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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 



was imperfect. And from imperfect knowledge 

 to fallibility the step is a slight one ; for, when a 

 Being has imperfect knowledge, how can we be 

 sure that his knowledge is perfect as to the limits 

 of its own imperfection ? But, as regards the 

 fallibility of Christ, we are not left to mere con- 

 jecture. He " marveled at the centurion's faith." 

 Now, it is obvious that an infallible being could 

 not marvel. When we say that a man marvels, 

 we imply that his expectation fell short of the 

 reality, and was therefore erroneous. And thus, 

 when we are told that Jesus marveled at the cen- 

 turion's faith, we infer that his previous estimate 

 of that faith had been unduly low. Again, a be- 

 ing conscious of infallibility would be free from 

 doubt and misgiving. Yet, Jesus was uncertain 

 respecting his death ; and, when dying, he feared 

 that God had forsaken him. 1 In case this dem- 

 onstration (for such it is) should be painful to 

 any reader, I would fain offer a word of comfort. 

 The great Catholic Commentary of Cornelius a 

 Lapide states that " esto Christus non creverit 

 sapientia et gratia habituali, crevit tamen actuali 

 et practica." This reasoning is just as applicable 

 to Christ's infallibiltiy as to his youthful defi- 

 ciency in knowledge ; and hence a liberal Chris- 

 tian who clings to the belief in his Lord's Divin- 

 ity may plausibly urge that the Saviour (as wai 

 inevitable) held some errors of his time, but that 

 in respect of those errors it was only his " actual 

 and practical wisdom," not his " habitual wis- 

 dom," that failed him. 



Having thus sought to disarm prejudice, we 

 can more freely comment on a few out of the 

 many erroneous statements reported in the Gos- 

 pel — statements that may, as it were, keep in 

 countenance the reported statements about hell > 

 and, in making the selection, we will mainly 

 confine our view to errors that have been prac- 

 tically acknowledged by Christians of note. We 

 will begin with an example that perplexed Mr. 

 Maurice. The Master is said to have prophe- 

 sied that he would " be three days and three 

 nights in the heart of the earth." Now, the in- 

 terval from Friday evening to Sunday morning 

 is only one day and two nights. Hence, in the 

 prophecy as reported by St. Matthew, there is as 

 open a breach with arithmetic as in the three 

 fourteens in the same Evangelist's genealogy ; 

 and, we may add, as in his strange narrative 

 (evolved out of a misunderstood prophecy) con- 

 cerning the ass and the colt, on both of which 

 (avTwv) Jesus rode to Jerusalem. 2 Again, Jesus 



1 Matthew xxvi. 39 ; xxvii. 46. 



2 By the ether three Evangelist* the supernumerary 



said that David ate the shewbread " in the high- 

 priesthood of Abiathar : " ' the event really oc- 

 curred in the high-priesthood of Ahinielech. 

 Once more : an excellent religious journal has 

 courageously proposed " to explain, once for all, 

 that the theological and historical library popu- 

 larly called the ' Bible ' contains some errors." * 

 Now, the "error" that is chiefly referred to oc- 

 curs in the Fourth Commandment. Did God 

 give the Ten Commandments or did he not? If 

 he did, the " error " was a Divine one, and the 

 thunders on Sinai were so many seals to that 

 error. If he did not, the Master, who clearly be- 

 lieved the Decalogue to be from God, was himself 

 in error on a fundamental point. The gravity of 

 such an error may be best shown by an illustra- 

 tion. In the parable of Dives and Lazarus — that 

 tremendous parable, as Charles Austin called it, 

 which implies that all who receive their good 

 things on earth, all whom a Jew of the Christian 

 era would have counted rich, will be tormented 3 

 — greater value is attached to the testimony of 

 Moses and the prophets than to that of one risen 

 from the dead. 4 Now, if one of the by-standers 

 had suggested that one risen from the dead would 

 appeal directly to the senses, whereas the pas- 

 sages in Moses and the prophets (even assuming 

 those passages to be genuine and rightly inter- 

 preted) might figure among the errors in the theo- 

 logical and historical library popularly called the 

 Bible — if one of the by-standers, say the virtuous 

 and enlightened St. Thomas, had suggested this, 

 would not the remonstrance, "Be not faithless, 

 but believing," have been the very mildest that 



ass is suppressed. St. Matthew and the fourth Evan- 

 gelist quote Zechariah ix. 9 differently, so as to make 

 it support their differing accounts. The Fourth Gospel 

 elsewhere furnishes a striking example of a myth de- 

 posited from a misunderstood text (xix. 23, 24). 



1 Mark ii. 26. I adopt Alford's translation, as the 

 difficulty is slurred over in the authorized version. 

 Alford comments on the instructive fact that a good 

 and learned divine has persuaded himself that this text 

 " rather suggests that he (Ahiathar) was not the high- 

 priest then : " nanum Atlanta vocavit, JEtJtiopem cya- 

 num. As for me, I forhear to waste words on the in- 

 genious disingenuonsness of harmonists : for I cannot 

 even understand the notion that it is honest to apply 

 to the Bihle a mode of interpretation which would be 

 dishonest if applied to any other hook; aDd that ortho- 

 doxy, like Sigismund, is sujrra grammaticam. 



2 Spectator, August 28, 1875, p. 1091. 



3 Luke xvi. 25. 



4 In like manner, the writer calling himself St. Pe- 

 ter attributes greater probative force to the enigmati- 

 cal prophecies of the Old Testament than to the evi- 

 dence of St. Peter's own eyes and ears (2 Peter i. 18, 

 19). This tendency of the early Christian mind is 



