4711. But this is vague in the extreme. More precisely and satisfactorily therefore to settle the point, we must endeavour to elucidate the following questions:

1. How long the birth of Christ must necessarily have preceded the death of Herod.

2. How long it may probably have preceded it.

3. Whether this probable date corresponds with the other chronological marks in the New Testament. If so, it may then fairly be considered as the true date, or at least as sufficiently correct for the great purposes of a Christian's solicitude, the vindication of his religion from the doubts of scepticism, and the cavils of infidelity.

I. We are to inquire how long the birth of Christ must necessarily have preceded the death of Herod.

When the Magi arrived in Jerusalem from the East to enquire after the King of the Jews, Jesus was already born, and Herod was yet alive. Two points are therefore necessary to be determined before we can ascertain the precise period of Christ's birth, viz. how long the birth of Christ

preceded the arrival of the Magi, and how long the arrival of the Magi preceded the death of Herod.

Let us first examine how long the visit of the Magi preceded the death of Herod.

In the settlement of this point we have no data whatever to guide us, but the actions of Herod at the time, and as they are stated to us in the Gospel. Now these as they are recorded by St. Matthew, chap. ii. would seem to indicate that, when the Magi arrived, Herod was in a perfect state of health both as to body and mind. He was active, he was intelligent. He assembled and would appear also to have presided with spirit and without difficulty at a council of the chief priests and scribes. He privately consulted with the Magi, and gave them the instructions which he thought necessary, promising himself to follow and worship the child;—a promise which he would neither have thought of making, nor been able to perform, had he been in that suffering and emaciated condition to which by his last illness he was soon reduced. In all this he acted with the energy of a man in perfect health and the full possession of the powers of his nature; nor is there one single hint or expression of any thing to the contrary. When Josephus relates the exe

cution of the Rabbis, he makes several allusions to the feebleness of the king, and carefully states the exertion and difficulty it required for him to attend the council, examine into the sedition and pronounce the condemnation of the guilty. The narrative of St. Matthew on the contrary proceeds with uninterrupted continuity, and contains no intimation which could impress the mind of the reader with the idea that Herod was otherwise than he had ever been; no symptom of weakness, no phrase to mark the writer's astonishment and horror, when relating the massacre of Bethlehem, that though its perpetrator was (to use the language of Josephus upon a similar occasion) μελαγχολῶν ἤδη καὶ μονονουχὶ αὐτῷ τὶ τῷ θανάτῳ ἀπειλῶν, προέκοψεν εἰς ἐπιβουλὴν ἀθεμίτου πράξεως. Such a remark would have been natural in the mouth of the Evangelist, had Herod at that time been in a declining state. But he has not said any thing at all like it, and hence it would appear highly probable that Herod's last illness had not made that progress when the Magi arrived which we learn from Josephus that it had made at the time of the execution of the Rabbis, on the 13th of March, J. P. 4710. The Magi therefore had arrived before that period.

Again, it

2

a

may be recollected that Josephus has

* Josephus de Bell, Jud. lib. i. cap. 21, p. 773.

told us, that the world at large attributed the last disease of Herod to the justice of an offended God visiting him with the most severe and lingering and extraordinary sufferings in consequence of his many and unparalleled crimes. Whether this opinion was right or wrong, I know not. I only say, that it will be difficult for any one who believes the Gospel, to suppose that a cruelty, so unprovoked and excessive as the massacre of Bethlehem, had not a considerable share in the formation of the idea, and consequently that this massacre not only preceded the execution of the Rabbis, but the very commencement of Herod's illness. Now the last illness, of Herod did not seize him at all until after the ambassadors were sent off to Rome with the evidence which had been collected relative to the guilt of Antipater, and the departure of those ambassadors stands in the narrative of the historian Josephus as one of the events immediately preceding the sedition and execution of the Rabbis.c These facts being admitted, and I think they cannot be denied, it is evident that the disease of Herod commenced only a short time before the execution of the Rabbis on the 13th of March, J. P. 4710. Yet as it certainly had made considerable progress when that execution took

place, we may be allowed, without being accused of making undue assumptions and as almost all writers have done, to suppose it to have commenced about a month before; that is about the 13th of February, J. P. 4710. Consequently the Magi having arrived before the massacre of Bethlehem, and the massacre of Bethlehem having taken place before the commencement of Herod's illness on the 13th of February, J. P. 4710; the Magi also must have arrived before the said 13th of February, J. P. 4710. I place much reliance on the validity of this reasoning, and can only express my astonishment that amongst all the various writers upon the chronology of our Saviour's life, not one, to my recollection, has bestowed a single thought on the observations upon which it is founded.

The same source, to which we have applied with success for the solution of the last question as to the length of time which must have elapsed between the death of Herod and the arrival of the Magi, will help us also, if not satisfy us, with regard to the length of time which must have elapsed between the arrival of the Magi and the birth of Christ.

No one I believe ever read the second chapter of St. Matthew, unbiassed by the influence of any preconceived opinion, without considering the