the Author, the Thinker, the Speaker, or Creator of the logoi." Holding these views, we can no longer "say that in the beginning was protoplasm, and that the whole world was evolved from it by purely mechanical or external means." "As Christians, we have to say, In the beginning was Logos."

In the Contemporary Review for last December there is an exceedingly able article, from another point of view, from the pen of Miss Caillard. Its title is, "The Knowledge of Good and Evil," and it is in continuation of one that appeared in the September number of the same magazine, on the relation of matter to spirit. Recognizing the principle of evolution, the writer refuses to accept Professor Huxley's limitation, "that the cosmic process has no sort of relation to moral ends." She adopts provisionally Mr. Spencer's definition of good as "that which under all circumstances is fitted to the purpose for which it was intended." Evil being taken as the converse of this, she assumes the truth of the Christian revelation "for the purpose of testing its competency to deal with the problem of evil;" and viewing "ethical man as the outcome of the cosmic process," finds the problem of evil most distinctly stated in him, and therefore proposes to study it in him. The Christian revelation gives no uncertain answer to the question-What is man's "good"? "The stamp of sonship to God" is on him. For human life to be "good," therefore," it must be fitted to enter into conscious union with the Divine Life." Separation from God is "evil." "Every individualized existence" which draws from nature's store renders its tribute again; and in the whole range of nature the union of giving and receiving is seen; and man, "in order to realize himself, or help the self-realization of others, must obey the same law which in him reaches the height of willing sacrifice and mutual intelligent love. All phenomena, whether "inorganic, organic, or super-organic," are manifestations of a single developing life, and the law of its development does not operate by pressure from without, but by the principle of self-determination. This principle reaches its highest manifestation in the conscious life of man. He is thus endowed with a necessary freedom, which implies the possibility of error. The natural tendency of his nature is to its source, as St. Paul speaks of the heathen as "seeking after God, if haply they might find Him; " but the "certain independence of life," pointed to by the principle of evolution, renders separation possible, and it may be the separation was allowed in order "that the union of man with God might be perfect, the result of intelligent love, aspiration, and obedience, not of inability to choose.” "For man to be united to God, it is not enough that he be innocent; he must be holy; hence his education through experience of evil." "The life of the universe is derived from, not shared with, God. God is not nature, but the Source of nature." "He is not mankind, but the Father of mankind, so that men have the distinctiveness, the individuality, the freedom of sons."

THE WORD "PROPHET."-The origin and exact significance of the Hebrew word for "prophet," as fixed by recent research, are traced by Professor Cornill, in the first of a series of lately published lectures on Israelitish Prophecy, with surprising clearness and force. There is nothing, indeed, that is new to specialists, but the latter form so small a proportion of Bible-readers that no apology is needed for giving a summary of the professor's remarks. The word nabi cannot be satisfactorily explained from the Hebrew, which shows that it describes a phenomenon that did not originate on Israelitish soil. It is, therefore, necessary to consult other Semitic languages, and, if we find one which supplies a perfectly distinct and transparent etymology, it is reasonable to assume that we have lighted on the home, not merely of the name, but of the thing. Now, the root naba'a is met with in Assyro-Babylonian and in Arabic. In Assyrian it means simply "speak," "declare," "name;" and the derived substantive signifies "declaration," "naming." Another derivative is Nebo, in Babylonian Nabu, the name of the deity of wisdom and knowledge, of word and speech, who was identified by the Greeks with their Hermes. Nabi, therefore, means "speaker;" but a man may be a speaker, and yet not a prophet. So the Assyrian does not lead us to the root of the matter. The additional help needed is gained from the Arabic, which has preserved the primitive Semitic type with greater purity than any other language of the group. There the root naba'a is used, not in the general sense of "speak," but in the special sense of "announce." He naba'a or anba'a who makes a definite announcement or executes a commission. So there lies in the root, as used in Arabic, the specific thought that the speaker speaks not of himself, but through an impulse from without-says nothing of his own, but only represents another. Consequently, the nabi would be the commissioned speaker, who has to make a definite communication, to deliver a message. There is a trace of this primary meaning of the word in a well-known passage in Exodus, the full import of which is only clearly seen when it is read in connexion with a preceding passage, "And the anger of the Lord was kindled against Moses, and He said, Is there not Aaron thy brother the Levite? I know that he can speak well. . . . And thou shalt speak unto him, and put the words in his mouth: and I will be with thy mouth, and with his mouth, and will teach you what ye shall do. And he shall be thy spokesman unto the people and it shall come to pass that he shall be to thee a mouth, and thou shalt be to him as God" (Exod. iv. 14-16). "See I have made thee a god to Pharaoh, and Aaron thy brother shall be thy nabi" (Exod. vii. 1). Aaron, then, is the prophet of Moses, because he speaks in behalf of the latter, at his commission. When the word is used as a technical term, it is implied that the giver of the message is God. The Hebrew term thus explained corresponds very closely to the Greek word popirns, which strictly described one who translated Divine revelation into articulate intelligible speech.

CUNEIFORM PARALLELS TO THE HEBREW SCRIPTURES.-The distinguished German Orientalist, Professor D. H. Müller, of Vienna, has called attention, in some very suggestive Studies in Ezekiel, which he has just issued, to several illustrations of Hebrew thought and diction which he has noted in the cuneiform inscriptions. 1. In several of Ezekiel's prophecies of judgment (vi. 3-7; xxxii. 5, 6; xxxv. 8) mention is made of those slain on the mountains and in the valleys. Similar language occurs in cuneiform literature from the time of Tiglath-pileser I. to the days of Assurbanipal, five hundred years later. "I beat down the corpses of their warriors," says the former of these barbarous conquerors, "on the heights of the mountains like a storm of rain: I caused their blood to flow over the glens and the heights of the mountain." 2. In different parts of the Old Testament sinners are threatened with the sword, famine, and pestilence. This awful trio is mentioned eighteen times in the Book of Jeremiah. It appears thrice in Ezekiel (vi. 11; vii. 15; and xii. 16), and in two other places is accompanied (as in Lev. xxvi. 22-26) by a fourth horror evil beasts. This terrible group of calamities was threatened by an Assyrian prophet to the enemies of his royal master, the great king Assurbanipal, who died in B.C. 626, the year after the Prophet Jeremiah commenced his prophetic career. Professor Müller quotes the passage in extenso, printing it side by side with two verses from Jeremiah; and the resemblance is in several points really very remarkable. The two portions which correspond most closely run as follows: The Assyrian saw in a dream inscribed on the disc of the moon the words, "To any one who plans evil and wages war against Assurbanipal, the King of Assyria, I shall apportion an evil death. By the iron quick sword, by famine, by the stroke of pestilence, will I put an end to their life." After repeating this prophecy, the monarch adds, "This I heard, and trusted on the word of Sin, my lord." The Hebrew parallel is found in Jer. xxvii. 8, "And it shall come to pass, that the nation and kingdom which will not serve the same Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon, and that will not put their neck under the yoke of the King of Babylon, that nation will I punish, saith the Lord, with the sword, and with the famine, and with the pestilence." 3. The idea that the violation of a covenant brought on the offender the curses invoked when the covenant was concluded, was common to the Hebrews and the Assyrians. It is said of the unfaithful Israelite, "All the curse that is written in this book shall lie upon him. . . . And the Lord shall separate him unto evil out of all the tribes of Israel, according to all the curses of the covenant that is written in this book of the Law" (Deut. xxix. 20, 21). Assurbanipal writes of certain people who had not kept their oaths, that they were punished with terrible famine, "according to the curses, as many as were written in the writing of agreement." These curious parallelisms are well worthy of notice, but they scarcely seem to prove Hebrew indebtedness to Assyrian

sources, as Professor Müller maintains. Whilst it is not impossible that Ezekiel and others of his nation may have been acquainted with, and a little influenced by, cuneiform literature, it is safer, until stronger evidence has been produced, to regard the phenomena as coincidences which can be accounted for by common origin, affinity of language, and manifold similarity in thought, expression, and habit.

CRITICAL CONTRADICTIONS.-Professors Cornill and Wellhausen are two well-known representatives of the same school of thought. Nevertheless, they contradict each other at times in a way which is rather puzzling to the unsophisticated. Here are a few examples culled from Professor Wellhausen's Israelitish and Jewish History and Professor Cornill's Israelitish Prophecy. 1. "Yahveh," we are assured by Cornill, means "the feller," the storm-god, who strikes down his enemies with the thunderbolt. Otherwise the oracle of Göttingen, who affirms that the word signifies "he who goes through the air, he who blows;" and adds that this etymology is quite transparent. 2. Elijah, according to Cornill, was not in principle antagonistic to Baal; he objected to him only in Israel. Wellhausen, however, assumes this antagonism: "Baal and Jehovah could not both be right and continue side by side." 3. The same scholar allows Jeremiah a hand in the introduction of Deuteronomy; but Cornill considers it out of the question that Jeremiah had anything to do with it. 4. The last twenty-seven chapters of Isaiah were written by one prophet during the Exile, in the opinion of Cornill. Wellhausen, on the contrary, holds it to be proved that eleven of those chapters were written by some one else at a later time. 5. The Law of Ezra is defined by one authority as the Priestly Code; by the other, as the Pentateuch. These curious divergences may strengthen the conviction, which has been long forming in many minds, that subjective criticism is not the most reliable of guides.

LUKE V. 37, 38.-There is an interesting note on this passage in the Reformed Quarterly Review (American). The writer dissents from the view of Archdeacon Farrar, that the "new wine" here mentioned is "must," or the unfermented juice of the grape, and that the risk of fermentation being set up and of the bottles being broken would arise from the presence in the old bottles of particles of albuminoid matter and of yeast-germs from the air, which would act upon the unfermented juice. The writer of the note in question says that it is undoubtedly true that the pure juice of the grape, tightly enclosed in skins, whether new or old, for the purpose of fermentation, would burst them at the sutures; but that the Saviour here speaks of "new wine," which, according to Acts ii. 13, denotes fermented juice of the grape. His explanation of the passage is as follows: "It is a fact," he says, "well attested by experience, that, even after the dregs have settled, new wine will again undergo

fermentation, if disturbed by being transferred from one vessel to another, unless this operation be performed at a certain low temperature. In a climate like that of Palestine, wines could not be easily and safely handled. It was a grape-growing country. Many, perhaps, were able to provide themselves with the means for the safe handling of wines; but the mass of the people, in the midst of whom and to and for whom the Saviour spake His parables, had very limited facilities for securing their preservation in the form referred to. Moreover, it is not always easy to determine the exact point of time at which wine becomes perfectly still, i.e. ceases to ferment, because fluctuations of temperature, when it nears that stage, readily affect it. Is it not more satisfactory to explain the passage by allowing that the must was permitted to ferment in the vat, and afterwards, as new wine, put into new bottles, so as to guard against loss by a renewal of fermentation? The new skins would admit of some distension, which might be discovered before any serious damage would ordinarily occur. And, even with this precaution, there would sometimes be a loss to both wine and skins. As to the presence of albuminoid matter and yeastgerms from the atmosphere in the old skins, they could readily be removed or destroyed by the use of boiling water or other means not unknown to the Jews, so that the danger from that source could be reduced to a minimum."

BIBLICAL THOUGHT.

THE SYNOPTIC PROBLEM.

BY REV. ARTHUR WRIGHT, M.A., TUTOR OF QUEENS' COLLEGE,

CAMBRIDGE.

THE six papers from the pen of the Rev. Paton J. Gloag, D.D., which appeared in THE THINKER of 1894, form an admirable introduction to the study of the synoptic problem of the Gospels, and will, I hope, induce many students to work seriously at this fascinating subject, without some knowledge of which both commentator and preacher are perpetually at a loss.

St. Paul's Epistles engrossed the attention of Biblical students of the last generation. Old Testament criticism is the pursuit of the present. The Gospels remain for the future. They are unquestionably the most important of the three subjects. Fidelity to them is the measure of life in the Church. As children, we think them easy; their difficulties increase as we realize their profundity. In this matter of criticism, without which their historic truth cannot be vindicated, the widest and most varied field for labour is opened out, in which every worker may find something to do.

Dr. Gloag's papers appear to have been delayed in publication, for he