St. Matthew's Gospel : with the Parallel Passages in the
other- Evangelists, showing their Agreements and Differences. With Notes and Comments. (Nimmo, Edinburgh and London.)—The anonymous author of this volume appears to have written it with the design of combatting the doctrine of the verbal inspiration of Scripture,—a theory which seems to be almost extinct among educated people in England, but which may possibly still retain its hold upon the minds of orthodox Presbyterians beyond the Border. The writer seems to think that it is his special mission to oppose this dogma, and he finds in every apparent discrepancy in the Gospel narratives a proof of the truth of his opinion, which he reiterates with a pertinacity which soon becomes wearisome to the reader. The same may be said of his views on the Incarnation and the Trinity, in which we find little which can lay claim either to originality or to sound. scholarship. Some of the notes, however, are novel enough Thus, on St. Luke i., 28, we are told that "the angel's salutation only went the length of saying that Mary was to be blessed among women, which words explicitly exclude her from being blessed among men!" ".0 vas ref; icv0p4roo" is translated "the son of the man," "evidently having reference to the prophecies which foretold that he should be the son of the man David." The commentator believes that "the Church of Rome adopted the Greek goddess here as her female divinity, under the christianised name of the Virgin Mary !" We are told that, if this work meets with the requisite encouragement, the other Gospels will be published in a similar form. We cannot think that such an extension of the author's labours would be likely to meet with much success.
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