And now, what have Mr. Stephens' deacons done with their children? Mr. Stephens does not tell us.

In a discussion of the Virgin Birth of our Lord contributed to Preuschen's Zeitschrift für die Neutestamentliche Wissenschaft, the Rev. G. H. Box, B.D., deals with the presence in St. Matthew's Genealogy of Tamar and Rahab and 'her that had been the wife of Uriah.' These 'strange women' are not in the Genealogy in St. Luke's Gospel. Were they inserted deliberately in the First Gospel? For what purpose?

Mr. Box believes that they were inserted deliberately. He believes that the first two chapters of St. Matthew's Gospel are a Midrash. That is to say, they have an historical basis, but they are not history pure and simple. They are history with a purpose. They are history written for edification.

Mr. Box draws attention to the number of names in St. Matthew's Genealogy. They separate into three fourteens. It is clear enough to Mr. Box, and to most people, that this is deliberate. What is the reason? He believes that Gfrörer was right when he suggested that the number fourteen was chosen because that is the value of the Hebrew letters in the name of David; and three fourteens because the same name is made up of three letters. This is entirely after the manner of a Midrashic commentary. And the intensely Jewish (that is, Jewish-Christian) atmosphere of the first two chapters of the First Gospel is plainly proved by Mr. Box in this very article.

Well, suppose that St. Matthew's Genealogy is Midrashic, supposing that it is written for edification, and that the actual Genealogy of Jesus is to be found in St. Luke, what purpose could be served by the insertion of those three women?

Mr. Box believes that they were inserted in order to anticipate a calumny that was sure to

arise regarding the Virgin Mary. Mr. Arthur Wright holds that the calumny had already arisen before the Genealogy was compiled. And in that way he accounts for 'the relatively late attestation of the doctrine of the Virgin Birth.' The whole narrative, he thinks, was kept back until conflict with heresy brought it forward. But whether it was meant to meet or to anticipate the calumny, Mr. Box believes that the purpose of inserting those women's names was to cast the Jewish charge against the Virgin Mary back upon the Jews themselves. Were they the persons to make such a charge when their own Royal House came down through such a history?

Dr. Samuel Daiches, of Sunderland, has contributed an article to the Jewish Quarterly Review for April on 'Ezekiel and the Babylonian Account of the Deluge.' What is the Babylonian account of the Deluge? Dr. Daiches does not translate it all. He translates the part with which he has to do here. But it is that part with which we all have most to do. For, whether Ezekiel knew the passage or not, it contains the most significant thing for religion in the whole poem.

This is the translation

Ea opened his mouth and speaks,
Says to the warrior Bēl:

Thou sage of the gods, warrior!

Why didst thou not take counsel and didst bring a flood?

On the sinner put his sin,

on the evil-doer put his evil deed!

(But) be merciful so that not (All) be cut off, be

patient so that not (All) [be destroyed]. Instead of bringing on a deluge, let lions come and diminish mankind! Instead of bringing on a deluge, let tigers come and diminish mankind! Instead of bringing on a deluge, let famine come and [smite] the land! Instead of bringing on a deluge, let pestilence come and waste the land!

do they remind us of? They remind us of the passage in the fourteenth chapter of Ezekiel (verses 12-20). There also the scourges of a country are famine, wild beasts, and pestilence. It is true that the sword is added, and that the order is not quite the same. But the parallel is undoubtedly remarkable. More significant, however, is the lesson that is taught. In both accounts the lesson is, that whatever may have been God's judgments in the past, henceforward the innocent is not to suffer with the guilty, but every man is to bear his own sin.

Dr. Daiches has no hesitation in saying that Ezekiel imitated the Babylonian narrative. He was living in Babylon. He was a scholar. The Babylonian tablets were familiar to him. He speaks (41) of taking a tile and portraying upon it a city. He means an ordinary clay-tile of Babylon. He was particularly fond of reading the writers who went before him, imitating their style and quoting their sentences. If the upper classes of exiled Israel, to whom he addressed himself, were now acquainted with the culture of their new country, as seems to Dr. Daiches extremely likely, then Ezekiel, the literary artist, would feel that an allusion to the Babylonian story of the Deluge would be readily understood by them and appreciated.

Now in the study of Ezekiel there is a more important question than his relation to the literature of Babylon. Few questions of Old Testament scholarship are more important or more difficult than the determination of the date of the 'Law of Holiness.' The Law of Holiness is found in Leviticus, chapters xvii. to xxvi. And the question is, Are these chapters or the Book of Ezekiel earliest? That they are not independent is certain. Which is the original and which the copy?

Again Dr. Daiches does not hesitate. Ezekiel never was original. He has his gifts as a writer and a prophet, but originality is not one of them. He himself would probably have said, the less

original the more a prophet. He copies Jeremiah. We have seen that he imitates the Babylonian tablets. Dr. Daiches has no doubt that he imitated Leviticus likewise.

But now a striking thing appears. With all his learning in Babylonian lore, with all his literary dependence, Ezekiel never learned from Babylon a word of religion, he never imitated a Babylonian religious idea. Dr. Daiches is as clear on that as on the other things. And on that he has abundant support from others. Says Gunkel (Schöpfung und Chaos, 169 f.): 'Ezekiel got his cosmogony and his history from the Babylonians; his faith is ever his own.' When Frederick the Great asked for a short proof of the miraculous, the answer was 'The Jews, my Lord.' This is the meaning of the answer. Ezekiel copied the Babylonian cosmogony, but where did he get his God?

Before closing his article Dr. Daiches adds a word on another difficult matter. Where did Ezekiel find the expression 'son of man,' of which he is so fond, and what did he mean by it?

Dr. Daiches believes that he got that also from the Babylonians. In the Code of Hammurabi (175 f.) mention is made of a mārat avelim, which means 'the daughter of a freeman.' If there was a mārat avelim, it is probable that there was also a mār avelim, the son of a freeman. Dr. Daiches thinks that Ezekiel's 'son of man' is a translation of the Babylonian mār avelim, and that it signifies 'freeborn son.'

There would then be no suggestion of human frailty in the name. Rather would there be a certain touch of irony. Were Ezekiel's fellowexiles free citizens now of Tel-Abib? And were they proud of it? Or does the expression signify a member of the aristocracy of the new country? In either case, was there not a gentle recall to their real position and the source of their true greatness, in the frequent use

Such occasional dependence upon Babylonia as the previous note refers to, would not be regarded apparently as lending support to the BabelBibel theories of Professor Friedrich Delitzsch. For in a volume written in reply to Delitzsch, and just published in an English translation (R.T.S.; 2s.), Professor König speaks affectionately of 'S. Daiches, the young Assyriologist,' and quotes approvingly from one of his letters.

Where, then, does the Dean of Canterbury find the 'scholars in this country among whom the theories of Delitzsch have found too much countenance?' Professor Driver is not one of them. And Professor Driver does not know any other English scholar who believes in 'the exaggerated estimate of the influence of Babylon upon the civilization of ancient Israel formed by Professor Delitzsch.'

The Dean of Canterbury is a scholar, and he probably knows the difference between the archæological and the literary critics of the Old Testament, between men like Professor Delitzsch and men like Professor König. He must know the difference. For he has written a preface to the English translation of Professor König's book. Now the sole purpose of that book, of which the title is The Bible and Babylon, is to discredit Professor Delitzsch's conclusions. As Dr. Wace himself, in this preface, puts it: 'Professor König, the author of this treatise, is one of the first Hebrew scholars in Germany; and he has subjected Professor Delitzsch's representations to a severe scrutiny, which will at least show that they are at present destitute of any adequate foundation.'

But Dr. Wace is a conservative in theology. He is one of the most conservative scholars in this country. He detests the literary criticism of the Old Testament as heartily as he abhors the

So he writes a preface to this book and approves of Professor König. But that path has pitfalls. Professor König answers Delitzsch well. But Professor König is a higher critic. He cannot keep his higher criticism out of even this book. And so the translator has to add 'notes.' When Professor König answers Delitzsch he is delightful; when he does a little higher criticism on his own account he is himself ' answered.'

Professor Driver protests against the whole proceeding. In a letter to the Guardian of June 21, he says, 'It is, I venture to think, a little surprising that the translation of Professor König's brochure should have been made by the translator a vehicle for the propagation of opinions in which Professor König profoundly disbelieves, and for the condemnation of books for which he has a high admiration and regard.' Dr. Driver has been in communication with Professor König, who has told him that he retains unchanged the critical position taken up by him in his Einleitung in 1893, and adds that a footnote in this new book, to which Dr. Driver has reason for objecting, was not contained in the proofs of the book submitted to him.

In a new book on The Souls of Black Folk (Constable; 5s. net), written by one of them (it is written by Dr. W. E. Burghardt du Bois, Professor of Economics and History in Atlanta University), there is a pathetic chapter, entitled 'Of the Passing of the First-Born.' It is not the story of a certain night in Egypt. It is the story of a birth and a death in Professor Du Bois' own home in the West. He tells it well. Clearly this Doctor of Philosophy, 'of negro descent,' has the gift of

expression. But the most memorable thing in the story is the unintentional revelation it gives that the birth of his first-born made a man of Professor Burghardt du Bois.

This chapter in Professor du Bois' book recalls a yet older story in which something similar is hinted at. In the fifth chapter of Genesis, that chapter to which the late Dr. Joseph Parker gave the name of 'Nobodyism,' after you pass Seth and Enos and Cainan and Mahalaleel and Jared, you come upon Enoch. And of Enoch it is said that he lived sixty and five years and begat Methuselah ; and that after he begat Methuselah Enoch walked with God three hundred years. After he begat Methuselah. Methuselah was his first-born. Is there anything in it?

The commentators say there is. Dr. Alexander Whyte is one of the commentators, and he is very impressive on it. Enoch, from the day that his little child was born, felt God shed abroad in his heart. He entered every new morning into his own heart to walk there with God. He walked abroad every morning with his child in his arms, and with his God in his heart.' And then he makes his appeal without hesitating: 'Fathers and mothers, young fathers and young mothers, fathers and mothers whose first child has just been born, and no more-seize your opportunity, let not another day pass. Begin to-day. Begin to-night. It is late, if not yet too late, with the most of us; but it is not yet too late with you. It was his first son that made Enoch a saint. As soon as he saw his first child in his image, and in his arms; Enoch became from that day a new man. All men begin to walk for a short season with God when their first child is born; only Enoch, alone almost of all men, held on as he had begun.'

But about this Enoch. Dr. Parker calls the chapter in which Enoch is mentioned a chapter of Nobodies. Well, even nobodies are necessary. The earth is necessary, as well as the salt that salts it. 'When your little child is ill,' says Dr. Parker

It is the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews that says Enoch was translated. He says Enoch was translated by faith. What an influence to attribute to faith. St. James asks (in our version), Can faith save you? This author affirms that it can translate you. And he is most practical and full of common sense. Our Lord says, 'If ye had faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye might say unto this mountain, Be thou plucked up by the root, and be thou planted in the sea; and it should obey you': and we do not know what to make of it. But the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews is one of us. He knows what faith can do for common men. And he says, 'By faith Enoch was translated, that he should not see death.'

How did Enoch show his faith? In two ways. He believed that God is, that was one way. And he believed that He is a rewarder of them that seek after Him.

He believed that God is. But we all do that. 'The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God.' We all believe that there is a God. Is that what Enoch did? No, not that. The devils do that. The devils believe that God is, and tremble. Enoch had faith that God is. We believe the fact, we believe the theological statement, that

God is. But that will not translate us. Enoch faithed that God is.

Why did our Christian fathers fail to make for us a verb out of the noun 'faith'? They made a verb out of hope. They allowed us to say, 'My hope is in God,' and 'He hoped in God.' Why did they not encourage us to say, as the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews in his own proper tongue could say, 'By faith (TíσTE) Enoch was translated . . . for he that cometh to God must

faith (morevσa yàp deî) that He is '? We are driven to say, 'must believe that He is'; and there is no virtue in the word 'believe' that it should translate us.

Enoch faithed that God is. And what is faith? 'Now faith is the substance (R.V. assurance) of things hoped for, the evidence (R.V. proving) of things not seen.' So Enoch hoped for God. Do we do that? Our God is a consuming fire; and it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God; and when we think of it, we rather hope that God is not. Enoch hoped that God is. And he realized his hope. His faith gave his hope substance, assurance; gave him the grasp of his hope; made it real and actual and at hand. It is true that no man hath seen God at any time; but faith is the evidence of things unseen; it makes the unseen seen. By faith Enoch not only hoped that God is, but realized his hope, saw God, and walked with Him.

Well, that was the one way in which Enoch showed his faith. He faithed that God is. He also faithed that God is a rewarder of them that seek after Him. That was the other way. And what reward did his faith bring? It brought him translation. By faith Enoch was translated, that he should not see death.'

That he should not see death. What a reward! No weary waiting till the end come; no longdrawn agony; no valley of the shadow of death. 'Terrible,' says Carlyle, 'terrible to all men is

death; from of old named King of Terrors.' Enoch had not to face the terror. What a reward!

But what faith can do for one man, faith can do for another. If we faith that God is, and walk with Him, that faith is able to save us, that faith is able to translate us. It translated Enoch. It might have translated Christ. For another reason Christ had to die. If He had not come to die for us, it would no doubt have been said of Him, as it was said of Enoch, 'He was not, for God took Him.'

Do you ask, What would then have become of the mortal and the corruptible? Well, what did become of it? We cannot tell. We only know that that is another matter, that it is a very insignificant and wholly negligible matter. We need not be troubled about that. St. Paul was not troubled about it. He knew that this corruptible has to put on incorruption and that this mortal has to put on immortality. How, he did

not know. But he was not troubled. He simply said, 'The dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.'