Here we see in generation after generation, the lives, beliefs, and practices of men who were conscious of definite relations with God; how they obeyed Him, neglected him or rebelled against Him, and how He rewarded them or punished them sometimes irretrievably and sometimes so as to bring them back to righteous living. It is true that the Old Testament gives partial pictures and only such. Years sweep by with little or no record; anon a blaze of light is thrown upon the person and history of an individual around whom circles, or in whom centers all the forces of a crisis. But such crises often illuminate

the darkness of the past age.

When the preacher regains his whole bible, when his sense of the Divine presence in the world becomes stronger, when his affections are kindled into sympathy with the Hebrew lyrists, and his passion for righteousness becomes like that of the Hebrew prophets, then can he, the preacher of our day, more successfully labor to restore a virile character to the church of Christ. During the past generation Hellenism, æstheticism, divorced from conscience, has been working more and more. rapidly into modern life. Its tendency has been to emasculate the Christian church. The love for beauty has often become so great that men feel pain in the presence of what is ugly in form or feature, their love for grace and elegance is so strong that awkwardness disgusts them and the unfinished in literature, although intrinsically excellent, only repels them. Character goes for nothing, form is everything. The love for beauty, elegance in form, manners or literature, needs no defence. It is a legitimate development in human nature. The very existence of this love in the human breast affirms an infinite Lover of beauty. But He, the Origin of all beauty, loves more dearly by far truth, righteousness. To Him the untrue, the unrighteous, the evil, is far the most repulsive. Let us then seek all that is good. Let us cherish

"The graces and the loves which make

"The music of the march of life."

Let us also have the Hebrew love of rectitude so developed that evil, no matter in how perfect a guise in art, manners, will excite an immeasurably profounder disgust than the true and righteous even when veiled in an ugly form or manner. Then

can our hearts like the Hebrews' pulsate in unison with God's own heart; then can the desires of a pure conscience reign in and over our modern life. Hebrew loyalty to holiness, righteousness, goodness, will match and rule the Hellenic love for beauty, yes, and the Roman conception of law. Then and never before can we realize grace and peace, that New Testament benediction.

In this spirit, with such hopes and and objects, practical as they are and, as I believe, in full accord with the traditions and purposes of this Seminary, so long as that Providence which has hitherto directed my life shall keep me here, so long shall I endeavor to administer the trust which has been put upon

me.

ARTICLE VIII.-THE REVISION AND ITS CAMBRIDGE CRITIC.

MANY who have read the "Quarterly Reviewer" in his recent attacks upon the Revision and Westcott and Hort's Greek text, have been amused to watch his dextrous changes of base. At one moment he seems almost to repudiate the received canons of text-criticism on which the opposing views are based, while at another he relies on those same canons to expose the weakness of the reading criticised. This inconsistency, which has already been pointed out in several replies to him, is due, no doubt, in part to the fact that the Reviewer cannot help being and remaining a trained text-critic of expert powers and adequate knowledge of his subject. If he errs it is not for want of light. But he has recently gained a disciple on this side of the water whose consistency is complete, and whose sincerity cannot be questioned-no less a person than Professor Bowen, of Harvard College. I wish to examine the validity of some of this gentleman's criticisms on the Revision in the Princeton Review, January, 1883, not for controversy but in the interests of truth, since it is not fair that the Revision should bear more than the weight of truth in any criticism simply because a great name and a brilliant reputation are thrown into the scale.

Professor Bowen commences by gracefully introducing to our notice Charles Thomson and his translation of the Bible, though the latter is not so little known among scholars as he supposes, nor does it possess a tithe of the excellence he ascribes to it. But this translation serves as a convenient stalking-horse, under cover of which the Professor fires his criticisms at the Revision.

I have styled him a disciple of the Quarterly Reviewer. Such an assertion demands justification. It is the result of what may be called "genealogical evidence." The Cambridge professor shares to a certain extent the views, the mistakes, the arguments-even the very words of the Quarterly Reviewer.

Indeed, in one or two cases, the real meaning of Professor Bowen was not clear to me until I read the full context in the London Quarterly. For instance, in speaking of the Revisers' Greek Text, he says:'

"In a vast majority of cases there is a great conflict of authorities, and in many cases the evidence on the two sides is so equally balanced that it is hard to decide between them. Accordingly, against many of the changes recorded by the Revisers we find the fatal admission recorded in the margin that many ancient authorities' or some ancient authorities,' or 'many authorities, some ancient,' are opposed to the change. Far better would it have been in all such cases that the Received Text should be let alone."

I could not understand how it could be a fatal admission to record that even "many ancient authorities" favored a text different from that adopted, if this was still, as the preface to the Revision implies, "that for which the evidence is decidedly preponderating." But the following passage explained it :*

"The Revisionists, not content with silently adopting most of those mistaken readings which are just now in favor with the dominant German school, have encumbered their margin with those other readings which, after due examination, they had themselves deliberately rejected. For why? Because, in their collective judgment, for the present it would not be safe to accept one reading to the absolute exclusion of the others.' A fatal admission truly! (the italics are mine). What are found in the margin are therefore alternative readings,' in the opinion of these self-constituted representatives of the church and of the sects."

The Quarterly Reviewer speaks of a fatal admission because he seeks to convey the impression that each one of these marginal notes about ancient authorities represents an "alternative reading" between which and the text the Revision Committee were undecided, an impression decidedly negatived by their own preface. Professor Bowen, unless I am mistaken, thus fails to convey the real point of the Reviewer.

The Harvard Professor's indictment against the Revisers may be summed up under two main counts-Their principles and practice in making the Greek text and in translating the same into English. Speaking of the Revisers' text in general he recapitulates and reëchoes, often almost in the same words,

London Quart. Rev. (Am. reprint), April, 1882, p. 162.

the series of misstatements and caricatures of the truth to which the Quarterly Reviewer has treated us. He re-asserts the essential adoption by the Revisers of Westcott and Hort's textual principles and results; in spite of the assertion of the Revisers' preface that different schools of criticism had been represented among them; against the express declaration of two of the Revisers published about the middle of last year in answer to the Quarterly Reviewer; and finally, in contradiction to the facts of the case as exhibited by the texts in question. For instance, Harper's Greek-English Testament gives in its introduction a list of more than two hundred and fifty noteworthy readings" in which the Revisers differ from Westcott and Hort.

If Professor Bowen had informed himself concerning the textual theories of Drs. Westcott and Hort he would not, we believe, have been led into misstatements like the following:*

"Drs. Westcott and Hort admit that repeated transcription involves multiplication of error; and the consequent presumption that a relatively late text is likely to be a relatively corrupt text is found true.' But they immediately proceed to qualify, or rather to nullify, this admission by their hypotheses (for they are nothing more), about the classification of the MSS. into families or recensions, and about the 'unconscious mental action' which induced the early transcribers to lose sight of the intrinsic sacredness' of the language in their instinctive feeling for sense.""

Now notice that if the evidence from the genealogy of MSS. and from transcriptional probability nullifies the presumption that a relatively late text is likely to be a relatively corrupt text, it is singular that the faithful employment of this evidence by Drs. Westcott and Hort has resulted in a text which is substantially that of the two oldest MSS. frequently supported by some others among the nearest in age to these. In other words, genealogical and transcriptional evidence arrive independently at substantially the same result as is yielded by the sole testimony of antiquity.

Moreover, it is a great injustice to follow the Quarterly Reviewer in calling Westcott and Hort's genealogical theories The Revisers and the Greek Text of the N. T., by two Revisers. London: Macmillan, 1882. pp. 28 sq. Cf. Church Quart. Rev., July, 1882, p. 473. 4 p. 27.