This view is corroborated by Luke iii. 1, where it is said that the word of God came to John the Baptist “in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar.”  John’s ministry had continued only a short time when he was imprisoned, and then Jesus “began to be about thirty years of age” (Luke iii. 23).  Augustus died in August 767, and this year 767, according to a mode of reckoning then in use (see Hales’ “Chronology,” i. 49, 171, and Luke xxiv. 21), was the first year of his successor Tiberius.  The fifteenth year of Tiberius, according to the same mode of calculation, commenced on the 1st of January 781 of the city of Rome, and terminated on the 1st of January 782.  If then our Lord was born about the 1st of March 751 of Rome, and if the Baptist was imprisoned early in 781, it could be said with perfect propriety that Jesus then “began to be about thirty years of age.”  This view is further confirmed by the fact that Quirinius, or Cyrenius, mentioned Luke ii. 2, was first governor of Syria from the close of the year 750 of Rome to 753. (See Merivale, iv. p. 457, note.) Our Lord was born under his administration, and according to the date we have assigned to the nativity, the “taxing” at Bethlehem must have taken place a few months after Cyrenius entered into office.

This view of the date of the birth of Christ, which differs somewhat from that of any writer with whom I am acquainted, appears to meet all the difficulties connected with this much-disputed question.  It is based partly upon the principle, so ingeniously advocated by Whiston in his “Chronology,” that the flight into Egypt took place before the presentation in the temple.  I have never yet met with any antagonist of that hypothesis who was able to give a satisfactory explanation of the text on which it rests.  Some other dates assigned for the birth of Christ are quite inadmissible.  In Judea shepherds could not have been found “abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night” (Luke ii. 8) in November, December, January, or, perhaps, February; but in March, and especially in a mild season, such a thing appears to have been quite common. (See Greswell’s “Dissertations,” vol. i. p. 391, and Robinson’s “Biblical Researches,” vol ii. p. 97, 98.) Hippolytus, one of the earliest Christian writers who touches on the subject, indicates that our Lord was born about the time of the passover. (See Greswell, i. 461, 462.)

CHAPTER III.

THE TWELVE AND THE SEVENTY.

It has often been remarked that the personal preaching of our Lord was comparatively barren.  There can be no doubt that the effects produced did not at all correspond to what might have been expected from so wonderful a ministry; but it had been predicted that the Messiah would be “despised and rejected of men,” [36:1] and the unbelief of the Jews was one of the humiliating trials He was ordained to