The above examples of discrepancies of context are taken entirely from Mt.'s Sermon on the Mount. But there are irreconcilable discrepancies in the contexts of the sermon as a whole, as given in Mt. and Lc. These two versions, in spite of some differences showing that they certainly originated in different traditions and from different hearers" (Neander, Life of Christ § 148), evidently refer to the same event (Hase, Neander, Strauss, Scherer, etc.). The circumstances attending their beginnings are similar (Mt. iv, 24-v, 2: Lc. vi, 17-20); they have like introductions and conclusions; their general tenor is the same; and both are followed by the healing of the Centurion's servant at Capernaum (Mt. viii, 5-13: Lc. vii, I-II.). Now, these two accounts of the same event are placed very differently by Mt. and Lc. Not only are various passages found in Mt. wanting in Lc., and others given on different occasions in chapt. xi, xII, XVI, and especially xII, as is illustrated above, but the whole discourse appears differently situated. In Mt. Jesus sits upon the Mountain (v, 1); in Lc., he stands upon the plain. This is a real discrepancy, however slight. (Criticism deals with slight things.) It has been attempted to make ¿πì (ἐπὶ τόπου πεδινοῦ, Lc. vi, 17) mean over, and to suppose that Jesus stood over the plain and so on the mountain : but this is contrary to the usus loquendi of έì in such connections, its primary signification being that of rest upon. Similarly, it has been said (Tholuck) that τόπος πεδινός means a level space on the mountain, to be distinguished from the plain below: but Mt. says that Jesus ascended; Lc., that he descended. "Without doubt (remarks Strauss) each was ignorant of what he omits; but each knew that tradition associated this discourse with a sojourn of Jesus on a mountain. Mt. thought the mountain a convenient elevation for one addressing a multitude; Lc., on the contrary, imagined a descent

necessary for the purpose: hence the double discrepancy, for he who teaches from a mountain is sufficiently elevated over his hearers to sit [it was the custom among the Jews for a teacher to sit while speaking], but he who teaches in a plain will naturally stand" (Life of Jesus, Part II, chap. vi, § 76). Lange explains the difficulty thus (com. in loc.); "On the top of the mountain Jesus addressed to his disciples the discourse about the kingdom of heaven in an esoteric form; while immediately afterwards, he repeated it in an exoteric form, in the midst of the people, on a plateau of the same mountain." It seems very strange however that each of the evangelists should have given only one of these two discourses, and that each should appear totally ignorant of any other than that given by himself.

It seems plain enough,

as remarked above, that each account refers to the same event. Lange's solution is conceived after the old fashion of multiplying similar events as many times as there are differences of context: and this is one of the cases in which all that we reverence in the living spirit of Jesus is sacrificed to the interests of the dead letter. If a teacher ever lived who was, to the greatest possible extreme, free from esoteric and exoteric distinctions, that teacher was Jesus; v. Mt. x, 27-28. I believe he would have scorned the notion. That he believed anything in the very deeps of his soul, was a sufficient reason, nay, a divine command, to him that he should speak it. He said truth was not his, but his Father's, who sent him. He was continually shocking and confounding the people with things that he could very easily have repressed on the esoteric plea, and a little exoteric conciliation would have saved him from the cross. If a man now thinks it right to palter and temporize, let him at any rate do justice to great souls who would not have understood the meaning of those words.

Again, Lc., though he agrees with

Mt. in following the Sermon on the Mount with the healing at Capernaum, as far as his narrative before the discourse is concerned, evidently places the sermon later than Mt.; for he relates many circumstances recorded by Mt. afterwards: c. Lc. v, 12-39, Mt. vIII, 2-1x, 17; Lc. vi, 1–11, Mt. XII, 1-14. Lc. moreover, relates the selection of the Twelve Apostles immediately before the sermon, after a night spent in prayer on the mountain (VI, 12-16); on these circumstances Mt. is silent, and afterwards (x, 1-4) simply mentions the apostles as if their selection had been already related.

In Mt. x, seq. we have a long discourse of Jesus to the Twelve when he was about to send them forth to preach. The distinct beginning and ending (Mt. x, 5, XI, I,) prove that it was, in Mt.'s mind, a contiuous talk on one occasion. But in Mc. v1, 8II and Lc. IX, 1-5, we have but a small part of Mt.'s discourse, while other parts are scattered in various places (Mc. XIII, 9 seq.; Lc. XII, 212, 51-53; XIV, 26-27), and the bulk of it is given by Lc. as a discourse of instruction to the Seventy, who are mentioned by Lc. alone. This discrepency of context, has, as usual, been reconciled by the supposition of two discourses, one to the Twelve, mentioned by the three synoptics; one to the Seventy, narrated by Lc. alone. (Neander Life of Christ, § 204). But this device is not less unnatural here than in other cases. The Twelve had returned, successful and safe (Mc. vi, 13, 30; Lc. Ix, 6, 10); there would seem less need of foreboding, instructions and warnings, especially as the Seventy also returned with joy (Lc. x, 17); and the woes

denounced upon Chorazin, Bethsaida and Capernaum (verses 13-15), seem more naturally placed by Mt. (if they were not repeated twice!!) where they are suggested by the rejection of both John and Jesus on the part of the Jews (Mt. x1, 21-24).

In Mt. XIII, are recorded seven parables recited by Jesus to the people and to his disciples, interspersed with private interpretations to the latter. The distinct beginning and ending noted in verses 3 and 53, show that Mt. regarded it all as one discourse. Of these seven parables, those of the buried treasure, the pearl and the net, are peculiar to Mt., as is also that of the tares in the field, unless Mc. iv, 2629, should be viewed as a different. form of the same parable. Mc., who has the same scene by the sea-side, gives in connection with it only three parables, but seems expressly to leave room for more (Iv, 33, 34; c. Mt. XIII, 36). The three of the seven parables which Lc. has in common with Mt., are seperated by him; that of the sower is given by him before the mission of the Twelve (viii, 1, 4 seq.); those of the mustard-seed and the leaven he places later than Mt., and relates them as spoken by Jesus while teaching in a synagogue on the Sabbath (xIII, 10, 18-21).

The few foregoing examples of discrepancies in context, have been selected at random, as the first which presented themselves among the multitude of them in the Gospels. We give them merely as illustrations, and by no means as altogether the most striking ones. Any one can multiply them indefinitely for himself by a careful reading of the N. T.

T is a conviction set fast among the

swept all the money out of the philos

that words are somehow a living vital force. The Bible makes, not the hand of God, but the word of God, the motive power of the creation, in the beginning, and the idea was still in force long after, when some Psalmist sang, "By the word of the Lord were the heavens made.” The Zend Anesta has preserved the same idea" by the word the world was created, and man is healed; and all defiled places are made pure." "The Holy One is the word," say the sacred books of the Chinese; and, "Our Grand Llama is the word that produced the world," say the wandering Tartars. In Christ and Paul the sense of the vitality of the word is always present. It is not needful, if I had the faculty, to go into the minute shades of meaning in the originals; what is most essential is the fact that no better word than "The Word" can be found for their translation.

It has been said that the words of Luther were half battles; they were more than that, they were the essential spirit and life of battles, the torch to the dry wood that was waiting to flame up into the mighty wars that followed in the entire track of the Reformation. Napoleon could not move a strong man with his hand, he could move a million by his word. His men in the desert were burnt up between the sun and sand, but a few words from him in their uttermost need refreshed them more than all the waters of the Nile. Perhaps no words in print at present offer more dreary reading than Whitfield's sermons, but when hard-headed practical Franklin went to hear one of those sermons, in the days when they were not the words but The Word of Whitfield, they

in spite of his determination not to give a penny. We laugh in our sleeve at the father and mother making a word out of what sounds to us like a mere gurgle in their first born, and then when our turn comes, fall just as surely into the same transcendant deception, because we are to learn afresh from the mouth of the babe and suckling, as one by one the words are found that bring the idea out of the deep of the soul, how the word is made flesh and dwells among us. And if by some sad mishap, the babe has no word for us and we learn at last that it will never create this that recreates the world, we look, O so sadly, into its eyes, to see if there is not there some shadow of a word. And then if there has been great wealth of words rippling all day long through the home, but after that silence, because the little one is caught into heaven, there is no memory at once so sad and inestimable, or that lingers so long in the home and heart, as that of the lisping broken words.

It is impossible that Jesus would break down any safeguard of human speech, when he tries in his sermon on the mount to put us back on the simple yea and nay. These are the natural fastnesses of that sacredness, and we are only in danger as we leave them. For if the Word reaches down into the very springs of the soul, centres in the most intimate life, is the expression of the man, then no possible adjunct can be found that can make it more than that. Heaven is God's throne, and earth his footstool, but the soul is his temple. So there was a reason in the nature of the thing for Voltaire's cutting sarcasm, that Penn's treaty with the Indians was the only

thing of the sort ever made without an oath, and never broken. That treaty went back into the strongest place there is, and there entrenched itself. These children of nature stood face to face with those the spirit had taught to be natural, and then they found they were on common ground.

There is a story of some painter who would not look at a bad picture because the thing tainted his own brush. I would try not to hear or say profane words for the same reason. I think one of the deep causes why so few " Friends” are ever taken in by rogues and cheats, lies in the fact that from their childhood, and in their very nature, all speech is in some sense sacred, and so the delicate inward ear detects the false word as the musician detects the false note, even when the man may not be listening. When the angel and the devil contend in that curious scene in the Epistle of Jude, and the angel refuses to scold, I imagine it was not merely because he would not demean himself to bandy words with one who had no noble sense of their worth, or because he was not ready to give the devil his due, on occasion, but in some deep instinct that the scolding would not only be as worthless as such things always are, but that when it was over he himself would be so coarsened as to be unfit to go back to heaven. Every coarse word coarsens first of all and most of all the man that says it. To meet an enemy in that way is as if I should throw stones right up and stand still while my enemy stands off; no one is hurt save myself and those that stand near me. If I abuse because I ani abused I cease to be the angel and begin to be the fiend. The purity and nobility of my cause, the fact that I am on the right side,—the fiendish provocation;-all these cannot save a man from his fate who will turn the sacred word to profane purposes.

It is related of a peasant who did not know a word except his native German, but who was very fond of

attending the disputations in theology conducted in the Latin, that a friend said to him one day, "What pleasure

can you take in these things? You do not understand what the doctors say. You have no hope of knowing which is right." "O but I have," was the quick reply. "I watch their faces, and when I see a man lose his temper and begin to talk furiously, I know he has lost." In the deep spiritual sense the man was right. The doctor who so lost his temper might be on the right side, but he himself was on the wrong side, and the truth could gain nothing from his advocacy of it. The enemy could not be converted, or the friend confirmed; the cause could only be a laughing-stock or a crying-stock, as those felt toward him that were looking on.

I cannot but wish and hope for the conversion of the world to a conviction, therefore, that not the Bible alone, which many cail the Word of God, but the word that is nigh us, even in our mouth, is sacred. The word to-day makes new heavens and a new earth. We toil, and think, and contrive for our children. We bless them by our bounty, and fold them in our love; but what they will treasure in the near places of their hearts, when we are dead and gone, will be the few words that we have said with a real sense of their sacredness. These will abide when all else has grown dim in the twilight of the years. When I went back to England after an absence of fifteen years, I found many that did not remember my face; but when I would tell them who I was they would then tell me of words I had said: they remembered, but I had forgotten. No man can tell, who has not tried it as he should, what power is hidden in the sacred word;-the word in dark desolate homes to those that have lost their dearest treasures; in counting rooms to merchants clean broken down and ready to give up; in committee rooms when the party is ready to bolt from the principle for

the sake of the vote; the word in the twilight when the young man tells his secret to the one maiden in all the world who can hear it; the first word from the little one newly from heaven; and the last word from the aged saint before his departure; the word of revelation that flashes its light from the soul; words that live, because they spring out of life, real, like the word that had hands to pick Franklin's pocket in spite of himself; immortal words caught up from man to man, ringing down the ages fresh and full for ever; and words of wit and humor, quick with instant laughter, like those that I love to think of as passing in heaven between those high souls that stand clearest of the baleful misconception, that to be very good you must be very stupid.

That is a beautiful parable about Pippa, who in all the year had one holiday. How when the day came she went out into the country side singing happy words. She sang by a window where a man and woman lived in deadly sin, and they were heart-broken as they listened. And a murderer by intention heard her and cast away his knife. And a lost woman heard her and felt in her heart as if an angel was calling her back from her doom. And then when the sun set she went home and sorrowed for her lost day. She had done nothing but sing these words, and what could they do. She never knew as we can never know, what words that are sacred can do, until altogether we shall know all.