to the prophetic language of their ancient Scriptures, we can not help suspecting everything that is reported as having been done or said "that the scripture might be fulfilled." It is possible, to say the least, that in all these cases, which are not few, the wish fathered the thought; the presumption that Jesus must have fulfilled the prophecies led to the conviction that he did fulfil them, and created a narrative in accordance with such belief. Thus, when we read in chapter xii., verses 16 to 21, that Jesus charged his followers not to make him known, "that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Esaias the Prophet, saying, He shall not strive nor cry, neither shall any man hear his voice in the streets, we can not but think that a very dull mind may have bungled in the attempt, either to attach prophecy to history, or to fit history to prophecy; and we can not be sure that Christ gave any such direction.

Again, words may justly be set down as unhistorical, which refer in detail to events that transpired years after the death of the supposed speaker. The faculty of looking into the future does not enter into the historian's account. To assume that Jesus was a prophet, would be setting historical laws aside, and would be exalting dogmatic opinion as the judge in a simple matter of fact. The Evangelist puts language into the mouth of Christ which upon this rule it is difficult to believe he uttered. We read that he predicted his own death and resurrection. "As Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale's belly, so shall the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth."(xii. 40.) "From that time forth began Jesus to show unto his disciples how that he must go unto Jerusalem, and suffer many things of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised again the third day."-(xvi. 21.) Similar predictions occur in chapters xvii. 22, xx. 17, xxvi. 2-32. That the disciples should have misunderstood such plain declarations as these, and should have lived on apparently oblivious of them; that the death of their master should have taken them so completely by surprise; that the report of his resurrection should have been received by them so incredulously, would countenance the suspicion, at least, that Jesus did not make the predictions in question. But, apart from such a consideration, the presumption against a literal prophecy is very strong. Unless there is distinct and powerful evidence that the words were indeed spoken before

the event occurred evidence which marks the points of time beyond dispute (and no such evidence is before us in the present instance) it is reasonable to take for granted that speeches of this kind were attributed to Jesus by those who lived after his death, when the belief in his resurrection had come to prevail extensively.

Other language put into the mouth of Jesus alludes so directly, and even circumstantially, to events which took place after his death, and especially to the destruction of Jerusalem by the Roman armies, that it is hard to believe it ever proceeded from his lips. We have an instance in chapter xxiii. 33-36. The particuular mention of Zacharias, the son of Baruch, who was massacred in the temple, A. D. 68, just before the final seige of Jerusalem, (see Josephus, War, iv. ch. v.,) could, it is hardly too much to have been made by none save a person well acquainted with the details of that bloody time when butcheries and desecrations were of daily occurrence. For arguments showing the identity of the Zacharias mentioned by Matthew with the Zacharias whose story is told by Josephus, see Hennell, Origin of Christianity, page 81.

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Chapter xxiv. contains a vivid description of the tumults and commotions that agitated Judea for several years preceding the downfall of the nation, foreboding the ruin of the State, and announcing to the Christians the end of the world. The description is not vague and shadowy, such as a prescient mind quickened by deep feelings might draw upon the curtain of futurity; it is close, clear, detailed, like the copying of a keen observer. "There shall not be left one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down." How incredible, how unimaginable to one who had not stood upon the ruins of the once majestic temple! "Many shall come in my name, saying, I am Christ!" There shall arise false Christs and false prophets, and shall show great signs and wonders." Is it credible that Jesus had in view the miraculous pretensions and prophetic claims, the popular sway and the miserable fate of the magician " Theudas, who was slain by the Roman procurator Fadus, in the year 46; or of the wretched enthusiasts whom Felix slaughtered; or of the deluded fanatics whom Festus destroyed with an army? Still harder is it to believe that Jesus read at the distance of a hundred years the history of Barkochbar, the famous Jewish insurgent, in the reign of Hadrian, A. D. 132, to whom the description in Matthew most

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fitly applies. Barkochbar was a man who gave himself out as the Messiah, come at last to deliver the nation from the Roman tyranny. He claimed to possess prophetic and miraculous powers, and succeeded in "deceiving the very elect;" for Akiba, one of the most distinguished of the rabbing, believed in him, and lent all his influence to his cause. Vast multitudes followed the pretender; in Palestine the uprising was so violent and general, that the Roman armies only after a long and desperate struggle succeeded in repressing it. "The spirit of disturbance," says Dio Cassius, was diffused all over the Roman Empire, wherever there were Jews, declaring itself in secret conspiracy or open insurrection; and the support which Barkochbar received alone proves how deeply the nation was implicated in his undertaking. Almost the whole world was set in commotion by this outbreak among the Jews." Barkochbar was a furious persecutor of the Christians, whom he would have persuaded to abandon their faith, and to join his standard. Most of them refused such, when they fell into his hands, were put to death most cruelly; but some, we are told, forsook Christ, and went after him. On the suppression of Barkochbar's revolt, the Emperor Hadrian entirely excluded all native Jews, and the Christians among the rest, not only from the city of Jerusalem, but from all its surrounding territory; Zion was again pillaged and destroyed; the Holy City became a Pagan colonial town; its very name was changed to Alia Capitolina. How closely does all this correspond with the language of Matthew! And "the abomination of desolation standing in the holy place "what may that have been? What so likely as the statue of Capitoline Jove, which Hadrian erected on the spot where the temple had stood, the grim and sacrilegious sign of utter devastation. So minute an object as this no seer could have pointed out to his friends, however right at hand it may have been; and we are led to the conclusion that the whole chapter was written after the events recorded had taken place, and is, therefore, only too historical to have any authentic connection with Christ. But the rule of criticism which questions the literal truth of every fact whose origin is imaginaty rather than historical, does not at all affect the authenticity of other portions of the Gospel narrative, which are open to no such suspicion. We look confidently to Matthew for faithful information touching the person and the faith of Christ.

MY CREED AND COUNTRY.

WHAT hath been suffered since this earth its primal course began

Is chiefly what hath had its birth in ignorance of Man;

Where youthful Faith was taught to tread where grey-haired Error trod, And blindfold to an idol led, was told to bow to God.

The twin-born nightmare of mankind, in day that still remains

(Dead on Earth's breast) is, that the mind consists in blood, not brains. The golden calf that Israel made, to which they'd kneel and pray,

A yellow monster, stands displayed in Mammon of to-day:

A coward, boasting is his trust

his pride conceals his fears

His feast is on the orphan's crust, his wine the widow's tears.
The common lie that strength is right, that truth is with the strong,
Hath shackled ages by its might, and chained the world to wrong;
But, lo! the Samson, shorn of locks, and blind, doth seize the walls,
And, see! old Custom's pillared rocks in one vast ruin falls,
While on the site the hero stands, with new illumined eyes,
And piles up with his giant hands a temple to the skies.

In that new church what faith or creed do we to all accord?
This is decreed in form and deed: Love as we list the Lord.
Takes one the Shasta, Brahmin-writ? the Llama? or the man
That held the fiery Korak's bit, and gave forth Al Koran?
Or chooses one Olympian Jove? or Talmud, with the Jew?
Or in the Sun sees God and Love, as they in fair Peru?

It matters not what track they tread to seek that high abode –
So they reach home when they are dead, why, any is the road.
For book or prayer I have no care; this pearl for me, ne'er priced,
Is for the faith to face grim Death - and that I find in Christ.
Nor will I man, my brother, blame, because we separate
Upon belief, or on a name, for That which rules our fate;

For He who made, and takes away, in the Hereafter knows
How best from disembodied clay our spirits to dispose.
Then, thank the Power that rules above, the first of this land's laws
Is freedom to bestow Faith's love where Conscience shows the cause.

W. W. F.

SATAN AND FAUST.

[From the German of Klinger.]

NIGHT covered the earth with its raven wing. Faust stood before the awful spectacle of the body of his son suspended upon the gallows. Madness parched his brain, and he exclaimed, in the wild tones of despair, "Satan, let me but bury this unfortunate being, and then you may take this life of mine, and I will descend into your infernal abode, where I shall no more behold men in the flesh. I have learned to know them, and I am disgusted with them, with their destiny, with the world and with life. My good action has drawn down unutterable woe upon my head; I hope that my evil ones may have been productive of good. Thus should it be in the mad confusion of earth. Take me hence; I I wish to become an inhabitant of thy dreary abode; I am tired of light, compared with which the darkness in the infernal regions must be the brightness of mid-day."

But Satan replied: "Hold! not so fast, Faust. Once I told thee that thou alone shouldst be the arbiter of thy life, that thou alone shouldst have power to break the hour-glass of thy existence thou hast done so, and the hour of my vengeance has come, the hour for which I have sighed so long. Here now do I tear from thee thy mighty wizard-wand, and chain thee within the narrow bounds which I draw around thee. Here shalt thou stand and listen to me, and tremble; I will draw forth the terrors of the dark past, and kill thee with slow despair.

"Thus will I exult over thee, and rejoice in my victory. Fool, thou has said that thou hast learned to know man! Where, how, and when? Hast thou ever considered his nature? Hast thou ever examined it, and separated from it its foreign elements? Hast thou distinguished between that which is offspring of the pure impulses of his heart, and that which flows from an imagination corrupted by the artificial? Hast thou compared the wants and the vices of his nature with those which he owes to society and the prevailing corruption? Hast thou observed him in his natural state, where each of his undisguised expressions mirrors forth his inmost soul? No! thou has looked upon the mask that society wears, and hast mistaken it for the true lineaments of man; thou hast only become acquainted with men who have consecrated their