have fallen upon such a contrivance, or ever have executed it without manifest tokens of clumsiness and deceit. St. Matthew goes at once to the conception of the blessed Virgin, without any circumlocution or preface. "Now the birth of Jesus Christ was on this wise." St. Luke introduces his narrative with a previous account of the annunciation of the angel, and the mode of Mary's conception. Would any two men have given such details as they give, if the events they record had been matter of invention and not of truth? They both declare the extraordinary and unheard-of fact, that the Saviour, whose life they wrote, was was not born after the ordinary course of human generation, but by the special instrumentality of God himself, in a way inscrutable and inconceivable by the human mind. Yet they acknowledge his mother to have been a married woman and a virgin, at the time of his birth, and that her delivery took place at a public enrolment at Bethlehem. The nation of the Jews every where received him as the joint offspring of Joseph and Mary, nor do they appear ever to have entertained any other view of his human nature. This circumstance will explain the cause of their contempt and rejection of him. It is the key which opens to us the whole of their treatment of him. Their disputations and cavils, their insinuations and reproofs, their scorn and contumely, exhibited towards him on sundry occasions, were not founded in his wonderful miracles or sublime discourses, but in his pretensions to superior sanctity and regard. He stood

before them claiming the highest honours of divinity, whilst they saw him only as the son of an ordinary Jew like themselves. "For a good work we stone thee not; but for blasphemy; and because that thou, being a man, makest thyself God."

In order to show that the malice of his countrymen was directed mainly against his lowly origin, we have only to consider their treatment of him on some particular occasions.

It appears that when our blessed Lord was at Nazareth, the scene of his early years and the residence of his parents, the miracles which he wrought, and the discourses which he delivered, so astonished the people, as exceeding not only the ordinary powers and capacities of men, but those even of the highest class, that they were led to exclaim, "Whence hath this man this wisdom, and these mighty works? Is not this the carpenter's son? is not his mother called Mary? and his brethren, James, and Joses, and Simon, and Judas? And his sisters, are they not all with us? Whence then hath this man all these things? And they were offended in him."

Now, in this remark, we find the objection lay against his origin. Perhaps it was jealousy, perhaps it was pride, perhaps it was envy and malice, most probably it was a combination of bad passions, which led them to reject the divine Author of our Salvation, not because he said or did things calculated to provoke hostility, but because, being their fellowtownsman and of humble descent, he exhibited more talent, and arrogated to himself a higher character,

than they themselves could claim. St. John informs us, that the immediate cause of the remark was his having declared, "I am the bread which came down from heaven." This was asserting a heavenly extraction, and placing himself in a scale of being infinitely beyond them. He had not only styled himself the Bread of God, the Bread of Life, the Satisfier of every Spiritual Want, so that he that came to him should never hunger, and he that believed on him should never thirst, but he had likewise declared, that all who should come to him he would raise up at the last day. This was making himself the author of everlasting life, and consequently equal with God. No wonder, therefore, the people, whose eyes were blinded that they could not discern his nature, nor consider him otherwise than as the son of the carpenter of Nazareth, were astonished. How strongly we are reminded of the judicial blindness ascribed to the Jews, both by the Prophets and the Apostles, that "seeing they could not see, and hearing they could not understand." The miracles of our blessed Lord were the clearest attestations of his divine power and authority, yet, because the origin of his birth was unknown or unbelieved, and the people with whom he had been brought up, recognised him only as the reputed son of Joseph, they would not credit even their very senses, in the testimony thus borne to his sublime character and office.

Another instance of this incredulity occurs at Jerusalem during the feast of Tabernacles. "Jesus

went up into the Temple, and taught. And the Jews marvelled, saying, How knoweth this man letters, having never learned?" The persons who made this remark, must have been acquainted with the early history of Jesus, with the obscurity of his birth, the poverty of his parents, and the defects of his education, because all these are implied in the language of the remark. They heard him speak. They were struck with the wisdom and talent which he manifested. They could not account for this on any known principles of acquired learning, but falling into the vulgar mistake with respect to his origin, and supposing that, because he was poor, he must be illiterate, and therefore undeserving of credit, they raised the remark I have noticed, the plain purport of which, was to express a suspicion, that all was not entirely right.

Now, our blessed Lord, in answer to this insinuation, declares, that he was sent by God; that he spake the words of God; that his doctrine, at which they marvelled so much, was not his own, as was manifest from this, that he did not seek his own glory in it, and, consequently, he was entitled to credit for it; and that it was wrong to judge from appearances only, as they were doing, but that they ought to judge righteously, that is fairly, from facts. In consequence of this remonstrance, some of the people, (not probably any of those who had raised the former objection, and who might be strangers come up from the country to attend the feast, but some of the inhabitants of the metropolis, for the

Evangelist designates them, some of them of Jerusalem,) said, "Do the rulers know indeed that this is the very Christ?"-a candid confession wrung from them by the evidence of the senses. But then, the human extraction of Jesus again came in their way, and destroyed the impression. "Howbeit, we know this man whence he is: but when Christ cometh, no man knoweth whence he is." In this they alluded to a vain notion current among them, that, although Christ was to be born in Bethlehem, his history would be involved in much obscurity. His high claims to divinity had been repeatedly asserted by him both in direct and in mystical terms, but these appeared to be contradicted by the known fact of his parentage at Nazareth, and though he founded these claims upon manifest and undeniable proofs of unlimited authority, yet every trivial circumstance, which could be supposed to spring from his reputed station, was carefully, maliciously, and pertinaciously urged against him. When the officers, who were sent to apprehend him, returned, declaring, "Never man spake like this man," yet the Pharisees, blinded by their passions and prejudices, and looking not at broad facts, but at supposed discrepancies and contradictions in his history, exclaimed, "Search, and look for out of Galilee ariseth no prophet."

A Third example of this kind may be seen in the miraculous cure of a demoniac. A man was brought to our blessed Lord who was both blind and deaf, and Jesus having cast out the evil spirit, the sight and hearing of the poor sufferer were both