tical tribunal in Europe would believe this very credible statement on such evidence.

There are many persons so thoughtless, or so unreasonable, as to assume that religious credulity is safer and more pious than incredulity. As if for the instruction of such, the Romanist steps in, to show them by his example to what results their easy faith leads. For centuries together Spain was eminent in the Romish world for its devotion to the Virgin, to whom the Spaniards have ascribed a prerogative which they entitle "immaculate conception."

Protestants in general, misled by the phrase, suppose it to assert the same miracle concerning the birth of Mary (whose mother is ecclesiastically known as St. Ann), as Matthew and Luke assert concerning the birth of Jesus. The writer of these lines has been rebuked by two Catholics for this very error; and as they were very explicit, he supposes they were correct. They explained, that the miracle in the case of St. Ann was, not that the Holy Spirit acted on her womb to supersede a human father, but so combined his influence on that organ with that of the real father, as to hinder the introduction of "original sin" by the father's act! Within the last few years we have seen this doctrine raised into a dogma of the church by the Pope; and Protestants cry out, that the dogma is very disgusting, and that it has no basis of proof; for of St. Ann nobody knows anything. We cannot defend the doctrine from such attacks; but we doubt whether the "orthodox" Protestant has fairly earned a right to make them. His own dogma is equally baseless, not less puerile or more edifying. If he insists that it is pious to believe rumours or speculations of this nature, in which the gossip of all heathenism abounds, he does his best to throw open the floodgates of measureless credulity and indecent fable.

A curious story, not much known, is alluded to by Dr. Campbell, of Aberdeen, in the fourteenth of his celebrated "Lectures on Ecclesiastical History." So late as the pontificate of Clement XI., in the beginning of the last century, a preacher in Rome, intending to honour St. Ann, applied to her the title "Grandmother of God;" which, being new, appeared highly offensive, and was suppressed by the Pope; who doubtless foresaw that, if it were permitted, we should next hear of "God's grandfather, uncle, aunt, and cousins." "The second Council of Nice, in quoting the Epistle of James, do not hesitate (says Dr. C.) to style the writer God's brother (áčeλpóleor)." "The sole spring

of offence is in the first step," viz., the calling the Virgin Mary "Mother of God." For, he adds, to distinguish between "the mother of the mother," and "the grandmother," is impossible. As a Protestant, he of course disapproves of the received Romish phraseology; yet, clear as he generally is, he leaves us in doubt whether he disapproves of saying (p. 253) that the Virgin is "the mother of him who is God," equally with the other formula, that she is “the mother of God." He has just informed us that under Pope Hormisdas and some of his successors there was a fierce strife, whether we ought to say, "One of the Trinity suffered in the flesh," or " One person of the Trinity suffered in the flesh." Unless such controversies are to be regarded as rightful and necessary, what are they but a reductio ad absurdum of Anglican orthodoxy?

We pass to the second great miracle, the Resurrection, to which the Ascension is a sort of complement. Here it is possible that men of science will admit (though we have no right to make concessions in their name), that evidence is imaginable adequate to prove facts of such a nature-which are not negative (as in the case of miraculous conception), but positive. Suppose a man's head were cut off, or his body burned to ashes; after either of these events, duly testified, no man of science could be incredulous of the real death. Again, suppose that after such death testimony were offered that the same person was still alive. Inasmuch as only from information and experience do we hitherto disbelieve that a man once dead ever resumes animal life in the same form, it would seem that an amount of first-rate testimony is imaginable, which might force us to modify the universality of this doctrine: nevertheless, the evidence needs to be very cogent. We must have decisive proof of the death, and decisive proof of the renewed animal life: a failure on either side would make the whole vain. If, for instance, a person fainted and seemed to die from exhaustion or loss of blood, and, after this, came overwhelming evidence that he was still alive; it would not have the slightest tendency to prove that he was risen from the dead, but only that the death had not been real. Now the very peculiar phenomenon in the Biblical narrative of the Resurrection is, that of the two propositions, both of which are equally essential,

"There were four different opinions. One set approved of both expressions; a second condemned both; a third maintained the former expression to be orthodox, the latter heterodox; and a fourth affirmed the reverse. In this squabble, emperors, popes, and patriarchs engaged with great fury."-Dr. Campbell.

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it is hard to say which of the two is less satisfactorily sustained: so that those who find it every way impossible to believe the miracle, are at the same time left uncertain whether or not the alleged death was real. Crucifixion was notoriously the most tedious of deaths, and was for this very reason selected by the Carthaginians and Romans as a mode of long torment and ignominy. The loss of blood endured by it is so trifling, that the victim dies only by exhaustion and thirst, or by the sufferings of muscular spasm. From the article " Cross," in the "Penny Cyclopædia," we extract the following:

....

"As death (from crucifixion) in many cases did not ensue for a length of time, guards were placed to prevent the relatives or friends of the crucified from giving them any relief, or taking them away whilst alive, or removing their bodies after they were dead. Even when it (crucifixion) took place by nailing, neither the wounds themselves nor the quantity of blood lost would be sufficient in all cases to bring on speedy death. During the reign of Louis XV. several women (religious enthusiasts, called Convulsionaires) voluntarily underwent crucifixion. Dr. Merand relates that he was present at the crucifixion of two females, named Sister Rachel and Sister Felicité. They were laid down, fixed by nails five inches long driven firmly through both hands and feet into the wood of which the crosses were made. The crosses were then raised to a vertical position. In this manner they remained nailed, while other ceremonies of these fanatics proceeded. Sister Rachel, who had been first crucified, was then taken down; she lost very little blood. Sister Felicité was afterwards taken from her cross. Three small basins, called palettes, full of blood, flowed from her hands and feet. Their wounds were then dressed, and the meeting was terminated. Sister Felicite declared that it was the twenty-first time she had undergone crucifixion."

The death being ordinarily so slow, it is of great importance to know how long Jesus hung on the cross: and here the narrators are at variance. Mark says distinctly (xv. 25-34) that Jesus was crucified at the third hour, and died at the ninth hour. John as distinctly tells us that he was not yet crucified at the sixth hour (xix. 14). "It was about the sixth hour, and Pilate saith unto the Jews, Behold your King. And they cried

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To save the Biblical infallibility, some divines hold that John had a different way of counting the hours from the other Evangelists. The learned Bloomfield, in his "Commentary to the Greek Testament," thinks such a theory too rash. He says (on Mark xv. 25), "Although such discrepancies [as this between Mark and John] are (as Fritz observes) rather to be patiently borne, than removed by rash measures,' yet here we are, I conceive, not reduced to any great necessity. For although the mode of reconciling the two accounts by a sort of management [Italics in Dr. B.], however it may be approved by many commentators, is not to be commended, yet in

short, it is best to believe the text in John corrupt, and to alter sixth to third. Of course this is possible; but so is the opposite; and no one can rest a miracle on a voluntary correction of a text.

out, Away with him, crucify him. . . Then delivered he him unto them to be crucified. And they took Jesus, and led him away. And he bearing his cross, went forth into a place called".

&c. &c. Such, after Pilate's command, was the further process of carrying the cross out from Pilate's judgment-seat to Golgotha; which for anything that appears to the contrary, may have delayed the actual crucifixion for another hour. In short, accepting the narratives, there is nothing in them to show that Jesus was longer than two hours actually on the cross. It is further manifest in them all, that Pilate most unwillingly consented to his execution, and was driven to it only by fear. He distinctly declares him to be innocent, and tries to save him. In Matthew he takes water, and symbolically washes his hands in sight of the multitude, saying, "I am innocent of the blood of this just person: see ye to it." A governor, who, after so humiliating a struggle, yields an innocent man to public death, is not unlikely to compromise with his conscience by giving secret orders to the executioners not to kill him, but to put him on to the cross for a short time, and give up his body, as if dead, to his friends, as soon as he appeared to faint. What might thus seem beforehand probable, is unexpectedly confirmed by John's information (xx. 32, 33) that the soldiers, knowing that the time was insufficient to kill, broke the legs of the other two who were crucified with Jesus (not a very effectual way of hastening death, but at least a security against their resuming the trade of robbers); while they did not break the legs of Jesus. John adds, that they refrained because they saw him to be dead; which appears to be a mere surmise; the real reason may have been that they had secret orders from Pilate to spare Jesus. Curiously enough, John proceeds unawares to state what distinctly suggests, that Jesus was not dead when they began to take him down from the cross; for he adds, that a soldier "pierced his side with a spear, and forthwith came out blood and water: and he that saw it (whoever this was) bare record, and his record is true," &c. Some of the Fathers, as Strauss observes, strongly felt how opposed this is to common experience of death. Says

Strauss has discussed this whole subject carefully: "Life of Jesus," Part III. ch. iv. § 134. [First Work, 1st edition.] He thinks the additions in John to be mythical inventions: but we here decline to discuss such possibilities, and (concessively) abide by the statements as given us.

+ Strauss observes that the breaking of legs nowhere else occurs in connexion with crucifixion among the Romans. He thinks that the fractures would be sure to mortify, and thus cause death.

Origen: "In all other dead bodies the blood coagulates, and no pure water flows from them; but the marvel of the dead body in the case of Jesus is, blood and water poured from his side even after death." So Euthymius: "For out of a dead human being, though you should stab him ten thousand times, no blood will come. This phenomenon is supernatural, and clearly proves that he who was stabbed was higher than man." We are too aware of the delicacy of such physiological questions, to speak so confidently ourselves. It suffices to say, that the flow of blood is most easily and naturally accounted for by supposing the circulation still to be active. Indeed, even swooning makes it hard to get blood out of a man. If he falls in battle from a sabre-cut and faints, the heart ceasing its normal action, the blood flows too feebly in the arteries to issue from the wound, which presently coagulates; and when death is complete, the stagnation must ordinarily be still greater. It is of course possible, that though crucifixion had not caused death, this spear-wound proved fatal; but the alternative is equally possible-that as he was still alive, neither did this new wound kill him. The narrative decides nothing either way. We however do learn from it that Pilate desired to save him, gave him up with a bad conscience, and subjected him to the shortest time of crucifixion which would obviate quarrel with the Jewish rulers; that Pilate's executioners favoured Jesus in comparison with the two robbers by not breaking his legs; allowed a humane person, when Jesus complained of the thirst accompanying that miserable torment, to moisten his lips with vinegar, which, diluted with water, was a well-known beverage of the Roman soldiers, and is a great relief to a fevered mouth; further, Pilate's officers took him down from the cross, and prepared to deliver him to his friends, while there were symptoms which strongly indicate life, and after an interval so short, that (as Mark asserts) Pilate "marvelled if he were already dead." With so very imperfect a proof of death, it is manifest that all pains in the second part of the story to prove a Resurrection are wasted: the more so, since, according to the accounts, neither was he buried in such a way as could have tended to suffocation. His body was given over to the friendly hand of Joseph of Arimathæa, who laid him "in his own new tomb, which he had hewn out in the rock;" that is to say, in a rocky vault, where a wounded man might receive surgical treatment and cordials.

The evidence offered in proof that Jesus after his burial was