not all with us? Whence then hath this man all these things?"*

Considering these and other kindred facts, in connection with the erroneous ideas which the Gospel-writers themselves acknowledge to have been cherished by some of the apostles, I am constrained to believe that, as they were Jew-born and thoroughly Jew-prejudiced, they may have tinged many real scenes with the gorgeous and marvellously effective colors of a Jewish fancy. They may have exaggerated some of the sayings and doings of Jesus, without the slightest intention to deceive; and I think that under all the circumstances by which they were surrounded, the superstitious character and inclinations of the age and of the people among whom they lived, &c., it would have been quite natural for them to have imagined, and at last settled down in the belief, that their Master, whose superior wisdom and goodness had so excited their wonder and admiration, must have been born in some other than the ordinary way. And might not this idea have assumed a narrative garb or embodiment, in course of the time which intervened be. tween his death and the writing of the first Gospel, which (according to some of the most reputable Protestant critics) was not less than twenty-seven years? Besides, is it impossible, from the very nature of the case, that some subsequent writer may have enlarged upon their idea, and finished what they, perhaps, may have commenced?

*Matt. xiii. 54-57.

It should be remembered that not Jesus only, but John the Baptist also, his reputed forerunner, is said to have been conceived miraculously, though not in precisely the same manner as was the former.* If some of the apostles or their immediate successors imagined that so illustrious a personage as Christ must have been generated by miraculous agency, would it have been unnatural for them to think that his harbinger also was somehow superhumanly born?

Several noted personages mentioned in the Old Testament are alleged to have been conceived by supernatural agency; viz. Isaac,† Joseph, Samson, and Samuel.|| Among the semi-barbarous people who lived when these characters flourished, it was doubtless imagined that every extraordinary man must have been born or engendered in some manner different from his inferiors. And with this generally prevalent superstitious idea for a foundation, it would not have been the most impossible task to erect a marvellous story about the appearance of angels, &c., &c.

In the Apocryphal New Testament, Christ's reputed mother, Mary, is said to have been miraculously conceived. In this instance, as well as in those just mentioned, an "angel of the Lord" came and previously notified both her father and mother. The particulars are detailed with considerable minuteness.T

*See Luke, i. 5-25. +Gen. xviii. 13, 14; xxi. 1-7. ‡Ib. xxx. 22-24. § Judges, xiii. 2-5, 24. || 1 Samuel, i. 1-20.

See the first three chapters of "The Gospel of the Birth of Mary."

DISAGREEMENTS BETWEEN THE SEVERAL EVANGELICAL WRITINGS.

Some of the minor and circumstantial details of certain events recorded in the several Gospels and in the book of Acts, are plainly at variance with each other. But many of these disagreements are so trivial that, in my opinion, they do not (as some have contended) so vitiate the main narratives with which they are connected, as either to prove them obviously false or to render them altogether improbable. I think that some skeptical writers have manifested a lack of impartial discrimination in their remarks upon the slight differences between the Gospels. They have, I think, sometimes been as strongly prejudiced against the Bible as the bigoted religionists have been in its favor; and so they have sometimes overstrained their criticisms. Nevertheless, there are some variances that are rather serious; and which serve to show that one or the other of the differing writers either himself committed an egregious blunder, or adopted a mistaken, hear-say rumor; or else perpetrated a deliberate untruth;-for where two accounts of one and the same event contradict each other, it is a common-sense conclusion that they cannot both be true, in those respects wherein they are discordant. Two of the most glaring contradictions of the New Testament, and which I am unable to reconcile, are the following:

Matthew, in giving the genealogy of Christ from David, makes it to consist of twenty-eight generations: while Luke in professing to give a record of the same

ancestry, represents it as composed of forty-three generations. And besides, with the bare exception of David and Jacob, all the names given in one of the catalogues are entirely different from those presented in the other! Some have sought to obviate the difficulty thus suggested by saying that perhaps Luke has given the genealogy of Mary rather than that of Joseph. But Luke says plainly that Joseph was the son of Heli,* and then proceeds with his enumeration. If Mary was the daughter of the same individual, then (as I have before remarked, in this lecture) Joseph must have married his own sister! There certainly must be a mistake somewhere.

In Luke's Gospel it is represented that Jesus ascended on the evening of the same day upon which he arose. But in the book called the Acts of the Apostles, (which is generally ascribed to Luke) it is said he was seen for the space of forty days after his resurrection, and before the ascension.t

Do these palpable disagreements prove that the evangelists were intentional liars? No. But they show plainly that they were not infallible. They prove demonstrably that they were not divinely inspired to such an extent as to preclude all possibility of their being sometimes mistaken.

Indeed, their fallibility is plainly evinced by their erroneous apprehension of Christ's teachings. Witness

*See Luke, iii. 23. Compare Luke, xxiv, 33–51 with Acts, i. 1—9,

their mistaken idea of the nature of the kingdom which he aimed to establish.*

CONCLUDING REMARKS.

There are several portions of the Gospels and the book of Acts, that I now leave unnoticed, which are of some interest as matters of comment and criticism. I cannot take up the consideration of them all and pursue the subject at much length, in a course of lectures which I originally intended should, in the whole, be much less extended than those I have already delivered.

I can hardly refrain from briefly noticing the poetic story of the angels singing, over the plains of Judea, at the period of Christ's birth, when their seraphic strains ravished the ears of the listening shepherds.† The account (which is given by Luke only) is invested with such a charm that it seems almost a pity to touch it with the finger of criticism. And yet, by considering it as merely an allegory, its beauty is, if possible, rather heightened—at least, in my view.

In the dramatic poem of Job, it is represented that, at the creation of the world, "the morning-stars SANG TOGETHER, and all the sons of God shouted for joy.”‡ Who that has any poetic susceptibility esteems this passage lightly because it is considered as metaphorical, rather than nakedly literal?

* See Matt xvii. 1—3; and Mark, ix. 33–37. † Luke, ii. 8—15. Job, xxxviii. 7.