After the New Testament, in this valuable MS., is placed the epistle ascribed to Barnabas. It is complete. It was written some time between the year 70 and the close of the first century, and it contains these words:--"_Let us therefore beware lest we should be found as it is written, Many are called, few are chosen._" These words certainly appear to be quoted from the twenty-second chapter of Matthew, but our author says there is a similar passage in the apocryphal book of Ezra--"_There be many created, but few shall be saved_," and he asks us to believe it is quoted from the latter. As we have not the same bias as he has, we decline, for obvious reasons, to do so, although he points out that the verse in Matthew is not in the oldest codex. Unfortunately the one in the British Museum is defective at that part, but the verse appears in later MSS. He says, had the Epistle of Barnabas been seriously regarded as a work of the apostle of that name, it could scarcely have failed to attain canonical rank. If this be our author's opinion, there was more discrimination used by the men who decided what writings were admissible into the canon than he has elsewhere given them credit for. The Epistle of Barnabas also contains the following important passage:-- "_But when he selected his own apostles, who should preach his gospel, who were sinners above all sin, in order that he might show that he came not to call the righteous, but sinners, then he manifested himself to be the Son of God._" Our author says that the words "_he came not to call the righteous, but sinners_," very probably a pious scribe added in the margin, and they were afterwards included in the text of the epistle. I remark that this is quite a gratuitous assumption. I see no probability of anything of the kind, and I agree with Tischendorf, who asks, "Could any one mistake the words being a quotation from Matt. ix. 13?" But our author insinuates that this chapter should be dissected, and the miraculous eliminated. He says the words of Jesus, "They that be whole need not a physician, but they that are sick," "evidently belong to the oldest tradition of the Gospel;" and he gives the opinion of Ewald, who ascribed them (ver. 1214), apart from the remainder of the chapter, originally to the _collection of discourses_[27] from which, with two intermediate books, he considers our present Gospel of Matthew was composed. [27] Spruchsammlung. These are the sort of conjectures upon which our author builds his argument. The ninth chapter of Matthew is too full of the miraculous to be accepted as a whole. It records how Jesus forgave sins, to the sick gave health, to the blind sight, to the dumb speech, and to the dead life; all of which is out of keeping with his bias and the German rationalism with which he has such profound sympathy.