SECTION VIII.

Of two very actively employed Sabbaths in the Life of Christ, which are of importance in settling the Harmony of the Gospels.

I

Two very actively employed days in the Life of Christ, and both of them sabbath days, deserve particular notice, because they have occasioned the greatest difficulty in arranging the Gospel history according to the order of time. If we attend to the express determinations of time, which have been given by one or more of the Evangelists, and their accounts are perfectly accurate, we must conclude that the several facts arranged N°. 25-30, happened in one day: as also those, which are arranged under N°. 33-37. To assist the memory, will give names to those days, and call the one The day of the sermon on the mount', and the other The day of the sermon in parables. The events, which took place on these two days have been separated, and recorded some in one place, some in another: an arrangement, which, though we cannot call it erroneous, as the Evangelists did not engage to write a journal, has influence on our determination of the period of some other events. It is however not impossible, that the actions of these two days, which are very similar to each other, have been confounded, that what belongs to the one has been referred to the other, and consequently that there is not only an apparent, but even a real contradiction in point of time, between St. Matthew and the other Evangelists.

I will first examine the day of the sermon on the Mount, N°. 25-30. Its history is briefly as follows. On the eve of a sabbath day, when the sabbath was just commenced, Jesus goes into a synagogue at Capernaum, delivers a discourse of the same import with that on the Mount', and cures a demoniac: he then departs out of the city, and goes up into a mountain,

where he passes the whole night in prayer: on the following morning he chooses his Apostles, and delivers a discourse called the sermon on the Mount, in which be teaches them the morality which they were to follow, a morality directly opposite to that of the Pharisees: he then enters again into Capernaum, cures a leper, the servant of a centurion, the mother-in-law of St. Peter, and when the sun was set, and the sabbath therefore ended, several other sick persons which were brought to him, and then leaves Capernaum. The reasons, why I believe that all these events happened in the same day, are the following.

1. The cure of the demoniac, Mark i. 21-28. Luke iv. 31-37. and of St. Peter's mother-in-law, happened on the same day, as appears from Mark i. 29. Luke

iv. 38.

2. The election of the twelve Apostles took place on the morning of that day, on which the sermon on the mount was delivered. See Luke vi. 12-17.

3. That the sermon on the mount recorded by St. Luke is no other than that recorded by St. Matthew, appears from the events which immediately follow it. Both Evangelists relate that Jesus, after the sermon was ended, went into Capernaum, and healed the servant of a centurion, a cure attended with such remarkable circumstances, that I can hardly suppose it to have happened twice, and that too in the same city.

4. The cure of the leper, according to St. Matthew's account, must have happened between the sermon on the Mount and the cure of the centurion's servant, when Jesus was just returned into Capernaum. St. Mark and St. Luke relate this fact on a totally different occasion, because they were unacquainted with the time, and St. Luke even with the place', in which it happened. The whole account is too circumstantial to admit the supposition, that the same cure, with all its concomitant circumstances, took place more than once.

Εγένετο εν τῷ είναι αυτον εν μια των πολεων. Ch. v. 12.

5. It is evident from St. Matthew's relation, that the cure of St. Peter's mother-in-law happened on the same day, as the two just mentioned miracles *.

6. The circumstance mentioned by all three Evangelists, that several sick persons were brought in the evening, and after sun-set, to the house where Jesus was, is a proof that the day in question was a sabbath day. For the Jews, on account of their over-strict observance of the sabbath, would not permit any cure to be exercised on that day but as soon as the sun was set, the sabbath was ended, and then they could bring their sick without scruple to the house where Jesus was, and likewise St. Peter's mother in law could prepare for him a repast.

7. That Jesus immediately afterwards left Caper

naum, is evident from the accounts of all the per

Evangelists.

The several events, which happened on this day, St. Luke, as appears from the preceding Table, has recorded in different places, because he was unacquainted with the time, in which they really happened. We cannot therefore say that St. Luke was mistaken, for he has left the time undetermined; yet his separation of the several facts, which happened on the same day, is attended with this consequence, that he has related one and the same fact, the departure of Christ from Capernaum, on two different occasions, namely ch. iv. 42. after the cure of the sick persons, who were brought to him at the close of the sabbath, and again ch. vii. 1 1. after the cure of the centurion's servant.

But there is one circumstance, in which the three Evangelists are so at variance, that they are hardly to be reconciled with each other. Whoever reads the account given by St. Matthew, ch. viii. 18-27. must conclude that Jesus, on quitting Capernaum, immediately crossed the sea, where he calmed the tempest. It is true that ver. 18. contains no express determination of time: yet every reader will naturally suppose, that it is connected with the preceding verses, and that what

is related v, 18-27. immediately followed that which is recorded v. 16, 17. The two other Evangelists, on the contrary, relate that Jesus, on quitting Capernaum, went, not to the sea side, but into the towns and villages of Galilee: and according to St. Luke, ch. vii, 11. he entered on the following day into Nain, where he restored a young man to life, I own that the distance between the two cities' makes this last account rather improbable: and the words εv Ty εEns, on which the supposition that Christ's entry into Nain was on the very next day, are at least dubious, for many manuscripts have, εv TM Enc, that is, not on the day following, but on a time following. Before however I examine this difficulty, I must proceed to the other actively employed sabbath.

This is the day of the sermon in parables, a day replete with discourses and events, and on which, as on the day of the sermon on the Mount, Christ at last withdraws himself from the pressure of the multitude, The two first numbers, N°. 33, 34, follow each other in all three Evangelists: they fall likewise on a sabbath, and on the same sabbath, for they cannot possibly be separated. The third number, No. 35, St. Matthew unites by the word TOTE ch. xii, 22. with the preceding N°. 34.; but the two other Evangelists, who were not eye-witnesses, separate it, and introduce it in another part, though without any determination of time, This however is the only portion of the history in question, which could be separated from the rest, and referred to the next day, in which case N°. 33-37. would contain the history of two days.

To return to N°. 35. On the same day, on which Jesus had cast out a devil, and the thronging of the multitude had allowed him not sufficient time to eat, a Pharisee invites him to dinner, But if Jesus was so engaged on this day, that he had not had time to eat, we might almost conclude, that he was likewise busily employed the evening before, a circumstance favourable

• Mark iii. 20.

'Luke xi. 37.

to the opinion, that N°. 34, 35, 36, hang together. Apisnon I take in the literal sense of the word, and understand it of dinner (at ten in the morning), because so many events afterwards happened on this very day. For not only the long discourse recorded by St. Luke, ch. xi. xii., and the assembling of the multitude before the house ch. xii. 1., but likewise the sermon in parables 10 N°. 37. certainly took place on the same day, that Jesus had cast out the devil, and had been sought by his mother, for Matth. xiii. 1. begins with Ev EKELVÝ Ty nuɛpa. St. Mark likewise unites these events, though he has not so expressly determined the day.

12

The history of the day of the sermon in parables is therefore the following. On Friday afternoon, when, according to the tenets of the Jews, the sabbath commences, that is, as St. Luke expresses it, σa66ary SEUTEροπρωτῳ, 11, Jesus goes with his disciples from the country into the city of Capernaum: and the disciples being hungry on the way, they pluck out ears of corn, which is censured by the Pharisees, but justified by Jesus. When he was arrived at Capernaum, and the sabbath day itself had actually commenced, or as St. Luke expresses it, ch. vi. 6. ev eтepy σabCare" in opposition to σαββατῳ δευτεροπρωτῳ, he entered into the synagogue, where there was a man, whose right hand was withered. Here the scribes and Pharisees endeavoured to ensnare him, by proposing to him the question, whether it was lawful to perform cures on the sabbeth day: intending, if he answered in the negative, to accuse him of being an impostor and unable to perform miracles without pre-concerted measures with the sick, and, if he answered in the affirmative, to charge him with a violation of the sabbath. Jesus in a very extraordinary manner evaded their artifices, and restored the sick man without any one's being able to accuse him of a breach of the sabbath. A dumb and blind demoniac is then brought to him, probably on the following morning, the sabbath still continuing; he cures the demoniac and is accused by some of the Pharisees of driving out devils by the