1 Record of the Mission of the Seventy...... 2 Christ upbraids the Cities of Galilee, MATT. xi. 20—24. 3 Notice of the Return of the Seventy...... 4 Christ's Thanksgiving to the Father, MATT. xi. 25-27. 5 Parable of the Good Samaritan..... 6 Visit to Mary and Martha at Bethany 7 Instructions for Prayer...... II. ..beginning 8 Cure of the Dumb Demoniac, and Discourse thereon, Matt. xii. 22—30 9 A Woman pronounces the Mother of Jesus blessed...... 10 Discourse when the Pharisees demanded a sign, MATT. xii. 38-45 11 Christ at the Pharisee's Table...................... III. 12 Admonitions and Encouragements to the Disciples, (comp. Matt. x. 17—33) 13 Warning against Covetousness; Parable of the Rich Man.... 14 Admonitions respecting Anxiety, (comp. Matt. vi. 25–33) 15 Preparation for the Coming of the Lord.... .... 16 Consequences of Christ's Mission; Individual Judgment urged.. 17 Calamities not always Judgments 18 Parable of the Barren Fig-tree... IV. 19 The Infirm Woman healed on the Sabbath. 20 Parable of the Mustard-seed, (comp. Matt. xiii. 31, 32). 22 Answer to the Inquiry," Are there few that shall be saved?". 23 Observations respecting the malicious purposes of Herod........... VI. 24 Occurrences at the house of a Ruler who was a Pharisee.. 25 Discourse on Counting the Cost...... 26 Parable of the Lost Sheep, (comp. Matt. xviii. 10-14) 31 Observations on Causes of Sin, (comp. Matt. xviii. 6, 7)......................... 32 33 Mutual Forgiveness, (comp. Matt. xviii. 15.).......... 10 With ver. 11 recommences the narrative of our Lord's fina! Journey to Jerusalem. Observations on the foregoing Analysis. Such are the contents of this remarkable portion of St. Luke's Gospel, most, if not all of which, he may have derived, directly or indirectly, from the testimony of some or other of the Seventy. The ninth chapter has for its subject, the Mission of the Twelve, their Return, and the Occurrences that followed till our Lord finally left Galilee. The records of the Seventy properly came after this chapter; and some one has not unaptly termed this portion, the Gospel of the Seventy. Some few sections in it occur also in St. Matthew's Gospel; but, taken generally, they are peculiar to St. Luke. The Apostolical Evangelist makes no allusion to the Mission of the Seventy, §. 1 and §.3; but he records the words of Christ in §. 2 and §. 4, which St. Luke's narrative connects with it. This was before our Lord went to the Feast of Dedication. From the nature of the Gnomology, we are not able to say confidently that the events in the next two sections immediately succeeded the Mission of the Seventy; but as the train of events places our Lord's journey to Jerusalem at this period, I regard the visit to Bethany, §. 6, as then taking place; and I see no reason why §.5 should not have occurred previously, viz. before our Lord left Galilee. We know from John x. 40-42, that our Lord went to Bethabara, in the Peræa, after the Feast of Dedication; and that he abode there for some time, many resorting to him there. He went thence to Bethany, to raise Lazarus; and then, John xi. 54, withdrew to Ephraim, probably in the south-east of Samaria. From Ephraim, as the train of events in Matthew proves, he returned to Galilee, shortly before the general Return of the Twelve, caused by the news of the death of the Baptist. Considering the nature of the Gnomology, we may suppose that the Instructions for Prayer, §.7, were given either in the Peræa, or after the Return to Galilee. Thinking that this section best suited "the new and calmer scene of instruction in the Perca," I have placed it, Harm. p. 106, immediately after the record of the Feast of Dedication. I should now, on the whole, prefer seeing it before Sect. x., connecting it with occurrences in Galilee, the arrangement of which we learn from Matthew, recorded by Luke in §. 8-11. But whichever position is adopted, all the sections of the first two divisions of the Gnomology, §. 1-11, will be in chronological order. The third division, §. 12-18, has a remarkable character. Though several portions of it greatly correspond with portions of other discourses, recorded by St. Matthew, the whole appears to have been regarded by St. Luke as one continuous series of discourses, itself connected in point of time (see Harm. p. 135) with the occurrences in ch. xi.-The fact in §. 19, followed by two parables attributed by Matthew to this period, may reasonably be placed here also, (see Harm. p. 140); and we shall then have the whole of the Gnomology, thus far, §. 1-19, in the order of occurrence, without any intervening portion in the narrative part of the Gospel. The next two sections clearly refer to the Last Journey, and of course stand in their due relation to the preceding, in order of occurrence. The facts appear to have taken place in the Peræa. But here the chronological series seems to be interrupted. Internal evidence will scarcely allow us to refer §. 24 to the Last Journey; otherwise, undoubtedly, the whole of the next six sections might also. As it is, I refer the whole of Division vi., as Macknight also does, to our Lord's sojourn in the Peræa, prior to the Resurrection of Lazarus; and I suppose that St. Luke has placed them after §. 22 and 23, because these also occurred in the Peræa, and he probably received the whole from residents in that country. If he knew of no other journey in that country, than the last, it fully accounts for its present position.. After the parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus, are three short sections, §. 31-33, which, whatever occasioned their present position, probably occurred, as we may gather from Matthew, just before the fact with which the historical narrative recommences. This Analysis shows, what is one capital advantage of the present Harmony, that it is not necessary, even for chronological accuracy, to separate much the portions which, through their mutual position in the Gospel, we are habituated to read in connection. (C). 66 GENERAL OBSERVATIONS RESPECTING THE ORIGIN OF THE FIRST THREE GOSPELS. The Reviewer of this Harmony in the Boston Christian Examiner for March 1837, referred to in my Preface, accords with me, for the reasons adduced in Section v. p. lix., in giving a general preference to the succession of events in St. Matthew's Gospel, even where this differs from the succession found alike in St. Mark's Gospel and St. Luke's. "But the "first three gospels," he continues, p. 46, "present so many curious and "at first sight perplexing phenomena, both of coincidence and of discrepancy, that we cannot but deem it the first business of the evangelical "harmonist to select, defend, and establish some theory of their origin, "which shall comprehend and elucidate all these phenomena. And herein "lies the main deficiency of the work under review. We infer from here "and there a random hint, that our author adopts Eichhorn's documentary theory, as developed and illustrated by Bishop Marsh. But if this be "the case, he has left his readers in the dark with regard alike to its 'grounds and its features." 66 It did not fall within the scope of my work to establish any theory but what respects either the duration of our Lord's Ministry, or the succession of events in it. The latter does, in part, depend upon the views that are entertained in relation to a common origin of that portion of the Gospels of Mark and Luke which respects Christ's Ministry in Galilee. But having shown that the order of Matthew, in the most remarkable case of discrepancy, must be that of reality, I felt that it was right to follow it, whether or not I could explain the difference between this order and that of Mark and Luke. Nevertheless I did, in the Appendix of the first edition, give such an "Analysis of the Part of Luke's Gospel which respects the Ministry of Christ in Galilee," as appeared to afford "some insight into the causes of the general arrangement which he adopted." I set out with the position, that "it seems almost certain that the two Evangelists, Luke and Mark, were in possession of some common documents." I afterwards stated, more fully, as a probable opinion, "that St. Luke had obtained, by his faithful research, several documents" "which he translated into Greek if they were in the language of Palestine, and which he employed as his judgment directed, connecting with them whatever additional information he was enabled to obtain by his diligent inquiries in Galilee." That analysis led me to the fact, that the occurrences of each separate division, are mainly in the order established by St. Matthew's Gospel; and I endeavoured to show on what principle St. Luke might have arranged the several divisions. My hypothesis, however, failed in respect to one division; (viz. F. in the foregoing Analysis); and more particularly in accounting for the fact, that Mark also arranges that division in the same connection that Luke does. I therefore inferred, either that there must have been some link of association which I had not traced, or, that some connection must have been established between these two, before the documents came into the hands of the Evangelist. The observations of the Reviewer in the Christian Examiner, led me again to the subject; and instead of analyzing Luke's Gospel alone, and observing its correspondence with Mark's, I considered the two Gospels together; and I have thereby attained the conclusion, which forms the subject of the first Appendix, that in the portion of Christ's Ministry in Galilee which began with the Imprisonment and ended with the Death of the Baptist, in which alone Mark and Luke differ from Matthew while agreeing together, those two Evangelists had one Common Record, valuable in itself, but not of apostolical authority, which directed them in the arrangement of events, and with which they connected such other occurrences as came within their knowledge; which, however, they employed only as the basis of their own narratives, enlarging, abridging, moulding, or altering, as their own information enabled them. It still does not appear to me that I am called upon to frame any theory which shall account universally for the phenomena of verbal agreement or disagreement in the evangelical records. What I have done in the following Harmony, has placed within reach of the unlearned scripturalist, a means, heretofore inaccessible to those whose knowledge is confined to the the English language, of accurately discerning these phenomena, and of investigating for himself the causes of them; but in determining the real succession of events, the best hypothesis to explain those causes can be of little avail. That Bishop Marsh's hypothesis, of one common document, including the whole scope of the ministry of Christ, is untenable, I have long been convinced; but I could not needlessly have undertaken the proof of this position; and the construction of my Haimony did not require it. I referred, in Sect. v. of this Dissertation, to Mr. Veysie's Examination in a way that shows my opinion of its value; and I have now the power of referring, not only to my Reviewer's own statements, but to a decisive examination of Marsh's Hypothesis by Professor Andrews Norton, in his very |