manifest himself as the Messiah expected by the Jews, which often occurred during his ministry, was particularly likely to occur near its commencement, after the declarations of John concerning him. The supposition of this occasion renders clear the meaning of what without it appears unintelligible and purposeless. Its true character is restored to it as a striking parable of very important significance, teaching truths most requisite to be inculcated on his followers.

Nor

The Evangelists, I conceive, received and severally recorded the words of Christ as they were transmitted to them by those to whom they were spoken. Luke, who was not an immediate follower of our Lord, was not present at the delivery of the parable. Nor was Matthew, since, if it had been uttered after his call to be an Apostle, he would have recorded it in its proper place in the order of time, among our Lord's discourses. can we reasonably believe that any Apostle was present from whom the Evangelists might derive knowledge of the circumstances attending its delivery, since, otherwise, it seems probable that an account of those circumstances would have been preserved. The words as reported appeared as a narrative, of the purport of which I cannot believe that Matthew or Luke formed any clear conception, but which they thought it their duty to record. Mark, I conjecture, felt the difficulties attending it more strongly, and hence, contrary to his usual custom in writing, merely related what he did not understand in as few words as possible, and without giving any circumstances of the supposed "trial" or "temptation." He has, consequently, left an account of it which, if it stood alone, would be wholly inexplicable to a modern reader, and only to be recognized and passed over as a difficulty by one satisfied from other considerations of the credibility of the Evangelists.

It is not necessary, however, to suppose that the Evangelists and the Apostles understood this account in the gross literal sense in which it has been received by most commentators, from Chrysostom in the fourth century down to our own day. As Jews, they had conceived of Satan as a spiritual being, tempting men by evil suggestions to their minds, not by appearing in a bodily shape and addressing them orally; and their mode of apprehending the account before us would be conformed to this notion of his agency. As regards the form of a dialogue, under which the suggestions of Satan and the considerations by which they were repelled are represented, it would occasion little obscurity; for it was a fashion among the Orientals to give a dramatic form to narratives, words being represented as spoken which it was not intended that the reader should understand as literally spoken, but only as expressive of the purposes or thoughts of the supposed or imagined speaker. The two descriptions that are given of Satan's carrying their Master to some eminence of the temple where he must have been exposed to the gaze of multitudes, and to the top of a high mountain where he might see all the kingdoms of the world, the one so highly improbable and the other so obviously impossible, that, whatever attempts have been made in subsequent times to explain them into something like credibility, it is not to be supposed that the Evangelists received or recorded them as facts, they, I conceive, understood as signifying that Satan suggested to the mind of our Lord the thought of being in such situations, that he carried him thither in imagination, and brought to his view the temptations which might there be presented. Regarding their Master only as the anointed of God, considering him as liable at least to temptation, they did not fall into the monstrous conception which seems necessarily to

follow from the opinions held by Christians through many ages of error and superstition, according to which the being to whom Satan made an offer of all the kingdoms of the world, upon condition of his falling down before him and worshipping him, was God himself. Receiving the account as a narrative, they did not receive it as involving the absurdities with which it was encumbered in later times.

NOR is there any difficulty in believing that the Evangelists misunderstood the words of our Lord which we are considering, so far as to regard them as a proper narrative. They fell into other errors equally great. In relating the cases of the diseased persons who were called dæmoniacs, they show that they received the notion common among their countrymen, and existing in the world long before and long after their time, that these diseased persons were actually possessed by dæmons; an error allied to that of supposing the suggestion of evil thoughts and desires to proceed from Satan. The parable of our Lord presented a view of the character of his ministry opposed to all the expectations which the Jews had entertained respecting the Messiah, and to all the ambitious and worldly hopes of his followers. It taught truths of fundamental importance, which he inculcated during his ministry, but which during his ministry his followers would not receive or understand. Imbued with the common notions of their countrymen, they could not give up the hope of such a Messiah as the Jews had expected, or reconcile themselves to the belief that their Master's character and office were so wholly unlike their anticipations. Their traditionary errors resisted during his lifetime his plainest teaching, and the unvarying, decisive evidence of facts. When he was travelling for the last time in Galilee, he predicted to

them his approaching violent death by the hands of his enemies, and they were greatly affected. But he connected it with a prediction of his resurrection, and their worldly hopes revived. Almost immediately afterwards he had occasion to address to them a discourse, in which his object was, by the most striking exhortations and the most solemn warnings, to compose the differences among them, arising from their rivalship with one another as to "who was to be greatest in the kingdom of Heaven," the earthly kingdom of their imagined Messiah. A little before his death, on his way to Jerusalem, he repeated the same predictions, with the addition, that he was to be mocked and scourged and crucified. Could they believe this of the Son of David, who was to be a far more illustrious monarch than his ancestor? Of the Son of God, whose miracles they had witnessed, to whom all power was given in heaven and on carth? Of the future deliverer of their nation,-him who was to subdue the Gentiles, their enemies, and to reign triumphantly over the world? Was he to be delivered up by their own people into the hands of the Gentiles, and to be mocked and scourged and crucified? The incongruity must have appeared to their minds so monstrous, that there is no difficulty in believing what Luke relates: "They understood this not at all; the meaning of his words was hidden from them, and they did not comprehend what he said."* How little they comprehended appears, indeed, from the very next incident related by Matthew and Mark, that James and John with their mother came to him to solicit the highest places in the kingdom of Heaven, a seat for one on his right hand and the other on his left.†

It was through the prostration of such hopes, that, when he

*Luke xviii. 34.

† Matthew xx. 20-28; Mark x. 35-45.

was apprehended, and the event of his death became certain, all his disciples left him and fled; and that Peter renounced him as his Master, and even denied that he had ever been his follower. These hopes, however, revived after his resurrection, and, only just before his leaving the earth, his disciples asked, "Lord, wilt thou now restore the kingdom to Israel?"

As, then, the followers of our Lord failed, during his ministry, to apprehend the plainest words respecting the duties and sufferings which so strongly distinguished his office from that which had been assigned to the Jewish Messiah, it is not strange that they should also have failed to understand the meaning and purpose of a parable relating to the same subject, the history of the occasion of which the key to its meaning - had been lost. Nor is it strange, after the mistake had been once made, and generally received, of considering it as a narrative, that the error should have been perpetuated by the first three Evangelists.

5.

"Then the Devil took him to the Holy City, and placed him on a part of the temple." "The Holy City": a name which shows the writer to have been a Jew.

66

-a part of the temple." It is impossible to determine with any confidence what part of the buildings of the temple was intended by the term used in the original, τὸ πτερύγιον τοῦ ἱεροῦ.

12, 13.

"But Jesus, hearing that John was

*Acts i. 6.