They certainly
seem to speak of things which did not happen in Zechariah's time, but
in the time of Jeremiah, nearly ninety years before. And, above all,
St. Matthew himself seems plainly to have thought that some part, at
least, of those chapters was Jeremiah's writing; for in the twenty-
seventh chapter of St. Matthew's Gospel, and in the ninth verse, you
will find a prophecy about the potter's field, which St. Matthew says
was spoken by Jeremiah the prophet. Now, those words are not in the
book of Jeremiah as it stands in our Bibles: but they are in the
book of Zechariah, in the eleventh chapter, twelfth and thirteenth
verses, coming shortly after my text, and making a part of the same
prophecy. This has puzzled Christians very much, because it seemed
as if St. Matthew has made a mistake, and miscalled Zechariah
Jeremiah. But I believe firmly that, as we are bound to expect, St.
Matthew made no mistake whatsoever, and that Jeremiah did write that
prophecy as St. Matthew said, and the two chapters before it, and
perhaps the two after it, and that they were probably kept and
preserved by Zechariah during the troublous times of the Babylonish
captivity, and at last copied by Nehemiah into Zechariah's book of
prophecy, where they stand now; and I think it is a comfort to know
this, and to find that the evangelist St.
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