The miraculous acts and inspired utterances of Jesus Christ have been put upon record through precisely the

doubtless, by his presence), there is a brief aside conversation of Jesus with his mother, his part of which is given in the Common Version in these words: 66 Woman, what have I to do with thee? Mine hour is not yet come." Humanized into idiomatic English, it means: "Mother, do not trouble yourself about it, but leave it to me. It is not time for me yet." She understood him and expected the result. How simple and appropriate his few words to her! They are gentle too. "Woman, behold thy son!" when spoken by him from the cross, does not sound harsh or disrespectful even to the falsely fastidious English ear, where "woman" and "lady" struggle hopelessly for precedence (John ii. 4).

The cleansing of the temple, mentioned by John (ii. 13) as occurring at the first Passover, and by the other evangelists at the last (and possibly transacted at both), has given occasion for empty ribaldry. But how natural is the scene when we realize it! In spite of the deadening effect of custom, religiously thoughtful Jews, even at Jerusalem, must have been shocked at this intrusion of traffic upon the place of devotion; and to the fresher Galilean hearts of Jesus and his companions, it must have seemed an abomination that only needed remonstrance to abolish at once. The remonstrance was uttered by him; and was immediately carried into effect by the bystanders aiding him and his apostles, with no more roughness than usually attends the summary course of popular justice. The "plaiting a scourge of small cords," shews no haste, at any rate. The scene is quite natural; and-what is natural in the impulses of a pure mind is seldom undignified in the doing.

Many a reader has wondered what Jesus meant by saying to Judas Iscariot at the paschal table, "That thou doest, do quickly" (John xiii. 27). What if he expressed the natural impatience of suspense, that most difficult thing of all to bear, when the mind is nobly strung for endurance, and has no scope left for active effort. "Do at once

what I know you are going to do." There is a similar but less urgent expression in the same tone, at an earlier period, about the baptism he was to be baptized with, and his being straitened till it should be accomplished (Luke xii. 50).

And many a reader has failed to find a natural meaning, by seeking a supernatural one, in Christ's words to Mary Magdalene after his resurrection, when in her joy she threw herself at his feet and clung about his knees. "Touch me not, for I am not ascended," &c., surely means, "Cling not to me, hold me not, as though this must be your only sight of me before I ascend. Your affectionate heart shall be gratified. I am not ascending yet. But go to my disciples and tell them I am risen, and that I shall ascend to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God" (John xx. 17).

same kind of human instrumentality as any of his ordinary actions and utterances contained in the same books, or as those of any ordinary persons in these or any other books. They were just as capable of description and attestation as any other actions or words recorded in history. Their being miraculous or inspired as to their origin, makes not the slightest difference in their capability of being accurately narrated. The narrative, indeed, does not, strictly speaking, give testimony to the miraculous causation. That is properly the inference of the reader (as it was also that of the writer). The testimony goes only to the facts of the case. The narrator describes certain phenomena, which, if the reader could reconcile them with his knowledge of nature, would of course not seem to him miraculous. These authors tell us, indeed, that they themselves considered certain actions miraculous; but they describe what those actions were, and we in our turn judge whether they were miraculous or not. They say they considered certain sayings as inspired; but they repeat the sayings to the best of their knowledge and recollection, and we read those sayings in connection with the times and circumstances of the speaker. The records in which these all-important matters are written, are, in short (according to the simple principles already explained and vindicated at the beginning of the first volume*), human records of words, some of which we refer to inspiration, and of deeds, some of which we deem miraculous. These records we must use like any other records of any other alleged sayings and doings. It is necessary to repeat this great principle of ordinary justice to the Scriptures,—a principle almost self-evident, yet almost constantly neglected. The Scriptures are the records of revelation, but not themselves the revelation. Inspiration is in the things

See Vol. I. p. 25, &c.

recorded, though not in the act of recording them. They are histories of miracles, though not miraculously-written histories. Let this distinction never be forgotten or disguised by those who would really understand and wisely vindicate them. Its neglect creates all the absurdities and half the difficulties which divide believers and doubters.

The historical and biographical form in which Christianity is conveyed to us, is peculiarly attractive and impressive. This is an old remark, common to all writers on the internal evidences of the truth of the gospel revelation. Every reader of the gospel feels it, whether distinctly defining it or not. No code of morals, no formal array of precepts, no disquisitions on providence and prayer, on life and immortality, could impress the mind with the same vivid sense of the reality and value of divine disclosures on these subjects, as when we are brought into contact with them through the life and conversations of Jesus Christ. We cannot, even in imagination, detach his gospel from himself. He is the central thought in our religion as Christians. His words have the reality of time, place and circumstance. His life was the essence of the revelation. And the power of the gospel is greatly attributable to this intire identification of the person and character of its Author with all its principles and hopes. We may not be quite sure that we have, in every instance, the very identical words of Christ preserved to us in the gospel histories, any more than we can be quite sure that we have the very identical words of Socrates in Xenophon's Memorabilia. But neither do we need the very words, if we have their sense and their spirit; and practically we have all that we can desire. Under the necessary conditions under which historical sayings and doings of any other kind are transmitted from age to age in other histories, and subject to the common laws of human thought, know

ledge and belief throughout every other department, we receive the principles of Christianity in the pages of its memoir-writers. To seek any different or higher certainty than this, is simply to desire exemption from the lot of man. Plenary inspiration itself (a theory which the Scriptures themselves confront) would not give the absolute certainty desired by its advocates, unless their own minds could be made infallible also in the act of reading. The infallibility of the Church or of the Pope, joined to the plenary inspiration of the Bible, would still be unavailing to procure absolute certainty, unless the individual mind be gifted with infallibility also. All attempts to escape from the necessary conditions of human knowledge and opinion are vain, while they are mischievous. The Christian Scriptures are strong indeed in their native strength of evidence, and are only to be weakened by false claims on their behalf. They eminently stand the test of every critical principle that is applied to ancient literature in general. On precisely the same principles of literary criticism on which we receive the histories of Tacitus and Cæsar as the contemporaneous records of certain parts of Roman history, we receive the four Gospels and the book of Acts as the contemporaneous history of the preaching of Christianity. And on the self-same principles of literary criticism on which we accept the letters of Cicero and Pliny as genuine, we accept those of Paul and other letter-writers in the New Testament. The gospel only requires to see its history and its literature fairly treated, like the world's history and literature in general. In the next two chapters we shall endeavour thus to estimate Christianity and the Christian Scriptures.

CHAPTER II.

THE CHRISTIAN ERA IN ITS CONNECTION WITH GENERAL HISTORY.

THE Christian Scriptures open before us in the full light of the world's history. Unlike those of the Old Testament,—most of which are placed by their venerable antiquity quite above the reach of minute critical inquiry into their origin and authorship, while many of their recorded facts admit of question or confirmation only on abstract and speculative principles, as distinguished from properly historical grounds,―the books of the New Testament belong to a strictly historical, and, more than that, a very conspicuous period, whether as regards the facts recorded and implied in them, or the literary history and characteristics of the books themselves. Unlike the Jewish Apocrypha, which are the feeble repetition, imitation and exaggeration of a venerated past, the Christian Scriptures are the fresh and lively records of a new era, marked with a character of its own. We have now to do with writings which profess to have been composed nearly eighteen centuries ago, and referring to events that were not a generation old at the time when the records were written. It is quite a literary period. The Augustan age of Roman literature is scarcely past. The world abounds in books, authors, readers and critics. Such is the era of the Christian Scriptures.

Christianity was born of Judaism. In the language of the Great Teacher, "Salvation was from the Jews." Unlike as Christianity is to Judaism, as regards the ceremonialism and exclusiveness of the old dispensation, it is the true sequel to the Law and the Prophets, which must have remained incomplete, if not objectless, without it. It bears the unmistakeable signs of its origin in