groundless conjecture, unassisted by any positive evidence; and it would be profane to mutilate the Scriptures, or alter them even in a single word or letter, without sufficient authority. We believe that none of the hypotheses proposed will be found sufficient to account for the verbal phenomena of the Gospels; and we therefore think it the wisest measure to pass them by. If the Evangelists copied from each other, their testimony will be reduced to one only; and if they used a common document, the case will be so much the worse, since that one will then be an unknown testimony. We must therefore use extreme caution, lest, by admitting a common document, we should lower the character of the sacred writers, and diminish the independent proofs of their credibility and authenticity. Their remarkable agreement is a convincing proof of their strict fidelity; while their occasional difference affords incontrovertible evidence that they neither copied each other, nor drew from a common source. In this view of the case we have four separate and independent witnesses to the same transactions. The three

former writing without the knowledge of each other; the latter perusing their several narratives, and, by the publication of a fourth, confirming the truth of the former three.

The attempts that have been made in both ancient and modern times, but especially in the latter, to divest the Gospels of their strictly historical character, have been referred to and briefly dealt with in vol. i. p. 371 seq.

THE GOSPEL OF MATTHEW.

CHAPTER I.

"The book of the generation of Jesus Christ."-Ver. 1.

In the Septuagint this phrase signifies a genealogy, but at the time of the Evangelists, it had come to signify a personal history, and may here be taken as the preface to the history which follows, and which commences at ver. 18. The evangelist claims the attention of the Jews by presenting them with the legal descent of Jesus from David and Abraham, the line from which they expected the Messiah.

"The son of David, the son of Abraham."-Ver. 1.

Of both Abraham and David, because the Messiah was the promise to both. The genealogies given by Matthew and Luke have had a vast amount of labour and learning expended upon them, with the object of showing that there are no real discrepancies in them, although it may seem otherwise; and if what has been done does not clear up every difficulty that presents itself, enough has been done. to suggest to every person disposed to weigh arguments attentively, that there must originally have been an obvious method of harmonising the genealogical tables; or, as we should rather say, that they could have presented no such difficulties to the persons for whose use they were immediately de

signed as we now find in them. That they were derived from authentic sources, and given in their genuine state, is obvious from two considerations:(1.) In an affair of so much importance as an exhibition of the evidence by which the descent of Jesus from Abraham and David was to be proved, upon which his official character depended, and one in which any error, accidental or designed, was open to detection, it is not credible that the Evangelists would either have copied incorrectly, or have attempted to falsify public documents. (2.) But supposing them to have made such an attempt, the Jews who were contemporary with them, as they wanted neither materials, opportunity, nor skill, so neither did they want the disposition, to expose the fraud, nor would they have failed to avail themselves of a circumstance which alone would have been sufficient to destroy the cause it was intended to support. That they made no such objection, is manifest; and we are of opinion that we must satisfy ourselves with that fact, for we agree with Dean Alford in thinking that the means of explaining the differences in the genealogies are lost. Matthew has omitted many names, and Luke may have done the same thing. Matthew speaks of sons, properly such, by way of natural generation. Luke introduces sons either properly or improperly such; i.e., sons either putatively or really such. And then, as Alford suggests, the same man often bore two or more names; the children of a levinate marriage (Deut. xxv. 5 Matt. xxii. 24) might be accounted to either husband; and with all these elements of confusion, it is quite as presumptuous to pronounce the genealogies discrepant, as it is over curious and uncritical to attempt to reconcile them.

;

"So all the generations from Abraham to David are fourteen generations; and from David until the carrying away into Babylon are fourteen generations; and from the carrying away into Babylon unto Christ are fourteen generations."-Ver. 17.

Commentators have been embarrassed to make out the even number of fourteen generations, as here reckoned, in the three periods specified; especially seeing that there are three reigns now entirely omitted between Jehoram and Uzziah, in ver. 8. But if the word "generation" be taken to denote a period of time, or mean of calculation, by the general (not individual) course of human life, every thing becomes clear and consistent. The editor of Calmet has illustrated this idea with much ingenuity, in "Fragments" No. cccxxx., which the reader will do well to consult, as also "The Critical English Testament," vol. I. p. 20.

"Now all this was done, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord, by the prophet."-Ver. 22.

The most important quotations from the Old Testament in the Gospels, says Dr. Owen, are ushered in as perfect accomplishments of ancient prophecies in the person of Christ, considered as the promised Messiah-hina plērōthe—“That it might be fulfilled;" or, rather, whereby was fulfilled that which was spoken; and the nature of these ancient prophecies he thus explains:

Known unto God, from the beginning of the world were all the works which he had graciously decreed to perform for the recovery and salvation of fallen man; and these he declared "by the prophets to the patriarchs, at sundry times, and in divers manners," but in these last days of their completion, has most openly declared them unto us by the

disciples of Christ. In these declarations, we, who have seen them verified, plainly discover a grand and extensive scheme, formed by Providence from the first, which consists of different parts, some respecting the temporal, and others the spiritual, benefit of mankind. And yet there is under all this variety a close and intimate connection between them, so that the temporal is often introductory to, and significant of, the spiritual. For as every temporal blessing, favour, and deliverance which the Jews obtained, sprung from the mercies of God through Christ, so they became not only preludes to, but also types and pledges of, that future deliverance and blessing which he was finally to procure by his birth, actions, and sufferings for the whole human race.

Hence we have, first, prophecies that literally and singly apply to Christ. And as many events, circumstances, or persons (as David, the king of Judah, spoken of as future long after his own death, Hos. iii. 5; Jer. xxx. 9; Ezek. xxxiv. 23, 24; xxxvii. 25) are types (or patterns, or models) of Jesus Christ, and of the events and circumstances of his life, we have also prophecies finally completed in him in a higher and more spiritual manner.

Matthew, for instance, traces the fulfilment of the prophecies given of Christ: First, His legal descent, as promised in the Scriptures, from David and Abraham: then, according to Isaiah, that he was to be born of a virgin; and according to Micah, at Bethlehem; then, that the prophecy of Jeremiah was fulfilled, of Rachel weeping for her children at Rama; his being called out of Egypt, foretold in Hosea; and His dwelling at Nazareth, that it might be fulfilled" He shall be called a Nazarene."

Now,