of the language of prophecy, he is speaking of what was still future, as if it were already past. For he proceeds: Ἔγω ἀπέστειλα ὑμᾶς θερίζειν ὃ οὐχ ὑμεῖς κεκοπιάκατε· ἄλλοι κεκοπιάκασι, καὶ ὑμεῖς εἰς τὸν κόπον αὐτῶν εἰσεληλύθατε *—where, if any one should take these words to relate to a past mission of the disciples, he would be bound to shew when, and where, and for what purpose, that mission had taken place. But, if they do not relate to a past, they must relate to a future, mission; and the way to render them will be this. I shall send you to reap that which you shall not have laboured for; others shall have laboured for it, and you shall enter into the effect of their labour. Two, as yet future, occasions, in the course of our Saviour's lifetime, there were, when the disciples were sent out; once, upon the mission of the Twelve, and again, upon that of the Seventy; neither of which, however, can here be meant; because the state of the case supposes not one set of agents or workmen, assisting another, and all preparing for a common result, but one set of agents or workmen, succeeding to another, and stepping in by themselves to a certain result; whereas both the Twelve, and the Seventy, were sent out, as we have seen y, in the former of these capacities, not the latter, and as fellow-labourers, with both our Saviour and the Baptist, in the work which they each had to perform.

There would, however, be a third such mission-but after his death-the mission of the Apostles in their proper character of the emissaries of Christianity, completing the purpose of the ministry of our Lord in his lifetime, by the commencement, the continuance, and the consummation, of that scheme of formal Christianity, the establishment of the kingdom of heaven upon earth, to announce which, and to prepare for its reception in its proper time, was the object both of his ministry and of the Baptist's. This mission is here intended; and, as referred to this, every thing becomes easy and natural. The effect of our Saviour's personal ministry, and that of the Baptist's, would be to have sown the seed, and to have raised to maturity the crop-but not

to have begun the reaping, or gathered in the fruit-that should be reserved for the ministry of the Apostles. And, therefore, he proceeds; And he, that shall reap, shall earn his wages, and shall gather together fruit against everlasting life; that both he who is sowing, and he who is reaping, (or he who is to sow, and he who is to reap) may rejoice in common. For herein, that is, by this dispensation of one ministry succeeding, and giving effect to, another, the saying shall truly consist, that he who is sowing is one, and he who is reaping is another: the ordinary sense of which proverb was merely to express the uncertain event of human schemes, by which it so often happens that the same hand does not both sow and reap; one party has had the anxiety and toil of the acquisition, another steps in to the enjoyment. How natural and pertinent, at the outset of our Saviour's ministry, such reflections as these would be, is too obvious to require any proof.

There were two seasons of harvest among the Jews; the season of barley-harvest, the first-fruits of which were to be consecrated at the Passover, and the season of wheatharvest, of which the same thing was true at the Pentecost z. Of wheat-harvest, in particular, Jerome, in Amos iv. 7. writes thus: Prohibui a vobis imbrem, cum adhuc superessent tres menses usque ad messem: quæ appellatur pluvia serotina, et agris Palæstinæ, arvisque, sitientibus vel maxime necessaria est; ut ne, quando herba turgeret in messem, et triticum parturiret, nimia siccitate aresceret. Significat autem vernum tempus extremi mensis Aprilis; a quo, usque ad messem frumenti, tres menses supersunt ". Between each of these seasons, and the corresponding seedtime, there was literally an interval of four months: Consider now, from this day and upward, from the four and twentieth day of the ninth month. ... Is the seed yet in the barn?... from this day will I bless youb. On which Jerome -Igitur decimus est mensis, eo tempore quo semina latitant in terra, nec futura fæcunditas conjectari potest c. Casleu,

Philo de Decalog. 766. De Victimis. 837. De Septen. et Fest. 1192. * Oper. iii. 1400. 1401. b Haggai ii. 18. 19. © Oper. iii. 1702.

C

then, which in a rectified year would answer nearly to our December, was one seed-time, four months before Nisan, or the time of barley-harvest; and, according to Maimonides a, the wheat, designed for the bread, Ad altaris ferta, et libamina, was sown seventy days before the Passover, so as to be ripe at the Pentecost, or fifty days after it; that is, the harvest was just one hundred and twenty days, or literally four solar months, later than the sowing-time. Diodorus Siculus asserts the same thing of Egypt-Τὸ σπέρμα βάλλοντας, μετὰ τέτταρας ἢ πέντε μῆνας ἀπαντᾶν ἐπὶ τὸν θερισμόν c.—Nor, as we have seen from Pliny, was wheat-harvest in that country ever later than the month of May. At the time of the Exodus from Egypt, when the vernal equinox coincided with April 5. the flax and the barley, it is said, were both destroyed by the hail, because both were at that time in the ear; but the wheat and the rye were not destroyed, because they were neither of them arrived at maturity. The plague of hail must have been some time in the month of March, and very probably in its former half.

But that no literal seed-time could have been meant is well argued by Origen, in his Commentary upon the place, ii. 230. If the time, says he, when Jesus spake these words, was four months before the harvest, it was evident that it was winter. One harvest, at least, begins to take place in Judæa about the time of the month, called among the Hebrews Nisan, when they are celebrating the Passover; so that they sometimes make their unleavened bread of new grain. But let us suppose that the harvest is not about that month, but about the next to that, the month which is called among them Jar; even in this case, a four months' time before that month is the depth of winter. When, then, we shall have shewn that, when he spake these words, it was about the season of harvest, either then at its maturity, or drawing, perhaps, to a close, we shall have demonstrated what we propose.

Of the appearance of things in the winter, Jerome in Za

d De Reb. Alt. interd. vii. 4.

i. 36.

f Exod. ix. 31.32.

chariam gives this description 8-Octavus apud Hebræos mensis, qui apud illos Maresvan .... apud nos November, dicitur, hyemis exordium est, in quo, æstatis calore consumpto, omnis terra virore nudatur, et mortalium corpora contrahuntur.

Even on the testimony of this passage, therefore, which has been the chief reason why some Harmonists (among whom Archbishop Newcome is one) have thought it necessary to place the journey through Samaria in the month of December, we may consider it almost demonstratively certain, that it coincided with the acme of wheat-harvest, or was but a little before it; which coincidence would be the case, if it occurred, where we suppose it to have occurred, about a fortnight before Pentecost. For I have supposed these words to have been spoken on May 13. and the feast of Pentecost was coincident with May 30.

There is yet another argument in favour of the same conclusion, taken from the order and succession of Sabbatic years at this time, which, though not less strong than any thing yet mentioned, I have reserved for an Appendix to this Dissertation, by itself: and this point being thus presumptively established, it remains only that we should state the order of facts during the rest of St. John's account, before it breaks off-and so make an end of the subject for the present.

After our Saviour's arrival in Galilee, he is brought again to Canah: but, before this, we meet with the observation, For Jesus himself bore witness that a prophet hath no honour in his own country; where, by his own country, Nazareth, the reputed place of his birth, and the actual place of his bringing up, may very well be meant. Now, if we consult the maps of Judæa, it will be seen that one, who was travelling from Samaria to Cana, would pass by Nazareth and there is an account, in St. Luke k, of a visit to Nazareth, at which the truth of the assertion that a prophet has little honour in his own country was verified by the It may be imagined, then, that this visit to Naza

event.

* Oper. iii. 1707.

h iv. 46.

i lb. 44.

k iv. 16.

reth, in St. Luke, preceded the visit to Cana, in St. John; and that the observation in question was expressly premised in reference to it: but this conclusion would be prema

ture.

For, first, the first miracle, after the return into Galilee, was wrought on this visit to Cana1; and, secondly, before Jesus came to Nazareth, one miracle, or more, had been performed at Capernaum m. Now the miracle performed in Cana came to pass in Capernaum; for it was performed by our Lord at Cana on a sick person in Capernaum; and if the visit to Nazareth was only sufficiently later than the visit to Cana, for the news of the miracle to have been spread from Capernaum to Nazareth, before our Lord came thither, this might be the miracle referred to. Now Nazareth was nearer to Capernaum, than Cana to Tiberias-and yet, according to Josephus ", a man might ride from Tiberias to Cana, in a single night.

The use of the plural, ὅσα ἠκούσαμεν γενόμενα, though in reference even to a single miracle, is so natural in relation to events made known by hearsay, and so familiar to the idiom of the Greek tongue, besides being exactly parallel to Mark v. 19. 20. and Luke viii. 39. as to constitute no objection.

The visit to Cana, then, preceded the visit to Nazareth, and supplies a link in the chain of the account, which would otherwise be perceptibly missed: for, however true in itself it might be, that miracles had been performed in Capernaum-neither the truth of the fact, nor the propriety of the allusion to it, would have appeared from St. Luke, independent of the light reflected upon them by St. John. And such being the benefit of the coincidence between the two accounts, it is unreasonable to question whether what possesses so happy an effect, in clearing up the obscurity of a former Evangelist, was so intended, or not, by a later. The declaration, therefore, at verse forty-four, relates to nothing which Jesus can be supposed to have said, but to something

1 John iv. 54.

m Luke iv. 23.

n Vit. 16. 17.