by the critics. But what proof is there that even eminent men in the Greek Church took up and sustained, as worthy of acceptance, a Greek collection made before A.D. 150 ?

Irenæus is affirmed to quote one clause in John i. 18 three ways:

a. The only begotten God, which is the Peshito reading of this text. b. The only begotten Son. A reading easily coming from confounding the contraction for Oeos in the Uncials with that for Uios son. c. The only begotten Son of God.

This reading unites the other two in one clause. Now, surely, if this father who wrote in the second century had accepted a well-accredited Greek canon not more than fifty years old, he would have kept to one reading of so short a clause. Now since he wrote in Greek so near the time when the critics allege the collection to have been made, and is so strongly relied on by them, he ought to have known of an accepted canon, and not to have played fast and loose with three manuscripts of the same text. This nut then needs to be cracked by clear proof of such general acceptance of the Greek canon of this date.

8th. Nut. How does your theory of a canon made so late as A.D. 100 to 150 harmonise with the introduction to Luke's Gospel. It might be written after the Gospel was finished. But it tells us that many others were interested in having such a work prepared. This is the Peshiton

account of what moved him to write. Then the Greek one comes down later, and says many had undertaken to have it done. Now Luke is evidently in full sympathy with these brethren and ready to enrich their collection of Christian Scriptures. For this purpose he wrote both the Gospel and the Acts. And the two works are dedicated to an eminent Christian, who clearly took a deep interest in the collection of Christian writings. Now, all this was long before the time when the critics who favour Greek, judge the first Greek canon to have been made. We know how they attempted to discredit the work of these good men, and picture Luke as writing to supersede them, but this is contrary to the record. He throws no slight upon them, but rather rejoices to help them. What less can "It seemed good to me also" mean? "They are doing a good work, and I am resolved to help them." Here is a glimpse of a canon as early as when Paul was a prisoner during five years. Luke was with or near him all those years, but the theory of the critics fails to account for this united labour of many hands to supply writings fitted to educate Christians of some standing in the Church.

9th. Another nut for the critics is found in the last chapter of John. There we find revisers who can certify to the facts contained in the Gospel. Besides these, and above them, is a chairman of revision, who certifies, in the first person singular, not to the truth of John merely, but to the glory of Jesus. Who are these men, and when could they edit or revise the Gospel now called in debate the Fourth Gospel? Observe what they say. We quote from the New Revision. "This is the disciple which beareth witness of these things, and wrote these things and we know that his witness is true." The commission which the risen Christ gave His apostles is given in Acts i. 8, "And ye shall be my witnesses." Now this certificate states that the author of the Gospel which they have in hand was fulfilling his duty as witness at the very time at which they are occupied with his work. Then of this work

they speak as a former production of his pen. "He wrote these things." It is a work of former time, the aorist tense is used. And after this they declare of their own knowledge that the witness of this writer is true. Where will you find men in the second century who can say such things? John was fallen asleep and could not be described in the present tense as still witnessing these things after A.D. 100. Neither were men living then who could say we know that this witness is true. If we allow Luke to help us, we may find them actively at work on a canon in A.D. 60 to 65.

But the critics who uphold Greek cannot find a place for these men in connection with their canon. Men who speak as witnesses of such miracles as are found in the fourth Gospel must have been equals in age with Jesus Christ, who performed such wonders. But surely they did not live to be 100 to 150 years old, with powers of mind and memory fitting them to give such a certificate as this found in John xxi. 24. And then, Who is he who writes verse 25 in the first person, and knows so much more than either this book or others to which he alludes in chap. xx. 30, 31 ? He speaks as one who knew so much more of the things which Jesus did, than his fellow-workers, that he must speak of them in the first person. So he says, not we, but "I suppose that the world itself would not contain the books that should be written." So might one of the disciples who daily saw His manifold works. But for any other man to pen this last verse would surely have been presumptuous. This nut No. 9 is then too hard for the adherents to a Greek canon so late as the second century.

10th Nut. How does your theory account for the abrupt ending of the Acts of the Apostles? If it was prepared for a private Christian gentlemen from whom it was afterwards procured for circulation, why should Luke give Theophilus no account of the noble exhibition of Gospel truth delivered by Paul before the High Court at Rome? He had pre

sented Paul in a most interesting light up to the close of the Acts. Theophilus must have wished to know how the appeal against the Sanhedrim would fare when it was heard before Cæsar. Luke was with Paul after his first answer. If then you are right as to the period when the books of the New Testament were first collected into a canon, the historian might have finished the Acts in a much more complete manner. Tell us then why he did not? On your theory this nut is too hard for you to crack.

11th Nut. How is the prophetic character of Jesus to be vindicated on your theory? In his last discourse, before a most representative assembly from all regions where the Hebrews were dispersed, jast gathered to the passover at which He suffered, He spake the words found in Matt. xxiii. 34. Among them He declared that He would send writers within that generation, and that as they treated His messengers so should their doom as a people be. Now here, to make good His words we must find these people supplied, in some suitable language, with such writings as will give the Hebrews the means of searching the Scriptures in the light of His life, death, resurrection, and ascension; and of the teaching of His apostles as to the meaning of these matters. His words foretell a New Testament canon of sufficient dimensions to give every candid Jew the means of thinking rightly of Christ. But this must have been sup

plied in about thirty years; for the war, which ended in the very ruin of which He warned them, began in A.D. 66, and the city and temple were ruined by A.D. 70. Now what avails a collection of Christian writings made at your late date, on which you build, to make good the words of Jesus. You must show a Testament not later than A.D. 65, of sufficient fulness to answer the case here presented, in Greek or Hebrew, or some tongue suited to the people to whom Jesus spake, and show, too, that it appeared in about thirty years after His ascension. But your theory does not find one until about a hundred years too late. Now we cannot afford to accept critical systems which involve the failure of Christ as a teacher. He said to Pilate, “To this end have I been born, and to this end am I come into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth.'

Are you bold enough to say that He failed in one material point in His last public discourse? If so, we cannot and will not hear you. But if you are not, then here is a nut too hard for you to crack.

12th Nut. How do you make clear the wisdom promised in the same breath with the writings on your theory that the apostles took no care to have the Christian Scriptures collected together in their time? "Jesus said, Behold, I send you prophets, wise men, and writers." In the exciting and most important gathering at Jerusalem, on the case of Gentile converts, which had been sent up from Antioch for settlement, James most emphatically called attention to the advantage which the supporters of Judaism possessed in having the Pentateuch read every Sabbath in their synagogues. And Jesus laid special stress on meu keeping His sayings, even down to the last supper discourse. Could men who overlooked both the words of their Master and the good practical sense of their opponents be worth calling wise men ? Where is the wisdom of men who left the precious words which they wrote under the strong conviction that those words had the force of the law of God, uncollected all their days, and died without appointing trustees to see to their being made into a canon? Is it not time that critics were rebuked for daring to rob the men whom Christ promised pre-eminent wisdom in the promulgation of His cause, not only of that wisdom, but of plain common sense? Peter, in his second epistle, chap. iii., clearly sanctions a collection both of the words of the prophets of the Old Testament and of the commandments of the apostle of Christ. On all the Churches to whom that second letter came He enjoins attention to this great canon, and that none might exclude Paul's writings from their reverent regard He gives them all special notice. But all this has no force with men who must uphold Greek, or they will be in the case of Shakespeare's Moor when peace was made. "Othello's occupation will be gone."

Have we not in the twelve nuts quite enough work for the venerable men of the Jerusalem Chamber? It may be that the home-land of Krupp will furnish crackers of such tremendous power, that they will demolish every one of the twelve nuts which we have presented above, and which now we shall sum up; but after watching the Germans for many years we are of opinion that they cannot crack our nuts and preserve the kernels. We repeat, then, our demand to be told by those who undertake to settle a Greek text:

1. Who collected the first Greek Testament ?

2. When was this done, say to within ten years?

3. Where was this collection of Greek made ?

4. What active agent traversed the Roman Empire to make such collection of Greek?

5. What special need of Greek-speaking Churches called for this collection when it was made?

6. Who bore the cost of this Canon ?

7. What sort of reception did the early Church give to this Greek Testament?

8. How does the theory of a first collection of a canon, century, harmonise with the introduction to the Gospel of Luke? in the second

9. What place have you for the company of editors found at the close of John's Gospel?

10. How does your theory account for the unfinished state of the Acts of the Apostles?

11. How was the pledge of Jesus to send scribes or writers as a final test of the character of the Jews, before the ruin of Jerusalem, redeemed on your critical theory?

12. How do you show that the wisdom promised in the same sentence as the writings was given to the apostles if they neglected to secure, in their own day, a New Testament Canon ?

If any adherent of Greek originals from which every other early New Testament was translated can answer these twelve questions, let him do But if he give up the task as beyond his power, we beg to hint that they can all be answered when we follow the right track.

So.

JAMES HOLDING.

MAN'S ONLY HOPE OF IMMORTALITY.

An Exposition of Christ's Argument against the Sadducees. BY WILLIAM GLEN MONCRIEFF.

10.

No. VI.

THE PROPOSED INTERPRETATION.

AS a first step towards a sounder exposition than the one examined

and rejected, we must determine with ourselves in what direction the speakers-the Lord God, Jesus, and the Sadducees-bend their thoughts. That is to say, what vision rises before each of them? Not that of an intermediate state, so frequently adverted to amid the errors of our time, but of eternity itself, to which a resurrection is the door yet to be thrown wide open for the slumbering saints. They alone, we have gathered from the authoritive part of the reply, are the heirs of an existence similar in permanence and splendour to that of the loving Redeemer's own. When "at the bush" the Lord God pronounced the words concerning the Patriarchs, His mind, and we speak thus with emotions of unfeigned reverence, is occupied with the transcendent hereafter, overlooking entirely, as of infinite trivial interest, their tem

porary confinement and oblivion in the grave. We so describe it, for what are a few thousand years to Him who is from everlasting to everlasting? A speck, an instant, measured by the perpetuity of His being; and the same is also true of the life in store for His regenerated sons, through the ages of the ages. What are they to those who "know

not anything" in their deep repose? Meditating on their condition as it lasts from generation to generation, we feel it waste and sad; to them, however, appertains no sense of duration, no perception of their lowly state. They weary not for the break of morning, yet it shall break; they pine not for release, but they shall be delivered; and when the resistless voice thunders at the portals of Sheol, "Come forth!" it will appear to them as if their eyes had just on that very second closed in the tents where they expired. To understand the argument, we must realise all this, awed by the overpowering spectacle as it looms into view.

In like manner, Jesus. He passes over, and for the same reasons, the brief interval of their suspended being, and "that world "—the solemn and unclosing future-meets His prophetic eye. He beholds all their destiny mapped out before His far-reaching glance; and just as His Father beheld the worthies, so did He, onward yonder where no night falls.

Even the poor misguided Sadducees, bondsmen of their early education and embittered prejudices, rose in their question to the same height, that of eternity; though according to their creed immortal life was reserved for no child of man. They likewise overlooked the years appointed for the woman and her husbands in the region of forgetfulness, and imagined them in the eternal world, so as for the occasion to stand on the same plane with the "Master" they addressed: "In the resurrection "when she is recalled to life and enters on the unending stage of being you discourse about-" whose wife is she?"

Thus all the speakers, divine and human, are away in the realm of the illimitable hereafter. God and His Son, in the excessive overflow of a mighty compassion, speaking words that ought to bend every knee in adoring thankfulness; and the hostile questioners trying their best, in the hardness of their hearts, to thwart heaven's blessed aim, to bring reproach and derision on the Light of the world, and to shut the gates of mercy on mankind.

11. We now hasten to develop directly what we regard as the correct view of our Lord's reasoning: first, briefly in the conversational form, taking the responsibility of both interlocutors upon ourselves; and afterwards, having resumed the ordinary style, justifying the exposition, so as most distinctly and completely to exhibit the argument in its grasp, point and cogency.

Writer-Jesus affirms that the doctrine of a resurrection, rejected by the Sadducees, is taught in the words of Moses, "I am the God of Abraham," &c.

Reader-I accept the statement, but how is the doctrine established thereby ?

Writer-Let us in the most reverential spirit imagine three possible human beings before the mind, or vision, of God, and ask ourselves the question, Would it be consistent with fact for Him to say, "I am the