most instances, one seems to supply what the other had omitted.* To arrange and harmonise these several accounts, is a work of some labour, but by one of those singular coincidences which sometimes occur, three competent and learned men were engaged at the same time in studying the account of the resurrection. These were, Pilkington, a country clergyman, whose work is a monument of patient investigation; Doddridge, the well-known author of the Family Expositor; and West, a layman, whose treatise on the resurrection will always be valued by those who would understand the evidences of their religion. These three writers, unknown to each other, all came to similar conclusions as to there being two companies of women. The only variation with respect to the two parties of women is, that Doddridge supposed them to have left the city by different ways, and therefore that they did not meet till they arrived at the tomb.

An abstract of Mr. West's plan was compiled by Dr. Doddridge, and may be seen in the postscript to the first part of the Family Expositor. It chiefly differs from that of Doddridge in these two circumstances: that it supposes the women to have made two different visits to the sepulchre, and in consequence of that, to have made two reports; whereas, Doddridge unites them (though he does not suppose they all came together, but that they met there); and that it also makes Peter to have run to it twice, of which there can be no reasonable doubt, though Doddridge, before he perused West's plan, had incorporated Luke's account with that of John, relating to his running thither with John, on Mary Magdalene's first report.

* See vol. i. pp. 48–54.

Referring to these harmonies for particulars, we may observe, that the chief difficulties which occur in the evangelical history of the Lord Jesus, from His death to His ascension, are found in the morning of His resurrection. The events related of it fell within a short space of time, and were nearly coincident, or quickly successive to each other. They are told briefly, and but in part, by the evangelists, with few notes of time or order relative one to another. It cannot therefore excite surprise, that learned men have judged variously of their connection, and have pursued different methods of reducing them into one narrative; but they have all succeeded so far as to shew, by a very probable arrangement, that the gospels are wholly reconcileable with each other.

THE GOSPEL OF MARK.

CHAPTER II.

"And when they could not come nigh unto him for the press, they uncovered the roof where he was: and when they had broken it up, they let down the bed wherein the sick of the palsy lay."-Ver. 4.

THIS passage has furnished merriment to deistical writers, some of whom have, with more wit than wisdom, attempted to depict the plight in which the breaking up of a roof, consisting of the usual materials of tile and plaster, would place the persons who were immediately under it, as it is supposed was the case with our Saviour and His disciples, etc. There is more than one way out of this supposed difficulty. Lightfoot, Whitby, Macknight, and others, suppose that the paralytic was brought on the roof, which was flat, by stairs from without the house and that the flat trap-door on the roof was taken forcibly up with its frame, and perhaps some tiling and plaster of the roof, also, the sick man being then let down into the upper chamber, where Jesus was teaching. Le Clerc conjectures, that the tiling of a covered vestibule, in which Jesus taught, might have been taken off. The late editor of Calmet, taking hold of what Dr. Shaw says of the houses throughout the East, namely, that they are low, consisting generally of a ground floor, only, or of one upper storey, and a flat roof, the roof being

covered with a strong coat of plaster, and built round a paved court, into which the entrance from the street is through a gateway, or passage room, presumes that our Saviour was preaching in a house of this description. Attending only to the

structure of such a house, he observes, will remove all difficulties supposed to exist in the narrative. It has been urged, for example, that " as the uncovering or breaking up of a roof, or the letting a person down through it (Luke v. 19), supposes the breaking up of tiles, spars, rafters, etc., so it was well (as the objector goes on in his ludicrous manner) if Jesus and his disciples escaped with only a broken pate, by the falling of the tiles." That nothing of this kind happened, Mr. Taylor shows by a careful examination of the terms employed by the Evangelist, and by a reference to the Syriac and Parsee versions, which he proves to justify this application: When they could not come at Jesus for the press, they drew back the veil where he was, or they laid open that part of it, especially, which was spread over the place where he was sitting, and having removed whatever should keep it extended, they let down the bed wherein the sick of the palsy lay." The parallel place in Luke, which we translate, "they let him down through the tiling, but which should be translated, "they let him down OVER, ALONG THE SIDE, OR BY THE WAY OF the roof," just as we may suppose Mark Anthony to have been, as mentioned by Tully in his second oration against Anthony, where he says, "How often did Curio's father thrust you out of his house? How often did he place sentinels to prevent you crossing his threshold? Yet you, favoured by night, prompted by lust, and compelled by hire, were let

down through the roof." So also, as Lightfoot observes, out of the Talmud, "when Rabh Honna was dead, and his bier could not be carried out through the door, which was too straight and narrow, they thought good to let it down by THE way of, or ovER, the roof," viz., by taking it upon the terrace, and letting it down by the wall that way into the street. Bloomfield objects as Parkhurst had previously done, that stegé is not used to denote a veil as the proposed reading of the passage assumes. The sacred writers, he says, always employ another word for that. Neither can apestegasan signify to withdraw, nor exorusso, to throw back, as they are supposed to do, according to this hypothesis. He therefore states that he would rather encounter

any difficulties to be found in the common interpre

tation than admit such a violent method of removing them. This is honest and ingenuous, but the case does not seem quite so desperate as to induce us to abandon it in despair. If stegé may not be taken to denote a veil, properly so called, it may be taken to denote a covering in general, or a shade, as it was understood by the Syriac translator, and is, therefore, as applicable to the covering of Dr. Shaw as to one of any other description. As to the second word, apestegasan, the sense of uncovering will answer the purpose as well as that of throwing back; and we know not if we should be much more incorrect in saying, 'they uncovered the covering," than our translators have been in saying, "they uncovered [unroofed] the roof." The idea is that of removing the covering, though it is difficult to mark in a translation the precise relation of the words in the original.

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On the word exoruzantes, the ingenious editor of