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pencils, yet neither for their "Madonna and Child," nor for their "Man of Sorrows," have they found guidance in the pages of the Evangelists. Neither Matthew, nor Mark, nor John, have furnished Guido or the Caraccis or Murillo with a hint. And were the Romish tradition of Luke's profession (that he was painter, no less than physician) true, even Luke forms no exception. They have left a moral, but not a physical, portrait on their pages. The height of that body which was stretched upon the accursed tree for us; the colour of those eyes which looked on Peter, and from which there flowed tears of holy sorrow, as he stood at Lazarus's grave and as he gazed on the doomed Jerusalem; the hue of that hair which the crown of thorns encircled; the bulk of that sacred body which walked Gennesaret's waters;-of these not a glimpse, not a word. The details of his infancy and boyhood are untold. At twelve, he is subject to his parents. At thirty, he is pub licly consecrated to his ministry. What of the eighteen years of interval? Where and how spent? Did those sacred hands toil at the business of his reputed sire? "One of the most striking features in the historical part of the New Testament (to which I would confine the appli cation of the present argument), is the omission of so much. matter, which would have gratified every reader's curiosity, and which every writer, one would think, would have been anxious to record. In the biography of the blessed Jesus, for example, there is none of that minute description of his person, dress, private habits, and the like, which we should fully expect to find, when we recollect especially that two of his biographers were his own familiar friends. None but the most scanty notice is found of that large portion of his life, which intervened from his circumcision to his temptation; pregnant with interest, as any occur rence of that period must have proved, both to them

and to all generations of Christians. This is very extraordinary, very unnatural. Look at the pretended gospels which have been excluded from our canon, and the introduction of these topics is precisely what the uninspired writer has made part of his history; because he felt that it was natural. It matters not whether the pseudo-evangelist received these facts from tradition, or himself invented them; he was sure that they would give a natural and genuine air to his story, and so he made use of them. Why was this not done by Matthew, by Mark, by Luke, and by John? Why should all omit to do it?

"In order to perceive that some counter-human influence must have been exerted in the authorship of these gospels, it is not necessary that we should comprehend the wisdom. of the omissions; the fact is at variance with the established laws of man's nature, and of itself indicates a supernatural interference. That it was however a wise provision, and worthy of that interference, 18, I think, as evident to us now, as it must have been beyond human foresight at the time it was done. Let us but reflect on the mischievous and fatal results which have followed, whenever the Christian's faith and piety have been diverted from the essential view of his Redeemer, to fabulous relics of the cross on which he died, the handkerchief which wiped his brow, and other personal memorials of him, which, if real and genuine, would, like the brazen serpent of the Israelites, only have been more likely to retain their hold on the superstitious veneration, the distorted piety, of successive generations. Experience shows that it would have been so. If pretended relics, if fabled accounts, were capable of seducing for ages the devotion of all Christendom from the Lord, to objects which became to them idols; what would have been the result, had all these been genuine and true? How should we have ever recovered from the spell with which inherited habits and

associations would have been investing no golden calf of man's own invention, but objects, that, like the brazen serpent, had been sanctified by association with miracle and divine help, and treasured up within the very ark of our covenant?"'*

And the risen Christ-was there any change in the nature of His body? Is the dictum of Bishop Horsley true, "Whatever was natural to Him before, seems now miraculous; what was before miraculous is now natural."+ And how-where-were the days between his resurrection and ascension spent? for we have but brief and scanty records On much of the detail of the earthly life of God manifest in the flesh "the oracles of God" are dumbScripture is silent.

8. A recent event in the Church of Rome has invested another point on which this silence was noticeable with weighty import. The Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary is now added to the list of her unscriptural and schismatical dogmas. The argument against this new article of faith, as derived from the silence of Scripture, is so well put by Dr. Wordsworth, that I give it you in his own words: "With reference to the Blessed Virgin Mary herself, every atten tive reader of Seripture will have observed that the Holy Spirit, who is the author of Scripture, and through whom alone, as the Author of Sanctity, the Virgin Mary, if free from original sin, must have been exempted from it, and whose voice would have been decisive on this subject, and who alone, with the Father and the Son, could be cognizant of the fact of her exemption, has (studiously, it would

Hinds on Inspiration and the Authority of Scripture, pp. 75-77.

+ Horsley's Sermons.-Third Sermon of Four Discourses on the Nature of the Evidence by which the Fact of our Lord's Resurrection is established. Edit. 1829. Vol. ii. p. 861.

seem) preserved a profound silence concerning the birth. and earlier years of the Blessed Virgin. It would appear that God has dealt with the Virgin Mary as He did with the body of Moses; and for the same reason. She is sparingly mentioned in the Gospel: and, as if by prophetic foresight and protest, not without terms of gentle rebuke.

"To these observations it may be added, that the Blessed Virgin is never once mentioned in the Epistles of St. John, to whose special care she was commended by Christ, and who was assuredly faithful and zealous in guarding her character with filial reverence, and was inspired by the Holy Ghost; and who, with his brother apostles and evangelists, also inspired, and guided by the Spirit into all truth, would not have suffered us to remain in ignorance of anything concerning the true honour of the Blessed Virgin, which it was necessary for us to know. But, it is observable, the Blessed Virgin is rever once mentioned by any of the apostles in the epistles of the New Testament. This silence of Scripture is inspired. May we not fairly conclude from it that the Holy Spirit foresaw the evil purposes to which her blessed name would be perverted, and by a stern silence has rebuked those who abuse that holy name, and pretend to be wise above what is written, and to know more than the Holy Spirit concerning the things of the Spirit, and so are guilty of a sin against the Holy Ghost?"*

"In the description of the Blessed Virgin," writes Stephen Charnock, "there is nothing of her holiness mentioned, which is with much diligence recorded of Elizabeth, 'righteous, walking in all the commands of God blameless;' probably to prevent the superstition which God foresaw

Occasional Sermon, xii. pp. 98, 100.

would arise in the world." "The Scripture," he says, "is written in such a manner as to obviate errors foreseen by God to enter into the church."* On this point, then, "the oracles of God" are dumb-Scripture is silent.

9. To instance miscellaneously another class of subjects:Some of the great nations of antiquity are mentioned in the Scripture histories, in reference to whose origin and early annals fuller details would have been most welcome to the student of antiquities, to the classic reader, and the bookworm. Thus, as is observed by Dr. Angus, in his very valuable "Bible Handbook," "We read of Assyria in a single passage of the book of Genesis, but not again. for fifteen hundred years, till the time of Menahem: and of Egypt we have no mention, between the days of Moses and those of Solomon. The early history of both nations is exceedingly obscure, perhaps impenetrably so. But the knowledge is essential neither to our salvation nor to the history of the church, and it is not revealed."+ And the profound author of "The Restoration of Belief," has noted that in fourteen of the books of the New Testament, viz., in those epistles in which an apostle is writing "to his intimates, his colleagues, and to those whose belief was a tranquil assurance, like his own-not a syllable of the supernatural meets the eye," other than that which is "implicitly" and "necessarily conveyed in the primary article of the Christian profession-viz. the Resurrection of Christ." "These teachers," then, he well argues, were not "men of heated minds whose element was the world of wonders, and who would always be labouring to propagate the same feeling, and to keep alive a species of excitement

• Charnock's Works, Third Edition, folio 1699. Discourse on the Wisdom of God, pp. 221, 2.

+ Page 119. See also page 120 for other useful remarks. I wish this very admirable volume was in the hands of every young man.

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