there. Bishop Demetrius was so much offended by his ordination that he called a Synod to consider the case; as he alleged that not only had he himself been slighted, but that one of the canons of the Church had been violated, which was probably true. The Synod was attended both by bishops and presbyters; and, after deliberation, it was resolved that Origen should be declared unworthy of the office of teacher, and excluded from the Alexandrian Church. They did not, however, degrade him from the office of presbyter. This sentence, severe as it was, did not satisfy Demetrius; and he convened a second Synod, from which all presbyters were excluded, and only bishops admitted. The episcopal assembly degraded Origen from the office to which the bishops of Palestine had ordained him. In this sentence all the churches acquiesced, except those among whom Origen had personally visited; and these refused to concur in this harsh condemnation of one whom they knew and honoured.

In the meantime the illustrious teacher had withdrawn from Alexandria. His work in that city, where for so many years he had been a centre of light and blessing, was now ended. God, to use his own words, who of old led his people out of Egypt, brought him out of the same land. It is not easy at this distance of time to say how far jealousy was at work—how far an honest distaste to some of his doctrines led the ecclesiastics of Egypt to act as they did: in every profession there is certain to arise a suspicious jealousy of a character like Origen; and it is probable we do them no injustice when we say that Origen formed one of the long and illustrious band of exiles whom their several native countries and churches have "cast out," not for their faults, but for their nobleness; because their earnest and unresting labours were an offence and a silent reproach to the sluggish respectabilities by whom they were surrounded.

us more.

E read their narratives and think not of the narrators-Matthew, Mark, and Luke. But for their names on the title-page,-placed there on the authority of early Christian writers, we should not have known to whom we owed these artless narratives. Raphael, in his painting of The Transfiguration, offends us by introducing the two nephews of the Roman Cardinal that was his patron as spectators of its glory. Had he introduced himself as present, he had hardly offended The flattery of a patron or the display of self, amidst such a scene, had been alike offensive. It is allowed to an author to introduce himself on the title-page and preface; but then we expect him to retire. Historical writers, as Thucydides, Xenophon, and Clarendon, if eyewitnesses of what they narrate, we allow to appear, because they give credibility to what they record. Of the three Evangelists, Luke alone does this in the Acts of the Apostles, changing his narration to the personal we, and thereby imparting to it the authority of an eye-witness. This reticence respecting self in three out of the four Evangelists is most worthy of note, when any natural occasion arises for the mention of themselves. The call of Matthew is one of these. His account is in the fewest and simplest words.

"As he passed by, he saw Levi the son of Alpheus sitting at the receipt of custom, and said unto him, Follow me. And he arose and followed him."

"A man, named Matthew," is changed by Mark into a style somewhat more courteous, into "Levi, the son of Alpheus." Matthew, says Jerome, was the vulgar name, which Mark avoids, along with the homely phrase, "a man." Luke tells the same thing, but with differences and additions that still more enhance Matthew's reserve.

Like Mark, he uses the more respectful name of Levi. His account also expresses more emphatically the self-denial and prompt compliance of Matthew. "He left all, rose up, and followed him." Luke adds, "Levi made him a great feast in his own house." Matthew speaks only of Christ sitting at meat in "the house," but does not tell whose house, or that it was on the occasion of his call; giving us no indication that our Lord was his guest.

How much of character and humour has our Scottish novelist drawn from the irrepressible desire of the Lady of Tulietudlem, in "Old Mortality," to speak at all times and places and to all persons of her having once had the honour of receiving the royal exile Charles II. within her walls. This only expresses the desire all have to associate their name with a greater than their own.

When we can do no more we inscribe

it on the same volume, or leave it on the same spot where the great have lived or suffered. Yet Matthew is silent as to which of the twelve made the great feast at his call, or at whose table the Saviour of the world sat; ay, though he is writing his narrative long after the days of his humiliation are over and gone, when the guest whom he entertained is to him the Lord of glory at whose feet angels cast their crowns.

Boswell has been called "The Prince of Biographers." He deserves his title, for no biographer more thoroughly reproduced his man. His admiration of Johnson is unbounded; yet he cannot help showing himself at every turn. Boswell must be at all times seen, known, and recognized in the company of his hero, for good or ill, wisdom or folly. Rather than be unnoticed, he shows us his own weakness. His respect for his hero, so far from repressing his egotism, is the medium of its indulgence; and not unfrequently he shows us Johnson only that he may show us Boswell.

Some years ago the statistical account of Glasgow was drawn up by one of its own citizens, and now forms part of the statistical account of Scotland. In statistical accounts we seldom think of their authors, unless we find occasion to question or verify their accounts; yet in that statistical account, consisting of 241 octavo pages, if any one will take the trouble to count, he may

| find the author makes mention of himself at least thirty-one times. We cannot doubt, in this case, as in Boswell's, that the author loved his subject, for he was an able and professed statistician; but if he loved statistics and loved Glasgow, he was not the less anxious to show us "the statistician." We all know how one little expression escaping from a great minister of England wrought his downfall"Ego et rex meus"-I and my king! The "I and my party" of Sir Robert Peel offended the British House of Commons in our times. This is human nature. There may be differences between one man and another, more or less reserve, more or less self-restraint, and various ways of doing the same thing. Some thrust themselves offensively into view; others wait to be sought out and not unsought be seen; yet no literary man toils to conceal himself. The great unknown of Scotland, however well he kept his own secret, anticipated one day to become "the well-known."

The self-forgetfulness of the three Evangelists stands alone. As men, they could not but feel the honour of being the chosen associates of him whom they so loved and honoured. They felt as other men do the temptation to associate their names, their sayings, and acts with those of their Master. They heard him say of the woman's act of love and reverence, "Wheresoever this gospel is preached it shall be told as a memorial of her," and they anticipated that their gospels would descend as memorials of their Master's life and teaching; yet they contain little or nothing of themselves, direct or indirect, except in so far as it is necessary in order to show their Master. In the presence of their great subject they feel like the Psalmist: "The Lord is in his holy temple, let all the earth keep silence before him." If there are any exceptions to this, it is in the mention of particulars unfavourable to themselves, as Peter's fall and the slow faith of all the twelve.

Silent as to themselves, they are silent also as to one another. They give no help to recall the bodily presence of the twelve. We can form some idea of the mental peculiarities of some of the first Christian teachers; but how little of their outward man! How little to help us to reproduce a Peter or a John on the canvas or the marble, as they conversed with men eighteen

hundred years ago! Of the Apostle Paul we learn, incidentally, that, in the opinion of his detractors at Corinth, "his bodily presence was weak and his speech contemptible" (2 Cor. x. 10). When the people of Lycaonia would have worshipped Barnabas and Paul as gods, they distinguished Barnabas as Jupiter and Paul as Mercury (Acts xiv.). This is the sum of our information, direct and indirect, from the New Testament respecting the great apostle of the Gentiles. The successors of the Apostles and Evangelists are not so silent. Chrysostom in the fourth century calls the Apostle Paul "the three cubit man." In Chrysostom's days curiosity was all alive to every tradition of his bodily presence, and had begun to invent what it found not. A recent writer (Lewin, 2 v.) on the life and epistles of Paul tell us, that, according to John of Antioch, "Paul was short of stature, bald at the crown, grayish as to the hair of his head and chin, of an aquiline nose, and blue eyes, with the eyebrows knit together, of a fair and ruddy complexion, a graceful beard, and benevolent expression of countenance. In the winter months he wore the Roman pœnula or cloak; and in his daily occupation at Ephesus, he carried the Roman sudarium or handkerchief, and used the semi-unctuum or half-girdle to hold up his tunic when he wrought at tent-making."

Who does not feel, on reading or hearing this description, that this is not the way of Luke, who could best have told us all about the person and manners of Paul, and tells us so little in the Acts. This is the religious gossip of an age that would not be satisfied with Scripture narratives, but must put questions and make answers to itself; like the ancient geographers who, in the construction of their maps, filled up the unknown parts of the world with mere names and fancied regions which no man had ever visited.

Our Lord tells Peter that when old he should be bound and carried whither he would not. Of the sufferings thus foretold there is no memorial in the New Testament, though Peter was the first called to be an apostle; yet room is found in the Gospels and Acts for recording the rashness of Peter, his denial of his Master, and the weakness and vacillation that drew on him the rebuke of Paul, when he "withstood him even to his face."

The death of Stephen, the first martyr of the Christian Church, is told with simple brevity and the absence of all irritation or exaggeration in matter or manner. That of James, the first martyr amongst the twelve, is told with like simplicity by Luke, and with like forbearance. Nothing is said of their burial-place. Nothing of their exaltation to the honours of church canonization. Nothing to tempt us to follow a Stephen or a James, even in thought, as we are called to follow Christ, within the vail with divine or semi-divine bonours. Their memory is blessed. Their bodily image, and all that might help us towards man-worship, is withheld.

Is this silence natural—that is, accountable on any ordinary principles or feelings of human nature? The Gentile world, in one of whose languages the Gospels were written, loved nothing so much as to behold the face and form of their heroes and sages reproduced by art. Athens was as full of statues as of men. So was Rome. Not only the temples, but the market-place, the forum, each public resort presented to the living some image of the dead. What are the choicest subjects of antiquity in our museums and cabinets but those numerous medals and coins and statues which have defied the tooth of time, and transmitted, even to our age, the face and form, not only of emperors and consuls, but of a Socrates and Plato, an Aristotle and a Pericles?

29

It is true the Apostles and Evangelists were Jews, and Jerusalem and her temple contained no images ;—not even an image of Moses their lawgiver would have been admitted within that temple. "Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image was interpreted by the Jew, not only to forbid the worship of God by images, but the very making of them for any purpose of honour or worship; and a Jew would as soon have inquired for a sight of the dead body of Moses, as for a bust or statue of Abraham, or any of the twelve patriarchs. But this, so far from explaining this silence on any natural principles, only doubles the silence, and shows it as common to all Scripture writers, Old and New Testament, and carries us upward to reasons for this silence far beyond all the views and reasonings of men. We have seen how this silence in the New Testament respecting our Saviour's bodily presence

These

may have been designed to veil the Christian Shekinah, that God in Christ might not be worshipped after the flesh, but in spirit and in truth. He who knew what is in man, knew that, as it had been before, so it would be again, and that man-worship, not through the Saviour only, but in a thousand forms, would anew repeat itself, peopling Christendom with deities under the names of Christian men and women. tendencies found a new stimulus in every martyrdom. The more needful therefore that they should have no countenance in those records to which belonged the highest authority and the most sacred character. In what are called Church developments we see the divine meaning of this silence. It has been remarked that the most unchristian book in the world is an ancient martyrology, because the most untruthful. The tales of tortures endured by one martyr would have sufficed to have despatched nine lives; and the miracles they are said to have performed amidst their tortures were sufficient to terrify or turn aside the most obstinate persecutor from his purpose. All sense and sobriety is lost, all love of truth confounded in the appetite for the marvellous and its multiplied appliances. Take up the Calendar of the Latin Church, and you will see how this tendency again broke out in its strength all over the Christian world. In the Calendar of the Roman Catholic Church, besides angels, apostles, and evangelists, we find two hundred and sixty-eight saints, some honoured apart, some in groups, having few or many, up to the indefinite number of "all saints." Yet the saints of the Roman Calendar are only a selection -the Greek Church has its own Calendar. Butler, in his "Lives of the Saints," includes fifteen hundred male and female, beatified or canonized and commended to honours national or universal. The work of the Bollandësts in Latin, entitled, "Acta Sanctorum," had reached its fiftieth folio volume when the first French Revolution terminated, for a time, the labours of its editors. The fifty-first volume has been added in our times. Yet three months of the ecclesiastical year, with its saints, remain behind; and the work, judging from the portion already published, will probably include thirty thousand saints, the legends of whom are now being

retailed anew in the most attractive forms, not only among the monasteries and convents, but amongst the peasantry and schools of the Roman Catholic Church throughout Europe.

THE EXCEPTION.

The Evangelist John never names himself in his Gospel. He does more. He describes himself, in a way that no name or surname could have done, as "the disciple that leaned on His bosom," "the disciple whom Jesus loved." One or other of these descriptions of himself occurs no fewer than five times in the course of the last six chapters of his Gospel (John xix. 26; xx. 2; xxi. 7, 20). No naming or surnaming, no repetions of the pronoun "I," nor telling, "I did it,” or, “I was there," nor the more covert "we," that seeks to reveal self by including others, would have so distinguished that Evangelist.

He records many circumstances in harmony with this high distinction. When our Lord spoke of his betrayal by one of the twelve, Peter, afraid to inquire, yet eager to know, asks John to put the too delicate question, as one having superior privileges, and accustomed to use more freedom in conversation with our Lord. John tells this, and of his compliance. At another time, standing with Mary beside the cross, Christ commends his mother to his care, and "from that hour that disciple took her to his own home." Peter was the first that entered the sepulchre and saw the napkin that was about his head, not lying with the linen clothes, but wrapped together in a place by itself; but John tells us that he was "that other disciple," and that, on going in, first interpreted aright these signs of a risen Saviour, and he adds, " he saw and believed."

After our Lord was risen, and his disciples had gone before to meet him in Galilee, according to appointment, when several of them had gone a-fishing, and were returning to the shore in the early morning, a stranger appeared and told them to cast their nets on the right side of the ship, and having done so, they were not able to draw them for the multitude of fish. John whispered to Peter, "It is the Lord," as if to him belonged a finer sense than Peter of all that bespoke the presence and handiwork of our Lord, and of this superiority John himself is the narrator.

More instances might be given; but these are enough to show that John does not, like the cther Evangelists, always hide himself. This is the more notable, because none of the other three Evangelists record these distinguishing circumstances, or even designate him as he always designates himself, "the beloved disciple;" nay, the only two incidents which they give are rather unfavourable to John's character at the time they refer to. The one was when he and his brother James were rebuked for their fiery zeal, and get the somewhat ironical name of Boanerges, "Sons of Thunder." This name we have always felt to contain a touch of humour, as if by the gentle raillery of this name to keep alive the rebuke, and shame the two brothers out of their false zeal. The other anecdote unfavourable to the two brothers is their apparent setting on of their mother to ask of their Master the highest place in his kingdom, which could not but offend the others, and which indicate that John's early temper was not that unambitious temper which it afterwards became as "the beloved disciple."

Have we not something of this showing of himself even in the Apocalypse? John himself is a very prominent figure in its opening, and from time to time reappears to its close. This, however, is only like the old prophets, who of necessity introduce themselves with their visions of coming events in order to give them authority. In a consecutive narrative of the life and teachings of our Lord, we do not expect the writer to show himself in the same way, nor is it necessary. Three of the Evangelists give their narratives with the least possible mixture of themselves. last alone brings forward its author, as if to ask for him a more distinguished presence and personality. Is this vanity a natural wish on John's part to be known as the favoured disciple wherever the gospel is known? Appearances, at least, are against John. All that is so often and justly said as to the self-forgetfulness of the other Evangelists here fails. How shall we account for this exception?

The

May they not be the expression of love and gratitude that cannot be silent as to Christ's preference of himself? "Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh." As if to counte

nance this construction of John's openness, we remark that no one in reading those narratives ever feels that John has intruded, and only regrets that his Gospel does not contain more such intrusions of self. This feeling arises not merely from these incidents being in themselves so interesting, but because there is not one of them that does not reveal something of our Lord that we would not willingly have had untold. Through John we draw nearer to our Lord, and are admitted to private interviews with John's Master. In this way the last of the four Gospels completes our knowledge of the character as well as the teachings of Christ. John, as the last survivor of the twelve, ere descending to the grave, gathers up the fragments of that spiritual feast at which he had long been a privileged guest, that after ages might share in that feast. Who does not feel that these last things are not the least, even those most personal to John himself-nay, that the gospel wine, preserved by John's care, like that of Cana, is the best wine of the Church of Christ.

Had John suppressed all mention of himself, as the other Evangelists have done of themselves, his Gospel might have been free from the apparent blemish; but it would no longer have been the Gospel according to John's knowledge' and view of Christ's character and ways. That the apostle had a natural complacency in recording these marks of Christ's preference, we may well suppose; and there was nothing unworthy of the Christian or the apostle in such a feeling. Had the mention of them added nothing to our knowledge of his Master, silence would have been more worthy of an Evangelist. But when the knowledge of them was the knowledge of Christ, it would have been unworthy of an apostle to have suppressed them from any fear of imputations. This had been hiding not only self, but hiding Christ from selfish fears. If Matthew, Mark, and Luke stand aside, like true disciples, it is that we may see Christ and Christ only. If John shows us more of himself, may it not be to show us more of Christ, more than in any other way he could have shown us the true and perfect character of our Lord. Each may have taken the best way of doing the same thing according to his circumstances. The one served best his