a sister named Mary, who sat also at the Lord's feet, and hearkened to His word, &c. (x. 38-9.)

We now come to S. John:—

But there was a certain sick man, Lazarus, of Bethany, from the village of Mary and her sister Martha. It was Mary who anointed the Lord with ointment and wiped His feet with her hair, whose brother Lazarus was sick, &c, (xi. 1, 2)

Then, after Lazarus's resuscitation,—

They prepared for Him there a supper, and Martha ministered.......Mary therefore took a pound of precious ointment, and anointed the feet of Jesus, and wiped His feet with her hair; and the house was filled with the odour of tho ointment, &c. (xii. 2, 3.)

We do not insert the parallel passages to this last from S. Matthew and S. Mark; because it cannot be denied, without manifest eccentricity, that they are parallel and describe the same event. We further assume, as a position which cannot be denied without manifest eccentricity, that the Mary and Martha of Luke x. are identical with the Mary and Martha of S: John.

From these and other notices of Scripture we think that the two following conclusions, which are Maldonatus's, may be inferred, with the very highest degrce of probability which is short of absolute certainty. Firstly the anointing of Luke vii. is an entirely distinct act from that of John xii.; but secondly, the agent on both occasions was the same, being no other than S. Mary Magdalene. The latter of these conclusions has long been almost universal among Catholics. The former, we fancy, is advocated by various distinguished Catholic writers besides Maldonatus. He himself cites in its favour S. Ambrose, S. Augustine, and S. Bede. We can appeal on its behalf to the authority, singularly high on such a subject, of F. Coleridge. (Sce "Vita Vitæ," p. 67.) F. Newman, in his fourth Discourse to Mixed Congregations, takes it for granted. F. Dalgairns, in a passage which we shall quote before we conclude, implies the same opinion. Professor Plumptre (if we rightly understand him) ascribes it also to the Bollandist writer on July 22nd.

In behalf of this our first conclusion, we necd say very little : for we are throughout mainly contending against Protestants; and on this particular point we are in accordance with their almost unanimous opinion: though one of them, Hengstenberg, whom we name at the head of our article, warmly dissents. We refer our readers then to the reasoning of Maldonatus (in Matt. xxvi. 6 and John xi. 2), and only add three remarks of our own. (1) The testimony of S. John (xi. 2) seems to us almost decisive on the matter, as we shall presently point out

in a different connection. (2) To our mind, every attempt at harmonizing Luke vii. with John xii. does but place in clearer light the utter hopelessness of such a task; and we were never before so firmly convinced that the two scenes are distinct, as when we read Hengstenberg's laborious effort to prove them identical. (3) There is a distinction between the two anointings, which should by no means escape notice. In S. Luke the peccatrix moistens His feet with her tears: a circumstance most natural in the first transports of conversion, but which very significantly is absent from all three accounts of the anointing at Bethany. It may further be added that, as appears from S. Matthew and S. Mark, at Bethany Mary anointed, not His feet only but also His head. This is hardly reconcilable with the wording of Luke vii.; while at the same time, as Mr. Isaac Williams points out, the change of action is most touchingly significative of her changed situation. at the later period, and of her increased confidence in her Saviour's love. Indeed if we look at the two narratives with all their attendant circumstances, we may say that the earlier act is the more excited, the later the more solemn and (as one may say) more ritual.

The main stress however of our argument must evidently turn on the second of our two conclusions. In behalf of this conclusion, we shall lay down three successive theses. And our first shall be, that-putting aside all the texts which mention Magdalene Mary of Bethany is pointed out in Scripture as identical with the peccatrix of Luke vii. Protestant commentators in general are especially earnest against this particular thesis. "Many persons" says Mr. Williams "would be inclined to allow that Magdalene may be Mary sister of Martha; and many would be disposed to take for granted that Magdalene was 'the sinner.' But most persons would be very loth to suppose that the good sister of Martha should be 'the sinner.'"+"There is not the slightest trace says Professor Plumptre (p. 257) "of the life of Mary of Bethany ever having been one of open and flagrant impurity." Such a supposition, Protestants often add, is considered additionally improbable, from the position held by her family. "All the circumstances of John xi. and xii.-the feast for so many guests, the number of friends who came from Jerusalem, the alabaster box, the ointment of spikenard very costly, the funeral vault of their own, point to wealth and social position

* "On the Passion," p. 412.

+ We should explain that Mr. Williams himself does incline to accept this view.

above the average." (Plumptre, p. 78.) Then again, as Protestants are especially fond of insisting, if this identity be supposed, "Mary, whom we have been accustomed to regard as a silent soul involved in meditation, who has opened her pure heart to the Redeemer as the tender flowers silently unfold themselves to the sun, becomes a wild and tameless woman, who first found in Christ stillness for her passions, and convulsively clings to Him still, lest the calmness of the waters of her soul should be exchanged again for tempest."*

We reserve to a later part of the article our inquiry, whether the character of Mary, Martha's sister, is in any respect different from what we might expect to find in the converted peccatrix: here we content ourselves with earnestly repudiating any such notion. As to the rest, we readily admit that a certain presumption arises against us, from the circumstances recounted in the objection. Still this presumption should go for very little indeed, considering that S. John testifies to our thesis almost in so many words. "It was Mary" he says (xi. 2) "who had anointed the Lord with oil,.... whose brother Lazarus was sick." As Maldonatus urges,-the Greek word is in the aorist after an imperfect, and necessarily refers to some act which had already taken place. “Ην δὲ Μαρία ἡ ἀλείψασα,” &c. &c. No one, unless he were quite recklessly defending a theory, would look this text deliberately in the face,† and dream of maintaining that it can be understood, without most grievous distortion, as referring to a future act. On the other hand be it remembered, that S. John wrote for the very purpose of supplementing the earlier Evangelists; and especially of sup plementing S. Luke. It was pointed out in our number for October 1864 (p. 427) by a writer, whom we may now without impropriety mention to have been F. Coleridge, that "almost the whole of S. John might be inserted in largo sections between various breaks in the third Gospel, and a continuous history be thus made up of the two." There really then cannot be a fair doubt, that S. John in this verse dis. tinctly declares the identity of Lazarus's sister with her, of whom S. Luke had narrated that she anointed the Lord with ointment and wiped His feet with her hair. t

This is Hengstenberg's account (p. 3) of an objection very common among Protestants, which he is to answer.

+ We mean to imply by this language, that the many Catholic writers, who identify the anointing of Luke vii. with that of Bethany, have not for the most part duly pondered this verse in the Greek, and deliberately given it an anticipatory sense. From the Latin alone, the argument is fas less strong.

It is a small matter, but worthy of mention, that all three of the Evan

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There can really be no fair doubt of this interpretation: still, since some (most strangely) have doubted it, we will add a corroboration, which on other grounds also is of some importance. It is evident that S. John was thinking of S. Luke in this part of his Gospel, because he refers to him in the preceding verse. "Lazarus was of Bethany, from the village of Mary and Martha;" i.e. he was an inhabitant of Bethany, but came originally from a certain other village. Greswell insists with much force on this distinction between "aπò” and "K" (Dissertations, vol. ii. p. 482); and is supported, not only by Professor Plumptre (p. 78, note), but also (as that writer mentions) by the illustrious scholar Hermann. Thus our Blessed Lord is always said to be “ ἀπὸ Ναζαρέτ,” and never once "K." And as Professor Plumptre justly observes, even though by degrees both words might come to be used apart with hardly any shade of difference, their use in close juxtaposition might still be antithetical: nay, we would even say, must be antithetical in the verse before us, because otherwise the change of prepositions in the same sentence would be senseless. Even apart from this particular linguistic question, there are strong grounds for our statement. It is surely a most forced hypothesis, that a place so important in Scripture as Bethany, and so frequently named, should be called by the title of "Mary and Martha's village." Still more unaccountable is it, that Bethany should be called "the village of Mary and Martha," rather than "of Lazarus" whom S. John is directly mentioning. Hardly less strange would it be if S. Luke, who so often mentions Bethany by name, had in one place (x. 38) called it vaguely "a certain village," and had moreover inserted what there took place, in the midst of Galilean events. On the other hand, S. John's expression would be most natural if he intended reference to a Galilean unnamed "village," mentioned by S. Luke as containing Martha's house, and as the scene of our Lord's temporary abode with her and Mary.* In both verses then S. John is connecting his narrative with S. Luke; and as verse 1 refers to Luke x., so (returning to our imme

gelists state the ointment used at Bethany to have been "very precious." In Luke vii. there is no mention of this; neither is there in John xi. 2.

*The only explanation we can find suggested on the other view is, that S. John called Bethany "the village of Mary and Martha," in order to distinguish it from the other Bethany which was beyond Jordan. But the expression would not so distinguish it; because he had said nothing whatever previously, as to which was the Bethany where Mary and Martha dwelt. If it be said that his readers knew this fact aliunde, it is certain that they must have equally known aliunde where Lazarus dwelt; and consequently the verse could give no one any information whatever.

VOL. XIX.-NO. XXXVII. [New Series.]

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diate purpose) verse 2 refers to Luke vii. In his first verse he identifies his own Mary of Bethany, with S. Luke's Mary, sister of Martha; and in his second he identifies her with S. Luke's peccatrix.

At last however, we would not account the argument which we derive from John vi. 2, as absolutely final and peremptory, in such sense that no imaginable amount of argument on the other side could justify a different rendering; for we would not deny that there may be some few Scriptural texts, of which the true sense is a very unobvious one. But our whole argument here is concerned with probabilities. And (speaking greatly within bounds) we say it is immeasurably more improbable that S. John's words refer to an event which had not yet happened,than that Mary's history should have been very exceptional in its character, and that the Evangelists should be silent on certain previous events of her life.

A further argument may possibly be adduced against our thesis, though we are not aware that any Protestant has so adduced it. "Many of the Jews," says S. John (xi. 19), “had come to Martha and Mary to console them for their brother." On this Professor Plumptre remarks very reasonably (p. 78), that "the particular sense which attaches to S. John's use of the phrase the Jews,'-as equivalent to Scribes, Elders, and Pharisees,-suggests the inference that these visitors or friends belonged to that class." It may be objected then that considering the well-known character of Pharisaism-such a circumstance disproves the supposition of Mary having been so recently an abandoned sinner. The reply however is obvious. It is seen from Luke x. 38, that Mary and Martha were in Galilee down to a period later than that which we ascribe to Mary's conversion. Her earlier course is not one of those facts which families love to blazon about; and it must not be supposed that private gossip would then circulate from Galilee to Jerusalem, as it might now from Scotland to London. However certain it were that Mary is the peccatrix, we see no fragment of reason for supposing that the Scribes and Pharisees, who came to know her in Bethany, were cognizant of the fact.

We ground our thesis then mainly on the circumstance that, unless we suppose the ordinary use of language revolutionized, John xi. 2 refers to a past fact; and that no such fact is dreamed of by any one, except that recorded in Luke vii. But secondly, even could it be admitted that the verse is anticipatory in its sense, -even on this most violent and paradoxical supposition, our thesis would still hold its ground. On such an hypothesis, S. John intended to declare: "this Mary was the woman, so well known throughout the Church as having anointed the Lord and wiped