more

minster Divines failed to perceive. We see that the Bible reveals a love of God for man tender than the love we find in the Institutes of Calvin. The conclusion we come to is this. It is not a necessarily narrow-minded function to stand by the truth of the old Documents. But, on the other hand, we should be on the outlook for fresh views, for newer visions, and for enlargements of the Creed.

On both sides there are dangers, however. The progressive force in our faith is exposed to the danger of putting novelties before truth. It is a force which tends to dream and to be fascinated by new aspects-when, perhaps, they are only new. The conservative force of faith is exposed to the more terrible danger of making an idol of the forms of truth. The soul in that case becomes shut in by a crust of orthodoxy, and does really sacrifice vital things to this holding fast to the form of words; sometimes goes so far as to sacrifice truth, brotherly kindness, and charity. Safety lies, then, in the interaction of the two forces-the fidelity to received truth and the openness to new truth which is not disobedient to the heavenly vision. So be that the living Christ is in the truth we cleave towe cannot cleave too closely, too firmly; so be that the living Christ is the new vision which appeals to us, we cannot surrender ourselves too absolutely to its light.

ILLUSTRATIONS.

Not disobedient. It is said of Henry of Bavaria that at one time, becoming weary of Court life, he determined to enter a monastery. When he presented himself to Prior Richard, the faithful monk gave him the strict rules of the order. The king listened eagerly, and enthusiastically expressed pleasure at the prospect of such complete consecration. Then the prior insisted that obedience, implicit and uninquisitive, was the first requisite of sainthood. The monarch promised to follow his will in every detail. 'Then go back to your throne and do your duty in the station God assigned you,' were the prior's words to him. The king took up his sceptre again, and from then until he died his people said of him, 'King Henry has learned to govern by learning to obey.'-G. COATES.

Power of Choice.-In Holman Hunt's famous picture of 'Christ the Light of the World' there is no latch of the door outside. The Christ stands knocking, waiting to be admitted, but the ivy-festooned door must open from the inside. Our Lord never destroys the will, but sweetly inclines us, makes us willing in the day of His power. It is always 'Whosoever will,' or 'Ye will not' that secures or loses us salvation. To Jerusalem, with tears of bitter sorrow, He said, 'I would, but ye would not.'-H. O. MACKEY.

The Heavenly Vision.-So was I speaking, and weeping in the most bitter contrition of my heart, when, lo! I heard from a neighbouring house a voice, as of a boy or girl, I know not, chanting, and oft repeating, 'Take up and read; take up and read.' Instantly my countenance altered; I began to think most intently, whether children were wont in any kind of play to sing such words: nor could I remember ever to have heard the like. So, checking the torrent of my tears, I arose; interpreting it to be no other than a command from God, to open the book and read the first chapter I should find.-Confessions of St. Augustine (Smellie's ed.), p. 223.

IT was at the beginning of these somewhat reckless years that I came to the great decision of my life. I remember it well. Our Sunday-school class had been held in the vestry as usual. The lesson was finished, and we had marched back into the chapel to sing, answer questions, and to listen to a short address. I was sitting at the head of the seat, and can even now see Mr. Meikle taking from his breastpocket a copy of the United Presbyterian Record, and hear him say that he was going to read an interesting letter to us from a missionary in Fiji. The letter was read. It spoke of cannibalism, and of the power of the gospel, and at the close of the reading, looking over his spectacles, and with wet eyes, he said, 'I wonder if there is a boy here this afternoon who will yet become a missionary, and by and by bring the gospel to cannibals?' And the response of my heart was, 'Yes, God helping me, and I will.' So impressed was I that I spoke to no one, but went right away towards home. The impression became greater the further I went, until I got to the bridge over the Aray above the mill and near to the Black Bull. There I went over the wall attached to the bridge, and kneeling down prayed God to accept of me, and to make me a missionary to the heathen.-James Chalmers Autobiography and Letters, by RICHARD LOVETT, p. 23.

WHOSO has felt the Spirit of the Highest,
Cannot confound, nor doubt Him, nor deny ;
Yea, with one voice, O world, though thou deniest,
Stand thou on that side, for on this am I.

FOR REFERENCE.

Beecher (H. W.), Sermons, 371.

Campbell (R. J.), Sermons to Young Men, 115.

Coates (G.), The Morning Watch for Soldiers of the King, 56.

Howatt (J. R.), The Churchette, 64.
Keen (J. O.), The Emphasis of Belief, 26.
Leitch (R.), Light of the Gentiles, 33.
Little (W. J. K.), The Light of Life, 246.
Lockyer (T. F.), The Inspiration of the Christian Life, 137.
MacLaren (A.), The Unchanging Christ, 236.

Roberts (J. E.), The Lord's Prayer, 46. Sadler (M. F.), Sermon Outlines, 300. The Keswick Week, 1901, 140.

Thorold (A. W.), The Gospel of Work, 15.

Three Hundred Outlines of Sermons on the N.T., 120.

Wilson (J.), Sermons preached in Clifford College Chapel, 154.

Winterbotham (R.), Sermons, 329.

IN criticizing my new book, Evangelion da-Mepharreshe, Mrs. Lewis has made certain statements about the readings of the Sinai palimpsest of the Gospels which I cannot allow to pass unchallenged, seeing that mere statements about such things are very easily believed by the non-expert public. I must begin by explaining that Evangelion da-Mepharreshe is the Syriac name for the Old Syriac version of the Gospels, and that my new book contains the Syriac texts of the two extant MSS. of that version, together with a literal English translation and a full introduction to the many difficult problems connected with the subject. In the In the course of my work I have had to go once more over the text of the Sinai palimpsest, which, as all the readers of THE EXPOSITORY TIMES know, is the better MS. of the Old Syriac version of the Gospels. In the course of doing this I have succeeded in correcting the hitherto published readings of the Sinai palimpsest in about 300 places, by means of the photographs generously given to the Cambridge University Library by Mrs. Lewis. Some 50 out of these 300 corrections occur in pages read originally by myself at Sinai ; the rest were from pages read by the late Professor Bensly, by Dr. Rendel Harris, or edited by Mrs. Lewis in her book called Some Pages of the Sinai Palimpsest. I gather that Mrs. Lewis disputes my new readings in several places, she enumerates fifteen, and that she considers that in some 70 places more she has been able to read the MS. where I have stated that it is illegible. She says, in fact, the text of these passages has been for three years in my desk.'

When the reading of a difficult palimpsest is in dispute, it is not easy to conduct an argument except in the presence of the MS. itself. There is very little left for the contending parties to do, except to assert their own views. This, however, may be said at the outset, that the Sinai palimpsest,

wherever it is clearly legible, presents a text remarkable for its idiomatic and nervous Syriac. There are in it, of course, a few scribal errors, but they are very few. When, therefore, we are trying to make out a passage where the text is blurred and the reading more or less uncertain, we shall not be satisfied that our decipherment is correct, unless what we assert to be the reading of the MS. is itself idiomatic Syriac. It is more likely that the eye of the modern decipherer should fail than that the grammar of the ancient scribe should go wrong. For instance, Mrs. Lewis has happily no longer any doubt' that the Sinai palimpsest makes the shepherds say yn in Lk 215. I do not profess here to be able to read the photograph, but Mrs. Lewis' suggestion is not very probable. The word yns does mean 'to make an entrance,' it is true. But it is only used of evil spirits taking possession of men. I cannot believe that the shepherds made use of terms which would be appropriate only in the mouth of Beelzebub. To come to details. With regard to Mt 520 I can only repeat that I believe my reading to be correct, and that I divide the lines thus

דאלא תאתר זריקותכון | מן ס[פ]רא ופרישא לא [תעלו] [ל]מלכותא] דש[מי]א

The last line is not really crowded: it contains 19 letters, and several lines in this part of the MS. contain 20 letters. Besides, I see the decisive letters in the photograph! Mrs. Lewis misses the point when she asks whether our Lord may not have spoken of the kingdom.' The full phrase 'kingdom of heaven' is read in Mt 520 by all known MSS, and is certainly the true reading. in this passage.

I see the in, but I cannot see whether was prefixed or not. Readers may be reminded that in Syriac writing initial takes no more horizontal space than itself. When Mrs. Lewis states

that the writing is so regular that each single letter occupies the same amount of space as its neighbour, I can only suppose that she was thinking of some other MS. If readers of my book will look at the photograph of the Sinai palimpsest given in vol. ii. p. 28, they will see that in Lk 1944 the word by takes up exactly as much room as the letters

.in the preceding line נשבקו

Mrs. Lewis is mistaken when she asserts that the palimpsest reads 2 and not na in Mk 417. The long and almost horizontal stroke of the y which follows occupies the place which would be occupied by the final, and so the word looks at first sight not unlike . But is the reading of the MS., as may be ascertained by looking at the photograph in a good light.

About Mt 2748 I do not understand Mrs. Lewis's words. The page in the MS. is here clear, but the photograph is blurred. Mrs. Lewis says 'the true reading will be found by substituting an for

at the beginning of the sentence.' Is this a conjecture, or a statement that she has read the MS. so? If Mrs. Lewis wishes to assert that she has read ann from the MS., I am willing to consider her statement. But if she gives it as an emendation, it is not satisfactory. There are two readings attested in Mt 2743 by other authorities, viz. Témоev, which is the reading of most Greek MSS. and later versions, and ei méπodev, which is the reading of D 1-118-209 and the Old Latin, as well as the Coptic and Armenian versions. The

ancient text of the Evangelion da-Mepharreshe, she devoted a long Note to the final colophon, which gives the date of the MS. and the place of writing. She read the name 'city of Kaukab of Antioch,' and identified it with the Monastery of the Star, near Antioch, mentioned in some colophons in a MS. of the Palestinian Lectionary. Unfortunately she had passed over in her elaborate edition of the MS. the important colophon on fol. 1656, which tells us that the volume was written in the city of Ma'arrath Meşrên, a small place in lat. 36° N., about equidistant from Antioch and Aleppo. This colophon had been noted and copied out by Professor Bensly when he was at Sinai, and when I saw that Mrs. Lewis had left it out I called her attention at once to the fact. Mrs. Lewis recognized that this fait nouveau entirely altered the interpretation of the imperfectly deciphered final colophon. The name of Ma'arrath Meşrên was found to occur there also; in fact, there cannot be a question that the book was put into its present shape in a monastery at Ma'arrath Meşrên.

But how about Kaukab? That is the point where Mrs. Lewis and I still differ; and as Mrs. Lewis speaks of my 'erroneous emendation,' I must try and make my contention clear. The colophon, as we now read it, gives the scribe's name thus:

אנא : בצירא : וחטיא : יוחנן : אסטוניא : דבית : מרי : קנון : קדישא : דמערת : מצרין : מדינתא : 4321:

דאנטיוכיא :

an ,[א] הו [ד]תכיל הוא suggestion which I made was

exact Syriac representation of εἰ πέποιθεν. I leave it to the judgment of those who know Syriac whether Mrs. Lewis was justified in speaking of this Syriac construction as 'cumbersome phraseology.' The passage is discussed fully in my Introduction, vol. ii. p. 76.

May I now say a few words upon the final colophon of the upper writing of the Sinai palimpsest, concerning which Mrs. Lewis and I have the misfortune to differ as to the decipherment of a certain word? The question is of some interest, as it concerns the place where the ancient MS. of the Old Syriac Gospels was turned into its present condition of a palimpsest.

When Mrs. Lewis published her edition of the 'Lives of Holy Women,' which were written in 778 A.D. by a certain John the Stylite over the

1 Studia Sinaitica, No. ix., 'Select Narratives of Holy Women,' by A. S. Lewis, 1900.

I, the mean and sinful John, the Stylite of Beth Mari Qanon the Saint of Maarrath Meşrên City, **** of Antioch.

Each word, it will be seen, is divided by two points, and the four asterisks correspond to the four letters, or spaces for letters, which form the word in dispute.

Now any one who looks at this sentence must see that the missing word should be something which further defines the position of Ma'arrath Meşrên, some word like district or province. Mrs. Lewis and I agree as to the first two letters; No. 1 is, and No. 2 is 1. Moreover, the final letter is not, so that the word, whatever it is, is not in what Syriac grammarians call the definite state.'

2 Sic. I am now sure of this word, but I only succeeded in deciphering it while this article was passing through the press.

Practically this means that it must be a foreign word, a word taken over from Greek. Such a word is kôr, an adaptation of xúpa, and in common use for 'district.' Thus in Lk 31 we read of the 1771, i.e. 'the district of Trachonitis'; and similarly here I believe that the MS. reads

DNT 71, ze. 'district of Antioch,' a region in which, as a matter of fact, Ma'arrath Meşrên is situated. Grammar and sense are both satisfied by this reading. Mrs. Lewis's Kaukab (1) satisfies neither grammar nor sense. It does not satisfy the requirements of Syriac grammar, for a native Syriac name like 'Star' would have to be in the 'definite state,' i.e. we must have had Kaukěbâ d-Antiochia, not Kaukab d-Antiochia. It does not satisfy the sense, for we have had already mentioned in the colophon the name of the monastery (St. Conon's) and the town (Ma'arrath Meşrên). The town of Ma'arrath Meşrên was in the district of Antioch, but it never could have been described as 'Kaukab of Antioch,' whatever that may mean. But, says Mrs. Lewis, the word is a word of four letters. Here is the point where we differ. I appeal with as much confidence as Mrs. Lewis to the verdict of Syriac scholars. If any one should take Mrs. Lewis's advice, and look at the photographs in the Cambridge University Library, I recommend him to study the one taken in 1895. This is somewhat faint, but clearer than the others. It shows the final letter to be an R. The word in dispute projects a little beyond the line to the left, and the dot which distinguishes the Syriac R from D will be found in its proper place above the final letter, in a line with the at the end of the preceding line. The reason why the word projects is that between the 1 and the final is a fault or mark

in the vellum, which shows itself as a blur in the photograph. This faulty piece the scribe left blank. This occupies space No. 3 above. It is a little smaller than the others; indeed there is hardly room for a letter there at all. In any case I must repeat that I still believe that the MS. reads NT 1, 'district of Antioch,' and that I claim to see these letters in the photograph.

I am not generally in the habit of replying to criticisms, and I do not think it necessary to follow Mrs. Lewis' remarks upon the rest of my book. But in the case of these readings of the Sinai palimpsest I felt it necessary to enter a protest, lest those who read the letter by her in THE EXPOSITORY TIMES should imagine the facts to be otherwise than they are.

has put his knowledge of Rabbinical literature to a more extended use. He desires to ascertain to what extent real light may be obtained from that literature upon either the form or the matter of our Lord's teaching. The present work touches, indeed, only the parables, but the restriction is more apparent than real. For one of Fiebig's results is to show how to the Jewish mind, with its inaptitude for abstract definition, the distinctions we mark between different forms of pictorial speech ('proverb,' 'parable,' 'allegory,' etc.) hardly exist. If we allow 'parabolic' to be coextensive with 'pictorial,' and to include also what we express by proverbial,' there is clearly little beyond what is parabolic in the teaching of our Lord as contained in the Synoptic Gospels. Fiebig has, of course, no doubt as to the originality of the teaching of Jesus in every respect in which originality is worth claiming. But he recognizes no a priori probability in the idea that the form of parabolic discourse that meets us in the Synoptic Gospels, in so far as it is different from anything we find in the Old Testament, originated with our Lord. The probabilities lie rather in the direction of supposing that, as regards methods of instructive discourse, He would use what was nearest to His hand and most familiar to His hearers. In the present work Fiebig does not claim exhaustiveness for his treatment of the parabolic material either in the Gospels or the Rabbinical writings. In relation to the Gospels he accepts in the main the results of Jülicher's great work on the parables of Jesus, and finds confirmation in the Rabbinical literature for Jülicher's weighty protest against the allegorizing method of interpretation, which is apt to miss the real meaning of a parable just in proportion as it seeks to find a meaning for each of its details. Where he does join issue with Jülicher, it is in regard to what he considers the latter's too great readiness (as seen, e.g., in his treatment of the Parable of the Tares) to find ' ecclesiastical' elements in some of the Gospel | parables, favouring the conclusion that they could not have been spoken by Jesus in the form in which they have come down to us. In regard to the Rabbinical documents, Fiebig is impressed with the enormous amount of critical work that has yet to be done-particularly in the way of fixing the dates of particular documents or of older material which they may incorporate, before the total value of this literatue, as a source from

which we may derive light upon the Gospels, can be properly estimated. What has been done during the last century for the New Testament itself has still to be done for the ancient extrabiblical Jewish literature. The present short work is, therefore, to be considered in the light of a justification and preparation of more extensive operations yet to be undertaken in the field of Semitic lore. Those who agree with the general contention of Fiebig that matter of real value for the New Testament student lies hidden in this field, and yet are conscious of unfitness or disinclination for the work of excavating it, will feel thankful that the field is being occupied by so fully equipped and so reverent a worker as Fiebig.

This feeling is likely to be strengthened by a perusal of the present work. It is learned, but neither long nor dull. The author illustrates, in handling his theme, what he marks as characteristic of the Semitic mind, a dislike of mere abstract propositions or possibilities. If the Synoptic Gospels represent Jesus as saying certain things, Fiebig's tendency is to believe that He said just these things, and he is instinctively suspicious of arguments for disbelief founded on merely general. considerations, as, e.g., the consideration whether or not the alleged saying is wholly consistent with other sayings not disputed. other sayings not disputed. In the present work, similarly, he has not aimed at formulating propositions that would be applicable to the entire body of Rabbinical literature, a large portion of which has not yet been critically explored. It is enough to deal with a single document containing matter of a kind which, as he gives reason for supposing, must have been current in the days of our Lord. The document chosen is the Mechilta, a Midrash on the Book of Exodus, which, as it happens, is singularly rich in parables. The first main section of the book (pp. 14-52) consists of literal translations of relevant portions of the Mechilta. The first division contains the 'Meshalim [proverbs or parables] of the Mechilta that are transmitted with indication of their authors.' The dates which Fiebig supplies for the Rabbis, whose parables are quoted, vary from about 90 to 220 A.D., and in a later section (Part ii. Div. 2) Fiebig reaches the conclusion that, judging from literature of the type of the Mechilta alone, we must conclude that parables of the type we find there must have been current as early as