be rid of him:  for his tone is magisterial, decisive and final.  This, I confess, suggests to me, that the aim of Jesus was not so much to enlighten the young man, as to stop his mouth, and keep up his own ostentation of omniscience.  Had he desired to enlighten him, surely no mere dry dogmatic command was needed, but an intelligent guidance of a willing and trusting soul.  I do not pretend to certain knowledge in these matters.  Even when we hear the tones of voice and watch the features, we often mistake.  We have no such means here of checking the narrative.  But the best general result which I can draw from the imperfect materials, is what I have said.

After the merit of “selling all and following Jesus,” a second merit, not small, was, to receive those whom he sent.  In Matt. x., we read that he sends out his twelve disciples, (also seventy in Luke,) men at that time in a very low state of religions development,—­men who did not themselves know what the Kingdom of Heaven meant,—­to deliver in every village and town a mere formula of words:  “Repent ye:  for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.”  They were ordered to go without money, scrip or cloak, but to live on religious alms; and it is added,—­that if any house or city does not receive them, it shall be more tolerable for Sodom and Gomorrha in the day of judgment than for it.  He adds, v. 40:  “He that receiveth you, receiveth me, and he that receiveth me, receiveth HIM that sent me.”—­I quite admit, that in all probability it was (on the whole) the more pious part of Israel which was likely to receive these ignorant missionaries; but inasmuch as they had no claims whatever, intrinsic or extrinsic, to reverence, it appears to me a very extravagant and fanatical sentiment thus emphatically to couple the favour or wrath of God with their reception or rejection.

A third, yet greater merit in the eyes of Jesus, was, to acknowledge him as the Messiah predicted by the prophets, which he was not, according to my friend.  According to Matthew (xvi. 13), Jesus put leading questions to the disciples in order to elicit a confession of his Messiahship, and emphatically blessed Simon for making the avowal which he desired; but instantly forbade them to tell the great secret to any one.  Unless this is to be discarded as fiction, Jesus, although to his disciples in secret he confidently assumed Messianic pretensions, had a just inward misgiving, which accounts both for his elation at Simon’s avowal, and for his prohibition to publish it.

In admitting that Jesus was not the Messiah of the prophets, my friend says, that if Jesus were less than Messiah, we can reverence him no longer; but that he was more than Messiah.  This is to me unintelligible.  The Messiah whom he claimed to be, was not only the son of David, celebrated in the prophets, but emphatically the Son of Man of Daniel vii., who shall come in the clouds of heaven, to take