In the days of Herod? What Herod?-exclaims the reader at once. Herod the tetrarch, says Mr. Norton. But how is the reader of this Gospel, fifty or more years after all the Herods were dead, to know that the tetrarch was meant? There is no context, no previous matter to give him a hint of this. There is no like thing, moreover, in all the Scriptural records. When the days of a person are mentioned as a point in chronology, the person meant must necessarily be designated; above all, where many persons about the same time had the same name, must this be done; as it is always both in the Old Testament and in the New. But if we are to credit Mr. Norton, nothing of this kind was done by Matthew. Quodcunque mihi narras sic-.

'But we have a more serious difficulty still,' according to Mr. Norton. If we allow chap. I. II. to be genuine, the last events mentioned are Archelaus's reign and Joseph's residence at Nazareth.... It was not in those days, but thirty years afterwards, that John the Baptist was preaching in the wilderness of Judea.'

Indeed! Archelaus's reign is to be sure mentioned in Matt. 2: 22, and as a reason why Joseph repaired to Nazareth, rather than to Bethlehem. But the chapter ends with an account of Joseph's fixing the abode of himself and family at Nazareth, and the third chapter begins with the clause, in those days, i. e. plainly and simply, during the period of the abode of his family at Nazareth. This comports with simple fact. It was really and truly what happened, viz., that John entered on his public ministry while they abode at Nazareth. What "serious difficulty" there can be in all this, I am not able to see. I am sure Mr. Norton has not succeeded in presenting any. It is not to Archelaus's reign, but to Joseph's sojourn at Nazareth, to which those days refers.

Mr. Norton says, at the close, that he thinks these reasons ought to satisfy us that the two chapters in question did not proceed from the apostle Matthew.' He then turns to the examination of the two first chapters of Luke; and "although," he suggests," the style is rather poetical than historical;" although, "with its real miracles, the fictions of oral tradition had probably become blended;" although, "with our present means of judging we cannot draw a precise line between the truth and what has been added to the truth;" yet we may on the whole, as he concludes, regard the account of this Evangelist as being substantially correct.

What kind of faith we can have in a Gospel which we regard in such a light, is for Mr. Norton to tell us. With such a faith I am sure we could say nothing more appropriate than Lord, help our unbelief!"

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But-to our immediate purpose. I may now be permitted to ask, at the close of this examination, by what kind of evidence or process Mr. Norton has laboured to establish his cause? What, I ask, is the question before us? A question simply of lower criticism; one which respects the mere fact, whether there is evidence that Matthew 1. II. is genuine. And how are such questions to be decided? By a priori reasoning; by objections of a theological cast; by our mere estimate of the probability or improbability of events related? Surely not. Whether the story in Matthew I. II. is probable or improbable, strange or a thing of common occurrence; whether it teaches Unitarian or Trinitarian theology; has nothing at all to do with the question of criticism, which is simply and only, whether critical witnesses speak for or against it.

And what is the result of our inquiries with regard to this last point? The result is so clear, that not a doubt of a critical nature can be sustained. All the known Mss. and Versions on the face of the earth speak but one language. All the Christian writers of the primitive ages speak but one language. We can trace the contents of these chapters in Justin Martyr, in Celsus, in the Syriac Peshito; we find Cerinthus using the matter of them about A. D. 80, before the apostolic age had passed away. No part of the church, except a small insignificant sect of the Ebionites, has ever ventured to doubt their genuineness, or to tamper with them. We have now as it were word for word and letter for letter, in the Syriac Version (made in the second century as we have good reason to believe), the very text which lies in the canonical Greek Matthew before us. A critical doubt on this subject, can scarcely be less than a critical heresy.

Yet Mr. Norton, passing by all this, suggests internal difficulties. We have also examined them. We have seen that a very different estimate from his may be made out from all the facts as they lie before us. And if it could not, his proof is not legitimate. We cannot betake ourselves to theologizing, on a mere subject of lower criticism. The deductions which might be made out in our own way of reasoning, cannot be shewn to have been made out by the mind of Matthew. Even if chap. I. II. of his Gospel have given us erroneous statements, (which VOL. XII. No. 32.

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however I do not believe), yet in the present state of criticism we are obliged to attribute these chapters to Matthew. The question now before us is not whether he has truly said or written this or that, or erroneously, but whether he actually said or wrote it. That question is settled, until some evidence yet unknown, at any rate yet unproduced, shall be developed, which will give a new aspect to the whole matter.

At the close of this somewhat protracted investigation, I cannot refrain from adding a few considerations, which are quite different from and opposite to the general nature of those suggested by Mr. Norton, and examined in the preceding pages. If they do not go to prove the genuineness of Matthew I. II., they may afford some aid in removing suspicion that these chapters are an interpolation.

It has often been remarked, and truly, that no one of the Evangelists refers so frequently to the Old Testament, or quotes from it so often, as Matthew. I say this has been truly observed; for Matthew plainly quotes at least thirty-five times from the ancient Scriptures, while Mark quotes eighteen, Luke twenty, and John fourteen times. I reckon here only the plain and obvious cases of quotation. The references in all the Gospels to sentiments contained in the Old Testament, would add to the list of appeals to the ancient Scriptures; but these are proportionally as frequent in Matthew as in the other Evangelists.

This characteristic in Matthew has been accounted for by many on the ground that he wrote more immediately for the benefit of the Jews, to whom frequent appeals to the Old Testament would be peculiarly gratifying. Matthew, it has been thought, labours in a peculiar manner to prove the Messiahship of Jesus from the predictions of the Hebrew Scriptures.

Whether these views be well grounded or not, it is still true that a prominent characteristic in his style is such as has now been stated. How then does the style or manner of chapters I. II. compare with this? Just as we should expect it would in case these chapters were from the hand of Matthew. No less than five appeals are here made to the Old Testament, viz. in 1: 23. 2: 6. 2: 15. 2: 18. 2: 23. Was it a matter of mere accident, or even a matter of design, that the supposed interpolation, or rather the writer of a narrative which another and subsequent redactor interpolated, thus imitated the manner of Matthew? I verily believe it was neither. There is no imitation here, but the hand of an original writer.

Again; Matthew is the only one of all the evangelists who has taken any notice of dreams, as means of divine admonition. In 27: 19 he tells us of a dream by the wife of Pilate, warning her that Jesus, accused before the tribunal of her husband, was innocent. In Matt. 1: 20. 2: 12, 22, we have the like occur

rences.

Of all the Evangelists or writers of the New Testament, Matthew is the only one who uses the word "vag, dream. This is employed in 27: 19, and in all the passages just referred to in chapters I. II. Is this a mere accidental thing, belonging to the translator of Matthew, as Mr. Norton would have us believe; or does it look like a mode of expression familiar to the original author of the whole book?

It would be easy to produce a number of idioms or phrases employed in chapters I. II. and afterwards in the other part of Matthew's Gospel, but found no where else in the New Testament. But I forbear, lest I should tire the patience of my readers. They may be found in Gersdorf's Beiträge; who has expended incredible labour on the examination of chapters I. II. Mr. Norton would probably say: These peculiarities belong to the translator of Matthew, and can as well be accounted for in this way as in any other?' Yet some of them are of such a nature, that I should doubt whether this could be made credible. They seem to characterize original composition rather than translation.

Thus have I gone through with the details of this subject; and I now submit the whole to the reader, and to Mr. Norton himself, and ask the question, whether any reader of Matt. I. II. and of the rest of his Gospel, would have ever thought that the whole book is a translation from another language, or that different parts of it were composed by different writers, unless some doubts about the facts in chapters I. II. had set him to making an effort to get rid of this part of the book? After reading again and again, in order to see whether I could detect any sensible difference in style, language, mode of thinking, order and manner of narrating, or even in the use of the small particles of transition, etc., I must confess unhesitatingly that I have been able to discover no such difference. Nor can

I think Mr. Norton himself, who appears to understand the laws of lower criticism so well, would ever have doubted, if some a priori views of what Matthew ought, or ought not, to comprise in his Gospel, had not led him to doubt.

I cannot resist the persuasion, that if there be a clear case in respect to the genuineness of any passage of the New Testament which has ever been controverted, the one before us is such a case. Most fully do I assent to the words of Griesbach, at the close of his critical examination of this subject (Comm. Crit. II. 55), who says: "Cum igitur parum roboris insit argumentis omnibus adversus duorum istorum capitum authentiam prolatis, genuina ea esse censemus; ipsaque inde ab initio, cum primum in publicam lucem emitteretur Matthaei Evangelium, huic adhaesisse, ac in autographo seu archetypo jam extitisse, nulli dubitamus,"

ARTICLE V.

THE SCRIPTURAL IDEA OF ANGELS.

By Lewis Mayer, D. D. late Prof. in the Theol. Sem. of the Germ. Ref. Church, York, Pa.

ter.

THE existence of a world of spirit is as much a subject of observation and experience as the existence of a world of matThe human soul is a spirit manifesting itself in the affections and operations of mind; there is a spirit in the brute which is the seat of sensation, of memory, of pleasure and of pain; the reproduction of animals, the vegetation of plants, the crystalization of minerals, and chemical agencies, are not the effects of inert matter, but must be referred ultimately to a cause which acts spontaneously and rationally. Ancient philosophy conceived that cause to be a soul of the world, and considered the world an animated, sentient, and rational being. The Bible makes it God, and the spirit of God, which pervades all things.

All spirit is not of the same order. There is an infinite difference, both of nature and of attributes, between the uncreated infinite Spirit, and all created finite spirit. There may also be an order of spirits among the creatures, perhaps embracing many genera and species, superior to man, and existing in a state of being which is not subject to the observation of our senses; nor, perhaps, even to be apprehended by the human mind, in its present connection with matter.

That intelligent creatures, superior to man, and still at an