SCRIPTURE READINGS.

EXPOSITION OF MATTHEW I.

OLD AND NEW TESTAMENT-THE GOSPELS-APOCRYPHAL GOSPELSMATTHEW'S GOSPEL-PREFIX SAINT-LANGUAGE OF THIS GOSPELINSPIRATION-MATTHEW'S GOSPEL FOR THE JEWS-GENEALOGY OF JESUS-BIRTH OF JESUS-THE VIRGIN MOTHER.

We now begin once more, in the course of evening reading, the New Testament Scriptures, so called in contradistinction to the Old, or the ancient form in which the same Gospel was revealed to the prophets, the patriarchs, and the people of Israel.

The four Gospels differ in many respects from each other. They have each peculiarities of style, expression, and design. They have left us each different parts of our Lord's biography, one Gospel containing what the other omits, and the other, again, giving at greater length that which another presents more succinctly. It is plain that we have a full view of the blessed Redeemer only from a full study of all the four Gospels.

The meaning of the word "Gospel," you have often heard me say, is "good news," derived from the two Saxon words God spell. It is the translation of the Greek word evayyéλov, which meant amongst ancient

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classic writers, a sacrifice or a thank-offering for good news; but in later Greek authors and the New Testament it denotes the good news themselves.

We have four Gospels,-why neither less nor more I cannot say, and these four have always been accepted in every age of the world, and on most conclusive proofs, as the inspired and accredited records of that mysterious, unprecedented, and wonderful biography, the Life of the Lord Jesus Christ. I need not say, that, at a subsequent age, additional Gospels, called pseudo-Gospels, were compiled, and thrust upon the Christian Church, partly by dreamy monks and fanatics. Some extracts from these I have read and seen, but they need only to be known in order to be repudiated as gross and scandalous impostures. They indicate their human origin, in the first place, in dwelling on alleged grotesque and showy miracles of Jesus. The "Gospel of Nicodemus" is the title of one, and the "Gospel of the Infancy" is another; these and other palpable forgeries expend their resources in dilating upon the wonderful miracles, so wonderful as to be puerile, that Christ, as they say, did when he was an infant. They give all the evidences one could desire, of being anile and absurd traditions. Besides, if that were not enough, they contain in themselves references and allusions to incidents which occurred after the apostolic age, and which alone are conclusive proofs that they were written at least two hundred years after the life and death of our Lord and Saviour Christ Jesus. If, for instance, a document professing to be written in the year 1780, contained allusion to the Roman Catholic Emancipation Bill of 1829, you would say that that document must have been composed after that political

event occurred, that it could not have been written prior to it. Now these Gospels, which were compiled, some of them by pious, but ignorant, and others by superstitious men, show that they were composed after the apostolic age, and in their character and contents they evince such a contrast to the Inspired Record, that it needs no great skill to prove that they were subsequent compositions, drawn up by men who gave heed to the traditions of the priests, or to the dreams of superstition, instead of borrowing, as they ought, every incident, and doctrine, and truth, from the Fountains of Truth, the Records of God.

The author of the Gospel which we are now to read on successive Sabbath evenings, is called Matthew. He was a publican; the word publican, as you are aware, in ancient times, being a word that denoted a tax-gatherer, or a person appointed by the Roman empire to collect the taxes which the Jews, or subject colony, owed to Cæsar. He is called sometimes Levi, but the name by which he was generally known, and by which he is distinguished now, is Matthew. The word "saint" is prefixed to the authors of the Gospels, but that name is not more due to them than to any other Christian. All Christians are saints. They are all believers, the ayo, "the holy people." Every Epistle is addressed to the "saints," that is, to Christians. Yet it seems by

universal consent, that the title "saint" should be accorded, though not restricted, to the evangelists, and to the apostles, and writers of the New Testament, as a mark of their inspiration and their writing of the Sacred Record.

It is a very remarkable fact, that almost universal antiquity asserts, that this Gospel was originally written

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in Hebrew, or rather in the Syro-Chaldaic language, the language spoken by the Jews in the days of our Lord. All ancient writers, as may be seen in Eusebius, the Greek ecclesiastical historian, Irenæus, Epiphanius, repeatedly say that this Gospel was written in the Hebrew, or the Syro-Chaldaic tongue. But that it was very early translated into Greek is certain, for the early editions of it now only exist in Greek; and the testimony to this is derived from passages which indicate translation, as if the Greek were not the original, but a copy. It is reported by some ancient writers that Matthew translated it himself. It may have been so ; at all events, we have it only in Greek, if this be a translation, and it has been received by the whole Christian Church, as it indeed internally evinces, onward to the present moment, as the inspired and actual history of Jesus, composed by Matthew. fact, I cannot conceive how anybody could suppose that a man originally vulgar-minded, uneducated, without any original thought, sentiment, or delicate feeling, a tax-gatherer by trade-not a very respectable one at that day, and generally in the hands of very unpopular men-that such a man composed out of his own head the majestic and impressive Sermon on the Mount. Give me the Sermon on the Mount only in St. Matthew's Gospel as my proof, and that alone, I assert, bears so vividly the impress of a celestial origin, that my inference must be alike just and natural, that he that recorded it only recorded what he heard, not invented out of his own mind what was his own. This Gospel contains some of our Lord's discourses, especially the Sermon on the Mount, at far greater length than any of the remaining Gospels, if I except St. John's, to

which, if spared, we hope to come, and then I shall be able to examine its peculiarities.

The peculiar distinction of this Gospel according to Matthew is, that it seems to have been addressed primarily to the Jews. It has a Jewish tinge and colouring, and allusions pervading it, all of which indicates that Matthew meant it to be especially for his countrymen, the Jews; and, in fact, there are evidences, on examining the four Gospels, that Matthew's Gospel was the Gospel chiefly for the Jews, that Luke's Gospel is chiefly for the Gentiles; the Hebraistic, or the Hellenistic Greek of Matthew, contrasting with the more Attic Greek of Luke, and indicating the classes for which they were respectively designed, as well as the men they were written by; and John's Gospel has been called the Gospel of the Father, meant for Jew, and Greek, and all mankind.

The first chapter begins by giving the generation, or the descent of Christ. First, it shows he was the Son of Abraham, and, therefore, the great fulfilment of the ancient promise, which we have been considering on successive Sabbath mornings, that, "In thee and in thy seed shall all the families of the earth be blessed." Again, he is mentioned as the offspring of David, to indicate his royal descent, and to respond to the many promises that show that Jesus, the Messiah, should be descended from David, and be David's son.

The expression Jesus "the Christ" occurs only in the prefatory matter of each of the Gospels, and seems to be almost dropped in the sequel or remainder.

After this genealogy has been given, we read of the birth of Christ being on this wise. Mary was espoused to Joseph. In ancient times a woman was espoused to