, whose name was Cleopas, answering, said unto him, Art thou only a stranger in Jerusalem, and hast not known the things which are come to pass there in these days? And he said unto them, What things? And they said unto him, Concerning Jesus of Nazareth, which was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God, and all the people: and how the chief priests and our rulers delivered him to be condemned to death, and have crucified him. But we trusted that it had been he which should have redeemed Israel: and beside all this, to-day is the third day since these things were done. Yea, and certain women also of our company made us astonished, which were early at the sepulchre. And when they found not his body, they came, saying, that they had also seen a vision of angels, which said that he was alive. And certain of them which were with us, went to the sepulchre, and found it even so as the women had said: but him they saw not. Then he said unto them, O fools, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken!

26,27. Ought not Christ to have suffered these things, and to enter into his glory? And beginning at Moses, and all the prophets, he expounded unto them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself.

28. And they drew nigh unto the village whither they went: and he made as though he would have gone further. But they constrained him, saying, Abide with us: for it is toward evening, and the day is far spent. And he went in to tarry with them. And it came to pass, as he sat at meat with them, he took bread, and blessed it, and brake, and gave to them. And their eyes were opened, and they knew him: and he vanished out of their sight. And they said one to another, Did not our heart burn within us while he talked with us by the way, and while he opened to us the scriptures?

33. And they rose up the same hour, and returned to Jerusalem, and found the eleven gathered together, and them that were with them, saying, The Lord is risen indeed, and hath appeared to Simon. And they told what things were done in the way, and how he was known of them in breaking of bread. Neither believed they them.

APPROACH the holy Gospels from the side of trust and love. In them is found the blessed presence of him whom, if you are a Christian, your soul loves above all things; of him through whom you have daily access to the Father of your spirit; of him whose atoning blood, daily applied to your soul, is your only confidence before God, in the midst of daily growing proofs of your own utter unworthiness; of him whose victory over death is your only hope as years pass on, and the edges of the dark shadow begin to infold you. These gospels are the history of Him; how he, from his awful Godhead, was pleased to stoop to be born as one of us, and yet not as one of us; how, in the emptying out of his glory as God, there grew up mysteriously around him, in his humiliation, the elements of human knowledge; how, himself without sin, he entered into conflict with sinners. How loving in the midst of severity, how gentle amid sternness, how humble in the holding back of his power, was ever his bearing among those who hated him! How holy and harmless his going down into death, how glorious his victory over it! Take these blessed facts as the life of your soul, and go to the gospels to know more of Him! A.

If, with a true and living faith, we seek to bring home to our hearts the great features of the evangelical history, we shall not seek in vain. The history of the gospels will be more and more to us a living history; one divine image ever waxing clearer and brighter—shedding its light on lonely hours, coming up before us in solitary walks, ever fresher, ever dearer—until at length all things will seem so close, so near, so true, that our faith in Jesus and him crucified will be such as no sophistry can weaken, no doubtfulness becloud. E.

L. 13. Emmaus. A village seven and a half Roman miles from Jerusalem, a walk of two and a half hours. R.—15. Jesus drew near, and went with them. It is incarnate Deity, fresh from the conflicts and the victories of the garden, the cross, the sepulchre. It is literally God walking with men, men walking, though they knew it not, with God. H.

16. Their eyes were holden.** Mark says (verse 12, above) that our Lord appeared to them in another form, while Luke here says that their eyes were holden that they should not know him. The one gives the cause and the other the effect. J. A. A.—The original expression (in Mark) points unmistakably in its signification to form or shape. J. J. O.—Still, the averment of Luke that their eyes were holden, and the manner of our Lord’s parting from them, seem more naturally to imply that the idea of a supernatural agency affecting the eyes or minds of the two disciples, was in the mind of the sacred writer. R.

18. Render the first clause in the sentence thus, “Dost thou lodge alone at Jerusalem?” “Dwellest thou in solitude there, so withdrawn from all which is passing, that no tidings have reached thee of the marvellous events which within the last few days have befallen?” T.

19. By questions needless for him to put, but very useful to them to answer, Jesus draws out from them the extent of their ignorance and incredulity, but, at the same time, the amount of their belief, the strength of their attachment to Christ, and the grief which the disappointment of their expectations regarding him had created. H.

21. We trusted that it had been he.** Even his chosen disciples gave to him their affections rather than their judgments. They devotedly loved his personal character, they believed in his greatness, but they did not comprehend it; the new principles struggled in their minds with the old faith, but they never succeeded, while he lived, in completely displacing it. Hence, when he died, the disciples at the first spoke as if their hopes were overthrown forever. The plain fact is, that Jesus at the last disappointed his disciples, disappointed his own relations, disappointed the masses of the people, disappointed every one except himself. He was never disappointed, from the first to the last moment of his course. Without a single complete example of success while he lived, amid constant discouragement and apparent discomfiture, he calmly believed in the omnipotence of spiritual truth and in the divinity of his own mission. Y.

25. Fools.** The word so rendered only means “wanting in thought, understanding, and consideration,” and does not imply any contempt. J. C. R.—Slow of heart to believe. Of the Scripture, they had believed as much as fell in with their preconceived prejudices and opinions; so often the way with us all; but not “all that the prophets had spoken.” Man’s word, and woman’s word, and angels’ words, they had paid more or less heed to all these; but of God’s word, that word which liveth and abideth forever, they had not inquired, nor sought to learn from it how it should fare with the Christ of God; else they would have found that the very things over which they were mourning had long ago been fore-announced, and declared needful to his entrance into his glory. T.

The one great, misleading prejudice of the disciples had been their belief that the path of the promised Messiah was only to be one of triumph and glory. To rectify that error, it was only required that they should be made to see that the predicted triumph and glory were alone to be reached through the dark avenues of suffering and of death. H.

27. In all the scriptures. He began, as we can hardly doubt, with the first promise: the seed of the woman, who should bruise the serpent’s head. And then there were the types, claimed by the Lord in the days of his flesh, or by those who wrote concerning him, as fulfilled in him: the brazen serpent and the paschal lamb. So also the typical persons: Joseph, who from the lowest humiliation of the pit and the dungeon passed to the right hand of the throne; David, who suffered so much and so long from the persecutions of Saul—these, with many more. And when the august interpreter reached the prophets, the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah was the central prophecy which he expounded. Around this would be grouped the great prophetical Psalms of the Crucifixion—the Psalms are specially referred to, verse 44—as eminently the twenty-second, claimed by the Lord upon his cross, and the fortieth, claimed in like manner for him by his apostle (Heb. 10: 5); then further Daniel 9: 26; and the book of the prophet Jonah; while Zechariah would prove rich in prophetic glimpses of all which had just on Calvary been fulfilled (12: 10; 15: 7). These disciples had assumed that Jesus of Nazareth could not be the Christ, because he had suffered these things; the Lord shows them from all Scripture that he could not be the Christ, unless he had suffered these things. T.

To accompany two such humble men, and spend so much of one of his Sabbaths in instructing them out of the Scriptures, the divine Redeemer himself thought not a task too lowly. By devoting so much of that first Christian Sabbath to it, has he not left behind him a pattern of what all true and faithful exposition of the sacred Scriptures ought to be, even the unfolding of the things touching a once crucified but now exalted Saviour; and has he not dignified, by himself engaging in it, the work of one man’s trying, at any time, or in any way, to lead another to the knowledge of the truth as it is in Jesus? H.

28. Made as though he would have gone further. He was simply passing on. Our Lord did not mean to deceive. He used the readiest and most natural means to draw out the feelings of the disciples, by walking on as if intending to go further. J. C. R.

30. He took bread, and blessed, and brake, and gave. Something in his manner of doing this was his own appointed means of their recognition of him. But we must not suppose any reference to, much less any celebration of, the Lord’s Supper. Neither of these disciples was present at its institution, and certainly it had never been celebrated since. With this simple consideration will fall to the ground all that the Romanists have built on this incident—even to making it a defence of administration in one kind only. A.

No instance given illustrates more strikingly the adaptation of the risen Saviour’s self-disclosures to the requirements of his disciples. Their minds were first enlightened and their hearts warmed, till there was no longer a danger of affecting their senses only, but a security of intelligent conviction, resting on impressions left by the discourse they had heard. They were gently led on till fully prepared, and then the appearance was granted in a way inexpressibly touching and tender, that no less fired their love than established their faith. G.

31. Vanished out of their sight. A marvellous change had passed over him. He was the same, and yet different. He was known only when he revealed himself. He conformed to the laws of our present life, and yet he was not subject to them. B. F. W.

The miracle of the resurrection was rather, in the first instance, for such as already believed in Christ, and now only needed that their faith should be sealed and confirmed. Hence, in part at least, the impression we get from the New Testament in regard to those forty days—an impression of unobtrusiveness on the part of Christ, a certain reserve and remoteness, almost semi-spiritual and shadowy, as evinced in sudden, unexpected appearances and disappearings, changes of form, and silent glidings in and out of secluded and fastened chambers, as if the feet, which were so soon to tread the yielding air ascending to the Father, were already lightening their pressure upon the solid earth. R. D. H.

The Evangelists treat the resurrection as simply, unaffectedly, inartificially, as everything else which they touch. The miracle to them seems to form a natural part of the Lord’s history. They show no consciousness that it needs greater or fuller authentication than the other events of his life. They wrote not to create belief, but to inform those already believing. A knowledge of the chief events in the Lord’s ministry, including the resurrection, and a general conviction of their reality and significance, is everywhere assumed in the apostolic writings. In each of the epistles the literal fact of the resurrection is the implied or acknowledged groundwork of the apostle’s teaching. The very designation of God is “He who raised up the Lord from the dead.” In this miracle lay the sum of the new revelation, the sign of Christ’s Sonship. To believe this fact and profess it was the pledge of salvation. B. F. W.

32. Did not our heart burn? From this episode I learn that Christ Jesus is willing to be the companion of my life-journey until I reach the heavonly home. Blessed the man whose heart burns within him from the constant presence and inspiration of the Saviour. Having Christ with him, the believer’s life-journey will be a safe one. He need never miss the right road. He will never be led astray. Christ knows the whole pathway thoroughly from the “City of Destruction” to the City of the Great King. And wherever Christ directs us to walk, there we ought to go. It matters not that we cannot see the end from the beginning. Christ sees; that is enough. He that walketh with Jesus “walketh surely.” T. L. C.

Section 163.—Meets the Eleven in the Evening, and again a Week later.

L. 36 AND as they thus spake, the same day at evening, being the first day of the week, when the doors were shut where the disciples were assembled for fear of the Jews, came Jesus himself as they sat at meat, and stood in the midst of them, and saith unto them, Peace be unto you. But they were terrified and affrighted, and supposed that they had seen a spirit. And he upbraided them with their unbelief, and hardness of heart, because they believed not them which had seen him after he was risen. And he said unto them, Why are ye troubled? and why do thoughts arise in your hearts? Behold my hands and my feet, that it is I myself: handle me, and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have. And when he had thus spoken, he shewed them his hands, and his feet, and his side. Then were the disciples glad, when they saw the Lord. And while they yet believed not for joy, and wondered, he said unto them, Have ye here meat? And they gave him a piece of a broiled fish, and of an honeycomb; and he took it, and did eat before them. J. 21 Then said Jesus to them again, Peace be unto you: as my Father hath sent me, even so send I you. Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature. He that believeth and is baptized, shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned. And these signs shall follow them that believe: In my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues; they shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover. And when he had said this, he breathed on them, and saith unto them, Receive ye the Holy Ghost: whose soever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them; and whose soever sins ye retain, they are retained. 24 But Thomas, one of the twelve, called Didymus, was not with them when Jesus came. The other disciples therefore said unto him, We have seen the Lord. But he said unto them, Except I shall see in his hands the print of the nails, and put my finger into the print of the nails, and thrust my hand into his side, I will not believe. 26 And after eight days again his disciples were within, and Thomas with them: then came Jesus, the doors being shut, and stood in the midst, and said, Peace be unto you. Then saith he to Thomas, Reach hither thy finger, and behold my hands; and reach hither thy hand, and thrust it into my side; and be not faithless, but believing. And Thomas answered and said unto him, My Lord and my God. Jesus saith unto him, Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.

WHAT a calm and solemn glory rests upon the history of the resurrection of our Lord! He is no more what he was, and yet he is the same. He is not yet seated on the throne at the right hand of the Father; but he does not appear to be of the earth, for he comes only “many times” to the disciples; and where is he when not with them? The twilight envelops our Lord, but it is a morning twilight.

The night lies behind him; behind him lies the conflict. After he had conquered the night with its terrors, there dawned the morning of a glorious day, which no night shall follow.

Peace be with you! This sounds not merely through our hearts and homes, but through the silent dwellings of the grave. The resurrection morning is the victory of immortality over corruption; and therefore all who bear the name of Christ rejoice at the grave of the risen One, in the anticipation of eternity. The resurrection festival of the Lord is a festival of peace. A. T.

HE had appeared to Mary Magdalene in the morning. Between morning and evening he had appeared to the company of women returning from the sepulchre, to Simon Peter, and to the two disciples walking to Emmaus. This therefore was his fifth appearance. The cause of the disciples assembling, we may reasonably suppose, was the tidings received from the four distinct sets of witnesses, that Jesus had risen from the dead, and was alive. J. C. R.

36. When the doors were shut. If, with Calvin and others, we regard his entrance as a miracle, nothing more is required than in the similar instance of Peter’s deliverance out of prison, where “the iron gate opened of his own accord.” There is not in the language the slightest foundation for the idea that Jesus entered through the closed doors or solid walls; or that his approach was like that ascribed to angels, and not like that of an ordinary human being. R.—That Christ came not through the doors (continuing shut), but that he caused them by his supernatural power to open before him, is a sense of the words that is fair, and unforced, and agreeable to the common way of speaking. R. S.

39-43. After reproving the disciples for not having already believed, he comes to the help of their infirmity, and manifests himself to them as their risen Lord with still greater certitude than to the Magdalene and to the disciples at Emmaus. C. B.

By this language and by this exhibition, and by eating before them—another act inconsistent with the idea of a spirit—it was our Lord’s deliberate purpose to persuade his disciples that he himself was before them in the same identical body which had been crucified and laid in the sepulchre. And these two conclusions follow irresistibly from all the facts recorded by the chosen witnesses of our Lord’s resurrection: First, that the disciples believed the body of their Lord after his resurrection to be the same identical body of flesh and bones, which they had seen crucified and laid in the sepulchre; and, secondly, that our Lord himself took special pains to impress this very belief upon their minds. R.

He so carefully qualifies them to be witnesses of his resurrection, that afterward they should appeal to this fact, as we find them doing, that they had “eaten and drunk with him after he rose from the dead” (Acts 10: 41). R. B.

He showed himself to none but disciples. The world could not have understood him. It might have thought that it beheld the “earthly;” it could not have comprehended the “heavenly.” It might have imagined that it saw one who was again to die; it could not have risen to the idea of a conqueror of the grave forever. It might have gazed upon him with the eye of sense; it had no eye of faith to contemplate him as he was, and as he would alone be known. Therefore it was that he showed himself to none but his disciples, and even to them only at such intervals as were necessary to fan the spark of divine life within their souls, and to prepare them for that perfect spiritual vision when they should rejoice to “know him after the flesh” no more. W. M.

This sacred seal of his mission was not for a show for skeptics. For a moment he would have been to them a wonder and a terror; but soon they would have said again, “He hath a devil.” His kingdom was the kingdom of truth; and truth must rest upon moral conviction. The resurrection had answered its end in convincing and confirming the disciples; the fact was made sure by sufficient witnesses; but it was not the fact, but the spiritual truth that this fact taught and certified, which was to be preached. J. P. T.—Christ had accomplished the facts of the redemption. But these facts enshrined doctrines. By the light that issued from his instructions during this brief interval, the apostles were led into the divine meaning of what before Christ himself could not fully explain. Binney.

J. 21. The peace which he had given to them in the word of promise he now extends to them in the reality of fulfilment; as if he had said: That peace be now with you which, through my dying and rising again, I have obtained for you! All the blessings contained in Christ’s kingdom, forgiveness of sins, reconciliation with God, redemption from the power of death and the devil, the gift of eternal life—all this the Lord sums up in the word peace. In giving peace he gave all that sinners can ever need. He has made peace, the old writers say, above us, with the reconciled Father in heaven (Rom. 5: 10); he has made peace within us, with our assured heart (1 John 3: 21); he has made peace beneath us, in hell, that we should have rest from Satan.

As my Father hath sent me, even so send I you. Christ is the arch-missionary and the arch-apostle (Heb. 3 : 1), at once the author and the first bearer of the office; and the apostles are his successors in the ministerial office. Christ came in his Father’s name, and the apostles come in Christ’s name. R. B.

Mk. 15-18, J. 22. Here follows our Lord’s charge and commission to the eleven apostles, delivered to them here in private by themselves; and distinct from the public and more general commission recorded in M. 28 : 19, 20. As a symbol of this commission to them in particular, and of the power which they should shortly receive through the Spirit imparted from on high, “he breathed on them, and said, Receive ye the Holy Ghost.” There was in this emblem a recognition and reiteration of the gracious promise of the Spirit before made; which was to be abundantly fulfilled on the day of Pentecost. R. (See Section 165, note on M. 28 : 18.)

Mk. 16. Believeth not. The words, “is not baptized,” are not found in this second clause, as would have been the case had baptism been a saving rite, or essential to salvation. Whether baptized or unbaptized, a man who has not the saving faith of the gospel will be lost. J. J. O.

17,18. Their sunken faith in his promises received a new impulse when these promises were repeated by him, risen from the dead; his reappearance formed the point of contact for a new spiritual communion with him never to be dissolved, thenceforward to be developed ever more and more. According to their own unvarying asseverations, his resurrection was the foundation of their immovable faith in his person, and in himself as Messiah and Son of God, as well as of their steadfast hope, in his communion, of a blissful, everlasting life, triumphing over death. Without it, they never could have had that inspiring assurance of faith with which they everywhere testified of what they had received, and joyfully submitted to tortures and to death. N.

Nothing stands more historically certain than that Jesus rose from the dead and appeared again to his followers, or than that their seeing him thus again was the beginning of a higher faith, and of all their Christian work in the world. It is equally certain that they thus saw him, not as a common man, or as a shade or ghost risen from the grave; but as the one only Son of God—already more than man at once in nature and power; and that all who thus beheld him recognized at once his unique divine dignity, and firmly believed in it thenceforth. The twelve and others had, indeed, learned to look on him, even in life, as the true Messianic King and the Son of God, but from the moment of his reappearing, they recognized more clearly and fully the divine side of his nature, and saw in him the conqueror of death. Yet the two pictures of him thus fixed in their minds were in their essence identical. That former familiar appearance of the earthly Christ, and this higher vision of him, with its depth of emotion and ecstatic joy, were so inter-related that, even in the first days or weeks after his death, they could never have seen in him the heavenly Messiah, if they had not first known him so well as the earthly. Ewald.

J. 22. As it was from the lips of the risen Saviour that the breath proceeded out upon the little company at Jerusalem, so is it from the risen, exalted Saviour that the Spirit comes, whose life-giving influences spread over the whole Church of the First-born. This was but an earnest of better things to come—a few sprinkled drops of that fuller baptism wherewith they were afterward to be baptized; but yet enough to teach that it was by Spirit-taught, Spirit-moved men—by men in whose breasts the heaven-kindled fire of the true spiritual life had begun to burn—that the commission Jesus had been giving could alone be executed. H.

The symbolical act, recalling the predictions of his last discourses in regard to the imparting of the Spirit, must have impressed them profoundly. The higher life received from Christ had before been covered and dormant; now a new consciousness of it arose within them. Still the full sense of the sign and of the words was far from being realized. Not as yet were they the mighty organs of that Spirit for the diffusion of the kingdom of God. The act, therefore, was in part prophetical. N.

Of this Spirit, with which he was anointed without measure, Christ, as the risen and glorified One, gives by measure to his disciples, and thereby sanctifies them to the ministry of the gospel, which is a ministration of the Spirit (2 Cor. 3 : 8). R. B.—The Holy Ghost is given to the apostles, and therefore their word in these matters is a word of the Holy Ghost, full of power and truth. Löhe.

23. Whose soever sins ye remit.** In any literal and authoritative sense this power was never exercised by one of the apostles, and plainly was never understood by themselves as possessed by them or conveyed to them. The power to intrude upon the relation between men and God cannot have been given by Christ to his ministers in any but a ministerial or declarative sense—as the authorized interpreters of his word, while in the actings of his ministers, the real nature of the power committed to them is seen in the exercise of church discipline. B.—Wherever the gospel of the grace of God is preached to an individual man, and he is entreated and encouraged to take hold of peace, to accept of pardon, to trust in the mercy of Jesus, to believe in the forgiving love of God—then is that office of remitting sins in the name of Jesus undertaken and discharged. H.

24. Thomas called Didymus.** Thomas’s mind was a reflecting one, striving after clear conviction in his understanding. When the Lord was speaking of his going to the Father, and of the way by which his disciples should follow him, then it was Thomas who could not endure this discourse which was unintelligible to them all, and who gave the almost impatient answer, “Lord, we know not whither thou goest, and how can we know the way?” “We trusted that it had been he which should have redeemed Israel”—this grief was gnawing at Thomas’s heart likewise, now that he had seen the Lord treading his path of crucifixion; and deeper than the other disciples was he lying in unbelief. R. B.

Was not with them. Christ made his first visit during the absence of the skeptical disciple, leaving him to contend with his own doubt and with his fellow-disciples, not by chance or accident, not because he was less worthy of the visit, but that the world might have from him the most overwhelming testimony to the identity of the Christ risen with the Christ dead. Devotion and faithfulness to Christ and duty at length triumphed over his skepticism, and made him the most convincing witness of a risen Redeemer. “Credo.”

Scoffers talk of the apostles as if they had been the most credulous people in the world. Now, of Thomas at least they cannot say this, for he was evidently one of those cautious people who must feel the ground on which they set their foot. And yet his doubt is a matter of deep interest to us. All things must work together for good to them that love God. And the effect of Thomas’s doubting is to prevent us from doubting. Thomas doubted thus, that all who doubt like him might be convinced like him. You are astonished at his skepticism; he astonished then likewise at his faith, after the Lord had, in infinite condescension, satisfied even the presumptuous demands of his doubt. A. T.

27. Then saith he to Thomas.** How sudden, how unexpected the address! Thomas knew that for seven days none of the disciples had seen the Lord; none of them could have reported to Him the words that he had used. Yet now are these very words repeated. H.

Thomas had said: “Except I shall see in his hands the print of the nails”—Christ answers: “Behold my hands!” Thomas had said: “Except I put my finger into the print of the nails”—Christ answers: “Reach hither thy finger!” Thomas had said: “Except I thrust my hand into his side”—Christ answers: “Reach hither thy hand, and thrust it into my side!” Thomas had said: “I will not believe”—Christ answers: “Be not faithless, but believing!”

See how the Lord Jesus keeps in view even every word! R. B.

This long-suffering was shown to Thomas, in order that in him Jesus Christ might manifest all kindness and gentleness, for a pattern to all weak and simple souls. Luther.—So does this all-tender Friend of souls still go out after all souls which are tormented with doubts respecting his goodness and truth, in his great patience overlooking even the sinful—“I will not believe.” It is not without meaning that the Lord says, Be not faithless; be believing, and not merely, believe! To be believing, is with true Christians their proper condition of life; they live not upon single glances of faith, but faith in Jesus Christ is the abiding motive sentiment of their whole life. R. B.

The apostles have recorded their own sin and shame that we should learn from them how gracious and long-suffering God is, and how he bears patiently with sinners; and we should see from these examples, that in what we are by nature there exists but small difference between us and the blessed apostles; seeing that they often went astray, and that they rested alone on Christ’s mercy. And we, although we may be conscious of even greater weakness and sin in ourselves, may not therefore lose heart or despair, but from their example may comfort and encourage ourselves in the hope that Christ will patiently bear with us too. Luther.

“We flee to thee, Lord Jesus”—so prays Bernhard—“because thou didst not despise the penitent thief, nor the weeping woman that was a sinner, nor the woman of Canaan who wrestled with thee, nor the publican at the receipt of custom, nor the disciple who doubted thy glory.”

28. That Thomas did not do what Jesus invited him to do, and what he had made the condition of his believing, seems plain from verse 29 (“Because thou hast seen me thou hast believed”). He is overpowered, and the glory of Christ now breaks upon him in a flood. His exclamation surpasses all that had been yet uttered. B.

Overpowered by the heart-searching and yet tender love which is seeking to win him, his heart breaks forth in the adoring confession, “My Lord and my God!” Jesus Christ, the crucified and risen One, he calls his Lord and his God. Now did the word of comfort shine bright and clear to him: “Believe in God, believe also in me;” now did the Spirit which shone forth from the wounds of the glorified Son of man remind him of all that Jesus had said concerning his oneness with the Father. He says to Christ, “My Lord and my God!” My—it is thus that the faith which saves speaks. That Christ is the Lord and that he is God, the devils also “believe;” but the saving my they cannot utter for fear and trembling. R. B.

It is at the very time when our Lord is pleased to convince his doubting follower of the reality of his sacred body, in fact of his perfect humanity, that the apostle so preeminently recognizes his Lord’s divinity. With evidence the most distinct that he whom he was permitted to touch was man, the convinced disciple, in terms the most explicit, declares him to be God. E.

This is the highest confession of faith which has yet been made. It shows how the testimony of Jesus to himself had gradually deepened and exalted the apostles’ conviction, from the time when they knew him only as the son of Joseph till now when he is acknowledged as their Lord and their God. A.

It was not faith which assured Thomas that what stood before him was the Christ he had known; that was sight. But it was faith which from the visible enabled him to pierce up to the truth invisible: “My Lord and my God.” And it was faith which enabled him through all life after to venture everything on that conviction, and live for one who had died for him. God has granted us the possibility of believing in a more trustful and more generous way than if we saw. To believe, not because we are learned and can prove, but because there is a something in us, even God’s own Spirit, which makes us feel light as light, and truth as true—that is the blessed faith. F. W. R.

The faculty of faith is as natural to man as the faculty of sight; and, where there is moral evidence to warrant our faith, we may feel as secure in believing as could Thomas in seeing. The spiritual apprehension of Christ through faith is a loftier condition of mind, a richer and more rewarding participation of his Spirit, than could ever be reached through the bodily senses.

29. Blessed they that have believed.** This far-reaching benediction embraced, upon one hand, the prophets and saints of the Old Testament, who, with no visible signs of Christ’s appearing, and no definite conception of his life and death, nevertheless kept him ever in view as the object of longing desire; and, on the other, it embraced every one who now comes to Christ with a living faith. This faith makes Christ present, makes heaven near makes salvation sure. All the wondrous truths of the gospel, in the person, the life, the death, and the resurrection of Jesus, and all its blessed promises of honor and glory in the future, are made real to our faith. More precious than gold in its own pureness and brightness, more enduring than the fires by which it is tried and tempered, this faith answers to the inheritance to which it leads, incorruptible, undefiled, and unfading. J. P. T.

How Doubt should be treated.—A mental difficulty, a doubt, is not a sin. To some, questioning, doubting is as natural as a strong will, a quick temper. It must be treated as a fact. We must confront all doubt with reality; we must confront every doubting soul with a believing one. Doubt is unrest, faith is repose; doubt is trouble, faith is peace. It is rest to touch some natures. There is a mighty calmness about a real believer. Christ spoke out of living realities; proof went with his words; and so far as a Christian can make the impression on a doubting heart that there is a reality in his faith, he has done something to bring such soul to peace. Chief of all, let us make it our greatest endeavor to bring the doubting soul into personal contact with Christ; have life touch life. If we can bring that life in its weakness and doubt into contact with his life of strength and truth, the work is done. We must be careful to let nothing come between the doubter and Christ. The mighty concession that Christ himself gives to a soul in doubt is full of meaning. He did not allow Mary to touch his crucified body, yet did not withhold it from doubting Thomas. Let us lead every doubting soul straight to Christ, to his life, to his death, and, if need be, to his crucified and risen body. Tucker.

For this end Christ has entered the world, that he may make man the heir of God, and God the heritage of man. He stands before us more clearly now, that he may assure us of it. He has borne the penalty of sin, has passed through death in our nature, and has risen above it, bearing those marks of his suffering which prove his continued share in our humanity and his everlasting sympathy with us. And he shows us his hands and his feet! Ker.

Section 164.—At the Sea of Tiberias. Lovest thou Me?

L. 50 So then after the Lord had spoken these things unto them, he led them out as far as 51 to Bethany; and he lifted up his hands, and blessed them. And it came to pass, while he blessed them, and while they beheld, he was parted from them, and taken up; and a cloud received him out of their sight; and he was carried up into heaven, and sat on the right hand of God. A. 10 And while they looked steadfastly toward heaven as he went up, behold, two men 11 stood by them in white apparel; which also said, Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven? this same Jesus, which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go into heaven. L. 52 And they worshipped him, and returned with great joy unto Jerusalem, from the 53 mount called Olivet, which is from Jerusalem a sabbath-day’s journey: and were continually in the temple, praising and blessing God. Mk. 20 And they went forth, and preached everywhere, the Lord working with them, and confirming the word with signs following. Amen. J. 30 And many other signs truly did Jesus in the presence of his disciples, which are not 31 written in this book. But these are written, that ye might believe that Jesus is the 25 Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye might have life through his name. And there are also many other things which Jesus did, the which, if they should be written every one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written. Amen.

THE Resurrection of the Lord, and the Ascension which divinely crowns it, are too often considered wholly by themselves in our study of the amazing life recorded in the Gospels. We do not always notice as we should how clear and strong a light shines backward from the transcendent close on all the course which had preceded, through which the now ascending One had day by day been patiently walking. As the rising of the sun irradiates the landscape, pouring the fresh matin splendor into each valley, wreathing the mountain-cliffs with smiles, turning the snowy crest to chrysolite, while renewing the grace of every flower, and charging the dew-drops with diamond lustres, so this supreme outburst of the divine fulness of energy and sovereignty resident in the Lord interprets all his preceding miracles, emphasizes all his recorded teachings, gives superlative import and glory to his humility, and makes us recognize the immensity of the sacrifice which to him was involved in the long endurance of our mortal limitations. The unsearchable and continuing love which had led him to the earth, and had kept him here on his life-giving errand, amid whatsoever contradictions of sinners, needs no demonstration but that which it finds in the instant ease with which when his errand has been accomplished he returns from the earth to the heavens he had left.

But most of all on the Cross does this Resurrection, with the following Ascension, pour celestial interpretation. The death of the Lord is here demonstrated voluntary, in the most complete and absolute sense. Certainly no man who accepts the self-moved return of the Lord out of death into a life more regal than before, can doubt that he could previously have forbidden that death if he had chosen. He might have ascended on the Palm-Sunday, as well as after Gethsemane and the tomb. He might have ascended on that same night on which he was betrayed; and the officers who sought him would have found it as easy to clutch the stars in their right hands as to detain for an instant that kingly form which afterward rose in silent majesty over Bethany. All the legions of Rome could not have fettered the sovereign hand which Death himself could not bind and hold! and what array of earthly force could possibly have cast him into that tomb whose very gates could not confine him after they had been shut and sealed! But if his death was thus wholly voluntary, then it was either a suicide or a sacrifice: a suicide, unjustified to our minds by any sufficient resulting benefit: or a sacrifice, made necessary to man’s salvation by the evilness and the doom of sin, and by the wise righteousness of God. This unconstrained acceptance of death must have been not only a part of his plan, but an indispensable factor in it; and the only explanation of that, which in the light that radiates afterward from shattered tomb and parted skies becomes so strange, startling, obscure, is that which lies in his own words: giving his life “a ransom for many;” his “blood shed for the remission of sins.” A Heaven opened to men by his Cross, as for reasons inherent in God’s economy it could not be by anything else—a Heaven whose infinite liberty and splendor are prophesied to us by his Ascension—this is the discovery which comes to us with inevitable clearness as we stand with the disciples beneath the cloud that at last receives him out of sight! R. S. S.

Now that Jesus had risen from the dead, his assent to heaven in an open and visible manner was a simple necessity to the moral value of the resurrection, and to the final impression of his life, his teaching, and his death. If he had simply vanished from among his disciples, the impression of his resurrection might, in time, have vanished also. But Jesus joined their last view of him on earth with his return to heaven as a palpable reality. J. P. T.

L. 50, 51. As far as to Bethany. The term Bethany is often used to describe the district of that village, which stretched toward Jerusalem, and touched the suburb called Bethphage, which extended eastward from Jerusalem six furlongs, or “a Sabbath-day’s journey,” on the Mount of Olives. W.—When on Olivet, I was impressed with the belief that Jesus on this occasion took the upper road, over the top of the mount. It was more private; and the moment the summit was passed, he and his disciples were in absolute solitude. Jerusalem is shut out by the hill, and Bethany is hidden until we reach a rocky spur overhanging the little nook in which it lies embosomed. I saw one spot, as far from Jerusalem as Bethany, very near the village, and yet concealed from view; and I thought that it, in all probability, was the very place on which the Saviour’s feet last rested. J. L. P.

It has been made impossible, in Providence, for the precise spot of his birth or his baptism, of his transfiguration, his death, his burial, or his ascension, to be beyond dispute identified; and no personal relic whatever remains of him. An idolatrous adoration of things earthly and temporal would have otherwise seemed inevitable in Christendom. R. S. S.

A cloud received him. The intervention of a cloud may have been designed, to make our Lord’s transit from earth to heaven more distinctly visible, and to recall the awful but familiar symbol of Jehovah’s presence under the Old Testament. Out of their sight. More exactly, from their (very) eyes. They saw the whole proceeding till the object passed the natural and necessary boundary of vision. This distinguished the case from every other like it. J. A. A.

Early in the morning, at an hour when no unconsecrated eye could see him—for only they, who believed in him, had beheld him since his resurrection—he walks with the eleven—the twelfth had gone to his own place, as the Scripture says—through the yet silent streets of the city—he goes out at the gate, and ascends with them the very mountain whose foot had been moistened with the tears, yea with the bloody sweat of the now glorified man. A. T.

He looks upon them; he lifts his hands; he begins to bless them. What love unutterable in that parting look; what untold riches in that blessing! His hands are uplifted; his lips are engaged in blessing, when slowly he begins to rise; earth has lost her power to keep; the waiting, up-drawing heavens claim him as their own. He rises; but still, as he floats upward through the yielding air, his eyes are bent on these uplooking men; his arms are stretched over them in the attitude of benediction, his voice is heard dying away in blessings as he ascends, till the commissioned cloud closes the earthly and sensible communion between Jesus and his disciples. That cloudy chariot bore him away, till he was “received up into heaven, and sat down on the right hand of God.” H.

The song of his birth once more wraps the earth in the folds of heaven—here the benediction, there the glory. With hands uplifted he blesses the disciples, leaves to men peace and good-will, and then goes up to God in the highest. From that hour the most momentous fact in history—the life and death of Jesus of Nazareth—the most potent means of moral reform, the most mighty influence of spiritual experience, began to work in human society, transforming that society, purifying and ennobling it, till at length Christianity has become its own witness; itself greater than all its miracles, the wonder of the ages, attesting Jesus as the Son of God, and his word as the power of an endless life. J. P. T.

The ascension is a stopping and a starting point in the march of time. When the cloud intercepted Jesus as he went up, it bore witness to a great change and a great transition. It forever terminated the carnal, it finally established the spiritual as the law of God’s dealing. Even the presence of Christ upon earth was the presence of the carnal. The Word made flesh tabernacled among us in a body. When Christ left the earth, he finally and forever exchanged the carnal for the spiritual. From that day place was nothing, form was nothing; the only temple of God is the soul, the only ritual of God’s Church the offering of a free heart. V.

Since our ascended Lord is in no sense dead, we are sure that all the great offices pertaining to his salvation are still in active exercise. He stands in heaven to-day the living head of his redeemed Church; our priestly advocate whose advocacy evermore avails in our behalf; the controller of all things in God’s providential government. He is what the apostle so grandly calls him, the King of the Ages. It is his providence which touches us. It is his love that guides us. It is his sympathy that helps us. It is his power that energizes us. It is his victory that we at last are utterly to share. Hoyt.

A hearty belief in the literal and local ascent of our Lord’s humanity into the heavens is in itself a belief in the whole mystery of the Godhead and Manhood. If in his death our Lord has assured us of his humanity, and in his resurrection has demonstrated his divinity, most surely in his ascension has he displayed both. In that last scene we realize all—the human, the divine, and the most complete manifestation of their union. It is more as a man that we see him leading his disciples out of Jerusalem, and walking, for the last time, up the slopes of Olivet: it is more as God that, with the eye of faith, we behold him taking his seat on his Father’s throne; it is, however, as the God-man in its truest aspects that we gaze on him ascending, flesh of our flesh, and yet God blessed forever—man in the form that rises, God in the power that bears him to his Father’s throne. E.

The end of Christ’s appearance on earth corresponds to its beginning. No link in its chain of supernatural facts can be lost without taking away its significance as a whole. Christianity rests upon these facts; stands or falls with them. By faith in them has the divine life been generated from the beginning; by faith in them has that life in all ages regenerated mankind, raised them above the limits of earthly life, and formed the stage of transition from an existence chained to nature, to a free, celestial life, far raised above it. Were this faith gone, there might, indeed, remain many of the effects of what Christianity had been; but as for Christianity in the true sense, as for a Christian Church, there could be none. N.

Christ rose as a conqueror to commence a new dominion. “He must reign till he hath put all enemies under his feet. The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death.” Nor will the end come till he has conquered back the empire of the universe to the Godhead. That reign is begun. That conquest is now proceeding. The Mediator is on the throne. He has received all power in heaven and on earth. His people are as safe as the subjects can be of One whose dominion ruleth over all. Nor will this mighty One put up his sword or stay his career of victory till all the universe is loyal, or all that is disloyal is disarmed; till moral evil has disappeared from the sight of a holy creation, banished to its own place.

A Saviour’s resurrection is too seldom the subject of our thoughts. Even those who are “often at Gethsemane” too seldom go out “as far as unto Bethany,” and gaze up into heaven along the track of an ascending Redeemer. Even those who sometimes look forth to Christ on the cross too seldom look up to Christ on the throne. But if Jesus was delivered for our offences, he was raised again for our justification; and if we would lead an elastic, hopeful, and improving life, we must remember our Saviour as risen and reigning, and destined to come again.

To one great sorrow, especially, is Christ’s resurrection the surest antidote. Whether in the actual endurance or in the awful anticipation, death is very dreadful, and it used to have a sting which not only slew the victim, but extinguished the survivor’s hope. Thanks be to God for Jesus Christ! Thanks that there is one tomb which has already lost its tenant, and thanks for the news of how that happened! Thanks that the old penalty is now exhausted in the sinner’s substitute, and that whatever great stone be placed on our sepulchre, there need be no gravestone of guilt on the immortal soul! Thanks, O Father, for thy gift unspeakable; thanks, O Saviour, for thy love unfathomable! Thanks for tasting death for every man! Thanks for thy glorious ascension and beneficent reign! Thanks for thy gracious promise to destroy the last enemy; and thanks, O Holy Spirit, the Comforter, for those to whom thou hast given such union to Jesus that they feel as if they could never die—nay, that to depart and be with Christ is far better! “O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? The sting of death is sin; and the strength of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who giveth us the victory, through our Lord Jesus Christ.” Hamilton.

Sat on the right hand of God. The whole gospel, and all the grandeur of the Christian religion, is reducible to this, namely: “That we have such a High-Priest, who is not entered into the holy places made with hands, which are the figures of the true, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us;” that he “is there set on the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens, being the Minister of the sanctuary, and of the true tabernacle, which the Lord pitched, and not man.” Q.

And now the great work of Christ’s incarnation is complete. In ancient times he was spoken of as “the Angel of God,” “the Angel of his presence,” “the Messenger of the covenant,” “the Lord.” In some of the prophets (especially Ezekiel and Daniel) “His likeness is as the appearance of a man.” Henceforth these titles cease: likeness has become reality. It is the APPEARANCE of a man no more, for his manhood has been verified and adored. The glory has taken a permanent form, and as a glorified man he is ever after set forth in the book of God. As such he stands in the midst of the golden candlesticks; as such he himself tells us he will hereafter be seen, “sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven;” and as such, when the judgment is past, his name will be made excellent in all worlds. J. A.

Between us and His visible presence—between us and that glorified Redeemer who now sitteth at the right hand of God—that cloud still rolls. But the eye of faith can pierce it; the incense of true prayer can rise above it; through it the dew of blessing can descend. And if he is gone away, yet he has given us in his Holy Spirit a nearer sense of his presence, a closer infolding in the arms of his tenderness, than we could have enjoyed even if we had lived with him of old in the home of Nazareth, or sailed with him in the little boat over the crystal waters of Gennesaret. We may be as near to him at all times—and more than all when we kneel down to pray—as the beloved disciple was when he laid his head upon his breast. To all who will listen he still speaks. He promised to be with us always, even to the end of the world, and we have not found his promise fail. It was but for thirty-three short years of a short lifetime that he lived on earth; it was but for three broken and troubled years that he preached the gospel of the kingdom; but forever, even until all the æons have been closed, and the earth itself, with the heavens that now are, have passed away, shall every one of his true and faithful children find peace and hope and forgiveness in his name, and that name shall be called Emmanuel, which is, being interpreted, “GOD WITH US.” F.

Acts 10. Two men stood by. It has been supposed that these were Moses and Elijah who had been present at the transfiguration and there talked with Jesus of his exodus about to be accomplished at Jerusalem. There is something sublime in the idea that the great prophetic legislator, and the reformer, who had come from heaven to be present at the momentary anticipation of the Mediator’s glory, now appear again as witnesses of his departure to take final and perpetual possession of it. J. A. A.

L. 52. Returned to Jerusalem with great joy. Yea, with joy! They had seen the hands stretched out to bless them. Wherever they stood and wherever they went, the blessing hands were before their eyes. And wherever we behold sorrowing men, show them these blessing hands! A. T.

Jesus moved upward as if lifted from the earth by some celestial attraction, with his face looking downward upon his beloved companions, and with his hands stretched out in an attitude of benediction. Hence the eleven grieved not for their Lord’s disappearance. They bowed their heads in worship toward the ascended Christ, and returned to Jerusalem with great joy, as if they had gained, not lost a friend, and as if the ascension were not a sunset, but a sunrise—as indeed it was, not for them alone but for the whole world. A. B. B.

The disciples returned, we are told, with great joy; the sorrow of the departure swallowed up in the hope of the speedy return. So vivid, indeed, was the expectation cherished by the first Christians of the second advent of the Lord, that it needed to be chastened and restrained. They required to have their hearts directed into a patient waiting for that coming. We require to have that faith quickened and stimulated, which they needed to have chastened and restrained. H.

J. 31. These are written, that ye might believe. The genesis and growth of John’s faith, and of that of his companions, were indissolubly connected with the teachings and miracles which he records. How often, after one of these records—for example, after the account of the miracle at Cana—it is added that his disciples believed! The Evangelist shows what it was, and why it was, that he and his companions believed, although Jesus was rejected by so many. The roots of that inward experience which was his life and joy, were in these transactions that he is induced to relate in order that others may share with him the spiritual blessing. There is thus an autobiographic element which runs through his narration. G. P. F.

Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God. This great doctrine of the threefold God, with its practical relation to ourselves, forms the substance of the writings of John; they all seem framed in it as in a mould; they perpetually suppose it not alone directly, but silently, in their inmost structure, and in a way which could not be interpolated unless his whole writings be an interpolation; and thus manifest the profound truth that these things were written that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; the Son of God, and thence himself divine; the Christ, and thence the anointed of a divine Spirit. W. A. B.

25. Many other things which Jesus did.** This verse seems to assert and vindicate the fragmentary character of the gospel, considered merely as an historical narrative; for that the doings of the Lord were so many, his life so rich in matter of record, that, in a popular hyperbole, we can hardly imagine the world containing them all, if singly written down; thus setting forth in the strongest terms the superfluity and cumbrousness of anything like a perfect detail. A.—In the limitation of these matchless histories, in point of number, there is as much of that divine wisdom which has presided over and pervades the living oracles, as in their variety and fulness. B.

The Fulness and Completeness of Christ’s Teaching.—The teaching of the Lord includes the substance of all Christian doctrine. Not only in set discourses, but in transient conversations and sudden replies, in words drawn forth by the appeals of the wretched, by the temptations of enemies or by the errors of disciples, in strong denunciations of the wicked or in tender consolations of the weak, the mind of Christ has been expressed on all points, and the store of divine sentences is full. It would be easy to show that every doctrine expanded in the epistles roots itself in some pregnant saying in the gospels; and that the intimation of every truth, revealed to the apostles by the Spirit, came first from the lips of the Son of man. The more we study the records of that short ministry in the flesh, the more we are impressed with the fact that all the past and all the future are gathered up in it. T. D. B.

We cannot more fitly conclude this narrative of our Saviour’s life on earth—in which we have aimed to bring into one view the records of the Four Evangelists—than by calling attention to the two points insisted on by John: first, that we have only a small part of our Lord’s sayings and doings in the presence of his disciples; but, finally, that all we do possess has been written with this one sole object, “That we might believe that JESUS IS THE CHRIST, THE SON OF GOD, and that, believing, we might have LIFE THROUGH HIS NAME.” S.

Of the Divine Trinity.

In the transcendent, removed, and awful depth of his absolute infinitude, which no understanding can pierce, the everlasting and almighty God lives in an existence of which our only possible knowledge is gained by lights thrown back from revelation. Out of that ineffable and veiled Godhead—the groundwork, if we may say so, of all divine manifestation, or theophany—there emerge to us in revelation the three whom we call persons, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, with their several individual offices, mutual relations, operations toward men, and perfect unity together. Holding fast the prime and positive fact of this unity, we have given us, as an equal matter of faith, the threeness. We know of no priority to that threeness; of no epoch when it was not; of no Deity independent of that threefold distinction. A question at that point takes us over into realms utterly inscrutable to thought. We conceive of God always, not as absolute Being, but as in relations, in process, in act. And in such relations, process, act, we behold him only as three: the Son eternally begotten of the Father, not subordinate in nature or essence, nor created, nor beginning, but consubstantial with the Father; the Holy Ghost ever proceeding from the Father and the Son, not in time, nor made out of nothing, but one in power and glory and eternity with them both. Christ comes forth out of the Godhead as the Son, the Saviour, and, being born of Mary, is Jesus, the Messiah. We could not know him in those very characters which he must sustain in order to be our Redeemer except as he really takes upon himself our nature, a voluntary human subjection—as it is precisely written, “the image of the invisible God” in humanity. This is the mystery of the incarnation. This was the precise mercy to be wrought for the solution of the problem of the world’s sin. He was to leave “the glory which he had with the Father before the world was,” and “be made in fashion as a man,” be “tempted like as we are, yet without sin,” be “an high priest that can be touched with the feeling of our infirmities,” “God manifest in the flesh,” “God with us.” To this agree all the Scriptures.

It was to be expected that, in repeated instances, this incarnate Son, engaged on his redeeming and intercessory work, would be shown as dependent on the Father, who now represents to us the unseen personality of the Godhead—as submissive, suffering, deferential, obedient even unto death, perfect in humiliation. Voluntarily, to this end, and for the time, he says, “My Father is greater than I.” He prays; how else could he be the Intercessor? He obeys, is sent, lessens himself to dependency for the sake of mediation. How else could the divine will and perfection be displayed under human conditions? Hence the whole of that instrumental inequality between Son and Father, which is wrought into Biblical language, remains in all our devotional habit, and which ought to remain there to give us a realization of the wondrous fact of the redemption, that we may apprehend our Saviour both as God and as man.

All implanted wants are wonderfully satisfied in the divine Trinity. In the absolute and one only Godhead, all man’s highest, purest, largest, most far-reaching conceptions, stretching away into the regions of Infinitude, Eternity, Almightiness, have their full and complete exercise. In the incarnate Christ, taking up our humanity, the longing for a personal, sympathizing, and companionable Deity is blessedly answered—and yet God is there; there is no loss of the essential and veritable Deity. In the Holy Spirit, the natural desire of the devout mind to connect God with all the operations of the present world, the processes of creation, the welfare, renewal, revolutions, sanctification, of the human family, finds its lawful verification. The adorable mystery becomes a practical and precious fact to the toiling and praying soul. The baffled intellect rests from the aimless beating of its wings, and, while it discovers fields of boundless contemplation for the expansion of all its powers, abides in the peace of that holy benediction, “The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Ghost, be with us all evermore.” F. D. H.

The good man who feels the power of the Father, to whom the Son is become wisdom, sanctification, and righteousness, and in whose heart the Spirit is shed abroad—this man, though he understands nothing of what is unintelligible, yet he alone truly understands the Christian doctrine of the Trinity. J. Taylor.

It suits, in fact, the actual states of most worshippers to turn in different moods to each of the three in the one, and, according to its joy or need, to praise and entreat each with the whole heart—the Father as Creator and Providence, the Son as Redeemer and embodied Friend, the Spirit as the Dispenser of a diffused and sanctifying influence which perpermeates and comforts the sensitive soul. More or less clearly there arise thus, before the thought, and impress the feeling, in these hours of high communion, the grand and moving facts of the evangelical history. The holy imagery that peoples the audience-chamber of the Eternal and the mansions of heaven stirs itself in the presence of the suppliant. Ere it is aware, the heart is encompassed with the verities and events of the redemption. F. D. H.

Using the triune formula in the least constrained way possible, and allowing the plurality to blend in the freest manner possible, with all our acts of worship, praying, singing, and adoring, we are only doing with three persons just what we do with one—making no infringement of the unity with the three more than of the infinity with the one. Let God be three persons forever, just as he is one person forever, and as this latter is a truth accepted without difficulty, and held as the necessary truth of religion, so let it be our joy that he is a being who needs for other purposes equally dear to be and be thought as three.

Let no shallow presumption turn us away from this glorious mystery till we have given it time enough, and opened to it windows enough, by our praises and prayers, to let in the revelation of its glory. Let it also be an argument of modesty with us, and a welcome commendation to our reverence, that so many friends of God and righteous men of the past ages, such as bore a greater fight than we, and grew to greater ripeness in their saintly walk, bowed themselves adoringly before this holy mystery, and sung it with hallelujahs in the worship of their temples, in their desert fastings, and their fires of testimony. And as their Gloria Patri, the sublimest of their doxologies, is, in form, a hymn for the ages, framed to be continuously chanted by the long procession of times, till times are lapsed in eternity, what can we better do than let the wave lift us that lifted them, and bid it still roll on? H. B.

The Person of Christ.

“THE same who is true God,” says Leo, “is also true man, and in this unity there is no deceit, for in it the lowliness of man and the majesty of God perfectly pervade one another. Because the two natures make only one person, we read on the one hand: The Son of man came down from heaven, while yet the Son of God took flesh from the Virgin; and on the other: The Son of God was crucified and buried, while yet he suffered not in his Godhead as coeternal and consubstantial with the Father, but in the weakness of human nature.” In the gospel history this personal unity everywhere unmistakably appears. The self-consciousness of Christ is not divided. It is one and the self-same theanthropic subject that speaks, acts, and suffers, that rises from the dead, ascends to heaven, sits at the right hand of God, and shall come again in glory to judge the quick and the dead.

The whole work of Christ is to be referred to his person, and not to be attributed to the one or the other nature exclusively. It is the one divine-human Christ, who wrought miracles of almighty power—by virtue of the divine nature dwelling in him—and who suffered and was buried, according to his passible, human nature. The person was the subject, the human nature the seat and the sensorium, of the passion. It is by this hypostatical union of the divine and the human nature in all the stages of the humiliation and exaltation of Christ that his work and his merits acquire an infinite and a genuinely human and exemplary significance for us. Because the God-man suffered, his death is the reconciliation of the world with God; and because he suffered as man, he has left us an example, that we should follow his steps.

The centre of personal life in the God-man resides unquestionably in the Logos, who was from eternity the second person in the Godhead, and could not lose his personality. He united himself not with a human person, but with human nature. The divine nature is therefore the root and basis of the personality of Christ. Christ himself, moreover, always speaks and acts in the full consciousness of his divine origin and character; as having come from the Father, having been sent by him, and, even during his earthly life, living in heaven and in unbroken communion with the Father. And the human nature of Christ had no independent personality of its own, besides the divine; it had no existence at all before the incarnation, but began with this act, and was so incorporated with the preëxistent Logos personality as to find in this alone its own full self-consciousness, and to be permeated and controlled by it in every stage of its development. The theology of the Church will ever return anew to deeper and still deeper contemplation and adoration of the theanthropic person of Jesus Christ, which is, and ever will be, the sun of history, the miracle of miracles, the central mystery of godliness, and the inexhaustible fountain of salvation and life for the lost race of man. P. S.

The Person of Christ as disclosed in the Fourth Gospel.—Jesus is the Word (the Logos), the Revealer of God. The word is the revelation of the thought; its incarnation, as it were, in order to convey it to the mind of another. The word in the Greek is also the reason of anything, “the unfolding of its true nature and meaning to him who knows it not.” Jesus Christ claimed to be the Revealer of the Father; and this is best expressed by his title, the Word.

His relation to the Father is absolutely unique. He came forth from the Father, he ever turns his face toward Him, and he is himself very God. In the bosom of the Father from all eternity, he is yet personally distinct from him, the only-begotten Son. In his work he is subordinate to the Father: he is sent by the Father; receives his name, the symbol of his power and greatness, from the Father; ascribes his power to the Father. Yet he declares himself one with the Father and equal with him. The Father is in him and he in the Father. Though on earth he is in heaven. Though from the Father he is yet self-existent.

His relation to man evinces his unity with the Father. The life for lost man was in him, and communicated by him. He is full of grace and truth, he preaches the truth, and he is the truth itself. Whosoever has seen him has seen the

Father also. Through his union with the Father, all power is given him; he gives life to whom he will; he presents himself as an example for men to copy; and he challenges the Jews to find a single blemish in his character.

On the other hand he is represented as a human being, and subject to the ordinary weaknesses and wants of men. When he fasted he was hungry and ate. When he travelled he was thirsty and weary. Being grieved he wept, and being crucified he died. He had a peculiarly human friendship and affection for the beloved disciple, and for the household in Bethany. He remembered the claims of filial duty even in that hour of supreme solemnity on the cross.

It is by virtue of his incarnation, or his partaking of human nature, that he becomes the source of life to the world. He is the vine and his disciples are the branches. A constant stream of life flows from him through them; a life which is governed by the same laws as man’s natural life. It reaches its maturity by means of growth through nourishment. Its food is Christ, the living bread which came down from heaven, who is a source of permanent life to the world. The operating principle of this divine life is faith in Christ. This faith leads to good works. By union with Christ, the vine, alone, a union effected by faith, can the branches become fruitful, and by abiding in him alone can they increase in fruitfulness. The new life of faith leads to purity and truth, and to mutual love. It makes men again the children of God, and gives them a claim upon his love and access to him in prayer. It makes them the channels of blessing to others, the representatives of Christ in a mission for the saving of mankind. D. S. G.

Doctrine of Messiah as disclosed under the Theocracy.

THE people of Israel were taken out of the midst of an idolatrous world, to become the depositaries of a purer knowledge of the one true God than was given to any other people. At a time when (humanly speaking) the world could hardly have preserved a spiritual religion in its highest purity, they received a divine revelation enshrined in symbols and ceremonies, whereby it might be safely kept till the time of its development in a purer and more heavenly form. J. S. H.

The Jewish nationality was placed in extraordinary circumstances to receive, preserve, and transmit this deposit of truth. God takes this people to himself. He creates, fashions, and appropriates it in a special sense, and in an effectual manner; he governs and directs it immediately. This extraordinary government is called Theocracy, or the personal government of God. A. V.

The kingdom of God was first realized in the form of a Theocracy. It had its boundaries like any other country, and, like an earthly king, God made the Temple of Jerusalem his dwelling-place. The separation between the sacred and profane was marked with minute care in the external life of the Jew: the law dealt first with the life of the body, in order to rise, little by little, to the life of the soul. The divine law was itself incorporated with a body of outward ceremonies. It is nevertheless easy to discern the immortal spirit under the sensible form and symbol. Prophecy proclaims that all nations shall be blessed in the posterity of Abraham, that a sacrifice more worthy of God than that of bulls and goats shall be offered to eternal justice. It hails in anticipation the servant of the Lord, who is to be at once the propitiatory victim and the king of the new Israel. De P.

The book of Genesis connects the promise of redemption with the narrative of the fall. At each crisis in the providential history of the world this promise was brought within narrower limits. After the flood, one of the sons of Noah was especially connected with the future triumph of God. Abraham was called, and the assurance was given to him that the blessing of the earth should spring from his seed. The fortunes of the twelve patriarchs were prophetically foreshadowed, and the sceptre was assigned to Judah. But up to this point no personal trait of a Redeemer was given. Hope was turned from mankind generally to a race, a nation, a tribe; but, in accordance with the simplicity of early faith, it was left otherwise vague and distant.

The legislation of Moses contained the next revelation of “the great age to come,” and the first description of the prophet by whom it should be inaugurated. The law from the first exhibited the image of a nobler law; and that which was permanent and essential in the relation which it established between God and man was transferred to a future law-giver. At the same time the hope of the world was definitely fixed in Palestine by the witness of a heathen seer. The promise of Moses was confirmed by the unwilling testimony of Balaam, who looked forward to the triumph of the Jewish race and the Jewish King, and condemned himself.

On the establishment of the kingdom one family was selected from the chosen tribe; and the “sceptre” was now reserved for the Son of David. The later period of the kingdom saw the gradual unfolding of the idea of this future King.

The captivity completed the circle of the Messianic hopes, by turning the eyes of the people to the divine glory of the coming King, and the universal extent of his dominion. The Son of David was recognized under the wider title of the Son of man; and his kingdom appeared as the last and mightiest of the monarchies of the world.

In this way the earliest hope of mankind was centred in a Person; and the image of the future Saviour was drawn from the varied forms in which God made himself known in the history of the chosen people. At the time of Christ’s appearance, the national hope of the Jews, although indefinite, was universal. In some form or other general expectation was quickened in Judea, and in Samaria, and among the Jews of the dispersion; “Jerusalem and all Judea, and all the region round about Jordan went out” to John’s baptism, without distinction of rank or sect, “musing whether he were Christ.” In the most different stations were those who “waited for the kingdom of God.” B. F. W.

The Old and the New Testament, the history of the Jews and the history of Jesus Christ, lie before us. Do these two monuments form but one single edifice? This second history—is it comprised and written beforehand in the first? Let us collect the principal texts which speak of the advent of the future Messiah:

Gen. 3 : 14, 15; 9 : 26; 12 : 3; 49 : 10; and Micah 5 : 2. He that shall bruise the head of the serpent shall belong to the race of Shem, to the posterity of Abraham and Jacob, to the kingdom of Judah.

Psalms 2 : 2, 6, 7; 22 : 1, 7; 69 : 21; 22 : 18, 8, 23, 27. Israel is at its apogee of splendor: David prophesies alike the sufferings and the glory of that Saviour of the world, who is to be, not merely the King of Zion, but “the Son and the Anointed of the Eternal.”

Isaiah 7 : 13, 14; 9 : 2-6; 11 : 1-4; 49 : 1-6; Zech. 9 : 9; and Isaiah 53. The kingdom of David and Solomon has begun to decay; Judah and Israel are separated; both kingdoms have their prophets, who at one time struggle against the crimes and evils of their respective ages, and at another occupy themselves in disclosing prospects of the future.

Seventeen centuries passed in the interval between the receiving of the Decalogue by Moses, and the actual approach of the Messiah announced by the prophets. At the end of these seventeen centuries the God who defined himself to Moses to be “I am that I am,” has never ceased to be the God, the sole God of Israel. Israel has passed through all governments, undergone all vicissitudes, fallen into all the errors to which it is possible to succumb. The Jews have had a hierarchy, and judges and kings; they have been alternately conquerors and conquered, masters and slaves; they have had their temptation to idolatry and paroxysms of impiety; still they have ever returned to the one God—to the true God. Their faith has survived all their faults and misfortunes; and after those seventeen centuries, Israel is waiting at the hand of Jehovah a Messiah, according to the affirmation of its greatest prophets, the Liberator and Saviour, not of Israel alone, but of all nations. Fact without parallel in history—fact that is not human! But what more shall that fact become, and what shall be our belief, when the prophecies shall have their accomplishment—when Jehovah shall have given to the world Jesus Christ? Guizot.

Christ: Prophet, Priest, and King.

THE Jewish rabbins ascribed to the Messiah a threefold dignity, “the crown of the law, the crown of the priesthood, and the crown of the kingdom.” This is the comprehensive result of the Old Testament declarations about the promised Mediator. The New Testament also sets forth Christ as the great Teacher, the great High-Priest, and the King of kings and Lord of lords. The whole history of the Israelites centres in these three points: Moses and the prophets, Aaron and the priesthood, and David and the royal house. Here were the grand institutes of the theocracy. Through a thousand years inspired prophets taught in the name of the Lord; in the degeneracy of Israel, they spoke of still deeper woes to come; in its lordliest days, they held up the glad vision of yet brighter times in store. Kings also ruled in majesty; yet even David was but a type of him who was to come of the root of Jesse. A whole tribe was set apart to the office of the priesthood; the shadow and symbol of the great High-Priest. The whole history of the Hebrew nation, in short, can only be distinctly read in the light of these three words: Prophet, Priest, and King. Not alone in these general types, but in specific promise, it was foretold that the Anointed One was to bear these offices. In exalted strains did the prophetic word depict the coming glories of the Son of God, and the sum of all is this: Prophet, Priest, and King.

As was the word of prophecy in the Old Testament, so was the fact of history in the New Testament. The three distinct offices are combined and concentrated in the one person of the God-man. The carnal Jewish mind looked for a temporal prince, attended with the pomp of worldly magnificence; but the King of the Jews, anointed of old, appeared as a simple teacher, suffered indignity and death, and showed his regal power by subduing death, hell, and the grave. He disappointed every earthly hope and fulfilled every divine prediction. He was greeted as a prophet, sent of God; he spake as never man spake; he foretold his own death, the destruction of the degenerate city that rejected him, and the victories of his kingdom. He revealed God to man, and thus showed himself to be the very Word of God. He was at once the living law and the living gospel. His words are spirit and life; heaven and earth may pass away, but his word shall never pass away. Chief and last of the prophets, the whole of prophecy has in him its summary and completion.

The New Testament also represents the Mediator as the great High-Priest, the only real sacrifice. He is the Lamb of God that taketh away the sins of the world. He offered himself through the eternal spirit without spot unto God. All other oblations are ineffectual; the blood of bulls and goats could not take away sin; but by the blood of Jesus, that new and living way, we have boldness of access. The Epistle to the Hebrews is one grand demonstration, not only that Christ is the High-Priest of our apostate race, but that he alone is, or can be, such; all others are but shadows. And that same epistle conjoins his regal with his priestly functions; for it is this High-Priest who is set on the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens. And John in the apocalyptic vision sees the heavenly hosts casting their crowns before his throne. Thus as the burden and sum of the New Testament, we find prophet, priest, and king, these three offices, and only these, and these in all their fulness, ascribed to the Mediator, and to him alone.

We know him not fully or truly, until we know him as our Prophet, giving to us the words of eternal wisdom; as our Priest, who paid the ransom for our souls; and as our King, ruling over and in us. He speaks to us to-day as really as he did to his chosen twelve in the cities and on the plains of Judea; he intercedes for us to-day as truly as he did for the disciples that hung upon his lips when he offered his hallowed prayer of intercession; he guides our steps as really now as he guided the steps of Peter, James, and John, when he walked with them day by day. Taught by him the unlearned become wise; redeemed by him the unholy become blameless; ruled by him, the slave of sin becomes the freeman of the Lord, and has the right of citizenship in the kingdom of God, the heavenly Jerusalem. And when the believer thus knows him, then he also knows that there can be but one Mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus, the King and Lord of our souls, our Redeemer. H. B. S.

Christ, the Divine Man: His Doctrine and Character.

1. THE TEACHER AND HIS TEACHING.—Jesus Christ was a man of Nazareth, in Galilee of Judea, whom no hint of the learning and science of other lands and of the discoveries and speculations of the world’s sages could by any possibility have reached. He was a man of humble origin; his parents, his relatives, his associates, were all poor, and he himself was poor, to the last very poor.

But this Person, in a ministry of three years, did infinitely more for mankind and for all succeeding ages, than either Socrates or Plato, or both together were able to do, each with the labor of thirty or forty years, with all their maturity of wisdom, and experience, and with all the advantages of learning, and travel, and patronage. The words of this being, even on common occasions, discover a breadth and universality without example; they are always very simple, but profoundly suggestive, sometimes of inexhaustible force. Jesus not only announces separate ideas of the highest value, but his sayings may be likened to rich seeds or roots of truth, from which spring up manifold living growths. The free and earnest soul, deeply pondering the sentences which fell from his lips, feels itself in a lofty and holy region, where new expanses of light and glory in all directions break upon the sight; where forms of truth, long familiar, open freshly, and disclose unimaginable wonders; and where an overpowering sense of reality, of living energy, and of divinity, is created.

He, too, is the only teacher who always speaks with certainty and precision. Not a shadow even of hesitation rests for a moment on his language. And he is the only teacher who always expresses himself without effort. Y.

The form of his expressions, whether he uttered parables, proverbs, maxims, or apparent paradoxes, was intended to spur men’s minds to profounder thought, to awaken the divine consciousness within, and so teach them to understand that which at first served only as a mental stimulus. It was designed to impress indelibly upon the memory of his hearers truths perhaps as yet not fully intelligible, but which would grow clear as the divine life was formed within them, and become an ever-increasing source of spiritual light. His doctrine was not to be propagated as a lifeless stock of tradition, but to be received as a living Spirit by willing minds, and brought out into full consciousness, according to its import, by free spiritual activity. The form of teaching which repelled the stupid, and passed unheeded and misunderstood by the unholy, roused susceptible minds to deeper thought, and rewarded their inquiries by the discovery of ever-increasing treasures.

He would not have been “Son of God” and “Son of man,” had not his words, like his works, with all their adaptation to the circumstances of the times, contained some things that were inexplicable; had they not borne concealed within them the germ of an infinite development, reserved for future ages to unfold. It is this feature (and all the Evangelists concur in their representations of it) which distinguishes Christ from all other teachers of men. Advance as they may, they can never reach him; their only task need be, by taking him more and more into their life and thought, to learn better how to bring forth the treasures that lie concealed in him. N.

Altogether we behold here an originality, a consistency, a living energy, a grandeur, and a depth which can be found nowhere else. He stands unapproachably distant from all that ever were honored with a divine mission; he is not a link in a chain of succession, but is absolutely alone, and has no predecessor and no successor. The multitude, the originality, the harmony, and the grandeur of his revelations, separate him, by an impassable line, from all that arose before his time, and the fact that in two thousand years not a single important contribution has been added to the body of spiritual truth which he left, cuts off all succession. Of all the spiritual truth existing in the world at this moment, not only is there not a single important idea which is not found in the words of Christ, but all the most important ideas can be found nowhere else, and have their sole fountain in his mind. From his mind there shone a light which neither Egypt, nor India, nor Greece, nor Rome, had ever kindled, which no age before his day ever saw, and none since, except in him alone, has ever seen. Y.

2. EFFECTS OF HIS TEACHING.—This Jesus of Nazareth, without money and arms, has conquered more millions than Alexander, Cesar, Mohammed, and Napoleon. Without science and learning, he shed more light on things human and divine than all philosophers and scholars combined; without the eloquence of schools, he spoke such words of life as were never spoken before or since, and produced effects which lie beyond the reach of any orator and poet; without writing a single line, he set more pens in motion, and furnished themes for more sermons, orations, discussions, works of learning and of art, and sweet songs of praise, than the whole army of great men of ancient and modern times. P. S.

The completeness of Christ’s teaching appears in the thoroughness and depth of his doctrines. He laid the axe at the root of the tree; he drove the ploughshare down under the soil. He did not talk of the overturning of the Roman Empire; he overturned it by the principles he set in motion against its oppressions, its vices, its crimes. He did not furnish a philosophy of social order; he reconstructed society by a few simple truths concerning the individual, the family, the neighbor, the state, the Church. He did not deliver a treatise on trade or political economy, but he gave rules that rendered injustice, fraud, dishonesty impossible within his kingdom, and disgraceful outside of it. What he taught took hold upon the innermost thoughts, feelings, passions, motives, imaginations of the human heart, to work there a revolution deep and radical. And his doctrines still confront the soul as a finality in respect to its character, its needs, its duties, and its hopes. These words of Christ strike the soul with awe, for by them it shall be judged.

The sayings of Christ are certified by their effects, especially in the higher spheres of human thought and feeling. Since the beginning of the Christian era, how large a portion of the literature of the world has been devoted to the exposition and illustration of his words, or directly or indirectly has grown out of them! How little is there in the sayings of other men that the world cherishes as life-words! How many volumes have been made simply by commenting on the words of Christ!

The power of Christ’s doctrine has been equally apparent upon human society. A new society, altogether peculiar, whose foundation is faith in Christ himself, whose bond is love to him and his, whose aim is moral perfection, has come into existence through his word, and today exists over half the globe. The Church of Christ, founded, without political purpose or physical power, upon a word, an idea, and expanding through the ages with an undying spiritual life, witnesses that never man spake like this man. Moreover, his words have penetrated civil society, have infused into government the idea of justice, have redressed social wrongs, have harmonized legislation, and lifted the masses to a higher plane of thought and hope. J. P. T.

There is a fifth gospel, which has been eighteen centuries in writing: the work of Christ among mankind. The track of his footsteps is seen wherever there has been any real progress in good, in love, in right, in the moral elevation of men. At the basis of our modern civilization lies the thought of Jesus. De P.

When we have it thrust upon our convictions by every fragment of historic testimony, by even heathen Pliny and infidel Gibbon themselves, by all monuments of human progress, and by all the civilization of to-day, and all the spreading life of the Church always, that since the moment when Christ came up out of the Jordan, wet with the baptism of John, and with the glory of his heavenly consecration shining upon him, a new principle has been steadily working in the heart of human things, to transform them, new in form and in spirit, in name and in essence—then how are we to escape believing that, if God was in the building of the world, it was not man that by regeneration created it anew?

Whether you strike down below the surface of events, or reach out either way to trace their sequence and interdependence, the under-tide that bears all up and sweeps all along is the irresistible current of Christ’s divine life. Changes with which no other change compares, revolutions for which no civil revolution can account, impulses of thought, conquests of science, growths of institutions, marches of learning and society—all testify that a silent power was cradled in the manger at Bethlehem, which was to dwarf down the empire of Cesars and Bonapartes into the puny dynasties of nursery games. All the growing multitudes, achievements, industry, enterprise, discoveries, wisdom, and strength of the race, lift a chant of thanksgiving that has grown louder from the first, and is swelling still, to proclaim Christ the divine Regenerator of its destinies, the infinite and eternal Head over his Church. F. D. H.

Outside of Christianity there have been grand spectacles of activity and force, brilliant phenomena of genius and virtue, generous attempts at reform, learned philosophical systems, and beautiful mythological poems; no real profound or fruitful regeneration of humanity and of society. Jesus Christ from his cross accomplishes what erewhile, in Asia and Europe, princes and philosophers, the powerful of the earth, and sages, attempted without success. He changes the moral state and the social state of the world. He pours into the souls of men new enlightenment and new powers. For all classes, for all human conditions, he prepares destinies before his advent unknown. He liberates them at the same time that he lays down rules for their guidance; he quickens them and stills them. He places the divine law and human liberty face to face, and yet still in harmony. He offers an effectual remedy for the evil which weighs upon humanity; to sin he opens the path of salvation, to unhappiness the door of hope. Guizot.

3. HIS POSITION AND CHARACTER.—We should naturally suppose that such a personage, setting up the most astounding claims and proposing the most extraordinary work, would surround himself with extraordinary circumstances. We should expect something uncommon and striking in his look, his dress, his mode of speech, his outward life, and the train of his attendants. But the very reverse is the case. His greatness is singularly unostentatious, modest, and quiet; far from repelling the beholder, it attracts and invites him to familiar approach. His public life never moved on the imposing arena of secular heroism, but within the humble circle of every-day life, and the simple relations of a son, a brother, a citizen, a teacher, and a friend. P. S.

Jesus exhibited an entire independence of parties. His position was not determined by any feeling of opposition to any of them; he represented no reaction. Rather is it true that he stood on a higher plane, and was moved by considerations altogether distinct from any impulse to follow or to oppose prevailing tenets. This is remarkable especially as regards the Pharisees, to whom he conceded a certain authority as teachers of the law, and who from their number, and standing, and apparent sanctity, impressed the people with awe. Jesus discriminates between what is to be followed and what rejected in their creed and conduct. But nothing in the plan of his own career, or in the doctrine which he inculcated, is caught up from them. His path is marked out with entire independence, in a way to clash directly with the ideas of the most revered leaders. This is one of the most impressive evidences of the originality of Jesus. It was from within, and not from without, that he derived that conception of his office and work, which, with undeviating constancy, he proceeded to realize. G. P. F.

In every other life than that of Christ, what imperfections, what inconsistencies! Where is the character that no opposition is sufficient to overwhelm? Where the individual whose conduct is never modified by event or circumstance, who never yields to the influences of the time, never accommodates himself to manners or passions that he cannot prevail to alter? From first to last he is the same; always the same, majestic and simple, infinitely severe and infinitely gentle; throughout a life that may be said to have been lived under the public eye, Jesus never gives occasion to find fault; the prudence of his conduct compels our admiration by its union of force and gentleness. Everything in him amazes me; his spirit outreaches mine, and his will confounds me. Comparison is impossible between him and any other being in the world. He is truly a being by himself: his ideas and his sentiments, the truth that he announces, his manner of convincing, are all beyond humanity and the natural order of things. His birth, and the story of his life, the profoundness of his doctrine which overturns all difficulties, and is their most complete solution, his gospel, the singularity of this mysterious being, his appearance, his empire, his progress through all centuries and kingdoms—all this is to me a prodigy, an unfathomable mystery. I see nothing here of man. Near as I may approach, closely as I may examine, all remains great with a greatness that crushes me; it is in vain that I reflect—all remains unaccountable. Napoleon.

The Christ of the gospels shows not the faintest trace of fanaticism or self-delusion. On the contrary, he discouraged and opposed all the prevailing carnal ideas and hopes of the Messiah, as a supposed political reformer and emancipator. He is calm, self-possessed, uniformly consistent, free from all passion and undue excitement, never desponding, ever confident of success even in the darkest hour of trial and persecution. To every perplexing question he quickly returned the wisest answer; he never erred in his judgment of men or things; from the beginning to the close of his public life, before friend and foe, before magistrate and people, in disputing with Pharisees and Sadducees, in addressing his disciples or the multitude, while standing before Pontius Pilate and Caiaphas, or suspended on the cross, he shows an unclouded intellect and complete mastery of appetite and passion—in short all the qualities the very opposite to those which characterize persons laboring under self-delusion or any mental disease.

Endowed with the keenest moral sensibilities and tenderest sympathies, moving in a corrupt age of this wicked world, and tempted as we, yea more than we are, by unbelief, ingratitude, malignity, denial, and treason, he yet maintained a spotless innocence to the last. He was ever true to his mission of mercy, lived solely for the glory of God and the good of mankind; united, in even symmetry, the opposite graces of dignity and humility, strength and gentleness, severity and kindness, energy and resignation, active and passive obedience even to the death on the cross, and furnished an exemplar of perfect humanity.

The same in doctrine and conduct from the beginning to the close, before friend and foe, in private and public life, in action and suffering, he had never to retract a word, never to regret a deed, never to ask the pardon of God or man. His calmness and serenity was never disturbed; he never felt unhappy or desponding, and, when at the close of his ministry, he could say to his heavenly Father in the presence of his intimate friends and disciples: “I have glorified thee on the earth; I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do.”

Such was Jesus of Nazareth—a true man in body, soul, and spirit, yet differing from all men, a character absolutely unique and original, from tender childhood to ripe manhood moving in unbroken union with God, overflowing with the purest love to man, free from every sin and error, innocent and holy, teaching and practising all virtues in perfect harmony, devoted solely and uniformly to the noblest ends, sealing the purest life with the sublimest death, and ever acknowledged since as the one and only perfect model of goodness and holiness! All human greatness loses on closer inspection; but Christ’s character grows more and more pure, sacred, and lovely, the better we know him. P. S.

Admissions of Skeptics concerning Christ.

[It is proper to state that the embodying of these admissions among our summarized topics is owing to a suggestion by the late Prof. Henry B. Smith, D. D., who was pleased to express his warm approval of the idea and plan of this work.]

“Jesus preached at all times,” said the late Mr. Noah, a Jew, and a distinguished editor of New York, “and in all places, in and out of the temple, with an eloquence such as no mortal has since possessed. Jesus was free from fanaticism; his was a quiet, subduing, retiring faith. He mingled with the poor, communed with the wretched, avoided the rich, and rebuked the vainglorious. He sincerely believed his mission, courted no one, flattered no one; was pointed and severe in his denunciations. These are not the characteristics of an impostor; but, admitting that we give a different interpretation to his mission, when one hundred and fifty millions believe in his divinity, and we see around us abundant evidence of the happiness, good faith, mild government, and liberal feelings which spring from his religion, what right has any one to call him an impostor?—that religion which is calculated to make mankind happy cannot be a false one.”

Dr. Raphael, an elegant scholar and eloquent rabbi of thirty years since, speaks in a similar strain:

“If you are desirous of knowing the opinion of a Jew, ay, of a teacher in Israel, respecting the proceedings against and the condemnation of the Master from Nazareth, I do not hesitate to tell you that I do not by any means feel bound to identify myself, or my brethren in faith, with these proceedings, or to uphold that condemnation; I, as a Jew, do say that it appears to me Jesus became the victim of fanaticism combined with jealousy and lust of power in Jewish hierarchs, even as, in later ages, Huss and Jerome of Prague, Latimer and Ridley, became the victims of fanaticism combined with jealousy and lust of power in Christian hierarchs; and while I and the Jews of the present day protest against being identified with the zealots who were concerned in the proceedings against Jesus of Nazareth, we are far from reviling his character or deriding his precepts, which are for the most part those of Moses and the prophets.”

THE charge of an extravagant, self-deluding enthusiasm is the last to be fastened on Jesus. While he claimed power in the future world, and always turned men’s minds to heaven, he never indulged his own imagination, or stimulated that of his disciples, by giving vivid pictures, or any minute description, of that unseen state. His benevolence, too, though singularly earnest and deep, was composed and serene. He never lost the possession of himself in his sympathy with others; was never hurried into the impatient and rash enterprises of an enthusiastic philanthropy; but did good with the tranquillity and constancy which mark the providence of God. Dr. Channing.

WHATEVER else may be taken away from us by rational criticism, Christ is still left—a unique figure, not more unlike all his precursors than all his followers, even those who had the direct benefit of his personal teaching. It is of no use to say that Christ, as exhibited in the gospels, is not historical, and that we know not how much of what is admirable has been superadded by the tradition of his followers. The tradition of followers suffices to insert any number of marvels, and may have inserted all the miracles which he is reputed to have wrought. But who among his disciples, or among their proselytes, was capable of inventing the sayings ascribed to Jesus, or of imagining the life and character revealed in the gospels? Certainly not the fishermen of Galilee; as certainly not Paul, whose character and idiosyncrasies were of a totally different sort; still less the early Christian writers.

About the life and sayings of Jesus there is a stamp of personal originality, combined with profundity of insight, which must place the prophet of Nazareth, even in the estimation of those who have no belief in his inspiration, in the very first rank of the men of sublime genius of whom our species can boast. When this preëminent genius is combined with the qualities of probably the greatest moral reformer, and martyr to that mission, who ever existed upon earth, religion cannot be said to have made a bad choice in pitching upon this man as the ideal representative and guide of humanity; nor, even now, would it be easy, even for an unbeliever, to find a better translation of the rule of virtue from the abstract into the concrete, than to endeavor so to live that Christ would approve our life. J. S. Mill.

THE evangelical history bears no marks of fiction. The history of Socrates, which no one presumes to doubt, is not so well attested as that of Jesus Christ. It is more inconceivable that a number of persons should agree to write such a history than that one should furnish the subject of it. The Jewish authors were incapable of the diction, and strangers to the morality contained in the gospel. The marks of its truth are so striking and inimitable, that the inventor would be a more astonishing character than the hero.

The majesty of the Scripture strikes me with admiration, as the purity of the gospel hath its influence on my heart. Is it possible that a book at once so simple and sublime should be merely the work of man? Is it possible that the sacred personage, whose history it contains, should be himself a mere man? What sweetness, what purity in his manners! What sublimity in his maxims! What profound wisdom in his discourses! What presence of mind, what subtility, what truth in his replies! How great the command over his passions! Where could Jesus learn, among his compatriots, that pure and sublime morality of which he only hath given us precept and example?

Socrates, in receiving the cup of poison, blessed indeed the weeping executioner who administered it; but Jesus, in the midst of excruciating tortures, prayed for his merciless tortornentors. Yes, if the life and death of Socrates are those of a sage, the life and death of Jesus are those of a God! Rousseau.

The close of a parable, or dream, in which an inquiring wanderer has passed through the various forms of ancient religion (A. P. S.):

The inquirer, perplexed by the troubles and superstitions around him, suddenly heard a voice from the sky, uttering distinctly these words: “Behold the Son of man; let the heavens be silent before him; let the earth hear his voice.” Then lifting up his eyes, he beheld on the altar, around which the idol-worshippers were assembled, a Figure, whose aspect, at once impressive and sweet, struck him with astonishment and awe. His dress was homely, and like that of an artisan; but his expression was heavenly. “O my children!” he said, in a tone of tenderness which reached the bottom of the soul, “I come to expiate and to heal your errors. Love him who loves you, and know him who is forever.” At the same moment, seizing the idol, he overthrew it without effort, and mounting the vacant pedestal without agitation, he seemed rather to take his own place than to usurp that of another. The people were seized with enthusiasm. The priests were irritated almost to madness. . . . Champion of a divine morality, he drew the world after him; he had but to speak the word, and his enemies were no more. But he, who came to destroy intolerance, refrained from imitating it. He used only the means which accorded with the lessons he had to teach and the functions he had to perform. He portrayed the love of man and all the virtues with traits so touching and in colors so attractive that, with the exception of the ministers of the temple, no one listened to him without being moved, and without loving better his own duties and the good of others. His speech was simple and gracious, yet profound and sublime; it was milk for children and bread for men. He attacked the strong and consoled the weak, and the most unequally gifted among his audience found something always at their own level. Nothing embarrassed him; the most captious questions met instantly the wisest solutions. It was needed only to hear him once in order to be persuaded. It was felt that the language of truth cost him nothing, because he had the source of truth in himself. Rousseau.

If in Jesus the union of the self-consciousness with the consciousness of God has been real—expressed not only in words, but actually revealed in all the conditions of his life—then he represents the highest point within the religious sphere: a height which posterity cannot reach, inasmuch as it could only be climbed with the help of Jesus, who first attained it. As little as humanity will ever be without religion, as little will it be without Christ. And this Christ, as far as he is inseparable from the highest style of religion, is historical, not mythical—is an individual, not a mere symbol. To the historical person of Christ belongs all in his life that exhibits his religious perfection, his discourses, his moral action, and his passion. He remains the highest model of religion within the reach of our thought; and no perfect piety is possible without his presence in the heart. Strauss, 1838.

Jesus is the purest among the mighty, the mightiest among the pure, who, with his pierced hand, has raised up empires from their foundations, turned the stream of history from its old channel, and still continues to rule and guide the ages. Richter.

If one considers the development of Christianity, its whole historical significance hangs only on the character of its founder. How soon would all that Christianity has taught of true and impressive have been relegated to the roll of long-forgotten sayings of the noble friends of man, and the thoughtful minds of antiquity, if its doctrines had not become words of eternal life in the mouth of its founder! F. C. Baur.

We are made aware in him of an augury at once of the profoundest spiritual depth, as well as of the mightiest will, an unending restless striving to get beyond the boundaries of the natural, beyond the limits of human nature, a renunciation of the whole world, a feeling of the nothingness even of riches that should compass the world, and of the utter helplessness of all human existence, which lives but from the alms and crumbs of the Eternal. But here, in place of the leap of self-annihilation, the plunge of man’s nothingness in God’s eternity, we find a profound repose of the being in himself, an internal contemplation of inward riches along with outward neediness, a joyful recognition of the bright light, the everlasting worth of a human soul, a self-confirmation in the right of endless existence, a belief in personal elevation, and in the dignity of mankind at large, in such strength of conviction as had never been before, and became henceforth the motive-power of all future humanity’s life.

But there is no destructive clashing of these inner contrasts with each other, only the sublimest equilibrium of the same, in the inkling sense of a manhood akin to God, of the bending of God to his creature as with a human love, and of the Godlike destiny of this humanity. From this fundamental feeling arose the religion of Jesus, his own religion, and his religion for all men, in the form of an heroic will built upon a God of gracious loving-kindness, determined to meet half-way from below the God that approaches from above, and so to overcome the chasm between Godhead and manhood—yes, the inward tension between longing and possession, out-reaching and self-repose, and that upon the ground of an infinitely exalted human Personality, by dint of the inward transfiguration of man’s nature into the glory of God’s likeness, the temple of his indwelling.

Hence two great facts throughout the religious life of Jesus: On the one hand this deep, restful, blissful feeling of the love of God in the heart of a human nature dowered by God himself with privilege and nobility, sounding through all changeful moments of stillness and of toil, of life in prayer and life amid the world, yes, even in its storm and stress. On the other hand this not-to-be-restrained endeavor on the part of man to penetrate inward and strive upward, to conquer God for himself with the full energy of a holy will, which is resolved to make Godlike the whole actual living man, that is, the inmost pulses of the heart and spirit’s life; to bring them to full perfection and divine entirety of knowledge, of goodness, of life, and of life in God. A religion, a self, a world of quite another kind from heretofore! No pride of human exaltation, yet no cowering dread; no self-assurance of blunted sensibility, and yet no tremblingly busy haste; no loose relations of compromise bought with a few external performances, and yet no slaughtering self-murder of the man in ascetic mortification of the body, or ecstatic frenzy, and fanatic flights of the spirit. The religion of the loftiest idealism, in faith and will: and yet again so entirely measured, rational, and sober; because resting on actual experienced facts, and built on earnest deeds of highest, fullest, and truly human, free, reasonable performance. Keim.

KARL HASE treats entirely of what he calls the human Jesus, and not of anything supernatural in his nature. He, however, admits that God revealed himself in wonderful power in this personage, admits that he wrought miracles, and even accepts the account of the resurrection, but not of the ascension. He says: “Every attempt to give the character of Jesus runs the risk of becoming a merely personified system of morals or of psychology, and to result in a superficial enumeration of all possible virtues and qualities. For to the ideal of humanity, as to that of Deity, it is essential to have no sharply-marked features, but a beautiful harmony of all powers. This character appears fully rounded even at the beginning of his public life. It is essentially an entire love of God manifested in the purest humanity. History has greater examples of the energy of single virtues and qualities, but in this Jesus stands alone, that every virtue, so far as it was possible to manifest it in his work, appears in full harmony and concord with every other, and includes what in other cases a one-sided development has excluded. If indeed we should take single actions and even speeches of Jesus, we might find in them something one-sided. This must necessarily be the case with every individual utterance as such; but other discourses of Jesus will almost in every case supply what is wanted to the perfect whole. . . . He accepted as his own God’s plan in behalf of mankind; determining to found a kingdom of heaven, first among his nation, and then by it to unite humanity, by means of pious love, into lasting communion, and so to become its Saviour. . . . That Jesus possessed a certain miraculous power, that is to say, a power of healing which far surpassed the knowledge and power of his contemporaries, is certified historically by its continuance in the apostolic Church (1 Cor. 12 : 10, 28); and so far from being improbable in itself, is essential to an explanation of the events of his life. . . . The truth of the resurrection stands immovably based upon the testimony, and we may even say upon the existence, of the apostolic Church.”

As an old Greek, Hase looked on everything on its aesthetic side. His representation of Jesus is the finest specimen of the morally beautiful that I have seen. C. P. Wing.

JESUS has no visions; God does not speak to him from without; God is in him; he feels that he is with God, and he draws from his heart what he says of his Father. He lives in the bosom of God by uninterrupted communication; he does not see him, but he understands him without need of thunder and burning bush, like Moses, or of a revealing tempest, like Job.

Whatever be the surprises of the future, Jesus will never be surpassed. His worship will grow young without ceasing; his legend will call forth tears without end; his sufferings will melt the noblest hearts; all ages will proclaim that among the sons of men there is none born greater than Jesus. Renan.

THOMAS JEFFERSON, although a disbeliever in inspiration and an opponent of the Bible, yet explicitly admits the innate truthfulness and purity of the character and teachings of Jesus. Writing to John Adams concerning a volume entitled “The Morals of Jesus,” which he was then engaged in compiling from the New Testament, he says: “We must reduce our volume to the simple evangelists, select even from them the very words only of Jesus. There will be found remaining the most sublime and benevolent code of morals which has ever been offered to man.” Subsequently he declares as his object in preparing the same book, “to place the character of Jesus in its true high light, as no impostor, but a great reformer of the Hebrew code of religion.” He further says: “It is the innocence of his character, the purity and sublimity of his moral precepts, the eloquence of his inculcations, the beauty of the apologues in which he conveys them, that I so much admire.” Yet again, referring to the Gospels, he says: “Intermixed with things impossible, superstitions, fanaticisms, and fabrications, are sublime ideas of the Supreme Being, aphorisms and precepts of the purest morality and benevolence, sanctioned by a life of humility, innocence, and simplicity of manners, neglect of riches, absence of worldly ambition and honors, with an eloquence and persuasiveness which have not been surpassed. These could not be inventions of the grovelling authors who relate them. They are far above the powers of their feeble minds. They show that there was a character, the subject of their history, whose splendid conceptions were above all suspicion of being interpolations at their hands.” J. G. B.

A MAN ridiculed for his lack of knowledge, in a nation of forms, of hypocritical priests and corrupt people, falls back on simple morality, simple religion; unites in himself the sublimest precepts and divinest practices, thus more than realizing the dream of prophets and sages; rises free from all prejudice of his age, nation, or sect; gives free range to the Spirit of God in his breast; sets aside the law, sacred and time-honored as it was, its forms, its temple, and its priests; puts away the subtle learned doctors of the law; and pours out a doctrine beautiful as the light, sublime as heaven, and true as God. The philosophers, the poets, the prophets, the rabbis, he rises above them all.

That mightiest heart that ever beat, stirred by the Spirit of God, how it wrought in his bosom! What words of rebuke, of comfort, counsel, promise, hope, did he pour out! What profound instruction in his proverbs and discourses! What deep divinity of soul in his prayers, his action, sympathy, resignation! It is for his truth and his life, his wisdom, goodness, piety, that he is honored in my heart—yes, in the world’s heart! Theo. Parker.

It would seem as if it were desired to restore to Jesus Christ, as a mere man, the susuperiority of which they deprive him in refusing to see in him the Godhead. But what incoherence, what contradictions, what falsehood and moral impossibility in his history, such as they make it! What a series of suppositions irreconcilable with the facts which they admit! This man they make so perfect and sublime becomes by turns a dreamer or a charlatan; at once dupe of his own mystical enthusiasm in believing his miracles, and wilful deceiver in tampering with evidence that he may accredit himself. The history of Christ is thus but a tissue of fables and falsehood; nevertheless the hero of this history remains perfect, sublime, incomparable—the greatest genius, the noblest heart, that the world ever saw; the perfect type of virtue and moral beauty; the supreme and rightful chief of mankind. And his disciples, in their turn, justly admirable, have braved everything, suffered everything, in order to abide faithful to him, and to accomplish his work; and, in effect, the work has been accomplished. So contradictory and insolvable a problem they present to us instead of the one they labor so hard to suppress.

History reposes upon two foundations—the positive evidence or documents concerning the facts and persons, and the presumptive evidence or moral probabilities resulting from the connection of facts and the action of persons. These two foundations are entirely wanting in the history of Christ as it is related or constructed in these days. On the one hand, it is in evident and shocking contradiction with the testimony of the men who saw Jesus Christ, and of the men who lived near those who had seen him. On the other hand, it equally conflicts with the natural laws connecting the actions of men and the cause of events. It does not deserve the name of historical criticism: it is a philosophical system and a romantic narrative substituted for the substantial proof of the moral evidence. It is a Jesus false and impossible, made by the hand of man, pretending to dethrone the real living Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

The World before and at Messiah’s Advent.

THE preparation for the advent of Jesus Christ involved the missions of Jew and pagan. It was the mission of the Jew to receive directly from God, and, in due time, transmit to the whole human race the only religion of salvation, and therefore the only true world-religion. Everything connected with the history of the Jews had reference to the completion of this one religion for mankind. Each revelation and dispensation, all discipline and punishment, every promise and threatening, their constitution, laws, and worship, every political, civil, and religious institution (so far as they were legitimate and proper), tended toward this one goal. In the light of providential developments and later revelations, the divine plan as connected with the Jews may readily be traced, in its great outlines, from the calling of Abraham to the advent of Christ.

Three great historical races, the Oriental, the Greek, and the Roman, successively entered, along with the Jew, into the work of preparing the world for the advent of Messiah and the spread of his divine salvation. This was in accordance with the prophecies of Daniel, contained in the second and seventh chapters of his book. These great empires were to precede and prepare the way for the mightier kingdom of Messiah which the God of heaven should set up, and which should be an everlasting kingdom. Each will be found to have accomplished a twofold preparatory work.

The Oriental empires which entered into this work were the Babylonian, represented by the head of gold in the great image of prophecy, and the less magnificent Medo-Persian, represented by the arms and breast of silver. These great Oriental races represented material riches, power, and grandeur. It was a subordinate part of their mission to prove the insufficiency of the greatest wealth, luxury, and splendor, to satisfy and save man. But the more important part of their mission was to furnish the agencies and theatre for the Jewish dispersion, and for the early dissemination of the germs of the world-religion. For this they were eminently fitted. The Jew was their proper representative, belonging to their own race. He had come forth from the valley of the Euphrates, in Abraham the Chaldee. In the Oriental mind the Jew was to place the grand truths of his religion first, and thus to open the way to reach, at a later date, the Greek and Roman. Meantime the Oriental races were to chastise the Jewish race and cure it of its idolatry.

The Greek empire was the third kingdom which was to rule over all the earth. Its strength is represented by the brass of the image in Daniel’s vision. The Greek did everything toward the perfecting of man that could be done by a purely intellectual civilization. He demonstrated for all time what human reason, when situated most favorably and tasked to the utmost, could accomplish for the salvation of a race with endowments superior to the other races. The later ages showed it to be very little. It became manifest that the glory of the Greek thought needed to be saved from its own corruption—saved for the good of mankind. This could only be accomplished by extending its sway over the Oriental empires, and bringing it in contact with the saving influences of the world-religion which was being diffused everywhere by the scattered and exiled seed of Abraham. When the Greek had voiced his wonderful thoughts of beauty and power in a language made for them and by them, and, therefore, the most perfect of the languages of the ancient ages—the one most worthy to become the world-language—and before the blight and decay had fallen upon the race, Alexander of Macedon appeared to perform the needed office of Hellenizing the world.

From Alexander to the advent, Judaism and Hellenism were in world-wide contact. The man of prophecy was elevating the view of the man of reason, while the man of reason was widening the vision of the man of prophecy. The two modes of thought came into direct contact; the philosopher and the scribe met and became one. At Alexandria, the Septuagint, or Greek version of the Old Testament Scriptures, was made three centuries before the advent; and the old revelation of the world-religion was thus scattered abroad for the Greek-speaking communities. At the same centre of culture Platonism and Judaism came together and were consolidated in the Neo-Platonism which exerted such an influence both before and after the advent. In this twofold manner, by despair of reason and hope from prophecy, the Greek was borne onward to the completion of his part in the work of preparation for the coming of the Messiah, until mankind was found in possession of the world-religion with its predictions of the coming Redeemer, written in the perfected world-language, and made capable of greater expansiveness by the Greek forms of thought.

The Greek mission was thus evidently essential in the preparation for Messiah. It forced the thinking men of that age to feel and confess the insufficiency of human reason, even in its most perfect development, for the deliverance and perfection of mankind, and left them waiting and longing for one who could accomplish this work. It brought in a dawning sense of human brotherhood, and so helped to bring mankind together into the true unity. It aided men to cut loose from the hoary but unreasonable traditions of the past, and thus prepared them to receive the reasonable truth of God. It made ready and living the better and broader forms of thought and speech in which the gospel with its grander truths—too grand and living to be put into the narrow and dead Hebrew—should be proclaimed to all the world.

Rome was already the rising power of the West when Alexander gave the Greek civilization to the East. The Roman empire was the fourth kingdom of the prophecy of Daniel. Its strength is represented by the iron of the great image. The Roman, as the man of power, was to attempt the solution of the same problem of perfecting man in which the man of prophecy and the man of reason and taste had already failed, and in his failure was to complete the preparation for the coming of him who could solve the hitherto insoluble problem. Before the time of the advent, Rome had demonstrated the powerlessness of human power to save mankind. It had done its best, but its best was little—practically nothing. It needed the coming Christ that itself might be saved. Imperialism was as helpless as Orientalism and Hellenism.

But the Roman performed a still more important part in preparing the world for the Messiah and the spread of the world-religion. It was Rome that cast up the highways along which the Jews plied their traffic and carried out to the ends of the earth the truth of God and the expectation of a coming Deliverer. It was Rome that made the influence of the divine religion free, rapid, and world-wide. But more than all, Rome did for the whole world that law-work without which man never feels the greatness of his need of the gospel. In carrying out his mission of power the Roman was, as already hinted, the representative of natural justice in the world. It was doubtless some alleviation that the moulds into which the Roman power so remorselessly crushed men and nations were moulds of justice; yet in proportion as the world was a wicked world was the justice a terrible justice. Rome is aptly described by the prophet Daniel as the iron kingdom. It was justice practically omnipotent and omnipresent, and so neither to be resisted nor escaped—justice which never dreamed of mercy until the work of conquest and consolidation was done. It made men long for mercy, because it demonstrated to them that there was no hope for them in righteous law.

So it came about that there was going up from all the world a wail for deliverance when the divine Deliverer appeared. Human nature had exhausted itself in the efforts of the Gentile world to solve the problem of man’s elevation and salvation. The Oriental had given the freest rein to human desires, in the most favorable circumstances, and was perishing in magnificence and luxury. The Greek had given fullest scope to reason and taste, in circumstances equally favorable, and was perishing in the very glory of his creations of thought and beauty. The Roman had made all the other powers subordinate to his executive energy, and conscience, with its insatiate justice, was crushing him, and all the world with him, even by his universal empire. There were no other powers in human nature to bring to the task. The world over, on the great and all-absorbing question of man’s salvation, the oracles of heathenism were dumb.

It was only as Judaism had wrought with heathenism and for it, that hope remained for mankind. Along the line of the divine purpose of grace, Jew and Gentile had wrought together, for the most part unconsciously, for more than a thousand years, and the final results were now to be reached. When the Cesars were firmly established on the throne of the empire, and the three phases of civilization, in Judaism, Hellenism, and Imperialism, had in measure blended and reached out over the world from Gibraltar and Britain to the shores of the Caspian, the Messianic expectancy and longing reached the highest intensity. It was the fulness of times. D. S. G.

If we take all these circumstances together, it is manifest with how much right we exalt the wisdom of God in the choice of the time in which Christ appeared. We see all circumstances concur to make mankind ripe and fitted for his advent. Yea, so greatly is he centre and key of the history of the world, that we are not surprised at the declaration of the celebrated historian, Johannes von Müller: “I saw the greatest result brought about by the most insignificant means; I saw the relation of all the nations of Asia and Europe to that despised Israel; I saw religion appear just at the most fitting moment for its establishment. All events work together for the establishment and extension of this doctrine. Since I have learned to know our Lord, all has become clear to me. The light that blinded Paul on his way to Damascus, was not more marvellous to him than what I suddenly saw: the fulfilment of all expectations, the point of perfection of all philosophy, the explanation of all revolutions, the key to all seeming contradictions in the material and moral world: life and immortality.” Van O.

THE Roman statesmen, the Grecian philosophers, the Jewish rabbis, looked for nothing beyond the immediate horizon; but the sibylline mystics at Alexandria, the poets at Rome, the peasants in Syria, were wound up to the expectation of “some beginning of a new order of the ages,” some hero “who from Palestine should govern the habitable world,” some cause in which “the East should once more wax strong” (Virgil, Tacitus, Suetonius, and Josephus).

What was that new birth of time? What the remedy for the superstition, infidelity, casuistry, ambition, impurity, misery of the age? Not a conqueror, not a philosopher, not a Pharisee, not a Sadducee, not a mere wonder-working magician, not an ascetic, not a vast hierarchical organization, not a philosophical system or elaborate creed; but an innocent child, an humble and inquiring boy, a man who “knew what was in man;” full of sorrows, yet full also of enjoyment; gracious to the weak, stern to the insincere; who “went about doing good,” and who “spake as never man spake;” a social and solitary being, in whose transcendent goodness and truthfulness was revealed a new image of the divine nature, a new idea of human destiny; a teacher, apart from the generation from which he sprang, yet specially suited to the needs of that generation. The world was taken by surprise. All his teaching abounded in surprises. But his own coming, his own self, was the greatest surprise of all; and yet when we reflect upon it, we feel that we ought not to have looked for anything else.

The factious disputings of Pharisee and Sadducee, the wild fanaticism of the zealots, the eccentricities of the Essenes, the worldliness of the priests, the formalities of the scribes, the cruelty, the profligacy, the domineering, hard-hearted ambition of the Roman world, the effete rhetoric of the Greek world, found their proper level in the presence of an influence which ran counter to them all. Not immediately, but gradually, at least in the forms then worn, all these things died away—not by direct attack of contradiction’s denial, but by the entrance of a larger affection, of a fresh object, of a grander spirit. The ancient world, although sitting in the cold shade of death, was instinct with a latent heat and light, which admitted a spiritual revolution, such as, either earlier or later, would have been, humanly speaking, impossible. In the Jewish Church the scattered sayings of the better Sadducees and the better Pharisees were waiting to be vivified by a new purpose. In the Gentile world the philosophy of Socrates and Plato was reaching forward to some higher manifestation of truth. The researches of Grecian science, the majesty of Roman law, though the coming religion long refused them, and was by them long disdained, were ready to be received into it, and at length in a large measure were assimilated by it. The unexampled peace under Augustus Cesar, the unity of the civilized world under his sceptre, gave a framework into which a new faith could spread without hinderance and without violence. The strong and growing belief in immortality, the intense apprehension of the burden of evil, needed only a new spirit to quicken them into a higher and deeper life. If ever there was a religion which maintained a continuity with ancient materials or parallel phenomena, it was that which avowedly came not to destroy, but to fulfil the glories of Judaism; not to exclude, but to comprehend the aspirations of all the races of mankind. A. P. S.

Christ’s Doctrine of the Kingdom the Key to His Ministry.

THROUGHOUT his public ministry his preaching consisted in presenting himself to the people as the divinely anointed and predicted King, in explaining the nature of the kingdom, his own redemptive work in setting it up, and the conditions of entering it; and in insisting on its spiritual character and growth, in refutation of the persistent error that it was to be a political kingdom, established and advanced by force. At his baptism he was proclaimed “the Son of God,” which was a well-known prophetic title of the Messiah. The temptation in the wilderness turned on the question what sort of a kingdom he should set up, and by what sort of agency; and he rejects every satanic proposal to establish an outward kingdom by force, even by his own miraculous power. When, at the first Passover after his baptism, he presented himself at Jerusalem and purified the temple, it was a formal and official presentation of himself as the Messianic King to the nation as such, in the person of their rulers, in the seat of the government, and the temple of the religion.

The Sermon on the Mount is an elaborate exposition of the spiritual nature of the kingdom, declaring in what it makes man’s supreme blessedness to consist; what is the character of its citizens, and their relation to the world as bringing to it light and salvation; what the relation of the kingdom to the law of God, and the positive and spiritual significance of its requirements; what the simplicity and godly sincerity of its members, the nature of worship, the law of beneficence, the necessity of entire consecration, the beauty and safety of faith in

God, and the completeness of the new life, beginning in faith, and vitalizing and rectifying the conduct to the remotest and minutest action. In his parables and his conversations with his disciples he is continually explaining what the kingdom is, and correcting current mistakes respecting it.

He preaches the prophecy and promise of the kingdom with unwavering assurance that the kingdom is about to come, and will extend till it fills the world. It becomes evident, however, that the people of his day cannot receive his doctrine. Whenever he goes to Jerusalem he is contemptuously rejected by those in authority, who early begin to plot against his life. He is obliged for safety to retire to Galilee, and prosecute his ministry in country places. Even there few receive him, and those from the humbler walks of life. Even his own family think he is quite gone crazy, and come to take him and confine him. Yet his confidence in his kingdom remains unshaken.

At last, it is for this persistent preaching of himself as the divinely-anointed King that he is arrested, condemned, and crucified. At his trial he declares before Pilate that he is the King, but explains: “My kingdom is not of this world.” Over his cross was written the reason of his condemnation: “Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews.”

This doctrine of the kingdom is the key to our Saviour’s ministry, without which it is impossible rightly to understand it. This doctrine gives the point, significance, and consistency of his particular discourses and conversations.

If you had been one of his hearers when he was on earth, you might have said: “This man’s conception of his kingdom surpasses all human conceptions in sublimity. In depth, compass, and completeness of thought, in grandeur of imagination and loftiness of genius, in purity of heart and power of love, he is in advance of all the great minds of antiquity—so in advance that comparison ceases, and contrast alone is possible. But if he expects this conception to be realized, he must be a visionary. Has he forgotten how infinitesimal in the rush of the world’s affairs is the influence of one man; and does he expect to transform the world? Has he forgotten how powerless the greatest are after they die, how shadowy the great names and systems of the past; and does he expect to lift his crumbling arm out from the grave, and sway with it the living world? Especially, has he forgotten how feeble is the greatest man to command the love of men; and does this provincial, this poor man, this man without office or honorable position or influence with the great, this unlettered man, this outcast among his own people—does this man expect to rule the world by men’s love to him? Does he expect to set up his power, where power is hardest to win, in the hearts of men, so that faith in and love to him will in all generations turn the energies of human hearts into a mighty enthusiasm to deliver mankind from sin? And does he expect that this power of his personal influence, this motive which he continually urges, ‘for my sake,’ will at last touch all hearts, and transform society everywhere into his kingdom?”

Still more would you think him a visionary, could you then know that his public ministry is to continue less than four years; that he is to suffer the most ignominious of deaths as a leader of sedition; that he is anticipating that death as the consummation of his work, into which the motive power of his name is to be concentrated; that, making but few converts himself, he is depending for the establishment of his kingdom after his death on the preaching of those few converts, with the story of his short life and ignominious death as the subject of their preaching, and thus sending them out, a few sheep among many wolves, he is expecting the sheep to conquer the wolves.

And your belief that he is a visionary would be still more strengthened could you then look forward through the ages and foresee the coming changes. The Roman Empire, then coextensive with Occidental civilization, will be destroyed. The imperial throne of the Cesars, at whose base then rippled the peaceful and sunlit waves of a world-wide obedience, will sink when the fountains of that great deep shall be broken up. Barbarians, whose very existence was then unknown, will overwhelm the abodes of civilization. From the consequent confusion, desolation, and darkness, the kingdoms of modern Europe will slowly and painfully emerge; new discoveries and inventions will change the courses of human thought and action; a new civilization will arise, so different from the ancient as to make that difficult of comprehension to the moderns; a new continent will be discovered; new philosophy and science, new arts and agencies, new institutions and laws will possess the earth.

And this man expects his personal influence to live through all these changes; and not to live only, but to vitalize, energize, and guide them; to establish itself in the seats of the ancient and decaying civilization; to meet the barbarians and to make them Christians; in the ages of darkness attending and following the overthrow of the Roman Empire to cause all men to bow in outward homage to the name of Jesus, and to quicken faithful ones truly to love him, and to seek for his sake to save men from sin; to kindle revival and reformation from age to age; to follow the star of empire in its westward way; to preside over the birth and growth of nations; to live in the latest progress of art, science, philosophy, and civil polity; in advance of all spiritual thought, the law of all human action, the ideal of human perfection, the source of the hope of pardon, of purification from sin, and of peace with God; at once the source, the motive, the strength, and the goal of all moral and spiritual progress.

But, from the day when he began to preach “The kingdom of heaven is at hand,” until now, his name has been a power in human thought and life; the kingdom has been in the world gathering individuals into itself, and vitalizing civilization with its divine ideas, a central force in the history of all enlightened and progressive nations. Therefore he was not a visionary.

But if Jesus was not a visionary, then he is man’s Redeemer and Lord. Then, with more than the wonder of those who cried: “What manner of man is this, that even the winds and the sea obey him?” we exclaim: “What manner of man is this, who rules amid the tumult of the ages, and the courses of human thought obey him, and the farthest progress of man is confessedly toward the realization of his idea?” He is man’s Redeemer and Lord; his idea of his kingdom, by its existence on the earth, and by its perpetuation and power through the ages, is proof that it is from God and is destined to prevail. S. Harris.

Christ and His Kingdom in Subsequent Human History.

TAKE an historic chart of the globe and trace the progress of the human family in its geographic course from east to west, all round the earth; from its origin in the heart of Asia; in both its northern and southern irruptions through the European continent; in its succession of contesting nations around the Mediterranean and on the shores of the Atlantic; across the Atlantic to our own continent; and here still ever westward to our Pacific coast; and through all this geographic march of the nations, encircling the globe, simply ask, what common history has been advancing, what one institution or economy running through and leading the whole race; and to this question there is but one possible answer; and that is, that through the whole history of our earth, as its centre and very soul, runs the history of the Kingdom of Redemption!

Repeat this process with the great historic empires and states which have sprung into successive being, and ask for whom was the ancient world prepared; whom did the Jewish people bear in their loins; for whose victorious sway was the whole Roman Empire made ready; who is the centre between the ancient and the modern world; who subdued the Roman Empire unto himself, and ruled in both its eastern and its western portions; whose name charmed into civilization the rude German tribes, and has been at the heart of the culture of every modern European state; and to whom was this land dedicated in its historic prime, and whose faith has it spread with its growth through all our borders; and to these questions respecting human empires we get a kindred response, and that is, they all take their law and course from him, who is the divine head of this same Kingdom of Redemption!

Try to get the angle of vision in which all the lines of historic time converge; there is but one such angle, and it opens an unequalled scene. Spread out the historic canvas, and in its very centre see one sacred form—for only one of all who have trod our earth, and borne our nature, can be imagined as having a rightful claim to that historic throne—wearing the crown of universal empire upon his suffering and victorious brow. The light that streams from him, a calm, divine effulgence, not generated from earthly sources, lends brightness to all that throng around him, recognizing his regal and beneficent dominion. The whole background of this immortal canvas, which a divine hand has limned, is filled with those who, with upturned prophetic gaze, await his coming; the progenitor of our race, to whom was given the first evangelic promise, Abraham, the father of the faithful, Moses, the leader and law-giver of Israel, the long line of Judea’s kings, with David as its crown, and of Judea’s prophets, most sublime in Isaiah; while standing more remote, yet still expectant, are the representatives of the vast heathen nations, which, by a divine providence, had in many ways been prepared for that glorious advent, being congregated in one vast empire, pervaded by one predominant speech. And before him, and all around him, is gathered the glorious company, the goodly fellowship of those who, for eighteen centuries, in every clime, have received from him the very law of their spiritual life.

It is he who has ruled historic times, and given them their shape and their law; it is he who has carried the race through the crisis of its destiny, that in the consummation of that destiny it might be drawn closer to himself. The divine right of popes, of kings, and of the people, has been in succession contended for, that the divine right of the Great Head of the Church might be seen to be the rallying-place, and the watchword, for the family of man, in its progress toward the end for which it was made.

And of this vision of human history, it is the triumph and seal, that it is not an imagination or a theory, but the open face of history itself, the legitimate summary and rendering of its facts. For Christianity, as has been well said, in its inmost spirit and highest sense, is historical. Its truths are truths of fact, inscribed upon the surface, looking out from the heights and up from the depths of all the annals of our race, so that the whole of human history becomes one body of divinity, presenting to us an untroubled mirror of the wisdom of God, and the image of his goodness.

Is it given to man to know anything more sublime than this spectacle of the building up of the city of God? Through the fickle fortunes of men we read the calm and sure order of an unchanging plan; in the growth and decay of states, we trace the unhasting yet unresting progress of a kingdom, ordained ere time began, to be completed when time shall be no more. It is the transfiguration of the history of our globe, in which a divine glory breaks through and irradiates all that is mortal and transient. In the human race are fulfilled the prophetic intimations, which have been found in the work of creation itself; through his six days of travail and conflict, man is prepared for the full glories of a Sabbath of eternal rest. H. B. S.

Look back to the cross, and the disciples gazing on it in terror from afar, and then look around on the nations that are influenced by the faith which there centres—and note the change! Then take these elements, established in history, and calculate the orbit Christianity is to fill! Remember, that she has met philosophies as well as armies, the combinations of heresy and the assaults of power, and has never been overcome; she has been girded in showy but poisoned doctrines, and still has retained her life within them; she has established among men new systems of doctrine, and new theories of the universe; she has acted efficiently for their social melioration, and has sent out her influences into art, into literature, into commerce, into government, has even dropped her seeds under the pillars of despotism till those have been moved and overthrown by their growth; she has made events tributary to her advancement that seemed at first essentially hostile, has used discussion for the spread of her principles, has been content with no attainment, but has still sought diffusion, has made seas rough with the track of her keels that scarcely before had been shadowed by a sail, is now more dear than ever to the race, more loftily placed for subduing it to obedience, and full of the life God gave her at the first.

Look abroad then over the earth, and consider what a place Christianity has on it, what progress it has made, what agencies it wields, and what openings are before it—and can we hesitate as to its future? Christianity is to rule the earth. As a spiritual, divine system, expressed to us through the Scriptures, all shall accept it. Not as a Church, merely—not primarily as a Church, or any institution of outward order—shall it gain this authority. Not as a doctrine, merely, and a dogma of belief; least of all as a simply civilizing force, for the reconstruction of society. As a spiritual and sublime system, embracing truth, precept, promise, life, all gathered in its organic unity, Christianity is to triumph.

It shall purify and exalt individual hearts, and hallow them with God’s presence. It shall pervade family groups; and the glory over Bethany shall but typify the promise and the joy above them. It shall gather men into permanent and harmonious assemblies, sympathetic, co-working, mirroring heaven on their purity. Pervading the spiritual life of nations, and renewing that into holiness, it shall blossom into all the forms of their expression. It shall show itself in literature; dignifying the labors of history; giving a tone as from eternity to the energy of eloquence; springing up into the airiest and most charming expression in the beautiful grace of a Christian poetry; subliming art, even, by mastering and renewing it, and making it the handmaid of the verities of Christ. It shall build up its permanent and organized results, in institutions of public beneficence and philanthropy, in establishments for general popular culture as well as for special religious training, in free governments, humane policies, and just laws. The skepticisms that have been powerful shall melt beneath its beauty. The fortified abuses, that now affront heaven, shall be dissolved at its authority, as the earth itself shall be at the revelation of God. Then shall be Peace, throughout the earth! The lion and the lamb shall lie down together. The beauty of Paradise shall clothe the world; and every breeze that floats above it shall bear upon its wing the songs of praise! R. S. S.

New Testament Intimations of the Second Coming of our Lord.

In every age the Church of Christ has sought consolation in the past and in the future. In the one she contemplates the origin of her mercies; in the other, the completion of them; and in both, the unaltered author and channel, “Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, and to-day, and forever.” It can therefore excite no surprise to find in Scripture, that the grace given to us at the first advent, and the grace to be revealed in us at the second, are topics of constant precept and encouragement (1 Cor. 1: 4-7): or that Christians are described as “waiting for the Son from heaven;” and as “looking for the blessed hope and the appearing of the glory of the great God our Saviour.” Christ’s first coming and his second are the grand objects of their faith and hope.

The “coming of Christ” is a phrase used in Scripture in different senses. His appearance in the flesh is so called, both at his birth and on his entrance upon his public ministry. Any great interposition either of his Providence or of his Spirit is so called. His coming to destroy Jerusalem, to end the previous dispensation, to manifest the justice and the faithfulness of God, is emphatically so called; and his predictions of this coming were fulfilled within forty years of our Lord’s death. It is applied to his visible appearance for judgment. The reign of righteousness is foretold, and is even begun. In that glorious issue all believe. Some, however, hold that righteousness will reign in the person of our Lord; while others think that his reign is spiritual only: having commenced at Pentecost, and being completed in the universal diffusion of his truth. That his coming to judgment is personal nearly all agree.

The coming of Christ in his kingdom and for judgment is not a single act, but many combined. He came to reign at Pentecost; he comes as each Christian repents and believes his gospel; in all the glory of his reign he is still to come. He came in judgment at the destruction of Jerusalem: he comes in judgment at the death of the sinner: for final judgment he is still to come. To each believer redemption is drawing nigh. Every sinner is already hastening to the coming of the day of God. And within a few brief years we all shall have passed to our account with shame or with honor. It may be affirmed, therefore, as a fact, that Christ comes to redeem or to judge at death, and that each instance of his coming is a kind of type of his final appearance—is to the man, what that will be to the race. The final coming will in truth but confirm and perpetuate what is done, when we die. As a principle of interpretation, therefore, the amplest announcements of complete salvation for the Church, and of awful vengeance for those who reject the gospel, have repeated fulfilments. For each of us, “the end of all things is at hand.” Christ is coming, and is even now “at the door.”

Again, the language of Scripture must always be interpreted with reference to the scheme of things of which it treats. What is near on one scale is distant on another. The coming of our Lord may be remote when measured on the scale of human life; but, measured on the scale suggested by the interval between the first promise and its fulfilment, or by the eternity which his coming is to introduce, it may seem even at hand.

And this apparent contradiction (which is really none) in the statements about his coming, this clear obscurity is intended; it is salutary; it forms an important part of our discipline. To cherish expectation, and to encourage inquiry, he has permitted gleams of light to cross our path. But it is at least as clear that, while he means us to inquire, he does not mean us to define; and, therefore, our light consists only of gleams. He that is coming will come. His coming is as certain as his existence; for he is equally the existing and the coming One; but all certainty concerning the time of his coming is withheld. And withheld so as to excite our watchfulness and hope. J. A.

WE may reach a few satisfactory statements, which pretty much exhaust the plainly revealed and therefore essential truth in the whole matter. And this we get at simply by bringing all the pertinent passages together, placing them side by side, observing their several connections, ascertaining the meaning of the original as well as the translated terms, and declaring the result.

1. Both Christ and his apostles speak repeatedly of a second coming of the Son of man, in such a sense as forbids us to confound the second with the first. The two are put entirely apart in time, though they are internally and morally connected with each other; the one preparing the way for the other, and each being in fact fragmentary and unintelligible without the other. The one coming, however, as an historical fact, is past—having given birth to a new age, the Gospel and the Church; the other is yet to be. They are respectively the beginning and the end, in time, of one design, the redemption and training of mankind, from sin to holiness, from an old life, which was death, into a life everlasting in an immortal society. We are all livling, throughout this Christian dispensation, in the intermediate stage of this glorious proceeding. It is a kind of transition-period. As compared with eternity, it is all but a short term—a narrow strip between two boundless seas. Could we really conceive of eternity, or could we so be lifted up as to look down on the immensity stretching on each side of this whole Christian era, it would no doubt appear like a mere thread across the field of vision. Yet, it is sufficient for the discipline of a living race, including millions of souls. So we stand here, each individual life but a speck on that narrow belt, and here we make our choice. We look behind and before. The gospel tells us, in every variation of the plainest language, that Christ has come in our flesh and nature once, and has removed every possible hindrance to our living with him forever. It tells us just as explicitly that he has gone, like a travelling prince, to receive for himself a kingdom, and that he is coming again to reign in that kingdom, with his own people, and that, in connection with that, the whole period of trial, of choice, will end.

2. That coming is personal and literal. Look at all the language and all the accompanying descriptions, and you will see that no loose talk of “figures of speech” will explain away this lucid and repeated declaration, or the mysterious fact it announces. Whatever accommodations of the literal language we may find, they must all grow up around this one unmistakable, foretold fact, and grow out of it. We may call signal social revolutions, reforms in government, the emancipation of slaves, or great accessions of knowledge or charity, new comings of Christ. The figure is intelligible; but they are not comings of Him. They may be comings of the impersonal power and principles of his religion—partial blessings reminding us of the one great blessing that includes them all; but He is to come. “Ye shall see the Son of man (not his ideas, but Him) coming in power and great glory.” Either by the gathering of his people, or by his own celestial movement, “Every eye shall see (not his works but) Him.” Besides, certain particular miraculous events and tokens are mentioned as attending his appearing.

Nor will it do to tamper with Holy Scripture by such a theory of interpretation as that His coming means our going. The death or departure of the individual is one thing; the

Bible often mentions that, meaning just what it says. The Lord’s coming is another; it will be but once again for all men; there will be a time for it; it will be sudden and bright, like the light that shineth from east to west. We have no data, no experience, no critical apparatus, to measure such a fact by. That is not our business. We are learners to be taught.

3. This great coming is to be connected with a separation of the good from the bad, the believers from the deniers, the spiritually alive from the spiritually dead. Hence it is always spoken of as a Judgment; because each one then goes to his own place, and finds his portion where he has chosen it. That begins to be the case, inwardly, with every man, now. But it becomes the outward, literal, terrible fact, not till then.

4. The twenty-fourth chapter of Matthew, however, in the common-sense interpretation of it, obviously has some reference to a kind of coming of Christ which was to take place in the lifetime of the generation that was on the stage while the Saviour was speaking. It was to be in some way connected with the invasion of the Roman armies and the downfall of the capital and temple of the Jews, in that century. This is the first of two main difficulties. Men have said, If the Messiah meant to predict a great coming in his kingdom at the end of the Christian age, why did he employ terms that distinctly point to what was to take place so soon, and at Jerusalem, and call that his coming? To answer that, consider that the disciples were questioning him on that very point, the overthrow of the temple. The reply to them must be a part of his discourse.

But consider, further, that it is one of what we may call the laws or canons of prophetic writing, that the language employed may have reference to two different persons or times—the one, and the less important, too near to the speaker; the other and the greater fulfilment being found in some remoter and grander personage or event to come. Thus, for instance, if you examine those Psalms of David which contain prophecies of the Messiah, you see that they are so composed as to be in part and at first applicable to David himself, and his own personal fortunes; but you look again, and see that there is prophetic language there which will not suit any other personage than the Son of God; and in fact Christ and the Evangelists expressly declare that it was written of Him. The human subject is made a groundwork and a type, to exhibit the divine King that was to be. So of some of the predictions of Isaiah. The same principle must be heeded in interpreting these predictions of our Lord. You find a part of the phraseology referring explicitly to Palestinian history, and of that part he says, “This generation shall not pass away till all these things are fulfilled.” Yet at the same time you find, in the same discourse, expressions that show the speaker to have been looking forward down the track of ages, to a much wider and mightier consummation. For he goes on to say that all nations shall be alarmed and aroused at this final appearing; that it shall be preceded by unprecedented disorders and antagonisms; that the gospel must first be preached to all nations; that signs shall appear before it such as the world has not yet witnessed. Moreover, studying the passage more carefully, you will notice that the change of reference is gradual; and that, while Christ begins with dwelling almost entirely on incidents of the fall of the city and temple, he rises, as he proceeds, till in the latter part the words befit his worldwide manifestation, and that alone. Admit the rule of a double application, one immediate and the other remote, which for some cause or other is evidently according to the supernatural genius and usage of the prophetic spirit, and difficulties disappear. Each portion of God’s word becomes consistent with itself, with other portions, with the character of the author, and with what was known of human history outside of it.

5. We come now to what, with many minds, has been a greater difficulty, viz., that inspired writers, apostles, signify their expectation that Christ’s second advent would take place during their own natural life. Let us honestly take the language of honest men in its ordinary acceptance. To me all difficulties are cleared by the following proposition, which commends itself as reasonable, reverential, and in harmony not only with the drift of the doctrine we have presented, but with the doctrine of inspiration which the faith of the Church catholic has held from the beginning: The purpose of revelation, in this matter, was to create in Christians, not a belief that Christ would come at any particular hour in history, but a belief that He is always at hand, and that all Christians should at all times and in

all places be ready, as men that stand with their lamps trimmed and burning, to meet Him personally. The date of the event was no part of the divine communication. On that point the writers were left to their human faculties, and if they misapprehended, it was only the plainer evidence that they were but men. In other words, it was of importance that the mind of the Church should be always regarding the Lord and Head as nigh, but not to have the chronology settled. The Bible makes its usual preference of moral and religious impression above accuracy in the letter. There was, in fact, no practical error. For the writers were as careful to caution the Church against impatience and over-confidence as against the opposite. That generation passed; and no future one could be misguided by their expressions. In regarding it as their solemn duty to be ever waiting, and watching, and hastening unto the coming of the day, as one of them ardently expresses it, even though they were individually to die in martyrdom, or in their beds, they were unquestionably and blessedly right.

In proportion as we rise, in thought, toward the immensity of the life of God, and have “the mind of the spirit,” the whole period of history shrinks, great distances dwindle, epochs are pressed together, and “a thousand years are as one day.” Besides, the highest authority in modern physical science, in astronomy, and geology, and chemistry, harmonizes singularly enough as to the issue with the apostolic language. It concludes that the machinery of the material universe is wasting, its movements are slackening, its balance is slowly loosening, and that a general catastrophe is inevitable. The sneer of the scientific skeptic of the last century is silenced by the science of to-day.

We may say that, in the Bible predictions generally, borrowing a phrase from the fine arts, what we may call historical perspective is lost sight of. We are not told at what intervals from each other, or always in just what order, these majestic events, by which eternity seems to open down into time, shall follow on. Chronology is not the object. The facts are what we are to know, and receive, and feed upon in our hearts by faith. The moment we begin to try our petty arithmetic on them we miss the mark, and lose our way. We all know that, even with ourselves, the moments of tremendous peril, when awful events are casting their colossal shadows about us, are just the time when the ordinary measure of succession drops out of sight. We look across the great tract and see other great conjunctions, as if they were nigh at hand. Christ Jesus is not inclosed in time, but time is all in Him. The regular sequence of incidents is broken up; common occurrences are dwarfed; and we see nothing else but Him, his first mediatorial ministry, his present ineffable life, his future glorious appearing and reign; we see Him as an object of supreme affection. So that the intense life of faith, begotten in the first disciples, at the miraculous stirring age of the very presence and sacrifice of the Saviour, would be the very condition of things where everything between would be forgotten, and the believer would look on straight to the great consummation and end of all, and would behold it as if that were the one transcendent and even near event, as, to the traveller straining his eyes to the mountain-top before him, the higher the peak the narrower the intervening plain appears. This, therefore, would become the appropriate and forward-looking attitude which the Church and the Christian would always hold, an attitude of hopeful, ardent, believing expectation, “looking for and hastening unto the coming or day of the Lord.”

The chief elements in the practical, animating power of that expectation are that it assures us of the unity and sure completion of the “redeeming work” for which the Son of God took our nature upon him; it promises the end of that long conflict of evil with good of which this world has been the defiled and weary theatre, wet, so many thousand years, with the tears of the wronged and the blood of the just, and resounding with groans of remorse; it pre-announces the victory and the eternal peace; it welcomes to the throne the Leader and Shepherd in whose dear cause the good soldier has fought, faithful to his life’s end. It anticipates the eternal festival when, not only in the right of possession but in the actual and loyal submission and praise of saints, the earth shall be the Lord’s and the fulness thereof. F. D. H.

The Miracles of Christ.

The miracles of our Lord are called in Scripture by different names; and each name is instructive. As they were manifestations of power, they are called mighty works; as adapted to prove the truth of his mission, and to strengthen the faith of his disciples, they are called signs; as creating surprise, they are called wonders; while in John they are called by a title of yet greater significance, simply “his works;” the appropriate and natural acts of one who was himself the mighty God, and a wonder to the people. J. A.—The healing of the paralytic was a wonder, for they who beheld it “were all amazed;” it was a power, for the man at Christ’s word “arose, took up his bed, and went out before them all;” it was a sign, for it gave token that one greater than men deemed was among them; it stood in connection with a higher fact, of which it was the sign and seal, being wrought that they might “know that the Son of man hath power on earth to forgive sins.”

To make a man is at least as great a marvel as to raise a man from the dead. The seed that multiplies in the furrow is as marvellous as the bread that multiplied in Christ’s hands. The miracle is not a greater manifestation of God’s power than these ordinary and ever-repeated processes; but it is a different manifestation. While the miracle is not nature, so neither is it against nature; beyond nature, beyond and above the nature which we know, but not contrary to it. Miracles, not being against nature, however they may be beside and beyond it, are in no respect slights cast upon its ordinary workings; but rather an honoring of these, in the witness which they render to the source from which these also originally proceed. Once lift up the whole discussion into a higher region, once acknowledge aught higher than nature, a kingdom of God, and men the intended denizens of it, and the whole argument against miracles loses its strength and the force of its conclusions. Against the argument from experience which tells against the miracle, is to be set, not, as Hume asserts, the evidence of the witnesses alone, but more, the anterior probability that God, calling men to live above nature and sense, would in this manner reveal himself as the Lord paramount of nature; also the testimony which the particular miracle, by its nature, its fitness, the glory of its circumstances, its intimate coherence as a redemptive act with the personality of the doer, gives to the conscience that it is a divine work.

He who already counts it likely that God will interfere for the higher welfare of men—who believes that there is a nobler world-order than that in which we live and move, and that it would be the blessing of blessings for that nobler to intrude into and to make itself felt in the region of this lower, who has found that here in this world we are bound by heavy laws of nature, of sin, of death, which no powers that we now possess can break, yet which must be broken if we are truly to live—he will not find it hard to believe the great miracle, the coming of the Son of God in the flesh, and his declaration as the Son of God with power by the resurrection from the dead; because all the deepest desires and longings of his heart have yearned after such a deliverer. And as he believes that greatest miracle, so will he believe all other miracles, which naturally cluster round and draw their lustre from the central brightness of that one. T.

If we once understand that the word nature has little or no meaning unless it be made to include the idea of its Author; if we once realize the fact, which all science teaches us, that the very simplest and most elementary operation of the laws of nature is infinitely beyond the comprehension of our most exalted intelligence; if we once believe that the divine providence of God is no far-off abstraction, but a living and loving care over the lives of man; lastly, if we once believe that Christ was the only-begotten Son of God, the Word of God, who came to reveal and declare his Father to mankind, then there is nothing in any gospel miracle to shock our faith: we shall regard the miracles of Christ as resulting from the fact of his being and his mission, no less naturally and inevitably than the rays of light stream outward from the sun. They were, to use the favorite expression of John, not merely “portents,” or “powers,” or “signs,” but they were “works,” the ordinary and inevitable works (whenever he chose to exercise them) of One whose very existence was the highest miracle of all. F.

Miracles, considered as signs of the divinity revealed in the world of sense, cannot, as such, be considered apart from their connection with the whole revelation of God. Their essential nature is to be discovered, not by viewing them as isolated exhibitions of divine power, but as elements of his revelation as a whole, in the harmony of his inseparable attributes, the holy love and wisdom appearing as much as the omnipotence. It is this which stamps divinity upon such phenomena, and attracts all souls that are allied to God. Thus the inexplicable character of the event leads us to the new revelation of that same almighty love which gave birth to the laws of the visible world, and which, in ordinary times, veils its operations behind them. N.

Miracles and Prophecy, as related to Revelation.—Miracles naturally accompany a divine revelation; the height of the revelation will be most full of miracles. Redemption stands in the same relation to the spiritual realm as miracles to the realm of nature; hence they almost always have a symbolical character. They naturally ceased after the kingdom of God was firmly established. Prophecies are the miracles of knowledge; they have the same relation to history that miracles have to nature; but they do not disturb man’s permanent and essential relations to history any more than miracles do his relation to nature. Their object is to strengthen faith, and to draw attention to the divine order and plan in history. J. Müller.

An historical student, not warped by any preconceived metaphysical or physical theory, who surveys the whole field, will be persuaded that Jesus, with the prophecies before him, never could have believed himself to be the Messiah, had he not found himself possessed of this power to work miracles. It is equally evident that, had he not evinced this power in the most impressive forms, the disciples, especially as he utterly abjured all political or revolutionary aims, would have disbelieved his claims. There would have been wanting what they considered the necessary credentials of the Christ. On examining the narrative, it is found that the works of Jesus are indissolubly connected with his undoubted words. The words presuppose the works, and, in certain cases, were occasioned by them. The works and the teaching of Jesus belong together. They form the totality of the manifestation, and cannot be divided more than the seamless garment which he wore. G. P. F.

What most distinguished the teaching of Christ was, that it was his self-revelation, and in this view it embraces both his words and works. His miracles, then, must be regarded in connection with his mode of teaching. Although they are not to be sundered from their connection with his whole self-revelation, yet, as an especially prominent feature of it, they served the highest purpose, in a certain sense, in vividly exhibiting the nature of Christ, as Son of God and Son of man. They also served as a basis and support of his labors as a teacher, as a preparatory means of leading from sensible phenomena to divine things, and of rendering souls, as yet bound to the world of sense, susceptible of his higher spiritual influences. N.—The true relation is one of mutual interdependence, the miracles proving the doctrines, and the doctrines approving the miracles, and both held together for us in a blessed unity, in the person of him who spake the words and did the works, and through the impress of highest holiness and of absolute truth and goodness, which that person leaves stamped on our souls; so that it may be more truly said that we believe the miracles for Christ’s sake, than Christ for the miracles’ sake. T.

We distinguish a twofold object of his miracles, the first a material one, i. e., the meeting of some immediate emergency, of some want of man’s earthly life, which his love urged him to satisfy; the other and higher one, to point himself out to the persons whose earthly necessities were thus relieved, as the One alone capable of satisfying their higher and essential spiritual wants; to raise them from this single exhibition of his glory in the individual miracle to a vivid apprehension of the glory of his entire nature. Nor was this last and higher aim of the miracle confined to the persons immediately concerned; it was to be to all others a

sign, that they might believe in Jesus as the Son of God. N.

Acts significant of Redemption.—True miracles are always more or less redemptive acts; in other words, works not merely of power but of grace, each one an index and a prophecy of the inner work of man’s deliverance, which it accompanies and helps forward. It was preeminently thus with the miracles of Christ. Each of these is a partial and transient realization of the great work which he came that, in the end, he might accomplish perfectly and forever. They are all pledges, in that they are themselves first-fruits, of his power; in each of them the word of salvation is incorporated in an act of salvation. Only when regarded in this light do they appear not merely as illustrious examples of his might, but also as glorious manifestations of his love. T.

Principles by which to distinguish Miracles.—These principles, which are more or less accepted by the common-sense of all mankind, as we see in the alleged heathen miracles and the pretensions of magic, were familiar to the Jews through the miracles of the old covenant, and formed the ground of their faith in Moses, and therefore the basis of their religion. Their rabbis distinguished true miracles from false by six chief tests: (1) The object must be worthy of the divine author; (2) the performance must be public, and (3) submitted to the senses, so that men might judge of their reality; (4) the mode of working must be independent of second causes; (5) they must be attested by contemporaneous evidence, (6) recorded by a monument, or in some form equally permanent. It may be added, as a condition highly satisfactory, though not perhaps essential, that the occasion should be natural, unsought, and purely incidental: a condition strikingly fulfilled in the miracles of Christ, and as strikingly violated by the elaborate preparations and cunning excuses of pretenders to miraculous power. These tests, laid down by the Jews themselves, bound them to believe Christ if he fulfilled them; and their manifest fairness makes them equally binding on all men. S.

If, after all, we set aside the evidence supplied by these miracles, we must then suppose a miracle greater than all. If Christ was not from God, we have then a Jewish peasant changing the religion of the world; weaving, with the story of his life, the fulfilment of anancient predictions, and a morality of the purest order, as unlike the traditional teaching of his countrymen, as it was superior to the precepts of Gentile philosophy; anticipating and enduring, with most unearthly composure, intense suffering, and inducing his followers to submit to similar sufferings, and many of them to a cruel death, in support, not so much of opinions, as of alleged facts, beginning with the miracle of his birth, and ending with the miracle of his resurrection. We have, then, these followers, “unlearned men,” going forth and discoursing upon the sublimest themes, persuading the occupiers of Grecian and Roman cities to cast away their idols, to renounce the religion of their fathers, to reject the instruction of their philosophy, and to receive instead, as a teacher sent from God, a Jew of humble station, who had nothing earthly to offer but persecution and poverty, and who had himself been put to a shameful death. To receive this explanation of the admitted facts, is to receive a greater miracle than any which the Bible contains. J. A.—From the standing miracle of a Christendom “commensurate and almost synonymous with the civilized world”—the mighty changes which this religion has wrought in the earth—the divine fruits which it everywhere has borne—the new creation which it has been—the way in which it has taken its place in the world, not as a forcible intruder, but finding all that world’s preestablished harmonies ready to greet and welcome it, ready to give it play and room—philosophy, and art, and science, practically confessing that only under it could they attain their highest perfection, that in something they had all been dwarfed and stunted and insufficient before—surely from a Christendom, even such as it shows itself now, it is fair to argue back to a Christ such as the Church receives as the only adequate cause. T.

His miracles are not only evidences—they are lessons. As he was himself the Word of God, so all the acts of this Word are words. They are not pictures merely, which we are to examine and admire; they are words which we are to understand; for they have each, if we are to study them, their own, and often the deepest meaning.

Nine of the miracles recorded in the gospels were wrought in nature. The water he made wine; the tempest he stilled; the sea he made as solid as earth, and walked upon it; twice he multiplied the bread, till now five thousand, and then four thousand were filled; twice he found in the miraculous draughts of fishes emblems of the work and progress of his kingdom; once the fish supplied him, through Peter, with proof of his Sonship; and once the barren fig-tree was blasted and withered as an emblem of the fate of the city near which he stood. The remainder of the miracles were all wrought in a nobler field. Twice he healed persons afflicted with leprosy; four times he opened the eyes of the blind; thrice he cast out devils; thrice he raised the dead; and many times besides he healed all manner of diseases. J. A.—It is but a very few of the many thousand cases of healing on the part of

Jesus of which any record has been preserved; while it seems probable that all the instances have been recounted in which there was any intervention with the laws or processes of the material universe.

We know of no miracle of our Lord that was a mere display of his omnipotence, a mere sign wrought to prove that he was almighty. Every miracle of our Saviour carried with it a lesson of wisdom, gave an exhibition of his character, was a type of some lower sphere of his working as the Redeemer of our souls. H.—All illustrate the blessings Christ came to introduce; all, the necessity of power and of faith; and each miracle has, besides, lessons of its own. J. A.

The Temple: its Area, Courts and Structures; its Worship and Priesthood.

[After careful study of Capt. Warren’s statements, and of the various conclusions previously reached by prominent investigators, the ground-plan presented by Dr. James Strong seems, in the main, best to harmonize the text of Josephus and of the Mishna with the facts shown by recent explorations. Furthermore, the details of the Sacred Enclosure are here admirably wrought out, and convey an impression alike interesting and instructive. Through the kind permission of Dr. Strong and of his publishers, the Methodist Book Concern, we present his plan, first, as a whole, and second (page 623), the Sacred Enclosure, considerably enlarged for a clearer apprehension of its details. Herewith the reader will find a carefully delineated outline of the main facts and points of interest connected with the Temple and its various appendages.]

LEADING investigators are agreed that the area of the Jewish Temple was identical on its western, eastern, and southern sides with the present enclosure of the Haram. According to the accurate survey of Warren, this area (presented in the diagram as square) had four unequal sides. Reckoning it, however, as square, and using approximate measures, the dimensions of the area may be set down as about 900 feet on each side. (The exact measures are: 922 ft. on the south, 1,090 ft. on the east, 997 ft. on the north, and 1,138 ft. on the west.)

“The whole immense area, once covered with royal or sacred buildings, has been created artificially, by building up huge walls on the four sides, from the valleys below, and filling in the space thus obtained with earth, when it was not utilized by substructures, in the shape of tanks, arches, etc.” Warren.

The platform of the Tower Antonia adjoined the upper or north side of this grand Temple Enclosure; the deep ravine of the Valley of Jehoshaphat (Cedron) was on the right or east side; the hill Ophel on the lower or south side; and the Valley of Tyropeon on the left or west side.

THE TWO GREAT DIVISIONS OF THE TEMPLE AREA.—This spacious, walled Area comprised two main portions: (1) The Outer Court, or COURT OF THE GENTILES; (2) (upon a higher level) the SACRED ENCLOSURE: including (upon successive terraces) three inner Courts, of the Women, of Israel, and of the Priests; and the Temple Edifice, central to and crowning the whole.

Golden Gate of Jerusalem, inside view.

Of the great east gate of the Temple— the so-called Golden Gate—we present a cut. The two archways are now filled up with Saracenic masonry. Warren says: “There appear to have been steps on arches leading down from this gate into the Cedron. On this east wall, in which the Golden Gate is built, are, at the southeast angle, the Phenician characters in red paint, establishing the great antiquity of this wall; and on which, until the destruction of Jerusalem, stood the Porch or Cloister erected by King Solomon.”

THIS had a varying breadth upon its four sides of the Sacred Enclosure: On the south, 460 ft.; on the east, 180 ft.; on the north, 140 ft.; on the west, 100 ft. The length of each side was 900 feet. These are approximate measures. On each side, next the wall, were Cloisters or Porticos “of greater splendor than any we know of as attached to any temple of the ancient world.” They were composed of rows of Corinthian columns, about 44 feet in height, surmounted with flat roofs, resting on the outer wall. The portico on the east side, like those on the north and west, had two aisles; that toward the Temple being open, and that toward the Mount of Olives probably affording an outlook through embrasures in the outer wall. This eastern portico retained the name of Solomon’s Porch. An ideal representation we present herewith, to convey some impression of the great extent and general character of these porticos.

Solomon’s Porch—an ideal representation, with the Mount of Olives in the distance.

The Stoa Basilica, or Royal Porch of Herod, on the south side, greatly surpassed the others in its breadth, and in the height and magnificence of its columns. It consisted of a nave 52 feet in breadth, and two aisles of 35 feet each. The pillars were 60 feet high, and were 162 in number; like the rest, hewn out of solid marble of dazzling whiteness. The entire floor of this vast exterior Gentile Court, in its roofed and unroofed portions, like the floors of the terraced Sacred Enclosure, was paved with various inlaid marbles. The roofs covering the porticos or colonnades were made of costly cedar. Under the colonnades of this Outer Court were “the tables of the money-changers, and the seats of them who sold doves.”

THIS included the large square Court of the Women; the Court of Israel, or the narrow single-cloistered corridor that ran around the Temple precincts; the Court of the Priests, including the spaces adjacent to the Temple, and containing the Great Altar and the Laver; and the Temple edifice. Reckoning the entire area of the Temple, approximately, at 900 feet square, the dimensions of this whole Sacred Enclosure would be more than 600 feet in length by 300 feet in breadth.

Next, we briefly notice the details contained in the clearly-marked diagram on page 623.

1. The Fence of Partition** separating the Sacred Enclosure on every side from the Outer Court of the Gentiles. This consisted of a balustrade of stone, rising five feet from the floor of the Gentile Court. At regular intervals in this wall, Josephus tells us, stood pillars with inscriptions in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin, warning all strangers and unclean Jews from entering the Holy Enclosure within (Eph. 2 : 14).

“Recently, while closely examining the walls of a small Moslem cemetery not far from the northwest angle of the Haram (Temple) Area, M. Ganneau observed two or three Greek characters on a block forming the angle of the wall, on which was built a small arch. The characters were close to the surface of the ground. On removing the soil more characters appeared, and when the stone was finally cleared, the discoverer had the gratification of reading the following inscription in Greek, in seven lines (translation): ‘No stranger is to enter within the balustrade round the temple and enclosure. Whoever is caught will be responsible to himself for his death, which will ensue.’” W. H. D.—“This monument was buried in the foundations of an Arab edifice, close to its original place. It is the only authentic relic yet discovered of the Temple itself. It has been a witness to the preaching of Jesus.” Ganneau.

2. The High Wall enclosing the Sacred Inner Courts.** An ascent of fourteen steps from the Outer Court reached a terrace seventeen feet wide, compassing the entire Sacred Enclosure. On the inner side of this terrace arose the lofty wall or battlement, sixty feet or more in height from the terrace, which constituted the defence of the Inner Courts; forming thus a mighty citadel within a citadel. This battlement had no gate on the west; four gates were on the north, and four on the south. These gateways, whose entrance was reached by five more steps from the terrace, were of great height, strongly fortified, and elaborately ornamented. The single gate, on the east, the main entrance, called the “Beautiful Gate,” made of Corinthian brass of the finest workmanship, was the loftiest and most magnificent of all. “Every night it was carefully closed; twenty men were needed to roll its heavy doors, and drive down into the rock its iron bolts and bars.” A. P. S.

3. The Beautiful Gate** opened into the Court of the Women. This was a square of nearly 300 feet, open in the centre, with covered chambers in the several corners, each having interior open spaces. Between these corner rooms, on the east, north, and south sides were splendid single-columned cloisters or porticos, with galleries for the women. The varied uses of the corner chambers are indicated on the diagram. Eleven (or thirteen) receptacles of money, with trumpet-shaped mouths, were placed near some of the columns. The particular locality was called the Treasury. Beyond this court no women were allowed to advance.

4. The Court of the Men, or of Israel.** This was a narrow, single-cloister breadth of space, immediately within and surrounding the western and larger half of the Sacred Enclosure. The entrance from the Court of the Women was by an ascent of twelve steps through the great gate Nicanor. In this narrow space was the standing-place of the worshipping Israelites. Here they could witness all the visible ministry of the priests; in the slaughter and sacrifice of the various animal offerings.

At the southeast corner of this court was the hall Gazith, in which the Sanhedrim held their regular sessions. Of this body, Dr. Fisher gives the following succinct account: “The Great Council—the Supreme Court—of the nation was the Sanhedrim at Jerusalem. It consisted of seventy-one members, who were priests, elders, or men of age and reputed wisdom, and scribes, over whom usually presided the high-priest. They met after the morning sacrifice, commonly in an apartment contiguous to the temple. They sat in a semicircle, with the president in the centre, behind whom, and facing the members, on rows of benches, were the pupils of the rabbis, who were present to listen to the debates, and witness the proceedings. The great Sanhedrim was a judicial body, taking cognizance of all questions relating to the theoretical law; for example, marriages, divorces, the forms of contracts, orthodoxy of opinion, and infractions of the Mosaic statutes, of every kind, as well as of the common law embodied in traditions. The Romans took away from this tribunal the power of inflicting capital punishment. Its jurisdiction stretched over the whole land.”

From the position of this session-room (as seen on the diagram) it will be readily understood how the “council” or Sanhedrim could have instant knowledge of, and be able, in their own persons or by their officers, to take part in any events that were transpiring within the Temple precincts. Incidents in the gospels and the Acts are better comprehended by bearing in mind the office-work and the chief working centre of this formidable tribunal.

5. The Court of Priests** included all the immediate precincts of the great Altar and the Temple. It was slightly elevated and lightly fenced off from the Court of the Men. It contained the Altar of burnt-offering and the Laver. Here too were the shambles for slaughtering the sacrificial victims, and “all those arrangements which we are hardly able to associate with the thought of worship, but which daily reiterated in the sight of the Israelites that awful truth that ‘without the shedding of blood there is no remission;’ the rings at which the victims were slaughtered, the beams and hooks from which they were suspended when dead, and the marble tables at which the entrails were washed.”

6. The Temple Edifice.** In the inner central space beyond the Court of the Priests, springing from a level reached by a flight of twelve steps, the last of the successive stairway approaches from the east, uprose the magnificent Sanctuary, fronted by a lofty, broad, and stately Porch or Vestibule. The entire structure, like that of Solomon, comprised four parts, of which the Temple proper included three: the Vestibule, the Holy Place, and the Holy of Holies. The fourth or remaining portion consisted of three stories of chambers (for the uses of the priests) built against the sides, but neither piercing the Temple walls nor having any communication with its sacred interior. The exterior walls were built of massive blocks of fine white marble, while “the roof had been set all over on the outside with sharp golden spikes to prevent the birds from settling.” J. G. B.

The Vestibule was wider than the rest of the house: its front was adorned with a golden vine of colossal proportions: and [besides the always open, golden-plated doors] it was separated by a richly-embroidered curtain or veil from the Holy Place, which contained the table of shewbread, the candlestick, and the altar of incense. J. S. H.—A thick veil of Babylonian tapestry, in which blue and scarlet and purple were woven into a fabric of matchless beauty and enormous value—the veil that was rent in twain at the time of the crucifixion—hung before the Holy of Holies, dividing it from the Holy Place, and shutting out all light from its mysterious depths. G.—Within this dark recess, there was nothing but the stone on which the high-priest laid his censer.

7. The Temple and its Courts viewed from the Mount of Olives.** (See frontispiece.) Striking indeed must have been the appearance of this triple precinct, the lower court standing on its magnificent terraces, the inner court surrounded by its embattled towers and gateways; within this again, the Temple itself with its snow-white walls and glittering pinnacles of gold rising out of this singular group and crowning the view—and the whole scene soaring out of the deep and dark abyss of the precipitous glen which lay beneath it. A. P. S.

As seen from this eminence—when the gilded front of the vestibule flashed back the rays of the sun, and all the courts glittered (to use the comparison of Josephus) with the whiteness of snow—while the column of smoke rose over all, as a perpetual token of acceptable sacrifice—and worshippers were closely crowded on the eastern steps and terraces in front of the Holy House, and pilgrims from all countries under heaven were moving through the Outer Court and flocking to the same point from all streets in the city—the Temple at the time of the festival must have been a proud spectacle to the religious Jew. It must have been with sad and incredulous wonder that the four disciples heard from him who wept over Jerusalem, that all this magnificence was presently to pass away. None but a Jew can understand the passionate enthusiasm inspired by the recollections and the glorious appearance of the national sanctuary. And none but a Jew can understand the bitter grief and deep hatred which grew out of the degradation in which his nation was sunk at that particular time. This ancient glory was now under the shadow of an alien power. The sanctuary was all but trodden under foot by the Gentiles. The very worship was conducted under the surveillance of Roman soldiers. J. S. H.

THE TEMPLE WORSHIP.—A daily incense offering morning and evening, on the altar in the Holy Place, at the times of trimming and kindling the sacred lamps, was ordained; and another yearly in the Holy of Holies, by the high-priest on the great day of atonement. The daily incense offering required the ministration of two priests, one of whom bore the incense in a special vessel; the other, glowing embers in a golden fire-pan, from the altar of burnt sacrifice without, and these he spread on the altar in the Holy Place. The first priest then sprinkled the incense on the burning coals.

During the burning of the incense each morning and evening, the worshippers in the different courts remained in silent prayer, their faces toward the holy spot where the symbol of their devotions was ascending in fragrant clouds toward heaven: their hope being that their prayer might rise up, odorous and well-pleasing like it, toward Jehovah. While the priests entered morning and evening into the Holy Place—with its seven lamps burning night and day, the memento of the awful presence in the pillar of fire that had guarded them of old, and with its table of “continual bread” of the presence—a male lamb, with the due fruit and drink offering connected with such sacrifice, was ready to be offered on the great Altar of burnt-offering outside. The atoning sacrifice, and the clouds of incense—the outward symbol of the prayers of the people—were thus indissolubly associated; and so holy were they in all eyes, that the hours sacred to them were known as those of the morning and the evening sacrifice. They served to set a time throughout the Jewish world for the morning and evening prayers of all Israel; and thus, when the priest stood by the incense altar, and the flame of the burnt-offering outside ascended, the prayers offered in the temple courts were repeated all over the land, and in every region to which a godly Jew had wandered.

THE PRIESTHOOD.—Of the priests returned from Babylon, after the captivity, the old twenty-four courses were reconstituted, with the same names as before, that the original organization might be perpetuated as far as possible. The priesthood of the second temple, however, never took the same rank as that of the first. The diminished glory of the sanctuary in which it ministered, compared with that of Solomon, made this inevitable; for the second temple had no longer the sacred ark with its mercy-seat and the overshadowing cherubim, nor the holy fire kindled at first from heaven, nor the mysterious Shechina, or glory of God, in the Holy of Holies, nor the tables of stone written by the finger of God, nor the ancient book of the law handed down from the great law-giver Moses. The spirit of prophecy was no longer granted; the Urim and Thummim no longer shone out mysterious oracles from the breast of the high-priest, and the holy anointing oil, that had been handed down, as the rabbis taught, from the days of Aaron, had been lost. There could thus be no consecration of the high-priest or his humbler brethren, by that symbol which above all others had been most sacred—the priestly anointing. The priests were now set apart to their office only by solemnly clothing them with their official robes, though the subordinate acts of sacrifice and offering were no doubt continued. The rise of the synagogue, and the supreme importance attached to the study of the law, tended also to throw the office of the priest into the background. In the centuries after the Return, the Rabbi became the foremost figure in Jewish history. Yet the priest was a necessary appendage to the temple, and even the traditions of the past lent his office dignity.

The services at the temple in Jerusalem, where alone sacrifices could be offered, were intrusted to the care of each course in rotation, for a week of six days and two Sabbaths, and hence the members of each, whose ministrations might be required, had to go up to Jerusalem twice a year. As the office was hereditary, the number of the priesthood had become very great in the days of our Lord. Josephus is perhaps correct in estimating the whole number at somewhat over 20,000.

The social position, as well as official standing, of such a large order varied greatly. First in consideration after the high-priest came his acting deputy, or assistant—the Sagan—and those who had filled that office, and the heads or presidents of the twenty-four courses—collectively, the “high-priests,” or “chief priests,” of Josephus and the New Testament; and next, the large body of officiating priests.

The countless sacrifices and offerings, with the multiplied forms to be observed in connection with them, which were settled by the strictest rules, required a knowledge at once minute and extensive, which could only be attained by assiduous and long-continued labor. Hence it is no wonder that there were many priests who knew little beyond the rites in which they had to take part. The priesthood was thus divided into “the learned”—or those who knew and observed the countless laws of ceremonial cleanness, and the endless ritual enforced—and “common priests.” There were others, doubtless in large numbers, whom some physical defect or other cause disqualified from public ministrations, though they retained a right to their share of the offerings.

The great mass of the order must have been poor in the days of Christ. The higher ranks, rich and haughty, contributed to the degradation of their poorer brethren, whom they despised, oppressed, and plundered. Nor was the general character of the priesthood unaffected by the corruption of the times; as a class, they were blind guides of the blind. Not a few, however, in so numerous a body, must have retained more or less religious sensibility, for we find that some even of the members of the Jerusalem council were so alive to the corruption of the hierarchy at large, that they believed on Christ, its great antagonist; and a large number of priests, shortly after his crucifixion, openly joined his disciples.

The special consecration of the young priest began while he was yet only a lad. As soon as the down appeared on his cheek he had to appear before the council of the temple, that his genealogy might be inspected. If it proved faulty, he left the temple clad in black, and had to seek another calling: if it satisfied the council, a further ordeal awaited him. There were 140 bodily defects, any one of which would incapacitate him from sacred duties, and he was now carefully inspected to discover if he were free from them. If he had no blemish of any kind, the white tunic of a priest was given him, and he began his official life in its humbler duties. Ordination, or formal consecration, followed, when he attained the legal age.

The official dress of a priest was of white linen. On his head he wore a kind of turban in his ministrations, reverence demanding that he should not enter the presence of Jehovah uncovered; and for the same reason his feet were left bare, the ground on which he stood, in the near vision of the Almighty, being holy. The full official dress was worn only in the temple, and was kept there by a special guardian, when the ministrations ended for the time. In private life a simpler dress was worn, but whether in his service at the temple or at his house, he was still a priest, even to the eye. The richly ornamented dress of the high-priest—the “golden vestment,” as it was called by the rabbis—was much more costly than that of his brethren, and passed down from one high-priest to another. It marks the character of the times that, under the Romans, it was kept in their hands, and only given out to the high-priest for use when needed.

The duties of the priests were many and various. It was their awful and peculiar honor to “come near the Lord.” None but they could minister before him, in the holy place where he manifested his presence: none others could “come nigh the vessels of the sanctuary or the altar.” It was death for any one not a priest to usurp these sacred prerogatives. They offered the morning and evening incense; trimmed the lamps of the golden candlestick, and filled them with oil; set out the shewbread weekly; kept up the fire on the great altar in front of the temple; removed the ashes of the sacrifices; took part in the slaying and cutting up of victims, and especially in the sprinkling of their blood; and laid the offerings of all kinds on the altar. They also announced the new moons, which were sacred days like the Sabbaths, by the blowing of trumpets. They had to examine all cases of ceremonial uncleanness, especially leprosy, clearing those who were pure and pronouncing others unclean; to estimate, for commutation, the value of the countless offerings vowed to the temple, and to watch the interior of the temple by night.

Thirteen towns, mostly near Jerusalem, and thus affording easy access to it when their duties called them to the temple, were assigned to the priests. During their term of service they lived in rooms in the temple buildings; but they came there alone, leaving their households behind them. For the support of the order, provision had been made from the earliest times, by assigning them part of the various tithes paid by the people; fees for the redemption of the first-born of man or beast, and in commutation of vows, and what may be called the perquisites of their office—the shewbread, heave-offerings, parts of the sacrifices, the first-fruits of corn, wine, and oil, and other things of the same kind. Officiating priests were thus secured in moderate comfort if they received a fair proportion of their dues; and the whole order had, besides, the great advantage of freedom from any tax and from military service. G.

The Synagogue.

THE word synagogue, which means a “congregation,” is used in the New Testament to signify a recognized place of worship. S.—Throughout the country, in town and village, increasing since the time of Ezra, had sprung up a whole system of worship, which to the Pentateuch, the Prophets, and the early Psalmists, was unknown. The main religious instruction and devotion of the nation was now carried on, not in the Temple, but in the Synagogues. A. P. S.

The importance of the synagogue dates not later than the age of the Maccabees. It rose from the institution, by Ezra, of periodical readings of the law in public. To him, apparently, belongs the signal honor of establishing the custom of constant public reading of the sacred books before the congregations of the people, and of taking care that, as Hebrew was no longer understood, interpreters should be provided to translate the Scripture lessons at the public services into the spoken dialect. Established first in Jerusalem, synasyna-gogues soon spread over the land, and even beyond it, wherever Jews had settled. They gradually became the great characteristic of the nation, for, though the services of the temple were yet cherished, the synagogue, by its local convenience, its supreme influence in fixing Jewish religious opinion, and its natural importance as the centre of each community, and the basis of their social life, carried with it the seeds of the destruction of the strictly local temple service. The priest, henceforth, was of less importance than the lay rabbi, for while the one touched life at only a few points, the other directed its every movement. In Christ’s day there were synagogues everywhere. G.—In the smaller towns of the north they probably answered the purpose of the town-hall as well as the church of the district. Each synagogue accordingly had its own small municipal jurisdiction, with the power of excommunication or exclusion. A. P. S.

The Internal Arrangement of the Synagogue. In this we trace an obvious analogy to the type of the tabernacle. At the upper or Jerusalem end stood the ark, the chest which, like the older and more sacred ark, contained the Book of the Law. This part of the synagogue was naturally the place of honor. Here were the “chief seats,” after which Pharisees and scribes strove so eagerly, to which the wealthy and honored worshipper was invited. Here, too, in front of the ark, still reproducing the type of the tabernacle, was the eight-branched lamp, lighted only on the greater festivals. Besides this, there was one lamp kept burning perpetually. Others, brought by devout worshippers, were lighted at the beginning of the Sabbath, i. e., on Friday evening. A little farther toward the middle of the building was a raised platform, on which several persons could stand at once, and in the middle of this rose a pulpit, in which the reader stood to read the lesson or sat down to teach. The congregation was divided, men on one side, women on the other, a low partition, five or six feet high, running between them. The arrangements of modern synagogues for many centuries have made the separation more complete by placing the women in low side-galleries, screened off by lattice-work. Within the ark, as above stated, were the rolls of the sacred books. The rollers round which they were wound were often elaborately decorated, the cases for them embroidered or enamelled, according to their material. S.

Officers. The chief authorities of the synagogue were a council of elders [also called rulers and shepherds], of whom one acted as head [the ruler of the synagogue], though only the first among equals. They pronounced ex-communications, delivered sentences on offenders of various kinds, managed the charities of the congregation, and attended to the wants of strangers. They were a local counterpart of the “elders of the people,” who, through the whole history of Israel, formed a kind of national senate, and of those humbler “elders” who constituted the ruling body over towns and districts, as they formerly had also done over the different tribes. It marks the simple and healthy basis of society in Israel, that the one idea of the family and household, ruled by its head, thus lay at its root, as is indeed implied in the very name—House of Israel—by which the nation, as a whole, was known. The head ruler or elder of the synagogue was formally consecrated by the laying on of hands.

The inferior offices were held by various officials. The Hazan, or “minister,” had the charge of the building, of cleaning the lamps, opening and closing the doors, and doing any other necessary servile work, like a modern sexton, besides acting as messenger to the rulers. But he, also, in many cases, led the prayers and chants. It was his part to hand the roll of the law to the reader for the time, pointing out the proper lesson of the day. The Reader, as representative of the congregation, had to blow the trumpet at the new moon, and to strew ashes on his head on fast-days. The alms of the congregation were collected and distributed by special officers, of whom two were required to act together in the receiving: three in the distribution. There seems to have been no functionary for reading the prayers, which was done in the name of the congregation, and by its authority, by any one empowered for the time. Any member of the congregation, unless he were a minor, was qualified to do so. As a rule, however, it is likely that the Hazan generally led the chanting, and read the ordinary lessons. A curious feature in the organization was, that in each synagogue, ten men, known as Batlanim, were paid to attend every service from its opening to its close, that there might never be fewer present than the rabbis required to constitute a lawful service.

The Worshippers. The men came in the long, flowing, and, to us, feminine-looking dress of the East; their heads covered with turbans of various colors—some simple, others costly—or with the plain keffiyeh, a kerchief of cotton, linen, or silk, of various colors, folded so that three of the corners hung over the back and shoulders, leaving the face exposed, and loosely held round the head by a cord—as is still the Arab custom; their clothing, only a long white or striped tunic, of linen or cotton, with sleeves, next the body, bound at the loins by a sash or girdle, and a loose abba or cloak thrown over it; their bare feet shod with sandals. Over the abba some would wear a wide scarf of white wool, thin and light, with bars of red, purple, and blue; but with many this scarf, enlarged to an abba, would be the only outer garment. A few rich men might wear one of silk, adorned with silver or gold. This was the Tallith, an indispensable part of the clothing of a Jew. From its four corners hung four tassels of eight threads apiece, of hyacinth-blue, of wool alone, woven and made up with superstitious care, as a half religious art, by a Jew only. These were the Zizith, or fringes, worn in fulfilment of an express commandment of Moses, that the sight of them might make the wearer “remember all the commandments of the Lord, and do them.” The right use of the lessons of the fringes a Jew believed equivalent to keeping the whole law, for the rabbis told him that, as the letters of the name Zizith, used as figures, made up the number 600, they and the five knots and eight threads are equal to the whole 613 precepts of the law.

The Jewish mothers and daughters, as they made their way to the synagogue, were not less Oriental and strange. They were always veiled in white at public worship, and not unfrequently at other times. Their flowing mantles showed as great variety of color as female dress does now, but they were much the same in shape as they had been for centuries. Their feet, like those of the men, were shod with sandals. At the threshold all laid aside their sandals, for it was unbecoming to enter even one’s own house with shod feet, far less the house of God; but, for the same reason, all kept their heads covered during the whole service.

Every man, on entering, put on his Tephillin or phylacteries, which must be worn every day during morning prayer. They consisted of two small parchment boxes, about an inch square, one divided into four parchment compartments, the other left undivided. Four slips of parchment, each about an inch wide and eight inches long, inscribed with the verses, Deut. 6 : 4–9; Deut. 9 : 13–21; Exod. 13 : 2–10; and Exod. 13 : 11–16, were placed in the different compartments of the one, a parchment lid inclosing the whole, with long leather thongs attached, to bind it on the forehead. The second box was exactly the same, except that its interior was not divided, and the verses of Scripture inclosed were written, in four columns, on one piece of parchment. The former of these phylacteries, or amulets, was bound on the forehead exactly between the eyes, before morning prayer began; the other on the left arm, opposite the heart, its thongs being wound seven times round the arm and thrice round the middle finger. Their wearer was now ready to take part in the services. As in the case of the Tallith, the Tephillin were put on with words of prayer in the prevailing language of the country.

The Worship. The service began with silent prayer by all present, the congregation standing during this as during all the prayers. Then the reader, wearing his Tallith, having entered the raised inclosure in the middle of the synagogue, recited a prayer of adoration from the desk. Readings from different parts of the Scripture then followed, closing with another short but exalted prayer. A few verses more from Scripture followed, and then came the Song of Moses at the passage of the Red Sea, and another short prayer. Presently the reader summoned the congregation to join in a short responsive utterance of praise known as the Kadish. “Praise the Lord,” said he, “who is worthy to be praised,” and to this the people, bowing, responded, “Praised be the Lord, who is ever and eternally worthy of praise!” and so, through several antiphonies. During all these prayers the congregation stood, with their faces toward the shrine of the law. Only the reader spoke: the congregation simply responded “Amen,” except at the Kadish.

Now commenced the second part of the service—the repeating of the “prayers known as the eighteen benedictions,” or simply as “The Prayer.” The first three prayers of the eighteen contained ascriptions of praise, the last three thanksgivings, and the twelve between, supplications for the nation and for individuals.

On Mondays and Thursdays, and on Sabbaths, the Law was now read. For the Sabbaths, the five books of Moses were divided into fifty sections, of seven lessons each, and a complete section was repeated each Sabbath, so that the Law was read through in a year. At the end of each lesson, and at its beginning, a collect was read, and between each, the expositor—a member of the congregation who had been invited for the purpose, and who stood in the desk beside the reader while the lesson was being read—delivered a short address from it. A priest, if present, had the first invitation, then a Levite, and any one who seemed to know the law came after. The roll of the prophets was handed to him by the reader after the closing collect of the lesson. At each service there was thus a series of short comments. Very few relics of these synagogue addresses survive, but we are able even from these, as preserved in the Talmud, to realize their general characteristics. Short, and in great measure made up of proverbs, natural imagery, and parables, they were very different from our sermons. . . . A few prayers more from the reader, and the service was ended, with a parting benediction delivered by a priest with uplifted hands, if one were present; if not, by the reader.

When to the many prayers of the synagogue service we add those required in private life, the “vain repetitions” against which Christ cautioned his hearers on the mount may be understood. Besides the five daily repetitions of the S’chma and the benedictions, every Jew gave thanks before and after every act of eating or drinking, before and often after each of the countless external rites and exercises required of him; and there were, besides, special prayers for new moons, new years, feasts, half feasts, and fasts, and many for special incidents of private or family life. Prayer, always prescribed in exact words, was in fact multiplied till it was in danger of becoming too often formal and mechanical—a mere outward act, of superstitious importance in itself, apart from the spirit in which it was offered.

The influence of an institution in which the law was read, throughout, every year, on the Sabbath, and, in part, twice each week, with extra readings on special high days; in which the Prophets and Psalms were constantly brought before the congregation, and in which multiplied prayers, always the same, impressed on the mind every emotion and thought of the national religion, in language often grand and solemn in the extreme—must have been great. The synagogue was, in fact, the seed-bed of Judaism: its inspiring soul and its abiding nurture. G.

It is obvious how important a link this institution established between the Jewish settlements throughout the world. In Alexandria, Rome, Babylon, and by many a tank or riverside in Egypt, Greece, or Italy, there was the same familiar building, the same independent organization, the same house for the mingled worship and business of every Jewish community.

It is obvious, further, that in these synagogues of Palestine was the safety-valve, the open sphere, the golden opportunity for any fresh teaching to arise. Without convulsion, or revolution, or disorder, the development of a new idea, the expansion of an old idea, could be unfolded within the existing framework by some new-comer, and the shock would fly from synagogue to synagogue throughout the country, and throughout the empire. In those brief discourses which were there delivered we have the origin of the “Sermon”—that is, the serious “conversation”—which has now struck so deep a root in the Jewish, the Mussulman, and the Christian communities. It began, doubtless, in the expositions of Ezra, but in this later age of Judaism assumed its predominance. It thus became possible that some heaven-sent Teacher might, by a first discourse, thus draw upon himself “the hate of hate, the scorn of scorn, the love of love,” by which he should be afterward followed even to the end. A. P. S.

The Scribes: their Traditions and Schools.

BESIDES the office of high-priest, and that of the civil magistrate, there arose a third estate, viz., that of the scribes. When all the sacred Scriptures of the Old Testament were collected into one by Ezra or Malachi, and when the people imbibed a new zeal for the law, a spirit of investigation into the Scriptures could not fail to arise. C. B.

Consequent upon the wonderful revival of Judaism under Ezra and his associates, an order known, indifferently, as “Scribes,” “Teachers of the Law,” or “Rabbis,” gradually rose, who devoted themselves to the study of the law exclusively, and became the recognized authorities in all matters connected with it. In the course of centuries many of the Mosaic laws had become inapplicable to the altered state of things, and as their literal observance had become impossible, new prescriptions began to be invented, after the Return, to perpetuate their spirit. Many were virtually obsolete: others required careful exposition by the rabbis. The comments thus delivered formed, as time rolled on, a great body of unwritten law, which claimed equal authority with the law of Moses, and was necessarily known in any full degree only by the professional rabbis, who devoted their lives to its study. It might be increased, but could never be altered or superseded in any particular.

Uniformity of belief and ritual practice was the one grand design of the founders of Judaism; the moulding the whole religious life of the nation to such a machine-like discipline as would make any variation from the customs of the past wellnigh impossible. A universal, death-like conservatism, permitting no change in successive ages, was established, as the grand security for a separate national existence, by its isolating the Jew from all other races, and keeping him forever apart. For this end, not only was that part of the law which concerned the common life of the people—their Sabbaths, feast-days, jubilees, offerings, sacrifices, tithes, the temple and synagogue worship, civil and criminal law, marriage, and the like—explained, commented on, and minutely ordered by the rabbis, but also that portion of it which related only to the private duties of individuals in their daily religious life. Their food, their clothes, their journeys, their occupations: indeed, every act of their lives, and almost their every thought, were brought under rabbinical rules. To secure a more strict observance of the law, they thus gradually formed what they called a hedge round it—that is, they added endless refinements and subtleties to every command, that by the observance of such external rites and precepts, the command itself should be the less in danger of being broken. To this “hedge” Judaism owes the rigid fidelity of its people ever since; for rites and forms at all times find a much stricter obedience from the masses than the commands of a spiritual religion. G.—Because these gradually-accumulated expositions and practices, added to the word of God by the scribes or rabbis, were sustained and enforced by the elders, they were called “the traditions of the elders.” J. G. B.

The rabbis are mentioned by different names in different passages of the gospels. They are called scribes, the equivalent of the Hebrew sopherim, from saphar, to write. The rabbinical law was known as the “words of the sopherim.” A second name was “lawyers,” and a third “doctors of the law.” They are also often referred to as “the Pharisees,” from the great majority belonging to that party; but all rabbis were not Pharisees, nor all Pharisees rabbis. In the same way, many priests were rabbis, but many rabbis were not priests.

The rabbis had thrown the hereditary priestly body of the nation quite into the shade in the days of Christ. A priest gained his position by birth; a rabbi owed his to himself. The temple service, and the vast sums of money received from Jews in all parts of the world, as a yearly tax in support of their religion, gave the priests great influence, and opened to the higher grades the control of the highest ecclesiastical offices in the nation. But the influence of the rabbis was so overwhelming that even the highest priests were glad to respect their opinions, to secure public favor.

As teachers of the law, they received superstitious honor, which was the great motive with many to court the title or join the party. They were classed with Moses, the patriarchs, and the prophets, and claimed equal reverence. The table of the rabbi was nobler than that of kings; and his crown more glorious than theirs. The rabbis went even further than this in exalting their order. The Mishna declares that it is a greater crime to speak anything to their discredit than to speak against the words of the law.

The rabbis were teachers, jurists, and preachers. They explained, defined, and taught the law in their schools, gave judicial opinions and decisions on it in their official meetings, and delivered expositions of Scripture, in their own style, to the people in the synagogues.

They were the casuists, the priests, the judges, the magistrates, and the physicians of the nation. But their authority went still further, for, by the rabbinical laws, nearly everything in daily life needed their counsel and aid. G.—The net of casuistry spread itself over every department of human life, and the energies of the rabbis were spent (to use the metaphor adopted by them) in “tying” and “untying,” in “binding” and “loosing,” the knots which they either found or made in this complicated web. A. P. S.—No one could be born, circumcised, brought up, educated, betrothed, married, or buried—no one could celebrate the Sabbath or other feasts, or begin a business, or make a contract, or kill a beast for food, or even bake bread, without the advice or presence of a rabbi. They were the brain, the eyes, the ears, the nerves, the muscles of the people, who were mere children apart from them.

The law itself was written in a language which the people had long ceased to speak, so that it was left to the rabbis to explain and apply it. The heads and leaders of the nation, they kept it in their leading-strings. Heresy, which would be fatal to the blind unanimity which was their political strength, could only be excluded by rigidly denouncing the least departure from their precepts. The law and the prophets must, therefore, be understood only in the sense of their traditions. The reading of the Scriptures was hence discouraged, lest it should win their hearts, and they should cease to reverence the words of the rabbis. One hour was to be spent on the Scriptures in the schools: two on the traditions. The study of the Talmud alone won honor from God as from man. That vast mass of traditions, which now fills ten folio volumes, was, in reality, the Bible of the rabbis and of their scholars.

Religiousness was thus measured by the more or less complete observance of ten thousand rabbinical rules of ceremonial purity; and fanatical observance of them was secured, not less by religious pride, than by their appeal to a spurious patriotism, and to self-interest. This severe and inflexible discipline, which regulated every act of life, foresaw every contingency, and interfered with common liberty, at every step, from the cradle to the grave, had been slowly elaborated by the rabbis, to isolate the Jew from all other nations.

Schools of the Scribes. [These grew up around the synagogues.] Famous rabbis gathered large numbers of students. The supreme distinction accorded to the rabbi in society at large, in which he was by far the foremost personage; the exaggerated reverence claimed for his office by his order itself, and sanctioned by the superstitious homage of the people; the constant necessity for reference to its members, under a religion which prescribed rules for every detail of social or private life, and, not least, the fact that the dignity of a rabbi was open to the humblest who acquired the necessary learning, made the schools very popular.

The form of teaching in the schools of the rabbis was by question and answer. The teacher propounded questions of legal casuistry to the scholars, and let them give their opinions, adding his own if he thought fit. The scholars also could propose questions in their turn. They sat, during class time, on the ground, the teacher, on a raised seat, known as the seat of Moses. As all the knowledge of the law was strictly traditional and oral, teacher and scholar alike had to depend entirely on memory, the one faculty of supreme importance to both. To attain high fame, a rabbi must have the reputation of knowing the whole immense mass of tradition down to his day, by heart, so as to be able to cite authorities for any possible question. G.

Imperatively necessary must these schools have been in the days of the Maccabees, when all the greatness, and all the littleness of the oral law, under the Pharisaic ascendancy, had to be expounded, defended, and reconciled with the precepts of the written law of Moses. And these local schools multiplying themselves all over the land pari passu with the synagogues, by a like necessity culminated in the great college at Jerusalem, under the guidance of the president of the Sanhedrim. This college by degrees became the centre of Jewish intellectual life, until at the opening of our era it was divided into the two great schools of Hillel the Great (born about 112 B. C.) and his contemporary Shammai; the former of which it is said embraced a thousand pupils. H. Smith.

The two were held in nearly equal honor. They did not teach, however, as their predecessors had done, in entire harmony with each other. The points on which they differed were almost innumerable. In most of them, questions as to the causes and degrees of uncleanness, as to the law of contracts or of wills, we can find little or no interest. On the former class of subjects the school of Shammai represented the extremest development of the Pharisaic spirit. The teaching of Hillel showed some capacity for wider thoughts. He was the first to lay down principles for an equitable construction of the law with a dialectic precision which seems almost to imply a Greek culture. The genial character of the man comes out in some of his sayings, which present some faint approximations to a higher teaching. The contrast showed itself in the conduct of the followers not less than in the teachers. The disciples of Shammai were conspicuous for their fierceness, appealed to popular passions, and used the sword to decide their controversies. Out of that school grew the party of the Zealots, fierce, fanatical, vindictive. Those of Hillel were like their master, cautious, gentle, tolerant, unwilling to make enemies, content to let things take their course. One sought to impose upon the proselyte from heathenism the full burden of the law, the other that he should be treated with some sympathy and indulgence. The teaching of our Lord must have appeared to men different in many ways from both. S.

The Three Oriental Dialects: the Targums and the Midrash: the Talmud and the Masora.

THE ORIENTAL LANGUAGES may be divided into three principal dialects, viz., the Aramean, the Hebrew, and the Arabic. 1. The Aramean, spoken in Syria, Mesopotamia, and Babylonia, or Chaldea, is subdivided into the Syriac and Chaldee dialects, sometimes called also the west and east Aramean. 2. The Hebrew, or Canaanitish dialect (Isaiah 19 : 18), was spoken in Palestine, and probably, with little variation, in Phenicia and the Phenician colonies. 3. The Arabic, which appears anciently to have been limited principally to Arabia and Ethiopia.

Of these Oriental languages, the Hebrew bears marks of being the most ancient. The oldest records that are known to exist are composed in this language; and there are other reasons which render it probable that it preceded its kindred dialects. It flourished in Palestine, among the Phenicians and Hebrews, until the period of the Babylonish exile; soon after which it declined, and finally was succeeded by a kind of Hebreo-Aramean dialect, such as was spoken in the time of our Saviour among the Jews.

The remains of the ancient Hebrew tongue are contained in the Old Testament, and in the few Phenician and Punic words and inscriptions that have been here and there discovered. The remains of the Aramean are extant in a variety of books. In Chaldee, we have a part of the books of Daniel and Ezra, which are the most ancient of any specimens of this dialect. The Targum of Onkelos, i. e., the translation of the Pentateuch into Chaldee, affords the next and purest specimen of that language. All the other Targums, the Mishna, and Gemara, are a mixture of Aramean and Hebrew. In Syriac there is a considerable number of books and MSS. extant. The oldest specimen of this language that we have is contained in the Peshito, or Syriac version of the Old and New Testament. In Arabic there exists a great variety of MSS. and books, historical, scientific, and literary.

The Aramean dialect was learned by the Jews during the captivity, and a mixture of this and the Hebrew, ever after their return, was perhaps spoken in Palestine by the people at large. The fact, however, that after the return so many authors wrote in the Hebrew dialect, and for public use, demonstrates that the knowledge of the language was not generally lost, although the dialect spoken may have been a mixed one. After the worship of God was renewed in the second temple, the ancient Hebrew Scriptures were unquestionably used in it. In the synagogues, which appear to have been erected not long after this, the Hebrew Scriptures were always used. Even so late as the time of the apostles, this was the case (Acts 15 : 21), as it has continued to be ever since.

How long the Hebrew was retained, both in writing and conversation, or in writing, after it ceased to be the language of conversation, it is impossible to determine. The coins stamped in the time of the Maccabees are all the Oriental monuments we have of the period that elapsed between the latest canonical writers and the advent of Christ; and the inscriptions on these are in Hebrew. At the time of the Maccabees, then, Hebrew was understood, at least as the language of books; perhaps in some measure also, among the better informed, as the language of conversation. But soon after this, the dominion of the Seleucidæ in Syria over the Jewish nation, uniting with the former influence of the Babylonish captivity to diffuse the Aramean dialect among them, appears to have destroyed the remains of proper Hebrew, as a living language, and to have universally substituted in its stead the Hebreo-Aramean as it was spoken in the time of our Saviour.

From the time when Hebrew ceased to be vernacular down to the present day, a portion of this dialect has been preserved in the Old Testament. It has always been the subject of study among learned Jews. Before and at the time of Christ, there were flourishing Jewish academies at Jerusalem. Those of Hillel and Shammai are the most celebrated. After Jerusalem was destroyed, schools were set up in various places; but particularly they flourished at Tiberias, until the death of Rabbi Judah, surnamed Hakkodesh, or the Holy, the author of the “Mishna,” about A. D. 230. Some of his pupils set up other schools in Babylonia, which became the rivals of these. The Babylonish academies flourished until near the tenth century. From the schools at Tiberias and in Babylonia, we have received the Targums, the Talmud, the Masora, and the written vowels and accents of the Hebrew language. Robinson.

Targum, a Chaldee word of uncertain origin; the general term for the Chaldee, or, more accurately, Aramaic, versions of the Old Testament. The injunction to “read the Book of the Law before all Israel” on the Feast of Tabernacles of every Sabbatical year, as a means of solemn instruction and edification, is first found in Deut. 31 : 10–13. Among the first acts undertaken by Ezra toward the restoration of the primitive religion and public worship is reported his reading “before the congregation, both of men and women,” of the returned exiles, “in the Book in the Law of God.” Aided by those men of learning and eminence with whom, according to tradition, he founded the Great Synagogue, he appears to have so firmly established regular and frequent public readings in the sacred records, that later authorities almost unanimously trace this custom to times immemorial—nay, to the times of Moses himself. To these ancient readings in the Pentateuch were added, in course of time, readings in the Prophets.

Although the primitive religion was re-established, together with the second temple, yet neither authority nor piety, neither academy nor synagogue, could restore to its original power and glory the Hebrew language. Ere long it was found necessary to translate the national books, in order that the nation from whose midst they had sprung might be able to understand them. And if, for the whole body of Hellenistic Jews, Greek translations had to be composed, those who dwelt on the hallowed soil of their forefathers had to receive the sacred word through an Aramaic medium. What more natural than that the immigrants under Jerubbabel, and still more those who came with Ezra—several generations of whose ancestors had been settled in Babel—should have brought back with them the Aramaic as an idiom with which they were perfectly familiar, and which they may partly have continued to use as their colloquial language in Palestine, as, in fact, they had had to use it in Babylon? Continuous later immigrations from the “Captivity” did not fail to reinforce and further to spread the use of the same tongue. Nor must it be forgotten that the colonists in Palestine (2 Kings 17 : 24) were Samaritans, who had come from “Aram and Babel,” and who spoke Chaldee. If the common people thus gradually had lost all knowledge of the tongue in which were written the books to be read to them, it naturally followed (in order “that they might understand them”) that recourse must be had to a translation into the idiom with which they were familiar—the Aramaic. Further, since a bare translation could not in all cases suffice, it was necessary to add to the translation an explanation, more particularly of the more difficult and obscure passages. Both translation and explanation were designated by the term Targum.

The same causes which, in course of time, led to the writing down, after many centuries of oral transmission, of the whole body of the traditional law, engendered also, and about the same period, written Targums, for certain portions of the Bible, at least. Deutsch.

The Targums that are now extant are nine in number: the principal ones being those of Onkelos on the Pentateuch, of Jonathan ben Uzziel on the first and last Prophets, and of Joseph the Blind on the Poetical Books.

To complete our summary of useful information upon this topic, a few words may be added respecting the history of that vast accumulation of comment called the MIDRASH, of which the Targum forms part. J. G. B.

THE centre of all mental activity and religious action among the Jewish community, after the return from Babylon, was the Scriptural canon collected by the Sopherim, or men of the Great Synagogue. These formed the chief authority on the civil and religious law, and their authority was the Pentateuch. Their office as expounders and commentators of the sacred record was twofold. They had, firstly, to explain the exact meaning of such prohibitions and ordinances contained in the Mosaic books as seemed not explicit enough for the multitude, and the precise application of which in former days had been forgotten during the captivity. Secondly, laws neither specially contained nor even indicated in the Pentateuch were inaugurated by them, according to the new wants of the times and the ever-shifting necessities of the growing commonwealth. Nor were the latter in all cases given on the sole authority of the Synod; but they were in most cases traditional, and certain special letters or signs in the Scriptures, seemingly superfluous or out of place where they stood, were, according to fixed, hermeneutical rules, understood to indicate the inhibitions and prohibitions (“Fences”) newly issued and fixed. But Scripture, which had for this purpose to be studied most minutely and unremittingly—the most careful and scrutinizing attention being paid even to its outward form and semblance—was also used, and more especially in its non-legal, prophetical parts, for homiletic purposes, as a wide field of themes for lectures, sermons, and religious discourses, both in and out of the synagogue—at every solemnity in public and private life. This juridical and homiletical expounding and interpreting of Scripture—the germs of both of which are found still closely intertwined and bound up with each other in the Targum—is called darash, and the avalanche of Jewish literature which began silently to gather from the time of the return from the exile and went on rolling uninterruptedly—however dread the events which befell the nation—until about a thousand years after the destruction of the second temple, may be comprised under the general name MIDRASH—“expounding.” Deutsch.

TALMUD is the name of a Jewish work containing the body of the doctrines, religion, and morality of the Jews, and having among them an authority equal to, if not greater than, that of the Hebrew Scriptures. The name comes from the Hebrew lamád, to teach, and signifies therefore teaching, or, rather, traditional doctrine. There are strictly two works under this name, viz., the Talmud of Jerusalem and the Talmud of Babylon. Each is composed of two parts, the Mishna and the Gemara. R.

The Talmud embodies the civil and canonical law of the Jewish people. It contains those rules and institutions by which, in addition to the Old Testament, the conduct of that nation is regulated. Whatever is obligatory on them, besides the law, is recorded in this work. Here doubts are resolved, duties explained, cases of conscience cleared up, and the most minute circumstances relative to the conduct of life discussed with wonderful particularity. Hence, the contents of the Talmud are of a diversified character, relating, not merely to religion, but to philosophy, medicine, history, jurisprudence, and the various branches of practical duty.

The Jews have been accustomed to divide their law into written and unwritten—the former being contained in the Pentateuch, the latter having been handed down orally, until circumstances compelled them to commit it also to writing. The oral law is an interpretation of the written, and constitutes the text of the Talmud. To the oral law the same antiquity is assigned as belongs to the written. According to the Jews, Moses received both on Mount Sinai. It was received by Joshua from Moses; Joshua again delivered it to the seventy elders, from whom it was received by the prophets, who transmitted it to the men of the Great Synagogue, the last of whom was Simon the Just. From the men of the Synagogue it was received by the Rabbins. After the second destruction of Jerusalem under Adrian, and the consequent dispersion of the Jews throughout the world, fears were entertained lest the oral traditions, which they held so sacred, should be lost, particularly as their number rendered it inconvenient, or, rather, impossible, to preserve them in the memory. Hence arose the necessity of committing them to writing, that they might be handed down from age to age as a national treasure. It is generally agreed that Rabbi Judah Hakkodesh (i. e., the Holy) made the first permanent record of them, about 120 or 150 years from the destruction of the Temple, A. D. 190 or 220. Such was the origin of the Mishna, or text, which is the same in both the Jerusalem and Babylonish Talmuds. It must not be supposed, however, that all the traditional interpretations or midrashim were embodied in the official Mishna. Many others existed which were not incorporated in that work.

A twofold commentary, or series of commentaries, was subsequently appended to the Mishna, one called the Babylonian Gemara, the other the Jerusalem Gemara. The former was begun by Rabbi Asche, who died A. D. 427, and was completed A. D. 500. It is the work of several Rabbins, whose names continue to be venerated by the learned Jews. These portions, committed to writing after the Mishna, constitute notes on that text, and make up, together with it, the Babylonian Talmud. The Jerusalem Gemara proceeded from the academy at Tiberias, and embodied the comment of the Palestinian Jews. It is said to have been written chiefly by Rabbi Jochanan, rector of that academy. From this statement, it will be seen that the two Talmuds differ in their Gemaras, or notes upon the text, while both have the same Mishna.

The Mishna is written in the Hebrew dialect, but the Gemara in Aramean. The former is tolerably pure and free from the admixture of foreign terms; but the latter contains many Persian, Greek, and Latin words—a circumstance which contributes to the difficulty of understanding it. The style of the Babylonian Gemara differs from that of the Jerusalem commentary. The latter is more in the Palestinian dialect, approaching to the Syriac. “The almost unconquerable difficulty of the style,” says Lightfoot, “the frightful roughness of the language, and the amazing emptiness and sophistry of the matters handled, do torture, vex, and tire beyond measure him who reads these volumes. They everywhere abound in trifles in that manner, as though they had no mind to be read; with obscurities and difficulties, as though they had no mind to be understood; so that the reader has need of patience all along, to enable him to bear both trifling in sense and roughness in expression.”

The Mishna is divided into six parts:

1. The first seder, i. e., order, disposition, division, is called seder zeraim, the order of seeds. It treats of sowing, the productions of the earth, herbs, trees, the uses of fruits, of seeds, etc.

2. The second is called seder moed, the order of festivals, and is occupied with a statement of the times when the festivals should begin and when they should terminate, as also of the different rites and ceremonies to be observed at such seasons.

3. Seder nashim, the order of women. This section discusses the distinctive rights of men and women, marriage, divorce; the customs, inclinations, and sicknesses of women, etc.

4. Seder nezikim, the order of damages. This division treats of the losses and injuries which one may be the means of bringing upon another, of the damages done by cattle, of restitution, of the punishment to be inflicted for such offences or losses, etc.

5. Seder kodashim, the order of holy things, treating of sacrifices, oblations, their different species, etc.

6. Seder taharoth, the order of purifications, relative to the purity and impurity of vessels, to household furniture and other things, and the way in which they should be purified.

Each of these orders is subdivided into several treatises or tracts, which again are subdivided into sections or chapters. The six orders contain sixty-three treatises and five hundred and twenty-four chapters. Davidson.

All those manifold assemblies wherein a people’s mental, social, and religious life are considered and developed are represented in the Talmud. Parliament, convocation, law-courts, academies, colleges, the temple and the synagogue, even the lobby and the common-room, have left realistic traces upon it. The authors of this book, who may be counted by hundreds, were always the most prominent men of the people in their respective generations; and thus undesignedly and designedly show the fulness and the various phases of this people’s life and progress at every turn.

The Talmud, in this wise, contains the social, criminal, international, human, and divine law, along with abundant explanations of laws not perfectly comprehended, corollaries and inferences from the law, that were handed down with more or less religious reverence. It contains also an account of the education, the arts, the science, the history, and religion of this people for about a thousand years; most fully perhaps of the time immediately preceding and following the birth of Christianity. It shows us the teeming streets of Jerusalem, the tradesman at his work, the women in their domestic circle, even the children at play in the market-place. The priest and the Levite ministering in their holy sites, the preacher on the hill-side surrounded by the multitude, even the story-teller in the bazaar: they all live, move, and have their being in these pages. Nor is it Jerusalem or even the hallowed soil of Judea alone, but the whole antique world that seems to lie embalmed in it: we find here the most curious notices of the religion of Zoroaster—how it gradually was restored to its original status; as if all things which had dropped out of the records of antique humanity had taken refuge in the Talmud. In it we have an array of carefully-preserved historical names and dates from beginning to end; names and dates, the general faithfulness and truth of which have never yet been called in question. From the Great Synagogue down to the final completion of the Babylonian Gemara, we have the legal and philosophical development of the nation always embodied as it were in the successive principal schools and men of their times. Its chief importance for religious history is the manner in which it informs us of things and circumstances at the time of the birth of Christianity, among the priests and Pharisees, of the education, synagogues, preaching, of women, of angels and demons, etc. It gives us the ethical sayings, the parables, gnomes, etc., which were the principal vehicle of the common Jewish teaching from an almost prehistoric period. These sayings were often tender, poetical, sublime: but they were not absolutely new: there was not one that was not substantially contained in the canonical and uncanonical writings of the Old Testament. Deutsch.

The Jews set so high a value on the Talmud as to place it generally above the inspired law. Hence we find in the “Words of the Scribes” the saying: “The Biblical text is like water, and the Mishna like wine, and the six orders like aromatic wine.” In another passage the following words occur: “The law is like salt, the Mishna like pepper, but the six orders like fine spices.” Again: “The words of the scribes are lovely, above the words of the law; for the words of the law are weighty and light, but the words of the scribes are all weighty.” Such extravagant praises of their oral traditions correspond with the Saviour’s words: “Making the word of God of none effect, through your tradition which ye have delivered.” But they do not harmonize with the real nature of the Talmud itself; for the book contains many fabulous, trifling, absurd, and irreverent things. Several parts of the Talmud, however, form an exception to the foolish and ridiculous passages with which the work abounds. Thus the treatise “Pirke Aboth,” containing the moral maxims and sentiments of the Jewish fathers, presents a favorable specimen of ethical philosophy. Davidson.

ALONG with the task of collecting and commenting on their various legal traditions, it is probable that the Jews of these several academies would occupy themselves with the text of the sacred writings; and it is indeed shown by various Talmudic notices. In these the first thing to be remarked is the entire absence of allusion to any such glosses of interpretation as those which, from having been previously noted on the margins of MSS., had probably been loosely incorporated into the Samaritan Pentateuch and the Septuagint. Interpretation, properly so called, had become the province of the Targumist, not of the transcriber; and the result of the entire divorce of interpretation from transcription had been to obtain greater security for the transmission of the text in its purity.

In place, however, of such glosses of interpretation had crept in the practice of reading some passages differently from the way in which they were written, in order to obtain a play of words, or to fix them artificially in the memory. But these traditional and confessedly apocryphal readings were not allowed to affect the written text. The care of the Talmudic doctors for the text is shown by the pains with which they counted up the number of verses in the different books, and computed which were the middle verses, words, and letters in the Pentateuch, and in the Psalms. The scrupulousness with which the Talmudists noted what they deemed the truer readings, and yet abstained from introducing them into the text, indicates at once both their diligence in scrutinizing the text, and their care in guarding it. Critical procedure is also evinced in their rejection of MSS. which were found not to agree with others in their readings; and the rules given with reference to the transcription and adoption of MSS. attest the care bestowed upon them.

It is evident from the notices of the Talmud that oral traditions had been gradually accumulating respecting both the integrity of particular passages of the text itself, and also the manner in which it was to be read. This vast heterogeneous mass of traditions and criticisms, compiled and embodied in writing, forms what is known as the Masora, i. e., tradition. Buxtorf ranges its contents under the three heads of observations respecting the verses, words, and letters of the sacred text. As to the verses, the Masorets recorded how many were in each book, and the middle verse in each; also how many verses began with particular letters, or began and ended with the same word, or contained a particular number of words and letters, or particular words a certain number of times, etc. As to the words, they noted that certain words were to be found so many times in the beginning, middle, or end of a verse, or with a particular construction or meaning. As to the letters, they computed how often each letter of the alphabet occurred in the Old Testament.

The Masora was originally preserved in distinct books by itself. A plan then arose of transferring it to the margins of the MS. of the Bible. For this purpose large curtailments were necessary. The Masora is now distinguished into the Masora magna and the Masora parva, the latter being an abridgment of the former. The Masora itself was but one of the fruits of the labors of the Jewish doctors in the Masoretic period. A far more important work was furnishing the text with vowel-marks, by which the traditional pronunciation of it was imperishably recorded. The vowel-marks are referred to in the Masora; and as they are all mentioned by R. Judah Ching, in the beginning of the eleventh century, they must have been perfected before that date. From the end of the Masoretic period onward, the Masora became the great authority by which the text given in all the Jewish MSS. was settled. Smith’s Dictionary.

Pharisees, Sadducees, and Essenes.

FROM the so-called three estates among the Jews—the priests, the scribes, and the elders—we must be careful to distinguish the three religious sects which arose among them under the names of Pharisees, Sadducees, and Essenes. These were not civil estates, but religious parties, which might be found under any of the three estates, as the Pharisees and Sadducees really were. C. B.—These three sects answer to the three tendencies which are usually found to arise when a religion decays, viz., sanctimonious formalism, trifling infidelity, and mystic superstition.

1. The PHARISEES, the separate—so called from their pretended holiness—represent the traditional orthodoxy, the dead formalism, the legal self-righteousness of Judaism. P. S.—They seem to have arisen just after the Babylonian captivity. As an influential sect, they appear first a century and a half before Christ. Eminent for learning, influence, and numbers (they amounted, according to Josephus, to not less than six thousand in the time of Herod), they secured a powerful party among the people, and acquired great political significance. By outward manifestation of piety, they captivated the ignorant multitude, and constrained those blind to follow blind guides. At their meals they observed the most rigid laws of purification; in prayer their bearing, in fasting their countenance, in giving alms the shrill trumpets at the corners of the streets, proclaimed their shining virtue. Their forehead was adorned with frontlets, containing sacred apothegms; the hems of their garments had written upon them the language of the sacred oracles, and from their lips resounded alternately long prayers and subtle interpretations of Scripture. Their doctrine, developed under the influence of tradition, was founded on the acknowledgment of God’s unlimited government of the universe, by which, however, the freedom of human acts was not taken away. At the same time they accepted the existence of a spirit-world, and held firmly an immortality, where recompense of their piety awaited them. Van O.

Spiritual pride, self-righteousness, the narrowness and arrogance of a dead Scripture-learning, and the absence of what our Saviour terms poverty of spirit, were in general the hinderances to faith on the part of the Pharisees. N.—In their conduct, they showed the want of the great thing, the deep spirit of the law, holiness in the inner man. For this they substituted a dead intellectual orthodoxy, a slavish routine of ceremonies, a pedantic observance of fasts, prayers, alms-givings, washings, and the like; and fancied this was true piety. Their natural descent from Abraham and outward circumcision seemed to them to constitute a sufficient title to an inheritance in the kingdom of God. Instead of awakening in the people, by the discipline of the law, the knowledge of sin and sincere repentance, and, by the exposition of the prophets, a longing for redemption, they rather promoted, by the abuse of the law, a hypocritical formalism and spiritual pride; by the abuse of prophecy, a fanatical spirit of political revolution; and by both, the final destruction of their nation. P. S.

2. Over against these stand the SADDUCEES, who may be denominated politically an aristocratic, religiously an ultra-liberal party. Its existence is satisfactorily explained from the natural counteraction which the attachment of the Pharisees to oral tradition must meet from those who were of different sentiments. Thence it was, also, that their ideas in all things assumed a hostile attitude toward those of the Pharisees. The doctrine of a Providence, if not wholly denied, was at least placed considerably in the shade, and human freedom in an excessive light. They rejected not only the existence of angels and spirits, but also wholly the future life. In their morality they worked less on the desire of reward, and insisted more on an external fulfilment of the original Mosaic precept. Van O.

They did not overload the Sacred Books with traditions, or encumber the duties of life with a multitude of minute observances. They were the disciples of reason without enthusiasm, they made few proselytes, their numbers were not great, and they were confined principally to the richer members of the nation. We find them established in the highest office of the priesthood, and possessed of the greatest powers in the Sanhedrim. J. S. H.

Sadduceeism was the first and boldest expression of the growing passion for freedom. But the type of freedom was sought in Greece, corrupted by luxury and skepticism, and not in the prophetic pictures of the spiritual Israel. After the first assertion of man’s absolute independence, a doctrine which contained implicitly all the subsequent tenets of the school, the influence of the Sadducees on Judaism was purely negative. Their existence was a protest against the sufficiency of the Pharisaic system; but they offered nothing to replace it. B. F. W.

The cold Sadduceeism, which suffered no aspiration after things beyond the limits of an earthly existence, presented no point of union whatever with the gospel. N.—We cannot wonder, therefore, that, in spite of their general hatred of the Pharisees, they made common cause with them in opposition to the Saviour. For men so entirely destitute of all deeper sense of religious need, Christianity had but little power of attraction. After the destruction of Jerusalem they disappear even from Jewish history, and are only occasionally mentioned in the Talmud as heretics and Epicureans. P. S.

3. The Sadducees and Pharisees compared.—Both vaunted their orthodoxy. The Sadducees were as deeply committed to support the theocracy as their popular rivals, for it was the basis of their dignities, their wealth, and even their existence. Fierce controversies, often culminating in bloodshed, marked the devotion of both alike to their opinions, and these opinions themselves illustrated the position of the two parties. The Sadducees uniformly fell back on the letter of the law, the prescriptive rights of the temple, and the glory of the priesthood; the Pharisees, on the other hand, took their stand on the authority of the rabbinical traditions, the value of sacred acts apart from the interposition of the priest, and advocated popular interests generally.

The contrast between the spirit of the two parties showed itself prominently in the harsh tenacity with which the temple aristocracy held to the letter of the Mosaic law in its penalties, as opposed to the milder spirit in which the Pharisees interpreted them in accordance with the spirit of the times. The Pharisees, for example, explained the Mosaic demand—an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth—metaphorically, and allowed recompense to be made in money, but the Sadducees required exact compliance.

But there were even deeper grounds of dislike and opposition. The Pharisees, as the hereditary representatives of puritans who had delivered the nation in the great struggle against Syria, looked forward with touching though fanatical yearning to the realization of the prophecies of Daniel, which, as they understood them, promised that Israel, under the Messiah, and with it, themselves, should be raised “to dominion, and glory, and a kingdom; that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve Him, and that His kingdom should be everlasting.” They believed that this national triumph would be inaugurated so soon as Israel, on its part, carried out to the full the requirements of the ceremonial laws as expounded in their traditions. It was a matter of formal covenant, in which the truth and righteousness—that is, the justice—of Jehovah were involved. The morals they demanded might be only mechanical, and their observances slavery to rites and ceremonies, but they believed that if they fulfilled their part, God must needs fulfil his, and they strove hard to make the nation, like themselves, “blameless” touching this righteousness, that they might claim divine interposition as a right. The zeal of the Pharisee for the law was thus a mere hired service, with all the restlessness, exaggeration, emulation, and moral impurity, inseparable from a mercenary spirit.

To this dream of the future, the Sadducees opposed a stolid and contemptuous indifference. Enjoying the honors and good things of the world, they had no taste for a revolution which should introduce they knew not what in the place of a state of things with which they were quite contented. Their fathers had had no such ideas, and the sons ridiculed them. They not only laughed aside the Pharisaic idea of righteousness, as identified with a life of minute and endless observance, but fell back on the Mosaic law, and mocked at the Messianic hope from which the zeal of their rivals had sprung. “The Sadducees,” says Josephus, “believe that the soul dies with the body, and recognize no authority but that of the law. Good was to be done for its own sake, not for reward in the Messianic kingdom, or at the resurrection of the dead.”

The Pharisees had a profound belief in Providence, understanding by it that they themselves were the favorites of Jehovah, and could count on his taking their side. “The Sadducees,” says Josephus, “maintain that there is no such thing as predestination, and deny that human affairs are regulated by it, maintaining that our destiny rests with ourselves: that we are the cause of our own good fortune, and bring evil on us by our own folly.”

Apart from all other considerations, the fact that the Sadducees supported zealously every government in turn was enough to set the people against them. Instead of this, the Pharisees shared and fostered the patriotic and religious abhorrence of the Roman supremacy, and were sworn enemies of the hated Herodian family. The result was that, in the words of Josephus, “the Pharisees had such an influence with the people that nothing could be done about divine worship, prayers, or sacrifices, except according to their wishes and rules, for the community believed they sought only the loftiest and worthiest aims alike in word and deed. The Sadducees were few in number; and, though they belonged to the highest ranks, had so little influence that when elected to office they were forced to comply with the ritual of the Pharisees from fear of the people.” G.

4. THE ESSENES.—Here, as in the other two divisions, the most probable explanations of the word “Essene” point, not to any personal leader or founder, but to the moral and social characteristics of their school. It indicates either the “watchful contemplation,” or the “affectionate devotion,” or the “silent thoughtfulness,” of those who retired from the strife of parties, and nourished a higher spiritual life in communities of their own. A. P. S.

Josephus classes as one of the four great parties of his day the Essenes, an order numbering about 4,000 members, in Syria and Palestine, more or less devoted to an ascetic life. The feverish anxiety to avoid Levitical defilement, which had already given rise to Pharisaism, found its extreme expression in these ultra-rigid legalists, who hoped, by isolation, to attain ceremonial righteousness impossible in the open world. The Pharisees, as years passed on, had become constantly less entitled to the name of the Separated, since they eagerly courted the multitude, and compassed sea and land to make a proselyte, and frequented the corners and public places to make a show of their piety. Ideal legal purity could not be attained by such a life, and hence members who aspired to a higher standard withdrew to form sacred colonies by themselves.

The rise of these desert colonies is not known, but the wanderer over the district between Jerusalem and the Dead Sea, in the days of John, came every here and there on such settlements, in the narrow, shady wadys, sometimes green in their hollows, which sink in great numbers from the high stony plateau, toward the Dead Sea. Their sad appearance, their life strictly regulated by the law, in the least detail, gave them the air of people weary of life, who had withdrawn from the world to prepare for death. They seemed to have given themselves up to a life-long penance, in hope of gaining heaven.

The earnestness of the order showed itself in its principles. The novices had to promise “to honor God, to be righteous toward man, to injure no one, either at the bidding of another or of their own accord; to hate evil, to promote good, to be faithful to every one, especially those in authority; to love the truth, to unmask liars, and to keep the hand from theft, and the conscience from unrighteous gain.” Slavery was forbidden, and no oaths permitted, save those by which members were admitted to the order. War, and even the manufacture of weapons, was held unlawful, nor would they even use animal food, since the law said, “Thou shalt not kill.” Trade, except so far as their simple wants required, was discountenanced.

But if their morality, drawn from the Old Testament, was pure and lofty, their slavish devotion to ceremonial observances marked them as the most superstitious of their nation. There were four grades of Levitical “cleanness,” through which the novice rose only by a long and stern probation; and it was defilement that needed to be washed away by a bath, for any member of a higher grade to be touched by one of a lower. Priests washed their hands and feet before any sacred rite, but the Essenes bathed their whole body in cold water before every meal, and all they ate must be prepared by one of their own number. On Sabbaths, they would not even move any vessel from its place, and they prepared all their food on Friday, to avoid kindling a fire on the sacred day. They refused to eat flesh or wine, partly from fear of defilement, partly because they wished to reproduce in their whole lives the strictness of the Nazarites, of the priests during their ministrations, and of the old Rechabites. Thus, their only food was that prescribed to others for fasts.

The whole life of an Essene was a long terror of defilement. The work of the colony began before sunrise, with psalms and hymns, followed by prayer and washing. They then went to their day’s work. At eleven—the fifth hour—the scattered laborers gathered again for a common bath in cold water. The woollen dress in which they worked was now laid aside, and the consecrated dress of the order put on, in preparation for their eating together, and their meal, which consisted only of bread and a single kind of vegetable, was eaten with prayer, in solemn stillness. The holy dress was then laid aside, and work resumed. In the evening, the second meal was taken, with the same solemnities and rites, and worship closed the day, that only pure thoughts might fill their souls as they retired to rest. One day followed another, with the monotony of pendulum beats, in precisely the same round of unbending forms.

The Essenes, as the mystics of Judaism, naturally gave themselves to metaphysical speculations, and revelled in fantastic allegorizing of Scripture. From the philosophic Judaism of Alexandria, they borrowed notions on free will and fate; and from Persia and Greece, with both of which their race had been, for long periods, in contact, they adopted various dogmas. The soul, they imagined, was a subtle ether of heavenly origin, drawn down to earth by a fell necessity, and imprisoned in the body till set free at death. It was then borne away, if pure, beyond the ocean, to a region where storms were unknown, and where the heat was tempered by a gentle west wind perpetually blowing from the ocean. If it had neglected the law, however, it was carried off to a dark, wintry abyss, to dwell there forever.

The influence of Essenism on the age, howhowever, was small, for its members were few in proportion to the teeming population, and made no attempt at propagandism, but lived entirely apart from men. The natural product of the times, with its Messianic hopes, its striving after legal righteousness, its glorification of the past, and its contact with heathen superstition, it served the purpose, in some measure, of drawing away the thoughts from the dream of national political glory, and of preparing the soil for the more spiritual conception of the Messiah, which John and Jesus were to introduce. The Essenes came in contact with the people as healers, prophets, dream-interpreters, and exorcists, not as teachers or preachers.

From their lofty morality, the Essenes have been assigned a rank among the spiritual forces of their age, to which in reality they had no claim. If their moral purity and spiritual depth breathed of the prophets rather than the theocracy, and made their order, in so far, a herald of Christianity, their exaggerated ceremonialism, their harsh austerity, and their fantastic and half-heathen superstitions neutralized, to a large extent, this healthy influence. Still, in some directions they surpassed in true morality anything in the last centuries of Jewish life. It gives even their harsh asceticism a higher dignity, that it was not, like that of the Pharisees, a mercenary service for external reward, but a self-denying attempt to keep out evil from the soul, and thus prepare it for that high communion with God, in whose sacred calm the still small voice of divine revelations grows audible. For the first time since the prophets, the spiritual condition of the soul was declared to be the end of religion. While the rabbis distracted the age with their fierce party strifes about the merely external, another kind of life ripened in the seclusion of the colonies of Essenes, which bore better fruit, because it concerned itself with the need of a new birth, and the circumcision of the heart, not with the theocracy, the temple, or politics. The likeness to Christianity, where it exists in Essenism, was not in its institutions, but in the quiet and meditative frame that breathed through the community in its religious seriousness and priestly consecration of life—the “daily keeping of Sabbath” which was also the ideal of the first Christian communions. G.

It is worthy of remark that almost the only quarter of Palestine which Jesus does not appear to have visited is the district near the Dead Sea, where the agricultural settlements of the Essenes were chiefly situated. H. M.

THE Jewish Church and nation, even in its last extremities, was able to contain these three divergent schools without disruption. So strong was the common bond of country and of faith, that the Sadducee, who could find in the ancient law no ground for hope of a future existence, and who resolutely refused to accept the convenient fiction of an oral tradition, could worship with the Pharisee, to whom the oral law was greater than the written, whose belief in immortality was bound up with the heroic struggles of the Maccabees, and who was in a state of chronic antagonism to the hierarchical and aristocratic class of which the Sadducee was the guardian and representative; while even the Essenes, who withdrew from the strife of Jerusalem to their oasis by the Dead Sea, who took part in none of the ceremonial ordinances, unless it were that of ablution, were yet not counted as outcasts, but are described even by Pharisaic historians as among the purest and holiest of men; and when their seers wandered for a moment into the haunts of men, they were welcomed as prophets even by the fierce populace and politic leaders of the capital. A. P. S.

Family and Religious Life of the Jews.

Family Life. “It must be granted,” says Ewald, “that in no ancient people has family life maintained itself so powerfully as in Israel, during the early days of the outward strength of the nation, or with so little weakening and deterioration as during the period of its gradual decline.” In their patriarch Isaac and his wife Rebecca, they had an abiding ideal which it seemed the highest felicity to copy. Woman, among the Jews, was never so dependent and despised as among other Eastern races, for the law proclaimed that she was bone of man’s bone, and flesh of his flesh, and designed to be a helpmeet for him.

Family life, resting on the holiest duty and reverence, has been nowhere, in any age, more beautiful than it was, and still is, among the Jews. In the parents, moreover, the passionate love of offspring, characteristic of the race, doubtless hallowed these lofty sanctions. The children of a Jewish household were the centre round which its life and love moved. Full of affection and sensibility, the heart of a Jew was not content with loving only those of his own generation, but yearned to extend itself to others who would inherit the future. A childless marriage was the bitterest trial. The rabbis went even so far as to say that childless parents were to be lamented as one would lament the dead. The purity of Jewish family life was proverbial even in antiquity. The surpassing morality of the ancient Scriptures, and the illustrations of ideal virtue presented by such mothers in Israel as Sarah, Rachel, Hannah, and Susanna, shed a holiness over household relationship in Israel that was unknown elsewhere. The Talmud hardly goes too far when it ascribes to the fidelity of the wives of the nation in Egypt its first deliverance and its national existence, and a modern Jew is, perhaps, justified in believing that the bond of family love among his people is stronger than in any other race.

At the frequently recurring household religious feasts, special rites, which should stir the child to ask their meaning, formed a regular part. The book of Proverbs abounds with proofs of the fidelity with which these commands were carried out by both fathers and mothers. In a virtuous home no opportunity was lost—at the table, at home or abroad, evening or morning—of instilling reverence for God’s law into the minds of the family, and of teaching them its express words throughout, till they knew them by heart. When we remember that the festivals made labor unlawful for two months in each year, in the aggregate, it is evident that the leisure thus secured would give great facilities for domestic instruction.

That every Jewish child should be taught to read, was held a religious duty; and every boy was required to learn the law. There was no Jew who did not know thoroughly the duties and rites of his religion, and the great deeds of his fathers: the misfortune was, that they were kept utterly ignorant of any other history than their own.

Religious Life. The whole existence of a Jew was religious, but it was a religiousness which, while the right spirit might not be wanting, was yet elaborately mechanical at every step. A devout Jew began his daily religious life with his first waking moments. “Every Israelite,” says Maimonides, “should be penetrated at all times by reverence for his Almighty Creator. The central thought of the godly and devout man is, ‘I have set the Lord continually before me.’ As if he stood before a king of flesh and blood, he should never forget the requirements of right conduct and ceremonial purity.” He was taught that his first thoughts, as soon as he waked, should be directed to the worship of God. Sleep was regarded as a kind of death, in which the soul leaves the body, to return to it on its awaking, and hence the first words of revived consciousness were an acknowledgment before “the living and everlasting King, of his having given back the soul for another day, in his great mercy and faithfulness.” Thanks for new life thus granted followed in something like this form: “My God, the soul which thou hast given me is clean. Thou hast created it, formed it, and breathed it into me, and thou wilt take it from me, and restore it me again. While this soul lives in me, I thank thee, O Eternal One, my God, and the God of my fathers! Lord of all works! King of all souls! Praised be thou, O Eternal, thou who puttest the souls again into dead bodies!”

Having risen from bed, it was not allowed to move four steps before washing the hands and face, which the rabbis taught was needed to cleanse one from the defilement of sleep, as the image of death. It was unlawful to touch the face, or any other part of the body, till this was done, nor could it be done except in the form prescribed. It was not lawful to do any work, or to eat any food, till the morning prayers had been repeated, either at home, or more properly in the synagogue, where they formed the daily morning service.

The religiousness of the first moments of the day was only in keeping with the whole life of a devout Jew. I have mentioned the morning first because our day begins then, but that of the Jew began in the evening. From the beginning of each day—that is, from the appearance of the first star—to its close, and from the first day of the week till the Sabbath; from the beginning of each month to its feasts and half-feasts; from each New Year’s Day to the next; and from one Sabbath year—that is, each seventh year—till another, the attention of every Jew was fixed unintermittedly on the sacred usages which returned either daily, weekly, or at set times, and kept his religion continually in his mind, not only by symbolical rites, but by prescribed words.

Lengthened prayers in set forms had to be repeated three times each day, and also at all feasts, half-feasts, and fast days; each kind of day having its special prayers. In every week there was a preparation day for the Sabbath, and there were similar preparation days for each feast in the different months; public worship was held twice weekly, each Monday and Thursday, and on feast days and holy days. Three pilgrimages to Jerusalem were required yearly, and others were often undertaken. A whole week was occupied by the feast of Unleavened Bread, and by that of Tabernacles, and by the feast of the Dedication. Every Jew was, moreover, occupied to a large extent, through his connection with the Temple, by tithes, sacrifices, and vows. He visited the holy place as often as possible, for prayer, and to offer special gifts.

He had to pay the most minute attention, continually, to permitted and forbidden food and clothing, and to the strict observance of all laws respecting the accessories of his public and private worship, his rolls of the law, his phylacteries, the blowing of trumpets, the gathering of palm twigs at the right times, and much more. The endless rules respecting the cleanness and uncleanness of persons and things demanded the greatest care every hour. Both men and women, as such, had many details to observe. Then, there were the everrecurring usages, festivities, or events of family life—circumcisions, betrothals, marriages, divorces, deaths, and mourning; the laws of the Sabbath year, recurring periodically, and many other diversified occurrences, which had each its prolixity of religious form, not to be overlooked. Besides all, extraordinary solemnities nities were appointed on special occasions, and these, again, made grave demands on the thoughtful care of the whole population. No wonder that the law was almost the one thing in a Jew’s mind, nor that one brought up in such an atmosphere should, in most cases, be blindly conservative and narrow. G.

The Basis and Change of the Sabbath.

As they at first existed, religion and the Church had but few and simple forms; and, correspondingly, the Sabbath was doubtless a day of few and simple duties. As, however, the ages rolled by, these things of God took on more and more of organized form and movement. The Sabbath in Eden must have been a sort of “Love Feast” between God and his two un-sinning worshippers. Afterward it took on sacrifice with confession and prayer, as the offering of sinners to a withdrawn because of-fended Maker. Later still, it gathered into itself a fuller and more richly significant ceremonial, as the specially enjoined worship of a chosen and peculiar people. And, finally, it became the day of the Lord of the whole earth, full of the memories of all his works in creation, in redemption, and in grace; and hallowed to the honor of his name, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost; a day for their most exalted and effective fellowship with the heirs of heaven, the candidates for an eternal Sabbath. From the first, the Sabbath has been God’s assessment on the time-estate granted to man; God’s tax on time, to remind man that the whole of it is his gift; God’s token to man that he fills all time with items for a future reckoning.

The peculiarities of the Mosaic economy which were abolished by Christianity were such as the Passover, the feast of the Weeks, the feast of the Tabernacles, the Aaronic High-Priesthood, the annual atonement, the various offerings and oblations, the shewbread, the ceremonial purifications, the special penalties by which certain laws were enforced, and the burdens of Jewish tradition. These and the like were allowedly parts of a temporary ritual, mere “shadows of good things to come,” which all vanished when the substance came and stood in their place. But the Sabbath, like marriage, the elements of moral law, the covenant of grace, the Church, the principle of a ministry, and such like, were permanences of religion before Moses was born. Under the Mosaic economy they were more distinctly recognized and more fully developed; and under the gospel they were modified or at least purified from the corrupt glosses of Jewish tradition; but they were never done away.

At the opening of the Christian economy, the whole state of the Church underwent a revolution. In some way, or to some extent, almost everything was changed. The Mediator was changed, Moses for Christ. The law was changed, the Levitical for the Evangelical. The High-Priesthood was changed, that of Aaron for that of Jesus. The promises were changed, those which looked primarily to temporal blessings for those which looked directly to eternal. The worship was changed, the stately and splendid rites of the Temple for the simple and spiritual forms of the Church. The Sacraments were changed, the Passover for the Lord’s Supper, and the bloody seal of circumcision for the unbloody laver of baptism. The whole dispensation was changed, that of the law and works for that of “grace and truth.” With all these changes, then, everything else made thus new, is it wonderful that the day of the Sabbath also was changed? Why was the divine rest originally fixed on the seventh day of the week? Because on that day God rested from his work of creation. On what day and in commemoration of what event should the Christian rest have been fixed, but the day and the event in which the Lord rested from the work of his new and spiritual creation, the work of delivering mankind from the thralldom of sin?

From the beginning, the divine rest was a festival, a day of holy joy. But on the old seventh day the crucified body of Jesus lay in the sepulchre, and his infant Church uttered its low, sad wail, “wrapped in its swaddling clothes” of fasting and of mourning. From that moment it became a totally unfit day for the celebration of a weekly and joyful holy rest. On the next, however—the glad first day of the week—Jesus rose, by divine power, from the dead, and reanimated his wailing Church to joy and gladness, and from that moment the first became the only fit day of the week for the celebration of this feast of rest, both on account of the preëminently joyful event which happened on it, and because of the preëminent glory of the work which it commemorates. He came among them on that blessed first day, and gave them the “peace” of a diviner Sabbath than even that of the first morning to man: a peace, sealed by the blood of redemption, from his hands and his side; by the labors and the love, the work and the heart, of a suffering and a conquering Saviour! Weeks later still, on the first day of the week, the day of Pentecost, the disciples again “were all with one accord in one place,” and then Jesus, the divine dispenser of all heavenly gifts, shed down on his assembled Church the promised Comforter, the fulness of the divine Spirit, with all the marvels of that most glorified Sabbath, a divine rest, now sacred to Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, gathering into itself the memory of the three great works of the Trinity, and pouring forth for Christians the fulness of his manifold grace. Thus by his example did Jesus hallow the first day of the week as a divine rest to Christians, throughout the evangelic age, and by the authority of a God sanctioned the change so made.

And what he thus gave, in and through his inspiring example, his apostles kept and perpetuated, in and through the example of their inspired practice. During the ministry of Paul, the disciples, following the now clearly indicated will of their Master, “came together on the first day of the week, to break bread,” and to listen to the preaching of the gospel. Stone.

And this was the day appointed by the apostle, for the Christians to lay by their charitable contributions for the poor. Still weightier is the testimony of John, of later date. For while in the cases cited from Paul’s history this day is called simply the first day of the week, the first day after the Sabbath, it appears in Rev. 1 : 10 already under the significant appellation, “the Lord’s day;” that is, the day of Christ, to whom John refers everything. In the same sense the Paschal Supper is styled in 1 Cor. 11 : 20 “the Lord’s Supper.” This expression plainly points to the religious observance of Sunday, on which the holy seer received the revelation of the future triumphs of Christ and his Church; and it shows at the same time the place which that day held in the minds of the primitive Christians. P. S.

The mode in which the change was really effected was exactly analogous to the change in the Passover for the Lord’s Supper, and of circumcision for baptism. No precept for the abolition of either the Passover or circumcision was ever issued; but both were suffered to stand side by side among the Jewish converts with the Lord’s Supper and with baptism. Those converts were willing to observe the Christian rites, provided they might be allowed to observe also the Passover and circumcision, to which, even as manifestly dying ceremonies, they still so eagerly and so fondly clung. They were similarly willing to observe the Lord’s day, provided that they might be allowed to observe also their ancient Sabbath. All these things therefore they were with a divine wisdom permitted to do, and with them, in doing so, the apostles as Jews occasionally mingled. And thus the Christian sacraments and Sabbath, gradually, silently, and inoffensively, grew into credit and reverence; till finally the mighty judgments of God came over the unbelieving body of the nation, swept their loved city and their lingering tribes from their ancient resting place, and left their empty rites and silent Sabbath, without observers, to drop away and vanish from the new and growingly vigorous fabric of the Christian institutes, which then, with their included sacraments and Sabbath, rose peacefully and unopposed into universal observance in the Church.

As a summary of above points: The Sabbath has never been abolished; the Sabbath has been officially purified; the Sabbath has been authoritatively changed. The mere day for its observance was transferred from the last of the old dispensation to the first of the new. There was no need of words to enact the change: it was legislated into practice by DIVINE ACTION. The Sabbath was first instituted by example and not by precept: by example and not by precept it was changed from the old and last seventh day of the grave to the new and first of the resurrection. He who instituted and he who changed was one and the same. His example, both in instituting and changing, has one and the same power, one and the same authority. The last Sabbath of the seventh day was the dying Sabbath of a “dead Christ;” the first Sabbath of the first day is the live Sabbath of the RISEN JESUS. He “entered into his rest” on it; and thus made it the Sabbath of the CHRISTIAN AGE. Stone.

Historical Summaries, relating to the Jews and to Jerusalem.

THE Jews, after the Captivity, did not attempt to resume the occupation of the country by tribes; but, first resorting to Jerusalem in a mass and then spreading themselves upon the adjacent country, they afterward, in quest of further territory, passed round the central portion possessed by the hated Samaritans, and settled the region to the north, between Gennesaret and the Mediterranean, thereafter known in history as Galilee. And, in the time of Christ, these were the three great divisions of the country—Judea on the south, Galilee on the north, and Samaria between.

The canon of the Old Testament closes soon after the restoration of the Jews from captivity; yet from secular sources we learn of the general fortunes of Palestine in the interval of about 450 years between the Old and the New Testaments. For more than one hundred years the country was governed by a Satrap of Persia, having his seat at Damascus. The High-Priest at Jerusalem was the deputy of the Satrap, and by this arrangement the Jews enjoyed a good degree of liberty. Then came the overthrow of the Persian power by Alexander the Great, who adopted toward the Jewish people a mild and liberal policy. After the death of Alexander, Palestine was for a time subject to the easy sway of the Ptole-

Ptolemies; but, a little over two hundred years before Christ, the Syrian kings wrested the country from its Egyptian rulers, and inaugurated a reign of cruelty and terror. Such became the excess of oppression under Antiochus Epiphanes and his general Apollonius, by whom Jerusalem was plundered, the Temple defiled, and the streets made to run with the blood of its murdered people, that the spirit of patriotic revenge was roused in the hearts of the nation, and, under the lead of the priestly family of the Asmoneans, including the Maccabees, the yoke of the Syrians was thrown off, and the independence of the nation secured. N. C. B.

Antiochus Epiphanes was ever afterward held in abhorrence by the Jews, and a special fast was kept up in memory of the time when the “abomination of desolation” stood in the Holy place. The champions of the independence of the Jewish nation and the purity of the Jewish religion were the family of the Maccabees or Asmoneans: and a hundred years before the birth of Christ the first Hyrcanus was reigning over a prosperous and independent kingdom. But in the time of the second Hyrcanus and his brother, the family of the Maccabees was not what it had been, and Judea was ripening for the dominion of Rome. Pompey the Great, the same conqueror who had already subjected Cilicia, appeared in Damascus, and there judged the cause of the two brothers. In the spring of the year 63 he came down by the valley of the Jordan, his Roman soldiers occupied the ford where Joshua had crossed over, and from the Mount of Olives he looked down upon Jerusalem. From that day Judea was virtually under the government of Rome. After a brief support to the reigning Maccabean or Asmonean family, a new native dynasty was raised to the throne. Antipater, a man of Idumean birth, had been minister of the Maccabean kings. In the midst of the confusion of the great civil wars, Antipater prepared a crown for his son Herod, and the Herodian family succeeded to the Asmonean. J. S. H.

NEARLY the entire history of the world might be written in that of two mighty cities, whose destinies are yet unfinished, and whose vicissitudes have exerted an influence upon the interests of the universe. The city of the seven hills yields in importance to her Jewish sister, for although Rome had a long career of ancient splendor, and is the cradle of modern civilization, yet the holy city had an existence in the world seven hundred years before Romulus had ploughed out the trench line of the future Rome, three hundred before Æneas had landed at the Lavinian shores, or Troy had fallen to the Greeks, an historic existence five centuries before the hanging gardens of Babylon were built, when Grecian civilization had not yet dawned, and immigrations were still settling on her shores from Egypt, Phenicia, and Mysia. She takes precedence of Rome also in importance, for although Rome after being for ages the scene of a splendid life drama, the centre of universal power, and the abode of a refined paganism, became the high place of modern Christianity, yet it was at Jerusalem the kings of the chosen people dwelt, into whose hands were intrusted the oracles of that religion; it was at Jerusalem the Temple of the Most High was erected, whose presence invested the Holy of Holies with an awe from which even devastating heathens often fled in terror; finally it was at Jerusalem that the foreshadowed One of all past history worked his Father’s will, and gave himself as a sacrifice for man. Rome, too, suffered many vicissitudes, but the vicissitudes of Jerusalem exceed those of any city recorded in history. Eng. Review.

The Rome of history was the head of the secular world; the Jerusalem of history was the head of the sacred world. Rome was the symbol of power and law; Jerusalem was the emblem of divine truth and salvation. In the empire of earth, Rome reigned unrivalled; in the domain of religion, of faith, of heaven, Jerusalem was equally unrivalled. And by as much as the heavenly surpasses the earthly by so much do the associations of ancient Jerusalem surpass in attractive interest those of Rome.

How are our minds stirred at the very mention of Jerusalem! We think at once of “the thrones of the house of David”—of God’s viceroys anointed by himself; we think of that Temple of Jehovah, at whose entrance for centuries smoked the morning and the evening sacrifice, and to which gathered the nation annually in festal or penitential assemblies; we think of Him, the King of the Jews, the One greater than the Temple—whose goings about this city, whose death without its gate, whose departure from its neighborhood up to the right hand of the Father, have invested its localities with a celestial sanctity and glory. N. C. B.

UNDER the last governors, Felix, Festus, Albinus, and Florus, moral corruption and the dissolution of all social ties, and at the same time the oppressiveness of the Roman yoke, increased every year. At last in the year 66, under the last procurator, Gessius Florus (from 65 onward), a wicked and cruel tyrant, who, as Josephus says, was placed as a hangman over evil-doers, there began an organized rebellion against the Romans, but at the same time a terrible civil war also between the zealots and the conservatives, as well as between different parties of the revolters themselves. The Christians, remembering the Lord’s admonition, forsook Jerusalem and fled to the town of Pella beyond the Jordan, in the north of Perea, where King Herod Agrippa II., before whom Paul once stood, opened to them a safe asylum. The emperor Nero, informed of this rebellion, sent the famous general Vespasian with a large force to Palestine. Vespasian opened the campaign in the year 67 from the Syrian port-town Ptolemais, and against a stout resistance overran Galilee with an army of sixty thousand men. But events in Rome hindered him from completing the tragedy, and required him to return thither. Nero had killed himself. The emperors Galba, Otho, and Vitellius followed one another in rapid succession; and Vespasian, in the year 69, was universally proclaimed emperor.

His son Titus, who himself ten years after became emperor, and highly distinguished himself by his mildness and philanthropy, then undertook the prosecution of the Jewish war, and became the instrument in the hand of God of destroying the Holy City and the Temple. P. S.—With several legions and numerous auxiliaries, he ascended from Cesarea to Samaria, thence marching southward and going into fortified camps at Gibeah and on Mount Scopus, north of the city. Here he was joined by a legion from the west; and another, which had been stationed at Jericho, marched up from that place and encamped on the Mount of Olives. The whole force was still further augmented by several legions called from about the Euphrates.

In April A. D. 70, the siege began. The condition of Jerusalem was, on all accounts, most distressing. The time was just that of the Passover, when the city was crowded with strangers attending the festival. [“Thou shalt be destroyed,” Christ had said, “and thy children within thee.”] Then, there was no harmony among the political leaders. On the contrary, armed and deadly hostile factions preyed upon one another, and together oppressed and persecuted the body of the people, who had little sympathy with any of them. Vast stores of provisions were destroyed by these factions in their mutual strifes, just as the siege was beginning; thus hastening the calamity of famine by which the great majority of the people subsequently perished. The efforts of these factions against one another ceased for a time, when Titus began the siege; and the armed forces of the Jews, uniting against the common foe, did brave battle and achieved important successes in their sudden sallies and fierce onsets against the too unwary Romans. But when, afterward, the Romans went cautiously and quietly about the work of a systematic reduction of the city, these factions had time for renewed efforts at mutual destruction. N. C. B.

Jerusalem was fortified by three walls, and by the battlements of the Temple and Fort Antonia. The north wall, then recently built, encompassed Bezetha, reaching down on the east side to Fort Antonia, and on the west to Zion. The second wall included Akra, or the Lower City (north of Zion). The third and oldest wall was that encompassing Zion, or the Upper City. Besides these upon Moriah were Fort Antonia and the Temple area with its vast structures. Each of these was a separate and mighty citadel. J. G. B.—Thus there were four distinct towns, each requiring a separate siege. The capture of the first wall only opened Bezetha. The second wall forced, only Akra or the Lower City was won. The strong rock-built citadel of Antonia and the Temple on the east, and Zion (loftiest and most impregnable of all) on the west, were not in the least weakened. H. M. (See page 661.)

Titus directed his first attack against the north wall, inclosing Bezetha. J. G. B.—His method was to rear embankments of earth and rock as near the wall as possible, which were surmounted with wooden towers for the soldiers and their various artillery. Battering-rams, as opportunity was gained, were brought against the vulnerable portions of the wall. N. C. B.—One of these battering engines was called by the Jews Nico the Victorious, for it beat down everything before it. Day and night it thundered, till at length the wall began to totter. The Jews, exhausted by fatigue, at once retreated to the second wall. The Romans entered Bezetha, and threw down a great part of the wall. Titus immediately gave orders for the attack of the second wall. Before long the great engine began to thunder against its central tower. The fifth day after, the Jews retreated from the second wall, and Titus entered the Lower City with a thousand picked men. Instead of throwing down the walls and burning as he went, with a view of gaining the people, he issued orders that no houses should be set on fire and no massacre committed. The fierce insurgents hailed this as a sign of weakness, and fell furiously on the Romans. Titus at last brought off most of his men. The insurgents then manned the breach, and made a wall of their own bodies, fighting for three days without intermission. On the fourth they were forced to retire, and Titus, entering the wall a second time, threw down the whole northern part of it, and strongly garrisoned the towers toward the south.

Two walls had fallen, but still the precipitous heights of Zion, the impregnable Antonia, and the stately Temple, lowered defiance on the invaders. H. M.—Meanwhile famine was raging, and the people by thousands were perishing from starvation. Unable to find food in the city, many would stealthily seek it beyond the walls. These, when caught by the Romans, were hung up crucified in sight of the walls; until the number of captives became so great as to exhaust the material of which crosses could be constructed. N. C. B.

After seventeen days’ labor, embankments were raised against the height of Antonia; the engines were mounted and the Roman legions stationed in readiness for assault. But at one point the Jews undermined the Roman works, and fired a mass of combustible matter stored beneath, when suddenly engines and embankments sank into a “fiery abyss and were either buried or consumed.” At another point, by a sudden desperate assault, the Jews set fire to the great Nico and its supporting works, and compelled the defeated Romans to retreat to their fortified camp. The loss of their battering train constrained delay, and determined the Romans to blockade the remaining unconquered heights. J. G. B.

Titus then proceeded to invest the entire city with what Josephus calls a “wall,” which, since it was constructed in three days, we infer to have been a ditch, lined with the bank of earth thrown out in excavating it. This work was undertaken to prevent all supplies from without, and so to compel the city’s speedy surrender. Thus were the very words of our Saviour’s prediction verified. This plan accomplished its object so far as terribly to aggravate the famine. In a short time the upper rooms of the houses generally, and whole streets, were filled with the dead. Friends became unable to care for their own dead, and by public arrangement all corpses were cast out of the city. The demoralization of the people which followed was frightful. The strong despoiled the weak; often wrestling the pittance of food, which the latter had gained, out of their very mouths. N. C. B.

The Romans, in the mean time, labored hard at their military engines. They were obliged to bring timber from a considerable distance, so that not a tree was left standing within ten miles of the city. All the gardens, the orchards, the shady avenues, where the inhabitants had enjoyed the luxury of their delicious climate, were utterly destroyed; and the whole gay and luxuriant suburban region turned to a frightful solitude. H. M.

Still the armed leaders refused to surrender; and the Romans, having completed their preparations, renewed the attack in the seventh month of the siege, concentrating their efforts on the strong tower of Antonia. In a few days this key-point of the city’s defences was won; the Jews retiring thence into the Temple, and preparing to defend themselves anew there. Once more Titus tried negotiations, but still the leaders were undaunted and determined. The next step for the Romans was to storm the Temple. N. C. B.

For some days, commemorated by the Jews in the traditional name of “days of wretchedness,” the most desperate hand-to-hand encounters took place, some in the passages from the Antonia to the cloisters, some in the cloisters themselves, the Romans endeavoring to force their way in, the Jews preventing them. But the Romans gradually gained ground. First the western, and then the whole of the northern external cloister was burned, and then the wall inclosing the court of Israel and the holy house itself. In the interval the daily sacrifice had failed, owing to the want of officiating priests; a circumstance which had greatly distressed the people, and was taken advantage of by Titus to make a further though fruitless invitation to surrender. At length, by the wanton act of a soldier, contrary to the intention of Titus and in spite of every exertion he could make to stop it, the sanctuary itself was fired. S.—The whole building was in flames in an instant. The blinding smoke forced the officers to retreat, and the noble edifice was left to its fate.

It was an appalling spectacle to the Roman; what was it to the Jew? The whole summit of the hill blazed like a volcano. One after another the buildings fell in, with a tremendous crash, and were swallowed up in the fiery abyss. The roofs of cedar were like sheets of flame; the gilded pinnacles shone like spikes of red light; the gate-towers sent up tall columns of flame and smoke. The neighboring hills were lighted up, and dark groups of people were seen watching in horrible anxiety the progress of the destruction; the walls and heights of the Upper City were crowded with faces, some pale with the agony of despair, others scowling unavailing vengeance. The shouts of the Roman soldiery as they ran to and fro, and the howlings of the insurgents who were perishing in the flames, mingled with the roaring of the conflagration and the thundering sound of falling timbers. The echoes of the mountains replied, or brought back the shrieks of the people on the heights: all along the walls resounded screams and wailings: men expiring with famine rallied their remaining strength to utter a cry of anguish and desolation. H. M.—No wonder that the historian represents even the mountains of Moab beyond the Jordan as returning the echo of the groans and cries, and augmenting the dreadful din. N. C. B.

The Temple was at last gained; but it seemed as if half the work remained to be done. The Upper City, higher than Moriah, inclosed by the original wall of David and Solomon, and on all sides precipitous except at the north, where it was defended by the wall and towers of Herod, was still to be taken. Titus tried a parley first through Josephus, and then in person, he standing on the east end of the bridge between the Temple and the Upper City, and the leaders, John and Simon, on the west end. His terms, however, were rejected, and no alternative was left him but to force on the siege. The whole of the low part of the town was burned, in the teeth of a frantic resistance from the zealots, together with the suburb of Ophel under the south wall of the Temple, and the houses as far as Siloam on the lower slopes of the Temple mount.

It took eighteen days to erect the necessary works for the siege. At the west or northwest corner, where Herod’s palace abutted on the wall, and where the three magnificent and impregnable towers of Hippicus, Phasælus, and Mariamne rose conspicuous, was the main attack. It was commenced about September 11th, and by the next day a breach was made in the walls, and the Romans at last entered the city. Such parts as had escaped the former conflagrations were burned, and the whole of both city and Temple were ordered to be demolished, excepting the west wall of the Upper City (Zion), and Herod’s three great towers, which were left standing as memorials of the massive nature of the fortifications. S.

Thus fell the metropolis of the Jewish state. Of all the stately city—the populous streets, the palaces of the Jewish kings, the fortresses of her warriors, the Temple of her God—not a ruin remained, except the tall towers of

Phasælus, Mariamne, and Hippicus, and part of the western wall. H. M.

Of the Jews, the aged and infirm were killed; the children under seventeen were sold as slaves; the rest were sent, some to the Egyptian mines, some to the provincial amphitheatres (to be slain in combats with wild beasts, or fighting as gladiators), and some to grace the triumph of the conqueror. Titus then departed, leaving the tenth legion, under the command of Terentius Rufus, to carry out the work of demolition. Of this Josephus assures us that “the whole was so thoroughly levelled and dug up, that no one visiting it would believe that it had ever been inhabited.” S.

Even the heathen Titus publicly exclaimed that God aided the Romans and drove the Jews from their impregnable strongholds. The Jew Josephus, a learned priest and Pharisee, who has described the whole Jewish war at length in seven books, and who went through it himself from beginning to end, at first as governor of Galilee, then as a prisoner of Vespasian, finally as a companion of Titus and mediator between the Romans and Jews, recognized in this tragical event a divine judgment, and admitted of his degenerate countrymen, to whom he was otherwise attached: “I will not hesitate to say what gives me pain: I believe, that had the Romans delayed their punishment of that ungodly people, the city would have been swallowed up by the earth, or overwhelmed with a flood, or, like Sodom, consumed with fire from heaven. For the generation which was in it was far more ungodly than the men on whom those punishments had in former times fallen. By their madness, the whole nation is ruined.” Thus, therefore, must one of the best Roman emperors execute the long threatened judgment of God, and the most learned Jew of his time describe it, and thereby, without willing or knowing it, bear testimony to the truth of the word, and the divinity of the mission, of Jesus Christ, the rejection of whom brought all this and the subsequent misfortune upon the apostate “royal priesthood.” P. S.

[To the pages of Dean Milman the interested reader of the above summary is commended, for a fuller and more impressive account of this greatest tragedy in human history—greatest because of its vital connection with man’s Divine Redeemer and Redemption. J. G. B.]

Sculptures on the Arch of Titus.—Before the Temple was consumed, Titus entered into the sanctuary and most holy place, and was struck with its remaining grandeur. Out of

The Golden Candlestick.

the former he saved the golden candlestick, the table of the shewbread, the altar of incense, all of pure gold, and the book of the law wrapped up in a rich golden tissue. After Vespasian’s triumph at Rome, he built a Temple of Peace, in which he laid up these golden vessels and instruments; but the law, and the purple veils of the holy place, he ordered to be deposited in his palace. These precious relics of the temple worship were carried off by Genseric, four hundred years afterward, when he pillaged Rome. The triumphal arch of Titus at Rome (between the Capitol and the

The Golden Table.

Coliseum), erected to commemorate the taking of Jerusalem, remains to this day, a striking memorial of the truth of this fact, and a noble monument of antiquity. On the south side of it is represented the triumphal entry into Rome, and on the opposite side is shown the procession of the captive Jews, with staves in their hands, bearing the spoils of the Temple of Jerusalem: the GOLDEN CANDLESTICK with its SEVEN BRANCHES; the GOLDEN TABLE, and the SILVER TRUMPETS. There is a small passage at one side for the Jews, as they cannot be prevailed on to pass under the arch which celebrates the triumph of their enemies and the downfall of their national glory. R. Haldane.

We present here a representation of the captive Jews bearing the vessels of the Temple, which are sculptured on the arch of Titus at Rome. They are still in good preservation.

FOR more than fifty years after its destruction by Titus, Jerusalem disappears from history. But in the reign of Hadrian it again emerged from its obscurity, and became the centre of an insurrection which the best blood of Rome was shed to subdue. The embers of revolt, long smouldering, burst into a flame soon after Hadrian’s departure from the East in A. D. 132. The contemptuous indifference of the Romans, or the secrecy of their own plans, enabled the Jews to organize a widespread conspiracy. Bar-Cocheba, their leader, the third, according to Rabbinical writers, of a dynasty of the same name, princes of the Captivity, was crowned king at Bether by the Jews who thronged to him, and by the populace was regarded as the Messiah. All the Jews in Palestine flocked to his standard. At an early period in the revolt they became masters of Jerusalem, and attempted to rebuild the temple. Hadrian, alarmed at the rapid spread of the insurrection, and the ineffectual efforts of his troops to repress it, summoned from Britain Julius Severus, the greatest general of his time, to take the command of the army of Judea. Two years were spent in a fierce guerrilla warfare before Jerusalem was taken, after a desperate defence, in which Bar-Cocheba perished. Five hundred and eighty thousand are said to have fallen by the sword, while the number of victims to the attendant calamities of war was countless. On the side of the Romans the loss was enormous, and so dearly bought was their victory, that Hadrian, in his letter to the Senate announcing the conclusion of the war, did not adopt the usual congratulatory phrase. S.

This date, 135, has always been accepted as that of their final dispersion. The Holy City was then made a Roman colony, the Jews were forbidden to enter into its walls under pain of immediate death, the very name was altered to the pagan one of Ælia Capitolina, a temple was erected on Mount Moriah to Jupiter Capitolinus, and Jerusalem was henceforth spoken of by this pagan name until the days of Constantine. Helena, the emperor’s mother, built a church on the site of the Nativity, and agitated Christendom to its foundations by the announcement of the discovery of the true cross. Constantine then built a church on the site of the holy sepulchre, and at last the Jews were admitted once a year into the city of their glory, to sing penitential psalms over their degradation.

In the year 614, the Persians fell upon Jerusalem, and this time the Christians suffered, ninety thousand of whom were killed. Then it was retaken by the Romans, when the Emperor Heraclius marched in triumph through its streets with the real cross on his shoulders. In 637, however, it fell into the hands of Arabic Saracens, from whom the Turks took it in 1079. Then came that marvellous agitation of Europe, when she poured out her millions of devotees to drive the Infidel from the Holy

Land; and in 1099 Godfrey de Bouillon was proclaimed King of Jerusalem by the victorious Crusaders. The Christians held it for eighty-eight years, when Saladin, the Sultan of Egypt, wrested it from them in 1187, and they held it until the year 1517, when the Ottoman Turks seizing upon Jerusalem made the twenty-first and last invasion which this devoted city has undergone, and in their hands it still remains. Eng. Rev.—The whole age of Jerusalem is now about 3,964 years. Spreading over almost the entire historic period of the human race, it has shared largely in that history—and the end is not yet! W. M. T.

On any theory of prophetic interpretation, it appears highly probable, if not absolutely certain, that in the progress of Christianity, and the blessing of the whole world thereby, Jewish and Gentile, Palestine, no longer under the misrule of barbarians and the blight of false religion, shall become a goodly land, its cities be rebuilt, Jerusalem become a praise, and a large portion, if not the whole body of the Jewish people, be found in the old home of their fathers, honored amid the family of nations, in proportion as, through the ages, they have been so generally despised. N. C. B.

Palestine, the Scene of the Labors of our Lord.

MIDWAY between the lands of Eastern luxuriance and of Western civilization lies one of the most remarkable countries of the globe, Palestine—the land of the shepherds—so called from the pursuit of tribes who early peopled it. It is about one hundred and sixty miles long, and at widest seventy miles broad, a small region, which at times reckoned more than five millions of inhabitants.

The region seems shut in on all sides. Its western boundary is the Great Sea, the sea on whose shores lie the mouldering remains of the ancient kingdoms of Egypt, of Greece, of Carthage, and of Rome. And yet that sea was never covered with the commerce of the Jews. On the southwest it is desert. On the south, a range of high hills and the barren sands of the Arabah forbid all access to the wilderness of Sinai, and the waters of the Red Sea. On the east, we have the sandy plains of Arabia, stretching away to the great river, “the river Euphrates:” and, on the north, a mountain-chain terminating on the snow-capped summits of Lebanon.

By the seaboard lie the beautiful plains of Philistia and Sharon; and between the two ranges of hills, which run nearly parallel from north to south throughout the whole land, lies the valley of the Jordan, reaching from the sides of Lebanon to the Dead Sea. Beyond Lebanon again, the valley stretches away still northward (under the name of Cœlo-Syria), to the very centre of Asia the Less. This mountain-range of Lebanon rises to the height of 10,000 feet. Everywhere there is enough to justify the hope that one day in seven, and even one year in seven, might be kept free from toil, and yet the people live in the midst of abundance. A careful observer, moreover, looking only at the surface of the country itself, would pronounce it the fitting residence of a hardy and prosperous race.

This region is nearly in the centre of the ancient world, equally distant from the heart of Asia, of Africa, and of Europe, and on the high-road between them all. One of its plains (Esdraelon) has been a battle-field of successive armies, for more than 3,000 years. Assyrians and Persians, Persians and Greeks, Jews and Gentiles, Crusaders and Saracens, Egyptians and Turks, Arabs and Franks, have all fought here.

If it had been one purpose of the Christian faith to foster a spirit of superstitious reverence for places, no country in the world would have furnished richer materials than “the land of the Bible.” That faith is indeed almost as much superior to heathen systems in touching incident, historical associations, and hoar antiquity, as it is in spiritual truth. It is in this region, this central spot of the earth, this temperate and tropical clime, this country of industry, of diligence, and of tempting repose, that we find the scenes of the life of Christ.

To this region the personal ministry of our Lord was confined. For the primary object of his coming was not to teach the nations; not so much, in fact, to reveal a gospel, as to act one; to lay the foundation of those truths which his apostles were afterward to proclaim abroad. For a life of intense and mysterious suffering (such was his life as a substitutionary sacrifice) it was essential that he should move on a narrow stage: and above all, was it essential that his life and death should be first accomplished, before the message of mercy, a message justified only by his suffering, should be communicated to the nations. The very restrictedness of his sphere, therefore, and the quiet, unostentatious character of his personal labors, are really among the evidences of the divinity of his mission. They are explained by the prominence which he himself attached to his death. It was the end of his life to die: and he left it to his apostles after his death to carry the doctrines, of which that death was the embodiment and the foundation, throughout Judea, and Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth. J. A.

The geography of Palestine, as we find it to-day, is the strongest testimony of the truth of that history which purports to emanate thence. The natural scenery of Palestine speaks in but one voice in favor of the Bible; every word of the sacred narrative receives its best interpretation by being studied in connection with the place where it was recorded. Ritter.

M. Renan visited the Holy Land in 1861. “All that history,” he says, “which at a distance seemed to float in the clouds of an unreal world took instantly a body, a solidity, which astonished me. The striking accord between the texts and the places, the marvelous harmony of the evangelical picture with the country which served as its frame, were to me as a revelation. I had before my eyes a fifth gospel, mutilated but still legible; and ever afterward in the recitals of Matthew and Mark, instead of an abstract being that one would say had never existed, I saw a wonderful human figure live and move.”

The actual features of the land are seen to be intwined with the Scripture history, in a way most strongly to uphold it as veritable and to exhibit it as vividly real. The natural features of Palestine—its fountains, its lakes, its rivers, its mountains, its plains, its peculiarities of climate and soil and productions—are mute yet eloquent witnesses for the truth of the Scriptures, and expounders of the Bible as the Book of God. N. C. B.

Physical Map, Descriptions and Diagrams. The Jordan and the Dead Sea.

THE great mountain-range of the Lebanon, as it runs down between the Mediterranean and the Jordan Valley, forms successively the mountain-region of Galilee, the hill-country of Samaria, and the hill-country of Judea. Extending from Hebron, it spreads over the south country, widening as it is traced southward. H. B. T.

Western Palestine may be briefly described as a mountainous central district, running north and south, flanked on each side by a plain. The plain on the west, or that of the sea-coast, has an average width of twelve or fourteen miles. The plain on the east is the valley of the Jordan, lying between the Dead Sea on the south and the Sea of Galilee on the north. This is narrower than the plain of the coast, reaching a breadth of only eight or ten miles in its widest part, at Jericho.

Between these two plains—of the west and the east—of the Mediterranean and the Jordan—lies the principal bulk of Palestine, a mountain-district, extending from below Hebron on the south to the plain of Esdraelon on the north, eighty miles long by thirty wide. This district—especially its southern half, the Judea of the New Testament—is indescribably rough and rocky. It is corrugated with ridges, or embossed with hill-tops. The northern half—the Samaria of the New Testament—shows more continuous mountain-chains and broader valleys. N. C. B.

To complete this outline view, we should mark the broad plain of Esdraelon, sweeping across the country east and west, along the northern end of the central region of Samaria; and then the hill-country of Galilee rising steeply out of this plain, and extending northward up the high slopes of Lebanon and Hermon. N. C. B.

From Joppa on the Mediterranean, through Jerusalem, to the mountains of Moab east of the Dead Sea. This exaggerated outline is designed to show the relative heights of the Mediterranean, the Judean Ridge, and the mountains of Moab; and the depth of the Dead Sea chasm.

There is a remarkable difference between the two sides of the ridge which forms the central chain of Judea. On the western accivility, the soil rises from the sea toward the elevated ground in four distinct terraces, which are covered with an unfading verdure.

The shore is lined with mastic trees, palms, and prickly pears. Higher up, the vines, the olives, and the sycamores, amply repay the labor of the cultivator; natural groves arise, consisting of evergreen oaks, cypresses, andrachnés, and turpentines. On the eastern side, however, from the summit of the hills a desert stretches along to the Dead Sea, presenting nothing but stones and ashes, and a few thorny shrubs. The sides of the mountains enlarge, and assume an aspect at once more grand and more barren. An.—The wilderness of Judah—different portions of which have, in the O. T., separate names—stretches along the entire length (on the western side) of the Dead Sea, with a breadth of ten miles. It comprises, in its whole desolate length, huge masses of crag and abysses of chasm. J. G. B.

Showing elevations in Judea, Samaria, and Galilee, including Mount Hermon; also the depression of the Jordan River and Valley, and the basins of the Dead Sea and the Sea of Galilee. This outline is also greatly exaggerated, for the more impressive exhibition of the relative heights and depths.

ALTITUDES AND DEPTHS. (Van de Velde.)

| | Above Sea-level. | | Below Sea-level. | | — | — | — | — | | Jerusalem | 2,642 feet. | Lake of Gennesaret, or Sea of Galilee | 653 feet. | | Nazareth | 1,265 " | (Greatest depth of this Sea, 160 feet.) | | | Horns of Hattin | 1,191 " | The Dead Sea | 1,292 feet. | | Tabor | 2,017 " | (Greatest depth, according to Lynch, 1,308 feet.) | | | Carmel | 1,861 " | | | | Cesarea Philippi (Banias Castle, 2,200 feet) | 1,200 " | | | | Damaseus | 2,400 " | | | | Hermon | 9,058 " | | | | Lebanon | 10,061 " | | | | Hasbelya source of Jordan | 1,700 " | | | | Banias " " | 1,200 " | | | | Dan " " | 647 " | | | | Merom or Hooleh Lake | 180 " | | J. M. |

It rises among the Lebanon Mountains in the north, and flows almost due south, first through a marshy plain to the Lake Hooleh or

Merom, then about nine miles to the Lake of Gennesaret or Sea of Galilee, descending in this distance 800 feet, and reaching, at the surface of the lake, a point 653 feet below the surface of the Mediterranean, and thence issu-

The Valley of the Jordan.

ing a headlong torrent, crooked and precipitous, through a narrow valley, falling rapidly meanwhile, and finally issuing in the Dead or Salt Sea, whose surface is over 1,300 feet below the level of the Mediterranean. Its average width between the two seas is from 70 to 80 yards, though at its mouth it is 180 yards. The Jordan thus divides the Holy Land into sections very clearly separated, partly by its waters, yet more by the valley or gorge through which it flows. L. A.

From the Hasbeiya source to the Dead Sea, the direct distance is about 120 miles. I estimate the addition to be made for winding of the channel from the source to the end of the Sea of Galilee as 20 per cent., and for the rest as 100 per cent. This would make the water in the first part to be 60 miles long, and in the second part 140 miles, or in all 200 miles of channel, from the source to the Dead Sea. The Hasbeiya source is 1,700 feet above the Mediterranean, and the Dead Sea is 1,300 feet below the Mediterranean, so that the total fall of Jordan is 3,000 feet, which would be 15 feet per mile of its channel, or 25 feet per mile of its direct distance.

As a general outline, it may be said that the Jordan runs 20 miles, falling 1,400 feet, into a basin 12 miles long that takes in Lake Hooleh; then runs 10 miles, falling 700 feet, into another basin 14 miles long, the Sea of Galilee; then runs 65 miles, falling 700 feet, into a basin 46 miles long and 1,300 feet deep, the Dead Sea. Here, the waters of Jordan being fresh, and therefore lighter than the highly saturated salt water of the Dead Sea, the river stream most probably disperses over the upper surface only; and so, being evaporated before they mingle much with the brine that lies heavy and deep below, they are wafted by the south wind in clouds once more to Hermon, and, condensed into snow-flakes, with water from the Abana and Pharpar, also borne up to Hermon, they trickle down again to run along old Jordan’s bed, their endless round. J. M.

THIS is, doubtless, the most remarkable body of water in the world. Among its chief features of interest are: the extraordinary depression of the basin which it occupies, the surface of the sea being 1,300 feet below the level of the Mediterranean, and the bottom of the sea 1,300 feet below the surface; the saltness and buoyancy of its water; the

Map and Longitudinal Section (from N. to S.) of the Dead Sea, from the Observations, Surveys, and Soundings of Lynch, Robinson, De Sauley, Van de Velde, etc., drawn under the Superintendence of Mr. Grove by Trelawney Saunders. References.—1. Jericho. 2. Ford of Jordan. 3. Wady Gumran. 4. Wady Zerka Ma’in. 5. Rás el-Feshkhah. 6. ‘Ain Terábeh. 7. Rás Mersed. 8. Wady Mójih. 9. ‘Ain Jidy. 10. Birket el-Khulil. 11. Sebbeh. 12. Wady Zuweirah from N. W., and Wady el-Muhauwat from S. W. 13. Um Zóghal. 14. Khashm Usdum. 15. Wady Fikreh. 16. Wady el-Jeib. 17. Wady Tuf’ileh. 18. Ghór es-Sáfieh. 19. Plain es-Sabkah. 20. Wady ed-Dera’ah, or Wady Keruk. 21. The Peninsula. 22. The Lagoon. 23. The Frank Mountain. 24. Bethlehem. 25. Hebron.

fact that it has no outlet, and voids the water poured into it from all sides only by evaporation; its steaming atmosphere, due chiefly to its deep depression between high bluff shores,

North Bay of the Dead Sea.

The Dead Sea, midway of the Western Shore and the consequent intense heat and rapid evaporation; the wild and desolate character of these mountain shores, and the general absence of life in and around it. Its length is 46 miles, its greatest breadth 10 miles. N. C. B.

It is a curious fact that the distance from the top to the bottom of the Dead Sea measures the height of its banks, the elevation of the Mediterranean, and the difference of level between the bottom of the two seas, and that the depth of the Dead Sea is also an exact multiple of the height of Jerusalem above it. Maury.—Another no less singular fact is that the bottom of the Dead Sea forms two submerged plains, an elevated and a depressed one: the first, its southern part, of slimy mud covered by a shallow bay; the last, its northern and largest portion, of mud and incrustations and rectangular crystals of salt. Lynch.

The gigantic fissure which runs from the roots of the Lebanon to the southern end of the Gulf of Akabah, and, slightly changing its direction, stretches as the Red Sea to the Indian Ocean, can scarcely have been otherwise formed than by volcanic action, the remains of whose unextinguished fires still heat the springs on the shores of the Dead Sea and the Lake of Tiberias, and shatter with occasional earthquakes such towns as Tiberias and Safed. The present floor of the fissure in which the sacred river finds its tortuous way due south to the Dead Sea first dips below the level of the Gulf of Akabah, after the Jordan has left the jungles of Lake Hooleh or Merom. B. and F. Rev.

Jerusalem and its Vicinity.

Rock Plan of Jerusalem. (Capt. Warren.)

THE geographical position of Jerusalem may be indicated by saying that its latitude is that of the northern end of the Dead Sea, its distance from the Mediterranean thirty-one miles, and its distance from the Jordan Valley and the Dead Sea fifteen miles. N. C. B.—It is exactly on the water-shed of the Mediterranean and the Dead Sea, 2,650 feet above the level of the former. Built on the very backbone of the country—the summit of that long ridge which traverses the Holy Land from north to south, and only approachable by wild mountain roads—the position of the city was one of great natural strength. H. B. T.—The general elevation of the region amid which Jerusalem is placed is great; yet, in reference to the adjacent country, the city is not elevated; and the “mountains” on which it is built can be considered such only in reference to the deep, trench-like valleys which surround and penetrate it. N. C. B.

The city stands upon a raised plateau, a little more than half a mile broad by a mile in length, separated from the adjoining country on three sides (all save the north) by deepening ravines. The surface of this plateau is

Outline of Ancient Jerusalem. (Robinson modified.)

broken into four distinct elevations. On the west side was ZION, the loftiest, and ACRA, the lowest; hence called the Upper and Lower City. On the north and northwest, BEZETHA, with diversely sloping surfaces, but inclining generally southeastward from the northern (third) wall. And MORIAH on the east; with its southern extremity, called OPHEL. A gradually deepening ravine, called the Valley of the Tyropeon, separated Moriah and Ophel on the east from Zion and Acra on the west. This valley passed, in one direction, westward round the northerly height of Zion to the west wall of the city, thus separating it from Acra. By another arm the valley also passed northward through Acra. This double direction will be readily seen in the accompanying rock plan of the city, redrawn from Capt. Warren’s sketch. J. G. B.—To the north and northwest of the city, the ground, instead of falling off rapidly into deep valleys, as elsewhere, rises gently, giving easy approach to the walls. N. C. B.—On Mount Moriah once stood the temples of Solomon, of Zerubbabel, and Herod, with the Tower of Antonia and the Pool of Bethesda behind them; and on Mount Zion, 120 feet higher than Moriah, was the old city and fortress of the Jebusites, afterward the City of David; and here, in later or New Testament times, was the palace of Herod. H. B. T.

The ravines of Hinnom [or Gihon] and of Jehoshaphat [or Cedron] rise to the north of

Jerusalem, very near to each other. The westernmost, the valley of Hinnom, runs southward for a mile and a quarter, skirting the City of David to the west, then turns suddenly to the east, and, passing through a deep gorge, joins the Jehoshaphat or Cedron southeast of the city. The valley of Jehoshaphat, beginning to the north of the city, runs eastward for a mile and a half, and then makes a sharp bend southward, skirting the Mount Moriah, separating it from the Mount of Olives, and rapidly descends, till, at its junction with the valley of Hinnom, it is 670 feet below its original starting-point. A third ravine, the Tyropeon of the ancients [referred to above], starts well up in the plateau, passes through the heart of the city southward, [dividing the southmost portion of the plateau into two unequal parts,] and then enters the basin formed by the confluence of the other two (Hinnom and Jehoshaphat), near the Pool of Siloam. From that point the united gorge pursues a southeast course under the name of the Cedron, and enters the basin of the Dead Sea. Thus we see that these [two chief] gorges [of Hinnom and Jehoshaphat], in their passage round the city, completely separate it from the surrounding district on three sides: east, south, and west. H. B. T.

Siloam is one of the few undisputed localities, in the topography of Jerusalem, still retaining its old name (with Arabic modification, Silwan), while every other pool has lost its Bible designation. Apart from the identity of name, there is an unbroken chain of exterior testimony, during eighteen centuries, connecting the present Silwan with the Shiloah of Isaiah and the Siloam of John. It is about fifty feet in length by sixteen in breadth, with a depth of eighteen feet, but never filled, the water being held at a depth of three feet. S.

Pool of Siloam, looking north.

PROFILE SECTION (EAST AND WEST) THROUGH JERUSALEM, TO THE HIGHEST POINT OF THE MOUNT OF OLIVES.

Showing the comparative elevations of Zion, Moriah, and the Temple Platform, and the Mount of Olives; and the Rock-bed of the Brook Cedron, where the water is still flowing. (See page 512.) The breadthwise distances are indicated (also in feet) on the bottom line.

To the spectator down about the confluence of the valleys of Hinnom and Jehoshaphat is admirably revealed the elevated position of the city. From the depths of Hinnom and Jehoshaphat, Moriah appears truly a mountain, and Zion the acropolis and citadel of David. N. C. B.

The great depth of the valleys on the west of Zion and the east of Moriah, the relative elevation of the northern and southern portions of the city, and the superior altitude of the Mount of Olives, will be better understood by the following statement of of these several points above the junction of the valleys of Hinnom and Jehoshaphat:

To the summit of Moriah, 370 feet.

To the summit of Zion, 520 feet.

To the summit of the Mount of Olives, 670 feet.

To the northeast corner of city, 470 feet.

To the northwest corner of city, 570 feet. J. G. B.

ONE city literally lies heaped upon another. For Jerusalem stood no fewer than twenty-seven sieges—from Jebusites and Israelites, Egyptians and Assyrians, Greeks and Romans, Mohammedans and Christians. The last and twenty-seventh siege took place in 1244 by the wild Kharezmian hordes. The Jerusalem of our day may be considered the eighth; for even before the time of David there was a city there. The second was the city of Solomon, from B. C. 1000 to B. C. 597, four hundred years; the third that of Nehemiah, three hundred years; at length came the magnificent city of Herod; then that Roman city on the ruin Titus had made; followed by the Mohammedan, and that by a Christian; and now, for six hundred years, the modern city has stood on the ruins of those that preceded it. If we examine the

South Wall, East Angle. Mount of Olives in the Distance.

rubbish and débris, we have to determine, at every step, among the ruins of which city we are standing—Solomon, Nehemiah, Herod, Hadrian, Constantine, Omar, Godfrey, Saladin, Suleiman, each in turn represents a city. E. C. Gray.

By the repeated sinking of shafts on the sloping face of Ophel, it is established that the south wall is buried for more than half its depth, and that, if bared to its foundation, this wall would present an unbroken front of solid masonry of nearly 1,000 feet long and 150 feet in height. The wall, as it now stands, with less than half that height emerging from the ground, has always been regarded as a marvel. What must it have been when entirely exposed to view, and the tall erections of the Temple towering over it! No wonder that prophets and psalmists should have rejoiced in the walls and bulwarks of the Temple, and that Tacitus should have described it as “built after the fashion of a citadel” (Ps. 48 : 13). H. B. T.

All these buildings, porticos, columns, pinnacles, altar, and temple, have perished. The area alone remains, and the massive substructures that for 3,000 years have been sleeping in their courses. The preservation has been due to the ruin. Buildings so vast have been toppled down the slopes of the Moriah that the original defiles and valleys have been almost obliterated. What had been regarded as the original surface has been found to be débris from 70 to 90 feet deep. At the southwest corner of the area, débris has accumulated to a depth of not less than 125 feet—the accumulation of ages, made up of the ruins of successive Jerusalems; and here some of the most interesting discoveries have been made.

Here is the famous arch of Robinson. It is inferred to be the remains of a bridge which crossed the valley on arches, and connected Mount Moriah with the mountain opposite—the modern Zion. It is the skewback or abutment that slopes to receive the end of the arch.

Three courses remain. The stones are five or six feet thick, and 20 or 25 feet long. The valley here is 350 feet wide, and this must have been the length of the bridge, connecting the Temple with the royal palace on the other side. At a depth of 30 feet a worn pavement was found, worn by feet that passed over it in our Lord’s time. Lying on this pavement were the voussoirs, or wedge-like stones, belonging to the arch. Breaking through this pavement, and through 24 feet of dibris beneath, they found a still more ancient roadway, and resting upon this, the key-stones of a still more ancient bridge. The explanation is probably reached; Robinson’s arch is the remains of the bridge that was standing at the siege of Jerusalem, upon which, at the eastern end of it, stood the Roman general Titus, holding a parley with the Jews, occupying the other end of the bridge. The older bridge, the remains of which were found beneath the pavement, belonged to the palmy days of Solomon. W. I. B.

Vicinity of Jerusalem.

OUT of the valley of Jehoshaphat, or Cedron of the Bible, eastwardly rises the MOUNT OF OLIVES, three hundred feet higher than Moriah. N. C. B.—It is not so much a mount as a somewhat elevated mass, having three rounded eminences, the whole running north and south for more than a mile, on a line with the eastern wall of the city. Of these three eminences, the central one is the Mount of Olives. The eminence on the south is called the Mount of Offence, from its being the seat of Solomon’s idol-worship. From the city to the summit of Olivet, approached by three paths, the distance is about half a mile. Across the valley of Hinnom, and directly south of Zion, is the Hill of Evil Counsel. J. G. B.

“From the Mount of Olives,” says Dr. Clarke, “so commanding is the view of Jerusalem, that the eye roams over all the streets and around the walls, as if in a survey of a plan or model of a city. Toward the southeast appears the Dead Sea, seeming to be within a short ride of the city. Lofty mountains inclose it with a prodigious grandeur. To the northeast are seen the verdant and fertile pastures of the Plains of Jericho, watered by the Jordan, whose course through its own broad valley may be distinctly discerned.”

Galilee and its Sea.

GALILEE at the time of Christ was one of the finest and most fertile portions of the earth. Stretching from the Mediterranean on the west to the Jordan and the sweet-watered Merom and Gennesaret on the east; abounding in springs, rivers, and lakes; possessing a rare and delightful climate and scenery of great variety and beauty; its surface infinitely varied by plains and valleys, gentle slopes and terraced hills, deep ravines and bold peaks, naturally fortified eminences and giant mountains; its soil naturally fertile, but forced by skilful husbandry to the highest state of productiveness, until the province was noted for the perfection and abundance of its fruits: Galilee thus possessed features of richness and beauty rarely if ever combined in so small a country in all the world besides. Its surface was covered with wealthy cities and flourishing towns, and crossed in many directions by her “way of the sea” and other great thoroughfares, which were thronged with the caravans of commerce. Its agriculture and fisheries, wine and oil trade, and other industries, were in the most flourishing condition. Its synagogues and other public buildings were built often in splendid style and at great expense. Money was abundant and easily raised for taxes, tributes, or for costly dwellings. S. M.

Mark speaks of towns, villages, and farmhouses on the Galilean hill-sides. The minute division of the soil, from the dense population, had caused the plough often to give way to the spade. Pasture-land was turned into fields, as more profitable than cattle or even flocks, which were left to graze the mountains of Syria and the barren hills of Judea. The rich dark soil of Esdraelon bore magnificent Indian corn and wheat, and the hill-slopes on its sides were noted for their wine, and the rich yield of their olive gardens and vineyards. The rabbis, in their hyperbolical way, say that one waded in oil in Galilee. “It never suffers from want of people,” says Josephus, “for its soil is rich, with trees of all kinds on it, and its surpassing fertility yields a splendid return to the farmer. The ground is worked with the greatest skill, and not a spot left idle. The ease with which life is supported in it, moreover, has overspread it with towns and well-peopled villages, many of them strongly fortified. The smallest has over fifteen thousand inhabitants.” The ease with which Josephus levied 100,000 Galilean troops seems to indicate a population of perhaps two millions, and the general prosperity is shown in the readiness with which Herod raised a Roman contribution of 100 talents in Galilee, as compared with Judea. The pictures in the gospels support this description. Everywhere the scene is full of life. Busy labor enlivens the vineyard, or ploughs the field, or digs the garden. In the towns, building is going on vigorously: the extra millstone lies ready beside the mill: the barns are filled and new ones about to be built: vineyards stretch along the terraced hill-sides. G.

THE Galilean Lake is rarely mentioned in the Old Testament, where it is known as “the Sea of Chinnereth.” In the gospels it is called the Sea of Galilee, the Sea of Tiberias, and the

Lake of Gennesaret. The lake is about 12½ miles long and (across the widest part from Magdala—J. M.) 6½ miles wide, and is 655 feet below the level of the Mediterranean Sea. H. B. T.—Like almost all lakes of volcanic origin it occupies the bottom of a great basin, the sides of which shelve down with a uniform slope from the surrounding plateaus. J. L. P.

On the east side the cliffs come close to its edge, shelving almost perpendicularly for 2,000 feet below the great plateau or table-land of Bashan, which here abruptly ends. H. B. T.—On the west side the mountains are more broken, and come down less continuously and closely upon the edge of the lake. Along the southwest they slightly recede, leaving space for the city of Tiberias; while farther north they retire in an almost semicircular sweep, opening the beautiful plain known as “the land of Gennesaret.” Only at the southern end do the mountains wholly give way. At the north, or around the expanded head of the lake, they come down to the shore in a gradual slope, forming a grand amphitheatre. N. C. B.—The line of the shore, in the upper part of the lake, is broken into a series of little bays of exquisite beauty.

The rabbis were wont to say that God had made seven seas in the land of Canaan, but had chosen only one for himself—the Sea of Galilee. G.—The contrast with its sister lake on the south gives to the natural features of the Sea of Galilee a peculiar interest. If the southern lake is the Sea of Death, the northern is emphatically the Sea of Life. And it is still by nature what it was at the Christian era by art also. A. P. S.—In the days of Christ all the splendor of nature in southern lands was poured on its shores. The western shore is still bright with many-colored vegetation, while, on the east, the steep hills that sink to the water’s edge are bare and gloomy volcanic rocks. G.

The sea abounded in fish of the choicest kinds. Both the eastern and western Bethsaida (“house of fish”), and possibly Chorazin, derived their names from this business of fishing; and all the cities about the lake sent forth their fishermen by hundreds over its surface. S. M.—And when we add to the fishermen the crowd of ship-builders, the many boats of passage, traffic, and pleasure, we see that the whole basin must have been a focus of life and energy; the surface of the lake constantly dotted with the white sails of vessels flying before the mountain gusts, as the beach sparkled with the houses and palaces, the synagogues and the temples, of the Jewish or Roman inhabitants. A. P. S.

From the eastern Bethsaida, about two miles above where the Jordan enters the lake, to Tiberias (see map, page 671), the distance is only four to six hours’ ride; yet within this limited space, along the northwestern and western shore of the lake, were situated in the time of Christ no less than five flourishing cities or towns, namely: Chorazin, the western Bethsaida, Capernaum, Magdala, and Beth-Arbel. Tiberias probably surpassed any one of the others, both in political and social importance, as well as in the richness and splendor of its buildings. With a decided Roman taste, Herod Antipas had lavished here vast sums of money to make this a perfect city. This luxurious and worldly Herod, the murderer of John the Baptist, had built magnificent Grecian colonnades, and Roman gates, and splendid public buildings, including his palace, and sought to appease the Jewish portion of the citizens by building for them perhaps the finest synagogue in all the north, “in whose colossal basilica during the period of the revolution the assemblies of the people were held.” S. M.

The eastern side of the lake has always been less populous, but even it had towns at every opening of the dark basaltic hills, the outworks of the Gaulonitish range, which press close to the water’s edge. G.

The first glimpse of the Sea of Galilee from the west is very impressive. One ridge after another is passed, and on a sudden the calm blue basin, slumbering in placid sweetness beneath its encircling wall of hills, bursts upon the view, and the hallowed scenes of our Lord’s ministry are spread at our feet a thousand feet below us. Though the lake looks small for the theatre of such great events, yet all the incidents seem brought together as in a diorama. H. B. T.

If Galilee at large, rather than Judea and Jerusalem, witnessed the public ministry of Jesus, it was the Sea of Galilee rather than the general district which witnessed most of his mighty works. Here were Capernaum—“exalted to heaven”—Bethsaida, and Chorazin. Here were the synagogues in which he habitually taught—the sea-side by which he

The Plain of Gennesaret—beyond Magdala. (For convenience, as in other cases before, we again introduce this admirable cut from Mr. Macgregor’s volume.)

in turn discoursed—the desert-places in which he sought retirement, and to which the multitudes followed him. N. C. B.

EL-MEJDEL, a small village with a few ruins, has been identified with Magdala. It is situated on the southern extremity of the Plain of Gennesaret. The hills here fall back from the sea, leaving the plain, which extends three and a quarter miles along the coast, and is one and one-eighth miles wide at its greatest part. Kitchener.

The plain is almost a parallelogram, shut in on the north and south sides by steep cliffs, nearly a thousand feet high, broken here and there into terraces, but nowhere easily to be climbed. On the west side the hills recede not quite so precipitously. The shore line is gently embayed, and the beach is pearly white—one mass of triturated fresh-water shells—and edged by a fringe of the exquisitely lovely oleander. At the northwest and southwest angles, tremendous ravines open upon the plain. H. B. T.

Here nature had lavished her tropical profusion and glory. Trees retained their foliage throughout the whole year, and during ten months of the year grapes and figs ripened. Here, in this rank soil, grew the finest wheat of the land. Its climate was a “harmonious mingling of the seasons,” and the rabbis looked upon this plain as an earthly paradise. S. M. —All that Josephus told of its extraordinary fruitfulness and beauty would be true to-day, were it cultivated. It would bear nearly all the productions of the world, so deep is the soil, so abundantly is it watered, and so full of power are the sun’s rays which strike down into this basin. W. L. Gage.

UPON no question of locality has there been more earnest discussion than upon that of Capernaum. Drs. John Lightfoot, Robinson, Porter, Keim, Tristam (in the first edition of his admirable volume), and Merrill, Mr. Macgregor, and Lieut. Kitchener, have advanced considerations that seem to be conclusive, showing that this favored city lay somewhere upon the Plain of Gennesaret. On the other hand, Major Wilson, Dr. W. M. Thomson, and others, place this city at a point nearly three miles distant from the plain, at a place now called Tell Hum (the Chorazin of our map). As a matter of peculiar interest, we present a summary of views, with somewhat full citations, in support of the theory adopted in the maps of this volume. A few repetitions could not be avoided.

Dr. Lightfoot says: “The Evangelists, compared together, clearly show that Capernaum was seated in the land of Gennesaret. For when it is said by Matthew (14 : 34) and

Mark (6 : 53), that Christ, sailing over from the desert of Bethsaida, arrived in the country of Gennesaret, it is manifest from John (6 : 22-25), that he arrived at Capernaum."

The points maintained by Dr. Robinson are chiefly these : 1. That the land or plain of Gennesaret was in the days of our Lord and Josephus a definite and well-known district on the west side of the Lake. 2. The city of Capernaum was situated in or adjacent to the tract of Gennesaret (M. 14; Mk. 6 ; J. 6). This tract is definitely bounded by the hills which run down to the Lake on the south and north of it, at Mejdel (Magdala) on the south, and at Khan Minyeh on the north. 3. A train of historical notices extending down to the seventeenth century seems to fix continuously the site of Capernaum at Khan Minyeh. Dr. Robinson also refers in substance, as follows, to

Bethsaida and Chorazin. As neither of these towns is spoken of, in Scripture or elsewhere, as in any connection with the tract of Gennesaret, they are probably to be sought on the north of Capernaum. On the shore north of Khan Minyeh, nearly a mile distant, is Tabiga, and still further on the shore are the remains of a place now called Tell Hum. Dr. Robinson reaches the conclusion that the site of Bethsaida is to be sought at Tabiga, and that of Chorazin at Tell Hum. As confirming this conclusion he cites, among other considerations, the narrative of Willibald, who visited the Holy Land about the middle of the eighth century : “From Tiberias he proceeded along the lake by Magdala to Capernaum, where was a house and a great wall. Thence he went on to Bethsaida, where was a church ; and remaining there one night, he came in the morning to Chorazin, where also was a church. His next stage was the sources of the Jordan. This narrative gives us distinctly the order of the towns along the Lake ; and thus fills out and confirms the accounts of Jerome, Antoninus, and Arculfus.”

Mr. John Macgregor (Rob Roy on the Jordan) spent two weeks in an exploration of the lake and its shores. He carefully compared the differing opinions of all who had preceded him respecting the sites of Capernaum and Bethsaida. His map of the Lake, with his soundings, we have reproduced and insert (a second time) on page 671.

That Tell Hum is not the site of Capernaum naum he infers from the character of the beach and the lack of harborage ; and from the nautical impossibility—which he argues at great detail, and it would seem with conclusive force—of the storm-tossed vessel of the disciples reaching Tell Hum, or indeed any other part of the coast than the plain of Gennesaret.

We cite portions of his journal respecting Bethsaida.

“‘Tabiga’ is the Arab name for the mills, and the few houses and huts that mark the spot. This surely is Bethsaida, the ‘house of food, or hunters, or snares,’ according to Cruden’s derivation, and in all three renderings plainly meaning the ‘fisherman’s home.’ The place soon asserted its right to the name Bethsaida by the exceeding abundance of the fish we saw tumbling in the water. The fishermen told me that, though fish are in other parts of the Lake, they are always most plentiful here.

“The bay is admirably suited for boats. It shelves gradually ; the anchorage is good, and boats can be safely beached. Rocks project at the southwest end about fifty yards beyond those seen above water. These would form a good protection to the harbor. The beach itself is a pretty bit of strand, with white pebbles and shells, and the shore was perfectly clean from drift-wood or debris, although a whole day’s gale had been blowing right into it. Just here, the beach rises rapidly, and there is deep water within a few yards of the shore, while at the same time a multitude of hearers could place themselves so as to see the Saviour in the boat.” J. G. B.

Chorazin—if the above view be correct—is at Tell Hum. Some years ago the tendency was to locate it at Kerazeh, considerably to the north, and two or three miles from the Lake. The reason for this identification was at best slight, and very few hold to it to-day. The Chorazin of the gospels was evidently near the sea, and in close connection with the other named cities. It may be a small thing upon which to construct a theory, but certainly it is a fact of interest, that if these locations be accepted as the right ones there is a beautiful order in Christ’s enumeration of the three cities named. And we can fancy him uttering, with the finger pointing toward each in succession, down along the Lake, the denunciation upon Chorazin, Bethsaida, Capernaum. And perhaps the elevation of the last-named place above the others, gave point to the expressions, “exalted to heaven,” and “cast down to hell.” H. C. Fish.

The Gospels call Capernaum a town, lying on the west shore of the Lake of Gennesaret, by the way of the sea, in possession of a synagogue with chiefs and elders, as well as of extensive customs, and a partly heathen garrison. Doubtless Capernaum was a place of no mean importance, that had grown from a village to an opulent town, connecting as it did the Mediterranean with Syria, Ptolemais, and Damascus. On a closer view Capernaum was one of the most glorious spots of the Lake of Gennesaret. Of that Lake at large the rabbis used to say, “Seven seas, spake God the Lord, have I created in the land of Canaan, but only one have I chosen for myself, that is the Sea of Gennesar.” This lake-land is called by Josephus the crown of Galilee. The rabbis extol the fruits of the land of Gennesar. Capernaum itself lay in the pearl of this neighborhood, the district of Gennesar. This district of the west shore is several times named by the Gospels, without exactly placing Capernaum in that part; but from a mere comparison of the fourth Gospel’s account of Jesus’ arrival upon the west shore after the Great Feeding, and after the storm, with the accounts of the first and second Gospels, it appears that it was just in this district that the town of Jesus lay.

It is no wide circle within which we have to seek for traces of the footsteps of Jesus. About a league and a half northward from Tiberias there opens out near the now wretched village of Magdala, the modern Mejdel—a fair plain of small extent, from which the hills retire in a kind of curved line, a league in length, and a third of a league in breadth. It is the land of Gennesar, which Josephus describes, to-day called El-Ghuveir, the little Ghor, or little plain. The fame of the fruits of Gennesar, which put to shame the market of Jerusalem, and of the gardens of Gennesar in the Rabbinical writings, belongs chiefly to this neighborhood.

The fairest, most vividly colored, and in truth the justest picture to ancient and modern ideals of this country has been drawn near the time of Jesus by the Jewish historian of Jerusalem, a picture for whose sake much—most of all, his silence with respect to the life of Jesus—may be forgiven him; in very truth, that was the ground which was worthy of Jesus, and which gives us a portrait of himself.

“Along the Lake of Gennesar,” says Josephus, “extends the district of like name, wondrous in natural beauty. There is no plant whose growth it refuses to sustain, such is its fertility. The husbandmen plant everything, and the well-tempered air suits equally divers kinds. In countless quantities grows there the hardy walnut tree; but none the less the palm, which flourishes in hot climes, close to it fig and olive trees, for which a gentler temperature is fitted. A rivalry of nature, one might call it, doing violence to herself to bring together discordant elements, a noble contest of the seasons, of which each appears to claim the district for its own. For the latter not only produces contrary to expectation the most diverse kinds of fruit, but keeps them in continuous preservation. The most royal fruits, grapes and figs, it furnishes in unbroken supply for ten months together; as well as other kinds, which along with the aforementioned ripen and mature throughout the entire year. Over and above the excellent mingling of temperature, the land is watered by a verily creative spring, called by the natives Kapharnaum.”

Fortunately the facts are such that the site of Capernaum can be fixed with, at all events, quite overwhelming probability. Only two places indeed are there which at the present time can seriously contest the honor of bearing the remains of Capernaum, and only one of them can at all make good its claim. The one is the broad ruin-covered field of Tell Hum, the other the great barrack-like mass of basaltic tufa buildings, now weather-worn, called Khan Minyeh, with some smaller remains; one on the north, the other on the northwest shore of the Lake, somewhat more than a league distant from each other. Khan Minyeh has been named since the twelfth century; at the beginning of the seventeenth, Francis Quaresmius mentioned this place as Capernaum, and lately Robinson and Sepp, the latter by repeated examinations, corroborated this position.

For Tell Hum [named Chorazin on our maps], what pleads more strongly than the name—whose distant resemblance to Capernaum doubtless had the greatest weight, though from the latter the former could not easily arise—is the astonishingly grand and in Palestine almost unique ruined site. (See cut, page 178.) This extends half an English mile in length, and is a quarter of a mile in breadth along the Lake. Close to the foundation walls of ordinary dwellings are to be seen the remains, 105 feet in length, of an unusually magnificent building composed of limestone, probably a synagogue, with a number of columns, double columns made of a single block, fine Corinthian capitals, hewn architrave, portal, and frieze full of sculptures. [Christ’s prediction of a special doom upon Capernaum would seem to negative the above plea.] But quite decisive against Tell Hum is its distance from the plain of Gennesar, beyond which it lies more than a league to the northeast, the absence of fresh water in this altogether desolate and dismal locality, whose surroundings are a brackish spring, a dried up wady, and black volcanic heaps of stone; the lack of any favorable harborage, and the immediate turning off of the road from the Lake inland at Minyeh. Keim.

Two other arguments are urged in favor of Tell Hum: 1. That the fountain “Kapharnaum” was at Tabiga. But if this be true, Tabiga is a mile nearer the locality of Minyeh than that of Tell Hum. Accepting this theory, Lieut. Kitchener says: “The water was brought past Minyeh to the plain, and was naturally called after that place. It could hardly be called after Tell Hum, a mile and three-quarters distant from the spring and in the opposite direction.” 2. That Josephus, when wounded somewhere above the Jordan’s entrance into the Lake, was carried to Capernaum; and Minyeh, it is said, was much farther than Tell Hum. But he was carried by water, and the difference in distance would be of small consequence. J. G. B.

For Khan Minyeh the whole situation vouches in a high degree. Here is the plain of Gennesar, and here too it leaves off, for directly north of it stretches the mountain-chain which had retired in a half-circle to make room for that fair district, and abuts again upon the Lake; so much so, that it is only by a narrow and difficult pathway that the rocks are artificially penetrated, and the great road to Damascus on leaving the Khan strikes straight uphill and inland. Here there is water and vegetation.

Close at hand are several springs. Along the lake-side is a strip of luxuriant green, consisting of grass and clover, an emerald meadow-carpet; “no other in Palestine so green:” the shore is adorned with a tall growth of sedge. Numerous herds and flocks graze on this part of the plain; indeed, it is just the pastures of Minyeh which, according to Burckhardt, have become proverbial for their richness among the dwellers in the neighboring districts. Finally, the district of Minyeh served as a harborage: a half-circle seems to mark the harbor, which has become choked up in the lapse of time, sheltered by the mountain promontory from all the northern winds: here the wood from the east shore is still landed for Acco. Even historical traces of the identity of the place are not absent. The French bishop Arculfus (in the seventh century) gives a picture of Capernaum, of which the features as detailed above find their point of coincidence at Khan Minyeh alone.

It remains, all things considered, in the highest degree probable that the quiet site of Khan Minyeh, at the northwestern end of the lake, a good league to the north of Magdala, about three leagues from the chief town, Tiberias, was that spot in the territory of Naphtali’s northern tribe so fraught with mighty issues in the history of the world, where the preaching of Christianity and the mission of Jesus had their rise. Keim.

Besides the ruins at Mejdel and Abu Shusheh, the only remains found on the plain of Gennesaret were those at Khurbet Minyeh, where there are extensive ruins, though nothing but remains of walls are now visible. I was informed by two authorities that hewn stones and good walls existed below the present surface, and are excavated for building purposes. The Khurbet is situated near the northeast extremity of the plain, and about one hundred yards from the shore of the sea. The Damascus road traverses the ruin, and a little farther on it passes the now ruined Khan Minyeh, which is still occupied by a few Arabs; it then passes up on the western slope of the steep hill, which here ends the plain. On the top of this hill is an artificially levelled square plateau, with traces of walls and buildings; there are also traces of steps leading up to it. It is called Khurbet ‘Aureimeh. Round the southern brow of this hill where the rock runs steeply down to the Lake, is the rock-cut aqueduct used as a road to Tabiga, three-quarters of a mile farther along the coast. Kitchener.

One would naturally ask, if the canal which is now the roadway was originally a canal, where was the road? And one has but to examine the region above and beyond the hill at that point to be convinced, not only that the road formerly went there, but that even to-day this route is the best one by which to reach Tabiga from the Plain of Gennesaret. S. M.

There are several small springs, and one very large one which turns several mills at Tabiga. The ‘Ain is inclosed by walls of masonry, forming an octagon twenty-six feet side; by this means the water was raised to the required height, and carried by the aqueduct to the Plain. Considerable remains of the masonry of the aqueduct leading to the rock-cut portion, and a small piece beyond, with the watercourse coated with thick cement, still remain.

The country between Tabiga and the Jordan is entirely basalt, and slopes gradually down to the sea. The ruins at Tell Hum, one and three-quarter miles from Tabiga, are along the water’s edge, and are of considerable extent, and contain the famous synagogue excavated and measured by Major Wilson.

The site of Capernaum is the most interesting of all the places around the Lake. I cannot help thinking that it was at Khurbet Minyeh. The guard-house, where the centurion resided, was probably on the great Damascus road at Khurbet el ‘Aureimeh, which seems to be the ruin of such a station. Kitchener.

Dr. Selah Merrill, of the American expedition, who, on several different occasions, visited and deliberately investigated all the ruins from Tiberias to the mouth of the upper Jordan, thus compactly sums up the stronger and fresher points of the argument in favor of Minyeh: “At Capernaum there was, 1, a garrison. For this there would naturally be some fort or castle, of which there should be remains. There was, 2, a custom-house; and this would be on the road leading northward past the Lake to Damascus. There are no traces of there ever having been a road leading past Tell Hum, or existing anywhere in the angle formed by the river and the north end of the Lake. At Khan Minyeh there are traces of a Roman road, and it is still in use. Tell Hum is fully two miles distant from this road. This road coming from the north would first touch the lake at Khan Minyeh, and the customs station being there, it would accommodate both the lake and the road. The garrison would be at the same place as the custom-house. No remains of a fort of any kind exist at Tell Hum, while the hill overhanging Khan Minyeh, between the old

Roman road just referred to and the present road which follows the trench in the brow of the bluff, has been shaped artificially, and gives every appearance of having been occupied by an ancient castle.

‘3. South of Khan Minyeh there is a swell in the plain with nothing on the surface to attract particular attention. Twice I have seen the peasants digging into this mound to the depth of eight or ten feet. First was met the soil of the wheat-field; next, yellow earth and round stones; but below this, at a depth of four or more feet from the surface, a wall was struck which was followed some distance, and which at last turned an angle and ran in another direction. This wall was built of limestone, the blocks being finely squared and faced, and the work belongs to the best class of Eastern ruins. The peasants had dug at other points near by, and had come upon walls, pottery, and other remains. I attach no importance to the ruins at Khan Minyeh that are still visible above-ground; but I have seen enough to convince me that a town of considerable size is buried there. On my last visit I went over the ground anew with Lieutenant Kitchener, and called his attention to the facts now stated. He said they seemed to him very weighty arguments, and in his report to his society he has given his opinion in favor of Khan Minyeh as the site of Capernaum. 4. Again as to the remains of the synagogue at Tell Hum. The appearance of the ruins is such as to lead me to the conclusion that the building dates from the third or fourth century of our era rather than from the first. There is a sharpness about all the carving and the angles, which gives them a new look, such as ruins dating from the Christian era, or before it, rarely if ever possess.”

In conclusion, it would seem that these combined arguments—the express Scriptural statements; the special fitness of the site, upon the plain and the cliff above it; its position directly upon the great road to Damascus, a position suiting its known central relations to adjoining cities, as well as to commerce and travel by “the way of the sea;” together with confirmatory historical notes, and discovered remains of buried structures and of the Roman road—suffice measurably to justify the inference that Capernaum lay upon the northeastern border of the beautiful and fruitful “Land of Gennesar.” J. G. B.

| SECTION. | TOPICS. | MATTHEW. | MARK. | LUKE. | JOHN. | | — | — | — | — | — | — | | 1 | Annunciation to Zacharias. | | | 1 : 1-25 | | | 2 | Annunciation to Mary | | | 1 : 26-38 | | | 3 | Mary visits Elizabeth | | | 1 : 39-56 | | | 4 | Birth of John the Baptist. | | | 1 : 57-80 | | | 5 | The Genealogies. | 1 : 1-17 | | 3 : 23-38 | | | 6 | The Birth at Bethlehem. | 1 : 18-25 | | 2 : 1-7 | | | 7 | The Watching Shepherds | | | 2 : 8-20 | | | 8 | The Circumcision and Presentation. | | | 2 : 21-39 | | | 9 | Visit of the Magi. | 2 : 1-12 | | | | | 10 | Flight to and Return from Egypt. | 2 : 13-23 | | | | | 11 | With the Doctors in the Temple. | | | 2 : 40-52 | | | 12 | Ministry of the Baptist. | 3 : 1-12 | 1 : 1-8 | 3 : 1-18 | | | 13 | Preface to John’s Gospel. | | | | 1 : 1-14 | | 14 | The Baptism. | 3 : 13-17 | 1 : 9-11 | 3 : 21-23 | 1 : 15-18 | | 15 | The Temptation. | 4 : 1-11 | 1 : 12, 13 | 4 : 1-13 | | | 16 | Testimony of the Baptist. | | | | 1 : 19-34 | | 17 | The First Five Disciples. | | | | 1 : 35-51 | | 18 | The Marriage at Cana | | | | 2 : 1-11 | | 19 | Expels Profaners of the Temple. | | | | 2 : 12-25 | | 20 | Discourse with Nicodemus. | | | | 3 : 1-21 | | 21 | The Baptist imprisoned. | 14 : 3-5 | 6 : 17-20 | 3 : 19, 20 | 3 : 22-36 | | 22 | Declares Himself to a Woman of Samaria. | | | | 4 : 1-26 | | 23 | Visits the Samaritans. | | | | 4 : 27-42 | | 24 | Heals a Jewish Nobleman’s Son. | 4 : 12 | 1 : 14 | | 4 : 43-54 | | 25 | Preaches at Nazareth, and is rejected | | | 4 : 14-30 | | | 26 | Dwells in Capernaum. Calls Four Fishermen. | 4 : 13-22 | 1 : 15-20 | 4 : 31, 32 5 : 1-11 | | | 27 | Heals a Demoniac and Others. | 8 : 14-17 | 1 : 21-34 | 4 : 33-41 | | | 28 | First Journey through Galilee | 4 : 23-25 8 : 2-4 | 1 : 35-45 | 4 : 42-44 5 : 12-16 | | | 29 | Heals a Paralytic. Calls Matthew. | 9 : 2-9 | 2 : 1-14 | 5 : 17-28 | | | 30 | Heals the Impotent Man at Bethesda. | | | | 5 : 1-16 | | 31 | “My Father worketh, and I work” | | | | 5 : 17-30 |

| SECTION. | TOPICS. | MATTHEW. | MARK. | LUKE. | JOHN. | | — | — | — | — | — | — | | 32 | Proofs of Divine Sonship | | | | 5 : 31-47 | | 33 | Justifies healing on the Sabbath | 12 : 1-15 | 2 : 23-28 3 : 1-7 | 6 : 1-11 | | | 34 | The Apostles chosen | 10 : 2-4 12 : 15-21 | 3 : 7-19 | 6 : 12-19 | | | 35 | The Beatitudes | 5 : 1-16 | | 6 : 20-26 | | | 36 | The Law in its Spirit. The Sixth Command | 5 : 17-26 | | | | | 37 | The Law further explained | 5 : 27-48 | | 6 : 27-30 32-36 | | | 38 | Almsgiving. Prayer. The Lord’s Prayer | 6 : 1-18 | | | | | 39 | Treasure. Service. Trust | 6 : 19-34 | | | | | 40 | Judge not. Ask. Enter in | 7 : 1-20 | | 6 : 31, 37-45 | | | 41 | The Wise and the Foolish Builders | 7 : 21-29 8 : 1 | | 6 : 46-49 | | | 42 | Heals the Centurion’s Servant | 8 : 5-13 | | 7 : 1-10 | | | 43 | The Widow’s Son raised. Messengers from John | 11 : 2-6 | | 7 : 11-23 | | | 44 | Extols John, and reproves the Generation | 11 : 7-19 | | 7 : 24-35 | | | 45 | Uphraids Favored Cities. Invites Heavy-laden | 11 : 20-30 | | | | | 46 | Pharisee and Sinner. Two Debtors. Second Circuit | | | 7 : 36-50 8 : 1-3 | | | 47 | Heals Demoniac. Charged with Blasphemy | 12 : 22-37 | 3 : 19-30 | 11 : 14, 15 17-23 | | | 48 | Rebukes Pharisees. Disciples his Kindred | 12 : 38-50 | 3 : 31-35 | 11 : 16, 24-36 8 : 19-21 | | | 49 | Dining with Pharisees, denounces their Hypocrisy | | | 11 : 37-54 | | | 50 | Cautions the Disciples. The Rich Fool | | | 12 : 1-21 | | | 51 | Unanxious Trust in God. Watching | | | 12 : 22-40 | | | 52 | The Faithful Servant. Divisive Effects of Gospel | | | 12 : 41-59 | | | 53 | Calamities not Judgments. The Barren Fig-tree | | | 13 : 1-9 | | | 54 | The Sower. Why Christ used Parables | 13 : 1-17 | 4 : 1-12 | 8 : 4-10 | | | 55 | Explains the Parable of the Sower | 13 : 18-23 | 4 : 13-25 | 8 : 11-18 | | | 56 | The Tares, and the Interpretation | 13 : 24-30 36-43 | | | | | 57 | Seed growing secretly. Mustard-seed. Leaven. Treasure. Pearl. Net | 13 : 31-36 44-53 | 4 : 26-34 | | | | 58 | Unready Disciples. Stilling the Tempest | 8 : 18-27 | 4 : 35-41 | 8 : 22-25 9 : 57-62 | | | 59 | The Demoniac of Gergesa or Gadara | 8 : 28-34 9 : 1 | 5 : 1-21 | 8 : 26-40 | | | 60 | Matthew’s Feast. Garments and Bottles | 9 : 10-17 | 2 : 15-22 | 5 : 29-39 | | | 61 | His Garment touched. The Daughter of Jairus | 9 : 18-26 | 5 : 22-43 | 8 : 41-56 | | | 62 | Two Blind, etc. Again at Nazareth. Third Circuit | 9 : 27-38 13 : 54-58 | 6 : 1-6 | | | | 63 | The Twelve instructed | 10 : 1, 5-23 | 6 : 7-11 | 9 : 1-5 | | | 64 | The Twelve, instructed, go forth | 10 : 24-42 11 : 1 | 6 : 12, 13 | 9 : 6 | | | 65 | Herod holds Jesus to be the Beheaded Baptist | 14 : 1, 2, 6-12 | 6 : 14-16 21-29 | 9 : 7-9 | | | 66 | Twelve return. Lake crossed. Five Thousand fed | 14 : 13-23 | 6 : 30-46 | 9 : 10-17 | 6 : 1-15 | | 67 | Night-storm. Christ walks upon the Sea | 14 : 24-36 | 6 : 47-56 | | 6 : 16-21 | | 68 | Christ the Bread of Life | | | | 6 : 22-40 | | 69 | Eternal Life by feeding upon Him. Defection | | | | 6 : 41-71 7 : 1 | | 70 | Pharisaic Traditions. Need of Inward Purity | 15 : 1-20 | 7 : 1-23 | | | | 71 | The Heathen Mother’s Faith. One Deaf and Dumb | 15 : 21-29 | 7 : 24-37 | | | | 72 | Multitudes healed. Four Thousand fed | 15 : 29-39 | 8 : 1-10 | | | | 73 | Accuses Pharisees and cautions Disciples | 16 : 1-12 | 8 : 11-21 | | | | 74 | Peter’s Great Confession and Christ’s Reply | 16 : 13-20 | 8 : 22-30 | 9 : 18-21 | | | 75 | Peter rebuked, and Disciples urged to Self-denial | 16 : 21-28 | 8 : 31-38 9 : 1 | 9 : 22-27 | | | 76 | The Transfiguration | 17 : 1-13 | 9 : 2-13 | 9 : 28-36 | |

| SEC-TION. | TOPICS. | MATTHEW. | MARK. | LUKE. | JOHN. | | — | — | — | — | — | — | | 77 | Expels a Demon which the Nine could not… | 17 : 14-21 | 9 : 14-30 | 9 : 37-43 | | | 78 | Foretells Death. The Temple Tribute… | 17 : 22-27 | 9 : 31-33 | 9 : 43-45 | | | 79 | Ambition rebuked. The Little Child… | 18 : 1-9 | 9 : 33-50 | 9 : 46-50 | | | 80 | Tenderness toward Disciples. Offences among them. | 18 : 10-20 | | | | | 81 | How to forgive. The Unmerciful Servant… | { 18 : 21-35 19 : 1 | | | | | 82 | Instructs and sends out the Seventy… | | | 10 : 1-16 | | | 83 | Leaves Galilee. Samaritans refuse. Ten Lepers… | | | { 9 : 51-56 17 : 11-19 | { 7 : 2-10 | | 84 | Feast of Tabernacles. Officers sent to take Him… | | | | 7 : 11-36 | | 85 | Invitation on the Great Feast-day. Officers return… | | | | 7 : 37-53 | | 86 | Woman and her Accusers. Light of the World… | | | | 8 : 1-20 | | 87 | Severe Denunciation of the Jews… | | | | 8 : 21-47 | | 88 | The Jews attempt to stone Him… | | | | 8 : 48-50 | | 89 | The Seventy return. The Good Samaritan… | | | 10 : 17-37 | | | 90 | Martha and Mary. How to pray… | | | { 10 : 38-42 11 : 1-13 | | | 91 | Sight to one born blind. The Jews’ Inquiry… | | | | 9 : 1-23 | | 92 | The Man cast out, and found by Christ… | | | | 9 : 24-38 | | 93 | The Only Door into the Fold of God… | | | | { 9 : 39-41 10 : 1-10 | | 94 | The Good Shepherd… | | | | 10 : 11-21 | | 95 | Feast of Dedication. Charged with Blasphemy… | | | | 10 : 22-42 | | 96 | Delays after Death of Lazarus… | | | | 11 : 1-16 | | 97 | “I am the Resurrection and the Life”… | | | | 11 : 17-31 | | 98 | Raises Lazarus from the Grave… | | | | 11 : 32-46 | | 99 | The Council conspire against Jesus… | | | | 11 : 47-54 | | 100 | An Infirm Woman healed… | 19 : 1, 2 | 10 : 1 | 13 : 10-21 | | | 101 | Entrance into the Kingdom. Message to Herod… | | | 13 : 22-35 | | | 102 | Dropsy healed on the Sabbath. Humility… | | | 14 : 1-14 | | | 103 | The Great Supper. Counting the Cost… | | | 14 : 15-35 | | | 104 | The Lost Sheep. The Lost Coin… | | | 15 : 1-10 | | | 105 | The Lost Son… | | | 15 : 11-32 | | | 106 | The Unjust Steward… | | | 16 : 1-18 | | | 107 | The Rich Man and Lazarus… | | | 16 : 19-31 | | | 108 | A Forgiving, Believing, and Serving Spirit… | | | 17 : 1-10 | | | 109 | Destruction of the Jewish State… | | | 17 : 20-37 | | | 110 | Importante Widow. Pharisee and Publican… | | | 18 : 1-14 | | | 111 | Divorce and Marriage. Little Children blessed… | 19 : 3-15 | 10 : 2-16 | 18 : 15-17 | | | 112 | The Rich Young Ruler. Peter’s Selfish Question… | 19 : 16-30 | 10 : 17-31 | 18 : 18-30 | | | 113 | The Laborers in the Vineyard… | 20 : 1-16 | | | | | 114 | The Last Journey. Serving greater than ruling… | 20 : 17-28 | 10 : 32-45 | 18 : 31-34 | | | 115 | Bartimeus. Zaccheus… | 20 : 29-34 | 10 : 46-52 | { 18 : 35-43 19 : 1-10 | | | 116 | The Pounds… | | | 19 : 11-28 | | | 117 | The Anointing by Mary… | 26 : 6-13 | 14 : 3-9 | | { 11 : 55-57 12 : 1-11 | | 118 | Public Entry into Jerusalem… | 21 : 1-9 | 11 : 1-10 | 19 : 29-40 | 12 : 12-19 | | 119 | Weeps over the City. The Fig-tree cursed… | 21 : 10, 11 14-19 | { 11 : 11-14 | 19 : 41-44 | | | 120 | Cleansing of Temple. Lesson of Withered Tree… | 21 : 12, 13 20-22 | { 11 : 15-26 | { 19 : 45-48 21 : 37, 38 | | | 121 | His Authority questioned. The Two Sons… | 21 : 23-32 | { 11 : 27-33 12 : 1 | { 26 : 1-9 | |

| SECTION. | TOPICS. | MATTHEW. | MARK. | LUKE. | JOHN. | | — | — | — | — | — | — | | 122 | The Faithless Husbandmen | 21 : 33-46 | 12 : 1-12 | 20 : 9-19 | | | 123 | The Marriage-Feast and Wedding-Garment | 22 : 1-14 | | | | | 124 | Question about the Tribute-Money | 22 : 15-22 | 12 : 13-17 | 20 : 20-26 | | | 125 | Question concerning the Resurrection | 22 : 23-33 | 12 : 18-27 | 20 : 27-39 | | | 126 | The Scribe’s Question. Christ’s Question | 22 : 34-46 | 12 : 28-37 | 20 : 40-44 | | | 127 | Fearful Denunciations against Pharisees and Scribes. | 23 : 1-39 | 12 : 38-40 | 20 : 45-47 | | | 128 | Widow’s Gift. Seeking Greeks. Voice from Heaven. | | 12 : 41-44 | 21 : 1-4 | 12 : 20-36 | | 129 | Reflections on the Unbelief of the Jews | | | | 12 : 37-50 | | 130 | Destruction of Jerusalem foretold | 24 : 1-14 | 13 : 1-13 | 21 : 5-19 | | | 131 | Signs of Coming Destruction | 24 : 15-36 | 13 : 14-32 | 21 : 20-33 | | | 132 | Transition to Christ’s Final Coming. “Watch” | 24 : 37-51 | 13 : 33-37 | 21 : 34-36 | | | 133 | The Ten Virgins | 25 : 1-13 | | | | | 134 | The Talents | 25 : 14-30 | | | | | 135 | Description of the Judgment | 25 : 31-46 | | | | | 136 | Covenant with Judas. Preparation for the Passover. | 26 : 1-5 14-19 | 14 : 1, 2 10-16 | 22 : 1-13 | | | 137 | The Passover Meal. Washes the Disciples’ Feet… | 26 : 20 | 14 : 17 | 22 : 14-18 24-27 | 13 : 1-17 | | 138 | “One of you shall betray me” | 26 : 21-25 | 14 : 18-21 | 22 : 21-23 28-30 | 13 : 18-30 | | 139 | Foretells Peter’s Denial and Dispersion of All | 26 : 31-35 | 14 : 27-31 | 22 : 31-35 | 13 : 31-38 | | 140 | The Lord’s Supper instituted | 26 : 26-29 | 14 : 22-25 | 22 : 19, 20 | | | 141 | Last Discourse—“Let not your Heart be troubled” | | | | 14 : 1-14 | | 142 | " " “Another Comforter” | | | | 14 : 15-31 | | 143 | " " Christ the Vine. Abiding | | | | 15 : 1-11 | | 144 | " " Mutual Love | | | | 15 : 12-27 | | 145 | " " Persecution. Office of the Spirit | | | | 16 : 1-15 | | 146 | " " “Ask in my Name” | | | | 16 : 16-33 | | 147 | The Prayer for his Own | | | | 17 : 1-12 | | 148 | The Prayer for their Sanctification and Oneness | | | | 17 : 13-26 | | 149 | The Agony in Gethsemane | 26 : 30, 36-46 | 14 : 26, 32-42 | 22 : 39-46 | 18 : 1 | | 150 | The Betrayal and Apprehension | 26 : 47-56 | 14 : 43-52 | 22 : 47-53 | 18 : 2-12 | | 151 | Led to Annas. Peter’s Denial | 26 : 58, 69-75 | 14 : 54, 66-72 | 22 : 54-62 | 18 : 13-18 25-27 | | 152 | Examined and condemned by the Sanhedrim | 26 : 57, 59-68 | 14 : 53, 55-65 | 22 : 63-71 | 18 : 19-24 | | 153 | Death of Judas. Jesus brought before Pilate | 27 : 1-14 | 15 : 1-5 | 23 : 1-5 | 18 : 28-38 | | 154 | Before Herod, and Pilate again. Barabbas preferred. | 27 : 15-26 | 15 : 6-15 | 23 : 6-25 | 18 : 39, 40 | | 155 | Scourged, mocked, and delivered up | 27 : 26-30 | 15 : 15-19 | | 19 : 1-16 | | 156 | Led away and crucified | 27 : 31-34, 38 | 15 : 20-23 25, 27, 28 | 23 : 26-34 | 19 : 16-18 | | 157 | The Parted Garments. The Title. The Malefactors. | 27 : 35-37 39-44 | 15 : 24, 26 29-32 | 23 : 34-43 | 19 : 19-24 | | 158 | “Behold thy Son.” Noon-day Darkness. “Finished” | 27 : 45-56 | 15 : 33-41 | 23 : 44-49 | 19 : 25-30 | | 159 | His Side pierced. His Body laid in the Sepulchre. | 27 : 57-66 | 15 : 42-47 | 23 : 50-56 | 19 : 31-42 | | 160 | The Empty Sepulchre. The Angel’s Message | 28 : 1-8 | 16 : 1-8 | 24 : 1-8, 12 | 20 : 1-10 | | 161 | With Mary and the Women. Disbelief of Disciples. | 28 : 9-15 | 16 : 9-11 | 24 : 9-11 | 20 : 11-18 | | 162 | Walk to Emmaus with Two Disciples | | 16 : 12, 13 | 24 : 13-35 | | | 163 | Meets the Eleven, and again a Week later | | 16 : 14-18 | 24 : 36-43 | 20 : 19-29 | | 164 | At the Sea of Tiberias. “Lovest thou me?” | | | | 21 : 1-24 | | 165 | With the Eleven in Galilee and at Jerusalem | 28 : 16-20 | 1 Cor. 15 : 6, 7 | 24 : 44-49 | Acts 1 : 3-5, 8 | | 166 | Ascension. Close of the Gospel | Acts 1 : 9-12 | 16 : 19, 20 | 24 : 50-53 | 20 : 30, 31 21 : 25 |

| MATTHEW. | | | MARK. | | | LUKE. | | | JOHN. | | | | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | | CHAP. | VERSES. | SECTION. | CHAP. | VERSES. | SECTION. | CHAP. | VERSES. | SECTION. | CHAP. | VERSES. | SECTION. | | I. | 1-17 | 5 | I. | 1-8 | 12 | I. | 1-25 | 1 | I. | 1-14 | 13 | | | 18-25 | 6 | | 9-11 | 14 | | 26-38 | 2 | | 15-18 | 14 | | II. | 1-12 | 9 | | 12, 13 | 15 | | 39-56 | 3 | | 19-34 | 16 | | | 13-23 | 10 | | 14 | 24 | | 57-80 | 4 | | 35-51 | 17 | | III. | 1-12 | 12 | | 15-20 | 26 | II. | 1-7 | 6 | II. | 1-11 | 18 | | | 13-17 | 14 | | 21-34 | 27 | | 8-20 | 7 | | 12-25 | 19 | | IV. | 1-11 | 15 | | 35-45 | 28 | | 21-39 | 8 | III. | 1-21 | 20 | | | 12 | 24 | II. | 1-14 | 29 | | 40-52 | 11 | | 22-36 | 21 | | | 13-22 | 26 | | 15-22 | 60 | III. | 1-18 | 12 | IV. | 1-26 | 22 | | | 23-25 | 28 | | 23-28 | 33 | | 19, 20 | 21 | | 27-42 | 23 | | V. | 1-16 | 35 | III. | 1-7 | 33 | | 21-23 | 14 | | 43-54 | 24 | | | 17-26 | 36 | | 7-19 | 34 | | 23-38 | 5 | V. | 1-16 | 30 | | | 27-48 | 37 | | 19-30 | 47 | IV. | 1-13 | 15 | | 17-30 | 31 | | VI. | 1-18 | 38 | | 31-35 | 48 | | 14-30 | 25 | | 31-47 | 32 | | | 19-34 | 39 | IV. | 1-12 | 54 | | 31, 32 | 26 | VI. | 1-15 | 66 | | VII. | 1-20 | 40 | | 13-25 | 55 | | 33-41 | 27 | | 16-21 | 67 | | | 21-29 | 41 | | 26-34 | 57 | | 42-44 | 28 | | 22-40 | 68 | | VIII. | 1 | 41 | | 35-41 | 58 | V. | 1-11 | 26 | | 41-71 | 69 | | | 2-4 | 28 | V. | 1-21 | 59 | | 12-16 | 28 | VII. | 1 | 69 | | | 5-13 | 42 | | 22-43 | 61 | | 17-28 | 29 | | 2-10 | 83 | | | 14-17 | 27 | VI. | 1-6 | 62 | | 29-39 | 60 | | 11-36 | 84 | | | 18-27 | 58 | | 7-11 | 63 | VI. | 1-11 | 33 | | 37-53 | 85 | | | 28-34 | 59 | | 12, 13 | 64 | | 12-19 | 34 | VIII. | 1-20 | 86 | | IX. | 1 | 59 | | 14-16 | 65 | | 20-26 | 35 | | 21-47 | 87 | | | 2-9 | 29 | | 17-20 | 21 | 27-30, | 32-36 | 37 | | 48-59 | 88 |

| MATTHEW. | | | MARK. | | | LUKE. | | | JOHN. | | | | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | | CHAP. | VERSES. | SECTION. | CHAP. | VERSES. | SECTION. | CHAP. | VERSES. | SECTION. | CHAP. | VERSES. | SECTION. | | IX. | 10-17 | 60 | VI. | 21-29 | 65 | VI. | 31, 37-45 | 40 | IX. | 1-23 | 91 | | | 18-26 | 61 | | 30-46 | 66 | | 45-49 | 41 | | 24-38 | 92 | | | 27-38 | 62 | | 47-56 | 67 | VII. | 1-10 | 42 | | 39-41 | 93 | | X. | 1 | 63 | VII. | 1-23 | 70 | | 11-23 | 43 | X. | 1-10 | 93 | | | 2-4 | 34 | | 24-37 | 71 | | 24-35 | 44 | | 11-21 | 94 | | | 5-23 | 63 | VIII. | 1-10 | 72 | | 36-50 | 46 | | 22-42 | 95 | | | 24-42 | 64 | | 11-21 | 73 | VIII. | 1-3 | 46 | XI. | 1-16 | 96 | | XI. | 1 | 64 | | 22-30 | 74 | | 4-10 | 54 | | 17-31 | 97 | | | 2-6 | 43 | | 31-38 | 75 | | 11-18 | 55 | | 32-46 | 98 | | | 7-19 | 44 | IX. | 1 | 75 | | 19-21 | 48 | | 47-54 | 99 | | | 20-30 | 45 | | 2-13 | 76 | | 22-25 | 58 | | 55-57 | 117 | | XII. | 1-15 | 33 | | 14-30 | 77 | | 26-40 | 59 | XII. | 1-11 | 117 | | | 15-21 | 34 | | 31-33 | 78 | | 41-56 | 61 | | 12-19 | 118 | | | 22-37 | 47 | | 33-50 | 79 | IX. | 1-5 | 63 | | 20-36 | 128 | | | 38-50 | 48 | X. | 1 | 100 | | 6 | 64 | | 37-50 | 129 | | XIII. | 1-17 | 54 | | 2-16 | 111 | | 7-9 | 65 | XIII. | 1-17 | 137 | | | 18-23 | 55 | | 17-31 | 112 | | 10-17 | 66 | | 18-30 | 138 | | | 24-30 | 56 | | 32-45 | 114 | | 18-21 | 74 | | 31-38 | 139 | | | 31-36 | 57 | | 46-52 | 115 | | 22-27 | 75 | XIV. | 1-14 | 141 | | | 36-43 | 56 | XI. | 1-10 | 118 | | 28-36 | 76 | | 15-31 | 142 | | | 44-53 | 57 | | 11-14 | 119 | | 37-43 | 77 | XV. | 1-11 | 143 | | | 54-58 | 62 | | 15-26 | 120 | | 43-45 | 78 | | 12-27 | 144 | | XIV. | 1, 2 | 65 | | 27-33 | 121 | | 46-50 | 79 | XVI. | 1-15 | 145 | | | 3-5 | 21 | XII. | 1-12 | 122 | | 51-56 | 83 | | 16-33 | 146 | | | 6-12 | 65 | | 13-17 | 124 | | 57-62 | 58 | XVII. | 1-12 | 147 | | | 13-23 | 66 | | 18-27 | 125 | X. | 1-16 | 82 | | 13-26 | 148 | | | 24-36 | 67 | | 28-37 | 126 | | 17-37 | 89 | XVIII. | 1 | 149 | | XV. | 1-20 | 70 | | 38-40 | 127 | | 38-42 | 90 | | 2-12 | 150 | | | 21-29 | 71 | | 41-44 | 128 | XI. | 1-13 | 90 | | 13-18 | 151 | | | 29-39 | 72 | XIII. | 1-13 | 130 | | 14, 15 | 47 | | 19-24 | 152 | | XVI. | 1-12 | 73 | | 14-32 | 131 | | 16 | 48 | | 25-27 | 151 | | | 13-20 | 74 | | 33-37 | 132 | | 17-23 | 47 | | 28-38 | 153 | | | 21-28 | 75 | XIV. | 1, 2 | 136 | | 24-36 | 48 | | 39, 40 | 154 |

| MATTHEW. | | | MARK. | | | LUKE. | | JOHN. | | | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | | CHAP. | VERSES. | SECTION. | CHAP. | VERSES. | SECTION. | CHAP. | VERSES. | SECTION. | CHAP. VERSES. SECTION. | | XVII. | 1-13 | 76 | XIV. | 3-9 | 117 | XI. | 37-54 | 49 | XIX. 1-16 155 | | | 14-21 | 77 | | 10-16 | 136 | XII. | 1-21 | 50 | 16-18 156 | | | 22-27 | 78 | | 17 | 137 | | 22-40 | 51 | 19-24 157 | | XVIII. | 1-9 | 79 | | 18-21 | 138 | | 41-59 | 52 | 25-30 158 | | | 10-20 | 80 | | 22-25 | 140 | XIII. | 1-9 | 53 | 31-42 159 | | | 21-35 | 81 | | 26 | 149 | | 10-21 | 100 | XX. 1-10 160 | | XIX. | 1, 2 | 100 | | 27-31 | 139 | | 22-35 | 101 | 11-18 161 | | | 3-15 | 111 | | 32-42 | 149 | XIV. | 1-14 | 102 | 19-29 163 | | | 16-30 | 112 | | 43-52 | 150 | | 15-35 | 103 | 30, 31 166 | | XX. | 1-16 | 113 | | 53 | 152 | XV. | 1-10 | 104 | XXI. 1-24 164 | | | 17-28 | 114 | | 54 | 151 | | 11-32 | 105 | 25 166 | | | 29-34 | 115 | | 55-65 | 152 | XVI. | 1-18 | 106 | Acts I. 3-5, 8 165 | | XXI. | 1-9 | 118 | | 66-72 | 151 | | 19-31 | 107 | Acts I. 9-12 166 | | | 10, 11 | 119 | XV. | 1-5 | 153 | XVII. | 1-10 | 108 | 1 Cor. XV. 6, 7 165 | | | 12, 13 | 120 | | 6-15 | 154 | | 11-19 | 83 | 1 Cor. XI. 23-26 140 | | | 14-19 | 119 | | 15-19 | 155 | | 20-37 | 109 | | | | 20-22 | 120 | | 20-23 | 156 | XVIII. | 1-14 | 110 | | | | 23-32 | 121 | | 24, 26 | 157 | | 15-17 | 111 | | | | 33-46 | 122 | | 25, 27, 28 | 156 | | 18-30 | 112 | | | XXII. | 1-14 | 123 | | 29-32 | 157 | | 31-34 | 114 | | | | 15-22 | 124 | | 33-41 | 158 | | 35-43 | 115 | | | | 23-33 | 125 | | 42-47 | 159 | XIX. | 1-10 | 115 | | | | 34-46 | 126 | XVI. | 1-8 | 160 | | 11-28 | 116 | | | XXIII. | 1-39 | 127 | | 9-11 | 161 | | 29-40 | 118 | | | XXIV. | 1-14 | 130 | | 12, 13 | 162 | | 41-44 | 119 | | | | 15-36 | 131 | | 14-18 | 163 | | 45-48 | 120 | | | | 37-51 | 132 | | 19, 20 | 166 | XX. | 1-9 | 121 | | | XXV. | 1-13 | 133 | | | | | 10-19 | 122 | | | | 14-30 | 134 | | | | | 20-26 | 124 | | | | 31-46 | 135 | | | | | 27-39 | 125 | | | XXVI. | 1-5 | 136 | | | | | 40-44 | 126 | | | | 6-13 | 117 | | | | | 45-47 | 127 | | | | 14-19 | 136 | | | | XXI. | 1-4 | 128 | |

| MATTHEW. | | | MARK. | | | LUKE. | | | JOHN. | | | | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | | CHAP. | VERSES. | SECTION. | CHAP. | VERSES. | SECTION. | CHAP. | VERSES. | SECTION. | CHAP. | VERSES. | SECTION. | | XXVI. | 20 | 137 | | | | XXI. | 5-19 | 130 | | | | | | 21-25 | 138 | | | | | 20-33 | 131 | | | | | | 26-29 | 140 | | | | | 34-36 | 132 | | | | | | 30 | 149 | | | | | 37, 38 | 120 | | | | | | 31-35 | 139 | | | | XXII. | 1-13 | 136 | | | | | | 36-46 | 149 | | | | | 14-18 | 137 | | | | | | 47-56 | 150 | | | | | 19-20 | 140 | | | | | | 57 | 152 | | | | | 21-23 | 138 | | | | | | 58 | 151 | | | | | 24-27 | 137 | | | | | | 59-68 | 152 | | | | | 28-30 | 138 | | | | | | 69-75 | 151 | | | | | 31-38 | 139 | | | | | XXVII. | 1-14 | 153 | | | | | 39-46 | 149 | | | | | | 15-26 | 154 | | | | | 47-53 | 150 | | | | | | 26-30 | 155 | | | | | 54-62 | 151 | | | | | | 31-34 | 156 | | | | | 63-71 | 152 | | | | | | 35-37 | 157 | | | | XXIII. | 1-5 | 153 | | | | | | 38 | 156 | | | | | 6-25 | 154 | | | | | | 39-44 | 157 | | | | | 26-34 | 156 | | | | | | 45-56 | 158 | | | | | 34-43 | 157 | | | | | | 57-66 | 159 | | | | | 44-49 | 158 | | | | | XXVIII. | 1-8 | 160 | | | | | 50-56 | 159 | | | | | | 9-15 | 161 | | | | XXIV. | 1-8 | 160 | | | | | | 16-20 | 165 | | | | | 9-11 | 161 | | | | | | | | | | | | 12 | 160 | | | | | | | | | | | | 13-35 | 162 | | | | | | | | | | | | 36-43 | 163 | | | | | | | | | | | | 44-49 | 165 | | | | | | | | | | | | 50-53 | 166 | | | |

[For the many readers who may desire to follow out citations made in these pages, the titles of leading volumes are appended to the names of authors. The opportunity of introducing these masterworks upon the Gospels and of conveying some impression of their great richness and value, to a wider circle of Christian and sympathetic readers, is one of many incidental advantages that have characterized this work.]

Aug. Augustine.

A. Henry Alford, D. D. How to read the Gospels, etc.

J. A. Joseph Angus, D. D. Christ our Life.

J. A. A. J. Addison Alexander, D. D. Gospels of Matthew and Mark explained.

J. W. A. Jas. W. Alexander, D. D. Faith; Discourses.

N. A. Nehemiah Adams, D. D. Friends of Christ; The Communion Sabbath.

L. A. Lyman Abbott, D. D. Com. on Matthew and Mark.

W. A. Wm. Adams, D. D. Conversations of Jesus Christ with Representative Men, etc.

W. L. A W. L. Alexander, D. D. S. J. Andrews, D. D. Life of our Lord upon the Earth.

An. An Unknown Writer. Wm. Arnot, D. D. Wm. Arthur, D. D. Bp. L. Andrewes, d. 1626.

B. David Brown, D. D. Com. on Gospels.

C. B. C. G. Barth, D. D. Chronological Com.

Beng. J. A. Bengel, D. D., d. 1752.

G. B. Rev. George Bowen. Daily Meditations.

H. B. Horace Bushnell, D. D. Sermons, etc.

J. B. John Brown, D. D.

R. B. Rudolph Besser, D. D. Christ the Light and the Life of the World.

N. C. B. N. C. Burt, D. D. The Land and its Story.

T. D. B. T. D. Bernard, D. D. Progress of Doctrine in the New Testament.

W. A. B. Wm. Archer Butler, D. D. Sermons.

W. I. B. Wm. Ives Budington, D. D.

A. B. B. Alex. B. Bruce, D. D.

J. G. B. J. G. Butler, D. D. Bernard de Clairvaux, d. 1157.

Rev. Samuel Burder. Oriental Customs.

William Burkitt, D. D., d. 1703.

James Beattie, LL. D., d. 1818.

Geo. W. Bethune, D. D.

Thomas Binney, D. D.

Bp. Gilbert Burnet, d. 1714.

Brenz. John Brentzen, d. 1714. Rev. Peter Bayne.

Bp. William Beveridge, d. 1708.

Rev. Thos. Bisse, d. 1731.

Rev. J. W. Burgon.

Edward Burton, D. D., d. 1836.

Rev. E. O. Bartlett.

Rev. E. Bickersteth.

Bp. Ralph Brownrig, d. 1659.

Rev. G. H. Bogatsky, d. 1774.

Henry Belfrage, D. D., d. 1835.

Chrys. Chrysostom, d. 458.

C. John Caird, D. D. Sermons.

John Calvin, d. 1574.

G. C. George Campbell, d. 1796.

H. C. Henry Cowles, D. D. The Gospel of John.

J. C. John Cumming, D. D.

R. C. Revue Chrétienne.

Article translated by L. J. Evans, D. D.

S. C. Samuel Clarke, D. D., d. 1729. Adam Clarke, D. D., d. 1832. E. D. Clarke, LL. D., d. 1822.

T. C. Thomas Chalmers, D. D. Rev. Samuel Cox.

T. L. C. T. L. Cuyler, D. D. Martin Chemnitz, d. 1586. Rev. Geo. Carr, d. 1776.

D. Philip Doddridge, D. D., d. 1751. Family Expositor.

J. D. Rev. James Drummond. Sermons, edited by J. G. Holland.

D. K. D. D. T. K. Drummond. Parabolical Teaching of Christ. I, Da Costa. The Four Witnesses.

W. H. D. Mr. Wm. Hepworth Dixon. J. De Liefde.

O. E. D. O. E. Daggett, D. D.

J. T. D. J. T. Duryea, D. D.

E. Chas. J. Ellicott, D. D., Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol. Historical Lectures on the Life of Christ

Z. E. Zachary Eddy, D. D. Immanuel; or, The Life of Jesus Christ.

B. B. E. B. B. Edwards, D. D. H. Ewald, D. D.

F. Frederick W. Farrar, D. D. Life of Jesus Christ. Geo. P. Fisher, D. D. Beginnings of Christianity. James Fergusson, F. R. S. A. H. C. Fish, D. D. Rev. Anthony Farindon, d. 1656.

G. Cunningham Geikie, D. D. Life and Words of Christ.

F. G. M. Guizot. Meditations upon Christianity.

D. S. G. Daniel S. Gregory, D. D. Why Four Gospels.

W. G. Rev. Wm. Gilpin, d. 1804. E. M. Goulburn, D. D. Thomas Guthrie, D. D. J. M. Gerhard, d. 1637. Richard Graves, D. D., d. 1729. Hugo Grotius, d. 1645. W. L. Gage, D. D.

H. William Hanna, D. D. The Life of our Lord, etc.

Bp. H. Bp. Joseph Hall, d. 1656. Contemplations, etc.

F. D. H. Frederick D. Huntington, D. D., Bishop of Central New York. Christian Believing and Living; Ser- mons for the People; The Christian Year, etc.

R. D. H. Roswell D. Hitchcock, D. D. J. S. H. John S. Howson, D. D.

H. B. H. Horatio B. Hackett, D. D. Hengs. E. W. Hengstenberg.

Matthew Henry, D. D., d. 1714. Samuel Harris, D. D. J. H. John Harris, D. D. M. H. Mark Hopkins, D. D. Hare. Julius Charles Hare. Mission of the Comforter. Augustus W. Hare. James Hamilton, D. D. Hilary. Hilarius Pictaviensis, d. 368. William Hales, D. D., d. 1819. Henry Hammond, D. D., d. 1660. Archbp. Herring, d. 1757. Bp. Geo. Horne, d. 1792. Bp. Samuel Horsley, d. 1806. Chas. H. Hall, D. D. Wayland Hoyt, D. D. Robert Haldane. Edward Irving, D. D., d. 1834. Jerome. John Jortin, D. D., d. 1770. W. J. Wm. Jones, of Nayland, d. 1800. K. John Kitto, D. D. Life of our Lord. Ker. John Ker, D. D. The Day-Dawn and the Rain, etc. Krum. F. W. Krummacher, D. D. A. K. Alex. Knox, d. 1831. John Keble, D. D. A. C. Kendrick, D. D. Lieut. H. H. Kitchener. Rev. H. S. Kelsey. T. Keim, D. D. Luther. J. P. Lange, D. D. L. J. B. Lightfoot, D. D. J. L. John Lightfoot, D. D., d. 1675. T. L. Taylor Lewis, LL. D. H. P. L. H. P. Liddon, D. D. Henry Leslie, D. D., d. 1660. F. A. Lampe, D. D., d. 1729. J. K. W. Löhe, d. 1872. John Locke, d. 1704. Wm. F. Lynch. M. James Macknight, D. D., d. 1800. Harmony of Gospels. A. M. Adolphe Monod, D. D. H. M. Henry H. Milman, D. D. History of Christianity, etc. H. L. M. H. L. Mansel, D. D. J. M. Mr. John Macgregor. Rob Roy on the Jordan. J. B. M. J. B. Mozley, D. D. McD. Rev. George McDonald. N. M. Norman Macleod, D. D. S. M. Selah Merrill, D. D. H. A. W. Meyer, D. D. Hugh McMillan, D. D. W. M. William Milligan, D. D.

Julius Müller, D. D.

Bp. Isaac Mann, d. 1789.

John McClintock, D. D.

Daniel March, D. D.

Wm. E. McLaren, D. D., Bishop of Illinois.

J. R. Macduff, D. D.

Bp. John Medley.

J. B. Massillon, d. 1742.

Joseph Mede, B. D., d. 1638.

W. L. Maury.

N. J. Aug. W. Neander, d. 1850. Life of Jesus Christ.

Archbp. Newcome, d. 1800.

Bp. Thomas Newton, d. 1782.

Robert Nares, D. D., d. 1829.

O. Hermann Olshausen, D. D., d. 1830. Com. on Gospels.

Van O. J. J. Van Oosterzee, D. D.

J. J. O. John J. Owen, D. D. Com. on Gospels.

Samuel Ogden, D. D., d. 1778.

P. Bp. B. Porteus, d. 1808.

De P. E. de Pressensé, D. D. Jesus Christ: His Times, Life, and Work.

J. L. P. J. L. Porter, D. D. Five Years in Damascus; Giant Cities and Syria’s Holy Places.

Pool. Rev. Matthew Pool, d. 1679.

S. P. J. J. S. Perowne, D. D.

William Paley, D. D., d. 1805.

Bp. Symon Patrick, d. 1707.

Bp. Z. Pearce, d. 1774.

Bp. John Pearson, d. 1686.

Bp. Thomas Percy, d. 1811.

Austin Phelps, D. D.

Thos. M. Post, D. D.

John Parkhurst, D. D., d. 1797.

Wm. L. Page, D. D.

Q. Pasquier Quesnel, d. 1719. Reflections on the Gospels.

R. Edward Robinson, D. D. Harmony of the Gospels; Biblical Researches, etc.

F. W. R. Fredk. W. Robertson, D. D. Sermons.

J. C. R. John C. Ryle, D. D. Expository Notes on John’s Gospel.

G. R. George Rawlinson, D. D.

A. R. Alexander Raleigh, D. D.

C. P. R. Rev. Chas. P. Reichel.

Rev. Robert Rollock, d. 1598.

S. William Smith, LL. D. N. T. History, etc.

R. S. S. Richard S. Storrs, D. D.

H. B. S. Henry B. Smith, D. D.

P. S. Philip Schaff, D. D. Person of Christ; Apostolic Church, etc.

A. P. S. Arthur P. Stanley, D. D. Sinai and Palestine, etc.

R. S. Robert South, D. D., d. 1716. Sermons.

W. F. S. Wm. F. Stevenson, D. D.

Stone. John S. Stone, D. D. Rudolph Stier, D. D.

A. S. Adolph Saphir, D. D.

James Strong, D. D. Harmony and Expos. of Gospels.

Rev. Chas. H. Spurgeon.

Archbp. Sharp, d. 1713.

Archbp. Secker, d. 1768.

Bp. Thomas Sherlock, d. 1761.

Dean Wm. Sherlock, d. 1707.

Dean George Stanhope, d. 1728.

Bp. Stillingfleet, d. 1699.

Philip Skelton, D. D., d. 1787.

Bp. Sanderson, d. 1662.

Rev. Jer. Seed, d. 1747.

F. E. D. Schleiermacher, D. D.

Rev. Thomas Smith, d. 1710.

A. L. Stone, D. D.

T. Richard Chenevix Trench, D. D., Archbishop of Dublin.

Notes on Miracles and Parables; Studies in the Gospels, etc.

J. P. T. Joseph P. Thompson, D. D.

Theology of the Words of Christ; Home Worship, etc.

A. T. F. Aug. G. Tholuck, D. D. Light from the Cross, etc.

G. T. Geo. Townsend, D. D. New Testament.

J. T. Bp. Jeremy Taylor, d. 1667.

H. B. T. H. B. Tristam, D. D. Land of Israel.

W. M. T. Wm. M. Thomson, D. D. The Land and the Book.

A. W. T. Anthony W. Thorold, D. D., Bishop of Rochester. The Presence of Christ.

W. T. W. M. Taylor, D. D. The Lost Found; Peter the Apostle.

C. C. T. C. C. Tittmann, D. D.

Tisch. Constantine Tischendorf. Andrew Thomson, D. D. In the Holy Land.

John Tulloch, D. D.

E. A. Thomson, D. D.

Rev. R. B. Thurston.

Archbp. Tillotson, d. 1694.

Bp. Geo. Tomline, d. 1827.

Thomas Townson, D. D., d. 1792.

W. J. Tucker, D. D.

W. H. Thomson, M. D.

F. W. Upham, LL. D.

Archbp. Usher, d. 1656.

V. Charles J. Vaughan, D. D.

Christ the Light of the World; Teachings of Christ.

A. V. A. Vinet, D. D. Vital Christianity: Gospel Studies.

V. D. H. J. Van Dyke, D. D. The Lord’s Prayer. H. J. Van Lennep, D. D. Bible Lands.

W. Christopher Wordsworth, D. D., Bishop of Lincoln. Notes on Gospels.

B. F. W. Brooke Foss Westcott, D. D. Introd. to Study of Gospels.

T. D. W. T. D. Woolsey, D. D. W. R. W. William R. Williams, D. D. God’s Rescue, etc

A. W. Archibald Watson, D. D. Dean Chr. Wordsworth, d. 1846. Bp. Watson, d. 1816. Peter Waldo, d. 1780. Bp. Warburton, d. 1779. Daniel Whitby, D. D., d. 1726. Daniel Waterland, D. D., d. 1740. Rev. Chas. Wheatley, d. 1742. Rev. Arthur Warwick. Rev. Ed. Wells, d. 1727. Archbp. Wm. Wake, d. 1737. Major Wilson. Y. John Young, LL. D. The Christ of History.

catalogue

OF

Index of Authors and Subjects.

PAGE

Abbott, Lyman, D.D.

Henry Ward Beecher: A Sketch of his Career. 15

A’Kempis, Thomas.

Of the Imitation of Christ. No. 5. 17

Alfred the Great. (Hughes.) No. 25… 17

Allen, Grant.

Nature Studies. No. 91…20

Colin Clout’s Calendar. No. 86…20

American Humorist. (Hawels.) No. 82.. 19

America Revisited. (Sala) No. 45… 18

Analytical Bible Concordance. (Young.) 5

Analytical Concordance to 8,000

Changes. (Young). 6

An Hour with Charlotte Bronte.

(Holloway.) No. 88…20

Apostolic Life. (Parker.) 6

Arnold, Edwin.

The Light of Asia. No. 4. 17

Bacon, Rev. Leonard Woolsey.

Lectures by Pere Hyacinthe…16

Baxter, Hon. W. E., M. P.

Winter in India. No. 93…20

Beecher, Lyman, D.D.

Reminiscences. No. 79…18

Beecher, Rev. Henry Ward.

A Sketch of his Career. (Abbott.) 15

Doctrinal Beliefs and Unbeliefs… 15

Bellows, Henry W., D.D.

In Memoriam—Bryant…15

Bertram, Rev. H. A.

Homiletical Encyclopædia… 10

Bible (“Perfect” Edition). See Holy

Bible…9

Bible and the Newspaper. (Spurgeon.)

No. 42…18

Bible Work. (Butler.) 6

Biblical Lights and Side Lights.

(Little) 6

Biblical Notes and Queries. (Young.) 6

Blackie, John Stuart.

On Self-Culture. No. 11… 17

Blood of Jesus. (Reid.) Cloth… 6

Paper, No. 75… 18

Bowles, Thomas Gibson.

Plotsam and Jetsam. No. 84… 19

Bronte, Charlotte, An Hour with.

(Holloway.) No. 88…20

Brown, Amelia M.

The Diary of a Minister’s Wife. Cloth… 14

Paper No. 53 and 58 18

Bryant, William Cullen, In Memor-

Iam 15

Bulwer, Edward.

Bulwer’s Novels 13

Burial of the Dead. (Duffield.) 7

Butler, J. Glenworth, D.D.

The Bible Work 6

C. lamities of Authors. (Disraeli.)

No. 27 17

Calvin, John. (Guizot.) Cloth… 13

PAPER No. 47 18

Carlyle, Thomas.

Carlyle’s Essays. No. 8 17

On the Choice of Books. No. 1 17

Sartor Resartus. Cloth 16

Paper No. 60 18

Chambers, Talbot W., D.D.

Commentary on Romans 8

Charlesworth, Rev. Vernon J.

Rowland Hill. No. 23 17

Child’s Guide to Heaven. (Hammond.) 13

Christian Sociology (Stuckenberg) 7

Christmas Books. (Dickens.) Cloth 13

PAPER, Nos. 48-49 18

Clood, Edward

Clood, Edward Nature Studies. No. 91 20

PAGE

Colin Clout’s Calendar. (Allen.) No. 86.. 20

Colton, Rev. C. C.

Lacon. No. 43… 18

Commentaries:

— on Exodus. (Murphy.) 7

— on Psalms. (Spurgeon.) 13

— on the New Testament. (Butler).. 6

— on Mark. (Hughes.) Cloth… 7

Paper, Nos. 68-69 18

— on Luke. (Godet.) Cloth… 7

Paper, Nos 51-52 18

— on Luke. (Van Doren.) Cloth… 7

Paper, Nos. 54-57 18

— on Acts. (Meyer.) 7

— on Romans (Godet.) 8

— on the Catholic Epistles. (Demarest.) 8

— on the Epistles. (Butler) 6

Companion to the Revised New Testa-

Companion to the Revised New Testa- ment. (Roberts.) 8

Companion to the Revised New Testa-

Companion to the Revised New Testa- ment. (Young.) 8

Compend of Baptism. (Hamilton.) 8

Compend of Baptism. (Hamilton.) 8 Complete Preacher 8

Complete Preacher… 8

Comstock, Anthony

Traps for the Young 16

Conant, Thomas J., D.D.

History of English Bible Translation. Cloth. 9

Paper, Nos. 65-66 18

Conversion of Children. (Hammond.)

Cloth 8

Paper, No. 72 18

Cornell, William Mason, M.D., LL.D.

How to Enjoy Life… 15

Crafts, Rev. Wilbur F.

Heroes and Holidays. Cloth… 15

Paper, Nos. 77-78 18

Few Testament Helps. No. 73 18

Successful Men of To-Day. No. 90… 20

Talks to Boys and Girls about Jesus… 16

Culture and Religion. (Shairp.) No. 50, 18

Cyclopedia of Quotations. (Hoyt-Ward.) 14

Day, Prof. Geo. E., D.D.

Theology of the Old Testament… 12

Deems, Charles F., D.D., L.L.D.

Birthday Book 14

Home Altar 10

Hymns for All Christians 15

Lessons in the Closet for 1883. No. 76… 18

De Lamartine, Alphonse.

Joan of Arc. No. 36 17

Demarest, John T., D.D.

Commentary on the Catholic Epistles… 8

D’Hanssonville, Othemin.

Salon of Madam Nocker. No. 28 17

Diary of a Minister’s Wife. (Brown.)

Cloth 14

Paper, Nos. 53 and 58 18

Dickens, Charles.

Christmas Books. Cloth 13

PAPER, Nos. 48-49 18

Disraeli, Isaac.

Diuraeli, Isaac. Calamities of Authors. No. 27 17

Dismaties of Authors. No. 27. Disraeli, Ht. Hon. B.

Lothair. Cloth 15

Lothair, Cloth… 15 Paper, Nos. 61-62 18

Drill Book in Vocal Culture (Thwing.) 14

Drill Book in Vocal Culture (Thwing.) 14 Duffield, Rev. Geo. D.D.

Durfield, Rev. Geo. D.D. Burial of the Dead 7

Burial of the Dead… 7 Early Days of Christianity. (Parrar.)

Early Days of Christianity. (Parran.)… 9 Eastern Proverbs and Emblems (Long.)

Eastern Proverbs and Emblems.(Long.)14

Eliot, George.

Essays. No. 87 20

Eschatology. (Peters.)

The Theocratic Kingdom… 12

Essays of George Eliot. (Sheppard.) No. 87.

The above works will be sent by mail, postage paid, on receipt of the price.

PAGE.

Ethics of the Dust. (Ruskin.) No. 29… 17

Everts, W. W., D.D. The Thoughts of John Foster… 13

Farrar, Canon F. W. Early Days of Christianity… 9 Life and Work of St. Paul. No. 9-10… 17 Life of Christ. No. 6-7… 17

Flotsam and Jetsam. (Bowles.) No. 84… 19 Foster, John. The Thoughts of (Everts.)… 13

Foster, Thomas. Nature Studies. No. 91… 20

From Gloom to Gladness. (Van Dyke… 9 Frondes Agrestes. (Ruskin.) No. 35… 17

Fulton, Justin D., D.D. Fulton’s Replies… 9 Sam Hobart. No. 89… 20

Funeral Service… 9 Gathered Lambs. (Hammond.)… 14

Gems of Illustration. (Guthrie.)… 14 Gilead; An Allegory. (Smith.)… 9

Giving or Entertainment. (Van Dyke) 15 Gedet, F., D. D.

Commentary on Luke. Cloth… 7 Paper, Nos. 51-52… 18 Commentary on Romans… 8

Goldsmith, Oliver. Letters from a Citizen of the World. No. 44.. 18

Gospel of Mark. (Teachers’ Edition.)… 9 Gospel of Marx in Phonetic Spelling. 15

Guizot, M. John Calvin. Cloth… 13 Paper, No. 47… 18

Guthrie, Thomas, D.D. Gems of Illustration… 14

Hall, Rev. John, D.D. Commentary on Exodus (notes)… 7 Commentary on Luke (notes)… 7

Hamilton, William, D.D. Compend of Baptism… 8

Hammond, Edward Payson, D.D. Child’s Guide to Heaven… 13 Conversion of Children. Cloth… 9 Paper, No. 72… 18

Haweis, Rev. H. R., M.A. American Humorist. No. 82… 19

Hermitis. (Kingsley.) No. 39… 18 Heroes and Holidays. (Crafts.) Cloth.. 15 Paper, Nos. 77-78… 18

Hervey, G. W., M.A. A Manual of Revivals… 11

Highways of Literature. (Pryde.) No. 85… 19

History of England. (Knight) Cloth… 15 Paper, Nos. 12-19… 17

History of English Bible Translation. (Conant.) Cloth… 9 Paper, Nos. 65-66… 16

History of the Cross. (Sherwood.)… 9 Holloway, Mrs. Laura C. An Hour with Charlotte Bronte. No. 88… 19

Home Altar. (Deems.)… 10 Homicile at Encyclopedia. (Bertram.) 10

Homicile at Monthly… 10 Homiletics. (Hoppin.)… 10

Homilet. (Thomas.)… 10

Hood, Rev. E. Paxton. Oliver Cromwell. No. 80… 19 Scottish Characteristics. No. 94… 20

Hoppin, James M., D.D. Homiletics… 10

How to Pay Church Debts. (Stall.)… 10 How to Enjoy Life. (Cornell.)… 15

Hoyt, J. K. Cyclopedia of Quotations… 14

Hughes, D. C. Commentary on Mark. Cloth… 7 Paper, Nos. 68-69… 18

Hughes, Thomas. Alfred the Great. No. 25… 17 Manliness of Christ. No. 2… 17

Hunt, Sara Keables. Death Birthday Book… 14

Hymns for All Christians. (Deems.)… 15

PAGE.

Hymns, Standard. (Thwing.)… 16

Idyls of the King. (Tennyson.) No. 22.. 17 India: What can it Teach Us! (Muller.) No. 92… 20

Ingersoll Answered. (Parker.) No. 67… 18

In Memoriam—Bryant. (Bellows.)… 15

Inner Life of Christ. (Parker.)… 10

Joan of Arc. (De Lamartine.) No. 36… 17

Job’s Comforters. (Parker.) No. 70… 18

John Ploughman’s Pictures. (Spurgeon.) No. 46… 18

John Ploughman’s Talk. (Spurgeon.) No. 1… 17

Johnson, Rev. John Edgar. The Rock that is Higher than I… 16

Kernahan, Prof. James. Commentary on Luke (notes.)… 7

Kingsley, Canon Charles. The Hermits. No. 39… 17 Town Geology. No. 24… 17

Knight, Charles. The Popular History of England. Cloth… 15 Paper, Nos. 12-19… 17

Kossuth, Louis. Memories of My Exile. Nos. 30, 31… 17

Lacon. (Colton.) No. 43… 18

Lectures by Pere Hyacinthe. (Bacon.) 16 Leech, S. V., D.D.

Leech’s Reply… 16

Leland, Thomas, D.D. The Orations of Demosthenes. Nos. 33-34… 17

Lessons in the Closet for 1883. (Deems.) No. 76… 18

Letters from a Citizen of the World. (Goldsmith.) No. 44… 18

Letters to Workmen and Laborers. (Ruskin.) Nos. 20-21… 17

Life and Work of Rev. Charles H. Spurgeon. (Yarrow.) No. 46… 18

Life and Work of St. Paul. (Farrar.) Nos. 9-10… 17

Life of Christ. (Farrar.) Nos. 6-7… 17

Light of Asia. (Arnold.) No. 4… 17

Liggins, Rev. John. Opium: England’s Coercive Policy. No. 74… 18

Little, Rev. Charles E. Biblical Lights and Side Lights… 6

Lives of Illustrious Shoemakers. (Winks.) No. 83… 19

Long, George. Thoughts of the Emperor Antoninus. No. 37. 18

Long, Rev. A. Eastern Proverbs and Emblems… 14

Macaulay, Lord. Macaulay’s Essays. No. 3… 17

Manliness of Christ. (Hughes.) No. 2… 17

Manual of Revivals. (Hervey.)… 11

Memories of My Exile. (Kossuth). Nos. 30-31… 17

Metropolitan Pulpit… 11 Meyer, Heinrich, A. W., Th. D. Commentary on Acts… 7

Moon, Rev. Geo. Washington, F. R. S. t. The Heviser’s English. No. 71… 18

Müller, F. Max, K. M. India: What can it Teach Us? No. 92… 20

Murphy, James G., D.D. Commentary on Exodus… 7

Mr. Horn and His Friends. (Pearse.) No. 32… 17

Nature’s Studies. (Proctor.) No. 91… 20

New Testament Helps. (Crafts.) No. 73. 18 Nutritive Cure. (Walter.) No. 59… 18

Oehler, Dr. Gust. Fr. Theology of the Old Testament… 12

Of the imitation of Christ. (A Kempis.) No. 5… 17

Oliver Cromwell. (Paxton Hood.) No. 80. 19

On Self Culture. (Blackie.) No. 11… 17

On the Choice of Books. (Carlyle.) No. 7. 17

Opium: England’s Coercive Policy. (Liggins.) No. 74… 18

Orations of Demosthenes. (Leland.) Nos. 33-34… 17

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PAGE

Ormiston, William, D.D., LL.D.

Commentary on Acts. (Meyer.) 7

Out-Door Life in Europe. (Thwing.)

No. 26… 17

Parker, Joseph, D.D.

Apostolic Life… 6

Ingersoll Answered. No. 67… 18

Inner Life of Christ:

These Sayings of Mine… 10

Servant of All… 11

Things Concerning Himself… 11

Job’s Comforters. No. 70… 18

Pastor’s Record. (Wylie.)… 16

Pearse, Mark Guy.

Mr. Horn and His Friends. No. 32… 17

Persian Queen. (Thwing.) No. 63… 18

Peters, Rev. G. N. H., A.M.

The Theocratic Kingdom… 12

Popery. (Van Dyke.)… 11

Popular History of England. (Knight.)

Cloth… 15

Paper, Nos. 12-19… 17

Preacher’s Cabinet. (Thwing.)… 11

Proctor, Richard A.

Nature Studies. No. 91… 20

Pryde, David, LL.D.

The Highways of Literature. No. 85. … 19

Palpit Talks. (Hylanco.)… 11

Ramsey, Edward B.

Pulpit Table Talk. No. 41… 18

Reid, Rev. William, A. M.

The Blood of Jesus… 6

Reminiscences of Rev. Lyman

Beecher, D.D. No. 79… 18

Revised New Testament. (Teachers’

Edition.)… 11

Reviser’s English. (Moon.) Cloth… 11

Paper, No. 71… 18

Roberts, Alexander, D. D.

Companion to the Revised New Testament… 8

Robert Raik’s Centennial Addresses. 16

Rock that is Higher than I. (Johnson.) 13

Rowland Hill. (Charlesworth.) No. 23… 17

Ruskin, John, LL.D.

Letters to Workmen and Laborers. Nos. 20-21. 17

Ethics of the Dust. No. 29… 17

Frondes Agrestes. No. 35… 17

Rylanco, J. H., D.D. Pulpit Talk… 11

Sala, George Augustus.

America Revisited. No. 45… 18

Salon of Madam Necker. (D Haussonville.) Nos. 28 and 38 and 64… 17

Sam Hobart. (Fulton.) No. 89… 20

Sartor Resartus. (Carlyle.) Cloth … 16

Paper, No. 60… 18

Schaff, Philip, D.O., LL. D.

Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia … 12

Scottian Characteristics. (Paxton Hood.)

No. 94… 19

Science in Short Chapters. (Williams.)

No. 81… 19

Servant of All. (Parker.) See “Inner Life”… 11

Shalrp, Prof. J. C.

Culture and Religion. No. 50… 18

Sheppard, Nathan.

Essays of George Eliot. No. 87… 20

Sherwood, James M.

The History of the Cross … 9

Spurgeon, Rev. Charles H.

Bible and the Newspaper. No. 42… 18

His Life and Work (Yarrow.) No. 46… 18

John Ploughman’s Pictures. No. 40… 18

John Ploughman’s Talk. No 1… 17

Talk to Farmers… 16

The Treasury of David… 13

PAGE

Smith, Rev. J. Hyatt.

Gilead: An Allegory … 9

Stall, Rev. Sylvanus.

How to Pay Church Debts… 10

Standard Hymns. (Thwing.)… 16

Standard Library… 19-20

Standard Series… 17-18

Standard Series, Class A. (Cloth)… 16

Stuckenberg, J. H. W., D.D.

Christian Sociology… 7

Studies in the Book of Mark. (Hughes)

See Commentary on Mark … 7

Studley, Mary J., M.D.

What Our Girls Ought to Know… 16

Talks to Boys and Girls about Jesus

(Crafts.)… 16

Talks to Farmers. (Spurgeon.)… 10

Tennyson, Alfred.

Idyls of the King. No. 22… 17

The Theocratic Kingdom. (Peters.)… 12

Theology of the Old Testament.

(Oehler.)… 12

These Sayings of Mine. (Parker.)… 10

Things Concerning Himself. (Parker.) 11

Thomas, David, D.D.

The Homilist … 10

Thoughts of John Foster. (Everts.)… 13

Thoughts of the Emperor Antoninus.

(Long.) No. 37… 18

Through the Prison to the Throne.

(Van Dyke.)… 13

Thwing Rev. Edward Payson.

Drill Book in Vocal Culture… 14

Outdoor Life in Europe. No. 26… 17

Persian Queen. No. 63… 18

Standard Hymns … 16

The Preacher’s Cabinet… 11

Town Geology. (Kingsley.) No. 24… 17

Traps for the Young. (Comstock.)… 16

Van Doren, W. H., D.D.

Commentary on Luke. Cloth… 7

Paper, Nos. 54-57… 18

Van Dyke, Rev. Jos. S.

From Gloom to Gladness … 9

Giving or Entertainment … 15

Popery … 11

Through the Prison to the Throne… 13

Waiter, Robert, M.D.

Nutrition Cure. No. 59… 13

Ward, John Anna L.

Cyclopedia of Questions … 14

What Our Girls Ought to Know.

(Studley.)… 16

Witner, Prof. Alexander.

India: What can it Teach Us? No. 92… 20

Williams, W. Mattieu, F.R.A.S.

Science in Short Chapters. No. 81… 19

Wilson, Andrew.

Nature Studies. No. 91… 20

Winks, William Edward.

Lives of Illustrious Shoemakers. No. 83… 19

Winter in India. (Baxter.) No. 93… 20

Wylie, Rev. W. T.

Pastor’s Record… 16

Yarrow, Rev. William H.

Life and Work of Rev. Charles H. Spurgeon.

No. 46… 18

Young, Robert, LL.D.

Analytical Bible Concordance… 5

Analytical Bible Treasury … 6

Analytical Concordance to 8,000 Changes … 6

Biblical Notes and Queries … 6

Companion to the Revised New Testament… 8

The above works will be sent by mail, postage paid, on receipt of the price.

The above works will be sent by mail, postage paid, on receipt of the price.

The above works will be sent by mail, postage paid, on receipt of the price.

The above works will be sent by mail, postage paid, on receipt of the price.

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Analytical Bible Concordance, Revised Edition. (Young.)

Analytical Concordance to the Bible on an entirely new plan. Containing every word in Alphabetical Order, arranged under its Hebrew or Greek original, with the Literal Meaning of Each, and its Pronunciation. Exhibiting about 311,000 References, marking 30,000 various readings in the New Testament. With the latest information on Biblical Geography and Antiquities. Designed for the simplest reader of the English Bible. By ROBERT YOUNG, LL.D., author of “A New Literal Translation of the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures,” etc., etc. Fourth Revised, Authorized Edition. Printed on heavy paper One large volume, 4to. cloth, $5.00; sheep, $6.00; Fr. im. morocco, $7.00; half morocco, $9.00; full morocco, $12.00.

There is but one authorized and correct edition of Young’s Concordance sold in America. Every copy of this edition has on the title-page the words “Authorized Edition,” and at the bottom of the page our imprint.

CAUTION.—That the public may be no longer misled by the botched edition from the plates of the American Book Exchange, Dr. Young has purchased the plates and suppressed the edition. Since a number of copies of the defective edition are still in stock in some bookstores, we warn the public against purchasing any copy that has not our imprint on the title-page.

Dr. PHILIP SCHAFF verifies these corrections.

AMERICAN BIBLE REVISION COMMITTEE, 42 BIBLE HOUSE, N. Y., June 22, 1881.

“Messrs. FUNK & WAGNALLS:

“Dear Sirs:—I have at your request examined personally, and had two literary friends examine, the proof slips of corrections of Young’s ‘Analytical Concordance to the Bible,’ and a comparison of the fourth edition with the first has convinced us that all these corrections have been made in the plates of the fourth edition (1881).

“I am glad to bear this testimony, as an act of justice to Dr. Young, who has spent so many years of self-denying labor upon this work, and has made it by far the most complete Concordance in the English or any other language.

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Analytical Biblical Treasury. (Young.)

Analytical Biblical Treasury: Being Appendixes to the Analytical Concordance to the Bible. Designed for the use of Teachers and Divinity Students. By ROBERT YOUNG, LL.D., author of the Analytical Concordance, etc., 4to. cloth, $2.00.

CONTENTS: (1) Analytical Survey of all the Books. (2) Of all the Facts. (3) Of all the Idioms of the Bible. (4) Bible Themes, Questions, Canonicity, Rationalism, etc., together with maps and plans of Bible Lands and Places. (5) A complete Hebrew and English Lexicon to the Old Testament (6) Idiomatic use of the Hebrew and Greek Tenses. (7) A complete Greek and English Lexicon to the New Testament.

Analytical Concordance to 8,000 Changes in the Revised New Testament. (Young.)

An Analytical Concordance to Eight Thousand Changes of the Revised New Testament. By ROBERT YOUNG, D.D., LL.D., author of Young’s Concordance to the Bible, etc. 8vo, 24 pp., price, paper, 40 cents. 12mo, 72 pp., price, paper, 40 cents.

Apostolic Life. (Parker.)

Apostolic Life as Revealed in the Acts of the Apostles, from the Ascension of Christ to the Withdrawal of Peter. By JOSEPH PARKER, D.D. Author of “Ecce Deus,” “Inner Life of Christ,” etc. 8vo, cloth. Price, $1.50.

“Much blessed, soul-saving truth is plainly and emphatically taught and much more is suggested. Every paragraph sparkles with ideas whose far-reaching relations open out grand vistas in the intellectual world and breed swarms of other ideas. The power of the book in this respect is marvelous, and hence its special advantage to preachers."—The Primitive Methodist Magazine.

“They are exceedingly stirring sermons in the best sense."—Congregationalist, Boston.

“If it be essential that a sermon, be dull, these are no sermons. Yet they are sermons rich in life and power, pungent, practical, faithful, fearless; with a steady flow of fancy, and bursts of imagination. Dramatic in style, thoughtful and affluent."—Christian Union.

See further commendations under “Inner Life.”

Biblical Lights and Side-Lights. (Little.)

Biblical Lights and Side-Lights, or Ten Thousand Biblical Illustrations, with Thirty Thousand Cross References consisting of Facts, Incidents, and Remarkable Statements for the use of Public Speakers and Teachers; and also for those in every Profession, who for illustrative purpose desire ready access to the numerous and interesting narratives contained in the Bible. By REV. CHARLES E. LITTLE. 8vo, cloth. Price, $4.00.

Biblical Notes and Queries. (Young.)

Biblical Notes and Queries: A general Medium of Communication regarding Biblical Criticism and Bible Interpretation, Ecclesiastical History, Antiquities, Biography and Theological Science, Reviews, etc. It answers Thousand of questions constantly presented to the minds of clergymen and Sunday-school teachers. By ROBERT YOUNG, LL.D., author of the Analytical Concordance to the Bible. Royal 8vo, cloth, 400 pp. Price, $1.75.

Bible Work. (Butler.)

The Bible Work; or, Bible Readers’ Commentary. The New Testament, in two volumes. The text arranged in Sections; with Readings and Comments selected from the Choicest, most Illuminating and Helpful Thought of the Christian Centuries.

Vol. I. The Fourfold Gospel. Vol. II. The Acts, Epistles and Revelation.

With Maps, Illustrations and Diagrams. By J. GLENTWORTH BUTLER, D.D.

Vol. I., 685 pp. Vol. II., 831 pp. Royal 8vo, cloth, price, per vol., $5.00; sheep, $6.00; half morocco, $7.50; full morocco, gilt, $10.00.

Rt. Rev. F. D. Huntington: “To preachers this Commentary must be invaluable, and in the family, in the Bible-class, the closet of devotion, it must bring help, illumination and impulses to a nobler and holier life as often as it is opened.”

Rt. Rev. T. M. Clark, R. I.: “I heartily indorse the recommendation of the work given by Bishop Huntington.”

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Pres. Bishop John F. Hurst, D.D.: “Adapted to a careful study of the New Testament.”

Blood of Jesus. (Reid.)

The Blood of Jesus. By REV. WM. REID, M. A. With an introduction by REV. E. P. Hammond. Price, paper, 10 cents; cloth, 40 cents.

Says ex-Pres. MARK HOPKINS, of Williams College: “It is the true view of the Gospel, and adapted to do great good.”

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Burial of the Dead. (Duffield.)

The Burial of the Dead. A Pastor’s Complete Hand-Book for Funeral Services, and for the Consolation and Comfort of the Afflicted. By REV. GEORGE DUFFIELD, D.D. AND REV. SAMUEL W. DUFFIELD. Arranged, for ease of reference, in four parts.:

I.—Scriptural Forms of Funeral Service.

II.—An exhaustive Biblical Study on the subject of Death.

III.—A short treatise on the Funeral itself, as it is found in the Bible.

IV.—Texts, Topics and Hints for Funeral Sermons and Addresses.

Entirely practical, wholly unsectarian, and far in advance of all other Manuals of the kind. Price, cloth, 75 cents: limp leather, $1.00.

T. W. Chambers, D. D., says:

“Admirable alike in conception and execution, and must be very useful, filling as it does a gap in our current literature.”

T. S. Doolittle, D.D., of Rutgers College, says:

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Christian Sociology. (Stuckenberg.)

Christian Sociology. By J. H. W. STUCKENBERG, D.D., Professor in the Theological Department of Wittenberg College. 12mo, cloth, 382 pp., $1.00.

A new book in a fresh field. Exceedingly suggestive and practical.

Commentary on Exodus. (Murphy.)

A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Book of Exodus, with a new translation by JAMES G. MURPHY, D.D. New edition, unabridged, with Preface and Notes by JOHN HALL, D.D. 2 vols., paper, 233 pp., $1.00; 1 vol., cloth, $1.50.

“Thus far nothing has appeared for half-a-century on the Pentateuch so valuable as the present volume (on Exodus). His style is lucid, animated, and often eloquent. His pages afford golden suggestions and key thoughts. * * * Some of the laws of interpretation are stated with so fresh and natural a clearness and force that they will permanently stand."—Methodist Quarterly.

“As a critical, analytical, candid, and sensible view of the Sacred Word, this work stands among the first."—Congregational Quarterly.

Commentary on the Psalms. (Spurgeon.) See “Treasury of David.”

Commentary on the New Testament. See “Bible Work.”

Commentary on Mark. (Hughes.)

Studies in the Book of Mark, for Teachers, Pastors, and Parents.

By REV. D. C. HUGHES, Editor of the International Sunday-School Lesson Department of THE HOMILETIC MONTHLY. Critical, Exegetical and Homiletical. 8vo, cloth, $1.50.

Commentary on Luke. (Godet.)

A Commentary on the Gospel of St. Luke. By F. GODET, Doctor and Professor of Theology, Neufchatel. Translated from the Second French Edition. With Preface and Notes by John Hall, D.D. New edition, printed on heavy paper. 2 vols., paper, 584 pp. (Standard Series, octavo, Nos. 51 and 52), $2.00; 1 vol., 8vo, cloth, $2.50.

Howard Crosby, D.D., LL.D., says:—“I consider Godet a man of soundest learning and purest orthodoxy.”

Wm. N. Taylor, D.D., says:—“I consider Godet an admirable commentator for clearness and suggestiveness.”

Lyman Abbott, D. D., editor Christian Union, says:—“Godet’s Commentary combines the critical and the spiritual, perhaps more effectually than any other.”

The Congregationalist, Boston, says:—“A book of richest and most permanent value to aid in studying Sabbath-School lessons—clear, thorough, critical, suggestive, inspiring.”

The Zion’s Herald, Boston, Mass., says:—“Godet is eminently clear, orthodox, and suggestive. He meets all the destructive criticism of the hour upon the sacred text and its authenticity, with a firmness of conviction and fullness of learning which are refreshing, while in exegetical and homiletical notes he leaves nothing to be desired.”

Commentary on Luke. (Van Doren.)

A Suggestive Commentary on Luke, with Critical and Homiletical Notes. By W. H. VAN DOREN, D.D. Edited by Prof. James Kernahan: London. 4 vols., paper, 1104 pp. (Standard Series, octavo, Nos. 54-57), $3.00; 2 vols., 8vo, cloth, $3.75.

Spurgeon says:—“It teems and swarms with homiletic hints.”

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Dr. Cheever says:—“It is the best malum in pares I have ever seen.”

Commentary on Acts. (Meyer.)

A Critical and Exegetical Hand-book to the Acts of the Apostles. By HEINRICH A. W. MEYER, Th.D. With Preface, Index, and Supplementary Notes to the American Edition, by William Ormiston, D.D., LL.D. 1 vol., 8vo, cloth, price, $3.00 (see p. 22)

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Commentary on Acts. (Meyer’s.)—Continued.

Meyer’s series of Great Commentaries on rank of scholarly Biblical works.

Spurgeon says:—“This is a very learned Commentary.”

Dr. T. W. Chambers says:—“Prince of Exegetes.”

Dr. Thos. Armitage says:—“Of immense value.”

Dr. Jas. I. Duryea says:—“Always helpful.”

Dr. Arthur Brooks says:—“Useful for its large learning, wise judgment, and conciseness.”

Charles S. Robinson, D.D., of New York, says:—

“Meyer on Acts is among the very best and most the New Testament are easily in the front needed of books for our use on this side of the water.”

Boston Journal of Commerce says:—“A most learned commentary, very suggestive, and to be consulted as a work of authority.”

Zion’s Herald, Boston, says:—“Unchallenged and peerless.”

The Tribune, N. Y., says:—“Profound scholarship and critical acumen are manifested on every page.”

Commentary on Romans. (Godet.)

Commentary on St. Paul’s Epistle to the Romans. By F. GODET, D.D., Professor of Theology, Neuchatel. Translated from the French by Rev. A. Cusin, M.A., Edinburgh. The Translation Revised and Edited, with an Introduction and Appendix, by Talbot W. Chambers, D.D. 1 vol., 8vo, 544 pp., cloth, price, $3.00.

Bible Student’s Library Edition.—Uniform in binding and style with Meyer’s Commentary on Acts.

Arthur Brooks, D.D., says:—“Any one acquainted with Godet’s other works will congratulate himself that the same author’s clear logic and deep learning, as brought to bear upon the difficulties of the Epistle to the Romans, are to be made accessible through this publication.”

Thos. Armitage, D.D., says:—“Especially must I

See also Godet’s Luke.

commend the fair, painstaking, thorough, and devout work of Dr. Godet. All his works are welcome to every true thinker.”

Lyman Abbott, D.D., editor Christian Union, says:—“Godet’s commentary combines the critical and the spiritual, perhaps more effectually than any other with which I am acquainted.”

Commentary on the Catholic Epistles. (Demarest.)

Commentary on the Catholic Epistles. By John T. Demarest, D.D. It is a thorough work. The press is very hearty in its commendation. 8vo, 650 pp., price, $2.00.

Commentary on the Epistles. See “Bible Work,” Vol. II.

Companion to the Revised New Testament. (Roberts.)

Companion to the Revised New Testament. Explaining the reason for the changes made on the Authorized Version. By ALEX. ROBERTS, D.D., member of the English Revision Committee, with Supplement by a member of the American Committee. Also a full Textual Index. Authorized edition. 8vo, paper, 117 pp., 25 cents: 16mo, cloth, 213 pp., 75 cents.

The New York Examiner and Chronicle says:—“It is very valuable, giving needed facts as to the causes of the differences of reading which have sprung up in the Scriptures, and the grounds upon which the changes in the present Revised Version have been made.”

Companion to the Revised New Testament. (Young.)

Contributions to a New Revision, or, A Critical Companion to the New Testament. By ROBERT YOUNG, D.D., LL. D. 12mo, 392 pp., cloth, 75 cents.

*One-half of each page is left blank for notes. Prominent words in the text are numbered.

Compend of Baptism. (Hamilton.)

Compend of Baptism. By WILLIAM HAMILTON, D.D.

The cream of the literature on the Baptism controversy. Its aim is, by brief but exhaustive exegesis, to elucidate and establish the fact clearly that affusion is at least as classical and scriptural a mode of Baptism as immersion, and that infants are entitled to it as their biblical right. 12mo, 390 pp., cloth, price, 75 cents.

Complete Preacher.

The Complete Preacher. A Sermonic Magazine. Containing nearly one hundred sermons in full, by many of the greatest preachers in this and other countries in the various denominations. 3 vols., 8vo, cloth. Each $1.50, or, per set, $4.00.

Conversion of Children. (Hammond.)

The Conversion of Children. Can it be Effected? How Young? Will they Remain Steadfast? What Means to be Used? When to be Received and how Trained in the Church? By Rev. E. P. HAMMOND, the Children’s Evangelist. Should be studied by all lovers and teachers of children. Price, paper bound, 30 cents; cloth, 75 cts.

The Christian at Work, New York, says: “A careful perusal must convince the most skeptical mind not only that young children are converted, but with a full belief in the possibility of very young children being converted.”

The above works will be sent by mail, postage paid, on receipt of the price.

Early Days of Christianity. (Farrar.)

The Early Days of Christianity. By CANON FARRAR, D.D., F.R.S. This standard work needs no commendation. Authorized Edition. Printed from imported plates without abridgment. Paper and press-work excellent. Substantially bound in brown or green cloth. Price, cloth, 75 cents; paper, 40 cents.

Eschatology. (Peters.) See “Theocratic Kingdom.”

From Gloom to Gladness. (Van Dyke.)

From Gloom to Gladness. Illustrations of Life from the Biography of Esther. By REV. JOSEPH S. VAN DYKE. A companion book to “Through the Prison to the Throne.” Rich in suggestive and practical thoughts. 16mo, 254 pp., cloth, $1.00.

Fulton’s Replies.

Punishment of Sin Eternal. Three sermons in reply to Beecher, Farrar and Inger & L. By JUSTIN D. FULTON, D.D. 8vo, paper, 10 cents.

Pulpit and Grave.

Funeral Service. A collection of many of the most impressive and appropriate Funeral Sermons; many themes and texts that have been used on funeral occasions, with hundreds of Suggestive Hints. An exhaustive work on this subject. Invaluable to clergymen. 12mo, 360 pp., cloth, $1.50.

Gilead: An Allegory. (Smith.)

Gilead; or, The Vision of All Souls’ Hospital. An Allegory. By REV. J. HYATT SMITH, Congressman from New York. Revised edition. 12mo, cloth, 350 pp., $1.00.

The Boston Traveller says: “Of all the attempts at Allegory, but three are worthy of mention: Spenser’s ‘Paërie Queen,’ Bunyan’s ‘Pilgrim’s

Progress,’ and J. Hyatt Smith’s ‘Gilead.’ J. Hyatt Smith is worthy to be so classed, and ought to be proud to fall in such good company.”

Gospel of Mark.

From the Teacher’s Edition of the Revised New Testament, with Harmony of the Gospels, List of Lessons, Maps, etc. Paper, 15 cents; cloth, 50 cents.

History of the Cross. (Sherwood.)

The Lamb in the Midst of the Throne; or, The History of the Cross. By JAMES M. SHERWOOD, D.D., editor for many years of the Presbyterian Review. 8vo, 525 pp., cloth, $2.00.

A theological work, treating the condition and tendencies of modern religious thought as related to the pulpit, and some of the grave questions of the day. The author has sought to bring out the universality of the relations of Christ’s death as an expiation for sin, and as a moral reconciling force. The style is fresh and vigorous.

“I like it altogether. There are only bright dealings with important subjects to be found in it."—DR. C. S. ROBINSON.

“‘The History of the Cross’ is an exceedingly able and valuable work. The book ought to have a wide and prayerful reading."—PRES. D. S. GREGGAT.

“A right sturdy, stalwart piece of orthodoxy is

Dr. Sherwood’s book; if you tap it with a mallet it has a resonant ring like the big bell of St. Paul’s. If every seminary student would read it before licensure it would tone him up for his life-work, and put new marrow into his bones."—DR. T. L. CUYLER.

“With the main positions of the book I am in full accord, and wish for it a wide circulation."—PRES. MARK HOPKINS.

History of English Bible Translation. (Conant.)

The History of English Bible Translation. Revised and Brought down to the Present Time by THOMAS J. CONANT, D.D., member of the Old Testament Revision Committee, and Translator for the American Bible Union Edition of the Scriptures. This History was originally written by Mrs. H. C. Conant, the late wife of Dr. T. J. Conant. It is a complete history of Bible Revision from the Wickliffe Bible to the Revised Version. 2 vols., paper, 284 pp. (Standard Series, octavo, Nos. 65 and 66), 50 cents; 1 vol., 8vo, cloth $1.00.

Holy Bible. (The “Perfect” Edition.)

The “Perfect” Edition of the Holy Bible, containing the Old and New Testaments, together with Cruden’s Concordance; the Psalms in Meter; a Comprehensive Bible Dictionary, fully illustrated; a Pictorial History of each of the Books of the Bible; Biographical Sketches of the Translators and Reformers; the Lives and Martyrdom of the Holy Apostles and Evangelists; Egyptian, Jewish and Biblical Antiquities; Cities of the Bible, with descriptive scenes and events in Palestine; Biblical Scenery, Manners and Customs of the Ancients; Natural History; Religions

The above works will be sent by mail, postage paid, on receipt of the price.

Denominations, Science and Revelation; Temple of Solomon; History of Jewish Worship, etc., etc. Profusely illustrated, elegantly bound. Royal 4to, 1663 pp.

Price, { A, American Morocco, Raised Panel, Gilt Back…$ 9 00 B, Fine French Morocco, Antique Panel, Full Gilt… 11 00 C, " German " Massive " “… 13 50 D, Genuine Turkey Morocco, Elegant Panel, Full Gilt… 16 50

Home Altar. (Deems.)

The Home Altar: An appeal in Behalf of Family Worship. With Prayers and Hymns for Family Use. By Rev. CHARLES F. DEEMS, LL.D., Pastor of the Church of the Strangers. Third edition. 12mo, cloth, 281 pp., 75 cents.

Bishop McTycire says: “This little volume we have read again and again, and cannot speak too well of it. There will be hardly any need of preaching on family prayers where it circulates.”

Homiletics. (Hoppin.)

Homiletics. By JAMES M. HOPPIN, D.D., Professor in Yale College. A standard work, invaluable to clergymen. New edition. 8vo, 809 pp., cloth. Price, $3.00.

The Congregationalist, Boston, says: “He has gone carefully into the history of his subject, and his graphic descriptions of ancient preachers and their preaching are as instructive as they are entertaining.”

The National Baptist, Philadelphia: “It is one of those books that, when one takes it up, he does not want to lay it down. It awakens interest and holds it.”

S. S. Times, Philadelphia: “Is quite full in regard to the history of preaching, very correct in discussing the object of preaching, and methodical in dealing with the analysis and composition of the sermon.”

The Christian Union, New York: “A valuable element is his study of the present drifts of popular religious thought and feeling, and his practical deductions as to the peculiarities of the work now devolving on Christ’s ministers.”

Homiletic Encyclopedia. (Bertram.)

A Homiletic Encyclopedia of Illustrations in Theology and Morals. A Handbook of Practical Divinity, and a Commentary on Holy Scripture. Selected and arranged by Rev. R. A. BERTRAM, compiler of “A Dictionary of Poetical Illustrations,” etc. Royal 8vo, cloth, 892 pp., $2.50; sheep, $3.50; half morocco, $4.50.

The London Record—“Its illustrations cast daylight upon more than 4 000 texts of Scripture. A treasury of practical religion.”

C. H. Spurgeon—”* * * A very valuable compilation—a golden treasury—an important addition to a minister’s library.”

The London Literary World—“No book of illustrations * * * that, for fullness, freshness, and, above all, suggestiveness, is worthy to be compared with the work.”

Edinburgh Review—“Nothing can be more serviceable to students.”

Homiletic Monthly.

The Homiletic Monthly. A Magazine of Sermons and other matter of Homiletic Interest and Instruction. (Subscription price, $2 50 per year; single numbers, 25 cents.) Volumes III., IV., V., VI., each 8vo, cloth, 724 pp., $3.00.

The Homilist. (Thomas.)

By DAVID THOMAS, D.D., author of “The Practical Philosopher,” “The Philosophy of Happiness,” etc., etc. Vol. XII. Editor’s Series (complete in itself). 12mo, cloth, 368 pp., printed on tinted paper, $1.25.

How to Pay Church Debts. (Stall.)

How to Pay Church Debts, and How to Keep Churches out of Debt. By Rev. SYLVANUS STALL. 12mo, cloth, 280 pp, $1.50.

The Appeal, Chicago, says:—“Of great value to the thousands of churches to day burdened with debt, or struggling to meet current expenses.”

The Christian Union, N. Y., says:—“To any troubled church or pastor, pining away under pecuniary difficulties, the suggestions here made cannot fail to bring relief.”

The Lutheran Observer, Philadelphia, says:—“The plans and methods have been successfully tried.”

The Presbyterian Journal, Philadelphia, Pa., says:—“Gives an abundance of plans and methods for raising money for church work, invaluable for all denominations.”

Inner Life of Christ. (Parker.)

Those Sayings of Mine.

These Sayings of Mine. Sermons on St. Matthew’s Gospel, Chaps. I-VII. By JOSEPH PARKER, D.D. With Introduction by Dr. Deems. 8vo, cloth, $1.50.

The above works will be sent by mail, postage paid, on receipt of the price.

Servant of All.

Servant of All. Sermons on St. Matthew’s Gospel, Chaps. VIII-XV. By JOSEPH PARKER, D.D. A sequel to the above volume. 8vo, cloth, $1.50.

Things Concerning Himself.

Things Concerning Himself. Sermons on St. Matthew’s Gospel, Chaps. XVI-XVIII. A sequel to the above volumes. By JOSEPH PARKER, D.D. 8vo, cloth, $1.50.

C. H. Spurgeon says:—“I place these volumes, by Dr. Parker, among my commentaries, to be constantly referred to when I am studying Matthew’s Gospel.”

Congregationalist, Boston, says:—“They are exceedingly stirring sermons in the best sense.”

Christian Union says:—“They are sermons rich in life and power, pungent, practical, faithful and fearless.”

The Christian World says:—“At times Dr Parker seems to flood a familiar saying with a light that surprises us; and withal it is such genuine truth that you know it is no fancy illumination, but a true light, although an unperceived one before.”

The Primitive Methodist Magazine says:—“Every paragraph sparkles with ideas whose far-reaching relations open out grand vistas in the intellectual world and breed swarms of other ideas.”

See Index “Parker” for other of his works.

Manual of Revivals. (Hervey.)

A Manual of Revivals. Practical Hints and Suggestions from Histories of Revivals, and Biographies of Revivalists, with Themes for the use of Pastors, before, during, and after special services, including the Texts, Subjects, and Outlines of the Sermons of many distinguished Evangelists. By G. W. HERVRY, M.A., author of “A System of Rhetoric,” etc. 12mo, cloth, price, $1.25.

Metropolitan Pulpit.

Metropolitan Pulpit, The. Containing carefully prepared Condensations of Leading Sermons, preached in New York and Brooklyn, Outlines of Sermons preached elsewhere, and much other Homiletic matter. Vol. I. Royal 8vo, cloth, 206 pp., $1.50. Vol. II., cloth, enlarged. (Metropolitan Pulpit and Homiletic Monthly.) Royal 8vo, 388 pp., $2.75. Per set, Vols. I. and II., $4.00.

Preacher’s Cabinet. (Thwing.)

The Preacher’s Cabinet. A Handbook of Illustrations. By Rev. EDWARD P. THWING, author of “Drill-Book in Vocal Culture,” “Outdoor Life in Europe,” etc. Fourth edition. 2 vols., 12mo, paper, 144 pp., 50 cents.

Popery. (Van Dyke.)

Popery the Poe of the Church and of the Republic. By Rev. JOS. S. VAN DYKE, author of “Through the Prison to the Throne,” etc. 8vo, cloth, 304 pp., $1.00.

Pulpit Talks. (Rylance.)

Pulpit Talks on Topics of the Time including “Religion and Science,” “Religion and Social Organization,” “Religion and Popular Literature,” “Religion and Popular Amusements.” By Rev. J. H. RYLANCE, D.D., Rector of St. Mark’s Church, N. Y. 12mo, 46 pp., paper, price 25 cents.

The Rev. Alexander T. McGill, D.D., Professor in the Theological Seminary, Princeton, New Jersey, says:—“I most earnestly commend it as an effort of great merit, diligence and skillful array of the facts which are of such fearful moment to the Church and to the country at this hour.”

The Rev. Joseph T. Duryea, D.D., Pastor of Central Congregational Church, Boston, Mass., says:—“It is an excellent summary of principles and facts bearing upon the controversy with the Papal Church. The arrangements and appeals are sound and strong.”

Revised New Testament. (Teacher’s Edition.)

With New Index and Concordance, Harmony of the Gospels, Maps, Parallel Passages in full, and many other Indispensable Helps. All most carefully prepared. For Full Particulars of this Invaluable Work, send for Prospectus. Price, in cloth, $1.50. Other prices, from $2.50 to $10.00. (See, in circular, what eminent clergymen and others say of this work.)

Revisers’ English. (Moon.)

A spicy criticism on the English of the Revisers of the New Testament. By Rev. GEO. WASHINGTON MOON, England. 12mo, cloth, 75 cents.

The above works will be sent by mail, postage paid, on receipt of the price.

Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge.

A Religious Encyclopedia; or, Dictionary of Biblical, Historical, Doctrinal and Practical Theology. Based on the Real-Encyklopädie of Herzog, Pitt and Hauck. Edited by Philip Schaff, D.D., LL.D., Professor in the Union Theological Seminary, New York, assisted by Rev. Samuel Jackson, M.A., and Rev. D. S. Schaff. Complete in three large volumes. Volumes I. and II. now ready; Volume III. ready February, 1884 Royal 8vo, 2500 pp., cloth, $6.00; sheep, $7.50; half morocco, $9.00; full morocco, gilt, $12.00, per volume.

Sold only by Subscription.

If any one desires to examine Vols. I. or II. of this great work before subscribing, he can do so by sending us his name and address. We will have a canvasser call upon him, and show him a volume.

Talbot W. Chambers, New York, says: “In fullness, fairness and accuracy the work is unequaled in its kind.”

Howard Crosby, D.D., LL.D., ex-Chancellor of the University of New York, says: “Dr. Schaff’s name is a guarantee for valuable and thorough work. His new Encyclopedia (based on Herzog) will be one of the most useful works of the day. It will prove a standard authority on all religious knowledge. No man in the country is so well fitted to perfect such a work as this distinguished and exact scholar.”

Rev. Henry Ward Beecher says: “Dr. Schaff has certainly enriched our American libraries with a greater store of ripe sacred knowledge than any other living scholar. The Encyclopedia will be invaluable for scope of subjects, for richness of knowledge, and for general reliableness of judgment. The product of, not one mind alone, but of clusters of minds, reflecting the whole scholarship of an age.”

R. S. Swers, D.D., says: “The articles are compact, careful, and well distributed, and the references to original works are judicious and ample.”

John Hall, D.D., New York, says: “It is worthy of its name, contains the matter of the great German work in which we Americans are interested, with many new contributions from the most competent specialists among ourselves. It will be of great and lasting value to editors, students, professors and clergymen.”

W. Ormiston, D.D., LL.D., New York, says: “The articles are concise, yet full. The volume is a sense of fresh and interesting information on all Scriptural and ecclesial matters in which lie pure magpie ready for the hand of the seeker. The work furnishes ample proof of laborious carefulness and vigilant accuracy.”

Full descriptive circulars with Testimonials sent, gratis, to any address.

The Theocratic Kingdom. (Peters.)

The Theocratic Kingdom of our Lord Jesus the Christ, as covenanted in the Old, and presented in the New Testament. By Rev. G. N. H. PETERS, A.M. An exhaustive work on Eschatology from the pre-millenarian standpoint. In three large vols., 8vo, cloth, price, $3.00 each. (In press.)

“It is the most complete and exhaustive discussion of the important subject of which it treats that has been prepared."—JAMES H. BROOKES, D.D., St. Louis, Mo.

“No one can fail to find important benefit to faith and Christianity by an attentive examination of what he (Peters) has written."—JOS. A. SEISS, D.D., Phila., Pa.

“The work * * * will prove one of the most valuable of recent contributions to eschatological literature."—Prof. S. H. KELLOGG, Western Theological Seminary, Allegheny, Pa.

“If the Scriptures are to be regarded as the only infallible test I cannot understand how any essentially different eschatology can be received."—Prof. J. T. COOPER, Allegheny Seminary, Pa.

Send for an exhaustive prospectus and specimen pages.

Theology of the Old Testament. (Oehler.)

The Theology of the Old Testament. By Dr. GUST. FR. OEHLER, late Professor Ordinarius of Theology in Tubingen, Leipzig. This American edition is edited by Prof. GEO. E. DAY, D.D., of Yale College, and compared with the latest German edition (1882). A very great work. It has been introduced as a class-book at Yale and other seminaries. Universally praised in Europe and America. 1 vol., 8vo, cloth, price, $3.00.

T. W. CHAMBERS, D.D., says: “Oehler’s Theology of the Old Testament has for a generation been considered as at the head of all treatises on the subject—a subject which just now has assumed unusual prominence, especially to those who are persuaded that the Old Testament and the New stand or fall together.”

JOSEPH T. DURVEA, D.D., Boston, Mass., says:

“Oehler represents the best results of the study of ‘Progress of Doctrine in the Old Testament,’ and prepares the way for the construction of Biblical Theology proper, in the unity of a system founded on theological principles, viz.: the relations of divine self-manifestations, and communications, and operations, throughout the period of the history of revelation to the ends of revelation.”

These Sayings of Mine. (Parker.) See “Inner Life.”

Things Concerning Himself. (Parker) See “Inner Life.”

The above works will be sent by mail, postage paid, on receipt of the price.

Thoughts of John Foster. (Everts.)

The Thoughts of John Foster. Collated, arranged and indexed. By W. W. EVERTS, D.D. Price, cloth, 12mo, $1.00.

John Foster ranks among the most original and suggestive writers of this century. His style equals the terseness and strength of that of Butler, Clark or Barrow; his imagination is more ardent and powerful than that of Taylor or Coleridge, and his conceptions dazzle with their splendor, and awe with their majesty.

Through the Prison to the Throne. (Van Dyke.)

Through the Prison to the Throne Illustrations of Life from the Biography of Joseph. By Rev. JOSEPH S. VAN DYKE, author of “Popery the Foe of the Church and of the Republic.” 16mo, cloth, 254 pp., $1.00.

Treasury of David. (Spurgeon.)

THE TREASURY OF DAVID: Containing an Original Exposition of the Book of Psalms: A collection of Illustrative Extracts from the whole range of literature; a series of homiletical hints upon almost every verse, and lists of writers upon each verse. By REV. CHARLES H. SPURGEON 8vo, cloth, per volume, $2.00; sheep, per volume, $2.75. Complete in Seven Volumes. Volumes I., II., III., IV., V. and VI. now ready.

Sold separately or in the set.

Vol. I., Psalms 1-26 (inclusive) Vol. II., Psalms 27-52; Vol. III., Psalms 53-68; Vol. IV., Psalms 69-103; Vol. V., Psalms 104-118; Vol. VI., Psalms 119-124; Vol. VII., Psalms 125-150.

Spurgeon’s Authorization.—“Messrs. Funk & Wagnalls have entered into an arrangement with me to reprint THE TREASURY OF DAVID in the United States. I have every confidence in them that they will issue it correctly and worthily. It has been the great literary work of my life, and I trust it will be as kindly received in America as in England. I wish for Messrs. Funk success in a venture which must involve a great risk and much outlay.

“Dec. 8, 1881.

Philip Schaff, D.D., the Eminent Commentator and the President of the American Bible Revision Committee, says: “The most important and practical work of the age on the Psalter is ‘The Treasury of David,’ by Charles H. Spurgeon. It is full of the force and genius of this celebrated preacher, and rich in selections from the entire range of literature.”

William M. Taylor, D.D., New York, says: “In the exposition of the heart ‘THE TREASURY OF DAVID’ is sui generis, rich in experience and preeminently devotional. The exposition is always fresh. To the preacher it is especially suggestive.”

John Hall, D.D., New York, says: “There are two questions that must interest every exposition of the Divine Word. What does a particular passage mean, and to what use is it to be applied in public teaching? In the department of the latter Mr. Spurgeon’s great work on the Psalms is without an equal. Eminently practical in his own teaching, he has collected in these volumes the best thoughts of the best minds on the Psalter, and especially of that great body loosely grouped together as the Puritan divines. I am heartily glad that by arrangements, satisfactory to all concerned, the Messrs. Funk & Co. are about to bring this great work within the reach of ministers everywhere, as the English edition is necessarily expensive. I wish the highest success to the enterprise.”

Bulwer’s Novels.

Leila; or, The Siege of Granada: and, The Coming Race; or, The New Utopia. By EDWARD BULWER, Lord Lytton. 12mo, leatherette, 284 pp., 50 cents; cloth, 75 cents.

Child’s Guide to Heaven; or, Stories for Children.

By REV. E. P. HAMMOND. Price in paper, 10 cents; leatherette, 25 cents.

Christmas Books. (Dickens.)

Christmas Books, containing A Christmas Carol, The Chimes, The Cricket on the Hearth, The Battle of Life, The Haunted Man. By CHARLES DICKENS. 2 vols., paper, 270 pp. (Standard Series, octavo, Nos. 48 and 49). 50 cents; 1 vol., 8vo cloth, 75 cents.

Calvin. (Guizot.)

John Calvin. By M. GUIZOT, Member of the Institute of France. 4to, paper (Standard Series, No. 47), 15 cents; cloth, 12mo, 160 pp., 50 cents.

The above works will be sent by mail, postage paid, on receipt of the price.

Cyclopedia of Quotations. (Hoyt-Ward.)

The Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations, English and Latin, with an Appendix, containing Proverbs from the Latin and Modern Languages; Law and Ecclesiastical Terms and Significations; Names, Dates and Nationality of Quoted Authors, etc., with copious indexes. By J. K. HOYT and ANNA L. WARD. Royal 8vo, over 900 pages, heavy paper. Prices, cloth, $5.00; sheep, $6.50; half morocco, $8.00; full morocco, $10.00.

Contains 17,000 Quotations, classified under subjects; nearly 2,000 selections from the Latin poets and orators; many Latin, French, German and Spanish proverbs, with 50,000 lines of Concordance, making at once available every quotation.

Hon. F. T. Frelinghuysen, Secretary of State: “Am much pleased with the ‘Cyclopedia of Quotations.’”

Henry Ward Beecher: “Good all the way through, especially the proverbs of all nations.”

Henry W. Longfellow: “Can hardly fail to be a very successful and favorite volume.”

Wendell Phillips: “Its variety and fullness and the completeness of its index give it rare value to the scholar.”

Ex-Speaker Radall: “I send check for copy. It is the best book of quotations which I have seen.”

George W. Curtis: “A handsome volume and a most serviceable companion.”

Oliver Wendell Holmes: “A massive and teeming volume. It lies near my open dictionaries.”

Boston Post: “Indispensable as Worcester and Webster. Must long remain the standard among its kind.”

Send for descriptive circular.

Deems Birthday Book. (Hunt.)

The Deems Birthday Book. Selections from the writings of Rev. CHARLES F. DEEMS, D.D., LL.D., Pastor of the Church of the Strangers New York. Arranged by SARA KEARLES HUNT.

These extracts are printed on the left-hand pages throughout the book. On the right-hand pages are printed the days of the year; two dates to each page, one at the top and one in the middle of the page. Under each date there is space for friends to write their names.

The book has for a frontispiece a very fine vignette portrait of Dr. Deems.

Price, cloth, plain edges, $1.00; gilt edges, $1.25.

Diary of a Minister’s Wife. (Brown.)

The Diary of a Minister’s Wife. BY ALMEDIA M. BROWN.

Complete Edition, 12mo, 544 pages. Handsomely bound in cloth, price $1.50.

Drill Book in Vocal Culture. (Thwing.)

Drill-Book in Vocal Culture and Gesture. Rev. Prof. EDWARD P. THWING. (Sixth edition.) 12mo, manilla, 115 pp., 25 cents.

Eastern Proverbs and Emblems. (Long.)

Eastern Proverbs and Emblems, illustrating old Truths, selected from over 1,000 volumes, some very rare, and to be consulted only in libraries in India, Russia and other parts of the Continent, or in the British Museum. All are classified under subjects, enabling teachers and preachers to fix in the school, the pulpit, or the press, great spiritual truths by means of emblems and illustrations drawn from the depths of the popular mind. This book is the opening of a rich storehouse of emblems and proverbs. By Rev. A. LONG, member of the Bengal Asiatic Society. 8vo, 280 pages. Price, cloth, $1.00.

Gathered Lambs. (Hammond.)

Gathered Lambs. Showing how Jesus “the Good Shepherd” laid down His life for us, and how many little Lambs have been gathered into His fold. By Rev. EDWARD PAYSON HAMMOND author of “Child’s Guide,” etc. A book for children. 12mo, 176 pp. Paper, 10c., cloth, 40c.

Gems of Illustration. (Guthrie)

Gems of Illustrations from the writings of Dr. THOMAS GUTHRIE, arranged under subjects which they illustrate. By an American clergyman. A priceless book for clergymen and all public teachers. Second edition. 8vo, 196 pp. Cloth, price, $1.50.

The above works will be sent by mail, postage paid, on receipt of the price.

Giving or Entertainment. Which? (Van Dyke.)

Giving or Entertainment—Which? By Rev. JOSEPH S. VAN DYKE, author of “From Gloom to Gladness,” “Through the Prison to the Throne,” etc. A clear, concise discussion on Church Entertainments in Contrast to Giving. 12mo, 32 pages. Paper, 25 cents.

Gospel by Mark in Phonetic Spelling.

The Gospel by Mark in Phonetic Spelling. By C. W. K. Issued to illustrate the reform in spelling as suggested by an able advocate of this movement. The system suggested is certainly novel, and has many arguments in its favor. As a help to the discussion we commend this “Gospel of Mark Phonetic.” Price, 15 cents; cloth, 40 cents.

Henry Ward Beecher. (Abbott.)

Henry Ward Beecher: A sketch of his career, with analyses of his power as a Preacher, Lecturer, Orator, and Journalist, and incidents and reminiscences of his Life. By LYMAN ABBOTT, D. D. Finely illustrated, 8vo, 600 pp., cloth, $3.00; sheep, $4.50; half morocco, $6.00; full morocco, gilt, $7.00; memorial copy, extra fine, $10.00.

Christian Chronicle, London, England, says: “The book lying before us may prove a solace and a Send for illustrated circular. partial substitute for Mr. Beecher’s presence. Excellent, timely and precious is this volume.”

Henry Ward Beecher’s Remarkable Statement of his Doctrinal Beliefs and Unbeliefs.

Before the Congregational Association of New York and Brooklyn, October 10, 1882. Price, 10 cents.

Heroes and Holidays. (Crafts.)

Talks and Stories about Heroes and Holidays. Short illustrated sermons to Boys and Girls by twenty-one preachers of the United States and Great Britain. Edited by Rev. W. F. CRAFTS, A. M. 12mo, 265 pp., cloth, price, $1.25. In various colored bindings.

History of England. (Knight.)

The popular History of England. A History of Society and Government from the Earliest Period to our own Times. By CHARLES KNIGHT. Tables of Contents, Index. Appendix, Notes and Letterpress unabridged. 8 vols., 4to, paper, 1370 pp. (Standard Series, Nos. 12-19), $2.80; 2 vols., 4to, cloth, $3.75; 4 vols., $4.40; 1 vol., sheep, $4.00, 2 vols., $5.00; 1 vol., Fr. im. morocco, $4.50; 2 vols., $5.50.

This is the most complete, and in every way the most desirable History of England ever written. The former price of this History was $18.00 to $25.00.

Lord Brougham says: “Nothing has ever appeared superior, if anything has been published equal, to the account of the state of commerce, government and society, at different periods.”

Noah Porter, D.D., LL.D., says: “The best history of England, for the general reader, is Knight’s Popular History. For a single history which may serve for constant use and reference in the library, or for frequent reading, it is to be referred to every other.”

“The very thing required by the popular taste of the day”—Edinburgh Review.

“The best history extant, not only for, but also of, the people.”—All the Year Round.

“This work is the very best history of England that we possess.”—London Standard.

How to Enjoy Life. (Cornell.)

Clergymen’s and Students’ Health; or, Physical and Mental Hygiene, the True Way to Enjoy Life. By WILLIAM MASON CORNELL, M.D., LL.D., Fellow of the Massachusetts Medical Society, Permanent Member of the American Medical Association. (Fifth Edition.) 12mo, cloth, 360 pp $1.00.

Hymns for All Christians.

Hymns for All Christians. Compiled by CHARLES F. DEEMS, D.D., LL.D., and PHOEBE CARY. (Fifth Edition.) 12mo, cloth, 75 cents.

In Memoriam.—Wm. Cullen Bryant.

A Funeral Oration. By HENRY W. BELLOWS, D.D. 8vo, paper, 10 cents.

Lothair. (Disraeli.)

Lothair. By Rt. Hon. B. DISRAELI, Earl of Beaconsfield. 2 vols., paper, 256 pp. (Standard Series, octavo, Nos. 61 and 62), 50 cents; 1 vol., 8vo, cloth, $1.00.

The above works will be sent by mail, postage paid, on receipt of the price.

Lectures by Pere Hyacinthe. (Bacon)

“Respect for the Truth,” “The Reformation of the Family,” “The Moral Crisis,” Translated from the French by Rev. LEONARD WOLSEY BACON. 8vo, paper, 15 cents.

Leech’s Reply.

A Magnificent Reply to Ingersoll’s Attack on the Bible. By S. V. LEECH, D. D. 8vo, paper, 10 cents.

Pastor’s Record. (Wylie.)

The Pastor’s Record for Study, Work, Appointments and Choir for one year. Prepared by Rev. W. T. WYLIE. 12mo, paper, 50 cents; cloth, 75 cents; leather, $1.00.

Robert Raikes’ Centennial Addresses.

The Addresses delivered at the Robert Raikes Centennial Celebration in New York, by Rev. Drs. J. P. Newman, Thos. Armitage, Rufus W. Clark, Chas. S. Robinson, R. S. Storrs, and others. 8vo, paper, 10 cents.

Rock that is Higher than I.

The Rock that is Higher than I. By Rev. JOHN EDGAR JOHNSON. This is a beautiful gift book suitable at all seasons. 8vo, cloth, very neat, 75 cents.

Sartor Resartus. (Carlyle.)

Sartor Resartus. The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh. By THOMAS CARLYLE. Paper, 176 pp. (Standard Series, octavo, No. 60), 25 cents; 8vo, cloth, 60 cents.

Standard Hymns. (Thwing.)

Standard Hymns. With Biographical Notes of their Authors. Compiled by Rev. EDWARD P. THWING. 32mo, paper, 96 pp. Each, 6c.; in lots of fifty or more, 5c.

Standard Series—Class A.

Fifteen volumes by the most eminent Authors. Being Nos. 1, 2, 5, 6 and 7, 9 and 10, 11, 20 and 21, 32, 40, 41, 42, 43 of Standard Series. 15 vols., paper, 670 pp., $2.50. 1 vol., 4to, cloth, $3.50. See “Standard Series.”

Talks to Boys and Girls about Jesus. (Crafts.)

Talks to Boys and Girls about Jesus, with Bible Links to make a complete and chronological Life of Christ for the Young. Edited by Rev. W. F. CRAFTS, author of the “Rescue,” “Heroes and Holidays,” etc. Finely illustrated, 400 pp. 12mo, cloth, $.50. Same without illustration, 75 cents.

Talks to Farmers. (Spurgeon.)

Talks to Farmers. By Rev. HARLES H. SPURGEON. A new book of nineteen Sermons to Farmers. Important for every clergyman who has farmers in his congregation. 12m$, 360 pp. Cloth, price, $1.00.

Traps for the Young. (Comstock.)

Traps for the Young. By ANTHONY COMSTOCK, of the Society for the Suppression of Vice in New York, Author of “Frauds Exposed,” etc.

A new, thrilling but prudent description of the author’s adventures with crime, and in bringing the victims to justice. A startling book for parents and the young, divested of all improper language or representations; exceedingly suggestive. 12mo, cloth, price, $1.00.

What our Girls Ought to Know. (Studley.)

What our Girls Ought to Know. By MARY J. STUDLEY, M.D. A most practical and valuable book; should be placed in the hands of every girl. Intelligently read, it will accomplish much in the elevation of the human race.

The book is full of the most practical information — just what every girl ought to know—must know.

Clergymen and others who have occasion to address, in sermon or lecture, girls, will find this book “crammed with suggestiveness”

The author, Dr. Mary J. Studley, was a physician of large practice and great success. She was a graduate, resident physician and teacher of the natural sciences, in the State Normal School, Framingham, Mass., also graduate of the Woman’s Medical College, New York: Dr. Emily Blackwell, Secretary of the Faculty, and Dr. Willard Parker, Chairman of the Board of Examiners. 12mo, 261 pp., cloth, price, $1.00.

The above works will be sent by mail, postage paid, on receipt of the price.