repeated acts of forbearance, at last to be offering him inducements to offend against one so placable? And if these transgressions are thus enormously multiplied, will it not be right that I should withhold the kind consideration which is made of so little account?” The answer of Jesus is, “I say to thee, not merely till seven times, but till seventy times seven.” That is, “To your forbearance towards an erring and returning Christian brother, there should be no limit but his own obstinate adhesion to his error. In coming out from the world to follow me, you have given up your natural rights to avenge, either legally or personally, those injuries which pass the bounds of common forbearance. The preservation of perfect harmony in the new community to which you have joined yourself, is of so much importance to the triumphant advancement of our cause, as to require justly all these sacrifices of personal ill-will.” With his usual readiness in securing an abiding remembrance of his great leading rules of action, Jesus, on this occasion, concluded the subject with illustrating the principle, by a beautiful parable or story; a mode of instruction, far more impressive to the glowing imagination of the oriental, than of the more calculating genius of colder races. This inquiry may have been suggested to Peter by a remark made by Christ, which is not given by Matthew as by Luke, (xvii. 4.) “If he sin against thee seven times in a day, and seven times turn again, &c. thou shalt forgive him.” So Maldorat suggests, but it is certainly very hard to bring these two accounts to a minute harmony, and I should much prefer to consider Luke as having given a general statement of Christ’s doctrine, without referring to the occasion or circumstances, while Matthew has given a more distinct account of the whole matter. The discrepancy between the two accounts has seemed so great, that the French harmonists, Newcome, LeClerc, Macknight, Thirlwall, and Bloomfield, consider them as referring to totally different occasions,――that in Matthew occurring in Capernaum, but that in Luke, after his journey to Jerusalem to the feast of the tabernacles. But the utter absence of all chronological order in the greater part of Luke’s gospel, is enough to make us suspect, that the event he alludes to may coincide with that of Matthew’s story, since the amount of the precept, and the general form of expression, is the same in both cases. This is the view taken by Rosenmueller, Kuinoel, Vater, Clarke, Paulus, and which seems to be further justified by the consideration, that the repetition of the precept must have been entirely unnecessary, after having been so clearly laid down, and so fully re-examined in answer to Peter’s inquiry, as given by Matthew.