tentative_--essays at obtaining the true order, rather than the certain
determination of it.

The relative number of _chapters_ in the different gospels does
not give their true relation in respect to _size_. The chapters
are respectively 28, 16, 24, 21; which are to each other in the
proportion of 7, 4, 6, 5 1/4. But estimating according to the
number of pages (in an edition without breaks for the verses),
it will be found that the gospel of Luke holds the first place,
its size being to that of the other gospels nearly as 60 to 57,
35, 46. The relation of Matthew's gospel to that of Mark, in
respect to the quantity of matter is then nearly that of 8 to 5.

In the notices of the separate gospels which follow it is not
thought necessary to give an elaborate analysis of their
contents. The aim will be rather to exhibit the prominent
characteristics of each, and its special office in the economy
of divine revelation.

II. MATTHEW.

11. The unanimous testimony of the ancient church is that the first
gospel was written by the _apostle Matthew_, who is also called Levi.
With his call to the apostleship he may have assumed the name of
Matthew, as Saul took that of Paul. He was of Hebrew origin, the son of
Alphaeus, and a tax-gatherer under the Roman government, Matt. 10:3;
Mark 2:14; 3:18; Luke 5:27, 29; 6:15; Acts 1:13. He was evidently a man
of some means (Luke 5:29), and his office must have required for its
proper discharge a knowledge of the Greek as well as of his native
Hebrew; that is, Aramaean, as the word Hebrew means in the New
Testament, when applied to the vernacular of the Palestine Jews.

12. The question respecting the _original language_ of Matthew's gospel
has been, since the time of Erasmus, a matter of controversy, in which
eminent biblical scholars have been found on different sides. The
problem is to find a solution which shall bring into harmony the
following well-established facts: (1) that, according to the united
testimony of the early church fathers, Matthew originally wrote his
gospel in Hebrew; (2) that our present Greek gospel has all the freedom
of an original work, that it has remarkable coincidences in language
with the second and third gospels, and especially that the citations
from the Old Testament which stand in our Lord's discourses follow as a
rule the Greek version of the Seventy; (3) that all the early writers,
those who te