made up. Every individual member in his separate capacity, and before he entered the assembly, is perfectly fallible; when there, he utters the very opinions which he brought there, and tenders the vote which he previously designed; yet "the aggregate of these fallibilities is inspiration!" As ten millions of circles can never make a square, so, argues Dr. Primrose, the united voice of myriads cannot lend the smallest foundation to falsehood. Reasoners on the doctrines of the New Academy have unreasonably enough alleged that, although no single sense does actually convey to us a correct impression of anything, nevertheless we are enabled so to confirm or modify the report of one sense by the report of another sense, that the result of the whole activity of the five senses is a true impression of the external Thing. This is a curious fallacy, observes one of their critics: it pretends that "a number of false impressions are sufficient to constitute a true one!" Southey, in the well-known imaginary conversation with Porson, cites as too self-evident for argument the truism, that the opinion of a thousand millions who are ignorant or ill-informed,* is not equal to the opinion of only one who is wiser. Hamlet sets off the judgment of the single judicious spectator against that of the "unskilful" and overbearing throng; "the censure of which one, must, in your allowance, o'erweigh a whole theatre of others." Non numero hæc judicantur sed pondere.

* An able dissertator on Taste shows that it is not from the greatest number of voices, but from the opinion of the greatest number of wellinformed minds, that we can establish, if not an absolute standard, at least a comparative scale, of taste. And while he freely admits that the greater the number of persons of strong natural sensibility or love for any art, and who have paid the closest attention to it, who agree in their admiration of any work of art, the higher do its pretensions rise to classical taste and intrinsic beauty; so, on the other hand, he urges that, as the opinion of a thousand good judges may outweigh that of nearly all the rest of the world, there may again be one individual among them whose opinion may outweigh that of the other nine hundred and ninety-nine; that is, one of a still stronger and more refined perception of beauty than all the rest, and to whose opinion that of the others and of the world at large would approximate and be conformed, as their taste advanced in culture.

O

XXIX.

MARTHA AND MARY.

ST. LUKE X. 38 seq.

LSHAUSEN observes that the account given in St. Luke's gospel of the two sisters of Bethany marks them, though in few touches, so strikingly and clearly, that they are often chosen as the exemplars of the peculiarities of two distinct religious tendencies: Martha being the recognized type of a life busily devoted to externals; and Mary of quiet self-devotion to the Divine as the one thing needful. "Among the apostles, Peter corresponded to Martha; John, on the other hand, to Mary." * The same commentator, while affirming that to a certain extent both tendencies will be combined in each believer, is careful not to overlook the existence of different vocations, or the fact of many being better fitted for busy outward labours than for an inner comtemplative life, although the most active must cultivate a real spirit of devotion, and the most contemplative must consecrate his energies to a practical service of God. Although Mary, as Jeremy Taylor says, was commended for choosing the better part, yet Mary had done worse, if she had been at the feet of her Master when she should have relieved a perishing brother. "Martha was troubled with much serving; that was more than need,

* Dr. Newman somewhere calls attention to the fact that Simon remained at his nets, while his brother Andrew followed John the Baptist; and that Andrew first recognized the Messiah among the inhabitants of despised Nazareth, and brought his brother to Him; yet to Andrew, Christ spake no word of commendation which has been allowed to continue on record, whereas to Simon, even at his first coming, He gave the honourable name by which he is now designated, and afterwards put him forward as the typical foundation of His Church. Nothing, indeed, can hence be inferred, one way or other, concerning the relative excellence of the two brothers. "Andrew is scarcely known, except by name, while Peter has ever held the place of honour all over the Church; yet Andrew brought Peter to Christ." Suum cuique is at times an ideal law, rather than a practical or plainly practicable one, in this busy world of ours.

and therefore she was to blame; and sometimes hearing, in some circumstances, may be more than needs; and some women are troubled with overmuch hearing, and then they had better have been serving the necessities of their house."

The address of Jesus to Martha is justly held to refer less to household activity in itself (for that must be cared for) than to the state of mind in which she went about it, and the comparison she instituted in this respect between herself and Mary. Busying herself to provide the best entertainment she could for the beloved Guest, she exaggerated the relative value of her household diligence; and from the gratification she felt in Siakovía a term comprising "all domestic services in which Martha lost herself in needless bustle "-from the enjoyment she felt in her congenial occupations, arose the reproving speech directed against her sister.* Martha's implied rebuke of Mary, whom indeed she desires our Lord implicitly to rebuke, is itself rebuked in His reply. He rebukes first the μεριμνᾶν and τυρβάζειν—the being careful and troubled, turbari, about many things—that is, her "restless spirit of action, as moved by the impulses of creature affection;" and next, He contrasts the trivial many things, Toλλά, with the indispensable one thing, &,-intimating at the same time that for the sake of the former she was losing the latter; though the many things might be dispensed with, the one thing not.

There is something of gentle chiding too, or mild rebuke, in our Lord's "Said I not to thee. ?" addressed to Martha, at her brother's grave. He had just bidden them take away the stone; and the doing so would, as Dr. Hanna puts it, at once expose the dead, and let loose the foul effluvium of the advanced decomposition. "The careful Martha, whose active spirit ever busied itself with the outward and tangible side of

*

"Perhaps conscience stirred her up and testified that Mary had more of Jesus than she. But as her craving for the heavenly was not sufficiently strong and pure, she suffered herself to be fettered by external activities, which in reality were more agreeable to her, and out of this state of mind may have arisen her speech. Jealous of Mary, she wished her to be as she herself was."-Olshausen.

things, at once perceives this, and hastens to interpose a check." Let us, however, be prompt to remember, with Bishop Hall, that "it was Martha who went to meet Jesus." So was it—to recall the assumed affinity between Martha and Peter on one side, Mary and John on the other,- -so was it Peter who "went into the sepulchre" of his risen Lord. John had outrun Peter, when to the sepulchre they ran both together. John came first to the sepulchre; yet went he not in.

Modern criticism is caustic on Bishop Fisher's elaboration of a parallel between the Lady Margaret and Martha of Bethany, in four respects. First, nobility of person; second, discipline of her body; third, in ordering her soul to God; fourth, in hospitality and charity. "Now," urges the author of the Biographia Borealis, "unless there be, as in all probability there is, a traditional history of Martha, containing many particulars not recorded by the evangelists, it would puzzle a herald to prove her nobility, except it consisted in her descent from Abraham, which made her akin to the kings of Israel and Judah." He adds that neither does it appear in Scripture that she disciplined her body in the sense here meant; while, as to the third and fourth conformities, it is observable that "in the only passage of the gospel wherein much is said about Martha, she is rather reproved for not turning her soul to God, and for being too intent upon her hospitality. But it had long been a commonplace to represent Martha and Mary as the types or symbols of the active and the contemplative + duties, and every good woman was compared to one or the other."

* On which point a foreign divine, already cited, observes, in reference to Martha's being described as owner of a house in the kwμn of Bethany, that whether she was a widow, or lived unmarried with her sister and Lazarus, cannot be determined, the evangelists being "remarkably sparing in their historic notices of the persons mentioned by them. They confine themselves to what is simply necessary, and are intent rather on the delineation of their spiritual life."

† Mr. E. S. Dallas, in his elaborate treatise on the science of criticism, glances casually but effectively at this symbolism. He is showing that ours is a chequered life, in which the moral forces cross and counteract each other, and in which no one of them can be regarded as by itself per

Hartley Coleridge himself compares a good woman to them both; or, at least, exhorts, in a hortatory sonnet, a winsome Martha of his acquaintance to emulate the excellence of each. "Thou bear'st a name by Jesus known and loved; And Jesus gently did the maid reprove

For too much haste to show her eager love.
But blest is she that may be so reproved.

Be Martha still in deed and good endeavour,
In faith like Mary, at His feet for ever.”

Of pure devotionality, more common in Roman Catholic countries than in England, Arthur H. Clough had this to say, in his review of Professor Newman's book on the Soul,—that the religionist who practises it simply ignores the exterior world; all that is done is merely mechanical, and absorption in the contemplation of the Deity is the whole life: to sit at the feet of an Unseen Visitant, to gaze on a celestial countenance, visible to the entranced one alone, and to listen to words spiritually discerned, inaudible to the carnal,—this is the one thing needful with which Martha must not interfere, however much Mary be needed for the many things of service. “In this life, except perhaps that the beatified Mary of necessity postulates the existence of the unblest Martha, there is at least consistency and unity. But, obliged as most people must be to mix with things earthly, and be cumbered and careful and troubled, they have to settle the question of reconciling the world and the Spirit, they have to make themselves holy friendships out of the unrighteous Mammon, to serve God in the world and in their generation." It is of millennial days that Doctor Hopkins

fect. Justice without mercy, for instance, becomes hateful, and the gentleness of doves may fail if divorced from the wisdom of serpents. There may be too much of a good thing: the moral not less than the physical earth needs change of weather, and could not thrive either in eternal sunshine or in eternal showers. So it is absurd, he argues, to speak of poetry and the fine arts as if they had not their weak side. "Religion itself has its weak side; and Mary, who sits at the feet of Jesus, knows not how much she owes to Martha, who takes the burden of the household cares." The life poetical and the life practical-this is his conclusion-may have each its virtues; but evidently they are virtues that, carried to certain, or uncertain, lengths, encroach upon each other.