(a.) Luke states that while the Jewish priest Zacharias, in the order of his course, was burning incense in the temple, the angel of the Lord appeared, standing on the right side of the altar. The old priest was startled. The angel told him that his wife Elizabeth should bear a son, who should be great in the sight of the Lord, who should turn many of the children of Israel to the Lord their God, and make ready a people prepared for the Lord. Zacharias had a misgiving that the event predicted could not well happen, as he himself was an old man, and his wife "well stricken in years." Whereupon the angel announced himself to be Gabriel, who stands in the presence of God, and forthwith he inflicted dumbness on Zacharias, to last until the child was born, as a punishment for his very reasonable doubt. Hark! the clanking clog of priestcraft the harsh ring of intolerance! Punishment because of reasonable doubt of a supernatural event not verified! Are the angels, then, on the side of the persecutors? Are they so sensitive of their "_ipse dixit?_" Thomas the disciple, it is mentioned, dis-believed in the risen Jesus, but Jesus appeared again to satisfy his doubts. Sarah, the wife of Abraham, laughed heartily when she heard the Lord announcing to her husband that she should bear a son when her child-bearing condition was past, and was kindly rebuked. Jesus in John, and the Lord in Genesis, had a tenderness to human doubt of a reasonable character; but Luke's peremptory angel was not for one moment to be gainsaid. Is this disposition angelic or earthly? Has such a temper of mind never been known among men? But to return to the narrative. Zacharias himself was the only one who saw the angel. Aged at the date of John's birth, neither he nor his wife could have been alive when Luke wrote. Who, then, came between Zacharias and Luke? Whose report has Luke credited? This is not a question of the credibility of Zacharias or the credibility of Luke, but of some unknown go-between, one or more. And can such unknown go-between be credited in view of the silence of John and Matthew; in view of the silence of Mark, the companion of Peter, who was (John i 41) a follower of John the Baptist? Surely the hesitating Zachariases, the doubting Thomases, and the mocking Sarahs of modern times are to be dealt with tenderly.