iii. 19-30). Luke also gives a large part of the same discourse, but with a hiatus just preceding and following the passage in question. The explanation would seem to be that Luke, having derived his information from others (i. 1-3), did not have this part of the discourse reported to him. He did, however, from some source learn of this detached saying, and as, deprived of its immediate context, it would have been inappropriate where it belonged, he put it in the next most appropriate place. We thus, however, miss the reason given by Mark for this utterance, "Because they said, He hath an unclean spirit" (iii. 30), the due consideration of which would have removed much of the trouble ignorantly experienced about "the sin against the Holy Ghost."

It seems scarcely needful to remark that we speak of the Evangelists in these respects from a purely human point of view. However powerful the influence of inspiration was upon them, it did not obliterate their idiosyncracies as human writers. Luke expressly tells us how he obtained his materials; and, while he was so guided in their use as to be saved from all error, it nowhere appears that he was the recipient of revelations to supply what may have been wanting in his sources. The verse in question is given by all three Evangelists. The question is, simply, whether it was repeated, and all three have failed to note its repetition, or whether Luke has given it out of its place. We confess to preferring the latter alternative, especially as its meaning is shown by its context in the first two, and is not thus explained in the last.

We come now to the longest of all these passages, Luke xiii. 18-21. It is made up of two short parables coming between our Lord's answer to the ruler of the synagogue, indignant at his healing on the Sabbath, and the record of a fresh circuit through the villages of Galilee. There is no reason whatever for insisting that it stands in its true place in Luke, and it is given both by Matthew (xiii. 31-33) and Mark (iv. 30-32) in connection with a series of parables not recorded at all by Luke.

The next passage is xvi. 16, 17, 18. It is made up of three VOL. XXXI. No. 123.

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distinct verses which seem each to belong to a different place. First note the context in Luke. The three verses have no close connection with each other, nor has any of them with that which precedes or follows. If, however, they are removed elsewhere, then the closest connection between vs. 15 and 19 sq. becomes at once apparent. Now let us see where these verses are found in the other Gospels. Verse 16 occurs Matt. xi. 12 in inseparable connection with its context; verse 17 is found in the Sermon on the Mount, Matt. v. 18, in a little different form but still identified by the peculiar pía Keρaía тоû vóμοv; verse 18 is given both by Matthew (xix. 9) and by Mark (x. 11, 12) where it evidently belongs, in the instructions concerning divorce, of which Luke, except in this verse, gives no record. These separate sayings in these three verses may be conceived to have been repeated; but this does not seem likely. Luke does not give the instructions concerning divorce at all, yet would retain this important conclusion of them. He must therefore give it out of its connection, and all attempts to show a close relation to its present context have signally failed. A breach being once made by the transfer of this verse, there need be the less hesitation in transferring the others also, although the reasons for these are somewhat less imperative.

The remaining passages are all in the seventeenth chapter, and need not detain us long. It is curious that all the passages of this kind should be embraced between the twelfth and seventeenth chapters. Two of them are xvii. 1, 2 and xvii. 3, 4. They occur together between the parable of Lazarus (xvi. 19-31) and the request of the disciples for an increase of faith (xvii. 5). Their connection with each other and with the context does not call for remark. It is neither so completely wanting as in the last case, nor is it so close as to form the basis of an argument. Both are instances of the preservation, out of their connection, of parts of discourses, other parts of which are given by this Evangelist in the same connection with the other Evangelists. Verses 1, 2 may be found in Matt. xviii. 6, 7; Mark ix. 42, and vs. 3, 4 in Matt.

xviii. 15 and 21-23. It is only a few verses of the beginning of this discourse which are preserved by Luke in its connection; the rest is wanting in his Gospel except as fragments are in this way gathered up.

The last instance is the thirty-first verse of the same chapter, and is perhaps the most difficult of them all. It occurs in the midst of a discourse of some length concerning the coming of the kingdom of God. It is certainly appropriate enough to the subject, although where it stands it somewhat mars the closeness of the connection of its immediate context. The same discourse is given in Matt. xxiv., and this verse is there omitted, but so are several others just before and after it. It is given in another part of the discourse in Matt. (xxiv. 17, 18) and also in the same connection by Mark (xiii. 15, 16), being in both inseparable from the context; and the curious fact is, that this part of the discourse is also given by Luke elsewhere (xxi. 5-36) with just this verse omitted. The question whether it does really belong in both places, and so was actually repeated, or whether Luke has transferred it from one place to another, will probably be differently decided by different minds. To the writer, the closeness of the connection in the earlier Evangelists, the looseness of it in Luke, and the absence of all indication of repetition, determine in favor of the latter alternative.

All these passages from Luke are short, and their place is comparatively unimportant. The interest of the question centres upon Matthew, where it is important for purposes both of harmony and of exegesis. In both it is helpful to find that he has followed, in regard to our Lord's discourses, the same plan that otherwise marks his narrative, that of grouping like things together. And in the case of the discourses he had this especial reason for it, that the discourses so grouped were connected with periods or events of which it was not his purpose to preserve the narrative.

ARTICLE III.

THE NATURAL FOUNDATIONS OF THEOLOGY.

BY THOMAS HILL, D.D., LL.D., FORMERLY PRESIDENT OF HARVARD COLLEGE.

THE realm of truth extends indefinitely, probably infinitely, in all directions. We see in part, and we are not able to state, in verbal propositions, even the whole of that which we see. At a scientific meeting in Baltimore, Peirce demonstrated that it would take an able mathematician two hundred thousand million years to make a preliminary examination of a series of plane curves which he had pointed out. These were curves of the simplest laws; add the more complicated; take also those revealed by different methods of investigation; add those which are not confined to one plane; pass then to the laws of surfaces and solids, and it is evident that in geometry, the simplest of possible sciences, there is an opportunity for eternal occupation and delight to an intelligent spirit. The other departments of mathematics, algebra and arithmetic, are equally boundless in resources. The physical sciences, the historical group, the domains of psychology and metaphysics, and our gropings after ontology and theology, remain yet to shew us what infinite resources there are for intellectual occupation in the coming cycles of eternity. And all this truth which to eternity may be giving by its discovery fresh pleasures to the expanding mind, has been from eternity known to God. His knowledge embraces not only all the real, past and future, but all the possible, and all the impossible. To see the truth is to see as he sees it, - truth is conformity to his thought.

It is sometimes said that men cannot see truth, their views must inevitably be not only limited, but obscure, and therefore doubly erroneous. But this is a rhetorical overstatement, which, strictly interpreted, would deny its own

truth; no human statement can be made which does not imply the speakers belief in its truth, and consequent belief that he sees truth. As far as man sees at all, he sees truth; and the addition of infinite knowledge would not destroy the truth already seen. God's thoughts embrace ours, but ours do not embrace his. Whatever the human intellect discovers in the relations of space and time, in the harmonies of the physical creation, or in the laws of its own thought, was known from eternity to the Creator; and it is a simple confusion of thought to object that this statement is anthropomorphitic. Man is made in the image of God,—that is not saying that God is in the image of man.

In this infinite realm of truth there are ideas which affect us profoundly, without being consciously understood. Even the simple truths of geometry may thus address us. An artist may draw a beautiful form, an ellipse or spiral for example, from his sense of beauty, without any intellectual conception of the law of that form. All truth affects the feelings to some extent, but the feeling is not directly proportioned to the clearness of the perception. The intellectual perception of a form, embodying a law, and the pleasure arising from its beauty, are not only distinct states of consciousness, but, as such, are to some degree mutually exclusive. Beauty, as an objective reality, is the embodiment of a single idea in a varied or complex form; the beauty of a material object is directly proportioned to the simplicity of the law of its being, and to the complexity or variety of the manifestation; but our perception of the beauty does not depend on our perception of the law; a person without any musical learning, for example, may enjoy a symphony.

But other emotions, than those of a simple pleasure, may thus be awakened by objects that suggest no decidedly intellectual thought. All the nicest shades of human feeling are expressed by music with more precision and force than can be given to their utterance in words. Thus also the human face may express all the varying passions of the heart.

In these instances the expression of a thought is not rec