yet sustaining its righteousness and authority, so that he may save all the penitent who turn to him. He freely and truly offers salvation to all; and his revealed design is to save all who in fact repent.

It is indeed his arrangement, the plan of his supreme and sovereign wisdom, that all men, by their descent from Adam, enter upon this life with the disadvantage of a tendency to evil, which makes it certain that they will sin when they come to put forth moral action. But his plan also is, that they begin life with the advantage of being under a remedial system. The very existence of the race on earth, as descended from the first transgressor, is essentially connected with the remedial system, and dependent on it; and by it recovery from sin and death is possible to all, as certainly as God is fair in his offers and true in his promises. All those who have sinned would be saved by the remedy through Christ, if it were not that they choose the way of sin, and persist in their choice. This they do in the exercise and abuse of that moral freedom and personal agency with which he has endowed them, and which is the glory of their being. So they perish when they might be saved, because they will not choose life. And surely the wisdom and love which provided the remedial system adapted to the condition and equal to the wants of the race, do not leave out of it those who die before they know good and evil, and are actually sinners, whose very existence depended on its introduction. To suppose they do, is quite inconsistent with the arrangement by which, "where sin abounded, grace did much more abound," and with the Lord's saying, in relation to infants: "Of such is the kingdom of heaven."

ARTICLE VII.

THE GENEALOGY OF CHRIST.

BY GEORGE M. CLELLAND, NEW YORK.

THERE is a class of commentators on the New Testament, but confined almost exclusively to modern times, who maintain that of the two genealogies of our Lord which are contained in the gospels of Matthew and Luke, the former only is on the side of Joseph, his father according to the law, and that the latter is on the side of Mary his mother. These hold the establishment of the latter genealogy as that of Mary to be of great importance, in order, according to their view of the case, to show that our Lord was "of the seed of David according to the flesh," a character which by the prophecies must belong to the Messiah. The argument is indeed stated with a good deal of obscurity, and its links are in a great measure assumed, instead of being proved, arising from the circumstance that, quite unaccountably on the basis on which the view in question depends, our Lord's connection with David through Joseph, David's undoubted descendant, appears to be set forth on the face of the scripture narratives as the fulfilment of those prophecies, and little is said of Mary in this respect except in connection with Joseph. In consequence of this difficulty, the assumed necessity of evidence of Mary's descent from David, if it does not take the place of the actual evidence required, is at least held to give a decisive weight to articles of evidence, which of themselves infer various degrees of probability only, and often very slight ones, of what Mary was, and so to make up for the absence of what may be deemed satisfactory proof. We propose to examine this question, which has recently been the subject of a good deal of discussion. The point at issue is interesting, and it would be momentous, could it be made out that

the Lord must be shown to have descended from David through Mary. We shall state in the sequel our reasons to the contrary, and for the conclusion that Mary's descent from David is not only not mentioned in the New Testament as a fact (whatever may be its probability), and consequently is not the basis of the fulfilment of the promises to David's seed, but that, in accordance with the character of our Lord's mission, her pedigree was purposely intended to be left unnoticed and without positive establishment.

We have hardly any light on this subject but what the scriptures themselves afford us, and this is confined to what is required for their own ends. This is a feature which is characteristic of the scriptures. They record enough in every instance to show that the events which came in the way of the sacred historians were real, that is, pertained to actual and known human interests, and this in a more intense degree, as regards expression and genuine form, than is found in any portion of secular history. But no care is taken merely to convey information, or to gratify curiosity. Wisely, and, we doubt not, purposely, the sacred narrative is guarded from being mingled with the stream of the secular annals of the human race; which are too often both superficial and full of errors, the record of the vain imaginations of men, subserving at best only temporal ends, and altogether failing to show the truth regarding the condition of men as God sees it. The mere matter of fact set forth in the scriptures, genuine as it is, is constantly kept subordinate to the spiritual purpose. We have no expectation that there will ever be much success in perfectly harmonizing sacred and secular history, the objects of the several writers, and the points of view from which they wrote, having been so essentially different as to make such a result as unattainable as undesirable. Subject to this guard from the insuperable heterogeneousness of the materials, we have no desire to discourage such partial illustration of scriptural statements, as can be obtained from the facts of nature or the secular records of history. On the contrary, this, wisely done, is fitted to lead to more enlarged views of the truth and wisdom of the writ

ten word of God; only, we insist, the subject-matter and the mere natural judgment of men are both treacherous, and will deceive, if in the examination the purifying eye-salve do not purge the mental sight.

At the time when a pure and powerful influence from God is on the minds of men, as at the chief events of the Jewish and Christian dispensations, those engaged have their thoughts too much absorbed by interests transcending the things of the earth, to admit of their caring for the mere material scenes where they were transacted; and before the opposite feeling sets in-which it is sure to do as soon as the religious feeling has lost its high tone, and become worldly-the usual effect of lapse of time and of imperfect memorials is to spread a veil over the outward circumstances, and to cover them with uncertainty. Providence would thus kindly dissuade men from making too much of the mere outward material of great events, and confine them to the spiritual substance; but too often in vain; for there is a proneness in the natural mind to the idolatry of such things. We need not dwell on what is so well known, — the uncertainty as to the precise scenes of many of the most important events of sacred history. Let two instances suffice. The exact place of the sensible manifestation of the presence of God to the thousands of Israel among the singular mountain cluster which forms the peninsula of Sinai, - the most imposing public event, perhaps, ever witnessed by the eyes of men, is the subject of keen controversy; and the disputants appear to be governed in their conclusions rather by the fitness of particular places to exhibit the appearances in what they would deem the most effective manner, than by what may be regarded as sober evidence as to the actual locality. Nay, Mr. Ferguson, of London, in his work on Jerusalem, has startled every one by maintaining the positions, backed by an array of authorities from scripture and ancient travellers, that the real Zion was the temple eminence, and that the site of the temple was not what is now commonly but erroneously termed the mosque of Omar, but was at the south-western end of mount Moriah, chiefly on the spot

where stands the mosque of Aksa; and, more surprising still, not merely that the locality of Calvary and of the Holy Sepulchre is not indicated by the church at present bearing the latter name, which had been questioned by Robinson, Barclay, and others, but that the bare rock known to lie within the mosque of Omar, and the cavern underneath, which have ever been held by the Mohammedans in superstitious veneration, are the real Calvary and sepulchre, and that the mosque itself, instead of being on the site of the temple, is the monumental church built by Constantine over them! If the evidence adduced by Mr. Ferguson should be held adequate, a subject we do not enter upon, one could not but admire the righteous retribution, that those who have been foremost in casting out the faith of Christ, should thus have been made to bow down in prostrate adoration to the place sanctified by his death.

It is exactly the same as to persons, in their relation beyond the need of scripture. We know nothing as to the private history of such personages as Abraham, Isaac, and Solomon, as soon as, after having satisfied the ends of instruction and type for which they were used, they drop into the background of the inspired recital. To come lower downwho were "the Lord's brethren," repeatedly mentioned in the evangelists ? Some think they were the children of Joseph by a former marriage; some, the children of a deceased brother, Alpheus; some, the children of another Mary, a widowed sister of Mary the Lord's mother; some, that they were children of Joseph and Mary; and there are other suppositions still. Similar difficulties surround the question: "Who was James the Lord's brother," mentioned in Galatians? To all such questions, and many others, no answers can be given. Scripture is either silent or undecided, and tradition is quite unsatisfactory. There was no practical end for the faith to be answered by the solution of such questions.

Returning backwards to a generation earlier than that of our Lord and his brethren, we find no such difficulties in regard to the position in which Joseph stood in his nation