far-seeing political eye of the reformer, as well as his delicate and welldigested tact.

The parent Bible Society of Prussia has published Kleinert's treatise on Luther's prefaces to the Sacred Scriptures. Pastor Ninck, in Hamburg, gives a very judicious extract from the favorite monograph of Luther, "Of the Liberty of a Christian Man," under the peculiar title, "Free from Every Body and Yet the Servant of All." With a skillful hand Musical Director Stein, in Wittenberg, treats of Luther's "Musical Significance and Activity." The same author has composed several popular chorals for the liturgical festival on the jubilee day. In addition to these, the same Bible Society has published a goodly number of liturgical devotions for the use of the churches during the festival days.

Luther's hymns have also been the object of the greatest attention. During his life-time he received the sobriquet of the nightingale of Wittenberg, and his undying notes have ever resounded, even through years. of darkness, down to the present light of day. One of the works is entitled "The Nightingale of Wittenberg," and introduces his hymns with most instructive notices. The Christian songs of the German Churches would be a comparative blank without the hymns of Luther, for on these has been based all the hymnology of the German Protestant Churches since that day. Some of these publications are accompanied with Luther's proverbs, adages, and fables, because of their peculiarly poetic character, and the fact that many of his hymns were based on these. In connection with these we may mention some of the artistic productions of the Reformation, now revived and republished, especially the large ones of Luther, Melanchthon, Zwingli, Frederick the Wise, and Hutten. A very excellent engraving of Luther, at the ridiculously low figure of three cents apiece, and in quantities at even a lower rate, has been published by tens of thousands, and, in spite of its low price, is really an acceptable ornament for the modest households of the

masses.

The relations between Wiclif and Huss are being brought out into a clearer light under the inspiration of the large attention being paid to the history of the Reformation. That there were close connections between the Bohemian movement of the beginning of the fifteenth century and that of Oxford are no longer simple suppositions; indeed, that such relations existed was clear to all concerned in the Council of Constance. But in the course of time, when the works of Wiclif became more inaccessible, the consciousness of the close connection between the two reformatory movements fell into the background. But since, during the last few years, the publications concerning Wiclif are commanding more attention, we are gradually perceiving how much Huss was indebted to Wiclif. The first step in this direction has now been made by Professor Loserth, of the University of Czernowitz, under the title of “Huss and Wiclif." This work will be of great value to theological

investigators. Loserth's very thorough and very diligent investigations are from many stand-points of scientific importance. Loserth seems to present valid proof that the Bohemian movement was, in the main, a repetition of the English one; that Wiclif was the highly gifted and energetic master, and Huss the docile scholar.

Dr. Guthe, the famous Palestine explorer, has just published an extended and valuable report of his latest labors in the line of excavations around Jerusalem. The accounts mainly concern the southern wall of ancient Jerusalem, the old sites and buildings on the south-eastern eminence, as well as the surroundings of the Pool of Siloam. Eleven plates of large form, partly lithograph and partly crayon, serve as illustrations; a map based on Wilson's, but corrected by Guthe and Sandel, affords an instructive view of the entire work. The journal of the German Palestine Association has, in the first number of its sixth volume, much interesting matter in regard to the present condition of the inhabitants of Palestine. It has also an article on the names of the squares, streets, and passages of the present Jerusalem by the missionary Sandreczki; also a treatise in regard to the so-called temple associations of Palestine, by one of the co-workers in that enterprise, as well as a description of the workmen and the sphere of work of the German Protestant mission in Jerusalem. The last article of the issue treats of the personnel and the condition of the various Christian confessions in the Holy Land, as well as those of the Jewish inhabitants. This German publication is one of the most valuable now issued in regard to contemporaneous activity in Palestine, and is invaluable in its contents to that portion of the Christian world that looks with interest and favor to all that concerns the regeneration of the Holy Land.

Under the title of "Exegetical Commentary to Nine Epistles of the Apostle Paul," we have a new work by Karl von der Heydt. It is to the Germans a gratifying as well as a rare occurrence, that a layman should use his extraordinary genius to throw a brilliant light on the living word of God, and so to delve in the original text of the New Testament as to find and give new significance to many of its words and expressions. The author of this work has discovered a rare worth in these Bible words, and seems greatly to enjoy all their meaning. His exegesis is not given solely on his own responsibility, but is based on the present status of investigation and the commentaries and authorities of the most thorough Greek scholars.

Two Christological works antagonistic in their character have recently appeared to attract the interest of the Christian world. The Ritschel theology has forced the Christological question into a new position by its distinction between metaphysics and dogmatics, but a work now comes to its relief from Alsace, from the pen of Professor Lobstein, in Strasburg. It is in French, and bears the following title: "The Idea of the Pre-existence of the Son of God: A Fragment of Experimental Christology." This work has just been published by the Protestant

house of Fischbacher in Paris. While asserting that he desires to serve neither the liberal nor the orthodox theology, he makes an effort, exegetically and critically, to furnish the proof that in the original New Testament text the idea of pre-existence of the Son of God did not exist. He makes assertions as follows: The Acts of the Apostles acknowledges his eternity only after death, and Peter asserted the pre-existence of Christ only in the thought of God. The Revelation contains the first assertion of a pre-existence of the Messiah. Paul, with rabbinical terminology, takes up the thought, and arrives in later epistles at the assertion that Jesus is to be comprehended as the living principle, and as an independent eternal personality. The Epistle to the Hebrews, on the basis of the Alexandrian philosophizers, makes the Son equal to the Father, as a symbol of his nature, etc. It is plain to be seen, from his short review of the quotations of Lobstein, that he starts from the supposition that the Lord himself has nowhere asserted his pre-existence, and that where it occurs it is only a human construction, and may, therefore, lay no claim to objective authority. He who can satisfy himself with this result of scriptural investigation may see how he will finally fare with his "historical and critical" testimony.

The other Christological work which we have here to name proceeds from a diametrically opposite basis. It is that of the Oxford professor, P. H. Liddon, which has just been published in German, to gratify the theologians of that land with an antidote for the works above named. The title of Liddon's book is, "The Divinity of our Lord and Master Jesus Christ." It is in the form of lectures, with a preface by a pastor of Nice. The views of this subject which we here find are of no extraordinary novelty. The most difficult problems of this Christological question, namely, the relation of the divine nature to the human, as well as the difference between the God-man existence of the Lord in the socalled condition of humiliation and in that of his elevation, is scarcely touched; and, indeed, the mode of treatment which Christology experiences in the school of Ritschel is not even mentioned, much less de bated. Nevertheless, the book is calculated to furnish a rich blessing to earnest Christians seeking for a Godlike Christ, and will, doubtless, exert a wide and wholesome influence in Germany, as it has done in England.

ART. XII.-QUARTERLY BOOK-TABLE.

Religion, Theology, and Biblical Literature.

The Revised Version. Heb. vi, 4-6: 'Αδύνατον γὰρ τοὺς ἅπαξ φωτισθέντας γευσαμένους τε τῆς δωρεᾶς τῆς ἐπουρανίου καὶ μετόχους γενηθέντας πνεύματος ἁγίου καὶ καλὸν γευσαμένους θεο ῥῆμα δυνάμεις τε μέλλοντος αἰῶνος, ἱκαὶ παραπεσόντας, πάλιν ἀνακαινίζειν εἰς μετάνοιαν, ἀνασταυροῦντας ἑαυτοῖς τὸν υἱὸν τοῦ θεοῦ καὶ παραδειγματίζοντας.

For it is impossible those once enlightened, having tasted the heavenly gift, and become partakers of the Holy Spirit, and tasted the good word of God, and the power of the future state, to renew again unto repentance, they recrucifying to themselves the Son of God, and exposing to disgrace.-Literal rendering.

For as touching those who were once enlightened and tasted of the heavenly gift, and were made partakers of the Holy Ghost, and tasted the good word of God, and the powers of the age to come, and then fell away, it is impossible to renew them again unto repentance; seeing they crucify to themselves the Son of God afresh, and put him to an open shame.-Revised Version.

This passage of Scripture is justly regarded as among the most interesting and solemnly important of the whole Bible. It is interesting as a critical study, since its finer discriminations of meaning can be clearly determined only by careful attention not only to the accepted sense of the words used, but also to the structure of the sentences, and especially to the tenses of the several verbal participles. It is also interesting as a dogmatic study, on account of its direct bearing upon a much-disputed point of the theology of evangelical Protestantism, the possibility or impossibility of the fatal and final apostasy of real Christians; and likewise for its awful lessons and solemn warnings against the sin of apostatizing. It embodies with great fullness and richness of expression the facts and phenomena of Christian experience, and shows the high estate, at once so precious and so perilous, in which the believer stands; and it also seems to intimate that, while a fall from that high estate is supposable, the condition resulting from such a lapse is terrible beyond all comparison.

In respect to its grammatical form and structure, the passage is not a difficult one. The words used are not unusual ones, nor do they appear to be carried out of their ordinary application, and the whole structure of the sentence is agreeable to the best understood and universally accepted grammatical rules. A certain process (to renew again unto repentance) is indicated as impossible (áðúvarov) to the class of persons who are included under the four designations (the last one twofold) first given, and who have fallen away from that state; and a further explanation

is added showing that this impossibility is conditioned and rendered irreversible by the position and practice of those who have so fallen away, because they "recrucify" and "contemn Christ. In respect to the grammatical sense of the whole passage, there is really no difficulty at all, and the objections raised against allowing it to be accepted and understood as it seems obviously to mean arise simply from dogmatic reasons, as teaching one or more points of doctrine that stand opposed to certain other accepted beliefs.

It is the established and the only defensible rule for interpretation of a discourse, spoken or written, that it shall be understood agreeably to the ordinary sense of its words and phrases, and where that is clearly ascertained there can be no appeal from its determination. The rule sometimes insisted upon, that particular texts (and the whole Bible is made up of such) must be interpreted agreeably to "the analogy of faith," can be legitimately used only when all other methods fail, and then the passages so interpreted cannot be employed as proof-texts. As an element in criticism dogmatic considerations must always occupy a very low place, and they must be used, if at all, only with very great caution, and when other and more rational processes fail to give any probable sense to the matter in hand-a consideration which certainly will not apply in this case.

The purport and design of the discourse of which the passage under consideration is a part should be clearly apprehended and its bearing properly conceded. Accordingly, we find the evident intent of the Epistle to the Hebrews to have been to dissuade those addressed from apostatizing from their Christian fidelity, toward which there seem to have been among them, at that time, strong incentives. The passage therefore appears as giving a reason why the threatened defection should not be allowed to take place, and the motive urged is the certain, fearful, and irreversible perdition of those who so apostatize.

The persons in whose interests these instructions appear to be given are indicated by certain facts that are assumed to belong to their history, and by referring to certain spiritual attainments to which they had come; the whole taken together constituting a deep and broad presentation of the religious or spiritual life, having very few parallels in accurate delineation of personal experience and Christian attainments.

The adverb of time or order, ärаs, applies naturally to all of the first four terms or clauses, which are all in one or other of