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PREFACE.

THE present volume is issued in compliance with suggestions coming from both sides of the Atlantic. Several of the essays it contains appeared originally in publications not easily accessible, yet embody results of the highest value to students of the New Testament, whether in its textual or its historical aspects. Some of them will be found to have received from the author, since their first appearance, not a few minute perfecting touches, characteristic of his punctilious and vigilant scholarship. In reading them, it is important to note the date of composition (given at the beginning of each), since it has not been found practicable always to mention such supplementary or qualifying facts as the progress of time has brought. Indeed, by far the larger portion of the present volume was printed nearly two years ago; and its publication has been delayed by causes over which the editor has had little control. The chief infelicitous result of the delay, however, appears in the fact that one or two additions - made somewhat inconsistently, it must be confessed have come in their turn to need supplementing (see, for example, p. 166, note). All the editor's annotations have been carefully distinguished from the work of the author by being enclosed in square brackets; but it should be observed that matter thus enclosed in the midst of quotations or translations is from the pen of Dr. Abbot himself.

Besides the elaborate discussions of debatable textual questions, which render the volume indispensable to the professional student, room has been found for a few of those papers in which Dr. Abbot addresses general readers in a style alike lucid, attractive, and authoritative. But, after all, to those privileged to know the variety and extent of his learning, the retentiveness and accuracy

of his memory, the penetration and fairness of his judgment, this volume will seem but an inadequate and fragmentary memorial.

The compass and special character of the essay upon the Fourth Gospel have made the editor glad to avail himself of the separate index to that part of the book courteously placed at his disposal by Professor Huidekoper, of Meadville. This index, accordingly, is not incorporated with that at the end of the volume.

In conclusion, special thanks are due, and are here publicly given, to the several editors or proprietors of the publications in which the essays were first printed, for the kind permission to reproduce them in their present form.

J. H. THAYER.

CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS,
July, 1888.

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