be allowed by us to pass with the less hesitation; and whatever pain the examination cost him, we are the gainers in the greater ease of accepting a record bearing his endorsement. The survey of his life may

suggest that, while it is most blessed to cultivate the heavenly temper which can believe without seeing and stand unpropped by outward evidence, Christ honours the man who fairly seeks the truth and feels the search so momentous that in it no questionable testimony or doubtful clue can be followed:

"For all thy rankling doubts so sore,

Love thou thy Saviour still,

Him for thy Lord and God adore,

And ever do His will.

Though vexing thoughts may seem to last,

Let not thy soul be quite o'ercast ;

Soon will He shew thee all His wounds, and say, 'Long have I known thy name-know thou My

face alway.""

"It (criticism) breaketh the window that it may let in the light; it breaketh the shell that we may eat the kernel; it putteth aside the curtain that we may enter into the most holy place; it removeth the cover of the well, that we may come by the water."

E come now to the third class of the apostles, to the quaternion which presents the greatest difficulty. The difficulty however is not throughout of the same kind. In the case of the traitor it is the complexity of motive that arrests the student and not any lack of well-ascertained acts; whereas about the three whose names head the present chapter our information is so slender that it is hard to say with confidence who they were and impossible to connect with each so much as a single incident and a solitary speech.

This difficulty would indeed be removed, could we identify them with persons in the New Testament bearing the same names; for such there are, occupying conspicuous positions and respecting whom interesting details are preserved. If the names borne in common by such persons and our apostles were of rare occurrence, the presumption would be strong in favour of supposing the two sets to be identical; while, if the names were in frequent use,

no inference of the sort would be allowable. Now James and Simon and Judas were among the Jews almost as common as Edward or William among ourselves; so that the identification of people possessing these names must depend on altogether distinct evidence.

We meet in the Acts with one James, president of the church at Jerusalem; we have also among our sacred books an epistle written by James, and another by Jude the brother of James; were these men the same with the James and Judas of our present inquiry? Again: in various parts of the New Testament we meet with notices of certain men bearing the honourable title of the Lord's Brethren, and there is a correspondence between their names and those of the sons of Alphæus; may we take them to be the same? These questions resolve themselves into one; for it may readily be shewn that James the Lord's brother was president of the, church and also author of the epistle, and likewise that Judas the brother of the Lord was author of the other epistle; so that all we have to determine is whether the three apostles now under notice, or any of them, have a right to be called brethren of the Lord.

Anxious as we may be not to sacrifice the practical lessons which spring out of the lives of the Twelve to the pursuit of unprofitable phantoms, this is an inquiry that ought not to be shirked; for, until it has been made, we are in no position to proceed. The account shortly to be given of James and his companions must depend on our ascertaining first