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legions of angels would carry him victoriously through the career into which he had plunged, and that, when struck down from lofty imaginations, a total collapse of mind ensued. The third and fourth narrators suppress his cry of despair, apparently as unworthy of him. Luke ascribes to him a nobler utterance: "Father! for"giv them; for they know not what they do." But Luke is here quite untrustworthy: for he represents one of the "robbers" who was crucified with him as reproving the other, and making actual prayer to Jesus as Lord of Paradise, which is magnificently accepted. So marked a contrast of the two robbers could not hav been unknown to Matthew and Mark, who distinctly declare that both of them insulted him. The fourth narrator makes him die with the grand utterance: "It is finished;" certainly a great improvement. But how much is here historically true, will be judged differently by different minds.

That the priests could not easily identify Jesus denotes that he was very new in Jerusalem. Archbishop Whately (late of Dublin) teaches, that Judas expected his Lord to summon angels to his rescue, as soon as an arrest was attempted; and hanged himself in despair, when no such event followed. But how much to believe concerning Judas* is a hard problem, when we discern that our narrators hav made history out of misunderstood prophecy. Their "potter's field" is a blunder. The true sense of the Hebrew is probably given by the LXX., as the foundry or mint; and no sound exposition can connect the prophecy with the proceeding of Judas.

The inquiry may justly be made, whether Jesus, after accepting and applauding Simon's avowal that he was the Messiah, at all changed his ideas concerning the coming Kingdom of Heaven. That he ever for a moment

*Paul in 1 Corinth. xv., says that Jesus after his resurrection "was seen "by the twelve."

"war.

internally aspired to be a new Judas Maccabæus, no one is likely to assert. Perhaps an obscure utterance attributed to him bears on this question. I submit my interpretation with diffidence; for I hav to assume that the Greek given us in Matt. xi. 12 does not to the letter express his exact argument. I suppose him to hav meant to say: "There ar persons who wrongfully expect "the kingdom of heaven to be established by weapons of Such men as was Judas of Gaulana use violence, "and think to seize it by force: and even after the "preaching of John the Baptist, who declared that it "must come through national repentance of sin, the error "continues to this day." That from the very beginning of his career Jesus believed himself higher than any preceding prophet and about to announce higher wisdom than any taught in the Mosaic law, cannot be doubted without a total rejection of our Gospels; but it may be asked, did his idea of the "kingdom of heaven" at all change, after he braced his courage to claim and act the part of Messiah? Apparently there was a change. The order of events in Luke is so untrustworthy, that we cannot press as belonging to the second stage his phrase (found in Luke only, xvii. 21), "the kingdom of heaven "is within you." But in his many comparisons of this kingdom, which seem to belong to his earlier stage, its predicted triumphs ar by moral and spiritual growth. The comparison of its process to that of leaven, and to the growth of mustard, also the parable of the sower, ar in this respect very notable. "The Son of Man" in Matt. xiii. 41 may be adduced on the other side; yet in what appears to be his earlier teaching, there is nothing flatly political like the twelve thrones of Matt. xix. 28, set up over the twelve tribes for compensation of the twelve disciples. Indeed when the mother of John and James (in Matt. xxii. 20-24) comes to entreat

ascendancy in his royalty for her two sons and hereby excites jealousy in the ten, Jesus warns them that these high posts must be earned by suffering and by service; yet drops no rebuke on this political ambition as a fundamental mistake. In his triumphal entry he assumes to be King of Israel, and again before Pilate avows himself to be a king, and allows Pilate to interpret the word as every Roman was sure to understand it. These ar indications that with the growth of his own ambition, his idea of "the kingdom" became more that of human royalty,—divinely established, no longer demoniacally. Indeed immediately after avowing himself to be Messiah, he claims (Matt. xvi. 27) to be the Heavenly Son of Man predicted in Dan. vii. 13. If that be rejected as spurious because the phrase "take up his cross" is anachronistic, yet no just suspicion rests on Matt. xxv. 31-46, a discourse very characteristic of him, nor on his declaration (xxvi. 64) in reply to the solemn demand of the High Priest. Had he not explicitly claimed to be prefigured in Daniel's vision, it is unintelligible that this should immediately on his death become the cardinal doctrin on which thenceforth his Church was to rest. The duty of watching for the coming of the Son of Man in the clouds of heaven does not appear in his earlier stage, and possibly is spurious in the later stage,—an afterthought.

APPENDIX TO CHAPTER VIII.

It will not be overlooked that in many texts Jesus is represented as avowing that the Pentateuch has Moses for its author, and rests on divine authority. Christians hav in general accepted this as decisiv and final.

Nevertheless modern skill in literature has pursued

its diligent course. The life-labors of many scholars, eminently of Germans, hav established that the Pentateuch is the work of at least three different writers, who wrote at different times,--the last as late as King Josiah. English clergymen, no doubt, struggle to deny this. The learned Professor, Rev. George Rawlinson of Oxford, is a very uncompromising opponent of Bishop Colenso, who has set forth his own argument elaborately on the German lines; and Mr. Rawlinson in answering him (Aids to Faith, p. 251) distinctly admits (1) that Moses made up the book of Genesis from a number of records of more or less antiquity; (2) that the Pentateuch underwent authoritativ revision [a thousand years after Moses by Ezra, who modernized it and introduced many parenthetic comments; (3) that the last chapter of Deuteronomy is not from Moses.--Ezra's dealing is merely conjectural, his authority so to deal is a fiction: but the admissions here made confess that the book is COMPOSIT and was worked up at a very late age; while no particle of historical evidence is produced in proof that Moses wrote one line in it.

The able German Professor Hupfeldt, commenting on the Sources of Genesis, avows that the discovery of the composit origin of the Pentateuch is as certain as it is important; that no retrograding of opinion is possible, as long as criticism exists; that we now start on this basis as already proved: proof is no longer needed, but at most, improvement in detail. Colenso equally, with unanswerable force, contrasting the versions of the Fourth Commandment in Exodus and in Deuteronomy, infers that the later writer knowingly alters the earlier, and supposed himself at liberty to do so, i. e., regarded the composition not divine, but human. The pretence that the law was recovered under Josiah, was adverted to above, p. 3. Unless we reject the testimony of these Gospels con

cerning the utterances of Jesus, we hav to believe either that he was misinformed on this literary question and was wrongfully dogmatic; else, that he knew the truth and concealed it. The latter is a most improbable imputation. To ascribe to him the knowledge which for us has been worked out by the co-operation of hundreds of students aided by libraries, is as unreasonable as to ascribe to him a knowledge of physical astronomy. On those who accept the Gospels as true, the conclusion presses that Jesus thought himself eminently wise in matters on which he had everything to learn. Therefor, when he assumed to be the Hebrew Messiah, there is no cause to wonder that he deceived himself and fell very deeply.

CHAPTER IX.

FIRST STAGE OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH.

DISMAY and Despair ar described as the first emotions in the disciples deprived of their Master; which were gradually dissipated, when the opinion gained currency, that the soul of Jesus, on leaving the body, had ascended to heaven, and was there glorified. That this was the original meaning of the doctrin, that "God raised him "from the dead" is attested by Peter's first Epistle, which says: "Christ was put to death in flesh, but was "made alive in spirit;" words that show the writer to hav no belief that the flesh of Jesus was called back into life. Indeed in Charles Knight's Cyclopædia the doctrin of Resurrection held by the Pharisees is described as consisting not in the re-animation of the body, but in the passage of the soul into some other body. We might