notions which prevailed among the Jews of that period-either his fathers or himself must have sinned. Was it, then, a malady inherited from the guilt of his parents? or was the soul, having sinned in a pre-existent state, now expialing its former offences in the present form of being? This notion, embraced by Plato in the West, was more likely to have been derived by the Jews from the East (1), where it may be regularly traced from India through the different oriental religions. Jesus at once corrected this inveterate error, and having anointed the eyes of the blind man with clay, sent him to wash in the celebrated pool of Siloam, at no great distance from the street of the Temple (2). The return of the blind man restored to sight excited so much astonishment, that the bystanders began to dispute whether he was really the same who had been so long familiarly known. The man set their doubts at rest by declaring himself to be the same. The Sanhedrin, now so actively watching the actions of Jesus, and indeed inflamed to the utmost resentment, had no course but, if possible, to invalidate the effect of such a miracle on the public mind; they hoped either to detect some collusion between the parties, or to throw suspicion on the whole transaction at all events the case was so public, that they could not avoid bringing it under the cognisance of their tribunal. The man was summoned, and, as it happened to have been the Sabbath, the stronger Pharisaic party were in hopes of getting rid of the question altogether by the immediate decision, that a man guilty of a violation of the law could not act under the sanction of God. But a considerable party in the Sanhedrin were still either too prudent, too just, or too much impressed by the evidence of the case, to concur in so summary a sentence. This decision of the council appears to have led to a more close investigation of the whole transaction. The first object appears to have been, by questioning the man himself, to implicate him as an adherent of Jesus, and so to throw discredit upon his testimony. The man, either from caution or ignorance of the character assumed by Jesus, merely replied that he believed him to be a prophet. Baffled on this point, the next step of the Pharisaic party is to inquire into the reality of the malady and the cure. The parents of the blind man are examined; their deposition simply affirms the fact of their son having been born blind, and having received his sight; for it was Conduct of now notorious that the Sanhedrin had threatened all the partisans drin. of Jesus with the terrible sentence of excommunication; and the timid parents, trembling before this awful tribunal, refer the the Saube Near Samaria, (1) It may be traced in the Egypto-Jewish book of the Wisdom of Solomon, viii. 19, 20. The Pharisees' notion of the transmigration of souls may be found in Josephus, Ant. xviii. 1. (2) It is a curious coincidence that anointing a blind man's eyes on the Sabbath is expressly forbidden in the Jewish traditional law. Kuinoël in loc. According to Grotius, opening the eyes of the blind was an acknowledged sign of the Messiah. Midrash in Psalm, cxlvi. 8., Isaiah, xlii. 7.; it was a miracle never known to be wrought by Moses or by any other prophet. judges to their son for all further information on this perilous question. The further proceedings of the Sanhedrin are still more remarkable: unable to refute the fact of the miraculous cure, they endeavour, nevertheless, to withhold from Jesus all claim upon the gratitude of him whom he had relieved, and all participation in the power with which the instantaneous cure was wrought. The man is exhorted to give praise for the blessing to God alone, and to abandon the cause of Jesus of Nazareth, whom they authoritatively denounce as a sinner. He rejoins, with straight-forward simplicity, that he simply deposes to the fact of his blindness, and of his having received his sight on such high questions as the character of Jesus, he presumes not at first to dispute with the great legal tribunal, with the chosen wisdom of the nation. Wearied, however, at length with their pertinacious examination, the man seems to discover the vantage ground on which he stands; the altercation becomes more spirited on his part, more full of passionate violence on theirs. He declares that he has already again and again repeated the circumstances of the transaction, and that it is in vain for them to question him further, unless they are determined, if the truth of the miracle should be established, to acknowledge the divine mission of Jesus. This seems to have been the object at which the more violent party in the Sandhedrin aimed; so far to throw him off his guard, as to make him avow himself the partisan of Jesus, and by this means to shake his whole testimony. On the instant they begin to revile him, to appeal to the popular clamour, to declare him a secret adherent of Jesus, while they were the stedfast disciples of Moses. God was acknowledged to have spoken by Moses, and to compare Jesus with him was inexpiable impiety Jesus, of whose origin they professed themselves ignorant. The man rejoins in still bolder terms, "Why, herein is a marvellous thing, that ye know not from whence he is, but yet he hath opened mine eyes." He continues in the same strain openly to assert his conviction that no man, unless commissioned by God, could work such wonders. Their whole history, abounding as it did with extraordinary events, displayed nothing more wonderful than that which had so recently taken place in his person. This daring and disrespectful language excites the utmost indignation in the whole assembly. They revert to the popular opinion, that the blindness with which the man was born, was a proof of his having been accursed of God. "Thou wast altogether born in sin, and dost thou teach us?" God marked thy very birth, thy very cradle, with the indelible sign of his displeasure; and therefore the testimony of one branded by the wrath of Heaven can be of no value. Forgetful that even on their own principle, if, by being born blind, the man was manifestly an object of the divine anger, his gaining his sight was an evidence equally unanswerable of the divine favour. But while they traced the hand of God in the curse, they refused to trace it in the blessing; to close the eyes was a proof of divine power, but to open them none whatever. The fearless conduct, however, of the man appears to have united the divided council; the formal and terrible sentence of excommunication was pronounced, probably for the first time, against any adherent of Jesus. The evangelist concludes the narrative, as if to show that the man was not as yet a declared disciple of Christ, with a second interview beween the blind man and Jesus, in which Jesus openly accepted the title of the Messiah, the Son of God, and received the homage of the now avowed adherent. Nor did Jesus discontinue his teaching on account of this declared interposition of the Sanhedrin; his manifest superiority throughout this transaction rather appears to have caused a new schism in the council, which secured him from any violent measures on their part, until the termination of the festival. Another collision takes place with some of the Pharisaic party, with whom he now seems scarcely to keep any measure: he openly denounces them as misleading the people, and declares himself the "one true Shepherd." Whither Jesus retreated after this conflict with the ruling powers, we have no distinct information-most probably however into Galilee (1); nor is it possible with certainty to assign those events, which filled up the period between the autumnal Feast of Tabernacles and that of the Dedication of the Temple, which took place in the winter. Now, however, Jesus appears more distinctly to have avowed his determination not to remain in his more concealed and private character in Galilee : but when the occasion should demand, when, at the approaching Passover, the whole nation should be assembled in the metropolis, he would confront them, and at length bring his acceptance or rejection to a crisis (2). He now, at times at least, assumes greater state; messengers are sent before him to proclaim his arrival in the different towns and villages; and as the Feast of Dedication draws near, he approaches the borders of Samaria, and sends forward Samaria, some of his followers into a neighbouring village, to announce his approach (3). Whether the Samaritans may have entertained some hopes, from the rumour of his former proceedings in their country, that, persecuted by the Jews, and avowedly opposed to the Near (1) From this period the difficulty of arranging a consistent chronological narrative out of the separate relations of the evangelists, increases to the greatest degree. Mr. Greswell, to establish his system, is actually obliged to make Jesus, when the Samaritans refuse to receive him because his face was as though he would go to Jerusalem," to be travelling in the directly opposite direction. He likewise, in my opinion, on quite unsatisfactory grounds, endeavours to prove that the" village of Martha and Mary was not Bethany." Any arrangement which places (Luke, x. 38-42.) the scene in the house of Mary and Martha, after the raising of Lazarus, appears highly improbable. (2)By taking the expression of St. Luke" he stedfastly set his face to go to Jerusalem," in this more general sense, many difficulties, if not avoided, are considerably diminished, (3) Luke, ix. 51–56. leading parties in Jerusalem, he might espouse their party in the national quarrel, and were therefore instigated by disappointment as well as jealousy; or whether it was merely an accidental outburst of the old irreconcileable feud, the inhospitable village refused to receive him (1). The disciples were now clate with the expectation of the approaching crisis; on their minds all the dispiriting predictions of the fate of their Master passed away without the least impression; they were indignant that their triumphant procession should be arrested; and with these more immediate and peculiar motives mingled, no doubt, the implacable spirit of national hostility. They thought that the hour of vengeance was now come; that even their gentle Master would resent on these deadliest foes of the race of Israel, this deliberate insult on his dignity; that, as he had in some respects resembled the ancient prophets, he would now not hesitate to assume that fiercer and more terrific majesty, with which, according to their ancient histories, these holy men had at times been avenged; they entreated their Master to call down fire from heaven to consume the village. Jesus simply replied by a sentence, which at once established the incalculable difference between his own religion and that which it was to succeed. This sentence, most truly sublime and most characteristic of the evangelic religion, ever since the establishment of Christianity has been struggling to maintain its authority against the still-reviving Judaism, which, inseparable it should seem from uncivilised and unchristian man, has constantly endeavoured to array the Deity, rather in his attributes of destructive power than of preserving mercy. "The Son of Man is not come to destroy men's lives, but to save them." So speaking he left the inhospitable Samaritans unharmed, and calmly passed to another village. It appears to me probable that he here left the direct road to the metropolis through Samaria, and turned aside to the district about Scythopolis and the valley of the Jordan, and most likely crossed into Peræa (2). From hence, if not before, he sent out his messengers with greater regularity (3), and it might seem, to keep up some resemblance with the established institutions of the nation, he chose the number of Seventy, a number already sanctified in the notions of the people, as that of the great Sanhedrin of the nation, who deduced their own origin and authority from the Council of Seventy, established by Moses in the wilderness. The Seventy after a short absence returned and made a favourable report of the in (1) The attendance of the Jews at the Feast of the Dedication, a solemnity of more recent institution, was not unlikely to be still more obnoxious to the possessors of the rival temple, than the other great national feasts. This consideration, in the want of more decisive grounds, may be some argument for placing this event at the present period. I find that Doddridge had before suggested this allusion. The inhabitants of Ginea (Josephus, Ant. xx. ch. 6.) fell on certain Galileans proceeding to Jerusalem for one of the feasts, and slew many of them. (2) After the visit to Jerusalem at the Feast of the Dedication, he went again (John, x. 40.) into the country beyond Jordan; he must therefore have been there before the Feast. (3) Luke, x. 1-16. Feast of tion. fluence which they had obtained over the people (1). The language of Jesus, both in his charge to his disciples and in his observations on the report of their success, appears to indicate the still approaching crisis; it should seem that even the towns in which he had wrought his mightiest works, Chorazin, Bethsaida, and Capernaum, at least the general mass of the people, and the influential rulers, now had declared against him. They are condemned in terms of unusual severity for their blindness; yet among the meek and humble he had a still increasing hold-and the days were now at hand, which the disciples were permitted to behold, and for which the wise and good for many ages had been looking forward with still baffled hopes (2). It was during the absence of the Seventy, or immediately after Dedica their return, that Jesus, who perhaps had visited in the interval Jesus many towns and villages both of Galilee and Peræa, which his Jerusalem. central position near the Jordan commanded, descended to the again in winter Festival of the Dedication (3). Once it is clear that he drew near to Jerusalem, at least as near as the village of Bethany; and though not insensible to the difficulties of this view, we cannot but think that this village, about two miles' distance from Jerusalem, and the house of the relations of Lazarus, was the place where he was concealed during both his two later unexpected and secret visits to the metropolis, and where he in general passed the nights during the week of the last Passover (4). His appearance at this festival seems to have been, like the former, sudden and unlookedfor. The multitude probably at this time was not so great, both on account of the season, and because the festival was kept in other places besides Jerusalem (5), though of course with the greatest splendour and concourse in the Temple itself. Jesus was seen walking in one of the porticoes or arcades which surrounded the outer court of the Temple, that to the east, which from its greater splendour, being formed of a triple instead of a double row of columns, was called by the name of Solomon's. The leading Jews, whether unprepared for more violent measures, or with some insidious design, now address him, seemingly neither in an hostile nor unfriendly tone. It almost appears, that having before at (1) Luke, 17-20. (2) Luke, x. 24. The parable of the good Samaritan may gain in impressiveness if considered in connection with the recent transactions in Samaria, and as perhaps delivered during the journey to Jerusalem, near the place where the scene is laid-the wild and dangerous country between Jericho and Jerusalem. (3) This feast was instituted by Judas Macca beus. 1 Macc. 4-5. It was kept on the 25th of the month Cisleu, answering to our 15th of December. The houses were illuminated at night during the whole period of the feast, which lasted eight days. John, x. 22-39. (4) In connecting Luke, x. 38-42. with John, x. 22-39., there is the obvious difficulty of the |