The The crucifixion.* demnation. The soldiers' insults. centurion's confession. The women. Pilate grants a guard for the sepulchre. declares, in terms most unequivocal, that the eternal principles of the Divine administration approve and reward the virtues of man to men, and discountenance and punish all neglect of mutual duty. "When the Son of Man shall come in his glory," does not, according to this view, point to some still future appearing, but to the now existing order of his heavenly kingdom upon this earth. He is even now upon the throne of his glory, with the holy angels of Truth, Virtue, Justice, Peace, Mercy, around him. Before him are gathered all nations, recognizing him of Nazareth as their common Lord and Teacher, Guide and Judge. His law is gone forth from Zion, and the word of the LORD from Jerusalem." To their own consciences, if not to each other's perception, he divides the sheep from the goats by moral tests, the tests of conduct. And the King is continually saying to the righteous, in the recorded promises of his Gospel, softly echoed by their own consciences, that they are the blessed of their Father, and already inheriting his kingdom. And when they do good to their fellow-men for Christ's sake, as well as at the bidding of their common humanity, they thankfully know and meekly feel what he so graciously says of its being done unto him. And if they on the left hand pretend not to know how any duty they can do can reach the Prince of this heavenly kingdom, their consciences can no longer sophisticate with him when he explains" Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these my brethren, ye did it not to me." So these must go away from his sentence, as often as he thus pronounces it, into the punishments of this age of clearly announced spiritual retribution, and the righteous into its blessed life continually more and more abundantly. These are, beyond question, the great principles of the Divine Government itself;—the principles upon which it has, doubtless, ever been conducted, however little or however fully known to mankind; -principles clearly proclaimed and published by the Gospel, and understood by men's reason and accepted by their consciences, as eternally right and just and kind. The kingdom of heaven on earth, in which Christ is supreme, is thus the reign of pure morals and vital piety and heavenly faith. Would that all Christians knew it as such, and such only! * In Matthew (xxvii. 52, 53), there is a very curious and perplexing statement inserted here, which no other Gospel contains, namely, that " many bodies of saints who had fallen asleep were raised; and they came forth out of the tombs after his resurrection, and entered into the holy city, and appeared unto many." The passage has a very legendary look; and some critics conjecture that it was not written [Ch. xxviii. 1. The resurrection.] 11. The guards tampered with, and promised impunity by the priests. [16. Christ meets the eleven disciples in Galilee, and gives them his parting commission to preach the Gospel.] THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO LUKE. THE third Gospel in our canon, and the book of the Acts of the Apostles, were written by the same pen. This appears from the opening of each, where they are severally dedicated to a person named Theophilus, while the opening of the Acts also refers to the "former treatise," and carries the history forward from the point at which it was left in the Gospel. Universal Christian antiquity ascribes these two books to Luke, the companion of the apostle Paul in many of his travels. We therefore consult the history and letters of St. Paul, to see what light they can throw upon the personality of Luke. Writing to the Colossians from Rome during his detention there before his trial, Paul sends greetings from Luke among others: "Luke, the beloved physician, and Demas, greet you" (Col. iv. 14). This passage, incidentally informing us of his calling in life, seems to by Matthew. But all the MSS. have it. It at once brings to mind Dan. xii. 1, 2, where it is said that "Michael, the great prince, on behalf of the children of Israel shall stand up, ** and the people shall be delivered, every one that shall be found written in the book. And many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt." The Jews, no doubt, expected this kind of resurrection to accompany their Messiah's reign; and we are strongly tempted to conjecture that a legend to this effect has crept into Matthew's Gospel with no sufficient authority. The second book of Esdras, and some other parts of the Apocrypha, attest the expectation. It can hardly be an essential of Christian belief, to maintain that it was fulfilled. vouch for fair education and ability on the part of Luke, though we must be well aware that the profession of physician did not, in those days, bear rank proportionately to its position among us. The literary qualities of the writings of Luke fully bear out this account of him. His style is above the average of Hebrew Greek writers, approaching nearer to the flowing ease of classical Greek, while yet full of Hebraisms of thought and phrase. In the letter to Philemon, who lived at Colosse (as inferred from Col. iv. 9),-a letter written also at Rome at the same time as that to the church of the Colossians, —Paul again mentions Luke as among his fellow-labourers: "There salute thee Epaphras, my fellow-prisoner in Christ Jesus, Marcus, Aristarchus, Demas, Lucas, my fellow-labourers" (Philem. 23, 24). Then, in his second letter to Timothy, written also from Rome, but at a later period of his detention there, Paul says (2 Tim. iv. 11), "Only Luke is with me,” and bids Timothy bring Mark with him when he comes, Demas having forsaken him through "love of the present world," and his other companions having been sent by him into various quarters. Turning now to the history of St. Paul as given in the book of Acts, we find that the writer is evidently present during the transactions of a large part of the history, as he uses the form we in his narrative. This expression first occurs in xvi. 10, 11, where Paul is in Troas (near the site of old Troy, at the N.W. corner of Asia Minor), and a vision appears to him entreating him to go over into Macedonia. Then the historian proceeds: "After he had seen the vision, immediately we endeavoured to go into Macedonia, assuredly gathering that the Lord had called us for to preach the Gospel unto them." It is generally supposed from this, that Luke first joined Paul and Silas at or near Troas, on this journey. The same form of expression, we, is continued till the 17th verse, when it vanishes for a while, to reappear in chap. xx. at the 5th verse, where it is said, "These, going before, tarried for us at Troas." It were a needless scruple, however, to doubt that Luke was with Paul and Silas, more or less, during their intervening journeys through Amphipolis, Apollonia, Thessalonica, Berea, Athens, Corinth and Cenchrea, the voyage thence to Ephesus and back again into Macedonia, till the embarkation from Philippi for Troas on the way to Jerusalem. Paul and Silas being the prominent actors in all these scenes, the narrator's word is usually he or they, except when he describes the journeying and voyaging from place to place, when he generally includes himself in the collective form we, but still without mentioning his own name. This form occurs sufficiently often throughout the rest of the book, to shew that the writer accompanied the apostle Paul to Jerusalem, and, never losing sight of him (so to speak) while he was imprisoned at Cæsarea, sailed with him in the same ship to Rome, where he appears to have stayed with him, as already attested by Paul's letters themselves, during the two years' imprisonment, with which event the book of Acts closes. It has been made a question whether Luke was a native Jew, or a Jewish proselyte, or a Gentile, before his conversion to Christianity. Each of these views has been held. But he could hardly have been a mere Gentile convert, to have accompanied Paul to Jerusalem without scandal, when the fact of the apostle's having been seen with Trophimus, an Ephesian, in the city, raised a rumour against him of his having brought Greeks into the temple and polluted it (Acts xxi. 28, 29). And, on the other hand, Paul's mode of mentioning him to the Colossians, above quoted, seems to shew that he was not a native Jew at any rate; for it is after enumerating Aristarchus, Mark, and Jesus called Justus, as his only fellow-workers "of the circumcision" who have been a comfort to him in his bonds, that he adds the salutations of Luke and Demas. Taking the enumeration as rigidly as possible, and allowing nothing for an after-thought (which is, however, conceivable), this mention of Luke, separately from the Jewish fellow-workers, would be sufficiently explained by supposing him to have been a Gentile by birth, but a Jewish proselyte before his conversion to Christianity. We cannot, of course, tell when his conversion to Christianity took place; but had it been effected by Paul's preaching (as some have supposed), we should probably have had some allusion to it in the writings of the one or the other. Probably he was of much longer standing in the Christian church. His companionship with the great apostle of the Gentiles is, perhaps, enough to account for a certain manner observable in his Gospel,—from which some have argued that he was a Gentile till he became a Christian,--where he speaks of the Jews and their institutions as if not including him personally. Thus (Acts i. 19) he speaks of the field to bury strangers in, bought with Judas's desecrated money, as "called in their proper tongue Aceldama, or the field of blood," as if it was not his own native tongue too. But this kind of phrase is common to the other evangelists also, who all evidently look at the Gospel in its relation to the wide world of nations and kindreds and tongues and peoples, and often explain little Jewish specialties as if conscious that they were writing for a wider sphere of readers. (See Matt. xxviii. 15; Mark vii. 3; John v. 1.) The name of Lucius (differing in the original from Luke or Lucas, just as much as the latter does from Lucius in English letters) occurs twice in the apostolical |