urges to invalidate the testimony of the sacred historian, when examined, presents a collateral evidence in support of its truth. It is one of those minute instances where there is at first an apparent discrepancy; but in which we find, on further examination, that there is, in reality a most striking and convincing historical evidence of the truth of the Holy Scriptures. The Evangelist tells us, that when Herod heard that wise men were come from the East, saying, "Where is he that is born king of the Jews? for we have seen his star in the East, and come to worship him," he, that is Herod, was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him. And Mr. Barker, with apparent exultation, advanced that as a proof that the Miraculous Conception was a fiction. Herod was troubled ! Was it unnatural in a fierce, despotic, tyrannical, cruel, jealous monarch to be troubled, when he heard that one called " King of the Jews" was born? Or was it unnatural that all Jerusalem should be troubled with him?-not because Christ was born, but when they knew his disposition-Herod's disposition-so characterized by cruelty and by jealousy and when they knew his character for indiscriminate slaughter, and were apprehensive that they themselves might become the next victims of his jealous ire, was it unnatural that they should be troubled at the same time?-especially when we remember that neither Herod nor the mass of the people understood the spiritual objects of the Saviour's coming. The result proves that their fears were not misplaced. I now refer to the murder of the infants of Bethlehem. Mr. Barker adverted to this as one of those events which prove a contradiction to the testimony of the Evangelists with regard to the Miraculous Conception. He tells you that the murder of the infants is not corroborated by any historian. : Really there is something remarkable in Mr. Parker's mode of arguing. He tells you that even when historians have corroborated the testimony of the Evangelists in some events, yet if there be a small discrepancy, we are to reject the testimony which is divine, and accept that which is human. But here, where there is no testimony at all, but, as he says, perfect silence, we are to regard that silence as sufficient to overturn the credit of the Evangelists. This is reasoning with a vengeance! Where others toil with philosophic force, (Laughter and applause.) Well! but cannot we account, think you, for this silence? Josephus, he says, is silent. But he is silent with regard to a multitude of events as well as this. Roman historians, he tells us, are silent. No wonder if they are. Bethlehem at that time was a reduced village, not containing more than a thousand population, including the surrounding country. The massacre was not indiscriminate. It extended only to the male children; and those only of a certain age. And thus the slaughter could not have been so extensive as at first sight might be supposed. Herod, too, died shortly after the event; and the whole transaction might soon pass into oblivion: but God thought fit to record it as important in marking the commencement of persecution against his beloved Son, who came into the world to bleed and to die for our salvation. It is therefore not at all an improbable event that the Roman historians should have overlooked a transaction like this, occurring in an obscure village fifteen hundred miles distant from Rome; and I believe there was no Roman historian existing at the time the transaction took place. But there is another enquiry, far more important. It is this. Does the murder not correspond with Herod's known disposition and character? It does. What does Macrobius say, in his Saturnalia? He says, Melius est Herodis porcum esse quàm filium. Abstinebat quippe Herodes à porcis: a filiorum cæde non abstinebat. Macrob. 2. Satur. c. 4. "Better to be Herod's hog, than his son; because while he spares his hogs, he murders his own children." Does it not, then, correspond with the disposition and character of Herod? And I may ask, is there not here a recognition of the event referred to? And then, if this be admitted, history is not altogether silent in reference to the event in question. 66 Another objection of Mr. Barker's was this, that the wise men who came to worship Jesus are called Mayo, Magi, in the Greek; and he tells us that the word means sorcerers." He should have told you that that was one meaning of the word. And the other is that which we have it rendered in the translation, "wise men." Who were the Mayor among the Persians? Men devoted to literature-devoted to religion, so far as they understood it: men to whose care was committed the education of the principal children of the empire. And thus the term Mayot became a kind of general designation, including both the class of men called sorcerers, and those who had nothing to do with magic arts. Just as our own words, "wise woman," in English, may mean witch; or the same terms may mean "a woman of intelligence, of sagacity, and of prudence." There is no evidence, then, that these wise men were sorcerers because they were called Magi. Certain it is that whatever they had been, they were not sorcerers now. They were worshippers of the true God-men who came to enquire for the Saviour-men who found and worshipped that Saviour-men who presented to him their choicest gifts-men who were watched over by a gracious Providence, directed in their movements by Providence, and made objects of peculiar regard,-they were not sorcerers: and, in deed, if they had been once sorcerers, that is no reason for their not being permitted to worship Jesus. Simon Magus, the sorcerer, was admitted a member of the church of Samaria, and never was ejected from that church until it was found that he I ocntinued in the "gall of bitterness, and in the bond of iniquity." Heartily welcome to Jesus, and His salvation, were publicans and sinners, and men with curious books, and who practised evil deeds, when they gave up their abominations-when they complied with the gracious terms of salvation. Another objection of Mr. Barker's is this, that Jesus followed the business of a carpenter. A most singular objection for Mr. Barker to make! He would have you believe, sometimes, that "college-bred priests" are of all men the most injurious to society; and now it turns out that he can reproach Christ for following an honest occupation. ("Hear, hear," hissing, and applause.) Silence, my friends. Give me a fair hearing,—1 want nothing more. Give me your candid judgment,-I want nothing more. Never before did I know that it was discreditable to follow a lawful occupation. Did not Jesus stoop down to man's condition? and is not that condition to earn his bread by the sweat of his brow? Is it not one part of the consequences entailed upon man by the Fall? And was it not hecoming in him, who became in all things like unto his brethren, to submit to earn his bread by the sweat of his brow; and thus to sanctify and honour the occupations by which men obtain their daily bread? I am sure Mr. Barker must have been at his wit's end for an objection when he could bring forward this, ---that the Lord Jesus, in his human nature, submitted to the occupation of a carpenter. He submitted to something lower than even this. He submitted so far as to receive alms and support from those to whom he ministered; and said, "The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests; but the son of man hath not where to lay his head." He "made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men." Glory be to his blessed name! But Mr. Barker tells us, as another reason why you should reject the Miraculous Conception, that you hear nothing of Jesus for 28 years. So then it follows, that however well authenticated may be the account of his birth, and of his ministry at a certain age, and of his death and resurrection, you are not to believe the Miraculous Conception unless you have the whole of his history before you! You may believe the circumstances of his death-you may believe his resurrection, without having that history; but you are not, on any account whatever, to believe the Miraculous Conception, unless you have the whole of his history before you. Wonderful logic; and still more wonderful theology! But, then, it is false. We have something recorded of Christ between the period of his infancy and his public ministry. We are told that he grew in wisdom and in stature, and in favour with God and with men. We are told that at twelve years of age he went to the temple, and there gave tokens of wisdom and devotedness to his Father's will. But Mr. Barker will not believe that. And would he believe the whole narrative, think you, if it recorded every event in the history of the Saviour? If he rejects the first fact, would he believe the rest? He tells us, as another reason why we should reject the Miraculous Conception, that Anna the prophetess spoke to all about her of the Saviour's Miraculous Conception; and that afterwards we hear no more about him. It is false. Anna did not speak to the people about our Lord's Miraculous Conception. She spoke to them not a word about it, that I can find ; but spoke of him as being the Redeemer of mankind. Mr. Barker alleges as another argument why we ought to reject the Miraculous Conception, and to take our scissors and cut away the two first chapters of the gospels of Matthew and of Luke, that "God has not given us a reason for it." So that we are never to believe in the great and eternal Jehovah until he explains to the creature of a day every reason for his conduct! Did God explain to Adam the reason why he was forbid to eat of the tree of knowledge? Did God explain to Abraham the reason why he called upon him to sacrifice his son? Did Abraham wait for a reason before he went forward to obey? And, besides, if God had given a reason, it is more than probable that Mr. Barker would never have believed it. If he reject the fact as a fiction, he might easily treat the reason as being a poetical fable. But, then, the pious mind can see a reason-an important reason, why the shrine in which the Godhead dwelt should be miraculously conceived-can see important reasons why the humanity of the glorious Redeemer should become incarnate in this miraculous and mysterious manner. But God never panders to human pride. And unbelievers would not submit to God's authority, whatever reasons he might condescend to give for his conduct. Another reason why we are to reject the Miraculous Conception is this, that the Saviour's brethren, as Mr. Barker says, did not believe on him. So, then, because they did not believe on him, we are to imitate their conduct, and reject the Miraculous Conception! Just the argument, in principle, which the infidel Gibbon puts forth, by insinuation, in his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, where he insinuates, with the characteristic subtlety of his specious mind, that it is strange that the Jews should reject the Saviour, and the Gentiles embrace him; intimating that there is no good reason for the Gentiles accepting him, since his own countrymen, who saw his miracles, rejected him. But there is no evidence that his brethren did know of his Miraculous Conception: and if they did know, there is no rational ground for supposing that would be a sufficient reason to prevent them from rejecting him. They saw his miracles-they beheld the wonders that sprung from his touch, or fiat, or command-they beheld the dead rise at his bidding, and five thousand people fed with five barley loaves and a few fishes-and they knew that devils acknowledged his Divinity; but though he presented before their eyes these stupendous manifestations of his power and of his glory, they still continued in hardness and unbelief. How, then, was it likely that the doctrine of the Miraculous Conception would neutralize an unbelief that could not be subdued by all the wonders they beheld around them? Further; Mr. Barker gives us some criticisms. I shall have occasion to notice some of his criticisms. He tells us that William Cooke denies the Scriptures in something like about eighty instances, where Christ calls himself "the son of man." Because he is called the son of man; Mr. Barker argues that he could not be miraculously conceived. If Mr. Barker be at scholar, he ought to know that the word "man," in English; the word D, Adam, in Hebrew; the word av0pwоs, anthropos, in Greek; and the word "homo," in Latin, are all expressive of the female as well as of the male part of the human race. (Applause, and calls to "Order.") I refer you, in the first instance, to the first chapter of Genesis, and 27th verse: and here you find the Hebrew word D78, Adam, comprehending both genders. "So God created man [78] in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them." Here the word D covers both genders, the male and the female -the man and the woman. And the Apostle Paul, when writing to the Corinthians, 1st epis., 11th ch., 8th verse, says,---“ For the man is not of the woman; but the woman of the man. Neither was the man created for the woman; but the woman for the man." The fact is, that the word man comprehends both; and hence, in Jewish genealogies, the woman loses her individual descent when she is the wife of the man; she loses her descent, politically considered, and is merged in the person of the man: and hence you find in the genealogies that it is only the male line that are adopted and made public in the registers ;---I mean to say, the male is the only line in which the genealogy is traced. But now for the eighty-six instances in which he says William Cooke has denied the Holy Scriptures in maintaining that Christ, according to the Evangelists, was born of the Virgin Mary, and not the natural progeny of Joseph. Have I denied the Holy Scriptures? Mr. Barker ought to have known that there are two Greek words to express the human kind. The one is Avno, Aner, which does refer to the male part of the human race almost exclusively: the other is, Avēρwπоç, Anthropos, which comprehends female as well as male. lf Mr. Barker will refer to Schleusner, or Groves, or Greenfield, he will find AveρwTos put in the common gender, for both male and female: and it is a remarkable circumstance that in all the eighty-six cases Mr. Barker has referred to, there is not one in which the word Avno, which means man properly, is employed; but in every instance it is the word Av0pwоs, which means both man and woman. (Applause.) It is not vios ανδρος, the son of man; but υιος ανθρωπου, the son of a human |