to this period. In John (vii. 11-xii. 11) we have an account of various transactions and discourses which occurred in this

interval.

Proceeding, therefore, on the supposition that, of the four Evangelists, Matthew and John alone have preserved the chronological order of events, it will be perceived that the proposed method of harmonizing them, or rather of arranging in sequence the events which they record, is very simple, and requires no change in the order of either. Where Mark and Luke relate the same events with Matthew, the place of those events in the narrative is to be determined by that assigned them by Matthew; where they relate different events, we have no means of determining how they should be arranged, except from their connection with events the place of which has been ascertained.

See, further, the note on Luke ix. 51-xviii. 14.

NOTE C.*

(See pp. 24, 349.)

ON THE CHANGE OF CHARACTER IN MEN SPOKEN OF IN THE NEW TESTAMENT AS PRODUCED BY CHRISTIANITY.

"WHEN We compare the common character and expectations of the Jews with the circumstances in which Jesus Christ appeared, the requisitions and spirit of his religion, and the pros-` pect which he opened to his followers, it will appear that a moral and intellectual change the most extraordinary was necessary for a Jew to become a Christian. He was to relinquish his hope of a conquering and triumphant Messiah, and to take for his master a poor man of humble origin, whose claims were rejected with scorn and hatred by the interpreters of the Law and the rulers of the people. He had expected a leader who would confer upon his followers power, wealth, and splendor. In becoming a follower of Jesus Christ, he was to join himself to one who had not where to lay his head; whose invitation was, 'Let him who would be my follower renounce himself, and come after me, bearing his cross,'—that is, Let him follow me as on the way to crucifixion, and whose promises were, 'You will be hated by all men for my sake.' He who kills you will think that he is offering a sacrifice to God.' The Jews had been expecting a dispensation by which God, delivering them from their oppressors, would bestow new and magnifi

* [This note consists of portions of a discourse which was first published in "The Liberal Preacher" for October, 1827.]

cent distinctions upon them, his chosen people. He who claimed to be their Messiah had come to announce to them the displeasure of God, to call them to reformation, and to treat as vile and hypocritical those whom they held in the highest honor. The blessings which he brought were to be offered as well to the Gentiles as to themselves. Instead of being the deliverer of his people, he proclaimed that their habitation was to be left by them desolate. The hope of Israel had come to denounce punishment and destruction. There was an utter discordance between the character of the new dispensation and everything which they had expected. If a Jew who felt strongly the passions and hopes common to his countrymen could have been made to comprehend at once its character, objects, and effects, in relation to the Jewish people, we can hardly conceive what must have been the revolt of his feelings, his amazement, and horror.

"But to this dispensation the Jew who became a disciple of our Saviour was to be gradually reconciled. Nor was this all. He was not merely to relinquish those expectations which had been handed down, as the most precious inheritance, from father to son, and which had been his solace and his pride; to eradicate his national, and religious prejudices and antipathies; to recognize the justice of the punishment and destruction of his people; to close his eyes upon all those views of personal aggrandizement with which he might have become a follower of Jesus Christ, and to prepare himself for self-denial, a life of suffering, and a violent death; - he was, at the same time, to acquire a new moral and religious character. The religion of the Jews in the time of Christ was generally a matter of pride and ostentation, of ritual ceremonies and superstitious observIt exhibited that worst form of false religion, which

ances.

grows up with men's vices, receiving strength from them, and imparting strength in return. But the mind of the Jew who became a convert to Christ was to be pervaded by a new spirit. He had gloried in his knowledge of God, and in what he believed his peculiar relation to him, but he was now to form much nobler and more correct conceptions of his character; he was to feel towards him much purer devotion and much stronger love; and this, at the very time that he was learning to regard him no longer as the peculiar God of the descendants of Abraham, but as about to cast them off from his favor to be trodden under foot by the Gentiles. His passions had been engrossed by the objects of this world; and he had possessed only some indistinct and erroneous belief respecting the future life, which had operated but little on his heart or conduct. He was now to acquire a new principle, which should supersede or control every other, the principle of faith, the habitual consideration of the invisible and the remote. Under its influence he was called upon to triumph over the dread of suffering and of death, and to regard everything here as unworthy to be compared with that great reward in heaven, of which the promises of his Master alone gave him assurance. He was called to the habitual practice of a virtue he had never dreamed of, one of which ancient Philosophy in her best days had formed but imperfect conceptions, the virtue of Christian charity. He was to become a follower of that Master who came 'not to be served, but to serve'; he was no longer to consider how much good he could possess himself of, but how much good he could communicate; he was no longer to regard himself as an insulated individual, who might pursue his distinct interests with no other care than not to encroach upon the rights of others; he was now to view his interests as blended with the interests of all

around him. He was not merely to forget that pride and those resentments which had formed a barrier between him and the rest of mankind; he was to be ready, if summoned to that high office, to go forth, as a minister of the religion which he professed, to urge the acceptance of its blessings upon all men, idolaters, sinners, and Gentiles; to serve the injurious, to conciliate the insulting, and to recognize in an enemy and a persecutor only an erring fellow-creature, capable of being reformed and benefited.

"I do not suppose that the Christian character was completely attained by all, or by a great majority, of the converts to our religion. But the character which I have described was proposed for attainment by Jesus Christ, however imperfectly his requisitions might be sometimes understood, or however imperfectly they might be complied with. In every sincere convert to his religion, a great change necessarily took place; and by some, we believe by Apostles and by martyrs, a degree of religious and moral excellence was attained, which has justly rendered them in all succeeding times objects of admiration and

reverence.

"The change required in the Gentiles in order to their becoming Christians was certainly not less than that demanded of Jews. A few individuals of a nation separated from the rest of the world and regarded with dislike and scorn, individuals rude in speech, expressing themselves in language which seemed barbarous to those whom they addressed, and with conceptions to which they were wholly unaccustomed, came among them to speak of a Jewish Messiah, of God, of man's nature and responsibility, and of immortal life. They came to give true notions of the Divinity to idolaters, to communicate religion in all its spirituality to those whose nominal religion was an affair of this