Union Notes on the Gospels; Compiled and Prepared with Especial Reference to the Wants of Parents and Sunday-School Teachers (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1855. Excerpt: ... because the Evangelists have made them. For if the same Spirit that declared the prophecies of the Old Testament, dictated also the interpretations of them in the New, he surely best knew his own design, and could best determine to whom, and to what, they were meant to be ultimately referred. Ch. Hi. 1.--In those days, &c.--John the Baptist's entrance on his ministry was probably about twenty-eight years after the event last mentioned, and when he himself was about thirty years of age. Num. iv. 3. We learn, from Luke i 80., that he had been brought up from his childhood in a secluded part of the country, probably in the neighbourhood of Hebron. See Luke v. 39. Having been there trained and prepared by God himself for the work which had been assigned him, he now received the divine command to enter upon it. See Luke iii. 2. The duration of his ministry is generally supposed not to have exceeded a year at the utmost. Preaching or proclaiming: that is, as a herald. The word preach, as used in Scripture, commonly implies the public declaration of divine truth in brief and comprehensive terms. See further on ch. iv. 23. The word wilderness, or desert, in the New Testament, denotes merely an uninclosed, unfilled, and thinly-peopled district. That in which John preached was in the neighbourhood of the river Jordan. John the Baptist.--Baptism had long been in use among the Jews as the initiatory rite by which they admitted proselytes to the privileges of the Jewish religion. It was used by John--the herald of the gospel kingdom--as the door of entrance to the visible Christian church. As this denoted his particular office, and as he baptized so many, he received the title of "the Baptist." He would thus also be distinguished from John the Evangelist. 2. And sayin...