The life of Jesus Christ, arranged from the Gospels into one narrative, with ...

contained a mixture of truth and falsehood. He supplies us with many interesting particulars not given by the other Evangelists; he writes with much care and vigour; and he seems to have been at great pains to ascertain the dates of some of the most memorable events of our Lord's history. IV. JOHN.-John, the son of Zebedee and Salome, was originally a fisherman of Bethsaida, in Galilee, but became one of the three most favoured apostles and the beloved disciple of our Lord. After Christ's ascension he left Judea, and laboured in Asia Minor-particularly at Ephesus. In the persecution under the Emperor Domitian, he is said to have been put into a cauldron of boiling oil, but to have come out at the end of four hours unhurt. He was then banished to the desolate and rocky isle of Patmos, where he had glorious visions of the exalted Saviour, and wrote the book of Revelation. About a year after his banishment he was recalled, and took up his abode at Ephesus, where he is said to have completed the hundredth year of his age, dying, beloved by all, the day following.

The gospel of John was doubtless written to supplement the accounts of the other Evangelists, and preserve several most important and edifying discourses of Christ which they had omitted, to destroy some pernicious heresies which had been promulgated respecting the person and death of Christ, and to establish the early Christians in their belief of the divinity as well as of the humanity of their redeeming Lord. It excels in artless simplicity and beauty of expression, and in its full display of the evidences of our holy religion. In it we are permitted to catch glimpses of the inner life of the Saviour, and note the ever-present consciousness of his unity with the eternal Father.

Such were the Evangelists, the historians of the life and ministry, the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

PALESTINE IN THE TIME OF CHRIST.

The scene of our Lord's earthly life, and of the greatest events in the world's history, is Palestine-so called from the Philistines, who originally inhabited the south-west part of the country, It forms a portion of Syria in the south-west of Asia. It is bounded on the north by the mountain ranges of Lebanon and Hermon; stretches on the east to the Arabian desert; on the south to the desert of Sinai, and is enclosed on the west by the Mediterranean Sea. Its length from Dan to Beersheba, the two extreme points, is only 145 miles, and its greatest breadth 85 miles. In New Testament times Palestine was divided into nine provinces-Iturea, Gaulanitis, Trachonitis (Luke iii. 1), Batanea, Auranitis, and Perea, to the east of Jordan; and Galilee, Samaria, and Judea, to the west of Jordan. The last four alone need at present receive attention. Judea was at the south, Galilee at the north, Samaria in the middle, and Perea to the east, "beyond Jordan" (Matt. iv. 15, John i. 28, &c.). The chief towns of Judea were Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Bethany, Bethphage, Hebron, Jericho, Emmaus, and Arimathea; the most important in Galilee were Bethsaida, Chorazin, Capernaum, Magdala, and Tiberias; and three worthy of remembrance in Samaria are Sychar, Samaria, and Cæsarea. Cæsarea Philippi, Gadara, and Bethabara are the towns deserving notice in Perea.

It was to Galilee chiefly that the journeyings of Christ were confined, a district of country about sixty miles in length, and thirty in breadth. It was, perhaps, the most populous and important part of Palestine, studded, according to Josephus, with no less than 240 towns, each containing about 15,000 inhabitants.

In 63 B.C. the Roman general Pompey reduced Jerusalem and soon after completed the subjugation of the whole

country, the Roman Empire about this time attaining its widest limits and extending from the Euphrates to the British Isles, from the Northern Ocean to the borders of Ethiopia. It was during the reign of Herod the Great, the son of a wealthy and crafty Idumean, who, through the friendship of Mark Antony, was proclaimed King of the Jews, and in all likelihood in the last year of his reign, that the Saviour of the world was born. During the reign of his son Archelaus, a Roman governor was placed over Judea, and the Holy Land became a tributary of the Roman Empire. Shiloh had now come.