during it, must have awakened the attention and raised the expectations of the tens and hundreds of thousands who had then come to Jerusalem from all parts of Palestine ;-it must be admitted that this was a suitable period for our Lord to begin his Public Ministry in Galilee, and that these circumstances well accord with the fact that, as soon as he began, great multitudes at once flocked around him.

The first three Evangelists supply us with information respecting the commencement of our Lord's Ministry, in their records of his Baptism, and his subsequent abode in the Desert. From his return to the Baptist, till after the Pentecost, we have a full and distinct record in the Gospel of John. On the interval of comparative retirement between that festival and the Feast of Tabernacles, observations will be offered to the reader in the Outline View which constitutes the second portion of this Dissertation.

SECT. II. Consideration of the Objection to this Chronological Arrangement, arising from the position of the Walk through the Corn-fields in St. Matthew's Gospel.

The record of the Walk through the Corn-fields, in St. Matthew's Gospel, ch. xii. 1-18, is found after the Mission of the Twelve, and before the miracle of the Five Thousand. Various changes might be admitted in the details of my Arrangement, without affecting its leading outlines; but if it could be established that the Apostle placed that record where it now stands in his Gospel, to decide the chronological order of the occurrences which he has himself related, then must some great and essential change take place in those leading outlines: for, since the wheat is reaped in Palestine soon after the Pentecost, most, if not all, of the events preceding the occurrence referred to, must then have taken place before that festival. This is the only essential objection I am acquainted with, against my view of the succession of events in our Lord's Ministry. It would be entirely obviated, if the occurrence could have taken place shortly before the Miracle of the Five Thousand; but, as far as I can judge, this supposition is inadmissible. To give it the greatest advantage, we may place the

⚫ It was first suggested, but with some hesitation, by my respected friend the Rev. Dr. Palfrey, now Professor of Biblical Literature in Harvard University, near Boston, in the Preface to his Harmony founded upon my arrangement. After considering it carefully, with all willingness to give due force to the reasons for it, I felt unable to receive it, and did not refer to it in my first Edition. Since that time, another critical friend, who has been closely examining my Harmony, has led me to review the supposition; but the evidence for it seems to me insufficient. I must therefore leave the difficulty to the influence it ought to possess. It has been almost entirely removed from my

Crucifixion in the year 29, as several of the ancients placed it, and the Passover of that year on the 17th of April, instead of the 18th of March, as is done in the chronology of this Arrangement, and as Dr. Priestley places it, who adopts it as the epoch of the Crucifixion. This would allow us to place the Walk through the Corn-fields so late as the early part of March but I can find no adequate reason to believe that even barley would then have been sufficiently ripe in Galilee for the disciples to get the grain from the ears by rubbing,—-to say nothing of the spike of that grain. If the natural history of Palestine would allow such a position to the occurrence, we might, perhaps, adopt it, notwithstanding the SECOND-first, SεUTEроTρWτ, in Luke vi. 1; appealing, in this case, to the omission of the word in several valuable ancient testimonies, and to the uncertainty resting on its import. The genuineness of the word, however, which no one could think of introducing, and which transcribers and translators might omit because unusual and not understood by them, seems next to certain. St. Luke would not have employed it, if it had not had a definite meaning, and if he had not deemed it of chronological importance. And I can discern no legitimate interpretation of it, which will not place the occurrence after the Passover, if not after the Pentecost. See Harm. p. 37, note +.

There is no case, I think, where it is more clear and certain that each of the first three Evangelists possessed a document common to all of them: the facts must have been retraced by some eye-witness, and have been recorded by him or some other disciple, as specimens of the unreasonable captiousness of the Pharisees. But there is this remarkable circumstance in addition. In the Greek translation of St. Matthew's Gospel, the two facts are so closely connected, ch. xii. 6, that I do not know how any one could conjecture that they did not occur on the same sabbath. In St. Mark's Gospel there is nothing, ch. iii. 1, which requires such connection. In St. Luke's, ch. vi. 6, it is expressly stated that the miracle was wrought 'on ANOTHER Sabbath'; and (ver. 1) that the occurrences in the Corn fields took place on the SECOND-FIRST sabbath.' It of course follows, that what appears at first sight, judging from Matthew's Gospel alone, to be the chronological connection, cannot be the real one. I believe it exists merely because it existed in the document from which he here derived his narration; and this solely from the connection of subject.*

own mind by the renewed examination of the records in the first three Gospels of that portion of the history, the result of which is given in App. A. of the foregoing Dissertation. See the observations respecting Division C, in pp. lxvi-lxviii.

The connection of subject and thought is so close that, even in a chronological arrangement like the present, it is doubtful whether the record respecting the Corn-fields

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But further, though St. Matthew, from the natural tendencies of an accurate eye-witness, strengthened, in his case, by the habits of method which his employments must have required, may reasonably be regarded as having adhered to the order of time in recording the occurrences at which he was present, these causes would not have equal influence in relation to those at which he was not present. Now the fact is recorded in the portion of his Gospel which belongs to the absence of the Twelve on their mission. This portion, more than any other part of his Gospel, might, therefore, have been expected to be of a miscellaneous nature;-the Apostle's main objects, however, being steadily kept in view, viz. to record the instructions of Christ and the proofs of his authority, and, to show the character of that malignant opposition, the effects of which were now about to bring the predicted ruin on his unhappy country. These objects, it is almost needless to say, are distinctly observable in this portion of the Gospel.

It would have removed the present difficulty, if St. Matthew had, like St. Luke, assigned the date to the Walk through the Corn-fields; but then we should have had another difficulty, in my judgment much greater than the present,-viz. the inconsistency of this with the general system of his Gospel since, till the last Passover, his Gospel does not give one date from which it could be known in what year, or at what period of the year, any event occurred that he has recorded. For the solemnly awakening purpose of his Gospel, it was of no consequence,-writing as he did thirty years after the transactions which he records, and when he saw the days of calamity approaching,-whether an event occurred after the Pentecost, or before the succeeding Passover. It would be of no consequence to us, if we had only his Gospel.

If the considerations which I have now advanced, do not satisfy the reader's mind as they do my own, then I have to refer him to those difficulties which attend the supposition that the record respecting the Corn-fields is really placed in St. Matthew's Gospel in its chronological position.

First-If, to escape this difficulty, we are disposed to adopt even the Tripaschal system, may I not justly say, after the statements made in the fifth Section of the First Dissertation, (see especially pp. xxxv-xxxviii.), that we must involve ourselves in difficulties incomparably greater?

(p. 37) might not have been best placed immediately before that of the Cure (p. 116); just as the first two Evangelists have placed the Anointing at Bethany, just before the treacherous offer of Judas (p. 232), when in point of time, it should be placed, as St. John places it (p. 198), on the day our Lord arrived at Bethany. Every reader of St. Matthew's Gospel, who attends to such subjeets, must perceive that his mode of composition is not only succinct but methodical; but method may respect place, or subject, as well as time.

Secondly-If we abide by the Bipaschal system, and at the same time admit, what I think I have established, that the miracle of the Five Thousand occurred not long before the Crucifixion, then we have to suppose that the transactions in the twelfth chapter of Matthew, and all those preceding, occurred before the wheat-harvest, which ended before June, while those in the fourteenth and following chapters occurred in the spring of the following year; and that St. Matthew's record of the intervening period is confined to the thirteenth chapter: though, in that long interval, must have occurred the Feast of Tabernacles, with the remarkable circumstances connected with it, together with those at and following the Feast of Dedication, including the Resurrection of Lazarus,-all recorded by St. John, and none by St. Matthew. Other difficulties might be stated, but these appear conclusive.

Thirdly-1f, while we retain the Bipaschal system, we adopt Dr. Priestley's view of the succession of events, then we involve ourselves in the following difficulties.* (1) We must give up every ancient testimony respecting the text in John vi. 4. (2) We must place the sixth chapter before even the fifth. (3) We must suppose that though all the great events at or near the Pentecost, Tabernacles, and Dedication, (which are recorded by John in the fifth chapter, and in the seventh chapter and the four following), occurred during the period which St. Matthew narrates; yet that this Apostle, who then must have accompanied his Lord to the Pentecost and the Tabernacles at least, not only omits all mention of them, but does not give any direct intimation, or other means of knowing, that our Lord attended them. And the same respecting the Gospels of Mark and Luke. (4) Though, on this supposition, the great series of miracles and instructions in Galilee, which preceded the Transfiguration, took place before the Feast of Tabernacles, yet, during the last six or seven months of our Lord's Ministry, no effort was made to continue the influence of them; since, on this arrangement of events, our Lord finally left Galilee before

Dr. Priestley transposes the sixth chapter of John, so as to stand before the fifth; and places the Public Preaching of Christ in Galilee, so far as to include his Discourse after the Miracle of the Five Thousand, between the First Passover and the succeeding Pentecost. He also considers our Lord's Final Departure from Galilee after his Trans figuration, as taking place before the Feast of Tabernacles.-These statements will give the reader a sufficient general idea of his arrangement.

On this subject I decidedly differ from one whose memory I venerate, and whose services to the cause of Christianity in general, as well as to that form of it which I deem the truth as it is in Jesus, were incalculably great. That the reader may know that this difference neither lessens my general appreciation of his character and talents, nor arises from a low estimate of his ability for scriptural research, I refer him to the sixth chapter of my Reply to Archbishop Magee.

the Feast of Tabernacles. (5) From the Gospels of Matthew and Mark, it appears that, from the time when Herod returned to Galilee after the death of the Baptist, and sought to see Jesus, our Lord was continually in the more remote parts of Galilee, or in Philip's dominions, till near the last Passover: but, on Dr. Priestley's arrangement, we must admit that Herod's inquiry was made ten months before the Passover, and yet that our Lord was afterwards openly at the Feast of Tabernacles, and that for a long period he sojourned, tranquilly and publicly, in the southern part of Herod's dominion, between his two courts, which were at Tiberias and Machærus. (6) Notwithstanding the characteristics of the Discourse in the Synagogue at Capernaum (p. xxxviii.), we are required to place it ten months before the Crucifixion. (7) Notwithstanding the remarkable expressions of St. Luke (p. lii.), in relation to the Transfiguration and our Lord's leaving Galilee for his departure from the world, we are required to place those events before the Feast of Tabernacles, when half of his Ministry still remained indeed Dr. Priestley places it in the middle of July, and the Crucifixion on the 18th of the March following. (8) After the grand series of miracles, beginning with the commencement of our Lord's Public Preaching in Galilee, and ending with his final departure from that country, during which, multitudes from Jerusalem and Judæa attended him, and Scribes went down from Jerusalem to observe him, we have to suppose that the kinsmen of Christ could speak of his doing things in secret-though it was in the most populous part of Palestine, and only from sixty to a hundred miles from Jerusalem. (9) This series of miracles, including even the Transfiguration, having occurred within four months after the First Passover, the remaining eight months before our Lord went up to Jerusalem to his Crucifixion, are left without the record of any signal and striking miracles, excepting those single ones, the Cure of the Blind Man after the Tabernacles, and the Resurrection of Lazarus after the Feast of Dedication. Even while I followed Dr. Priestley's arrangement, this appeared to me a very serious objection to it.

The supposition which I make is, that St. Matthew possessed a written record containing the narrations of two transactions at neither of which he was present; the second narration respecting an important occurrence which led on to others alike important; the first, a brief one, probably connected with the succeeding one by locality and by the personal knowledge of the first recorder, at any rate connected by the subject;-and that the Evangelist placed the two narratives together, as he found them, in that part of his Gospel where the train of history required the principal one to be placed. See Diss. II. App. A.