horting to virtue and dissuading from vice in general terms. It would
never have entered into the thoughts of either, to have crowded together
such a number of allusions to time, place, and other little circumstances,
as occur, for instance, in the sermon on the mount, and which nothing but
the actual presence of the objects could have suggested (See Bishop Law's
Life of Christ).

II. There appears to me to exist an affinity between the history of
Christ's placing a little child in the midst of his disciples, as
related by the first three evangelists, (Matt. xviii. 1. Mark ix. 33.
Luke ix. 46.) and the history of Christ's washing his disciples' feet,
as given by Saint John. (Chap. xiii. 3.) In the stories themselves there
is no resemblance. But the affinity which I would point out consists in
these two articles: First, that both stories denote the emulation which
prevailed amongst Christ's disciples, and his own care and desire to
correct it; the moral of both is the same. Secondly, that both stories
are specimens of the same manner of teaching, viz., by action; a mode of
emblematic instruction extremely peculiar, and, in these passages,
ascribed, we see, to our Saviour by the first three evangelists, and by
Saint John, in instances totally unlike, and without the smallest
suspicion of their borrowing from each other.

III. A singularity in Christ's language which runs through all the
evangelists, and which is found in those discourses of Saint John that
have nothing similar to them in the other Gospels, is the appellation of
"the Son of man;" and it is in all the evangelists found under the
peculiar circumstance of being applied by Christ to himself, but of
never being used of him, or towards him, by any other person. It occurs
seventeen times in Matthew's Gospel, twenty times in Mark's, twenty-one
times in Luke's and eleven times in John's, and always with this
restriction.

IV. A point of agreement in the conduct of Christ, as represented by his
different historians, is that of his withdrawing himself out of the way
whenever the behaviour of the multitude indicated a disposition to
tumult.

Matt. xiv. 22. "And straightway Jesus constrained his disciples to get
into a ship, and to go before him unto the other side, while he sent the
multitude away. And when he had sent the multitude away, he went up into
a mountain apart to pray."

Luke v. 15, 16. "But so much the more went there a fame abroad of him,
and great