quite retired before Christianity, at least within the pale of the Church'. Though we have seen ample reason to conclude that nearly all the discourses of Jesus in the fourth gospel are mainly the composition of the evangelist from memory or tradition, rather than the genuine utterances of our great Teacher, it may be satisfactory, as further confirmation, to select a few single passages and expressions, as to the unauthentic character of which there can be no question. Thus at ch. iii. 11, Jesus is represented as saying to Nicodemus, in the midst of his discourse about regeneration, "We speak that we do know, and testify that which we have seen; and ye receive not our witness,”expressions wholly unmeaning and out of place in the mouth of Jesus on an occasion where he is testifying nothing at all, but merely propounding a mystical dogma to an auditor dull of comprehension-but expressions which are the evangelist's habitual form of asseveration and complaint. It is not clear whether the writer intended verses 16-21 to form part of the discourse of Jesus, or merely a commentary of his own. If the former they are clearly unwarrantable; their point of view is that of a period when the teaching of Christ had been known and rejected, and they could not have been uttered with any justice or appropriateness at the very commencement of his ministry. Ch. xi. 8. "His disciples say unto him, Master, the Jews of late sought to stone thee: and goest thou thither again?" The Jews is an expression which would be natural to Ephesians or other foreigners when speaking of the inhabitants of Palestine, but could not have been used by Jews speaking of their own Modern criticism has detected several slight errors and inaccuracies in the fourth gospel, such as Sychar for Sichem, Siloam erroneously interpreted sent, the killing of the passover represented as occurring on the wrong day, &c., &c., from which it has been argued that the writer could not have been a native of Palestine, and by consequence not the Apostle John. We think Bretschneider has made far too much of these trifles, while Hug's attempts to evade or neutralize them are, in our view, more ingenious and subtle than fair or creditable. countrymen. They would have said, the People, or, the Pharisees. The same observation applies to xiii. 33, and also probably to xviii. 36. Ch. xvii. 3. "And this is life eternal, that they might know Thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent." This would be a natural expression for the evangelist, but not for his Master. We have no instance of Jesus speaking thus of himself in the third person, especially in an address to God. As before observed, great doubt hangs over the whole story of the testimony borne by the Baptist to Jesus at his baptism. In the fourth evangelist, this testimony is represented as most emphatic, public, and repeated-so that it could have left no doubt in the minds of any of his followers, either as to the grandeur of the mission of Jesus, or as to his own subordinate character and position (i. 29-36; iii. 26-36). Yet we find, from Acts xviii. 25, and again xix. 3, circles of John the Baptist's disciples, who appear never even to have heard of Jesus a statement which we think is justly held irreconcilable with the statements above referred to in the fourth gospel. The question of miracles will be considered in a future chapter; but there is one miracle, peculiar to this gospel, of so singular and apocryphal a character as to call for notice here. The turning of water into wine at the marriage feast in Cana of Galilee has long formed the opprobrium and perplexity of theologians, and must continue to do so as long as they persist in regarding it as an accurate historical relation. None of the numberless attempts to give anything like a probable explanation of the narrative has been attended with the least success. They are for the most part melancholy specimens of ingenuity misapplied, and plain honesty perverted by an originally false assumption. No portion of the gospel history, scarcely any portion of Old Testament, or even of apocryphal, narratives, bears such unmistakeable marks of fiction. It is a story which, if found in any other volume, would at once have been dismissed as a clumsy and manifest invention. In the first place, it is a miracle wrought to supply more wine to men who had already drunk much—a deed which has no suitability to the character of Jesus, and no analogy to any other of his miracles. Secondly, though it was, as we are told, the first of his miracles, his mother is represented as expecting him to work a miracle, and to commence his public career with so unfit and improbable a one. Thirdly, Jesus is said to have spoken harshly' to his mother, asking her what they had in common, and telling her that "his hour (for working miracles) was not yet come," when he knew that it was come. Fourthly, in spite of this rebuff, Mary is represented as still expecting a miracle, and this particular one, and as making preparation for it: "She saith to the servants, Whatsoever he saith unto you, do it ;" and accordingly Jesus immediately began to give orders to them. Fifthly, the superior quality of the wine, and the enormous quantity produced (135 gallons, or, in our language, above 43 dozen2) are obviously fabulous. And those who are familiar with the apocryphal gospels will have no difficulty in recognising the close consanguinity between the whole narrative and the stories of miracles with which they abound. It is perfectly hopeless, as well as mischievous, to endeavour to retain it as a portion of authentic history. All attempts at explanation have failed to remove this character from the expression : γύναι τί ἐμοὶ καὶ σοί. 2 See the calculation in Hennell, and in Strauss, ii. 432. The μsgnons is supposed to correspond to the Hebrew bath, which was equal to 1 Roman amphora, or 8.7 gallons; the whole quantity would therefore be from 104 to 156 gallons. CHAPTER XI. RESULTS OF THE FOREGOING CRITICISM. THE Conclusion at which we have arrived in the foregoing chapters is of vital moment, and deserves to be fully developed. When duly wrought out it will be found the means of extricating Religion from Orthodoxy-of rescuing Christianity from Calvinism. We have seen that the Gospels, while they give a fair and faithful outline of Christ's character and teachingthe Synoptical gospels at least-fill up that outline with much that is not authentic ;-that many of the statements therein related are not historical, but mystical or legendary ;-and that much of the language ascribed to Jesus was never uttered by him, but originated either with the Evangelists themselves, or more frequently in the traditional stores from which they drew their materials. We cannot, indeed, say in all cases, nor even in most cases, with certainty-in many we cannot even pronounce with any very strong probability—that such and such particular expressions or discourses are, or are not, the genuine utterances of Christ. With respect to some, we can say with confidence, that they are not from him; with respect to others, we can say with almost equal confidence, that they are his actual words;-but with regard to the majority of passages, this certainty is not attainable. But as we know that much did not proceed from Jesus-that much is unhistorical and ungenuine we are entitled to conclude-we are even forced, by the very instinct of our reasoning faculty, to conclude that the unhistorical and ungenuine passages are those in which Jesus is represented as speaking and acting in a manner unconformable to his character as otherwise delineated, irreconcilable with the tenour of his teaching as elsewhere described, and at variance with those grand philosophic and spiritual truths which have commanded the assent of all disciplined and comprehensive minds, and which could not have escaped an intellect so just, wide, penetrating, and profound, as that of our great Teacher. Most reflecting minds rise from a perusal of the gospel history with a clear, broad, vivid conception of the character and mission of Christ, notwithstanding the many passages at which they have stumbled, and which they have felt-perhaps with needless alarm and self-reproach-to be incongruous and unharmonizing with the great whole. The question naturally arises, Did these incongruities and inconsistencies really exist in Christ himself? Or are they the result of the imperfect and unhistorical condition in which his biography has been transmitted to us? The answer, it seems to us, ought to be this:We cannot prove, it is true, that some of these unsuitabilities did not exist in Christ himself, but we have shown that many of them belong to the history, not to the subject of the history, and it is only fair, therefore, in the absence of contrary evidence, to conclude that the others also are due to the same origin. : Now, the peculiar, startling, perplexing, revolting, and contradictory doctrines of modern orthodoxy-so far as they have originated from or are justified by the Gospels at all-have originated from, or are justified by, not the general tenour of Christ's character and preaching, but those single, unharmonizing, discrepant texts of which we have been speaking. Doctrines, which unsophisticated men feel to be horrible and monstrous, and which those who hold them most devotedly, secretly admit to be fearful and perplexing, are founded on particular passages which contradict the generality of Christ's teaching, but which, being attributed to him by the evangelists, have been regarded as endowed with an authority which it would be profane and dangerous to resist. In showing, therefore, that several of these passages did not emanate from Christ, and that in all probability none of them did, we conceive that we shall have rendered a vast service to the cause of true religion, and to those numerous individuals in whose tortured minds |