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    same person for the same object , though the account of them be less circumstantial and satisfactory in itself . I shall content myself , therefore , with commenting on the theory proposed for the two principal miracles assigned to the second and third classes respectively ;—only observing further , in respect to the first class , that if they stood alone , it would be necessary to prove more satisfactorily than the writer has done , the previous existence of that * state of excitement and confident

    expectation which can produce the cure , more or less sudden and complete , of diseases '—p . 87 . He has attempted to show that this excitement of feeling had been called forth towards Jesus , by his natural qualities and his accordance with the prejudices and expectations of the Jews ; but if he has overrated the personal influence of Jesus , and not correctly represented

    him as falling in with the universal expectations concerning the Messiah , —if our Lord did , on the contrary , bitterly disappoint those hopes by his conduct , and even sometimes , if not often , discountenance them in express words , —we have then no adequate cause assigned for the origination , or at any rate for the continuance of the assumed * state of excitement and confident 5

    expectation . To imposture on the part of the patient 9 the alleged resurrection of Lazarus is ascribed . The sisters are implicated in the imposture ;—Jesus ( strange to say !) is innocent of it , and is himself made to suppose that he is working a miracle—the puppet moved by the hands of Mary and Martha , for the advancement of his own glory i How to argue with a man who proposes such an

    hypothesis , I confess I scarcely know . Can he really know what human nature is ?—can he recognize the internal marks of truth in a simple , unadorned tale ?—has he ever heard the accents of real affection grieving over bereavement , and gently reproaching the supposed neglect of some one scarcely less loved than the dead , that he could thus interpret the scene at the grave of

    Lazarus ? The grave , ' we are told , ' was a cave , and a stone lay upon it . When Jesus came , Lazarus had been there four days : his sisters might visit him at night with food , free him from his bandages , and allow him to come forth . On Jesus ' s near approach , Martha went to meet him , and complaining that had he been with them , her brother had not died ,

    expressed her conviction , that eVen now he would be restored to life if Jesus would ask it of God , &c . '—( p . 111 . ) Oh , well-dissembling sister ! And Mary , too , whose grief was more overpowering still ! No wonder it imposed upon the bystanding Jews , and wrung from them tears of superfluous sympathy ! No wonder that Jesus himself was deluded by the well-acted drama ; and that to the time when John recorded it , the cheat should never have been suspected b y those who had witnessed its enactment { Ths only wonder w , that tbi » pigns $ upi ! y J * a 4 wt telcep the

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    Orthodoxy and Unheliej . & 33

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Dec. 2, 1832, page 833, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1826/page/41/