rent in any instance, by the absence of all difficulties which have not their counterpart in the analogy of nature and of providence, and in the general scheme of revelation.

This being borne in mind, we now proceed to consider the genealogy given by St. Matthew, with a view to the establishment of the proposition above enunciated.

We assume as an axiom of investigation, which has been already established, the correspondency of the general form and structure of the genealogy (as composed of six weeks of generations from Abraham downwards preparatory to the coming of the Father of the Age,' or seventh week, when the fullness of the time was come ') with what the analogy of nature and of the scheme of revelation would lead us to expect.

We have also to establish the general principle on which, when viewed in its relation to the Old Testament, and compared with that given by St. Luke, the Genealogy in St. Matthew appears to be constructed.

The prominent idea of the Messiah in the minds of the Israelites, for whom St. Matthew primarily wrote, was of course the royalty of his person and character. Accordingly, he gives the descent through David and Solomon, and their successors on the throne of Judah; the list ending with the names of twelve private persons, during whose lifetime the royalty of the house of Judah was violently suppressed. Now, Salathiel, the first of these twelve names, follows Jechoniah or Coniah, of whom it was declared in Jer. xxii. 29, 30, that he was to be childless (the Hebrew word denoting absolute destitution of offspring), and that neither his nor his father's descendants (Jer. xxxvi. 30) should sit upon the throne of Judah. The verification of these denunciations requires us to recognise the fact which the coincidence at this point of St. Matthew's list with that of St. Luke (for the first time since David) indicates, viz., that Salathiel was the adopted son of Jechonias, who in the near prospect of the extinction in his person of that royal succession to which perpetuity had been promised, was led to provide for the continuance of the succession in the line of Solomon's elder brother, by the same mother, the line of Nathan as given by St. Luke. Accordingly, in Salathiel and Zorobabel, the two genealogies coincide, and we are necessarily led to the conclusion that the principle on which St. Matthew's record of the genealogy was framed, is that of exhibiting the royal succession to the throne of David and Solomon, and the consequent realization to Jesus Christ of the promises made to the Messiah as the heir of David's and Solomon's alternately warlike

d P. 67, 68. Cf. note, p. 67.

and peaceful kingdoms, in the character of The Son of David.' The view here taken, though morally certain, on the principles recognised by Christians (and by the faithful of old), must be admitted to want that positive proof which one destitute of the principle of faith, and who chooses to survey the sacred text of the Old Testament entirely from without, as he would any other matter of history, might require as a ground for accepting it as true. The argument by which the above view is supported rests on the assumption (which believers in the inspiration of the Prophets regard as a moral certainty) that the denunciation of the Prophet, in respect to the younger Jechonias, was realised, though we have not the means of proving the historical fact which it involves, viz., that the sons of Jechoniah,' 1 Chron. iii. 17, 18, were adopted by him from the nearest collateral branch of the house of David, which the genealogy in St. Luke indicates to have been the line of Nathan's descendants.

But though the fact of the strictly legal inheritance of the throne of David and Solomon by Jesus Christ, the legal son of Joseph, thus wants that positive demonstration which the adversary desiderates, we have, short of actual demonstration, the highest possible presumption in its favour. And it is on this peculiar feature of the general form and structure of the genealogy that we would ground our vindication of its inspired character. The evidence which, viewed in its relation to the Old Testament, the genealogy suggested in favour of Jesus Christ, as the heir of David's and Solomon's throne, was precisely suited to serve as a moral test, and to distinguish the noble from the base descendant of Abraham the father of the faithful seed. The want of full demonstration of his claims as Messiah would be eagerly alleged by the carnal Israelite, whose thoughts were limited to a temporal kingdom, as a reason for his rejection of one in whose person and character the worldly greatness of David and Solomon was not realised. Such has, in fact, been the actual result, for the Jewish rabbies, without any authority either from Scripture or tradition, have invented the story that Jechonias by repentance procured the reversal of the doom of childlessness pronounced upon him, and that the 'sons of Jechonias' in 1 Chron. iii. 16, 17, were really begotten of him during the captivity.5

e

Note b, mf.

f Acts xvii. 11, compared with verse 5. Mill's Vindication of the Genealogies,' p. 160: Granting freely the possibility of such averting of a divine judgment, it were notwithstanding most rash and irreverent to believe the non-accomplishment in this instance of a declaration so emphatic, when the inspired records of the captivity give no hint of any such exemplary repentance, nor is there ever satisfactory evidence of any tradition lying at the basis of the statement, but only a presumed hermeneutical necessity for 1 Chron. iii. 17.'-Ibid.

Such, then, is the leading feature of the genealogy on which rests the claim of Jesus Christ to be the legal heir of David's and Solomon's throne. The evidence derivable from the Old Testament is not such as to carry conviction to the intellect, if the will be prejudiced against the conclusion itself, as the popular will of the Jewish nation was in regard to the claims of Jesus of Nazareth. At the same time, that evidence was sufficient for the purpose, and if fairly weighed, must have led to the full recognition of the truth. It could be nothing less than a culpable prejudice by which the well-instructed Jew was prevented from attaining, through such evidence, to the knowledge of the Messiahship of Jesus Christ, which the miracles of His after-life asserted. (Isaiah, XXXV., 6; cf. S. Matt. xi. 5.)

Now the kind of evidence thus suggested has its exact counterpart in the systems of nature and of providence, and in the general scheme of revelation. Bishop Butler's great argument is, that in the affairs of this life, and in estimating and judging of truth, we act upon probabilities or presumptions varying from the lowest possible presumption to the highest moral certainty. 'Probability,' he observes, is the very guide of life.' The fact that, judging from the analogy of nature and of providence, probability can be predicated of the great truths which revelation unfolds to view with regard to the invisible world, is an argument that revelation proceeds from the author of nature and moral governor of the world. Such is precisely the sort of evidence which St. Matthew's record was calculated to suggest in favour of the Messiahship of Jesus Christ; evidence short of demonstration, but amounting, if duly weighed, to moral certainty. For the same Scriptures which pourtrayed under such vivid and varied imagery (by which the imagination of the carnal Jew was misled) the glory and greatness of Messiah's kingdom, recorded with equal distinctness and minuteness the lowly circumstances by which His person and character were to be distinguished. It was the absence of that moral preparation of heart and mind, which the Prophets inculcated as essential to the discernment of truth, which led the Jews to shut their eyes to the less pleasing side of the Messiah's character, and to their will being prejudiced accordingly against the true Messiah. To the faithful Israelites the teaching of the Prophets would have served as a preparation for their discernment in Jesus of Nazareth, notwithstanding the lowliness of His outward appearance, of the legal heir to the throne of David and Solomon, or the authority of St. Matthew's record of the genealogy, viewed in its relation to the Old Testament, in which from childhood they had been instructed.

The inspiration of the general form and structure of the

Genealogy having been thus vindicated against the general objection arising from the absence of conclusive proof of the legal heirship of Jesus Christ, which was less to be expected than the strong presumption which really exists, we may now attempt to extend the argument to support the inspiration of several details to which objection has been made.

Thus, it is alleged by Strauss, that whereas the Evangelist professes to divide the list into three parts of fourteen generations each, he has in fact not attended to his own division, but has included in the third double hebdomad from Salathiel only thirteen names, including Jesus.

The objection assumes (owing perhaps to the non-repetition of the formula, including the word eyevnσe before the second Jechonias) that Jechonias, the son of Josiah, in v. 11, and the Jechonias of v. 12, are identical. This is plainly a mistake, the correction of which St. Matthew himself supplies by stating of the former Jechonias, the son of Josiah, that he had brethren,' whereas the son Jechoniah had but one brother, if any (1 Chron. iii. 15, 16).

Not only, however, does the Evangelist supply us with the statement whereby we are enabled, by the help of the Old Testament Scriptures, to distinguish the persons, but we are also enabled from the latter source to account for the absence of the expression denoting the paternity of the son of Josiah in regard to Jechonias the younger. For it was said of the father (Jechonias), 'He shall have none to sit upon the throne of David,' which was fulfilled by the son's not reigning more than three months at Jerusalem. Hence the use of the term yε to denote the handing down, as from father to son, of a legal inheritance (or at least as including this notion, with which the word was prominently associated in the ideas of the Jews and in the Hebrew style of the Old Testament) i would have been incongruous in the present instance. Assuming, therefore, the principle on which the genealogy is framed, of giving the purely legal succession to the throne, the apparent discrepancy is, in fact, the result in detail of the carrying out of the divine design. Nor, perhaps, can any supposition but the legal heirship and descent of Jesus leading to the omission of Ιωακειμ δε εγεννησε τον Ιωαψειμ κ. τ. λ., enable us to account for the apparent discrepancy otherwise than as a corruption of the text.

We are thus led to the discovery in a minute point of detail, and under the semblance of a logical discrepancy, of a feature in

h Accordingly the scholiast of one of the Moscow MSS. says, ouros na Iwani Exaλuro, this name Jehoiakim being very commonly confounded with Jehoiachin or Jechonias, in Greek.-Mill, p. 10, with note 10.

i In proof of which see Lord Arthur Hervey's work on the Genealogies, pp. 48-56.

* Which Lord A. Hervey (p. 73) and others, accordingly argue to be the case.

the structure of the Genealogy resulting from the divine design of exhibiting the legal succession to the throne. The solution adds. strength to the original presumption on which it rests, that St. Matthew does give the purely legal descent, whatever may be, in the first instance, our estimate of that presumption, whether, as believers in the inspiration of the Prophetical Scriptures as to Jechoniah's being childless, we are persuaded of the moral certainty of the truth which it favours, or whether our assent be not so full in the first instance. In either case, the result of more inquiry, or the supposition of its truth, is to increase our appreciation of the evidence on which the original presumption is based.

6

6

Herein we discern a correspondency with that feature in the works of God, which consists in the progressive development of truth by slow successive steps towards the final result. Faith, which consists in the first instance in acting upon probabilities or presumptions, is the first step towards the full discovery of truth. By faith,' says St. Paul, we understand that the worlds were formed by the Word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear.' m Faith must precede that process of inductive reasoning through which we arrive, step by step, at the discovery of causes hidden from us, through the knowledge of the effects which flow from them. Thus it is that we arrive at the discovery of the great First Cause which revelation unfolds And in the study of His works, and herein of language of which inspiration is predicated, we must start with implicit faith in the Record, in order that we may be able to appreciate, one by one, those evidences of design, harmonising with principles we already know, which tend to establish the truth of the original presumption.

to us.

But to proceed with our investigation. One of the leading discrepancies objected to the Genealogy is the certain omission of three kings from the list between Joram and Ozias, viz., Ahaziah, Joash, and Amaziah. Considered simply as an omission, the discrepancy is accounted for by the design of suiting the number of names to the previously fixed number (the choice of which harmonises with what analogy would lead us to expect) of three double hebdomads of generations. From Abraham to David the exact number of generations which the Old Testament contains is fourteen," whilst from David to the Captivity the number of generations mentioned is seventeen, of which the three above-named are omitted by St. Matthew. That the omission could not be the

m Heb. xi. 3.

n Gen. xxv. 20, 21-26 (Cf. 1 Chron. i. 34; ii. 1, 2). Gen. xxxviii. Cf. 1 Chron. ii. 1-4; Ruth iv. 18-22.

1 Chron. iii. 10-17.