truth and impressiveness. The doctrine of repentance, as taught him by " that Shepherd, the Angel of Repentance," is generous and tender, worthy of the Heavenly Father, and encouraging to his frail human offspring. This is in the Eighth Similitude, of the willow rods growing green again. The completion of the church, and a great approaching consummation, not definitely described, but such as was vaguely anticipated by the Christians in general for a century or two after the death of their Lord, is the staple subject of the Similitudes. Martyrdom is especially honoured: "Whosoever have suffered for the name of the Lord, are esteemed honourable by the Lord; and all their offences are blotted out, because they have suffered death for the name of the Son of God" (Simil. ix. 234). Hermas is well worth reading, though rather tiresome towards the end of his Similitudes.

IGNATIUS, bishop or president of the church of Antioch, in Syria, is the next of the Apostolical Fathers. And to him seven Epistles still extant are ascribed, which Lardner dates A.D. 107. He suffered martyrdom at Rome that year. Eusebius says that, as he was marched under guard through Asia Minor on his way to Rome, he confirmed the churches in the cities through which he passed; and that from Smyrna, where Polycarp was bishop, he wrote letters to the churches at Ephesus, Magnesia, Trallium and Rome; and, having reached Troas, that he wrote to the churches at Philadelphia and Smyrna, and also one to Polycarp, the president of the latter. These seven Epistles are generally believed to have been preserved in the compositions now bearing their respective titles. But these compositions exist in two different editions, were, the one much more full than the other; and it is supposed that the additional parts are interpolations by later hands. There is great

as it

sameness (as might indeed be expected) in these Epistles, each church being exhorted to unity and due subordination to their bishop, and warned against heresies. Among these heresies the most distinctly named is that of denying that Jesus Christ had come in the flesh,—a mystical idea just budding in the New-Testament times, and now full-blown. Says Ignatius, smartly enough, to the Smyrnæans: "If all these things were done only in show by our Lord, then do I also only seem to be bound." And again, more gravely: "He suffered truly, as he also truly raised up himself; and not, as some unbelievers say, that he only seemed to suffer, they themselves only seeming to be. And as they believe, so shall it happen unto them when, being divested of the body, they shall become mere spirits. But I know that even after his resurrection he was in the flesh; and I believe that he is still so."

I believe he is still so! Thus one dogmatic conceit provokes its opposite. The asperity of feeling shewn in the above passage prevails throughout these Epistles. Even the tone in which Ignatius anticipates his martyrdom is hard and defiant, to a degree that seems unnatural, when he begs the Roman Christians not to interfere on his behalf: "I beseech you that you shew not an unseasonable good-will towards me. Suffer me to be food to the wild beasts, by whom I shall attain unto God. For I am the wheat of God; and I shall be ground by the teeth of the wild beasts, that I may be found the pure bread of Christ. Rather encourage the beasts, that they may become my sepulchre, and may leave nothing of my body; that, being dead, I may not be troublesome to any. Then shall I be truly the disciple of Jesus Christ, when the world shall not see so much as my body" (Rom. ii. 2-5). There wants the genuine touch of nature, I think, in these letters. They do not interest

one as they ought to do, if really written in the circumstances alleged.

POLYCARP, the last of these Apostolical Fathers, is believed to have written the letter to the Philippians which bears his name, shortly after the death of Ignatius, to whom he alludes as "the blessed Ignatius." There is little doubt, external or internal, about the genuineness of this Epistle. It is genial and interesting to read. It is clearly a letter "that might be real," which one cannot feel in reading those last mentioned. It is full of New-Testament quotations and allusions, all in good taste, while marked by serious earnestness of purpose. Paul and his letter to the Philippian church are most respectfully alluded to, and many expressions from his Epistles are interwoven with the exhortations of Polycarp to the same church. The "Antichrist who does not confess that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh," is firmly denounced, but less fiercely than in the Epistles of Ignatius. This looks more like a genuine letter, free from the interpolations of a later and more controversial age.

Such, then, are the writings of the five "Apostolical Fathers." They are the next in antiquity to the Scriptures of the New Testament, and their non-admission into its canon shews us clearly upon what principles the selection was made. These are not the writings of apostles; so far they had no claim to be regarded as Christian Scriptures. Nor are they histories of Gospel facts by apostolic men; otherwise Barnabas or Clement might have been admitted, with Mark and Luke, to give his testimony. All the books of the New Testament belong, or have been believed to belong, to one or the other of these classes, and have been accepted more or less confidently as such. All of them, except the histories of Mark and Luke, claim to be, or have been believed to

be, the writings of apostles. As regards some, indeed, the authorship has been acknowledged to be less clear than as regards others; and we must therefore look with appropriate discrimination upon the claims of the disputed books. This we shall endeavour to do as they come individually under review in the order of the NewTestament Scriptures.

The rejection of all other apocryphal books from the New-Testament canon, proceeded upon the perception that they were forgeries so far as they professed to be the works of apostles, and destitute of Christian authority of any kind so far as they called themselves by other names. It is a truly melancholy thing to read the profane legends contained in some of these books, such as the "Gospel of the Birth of Mary," falsely ascribed to Matthew; the "Protevangelion," to James the Less; and those infamous burlesques upon the Saviour's history called the books of his "Infancy," one of which insults the name of Thomas. They are as foolish, in their way, as the weakest fictions of the Jewish Apocrypha. Many of their legends re-appear in the Koran of Mahomet, who professed, indeed, to receive the divine mission both of Moses and of Christ, but whose view of Judaism is as little scriptural as his view of Christianity, the Rabbins of the former and the Fathers of the latter dispensation being confounded by him, in hopeless disorder, with the Scriptures of each. After making all possible allowance for the ignorance and weakness of well-meaning men, converts from Jewish ceremonialism or from Heathen superstition, whose new zeal for Christianity, joined to no small share of self-conceit, may have led them to drive their rash pens in the race of legendary lore, - the perusal of such specimens of early Christian heathenism as these books contain (their legends deserve no better name), inclines me to believe that they owe

their origin, in many instances, to the artifice of the enemies of Christianity, rather than to the superlative folly of its friends. A clever unbeliever might burlesque the infancy of the Saviour, by ascribing to it miracles of puerile precocity, and miracles of boyish mischief and malice; but how any disciple of Christ could think to honour the Gospel by such wretched fancies, surpasses modern imagination. The result certainly is, what the unbeliever would make his object,-to degrade Christianity.

The canon of the New Testament, then, comes out clearly thus it contains all books known or widely believed (though not universally believed) to be written by apostles of Christ; together with a Gospel by Mark, and a Gospel and history of the Acts of the Apostles by Luke, both of them companions of apostles, and believed to be competent historians of the origin of Christianity. No other existing books answer either of these descriptions; while, as regards some even of these, the evidence of their belonging to the rank of apostolic writings is less clear than in other cases, and must be taken in each case on its own merits, when we read the respective books.

CHAPTER V.

THE RELATION OF CHRISTIANITY TO JUDAISM, AND OF THE NEW TESTAMENT TO THE OLD.

EVERY Christian feels that there is a close connection between the Scriptures of the New Testament and those of the Old, implying a corresponding relation between the Christian Revelation and the Jewish, of which they are respectively the records.