(Continued from page 35.)
It is perhaps well to remark that the Gospel according to the Hebrews indulged in the grossest form of Jewish mysticism. We read, “The Savior said, My mother the Holy Ghost took me by one of my hairs and carried me to the great mountain Tabor,” and much more (Gfrorer, Tahr. der Heils. Stuttgart, 1838, pp. 332 ff.). This is quoted by Origen, only saying, “if any one received it,” in Jeremiah Hons. 15:4. He elsewhere definitely declares the church had only four Gospels, the heretics many. Jerome quotes it, on Micah, lib. ii. cap. vii. vol. vi. 521, Ed. Vall., where he states he had just translated it, so that it was not a mere Ebionitish addition. So in Comm. Isa. 11 Vail. iv. 156.-Juxta Evangeliarri quod Hebraeo sermone inscriptum legunt Nazaraei. But it came to pass that when the Lord went up out of the water, the whole fountain of the Holy Ghost descended and rested upon Him, and said to Him, My Son in all the prophets I expected Thee, that Thou shouldest come and I should rest on Thee, for Thou art my rest, Thou art my first-born Son, Who reignest forever.
So iv. 485. He quotes the strange phrase, “My mother the Holy Ghost took me by a hair,” etc., from the Gospel according to the Hebrews, which the Nazarenes read, adding that no one ought to be offended, as spirit is feminine in Hebrew, masculine in Latin, neuter in Greek, that, thus being of the three genders in the three principal languages respectively, we might know that what is different is of none, going pretty far in owning the work. Origen excuses it also (De la Rue, iv. 69), but on the plea that as Christ called those who did His Father's will, brother, and sister, and mother, so we might call the Spirit His mother. But the passage of Jerome on Isa. 11 proves it was a systematic doctrine, and the Gospel probably heretical, on the system of Simon Magus and Helen. Yet Jerome translates it and says, many call it the authentic Matthew. This, it is said, was in A.D. 398. Later still, A.D. 415, he says it was in the library of Caesarea (the Nazarenes there using it); the Gospel according to the apostles, or, as many think, according to Matthew (Dialogus iii. contra Pelagianos). He quotes or refers to it very often. A.D. 321 circa, he speaks of it as in the Caesarean library, and composed in Hebrew letters and words. Who translated it into Greek was uncertain (De Viris The Ebionites, he says, used it, joining them and the Nazarenes, where he speaks of lately translating it. But the Nazarene copy he translated. The Ebionites at any rate were divided into two classes, one certainly heretical, as were the Nazarenes or Nazarites. Origen, he says, often used it. Jerome translated it into Greek and Latin; strange if he thought it the same as Matthew, and Matthew translated by we know not whom.
That there were but four Gospels recognized is perfectly clear; Jerome, Irenaeus, Origen, all speak decidedly. Jerome speaks of the others as concocted of the writers without the Spirit and grace of God, that to the Egyptians among them—not naming that according to the Hebrews, but be does that according to the twelve apostles, and this in Dial. 3 contra Pelagianos, he declares to be the same. He then goes on to say that the church has four, which the Lord poured forth as the four rivers of paradise, and four angels and rings, by which, like the ark of the Lord and keeper of the law of the Lord, she is carried on unmovable bars (liguits); and then speaks of our canonical Gospels, and referring them to the cherubim, connects the four animals there represented with the four Gospels, and declares that only four ought to be received, and the rest as useless fables to dead heretics. (Preface to Matt. 7 p. 1, Vail.) He was somewhat late in date, but Irentis says the same thing. He says, lib. iii. 8, There can be no more than four, nor can there be fewer. There are four regions of the world, and four principal winds, and as the church is spread over all the world it must have four columns, whence it breathes forth life. So He who sits between the cherubim has given us a fourfold Gospel, composed by one Spirit ἑνι δὲ πνεύματι συνεχόμενον referring, I apprehend, to the τεχνίτης Λόγος ὁ συνέχων τὰ πάντα, and he then enters largely into the four cherubim, saying the Gospels are consonant to those in which Christ is seated. Irenaeus had been showing that the heretics themselves received one kind one Gospel, another another, but in result all four, and were self-condemned by what they did accept; but the church all four, the sure and full pillars of the truth.
I will now cite one or two of the miracles of the apocryphal Gospels, heretical often it may be, and in general mere fables, but often valued by the ‘Fathers.'
Christ was sent to one master, and told him all the letters and their meaning, and the master brought Him back, and said He must have been born before Noah; then to a more learned one, and, the master having raised his hand to beat Him, his hand withered and he died. Then Joseph said to the divine Mary, From this time we will not suffer Him to go out of the house, since every one that opposes Him is struck with death.
There was a rabid boy who, when the fit took him, bit every one, and being in company with the boy Jesus, sought to bite His side, and struck it so that Jesus cried; but Satan fled out of the boy like a mad dog. The boy was Judas Iscariot, and it was that side which was pierced with the lance.
Then He was making figures of animals and birds out of mud. Now, he says, I shall order them to move. Are you, said the boys, the Creator's Son?” But then He ordered them, and they went and came back when He called. At another time at a dyer's He threw all the articles out into the yard; the dyer was in a great way about it, when he returned them piece by piece of the right color. He made all Joseph's work fit exactly.
He went out to play, but the boys left and hid themselves, and when in each house they were denied to be there, He asked, What have you there in the furnace? Three-year-old goats, said the woman; and He said, Come out here to your shepherd, goats; and they came out like goats and leapt around Him, and the women were all terrified, and besought Him; and then he said, Come, boys, and let us play, and immediately they were restored to their proper form.
Then He made ponds and twelve little birds, three of a side, and a Jewish boy, Hananus, it being the sabbath, came up and reproved Him, and destroyed His fish-ponds, but, He clapping His hands on the birds, they flew away piping; and Hananus coming up to destroy the fish ponds of Jesus also, the water disappeared, and He said, as the water disappeared, Your life shall disappear also, and immediately the boy dried up.
I will now take up some of the Gospel miracles, and, first of all, using that of Matthew, as the structure of the Gospel is very evident with a little attention, and the place and character of the miracles through it.
The difference of the three synoptical Gospels and the fourth is this. The first three present Christ as Emmanuel-Messiah, the prophet servant, and Son of man, to men, and, in a narrower sense, to the Jews. Whereas in John this is not the case; it reveals what Christ is in Himself; that the world, when He was revealed in it, did not know Him, though He made it; and that His own rejected Him.
But then He put into the place and privilege of sons those who did receive Him, a new thing, but thus they were born of God, not of the flesh nor of man's will. The Jews are therefore treated all through as reprobate, but He declares that He would have His sheep out from their midst, and others from among the Gentiles; and then the Holy Ghost is spoken of as living on the earth instead of Him, when He was gone as man to the Father.
Now this presentation of Christ in the three first terminates and reaches its climax in the transfiguration, which changed all, for it was as a revelation bringing in a glorified Christ. This divides the first three Gospels into three parts, the history of the Lord up to the transfiguration (His birth, as Mark gives the prophet, being there left out), the continuance of patient mercy up to blind Bartimaeus, with various instructions, chiefly for the coming time; and, from meeting with the blind man, His last presentation as Son of David to the Jews, and the details of His being taken and crucified. Miracles Christ wrought at all times, even to the last days, when He was free in the temple, healing the ear of Malthus at the moment of His capture. Perhaps we may say the greatest of all His living miracles was His giving up His own spirit to His Father on the Cross.
But, in the active life of Jesus, it is the time which closed in the transfiguration, beginning after His temptation in the wilderness, which forms the proper period of His working miracles as a testimony. The goodness expressed itself at all times in them, but that on which it rested (“or else, believe Me, for the very works' sake") was from His victory over Satan, binding the strong man, till the transfiguration revealed a wholly new order of things coming in connected with a rejected Christ, from which time He forbade His disciples to tell men that He was the Messias, saying “the Son of man must suffer,” though still till His hour was come, continuing His work of grace. The general character of the Lord's miracles I have spoken of. The revelation of God in power and goodness that He might be known and trusted by man, and man, wicked as he might be, have confidence in Him. As the beginning of Eve's sin was losing confidence in God's goodness by the guile of Satan, if God did not seek their happiness fully they must seek it for themselves, as even now. Hence will, lust, transgression, so now God was there to give in perfect goodness blessed ground of confidence in Himself; but, I add here, graciously and perfectly suited to the state and need of man. The person who can be insensible to the perfectness of the revelation of God in goodness to man in Christ down here is incapable of feeling what God and goodness is.
But I turn now to look at the miracles recorded in particular as suited to the special testimony given, and first in Matthew. The general testimony is in 4:23. “And Jesus went about all Galilee teaching in their synagogues and preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing all manner of sickness and all manner of disease among the people,” or, as expressed by Peter (Acts 10), “He went about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed of the devil, for God was with Him.” Matthew's testimony is to the Lord as Emmanuel and as Jesus, that is, Jehovah the Savior. For He shall save His people from their sins. He was Jehovah; but first of all Jehovah, according to promise to His own people. Hence His genealogy is traced from Abraham, and also David, to whose seed the promises were made; as Paul states it in the Romans, of the seed of David according to the flesh, a minister of the circumcision for the truth of God, to perform the promises made to the fathers, as this He was rejected; and then comes in another character and title, proved Son of God with power, according to the “Spirit of holiness by resurrection of the dead.” This last, on which Christianity is really based, is not our subject. The order of the Gospel is this: 4:23, had gathered multitudes around Him. He announces to His disciples, but in the audience of the multitude, the principles of the kingdom, and who were such as could enter, adding reward in heaven itself when suffering for Christ existed. There is nothing of redemption or justification in it. In viii. we have the Lord personally as Jehovah, still as rejected Son of man; in 9 the character of His service down here—grace. x. Mission to the Jews alone, any other forbidden; but from verse 15 carried on after His departure, but still in cities of Israel, till the Son of man be come. 11. His ministry as well as John the Baptist's in their midst rejected, but John owned by Him, and He as Son of God revealing the Father and calling the weary to Himself to rest. xii. His utter rejection of and by the pharisaic Jews, and final break in principle with the nation. xiii. He is out of the house, and unfolds the status of the kingdom when the king was rejected. xiv., xv. His mercy as being there still continues in a sovereign way, but the principles of what is brought in anew, both as to dispensational position, trial, and relationship, are unfolded; then pharisaism, man's religion, man's heart and God's laid bare, the great foundation truths of his dealings in Christ. xvi. The church replaces Judaism. xvii. The glory of the kingdom does: only for all this He must die. xviii. Individual and collective directions founded on the new thing. Chs. 19. and 20. to 28. complete these new principles and their consequences. Verse 29 of 20. begins the last events up to the Lord's death and resurrection: only you have no ascension. The remnant are sent out from Galilee to the Gentiles, as we see in the close.
(To be continued.)