THE READERS FOR WHOM MATTHEW WROTE HIS GOSPEL. 193 



the special aspect as Jehovah's Messiah. In St. Mark He is 

 Jehovah's Servant, in St. Luke He is Jehovah's Man, in St. John 

 He is Jehovah HimseH. It is in this light that the Jewish 

 Remnant— after the Church has gone — will read the four Gospels 

 from the Jewish standpoint, in connection with the Old Testament 

 prophecies. 



"The kingdom of the heavens," an expression found 32 times 

 in St. Matthew's Gospel, points, as most of us know, to the future 

 actual reign of the heavens over the earth under the glorious reign 

 of Christ, as foretold by Daniel and by the Lord Himself in Matthew 

 xxiv. and xxv. 



The parable of the sheep and the goats should be interpreted 

 according to the context. 



Lt.-Col. Mackinlay said: It is, of course, very generally supposed 

 that St. Mark's Gospel in Greek was the first of all ; but Dr. 

 Thomson is not, I believe, alone in thinking that St. Matthew 

 wrote first, and in Hebrew. Our author claims that St. Matthew 

 wrote for the Jews long dispersed in Babylonian dominions ; he 

 gives many excellent reasons for these conclusions, which are very 

 probably correct, though whether Matthew wrote before Mark hardly 

 seems to affect the question. 



Looking at the details of the paper, the differences between the 

 Synoptists are hard to explain, particularly the " dis " of Mark, 

 to which our author alludes on page 179 ; they may be due to 

 various causes, but it is difficult to see how they demonstrate that 

 Matthew wrote his Gospel before Mark. 



On page 180 the fact that our Lord quoted the Septuagint looks 

 as if He spoke in Greek. But then we have records of the actual 

 Aramaic or Hebrew words which He employed on certain definite 

 occasions. Apparently, our Lord used both languages ; we ourselves 

 have but little practical experience of bi-lingualism in the part of 

 the country in which we live, but some Welshmen, our Prime 

 Minister, for instance, appear to be equally fluent in their native 

 language and in English, and thus able to give an account of events 

 equally graphically in either tongue. The labouring countrymen, on 

 the other hand, are only at home in their own language, consequently 

 the bi-lingual capacities of a people differ among themselves. 



Why does our author, on page 181 suggest any doubt of the his- 

 torical accuracy of the book of Esther? All will agree that large 

 numbers of captive Jews were taken into Babylonia or Assyria in 

 Old Testament times, and their descendants remained there in great 

 measure. 



Pages 182 to 184 are valuable, and are worthy of careful study, as 

 they enumerate many of the distinctive features of the Gospel of St. 

 Matthew, specially the fulfilment of prophecy, the Davidic genea- 



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