force, to use worldly weapons to advance the spiritual Kingdom? Yes, sometimes! And the calm patient voice of the Christ comes down upon it all with soothing reassuring effect. 'The Kingdom of Heaven suffereth violence'; and the violent would take it by force if they could. But it is the wrong method. From John the Baptist until now the prevailing idea has been that of a Kingdom of Heaven which should place itself in harmony with the expectations of mankind, which should assert its authority with a power that the world could appreciate; but John the Baptist's impatience and man's false notions of My Kingdom's growth and real life, must be totally eradicated and reversed; and-blessed is he whosoever shall not be offended in Me.'

'Christianity is a scheme imperfectly comprehended,' if I may quote Bishop Butler once again. How can a finite brain appreciate or successfully criticise an infinite idea? It is ours to do our duty according to the method and example of Christ Himself; and to trust that, while we

Who are but parts,

and can therefore only

See but part, now this, now that,

He who gives us our duty to do sees and knows the value of each attempt of ours, and will give it its due place and recognition in the great scheme of God's Kingdom. God forbid that, in place of the quiet orderly methods which Christ Himself approved and used, we should be tempted to avail ourselves of others, more showy, no doubt, more captivating and more popular, but thereby condemned as opposed to the methods of our Divine Lord and Master Himself. 'HE shall not strive nor cry aloud, neither shall anyone hear His voice in the streets.'

'The Kingdom of Heaven suffereth violence (Biάlerai), and violent ones (Biaoraí) take it by force.' I am aware that the usual interpretation of these difficult words is other than that which I have ventured to put upon them. The majority of commentators, ancient and modern, interpret them as inculcating intense effort and ardour in the heavenly race and calling. But it does seem from the context in which our Lord used them that He meant to rebuke a wrong method and not to

'Is violated.' Blášw is not, I believe, anywhere used, absolutely, in a good sense.

commend a right one Let us examine the sequence of thought more closely.

It was during a busy day of beneficent deeds that John's disciples arrived and put their master's question (Lk 719). Christ proceeded with His active works of mercy, and then gave a report of His method as an all-sufficient response to the Baptist; adding, too, a veiled reproof in the form of a eulogy of such patience and faith as would not find this method a stumbling-block. Then, as the messengers departed, lest the multitudes (oi oxλo) should fall into the mistake of undervaluing the Baptist and his work, Christ proceeded to extol John as the ideal fulfiller of the work which he had to perform as the Forerunner, and to enlarge upon the unique position which he occupied as the noblest and last of the prophets under the Old Dispensation. Yet the Baptist's position had its limitations, and the least member of the new Kingdom was more highly graced than John. John's work was that of awakening and startling by bold and violent measures; and this had the tendency of leading unthoughtful men to look for the same methods in the work of the Christ, and to imagine that the Kingdom of Heaven could be taken by force. But here comes the contrast. The method of the Baptist was not the method of the Christ. The startling asceticism of the one, which was necessary for its purpose, is set over against the sociability of the Other; and the Jews are likened to petulant children refusing to join their fellows in corresponding play. And yet the two contrasted methods will eventually be seen to be justified by their results.

A like passage in Lk 1616 brings out the same thought in another context. The era of the Law and the Prophets closed with John. Then came the preaching of the glad tidings of the Kingdom of God; and, misled by its free invitations, everyone was inclined to force an entrance into it, or to use violence against it (πᾶς εἰς αὐτὴν βιάζεται). But, as a matter of fact, the same orderly methods were to obtain in the Kingdom as under the Law; so much so, that the Law itself might be said to be maintained in every detail. The Gospel was not a release from, but a deepening and widening and spiritualizing of, the Law's requirements.

Taking our Lord's words, then, as a reproof, and not as a commendation, can we say that the rebuke was unwarranted? In every age, and not least in our own, men are found who, in their

masterful dictation to the ways of Providence and in their self-constituted methods of saving souls, seem to take the Kingdom of God by violence, instead of by the quiet divinely appointed channels of grace which Christ has ordained. All those violent emotion-stirring appeals to the uncultured affections, what are they but an attempt to storm the citadel of salvation by assault, and by one gigantic effort of the will to seize upon a position of assurance which nothing can touch or assail? Surely this is to ignore the lessons of Christ's own teaching and example. He taught that the seed would grow secretly and noiselessly; that the leaven would work silently and quietly. He also repudiated the wild enthusiasm which so far misunderstood His mission as to lead the excited multitudes to try to take Him by force and make Him a King.

The same principle is truly applicable both to the individual soul and to the collective community of Christians, the Church. The teaching of many popular sermons and popular hymns demands from the individual some loud outbursts of experiential testimony as the only legitimate signs of grace; and such an unwarranted demand has done, and is doing, much to paralyse the life of many earnest souls.

And similarly, the impatient ones, both in the Church and in the world, often clamour for more outward and convincing proofs of the extension of Christ's Kingdom, some tremendous signs that His servants are up and doing, and portentously busy about their Master's work, some manifestations that will indeed proclaim their mission in a way that cannot be gainsaid, and that will put to shame the busy mockers.

But once again, No. The Church's wisdom is to find her strength 'in quietness and confidence'; the help of Egypt with its horses and swift riders is not for God's Israel; the blessing is for those who wait' for Him; the command is that we possess our souls in patience. 'God is her King of old the work that is done upon earth, He doeth it Himself.'

And once more. It is not only the method of the Church-that is, the method of Christ-that is pitted against other modes and ways of extending God's Kingdom by the unthoughtful and shortsighted, it is Christianity itself that has to run the gauntlet of comparison with modern speculative theories, and even with ancient Oriental beliefs.

The religion of Humanity and the creed of the Positivist are sometimes pointed to as powers that will in the future do more for the amelioration of mankind than Christianity could ever accomplish. The question of John the Baptist thus recurs under another form, not addressed now to Christ personally, but to His followers and members of the Kingdom which He founded. 'Is your teaching and your creed the best and final message for humanity as you claim that it is; or are we not to look for something better in those great evolutionary forces which are leading the human race to some unknown but elevated goal?'

Or the question may be re-echoed in another form by the so-called Theosophists who devote their faculties to the acquisition of some transcendental mysticism, and to the classification of spiritualistic phenomena. They first isolate Christianity from its position as a developing factor in the world's history from the dawn of time, and then ask, 'Is your religion, which, by its own style of dating itself, can only boast of nineteen centuries of life, to be placed before those beliefs of hoary antiquity whose adepts command even now the elemental forces of Nature in a manner which shames the Gospel miracles into insignificance?' The answer to both these questions is the same. The mere fact of their being asked at all shows that the method and the object of Christianity are alike misunderstood. The primary object of Christianity is not the physical amelioration of man, nor the providing the human race with a greater number of creature comforts, but the application of a spiritual remedy to sin stricken. souls. It is the proclamation of the Incarnation, and the Atonement, and the Risen Life. The method of Christianity is not the method of modern advertisement, but of the therapeutic adaptation of spiritual truth to the needs of individual souls, simply, unostentatiously, quietly, noiselessly, taking them one by one as they come under its gracious and beneficent influence and reach.

It is a terribly harassing thing to have your motives misunderstood; it is still worse when your method and goal are alike misrepresented, and in consequence condemned. Such was our Lord's case; and such has been the misfortune of His Church in almost every age. The temptation which assails us, and against which we are bound to fight, is the temptation to alter our method and readjust our goal so as to bring them into harmony.

with what the world or our impatient companions expect. We have to recall ourselves from these alluring excursions into worldly methods and aims, and to realize that, in our Lord's own mind, the greatest glory and the final climax of His method

lay in the great spiritual miracle, which far transcended those of the physical sphere, that the 'poor,' — and we must give the word its most extended meaning,-the poor had the gospel preached to them.

I. Ramsay on the Apocalypse.1

ONCE more Professor Ramsay has laid students of the Apostolic Age under a deep debt. He never touches a subject without giving its study a fresh and vital impulse. He is pre-eminently a pioneer. Indeed, his chief defects are those natural to a pioneer: he tends to push his new line of progress too far, and to overlook other though less fresh lines of explanation. So is it here in his treatment of the Apocalypse in terms of the archæology of the Roman province of Asia. He views its writer as if quite naturalized to his new environment. He forgets far too readily how intensely Jewish, as distinct from Greek, John was and remained; and he does so largely because he approaches him after such long and intense preoccupation with Paul, the born provincial. But how fruitful are his suggestions! There is more to learn from his slips than from another's formal correctitude within narrow limits of thought and feeling. Ramsay has a larger outlook, a profounder humanity than any other writer in his field; and the perusal of his pages gives one the feeling of passing from a close study into the open air, where the actual full-blooded life of men has its being. It is, moreover, a book which can be read with equal pleasure and profit by the general reader and the specialist.

Take the opening sentences of his Preface. 'In the contact of East and West originates the movement of history. The historical position of Christianity cannot be rightly understood except in its relation to that immemorial meeting and conflict.' How much food for thought do these words supply? Later we read: 'Only a divine

The Letters to the Seven Churches. By Professor W. M. Ramsay. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1904. Pp. xx, 446. Price 12s.

origin is competent to explain the perfect union of Eastern and Western thought in this religion. . . . The adaptation of Christianity to the double nationality can be best seen in the Apocalypse, because there the two elements which unite in Christianity are less perfectly reconciled than in any other book of the New Testament. The Judaic element in the Apocalypse has been hitherto studied to the entire neglect of the Greek element in it. Hence it has been the most misunderstood book in the New Testament.' In these last two sentences we have some of the exaggeration which has helped to make certain scholars, particularly abroad, so blind to Ramsay's high services. Especially is it misleading to attribute the misunderstanding of the book to study of the Judaic element therein. That is what has recently helped to bring it out of the twilight in which it has lain for nearly eighteen hundred years; and more light has yet to break forth from that quarter. Still though the inmost structure of its writer's mind was determined by Jewish feeling and training, many allusions in the Apocalypse, especially in the Messages (not 'Letters,' for here Ramsay goes off largely on a wrong tack) in chaps. ii. iii., are only to be understood in their true historical sense when placed in a setting furnished by the actual conditions of life in the province of Asia. But Ramsay makes a serious mistake when he says: 'It was written to be understood by the Græco-Asiatic public; and the Figures [given in his text to illustrate Asiatic ideas and usages, religious in the main] prove that it was natural and easy for those readers to understand the symbolism.' On the contrary, it was written, not for 'the public,' but for special esoteric circles in Græco-Asiatic society, whose chief chance of understanding much of the form and symbolism of such a special literary phenomenon

lay in what they did not share with their fellowcitizens, but rather with the Jewish Scriptures, apocryphal as well as canonical. A glance at Westcott and Hort's edition, which indicates Old Testament allusions in special type, demonstrates this. It is strange that Ramsay has so lost sight of the Christians in Asia as 'elect sojourners of the Dispersion,' as they are styled in the Epistle addressed to them by Peter, a man whose attitude to pagan society was more akin to John's than was Paul's. I can see little or no evidence that John had that quick sense for the Christian Church sojourning in an Asian city, as in spiritual solidarity with the life of such a city, itself determined by topography and local history, which our author possesses and in turn attributes to him. For what came under his own direct observation as a social factor conditioning the habits of his fellowChristians in each city, John had doubtless a keen eye; and Ramsay has done exceeding well in bringing this out in connexion with the 'Nicolaitans,' however one may question whether he has not put too favourable a face upon their actual practices, so giving an unduly harsh appearance to the seer's denunciation of them. But that is another thing from saying that 'the Apocalypse reads the history and the fate of the churches in the natural features, the relations of earth and sea, winds and mountains, which affected the cities.' To our thinking, his most valuable elucidation of the Apocalypse from archæological data, is the light he casts on the hitherto obscure description of the beast from the land' as promoting the worship of the beast from the sea,' in 1311-18. This, as he shows, refers to the zealous initiative of the province of Asia, through its Commune or Council, for religious purposes in particular, in the matter of promoting and exacting Cæsar-worship. But I suspect that here our author has not applied with sufficient strictness what this passage, so expounded, really teaches us as to the province of Asia, as distinct from the central imperial government, when he connects this zeal with the imperial policy of Domitian in his later years. For the whole point of the passage is the local nature of the initiative; and there is no sign that it had as yet received the formal sanction of the emperor. In fact, it is possible that this excess of zeal was discountenanced when it reached the ears of the emperor; that the persecution on these lines, and to the degree of intensity feared

in the Apocalypse, was never carried through to the end; and that this is the reason why we do not hear of it outside the seer's pages. Of course such a view depends somewhat on our theory as to the emperor of the day, and so on the date of the Book. the Book. I can here only say, that study of Ramsay's book, and of the inconsistencies which from time to time emerge in his candid presentation of various aspects of the picture, has confirmed me in the belief that it was written early in Vespasian's reign, and not under Domitian at all. Such a view alone makes the common authorship of the Apocalypse and the Fourth Gospel, which Ramsay attributes also to John the Apostle, psychologically conceivable. As to that dual authorship I concur with his judgment, and consider that he has done much to clear away prejudices clinging to its discussion. But such an authorship within one and the same decade of an aged author's life, seems to me out of the question; and I would fain hope that Ramsay may yet come to view the phenomena of persecution as compatible with the earlier date, as he seems to have done in the case of 1 Peter.

Ramsay justly argues that the phrase, 'The seven churches that are in Asia,' without further explanation, in the opening address of the Apocalypse, implies that such a special group was recognized in the local Christian parlance; but his explanation of the fact is unsatisfying. He regards their distinction from other Asian churches as 'in some way connected with the principal road-circuit of the Province.' In fact, they stood on a very important circular route, which starts from Ephesus, goes round what may be called Asia par excellence, the most educated and wealthy and historically pre-eminent part of the Province. They were the best points on that circuit to serve as centres of communication with seven districts.' This may be true enough in fact; yet it is too accidental a basis for their being addressed as typical of the needs of the Asian churches. The theory does not square with what Ramsay himself says elsewhere touching the Messages to the provincial Church as couched in terms of the conditions of the Seven, as known to the seer. May it not rather be that they were 'the Seven (original) churches' of any note, going back to the beginning of the gospel,' when it spread from Paul's mission in Ephesus; and that this their historical pre-eminence became crystal

lized in the phrase in question? They were, perhaps, the seven original Pauline churches, founded by his personal friends and disciples, when, as Ac 1910 has it, all the dwellers in Asia heard the word of God.' Such a view renders unnecessary the rather over - elaborate organization, postal and otherwise, which Ramsay infers from the phrase on his theory.

While, then, it seems likely that not a few of the bold and taking suggestions of this book will require modification or correction, yet it so teems with fine observations as enormously to advance our knowledge of the conditions implied by the Apocalypse, as well as of its essential spirit and message. It has the peculiar vital quality that marks all Ramsay's work and has given him the key to so many New Testament difficulties. Where he fails, it is usually owing to defective grasp of Jewish literature, specially in its apocalyptic forms. For instance, the Apocalypse of Baruch, which includes a Letter to Jews at large, affords a parallel to this feature of John's Apocalypse which makes a good deal in chap. iv. seem beside the mark. But where knowledge of But where knowledge of Græco-Roman society and its atmosphere of thought and feeling can bear on the New Testament, there he remains a master, perhaps the master of the surest sense at present with us. Accordingly, we may conclude with some words which he speaks where his authority is greatest: 'No one, who is capable of appreciating the tone and thought of different periods, could place the composition of any of the Books of the New Testament in the time of the Antonines (i.e. after 138 A.D.), unless he were imperfectly informed on the character and spirit of that period.'

II. Dr. Drummond on John's Gospel.1 This is a valuable contribution to a truly great problem - great because of the many elements entering into its final solution. The inquiry is that of a mind possessing two at least of the elements most needful to success, viz. the judicial temper and spiritual insight. When to these is added large and exact learning, we may expect the inquiry at any rate to leave the field clearer of confusions and false scents than it found it.

1 The Character and Authorship of the Fourth Gospel. By James Drummond, Principal of Manchester College. Oxford: Williams & Norgate, 1903. Pp. xviii, 528. Price 10s. 6d.

He

And such is the case. The external evidence which has for some time pointed steadily to a date in the closing years of the first century, and indeed to the Apostle John as author in some real sense, is here set forth with great fairness and power. The internal evidence, too, is handled freshly and carefully, along the familiar lines, which narrow down the authorship to a Palestinian Jew who was in some degree at least an eye-witness. At this point the external and internal forms of evidence combine to preclude the supposition of a late Greek authorship.' When, too, we 'remember the cumulative character of each, it seems to me,' says Dr. Drummond, 'that we have an amount of proof of the Johannine authorship which ought to command our assent, unless very strong evidence can be produced upon the other side' (p. 384). then proceeds to examine the objections to the traditional view' with a fulness and patience which seldom mark the criticism of the positive arguments by those who favour a negative conclusion on the point. on the point. But, beyond this, he makes a weighty contribution to the logic of the whole controversy, in showing the precariousness of the 'argument from silence' as often applied in the face of probabilities established by general literary analogies. Accordingly, allowing for a certain unconscious development of the ideal side of the teaching once heard from his Master, which must have gone on in the apostle's vital experience and have influenced his way of putting some things in a gospel that was no mere narrative, but an implicit argument for faith in Jesus as the Christ, the Son of God (2081), Dr. Drummond concludes that the apostolic authorship is the least difficult of theories in view of all the facts, fairly dealt with according to their relative weight.

But while the inquiry as a whole leaves one very strongly under this impression, there is one element of weakness in the picture he draws, the serious, if not fatal, character of which its author does not seem duly to realize. It emerges in the fourth chapter, entitled 'How far is the Gospel Historical?' and again towards the end (pp. 426 ff.). The question affects both the speeches and the events which it records. The main test in view is the Synoptic narrative, from which the Fourth Gospel diverges, or seems to diverge, on several important matters. The most crucial of these, allowing for all tricks of memory, are certain