less than the Lord's, would be due. Christ says not for us,' but for Me and thee;' as elsewhere, I ascend unto my Father and your Father, and to my God, and your God' (John xxv. 17); for, even while He makes common part with his brethren, He yet does this by an act of condescension, not by a necessity of nature; and it greatly concerns them that they should understand this; and at no time lose sight of the fact that here is a delivered and a Deliverer, a ransomed and a Ransomer, however to the natural eye there may seem two who are ransomed alike. And, as on other occasions, at his presentation in the temple (Luke ii. 22–24), and again at his baptism (Matt. iii. 16, 17), there was something more than common which should hinder a misunderstanding of that which was done; at the presentation, in Simeon's song and Anna's thanksgiving; at the baptism, first in John's reluctance to baptize Him, and then in the opened heaven and the voice from thence;-so also is there here a protest of Christ's immunity from the present payment, first in his own declaration, Then are the children free;" and next in the novel method by which He supplies the necessity which Peter has so thoughtlessly created for Him.'

It is remarkable, and is a solitary instance of the kind, that the issue of this bidding is not told us but we are, of course, meant to understand that Peter went to the neighbouring lake, cast in his hook, and in the mouth of the first fish that rose to it, found, according to his Lord's word, the money that was needed. As little here as at Luke v. 4, 6, did the miraculous in the miracle consist in a mere foreknowledge on the Lord's part that this first

1 Bengel: In medio actu submissionis emicat majestas. And Clarius: Reddit ergo censum, sed ex ore piscis acceptum, ut agnoscatur majestas. So too Origen (in loc.) recognizes a saving of the Lord's dignity in the mode of the payment, a saving, of course, not for his own sake, but for In other cases where misapprehension was possible, we find a like care for this (John xi. 41, 42).

ours.

fish should bear the coin in its mouth: He did not merely foreknow; but by the mysterious potency of his will which ran through all nature, drew such a fish to that spot at that moment, and ordained that it should swallow the hook. We see here as at Jonah i. 17 ("the Lord had prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah '), that in the lower spheres of creaturely life there is unconscious obedience to his will; that these also are not out of God, but move in Him, and without knowing are the ministers of his will (1 Kin. xiii. 24; xvii. 6; xx. 36; Amos ix. 3).

All attempts to exhaust this miracle of its miraculous. element, to make the Evangelist tell, and intend to tell, an ordinary transaction,-as that of the rationalist Paulus, who will have it that the Lord bade Peter go and catch as many fish as would sell for the required sum, and maintains that this actually lies in the words,'-are hopelessly

1 His honesty and his Greek keep admirable company. Пpwтov ixúv he takes collectively, primum quemque piscem, ἀνοίξας τὸ στόμα αὐτοῦ solvens eum ab hamo, ɛúpýσɛis oτarñpa vendendo piscem statera tibi comparabis. This is not even new; for see Köcher, Analecta, in loc., 1766: Piscem capies quem pro statere vendere poteris. In a later work, Paulus amends his plea, and ȧvoížaç rò σróμa is no longer, opening the fish's mouth to take out the hook, but, opening thine own mouth, i. e. crying the fish for sale, auroù εvρýnis orarñpa, thou wilt there earn a stater. Another of the same school (see Kuincel, in loc.) will have the whole speech a playful irony on the Lord's part, who would show Peter the impossible payment to which he has pledged Him, when money they had none in hand; as though He had said, 'The next thing which you had better do is to go and catch us a fish, and find in its mouth the coin which shall pay this tax for which you have engaged us.' It was reserved for the mythic school of interpreters to find other difficulties here, besides the general one of there being a miracle at all. 'How,' exclaims Strauss (Leben Jesu, vol. ii. p. 195), 'could the fish retain the stater in its mouth? the coin must needs have dropt out while it was opening its jaws to swallow the hook; and, moreover, it is not in the mouths, but in the bellies, of fishes that precious things are found.' Did Juvencus, by the way, anticipate and seek to evade this difficulty, when, turning the Gospels into hexameters, he wrote: Hujus pandantur scissi penetralia ventris? Such is the objection against which this history is too weak to stand! It can only be matched with the objection which another makes to the historic truth of Daniel in the lions' den; namely, that if a stone was laid at the mouth of the den (Dan. vi. 17), the lions must needs have been suffocated, so that nothing will satisfy him but that the mouth of the den must have been hermetically sealed!

absurd. Yet, on the other hand, they multiply miracies without a warrant who assume that the stater was created for the occasion; nay more, they step altogether out of the proper sphere of miracle into that of absolute creation; for in the miracle, as distinguished from the act of pure creation, there is always a nature-basis to which the divine power which works the wonder more or less closely links itself. That divine power which dwelt in Christ, restored, as in the case of the sick, the halt, the blind; it multiplied, as the bread in the wilderness; it changed into a nobler substance, as the water at Cana; it quickened and revived, as Lazarus and the daughter of Jairus; it brought together, as here, by wonderful coincidences, the already existing; but, as far as our records reach, it formed no new limbs; it made no bread, no wine, out of nothing; it created no new men: never passed over on any one occasion into the region of absolute creation."

The allegorical interpretations, or rather uses, of this miracle, for they are seldom intended for more, have not much to attract; neither that of Clement of Alexandria,3 that each skilful fisher of men' will, like Peter, remove the coin of pride and avarice and luxury, from the mouth. of them whom he has drawn up by the hook of the Gospel from the waste waters of the world; nor yet that which St. Ambrose brings forward, wherein the stater plays

1 So does Seb. Schmidt (Fascic. Diss. p. 796). Chrysostom (Hom. lxxxvii. in Joh.) accounts in like manner for the fish which the disciples find ready upon the shore (John xxi. 9); and some will have that Christ not merely gave sight to, but made organs of vision for, the man who was born blind (John ix.).

2 The accounts are numerous of precious things found in the bellies of fishes. The story of Polycrates' ring is well known (Herodotus, iii. 42); and in Jewish legend Solomon, having lost his ring of power, recovers it in the same unexpected way (Eisenmenger, Entdeckt. Judenth. vol. i. p. 360). Augustine (De Civ. Dei, xxii. 8) records a like incident in his own day, in which he sees a providential dealing of God, answering the prayer, and supplying the need, of one of his servants.

3 Pædag. ii. vol. i. p. 172, Potter's ed.; cf. Origen, Comm. in Matt. for the same.

2

1

altogether a different, indeed an opposite, part; nor has Augustine's more to draw forth our assent. It is superfluous to press further a miracle already so rich in teaching as this approves itself to be.

1 Hexaëm. v. 6: Ideo misit retia, et complexus est Stephanum, qui de Evangelio primus ascendit [ròv åvaßávτa æpõster] habens in ore suo staterem justitiæ. Unde confessione constanti clamavit, dicens: Ecce video cælos apertos, et Filium hominis stantem ad dexteram Dei. So Hilary, Comm. in Matt. in loc.

2 Enarr. in Ps. cxxxvii. 8: Primum surgentem de mari, primogenitum a mortuis; for by Him, he says, with the error which runs through his whole interpretation, ab exactione hujus seculi liberamur.

ST.

29. THE RAISING OF LAZARUS.

JOHN xi. I-54.

T. JOHN expressly states towards the close of his Gospel that there were many signs wrought by the Lord in the presence of his disciples which were not written in his book, but that enough were recorded to make evident that Jesus was the Christ, the Son of God (xx. 30, 31; xxi. 35). He has indeed shown a remarkable restraint, even a parsimony, in the commemoration of these. He has in no instance more than one miracle of the same kind; thus one healing of the lame (v. 9), one opening of blind eyes (ix. 7), one raising from the dead, namely this of Lazarus; and, as wrought by the Lord in the days of his flesh, only seven miracles in all-these seven again dividing themselves into two groups, of four and of three; four wrought in Galilee, and three in Judæa. When we call to mind the frequent grouping by seven both in his Gospel and in the Apocalypse, we can hardly account this number accidental. We have now reached the last of this seven; it is not for nothing that it should thus be the last, and so occupy the place which it does just at the close of Christ's ministry on earth. He who was Himself so soon to taste of death will show Himself by this infallible proof the Lord of life and conqueror of death; who, redeeming the soul of another from the grave, would assuredly not lack the power to redeem his own from the same.

It must always remain a mystery why this miracle, transcending as it does all other miracles which the Lord