king yet the very next day, when Christ said to these same people, "This is that bread which came down from heaven," they murmured at him, doubtless considering him to lay claim to divinity; for he replies, " Doth this offend you? what and if ye shall see the Son of Man ascend up where he was before?" Expressions, at which such serious offence was taken, that "from that time many of his disciples went back, and walked with him no more." So that it is not in these days only that men forsake Christ from a reluctance to acknowledge (as he demands of them) his godhead. And again-when Jesus cured the impotent man on the Sabbath day, and in defending himself for having so done, said, “My Father worketh hitherto, and I work," we are told, "therefore the Jews sought the more to kill him, because he not only had broken the Sabbath, but said also that God was his Father, making himself equal with God." (John, v. 18.) So, on another occasion, when Jesus had been speaking with much severity in the temple, we find him unmolested, till he adds, "Verily, verily, I say unto you, before Abraham was, I am." (John, viii. 58.) But no sooner had he so said, than "they took up stones to cast at him." In like manner, (to

come to the last scene of his mortal life,) when he entered Jerusalem he had the people in his favor; for the chief priests and scribes "feared them :" yet, very shortly after, the tide was so turned against him, that the same people asked Barabbas rather than Jesus. And why? As Messiah they were anxious to receive him, which was the character in which he had entered Jerusalem-but they rejected him as the "Son of God," which was the character in which he stood before them at his trial facts which, taken in a doctrinal view, are of no small value, proving, as they do, that the Jews believed Christ to lay claim to divinity, however they might dispute or deny the right. It is consistent, therefore, with the whole tenor of the Gospel history, that the enemies of Christ, to gain their end with the Jews, should have actually accused him of blasphemy, as they are represented to have done, and should have succeeded. Nor is it less consistent with that history, that they should have actually waved the charge of blasphemy, when they brought him before a Roman magistrate, and substituted that of sedition in its stead; for the Roman governors, it is well known, were very indifferent about religious disputes-they had the tolera

tion of men who had no creed of their own. Gallio, we hear in after-times, "cared for none of these things ;" and, in the same spirit, Lysias writes to Felix about Paul, that “he perceived him to be accused of questions concerning their law, but to have nothing laid to his charge worthy of death or of bonds." (Acts, xxiii. 29.)

It may be remarked, that this is not so much a casual coincidence between parallel passages of several Evangelists, as an instance of singular, but undesigned harmony, amongst the various component parts of one piece of history which they all record; the proceedings before two very different tribunals being represented in a manner the most agreeable to the known prejudices of all the parties. concerned.

XII.

MATT. XXVI. 71.-" And when he was gone out into the Porch (τov лvivα), another maid saw him, and said unto them, This man was also with Jesus of Nazareth."

How came it to pass that Peter, a stranger, who had entered the house in the night, and

under circumstances of some tumult and disorder, was thus singled out by the maid in the Porch?

Let us turn to St. John, (ch. xviii. v. 16,) and we shall find, that, after Jesus had entered, "Peter stood at the door without, till that other disciple went out which was known unto the high-priest, and spake unto her that kept the door, and brought in Peter." Thus was the attention of that girl directed to Peter, (a fact of which St. Matthew gives no hint whatever,) and thus we see how it happened that he was recognized in the Porch. Here is a minute indication of veracity in St. Matthew, which would have been lost upon us, had not the Gospel of St. John come down to our times;—and how many similar indications may be hid, from a want of other cotemporary histories with which to make a comparison, it is impossible to conjecture.

XIII.

My next instance of coincidence without design is taken from the account of certain circumstances attending the feeding of the five thousand. And here again, be it remarked,

an indication of veracity is found, as formerly, where the subject of his narrative is a miracle.

In the sixth chapter of St. Mark, we are told, that Jesus said to his disciples, "Come ye yourselves apart into a desert place, (it was there where the miracle was wrought,) and rest awhile; for there were many," adds the Evangelist, by way of accounting for this temporary seclusion, "coming and going, and they had no leisure so much as to eat." How it happened that so many were coming and going through Capernaum at that time, above all others, this Evangelist does not give us the slightest hint; neither how it came to pass, that, by retiring for a while, Jesus and his disciples would escape the inconvenience. Turn we then to the parallel passage in St. John, and there we shall find the matter explained at once, though certainly this explanation could never have been given with a reference to the very casual expression of St. Mark. In St. John we do not meet with one word about Jesus retiring for a while into the desert, for the purpose of being apart, or that he would have been put to any inconvenience by staying at Capernaum; but we are told, (what