79. Miscellaneous Instructions and Controversies of Jesus. (Chapter 6. The Discourses of Jesus In The Three First Gospels.) (The Life of Jesus Critically Examined) (Strauss, David Friedrich)

AS the Discourses In Matt. xv. 1-20 have been already considered, we must pass on to xviii.1ff., Mark ix.33ff., Luke ix.46ff., where various discourses are connected with the exhibition of a little child, occasioned by a contention for pre-eminence among the disciples. The admonition to become as a little child, and to humble one's self as a little child, in Matthew forms a perfectly suitable comment on the symbolical reproof (v. 3, 4.); but the connection between this and the following declaration of Jesus, that whoever receives one such little child in his name, receives him, is not so obvious. For the child was set up to teach the disciples in what they were to imitate it, not how they were to behave towards it, and how Jesus could all at once lose sight of his original object, it is difficult to conceive. But yet more glaring is the irrelevance of the declaration in Mark and Luke; for they make it follow immediately on the exhibition of the child, so that, according to this, Jesus must, in the very act, have forgotten its object, namely, to present the child to his ambitious disciples as worthy of imitation, not as in want of reception. Jesus was accustomed to say of his disciples, that whoever received them, received him, and in him, the Father who had sent him (Matt. x.40ff.; Luke x. 16; John xiii. 20). Of children he elsewhere says merely, that whoever does not receive the kingdom of heaven as a little child, cannot enter into it (Mark x. 15. Luke xviii. 17.)

Closely connected by the word "answering," with the sentences just considered, Mark (ix. 38 f.) and Luke (ix. 49 f.) introduce the information which John is said to give to Jesus, that the disciples having seen one casting out devils in the name of Jesus, without attaching himself to their society, had forbidden him.

Schleiermacher explains the connection thus: because Jesus had commanded the reception of children in, his name, John was led to ^{P.384} the confession, that he and his associates had hitherto been so far from regarding the performing of an act in the name of Jesus as the point of chief importance, that they had interdicted the use of his name to one who followed not with them. Allowing this explanation to be correct, we must believe that John, arrested by the phrase, in my name (which yet is not prominent in the declaration of Jesus, and which must have been thrown still further into the background, by the sight of the child set up in the midst), drew from it the general inference, that in all actions the essential point is to perform them in the name of Jesus; and with equal rapidity, leaped to the remote reflection, that the conduct of the disciples towards the exorcist was in contradiction with this rule. But all this supposes the facility of combination which belongs to a Schleiermacher, not the dulness which still characterized the disciples. Nevertheless, the above critic has unquestionably opened on the true vein of connection between the preceding apothegm and this perplexity of John; he has only failed to perceive that this connection is not intrinsic and original, but extrinsic and secondary. It was quite beyond the reach of the disciples to apply the words in my name, by a train of deductions, to an obliquely connected case in their own experience; but, according to our previous observations, nothing could be more consistent with the habit of association that characterizes the writer of the Gospel tradition in the third Gospel, from which the second evangelist seems to have borrowed, than that he should be reminded by the striking phrase, in my name, in the preceding discourse of Jesus, of an story containing the same expression, and should unite the two for the sake of that point of external similarity alone.

To the exhortation to receive such little children, Matthew annexes the warning against offending one of these little ones, an epithet which, in x. 42, is applied to the disciples of Jesus, but in this passage, apparently, to children. Mark (v. 42) has the same continuation, notwithstanding the interruption above noticed, probably because he forsook Luke (who here breaks off the discourse, and does not introduce the admonition against offences until later, xvii. 1. f., and apart from any occasion that might prompt it), and appealed to Matthew. Then follows in Matthew (v. 8 f.) and Mark (v. 43 f.) a passage which alone ought to open the eyes of commentators to the mode in which the Synoptics arrange the sayings of Jesus. To the warning against the offending, (skandalizein), of the little ones, and the woe pronounced on those by whom offences come, they annex the apothegm on the offending of the hand, eye, etc. Jesus could not proceed thus, for the injunctions: "Mislead not the little ones!" and, "Let not your sensuality mislead you!" have nothing in common but the word mislead. It is easy, however, to account ^{P.385} for their association by the writer of the first Gospel. The word "scandalize" recalled to his mind all the discourses of Jesus containing a similar expression that had come to his knowledge, and also he had previously presented the admonitions concerning seduction by the members, in a better connection, as part of the sermon on the mount, he could not resist the temptation of reproducing them here, for the sake of this slight verbal affinity with the foregoing text.

But at v. 10 he resumes the thread which he had dropped at v. 7, and adds a further discourse on the little ones, fuapov. Matthew makes Jesus confirm the value of the little ones by the declaration, that the Son of Man was come to seek the lost, and by the parable of the lost sheep, (v. 11-14). It is not, however, evident why Jesus should class the mikrouj (little ones) with the a)pollwlouj (lost); and both ths declaration and the parable seem to be better placed by Luke, who introduces the former in the narrative of the calling of Zaccheus (xix. 10), and the latter, in a reply to the objections of the Pharisees against the amity of Jesus with the publicans (xv.3ff.). Matthew seems to have placed them here, merely because the discourse on the little ones reminded him of that on the lost, both exemplifying the mildness and humility of Jesus.

Between the moral of the above parable (v. 14) and the following rules for the conduct of Christians under injuries (v.15ff.), there is again only a verbal connection, which may be traced by means of the words, "should perish," and "you have gained;" for the proposition: God wills not that one of these little ones should perish, might recall the proposition: "We should endeavour to win over our brother," by showing a readiness to forgive. The direction to bring the offender before the Church, e)kklhsia, is generally adduced as a proof that Jesus intended to found a Church. But he here speaks of the e)kklhsia as an institution already existing: hence we must either refer the expression to the Jewish synagogue, an interpretation which is favoured by the analogy of this direction with Jewish precepts; or if, according to- the strict meaning of the word and its connection, e)kklhsia must be understood as the designation of the Christian community, which did not then exist, it must be admitted that we have here, at least in the form of expression, an anticipation of a subsequent state of things. The writer certainly had in view the new Church, eventually to be founded in the name of Jesus, when, in continuation, he represented the latter as imparting to the body of the disciples the authority to bind and to loose, previously given to Peter, and thus to form a Messianic religious constitution. The declarations concerning the success of unanimous prayer, and the presence of Jesus among two or three gathered together in his name, accord with this prospective idea.

The next discourse that presents itself (Matt. xix. 3-12, Mark, x. 2-12), ^{P.386} though belonging, according to the evangelists, to the last journey of Jesus, is of the same stamp with the disputations which they, for the most part, assign to the last residence of Jesus in Jerusalem. Some Pharisees propose to Jesus the question, at that time much discussed in the Jewish schools, whether it be lawful for a man to put away his wife for every cause. To avoid a contradiction between modern practice and the dictum of Jesus, it has been alleged that he here censures the species of divorce, which was the only one known at that period, namely, the arbitrary dismissal of a wife; but not the 1'udicial separation resorted to in the present tiay. But this very argument involves the admission, that Jesus denounced all the forms of divorce known to him; hence the question still remains whether, if he could have had cognizance of the modern procedure in disolving matrimony, he would have held it right to limit his general censure. of the succeeding declaration, prompted by a question of the disciples, namely, that celibacy may be practised for the kingdom of heaven's sake, Jesus himself says, that it cannot be understood by all, but only by those to zulwm it is given (v. 11). That the doctrine of Jesus may not run counter to modern opinion, it has been eagerly suggested, that his panegyric on celibacy had relation solely to the circumstances of the coming time, or to the nature of the apostolic mission, which would be impeded by family tics. But there is even less intimation of this special bearing in the text, than in the analogous passage 1 Cor. vii. 25 ff., and, adhering to a simple interpretation, it must be granted that we have here one of the instances in which ascetic principles, such as were then prevalent, especially among the Essenes, manifest themselves in the teaching of Jesus, as represented in the synoptic Gospels.

The controversial discourses which Matthew, almost throughout in agreement with the other Synoptics, places after the entrance of Jesus into Jerusalem (xxi. 23-27; xxii. 15-46), are certainly pre-eminently genuine fragments, having precisely the spirit and tone of the rabbinical dialectics in the time of Jesus. The third and fifth among them are particularly worthy of note, because they exhibit Jesus as an interpreter of Scripture. With respect to the former, wherein Jesus endeavours to convince the Sadducees that there will be a resurrection of the dead, from the Mosaic designation of God as the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob, maintaining that he is not the God of the dead, but of the living (Matt. xxii. 31-33); ^{P.387} Paulus admits that Jesus here argues subtly, while he contends that the conclusion is really involved in the premises. But in the expression "the God of Abraham" etc., which had become a mere formula, nothing more is implied than that the Lord, as he had been the protecting Deity of these men, would for ever continue such to their posterity. An individual relation subsisting between the Lord and the patriarchs after their death, is nowhere else alluded to in the Old Testament, and could only be discovered in the above form by rabbinical interpreters, at a time when it was thought desirable, at any cost, to show that the idea of immortality, which had become prevalent, was contained in the law; where, however, it is not to be met with by unprejudiced eyes. We find the relation of God to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, adduced as a guarantee of immortality el-sewhcre in rabbinical argumentations, all of which could hardly have been modelled on this one of Jesus. If we look into the most recent commentaries, we nowhere find a candid confession as to the real character of the argumentation in question.

Olshausen has wonders to tell of the deep truth contained in it, and thinks that he can deduce from it, in the shortest way, the authenticity and divinity of the Pentateuch. Paulus sees the validity of the proof between the lines of the text; Fritzsche is silent. Wherefore these evasions? Why is the praise of having seen clearly, and spoken openly, in this matter, abandoned to the Wolfenb ttel Fragmentist? What spectres and doublesighted beings, must Moses and Jesus have been, if they mixed with their contemporaries without any real participation in their opinions and weaknesses, their joys and griefs; if, mentally dwelling apart from their age and nation, they conformed to these relations only externally and by accommodation, while, internally and according to their nature, they stood among the foremost ranks of the enlightened in modern times.

Far more noble were these men, indeed, they would then only engage our sympathy and reverence, if, in a genuinely human manner, struggling with the limitations and prejudices of their age, they succumbed to them in a hundred secondary matters, and only attained perfect freedom, in relation to the one point by which each was destined to contribute to the advancement of mankind.

A controversial question concerning the Messiah is proposed (v.51-46) to the Pharisees by Jesus, namely, How can the same personage be at once the Lord and the son of David? Paulus maintains that this is a model of interpretation in conformity with the text; an assertion which is no good augury that his own possesses that qualification. According to him, Jesus, in asking how David could call the Messiah, "Lord," when in the general opinion he was his son, intended to apprise the Pharisees, that in this Psalm it is not David who is speaking of the Messiah, but another poet who is speaking ^{P.388} of David as his Lord, so that to suppose this warlike psalm a Messianic one, is a mistake. Why, asks Paulus, should not Jesus have found out this interpretation, since it is the true one? But this is the grand error of his entire scheme of interpretation-to suppose that what is truth in itself, or more correctly, for us, must, even to the minutest details, have been truth for Jesus and the apostles.

The majority of ancient Jewish interpreters apply this psalm to the Messiah; the apostles use it as a prophecy concerning Christ (Acts ii. 34 f.; 1 Cor. xv. 25); Jesus himself, according to Matthew and Mark plainly gives his approval to the notion that it is David who there speaks, and that the Messiah is his subject: how then can it be thought that he held the contrary opinion? It is far more probable, as Olshausen has well shown, that Jesus believed the psalm to be a Messianic one: while, on the other hand, Paulus is equally correct in maintaining that it originally referred, not to the Messiah, but to some Jewish ruler, whether David or another. Thus we find that Jesus here gives a model of interpretation, in conformity, not with the text, but with the spirit of his time; a discovery which, if the above observations be just, ought to excite no surprise. The solution of the enigma which Jesus here proposes to the Pharisees, lay without doubt, according to his idea, in the doctrine of the higher nature of the Messiah; whether he held that, in virtue of this, he might be styled the Lord of David, while, in virtue of his human nature, he might also be regarded as his son; or whether he wished to remove the latter notion as erroneous. The result, however, and perhaps also the intention of Jesus with respect to the Pharisees, was merely to convince them that he was capable of retaliating on them, in their own way, by embarassing them with captious questions, and that with better success than they had obtained in their attempts to entrap him. Hence the evangelists place this passage at the close of the disputations prompted by the Pharisees, and Matthew adds, Neither dare any man from that day forth ask him any more questions: a concluding form which is more suitable here than after the lesson administered to the Sadducees, where it is placed by Luke (xx. 40), or than after the discussion on the greatest commandment, where it is introduced by Mark (xii. 34.);

Immediately before this question of Jesus, the first two evangelists narrate a conversation with a lawyer, or scribe, concerning the greatest commandment. (Matt. xxii.34ff.; Mark xii.28ff.) Matthew annexes this conversation to the dispute with the Sadducees, as if the Pharisees wished, by their question as to the greatest commandment, to avenge the defeat of the Sadducees. It is well known, however, that these sects were not thus friendly; on the contrary, -we read in the Acts (xxiii. 7), that the Pharisees were inclined to go over to the side of one whom they had ^{P.389} previously persecuted, solely because he had had the address to take the position of an opponent towards the Sadducees. We may Here quote Schneckenburger's observation, that Matthew not seldom (iii. 7; xvi. 1) places the Pharisees and Sadducees side by side in a way that represents, not their real hostility, but their association in the memory of tradition, in which one opposite suggested another.

In this respect, Mark's mode of annexing this conversation to the foregoing, is more consistent; but all the Synoptics seem to labour under a common mistake in supposing that these discussions, grouped together in tradition on account of their analogy, followed each other so closely in time, that one colloquy elicited another. Luke does not give the question concerning the greatest commandment in connection with the controversies on the resurrection and on the Messiah; but he has a similar incident earlier, in his narrative of the journey to Jerusalem (x.25ff.). The general opinion is that the first two evangelists recount the same occurrence, and the third, a distinct one. It is true that the narrative of Luke differs from that of Matthew and Mark, in several not immaterial points. The first difference, which we have already noticed, relates to chronological position, and this has been the chief inducement to the supposition of two events. The next difference lies in the nature of the question, which, in Luke, turns on the rule of life calculated to insure the inheritance of eternal life, but, in the other evangelists, on the greatest commandment. The third difference is in the subject who pronounces this commandment, the first two Synoptics representing it to be Jesus, the third, the lawyer. Lastly, there is a difference as to the issue, the lawyer in Luke putting a second, self-vindicatory, question, which calls forth the parable of the good Samaritan; while in the two other evangelists, he retires either satisfied, or silenced by the answer to the first. Meanwhile, even between the narrative of Matthew and that of Mark, there are important divergencies. The principal relates to the character of the querist, who in Matthew proposes his question with a view to tempt Jesus; in Mark, with good intentions, because he had perceived that Jesus had answered the Sadducees well. Paulus, indeed, although he elsewhere (Luke x. 25) considers the act of tempting as the putting a person to the proof to subserve interested views, pronounces that the word -retpduv in this instance can only be intended in a good sense. But the sole ground for this interpretation lies, not in Matthew; but in Mark, and in the iinlbunded supposition that the two writers could not have a different idea of the character and intention of the inquiring doctor of the law.

Fritzsche has correctly pointed out the difficulty of conciliating Matthew and Mark as lying, partly in the meaning of the word mipdv, and parly in the context, it being inadmissible to suppose one among a series of malevolent questions friendly, without any intimation of the distinction on the part of the writer. With this important ^{P.390} diversity is connected the minor one, that while in Matthew, the scribe, after Jesus has recited the two commandments, is silent, apparently from shame, which is no sign of a friendly disposition on his part towards Jesus; in Mark, he not only bestows on Jesus the approving expression, Well, Muster, you have said the truth, but enlarges on his doctrine so as to draw from Jesus the declaration that he has answered discreetly, and is not far from the kingdom of God. It may be also noticed that while in Matthew Jesus simply repeats the commandment of love, in Mark he prefaces it by the words, "Hear, 0 Israel, the Lord your God is one Lord." Thus, if it be held that the differences between the narrative of Luke, and that of the two other evangelists, entail a necessity for supposing that they are founded on two separate events; the no slighter differences between Mark and Matthew, must in all consistency be made a reason for supposing a third. But it is so difficult to credit the reality of three occurrences essentially alike, that the other alternative, of reducing them to one, must, prejudice apart, be always preferred. The narratives of Matthew and Mark are the most easily identified; but there are not wanting points of contact between Matthew and Luke, for in both the lawyer appears as a tempter and is not impressed in favour of Jesus by his answer; nor even between Luke and Mark, for these agree in appending explanatory remarks to the greatest commandment, as wll as in the insertion of forms of assent, such as You have answered right, you have said the truth. Hence it is evident that to fuse only two of their narratives is a half measure, and that we must either regard all three as independent, or all three as identical: from which again we may observe the freedom which was used by the early Christian legend, in giving various forms to a single fact or idea, the fundamental fact in the present case being, that, out of the whole Mosaic code, Jesus had selected the two commandments concerning the love of God and our neighbour as the most excellent."

We come now to the great anti-pharisaic discourse, which Matthew gives (xxiii.) as a sort of pitched battle after the skirmishing of the preceding disputations. Mark (xii.38ff.) and Luke (xx.45ff.) have also a discourse of Jesus against the scribes, but extending no further than a few verses. It is however highly probable, as our modern critics allow, that Jesus should launch out into fuller invectives against that body of men under the circumstances in which Matthew places that discourse, and it is almost certain that such sharp enunciations must have preceded the catastrophe; so that it is not admissible to control the account of the first evangelist by the meagre one of the two other Synoptics, especially as the former is distinguished by connectedness and unity.

It is true that much of what Matthew here presents as a continuous address, is assigned by Luke to various scenes and occasions, and ^{P.391} it would follow that the former has, in this case again, blended the original elements of the discourse with kindred matter into the discourses of various periods, if it could be shown that the arrangement of Luke is the correct one: a position which must therefore be examined. Those parts of the anti-pharisaic harangue which Luke has in common with Matthew, are, excepting the couple of verses which he places in the same connection as Matthew, introduced by him as concomitant with two entertainments to which he represents Jesus as being invited by Pharisees (xi.37ff.; xiv.1ff.), a politeness on their part which appears in no other Gospel. The expositors of the present day, almost with one voice, concur in admiring the naturalness and faithfulness with which Luke has preserved to us the original occasions of these discourses. It is certainly natural enough that, in the second entertainment, Jesus, observing the efforts of the guests to obtain the highest places for themselves, should take occasion to admonish thera against assuming the precedence at feasts, even on the low ground of prudential considerations; and this admonition appears in a curtailed form, and without any special cause in the final anti-pharisaic discourse in Matthew, Mark, and even in Luke again (xx. 46). But is it otherwise with the discourse which Luke attaclics to the earlier entertainment in the Pharisee's house. In the very beginning of this repast, Jesus not only speaks of the "ravening," and "wickedness," with which the Pharisees till the cup and platter, and honours them with the title of fools, but breaks forth into a denunciation of woe (ou)ai) against them and the scribes and doctors of the law, threatening them with retribution for all the blood that had been shed by their fathers, whose deeds they approved. We grant that Attic urbanity is not to be expected in a Jewish teacher, but even according to the oriental standard, such invectives uttered at, table against the host and his guests, would be the grossest dereliction of what is due to hospitality. this was obvious to Schleiermacher's acute perception; and he therefore supposes that the meal passed off amicably, and that it was not until its close, when Jesus was again out of the house, that the host expressed his surprise at the neglect of the usual ablutions by Jesus and his disciples, and that Jesus answered with so much asperity. But to assume that the writer has not described the meal itself and the incidents that accompanied it, and that he has noticed it merely for the sake of its connection with the subsequent discourse, is an arbitrary mode of overcoming the difficulty. For the text runs thus: And he went in and sat down to a meal. And when the Pharisee saw it, he marvelled that he had not first washed before dinner. And the Lord said to him, "You Pharisees first wash the outside of the cup..etc. It is clearly ^{P.392} impossible to thrust in between these sentences the duration of the meal, and it must have been the intention of the writer to attach "he marvelled" to "he sat down to meat" and "he said" to "he marvelled." But if this could not really have been the case, unless Jesus violated in the grossest manner the simplest dictates of civility, there is an end to the vaunted accuracy of Luke in his allocation of this discourse: and we have only to inquire how he could be led to give it so false a position.

This is to be discovered by comparing the manner in which the two Other Synoptics mention the offence of the Pharisees, at the omission of the ablutions before meals by Jesus and his disciples: a circumstance to which they annex discourses different from those given by Luke. In Matthew (xv.1ff.), scribes and Pharisees from Jerusalem ask Jesus why his disciples do not observe the custom of washing before meat? It is thus implied that they knew of this omission, as may easily be supposed, by report. In Mark (vil.1ff.), they look on, while some disciples of Jesus eat with unwashed hands, and call them to account, for this irregularity. Lastly, in Luke, Jesus himself dines with a Pharisee, and on this occasion it is observed, that he neglects the usual washings. This is an evident climax: hearing, witnessing taking food together. Was it formed, in the descending gradation, from Luke to Matthew, or, in the ascending one, from Matthew to Luke? From the point of viewadopted by the recent critics of the first Gospel, the former mode will be held the most probable, namely, that the memory of the original scene, the repast in the Pharisee's house, was lost in the process of tradition, and is therefore wanting in the first Gospel.

But, apart from the difficulty of conceiving that this discourse was uttered under the circumstances with which it is invested by Luke, it is by no means in accordance with the course of tradition, when once in possession of so dramatic a particular as a feast, to let it fall again, but rather to supply it, if lacking. The general tendency of the legend is to transform the abstract into the concrete, the mediate into the immediate, hearsay into vision, the spectator into the participator; and as the offence taken against Jesus by the Pharisees referred, among other things, to the usages of the table, nothing was more natural than for legend to associate the origin of the offence with a particular place and occasion, and for this purpose to imagine invitations given to Jesus by Pharisees-invitations which would be historically suspicious, if for no other reason than that Luke alone knows anything of them. Here, then, we again find Luke in his favourite employment of furnishing a frame to the discourses of Jesus which tradition had delivered to him; a procedure much further removed from historic faithfulness, than the effort of Matthew to give unity to discourses gathered from different periods, without adding matter of his own. The formation of the climax above displayed, can only be conceived, in accordance with the general relation between the Synoptics, in the following manner: Mark, who in this ^{P.393} instance evidently had Matthew before him, enriched his account with the dramatic expression Moyrec; while Luke, independent of both, has added a repast, deipnon, whether presented to him by a more developed tradition, or invented by his own more fertile imagination. Together with this unhistorical position, the proportions themselves seem to be disfigured in Luke (xi. 39-4:1, 49), and the observation of the lawyer, Master, thus saying you reproach us also (xi. 45), too much resembles an artificial transition from the philippic against the Pharisees, to that against the doctors of the law.

Another passage in this discourse has been the subject of much discussion. It is that (v. 35) in which Jesus threatens his contemporaries, that all the innocent blood shed from that of Abel to that of Zechariah, the son of Barachias, slain in the temple, will be required of their generation. The Zechariah of whom such an end is narrated 2 Chron. xxiv. 20 ff, was a son, not of Barachias, but of Jehoiada. On the other hand, there was a Zechariah, the son of Barucli, who came to a similar end in the Jewish war.) Moreover, it appears unlikely that Jesus would refer to a murder which took place 850 B.C. as the last. Hence it was at first supposed that we have in v. 35 a prophecy, and afterwards, a confusion of the earlier with the later event; and the latter notion has been used as an accessory proof that the first gospel is a posterior compilation. It is, however, equally probable, that the Zechariah, son of Jehoiada, whose death is narrated in the Chronicles, has been confounded with the prophet Zachariah, who was a son of Barachias (Zacli. i. 1; LXX; Baruch, in Josephus, is not the same name); especially as a Targum, evidently in consequence of a like confusion with the prophet who was a grandson of lddo, calls the murdered Zachariah a son of Iddo.)

The murder of a prophet, mentioned by Jeremiah (xxvi. 23), was doubtless subsequent to that of Zachariah, but in the Jewish order of the canonical books, Jeremiah precedes the Chronicles; and to oppose a murder revealed in the first canonical book, to one recorded in the last, was entirely in the style of Jewish parlance.

After having considered all the discourses of Jesus given by Matthew, and compared them with their parallels, with the exception of those which had come before us in previous discussions, or which have yet to come before us in our examination of single incidents in the public ministry, or of the history of the passion: it might appear requisite to the completeness of our criticism, that we should also give a separate investigation to the connection in which the two other Synoptics give the discourses of Jesus, and from this point review the parallels in Matthew. But we have already cast a comparative glance over the most remarkable discourses in Luke and Mark, and ^{P.394} gone through the parables which are peculiar to each; and as to the remainder of what they offer in the form of discourses, it will either come under our future consideration, or if not, the point of view from which it is to be criticised, has been sufficiently indicated in the foregoing investigations.