ever, that the name of the Virgin, is, on the authority of the best MSS., given generally as Mariam, whilst her sister, Mary of Cleophas (properly" Clopas "), is Maria. There seems to have been a close companionship, as well as sisterly affection, between these two sisters; and it is probable that they resided together, being widows (Joseph and Alphæus being dead), according to a tradition which is supported by the silence of the Gospels concerning their life.

Some critics identify Mary Salome with the sister of Mary, our Lord's mother, mentioned in S. John xix. 25; if so, there was close relationship between the three. But the identification of Mary Salome with Mary of Cleophas, mentioned in the Fragment of Papias, is not supported by the opinion of critics.

It may be noticed that Mary, the sister of Lazarus, is not mentioned in the Fragment of Papias. It may be that she is thus identified with Mary Magdalene; but the great opinion of the early Fathers is against this identification. It was, we know, supported by the Church of Rome in the Middle Ages, which leaned to that view; but it is now universally rejected.

This identification (if it be so) of Mary Magdalene and Mary the sister of Lazarus, would, as it is contrary to the view of the early Fathers, throw suspicion on the authenticity of this fragment; to which, indeed, a late date has been assigned.

No. XVIII.

On xxxi. 36.

NECESSITY OF DEATH TO MAN.

It might be an interesting subject of inquiry (though the data must be insufficient, and the merest digest of authors, scientific and theological, voluminous), whether death would be a necessity to the bodies of men; whether, had Adam remained unfallen, the death which was passed as a penalty, might have ensued through natural

causes.

It is certain that death was present in the world before our era, as may be gathered from the various remains, fossil and other, which have come down to us; and therefore, if death could affect animal life, might it not have affected the animal life of man? Could the body of man necessarily have withstood the many accidents incidental to residence on earth? Would not a falling tree, a landslip, a falling rock, have utterly crushed and destroyed life, as it must have mutilated the body? Could it ever have been possible to such a body as ours to live in water, to withstand fire, to exist in entire vitiation of air? Could it, supposing its accidental prevention from obtaining food, have lived on without natural food?

And the possibility of dangers and accidents such as these, or similar in effect to them, may have lurked in the groves, amidst the rivers, and in the glades of the plain of Eden. This body of ours was not a spiritual body before Christ, the first Adam of the resurrection of life; it had the limitations, and was subject to the laws, of bodies formed from "the dust of the earth." Does not the very necessity of eating argue a necessity of replenishing vital powers; and therefore, in the failure of proper food, a possibility of death? Could it ever have been possible to man to distil from the herbarium of earth, which formed his original grant of food (Gen. i. 29), the elixir of immortal life?

It may have been, however, one of the privileges bestowed on those whom God created in His own image and likeness, to be exempt from the action of the law of death. There was around them, we know, the protection of ministering spirits. "The tree of life in the midst of the garden" of Eden, may have had properties which were necessary for the sustentation of life even there; or was a sacramental emblem, as the ancient writers thought, of such a gift. At any rate, the fact of there being such a tree, endowed with the properties ascribed to it, is suggestive of immortality not being naturally inherent in man's body, but dependent on the use of some gift of God external to himself, and dependent on the will of God.

It is declared distinctly and invariably in Holy Scripture, that death came into the world by sin, and that "death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned;" but we can scarcely argue from this that man's body must otherwise have been endued with immortality, and that it could not possibly have become subject to death.

It seems that man's body was not in itself suitable for existence in the heaven of heavens, amongst the inhabitants of the spirit world. Before he could be admitted into another state of being, beyond earth, he must be "translated" (whatever change that word expresses) by the power of God. Enoch and Elijah, that we know of, were thus translated, because they pleased God. The change to the spiritual body of the resurrection may have passed upon them, either in anticipation of, or, far more likely, after our Lord's resurrection; at any rate, they retained their bodies of earth without losing them by death. It appears, however, that before Christ's entrance into heaven, they had not ascended up into heaven; and must therefore have remained, embodied, amongst the disembodied saints of the world of saved spirits. (See Essay, "The Descent into Hell.")

We see from their case that it need not follow that man must die. The longevity of the antediluvian world proves that considerable limits of extension could be assigned to the bodily life, even after its subjection to the law of death; what may not, therefore, have been possible before the entrance of that mortal law? It is enough, however, to ask if man could be mortal before Adam fell; whether

it was his privilege to escape death by "translation" in God's time; and whether his punishment was his subjection to a natural law, to which it had been his happy destiny to be superior; or was it a new law, to which his unfallen nature could not possibly, under any circumstances, have been subjected?

Does not Christ's death further suggest the exercise of a law always possible to our animal body? Our Lord's body was not mortal by Adam's sentence; yet, at His permission (permission, we gather from Holy Scripture, not compulsion), it experienced natural death; and at His will passed under the action of the law now universally reigning in the world. In all things connected with His human body, we find our Lord subject to the will of the Father, dependent on His preservation, and obedient to His rules of life, and, finally, "obedient unto death."

It is declared that life and immortality were brought to light, by our Saviour Jesus Christ, through the Gospel (2 Tim. i. 10)—a statement which suggests powerfully that these were not previously necessary conditions and properties of the body of man; they may have been gifts destined and held in reserve for him, but not, even in his unfallen state, his by necessity of being. He had an immortal soul; but was it not always, for residence on earth, the tenant of a body to which mortality was possible?

We cannot decide these points, which neither revelation has unveiled, nor science can certify to us. We may, however, be permitted to suppose that death might have befallen man (even as now it must); but that the law of man's access to heaven would probably have been by "translation" in God's good time; and that then, by God's gift, he could have been endowed with a more abundant life than that of his earthly sojourn-with, in fact, the spiritual life which Christ "brought to light," and which became revealed to him from the date of the resurrection of Christ, who reversed, and more than reversed, the sentence which had passed on the human race through the fall of Adam; that, in short, unlike the existence of the soul, immortality of the body must always have been the special gift of God, even as now we are told the crowning blessing and "gift of God is eternal life, through Jesus Christ our Lord."

No. XIX.

On xxxi. 37; xxxii. 18; II. i. 6.

INSEPARABILITY OF CHRIST'S NATURES.

On this point, the orthodox writers, both of ancient and modern times, are explicit, and are agreed. They declare that the Divine and human natures are inseparable. Their being held separable would involve the capital heresy of the Nestorians, who asserted that there were two distinct persons, as well as natures, in Christ; and it would affect the great doctrine of the Atonement. For, if severed from the Godhead, the manhood could not of itself atone for the sins of the whole world; for then Christ would not have died for the sins of the world, as, in His human nature, He did die. But, God and man being one Christ, "God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son," not merely a sinless human form taken up for the occasion, and disunited from the Divine Son by death; but the God and man, which were thus one Christ.

Hooker, after discussing the union of the two distinct natures of God and man in one Christ, thus sums up the teaching of the Church on this point: "These natures, from the moment of their first combination, have been, and are for ever inseparable.__For even when His soul forsook the tabernacle of His body, His Deity forsook neither body nor soul. If it had, then we could not truly hold either that the person of Christ was buried, or that the person of Christ did raise up itself from the grave. For the body separated from the Word can, in no true sense, be termed the person of Christ; nor is it true to say that the Son of God, in raising up that body, did raise up Himself, if the body were not both with Him, and of Him, even during the time it lay in the sepulchre. The like is to be said of the soul, otherwise we are plainly and inevitably Nestorians.

"The very person of Christ, therefore, for ever one and the selfsame, was, only touching bodily substance, concluded within the grave, His soul being only thence severed, but by personal union His Deity still inseparably joined with both." ("Eccles. Polity," V. lii. 4.)

Bishop Pearson says, "Christ raised Himself from death, according to His express prediction; for the union of the two natures (the Divine and human) still remained; nor was the soul or the body of Christ separated from the Divinity, but still subsisted, as they did before, by the subsistence of the second Person of the Trinity."

No. XX.

On xxxii. 11; II. i. 2.

THE SABBATH AND THE LORD'S DAY.

The change of the world's day of rest from the seventh to the first day of the week, is a very extraordinary one. It must have been by the direct order of Christ Himself that the change was made. No human order could have rightly superseded the obligation of that ordinance, which, in the beginning, God appointed in memory of the great work of creation. No sanction of the Christian Church, within the power of binding and loosing upon earth, could affect the rights which all mankind, within and without the pale of that Church, have in the original grant of the sabbath. God alone could declare that the work of redemption was greater than that even of creation, and man's real interest in it higher; and that therefore the Lord's day should take the place of the sabbath as blessed by Him, and hallowed. Certainly, in no way more significant could we have decided the relative magnitude of His great works. The command itself is not stated in express terms; but from the date of the resurrection until the canon of Scripture closes, there is not only a cessation of the reference, so common in the four Gospels, to the observance of the sabbath, but also one continuous evidence of the Lord's day as the great day of Christians; and the conclusion is irresistible as to the truth of the testimony of ancient writings, and of tradition, that our Lord Himself ordained the observance of His own day.

Isaac Williams traces the coincidence between the act of the creation of man, and that of His ransom from death upon the sixth day of the week; of Christ's resting the seventh day from His work of grace, and rising again, as the "light of life," on the day when light was originally created. He quotes the opinion of Origen, that, "as two kind of creatures were formed on the Sunday, both animals and man, the animals were created on the forenoon of that day, and afterwards, perhaps at the sixth hour of that day, God said, 'Let Us make man in Our image,' which time, therefore, would correspond with the time of our Lord's dying upon the cross, and His Church being formed from His side. So that," he continues, "in the afternoon we were first created; and at the same period of the same day were redeemed and created anew in Christ. On the seventh day God rested from the work of creation; and on the same day Christ rested from the work of redemption in the grave. On Sunday God created the light; and on Sunday, Christ, the true Light of the new creation, came from the grave. That sabbath, also, on