THE GOSPEL OF LUKE. CHAPTER I. "And the angel answered and said unto her, The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee; therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God."-Ver. 35. UNLESS holy, here, were used in a different sense than in the rest of the New Testament, says Irving,* where it is continually applied to the regenerate, "the saints," the "holy ones," unless a new import altogether were given to it, which hath had no reality in the world since Adam fell, it cannot be otherwise understood than as sanctified by the Holy Ghost. And why it should be called the "thing," he adds, and not the person, is because the thing, and not the person, was sanctified. He, the eternal Godhead, needed no sanctification; but the substance He took of the virgin did, and received it in the act of his being generated man ; and what sanctification it then received from Him, He continued to give it—to maintain—all his life long. That substance was a thing made holy from its conception, and kept holy by the same power which made it so; not holy in itself, but made holy; not made holy by one act and no more, but kept holy "Human Nature of Christ," p. 136. through the incidents, and trials, and endurances of a whole life. It is plain that "that holy thing" which, the angel said, "shall be called the Son of God," was the human nature of Christ, for it was that which was to be conceived and born of the virgin. CHAPTER II. "That all the world shall be taxed."-Ver. 1. ; THIS phrase cannot mean the whole world, as in the common translation for the Romans had not the dominion of the whole world. What is meant is that a general CENSUS of the inhabitants and their effects had been made in the reign of Augustus, through all the Roman dominions; but as there is no general census mentioned in any historian as having taken place at this time, the meaning must be further restrained, and applied to the land of Judea. This signification it certainly has in chap. xxi. 26; and Luke used the word in this sense in conformity to the Septuagint, who have applied it in precisely the same way (Isa. xiii. 11; xiv. 26; xxiv. 1). It is probable, that the reason why this enrolment, or census, is said to have been throughout the whole Jewish nation, was to distinguish it from that partial one made ten years after, mentioned Acts v. 37, which does not appear to have extended beyond the estates of Archelaus, and which gave birth to the insurrection excited by Judas of Galilee.† *See Lardner, Works, vol. i., p. 241, etc. 8vo. † See Josephus, Antiquities, Bk. xx. c. 3, and Dr. A. Clarke, in loco. XI. SCRIPTURE DIFFICULTIES EXAMINED. LUKE-COLOSSIANS. BY WILLIAM CARPENTER, AUTHOR OF A POPULAR INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF THE SCRIPTURES; Many and painful are the researches, usually necessary to be made for settling these difficulties. Pertness and ignorance may ask a question in three lines, which it will cost learning and ingenuity thirty pages to answer. When this is done, the same question shall be triumphantly asked again the next year, as if nothing had ever been written on the subject. Hence the odds must ever be against us; and we must be content with those for our friends who have honesty and erudition, candour and patience, to study both sides of the question.-BISHOP HORNE. LONDON: HEYWOOD & CO., 335, STRAND, W.C., AND S. W. PARTRIDGE & CO., 9, PATERNOSTER ROW, E.C. MDCCCLXVIII. |