even with that letter which is only too often treated as a treatise -the letter of Paul to the Romans. It was farthest from his thoughts to sit down and write a treatise upon justification by faith. Those outer causes he must needs write to the Romans; and when he writes he must needs write of that which fills his heart, and his head, and his hands—" the gospel of Jesus Christ, the power of God unto salvation." That thought leads his mind whither it will. A wonderful revelation of what God is and does, and is and does in man and in creation, is the result. Justification by faith forms an essential part of the letter, but by no means all. There we must stay. Let us only hear the sense of what has been said. God chose the Israelites and the early church to be the special subjects of his manifestations in both words and works, and especially in works, and men filled with the spirit that wrought in the nation and in the church, recorded the works and words of God; and the Bible is the record. That the Bible is historical and only sparingly and somewhat incidentally dogmatical, is no ground for doubting it to be the Word of God, but much rather a ground for believing that it is; that the history deals with common, every-day life, and sanctions manners and notions belonging only to an imperfect state of society and of science, is also no ground for doubt, but much more a ground of faith, for from the very nature of the revelation-it being a revelation of God in the people and their life, it must deal with such a state of life and science; this it has been sought to shew. The view of the Bible thus presented has been by no means defended as it is capable of being, the writer's aim being to serve those who prefer suggestion rather than elaborate argument. In this age of the subjective, it is a vital necessity to hold fast to the objective. It is of the essence of our salvation that it is without us as well as within us. It is from ourselves that we need to be saved. And so our Redeemer came down from heaven, and after his return sent the Comforter. To grasp these historical, outer facts, is to grasp what many are letting go. J. F. SMITH. EXEGESIS OF DIFFICULT TEXTS. MATT. viii. 9. LUKE vii. 8. It is commonly said that the inference from the words of the centurion's message, "For I also am a man under authority," etc., is of an à fortiori nature: If my servants obey my subaltern authority, much more will diseases obey thy absolute authority." But this assigns no force to the kai in kaì yàp ẻyà ἄνθρωπός εἰμι ὑπὸ ἐξουσίαν, ἔχων ὑπ ̓ ἐμαυτὸν στρατιώτας, which is neglected in the Authorized Version of St. Matthew, but translated "also," as above, in that of St. Luke. It would seem to us that the centurion intended to draw an exact parallel between the position of Jesus and his own. Jesus was uπrò èovo lav in his idea as regards the Person from whom His commission came, namely, God, just as much as he was himself under his superior officers, and ultimately under the emperor. Thus he considered that our Lord's authority, derived from God, over diseases and other physical and mental phenomena, was similar to his own, derived from man, over his soldiers and servants. So that word of mouth,-compare λéyw TоÚT in Matt. viii. 9 with eimè Xoy in the preceding verse,-in either case was sufficient without actual propinquity or touch. The Jews always appear to have expected our Lord to touch or be touched in the performance of a cure (compare Mark v. 28). In raising the young man at Nain he touched the coffin; the daughter of Jairus was taken by the hand; and in fact with a few exceptions, such as that of the ten lepers who were cleansed while going to the priests, touch appears to have been our Lord's practice. Our Lord's own disciples were as yet scarcely certain that He was the "Christ of God" (Luke ix. 20); and it is treason to sound criticism to suppose that the centurion had any idea that he was more than man, when another reasonable explanation can be found independent of any such assumption. Again, if we compare the case of the centurion with that of the nobleman (Baσiλixòs) mentioned in John iv. 46-54, we shall see abundant reason for the commendation of the especial faith shewn by the former without supposing him to have possessed any greater insight into our Lord's divine nature than the mass of people of the day. When the nobleman says to our Lord, "Sir, come down ere my child die;" our Lord replies, "Go thy way, thy son liveth,"-thus putting his faith to the very trial to which the centurion at once declares himself superior. It must, however, be acknowledged that the xal in kai yàp does not always belong to the following word, but the phrase some times corresponds to the Latin etenim rather than to nam etiam. In Xen., Anab., i. 1, 6, we find an instance of the sense etenim, καὶ γὰρ ἦσαν αἱ Ἰωνικαὶ πόλεις Τισσαφέρνους τὸ ἀρχαῖον ; but in the same book and chapter, § 8, there is an equally clear instance of the sense nam etiam, which we believe it to have in the history of the centurion. This passage runs : καὶ γὰρ ὁ Κῦρος ἀπέπεμπε τοὺς γιγνομένους δασμοὺς βασιλεῖ ἐκ τῶν πόλεων ὧν Τισσαφέρνης ἐτύγχανεν ἔχων. Túyxaνev exwv. "For Cyrus also (as well as Tissaphernes) used to send in for the king the accruing tributes from the towns that Tissaphernes used to hold." In any case the argument from the improbability of the centurion having, except by special revelation, a fuller knowledge of our Lord's real nature than was possessed by His own disciples, and the absence of any indication of such a revelation, hold good against the à fortiori explanation of his speech, which we contend to be both needless, groundless, and uncritical. MATT. vi. 12. LUKE Xi. 3. Assuming the derivation of πiovσios from eπì and eiμ to be correct, and rejecting the instances cited to signify its derivation from eπ and ciui, as either containing relics of the digamma taken from epic Greek, or belonging to an older state of the language, we think the commentators have not as yet succeeded in analyzing the word satisfactorily. Surely we must not with Winer attempt to derive it from ἐπιών, or rather from ἡ ἐπιοῦσα upa, which, the upholders of eπì and eiμì rightly observe, gives a false sense and makes us pray for the "succeeding" day, the morrow, for the things of which we are shortly afterwards, by St. Matthew, indeed, at the conclusion of the same chapter,bidden not to care. Let us rather take as our guide the words, ἐφόδιος=ἐπὶ τὴν ὁδὸν, “ lasting for the journey,” ἐφημέριος, lasting for a day," and eπernotos in Hom. Od., vii. 118. « Τάων οὔποτε καρπὸς ἀπόλλυται οὐδ ̓ ἀπολείπει which, begging pardon of Liddell and Scott in their last edition, is manifestly correctly explained by Damm and Rost as meaning "lasting the whole year," mì Tò eros, in contradistinction to ÉTÉTELOS, which indicates annual change or recurrence. Such is also probably the origin of eneтavòs, although the sense "sufficient" is said to be always satisfactory without any allusion to ἔτος. Hence we shall come in the case of ἐπιούσιος to ἐπὶ τὴν 'IOTZAN μéрav, "sufficient for the going or current day," a sense and derivation which appear to satisfy all the conditions of both the word and its context. We must not, however, attempt to ignore the difficulty presented by Euripides, Phon., 1637: “And remain a virgin, awaiting the coming day, in which the bed of Hæmon awaits you.” Here, however, loûoav is the reading of only one manuscript, most of the others giving εἰσιοῦσαν οἱ ἐπιοῦσαν, thus indicating that lovσav is here used in an unusual sense, and one in which the example of Euripides was not followed by his countrymen generally. We do not think that lovσav in the sense of 66 com ing "would have been at all familiar or even intelligible to the writers or readers of the gospels, who would respectively have used and expected epxoμévnv. Strange to say it appears only to be used once in the LXX., in Prov. vi. 6, 0 πроs тоν μúρμηкa, and then in the sense of going, "Go to the ant." Paley, in remarking on the above passage of Euripides, says: "It seems doubtful if iovoa nuépa could signify a coming day. It should rather mean, a day now partly spent,'" which is exactly the meaning for which we are contending with regard to the compound επιούσιος. We must now leave the passage of Euripides with the alternatives of taking loûσav in a very strange sense, or of considering that Creon is represented as brutal enough to order Antigone to prepare for marriage on the night of the very day on which she has lost her two brothers by mutual slaughter. But we offer our explanation of the derivation of éπioúotos with considerable confidence. MARK ix. 23. Assuming that the word TOTEûoal is an interpolation, we cannot but object to Tischendorf's introduction of a note of interrogation after Tò el dúvaoal. A semicolon should be put in the Greek, and a note of admiration, not of interrogation, in English. The translation would then run thus: "But if aught thou canst, help us, taking pity upon us. But Jesus said to him, If thou canst! All things are possible to the believer." The meaning is, "I am surprised at your use of the expression, If thou canst; of course I can; all things are within the power of a real believer." Το translate τὸ εἰ δύνασαι πιστεῦσαι with De Wette and others, "the usual formula, If thou canst believe," is to call that usual which was not usual, at least as far as we can see from our present gospels. Reference was undoubtedly made by our Lord to the faith of some of the parties concerned in cures, but this was not the usual formula by which he did so. And De Wette's objection that el Ti Súvaσai would have followed Tò, instead of merely ei dúvaoai, is surely hypercriticism. The gravamen of the man's offence lay in ei dúvaoal, not in the modifying Tɩ; and the mistakes of so many commentators have arisen from their not seeing that our Lord's reference was not to the faith of the man, but to His own. In Plato's Phœdo, 99 B., we have a sentence beginning with τὸ and finishing without any finite verb: τὸ γὰρ μὴ διελέσθαι οἷόν τ' εἶναι ὅτι ἄλλο μέν τί ἐστι τὸ αἴτιον τῷ ὄντι, ἄλλο δ ̓ ἐκεῖνο ἄνευ οὗ τὸ αἴτιον οὐκ ἄν ποτ ̓ εἴη αἴτιον· which should be translated: "For fancy not being able to distinguish that the cause in reality is one thing, and that without which the cause would never be a cause, another!" LUKE iii. 23. We have never been satisfied with any explanation of ἀρχόμενος that we have seen. It is clear that v cannot follow it in construction; and to translate ȧpxóuevos, "when he began his ministry,” taking ἦν with ὡσεὶ ἐτῶν τριάκοντα, appears to us exceedingly awkward. With the reading of Tischendorf, v o Ἰησοῦς ἀρχόμενος ὡσεὶ ἐτῶν τριάκοντα, we think the translation which we are about to propose is certainly right; and even with the common reading, which perhaps was originated by some one who misunderstood the other, we think it can claim a fair share of probability. Referring to the commencement of the Acts, we find τὸν μὲν πρῶτον λόγον ἐποιησάμην περὶ πάντων, ὦ Θεόφιλε, ὢν ἬΡΞΑΤΟ ὁ Ἰησοῦς ποιεῖν τε καὶ διδάσκειν. Now why should not v ȧpxóuevos be the ordinary compound past tense, which v épxóμevov surely is in John i. 9, and of which the instances are almost innumerable in the New Testament and LXX.? As for instance Mark ii. 18, hoav vηoteúοντες; Luke ii. 33, ἦν Ἰωσὴφ καὶ ἡ μήτηρ αὐτοῦ θαυμάζοντες. Thus the translation is very simple, the genitive of age corresponding to the ordinary Latin use: "And Jesus himself began (his ministry, i.e., Toiеiv κai didúoκew, as in Acts i. 1) when about thirty years old, being, as he was supposed,” etc. This explanation also satisfies the usual rule, that and its participle are only separated by their subject and its adjuncts. LUKE vii. 36-50. Translate verse 50: "Wherefore I say unto thee, Her many sins are forgiven, because she loved much; but one to whom |