"If you're Spared."

Dickson's The Kirk Beadle.

DAYS from home, exchanging pulpits, translations to other parishes, the ordination of new ministers, and other incidents in clerical life were all the sources of much anxiety to the minister's man. When he had got a master whom he loved and honoured, and whom he wished to remain in the parish, it was a sorrowful business when the leave-taking did take place. On the occasion of the Rev. Donald Macleod's settlement at Linlithgow, the beadle took him to the churchyard and pointed out the restingplace of all that was mortal of former ministers of the parish. 'There's where Dr. Bell lies, an' there's where ye'll lie if you're spared." It was not to be however, for Dr. Macleod was subsequently translated to Glasgow. Before leaving Linlithgow, the beadle returned to the sore point, and remarked: "Weel, sir, ye are the first man that was ever lifted oot o' Linlithgow except to the grave."

Answering our own Prayers.

The Methodist Times.

THERE is a well-known religious anecdote which is peculiarly pertinent this week. A wealthy Christian was praying most fervently at morning prayer that the shivering and starving poor in the village that surrounded his luxurious mansion might be clothed and fed. When the family rose from their knees, his little daughter said: "Father, if I were you, I would answer that prayer myself."

"God and We."

The Modern Church. Ar the close of an address to the Auckland Ministers' Association, New Zealand, the Rev. T. F. Robertson said On the keystone of a bridge over a stream in a beautiful

Scottish parish, we have read the words "God and We." The tale is interesting. A humble girl in danger of perish. ing in a storm, when the stream was in flood, vowed that if God would save her life and help her in the future, she would build a bridge over the dangerous chasm. Her prayer was heard. She lived to build the bridge, and to leave an endowment for the poor of the parish. The inscription on the bridge gives the secret of success. It is not "God" alone, that would mean human idleness; or "We" alone, that would be human presumption. It is not even "We and God," that would be human pride; but "God and We" gives the scriptural way of success. "Fellow-workers with God," yet depending on Him.

If we but Knew.

The Churchman (New York).

IF we but knew what dangers lie before,
What wells of bitterness,

What paths of weariness,

That, darkening, go by sorrow's gloomy shore-
Would we not closer hold the Master's hand,
And seek more oft His counsel and command?

If we but knew what dangers we have missed, Led safely, surely on

While happy suns have shone
Upon our paths, and peace our lips has kissed-
Would not our hearts go out in thankfulness?
The Master's love our every act confess?

We cannot know; in wisdom He doth hide
The mystic way He leads;

We can but sow the seeds

Of hope, of trust. He is a faithful guide,
And, seeing not, we may believe the more;
He knows all things who sweetly goes before.

MATT. V. 14-16.

"Ye are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hid. Neither do men light a lamp, and put it under the bushel, but on the stand; and it shineth unto all that are in the house. Even so let your light shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven" (R.V.).

EXPOSITION.

"Ye are the light of the world."-This being the distinctive title which our Lord appropriates to Himself (John viii. 12, ix. 5),—a title expressly said to be unsuitable even to the highest of all the Prophets (John i. 8),—it must be applied here by our Lord to His disciples only as they shine with His light upon the world, in virtue of His Spirit. dwelling in them, and the same mind being in

them which was also in Christ Jesus. Nor are Christians anywhere else so called. Nay, as if to avoid the august title which the Master has appropriated to Himself, Christians are said to "shine," not as "lights," as our translators render it, but as "luminaries" (pwornpes) in the world (Phil. ii. 15); and the Baptist is said to be the "burning and shining" lamp (λúxvos), not "light" of his day (John v. 35).—Brown.

The whole of this division of our Lord's sermon is addressed to all His followers, not exclusively to the ministers of His Word.-ALFORD.

engaged in prayer (Matt. vi. 9), but in the activity of obedience.-PLUMPTRE.

METHODS OF TREATMENT.

I.

THE LAMP AND THE BUSHEL

By the Rev. Alexander Maclaren, D.D.

1. The first point that I wish to deal with is this. Christian men individually, and the Christian Church as a whole, shine by derived light. There is but One that is light in Himself. He who said, "I am the Light of the world, he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness," was comparing Himself to the sunshine; whereas when He said, "Ye are the light of the world, men do not light a lamp and put it under a bushel," He was compar

"Under the bushel."—The image was drawn from objects familiar to all the hearers, and the presence of the article in the Greek, "under the bushel," "on the candlestick or lampstand," implies the familiarity. Each cottage had one such article of furniture. The "bushel" was a Latin measure, nearly the same as the English peck.-PLUMPTRE. "Even so."-That is, like the city on the hill, the candle in the candlestick, not "so that they may see," as the common version might be rendered.— SCHAFF.

"Let your light shine."—It is of importance to observe that it is not said "even so shine," but that we should "let (freely without hindrance) our light (that which has by grace been given to us, and exists within us) shine before men," according to its own nature and the will of Him who kindled it. -STIER.

"Your good works."-Not you, but your works, non vos, sed opera vestra.-BEngel.

beginning and will have an end. He is the one true light, (a) as the Eternal Word of God who was from the beginning, and (b) as the Incarnate Word, the Historic Christ, the Perfect Pattern of conduct. We shall be light if we are "in the Lord."

2. The next point that I would make is this: following the words before us, the certainty that if we are light we shall shine. Light cannot choose but shine, that is its nature and property. The little village perched upon a hill there, glittering and twinkling in the sunlight, cannot choose but be seen. In like manner, if the life of Christ is within us, it will certainly manifest itself. Take two thoughts: (a) All earnest Christian conviction will demand expression. Everything that a man believes has a tendency to convert its believer into an apostle. "Thy word shut up in my bones was like a fire,”-did you ever feel it in your heart? And (b) all deep experience of the purifying power of Christ upon character will show itself in conduct. You have received forgiveness of sins and inner sanctification-let us see it, let us see it in the commonest, pettiest things of daily life. A revolution deep down will manifest itself in the outermost part of life and conduct.

3. Christ has lit our lamp for this very purpose, that it may give light

"Heaven doth with us as we with torches do;
Not light them for themselves."

How do men fail in this? How do they smother and shroud their light? (a) Under a whole

mountain of inconsistencies. If one were fanciful one might say that the bushel and meal-chest is material well-being, and the bed is love of ease. (b) Under cowardly and indifferent silence, like blue-ribbon men who button their great-coats over their blue ribbons when they go into company.

4. The last word is the plain duty: If you are light, shine. You fear Pharisaic ostentation? The motive makes the difference. Tend the lighthouse lamp and it will be seen far out at sea, simply feed and tend it. Be not content till your own hearts are fully illumined by Christ, having no part dark— and then live as remembering that you have been made light that you may shine: "Arise, shine, for thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee."

II.

CIVILISATION AND RELIGION.

By the Very Rev. R. W. Church, D.D., Dean of St. Paul's. If ever the Church was the salt of the earth, the light of the world, the leaven of society, there is just as much place for it to be so still. The world still wants it, and it only can supply the want. Civilised society can do many things for itself which it could not do once; but there is much which it is not in the nature of things that it can do. I will venture to notice generally one or two points.

1. We are in danger of dropping out of sight the supreme value of the spiritual part of man, or to obscure the proportion between what is and what we look forward to. To have fought against and triumphed over this tendency is the great achievement of Christianity. Civilisation in its professed aim is content with the present.

The idea of

2. Purity, and all its consequences. purity in its essential nature, apart from political necessities, or ceremonial restrictions, or social expediencies or tastes, we owe absolutely to the religion of the Bible. It is the flower of the Christian graces. Civilisation in this matter is in itself but a precarious safeguard for very sacred interests. By itself, it throws itself upon nature, and in some of its leading and most powerful representatives, looks back to paganism. Purity is one of these things which Christian ideas and influences produced; it is a thing which they alone can save.

ILLUSTRATIONS.

ST. PAUL'S CATHEDRAL is "a city set on a hill" in the thoughts of all well-informed Englishmen. It has been the central sacred spot in London since London has been Christian. Upon this very site where, as it would seem, the heathen goddess Diana was once worshipped as patroness of their sports by the officers of the Roman Prætorian camp, who hunted in the neighbouring forest, Christ has been named, Christ has been adored, for at least thirteen centuries.-H. P. LIDDON.

ST. PAUL was himself "a city set on a hill." What a public life was his, made up of such varied forms of activity, a rapid writer, a constant speaker in public and to unfriendly audiences, a keen dialectician in controversy, a vigorous demonstrator, an unwearied philanthropist.-H. P. LIDDON

ST. PAUL, Martin Luther, John Howard-these were great lights in the world, cities set on a hill. But there is something here that may be nearer to some of us than that. A lighted candle is meant for the house. It would do little good in the wide street or the great hall. We may be little known in the world; our place may be at home.

THE conception is of Christians being lights, not as Source, but as reflectors. Now reflectors are ordinarily

either metallic or vitreous. In either case, two preparatory processes are necessary; there must be a melting first and a polishing afterwards.-W. ARNOT.

"STIR up the gift of God which is in thee," said Paul to Timothy. The meaning of the word is "stir into a flame." Every gift of God in us is a latent power to shine. The gift may be but a spark, then stir it up until it bursts into a flame.-D. DAVIES.

AMONG a crowd of placards, varying much in size and subject, which jostled and overlapped each other on a piece of neglected wall at the entrance of a large city, one particularly arrested me. At the distance at which I stood, it exhibited only these words: "Large Type Christians." Doubtless intermediate lines in smaller letters, invisible where I stood, informed the reader that some publisher had prepared a series of tracts in large type for the special use of aged Christians.-W. ARNOT.

"LET your light shine." "But," says some one, "that means great consumption of energy, expenditure of force." Precisely; that is just what Christ asks of us. If we are His disciples, we must be prepared for that. The wick and oil must consume if there is to be a flame. "I will gladly spend, and be spent for you," exclaimed the apostle.

D. DAVIES.

"ON the stand." God has a lampstand for every lamp that He ever kindled. Be it ours to find where that lampstand is.-D. DAVIES.

THE PARALLEL BIBLE. Some inquiries have been made regarding editions of the Revised Version and of the Parallel Bible. For new editions of the Revised Version itself we refer to THE EXPOSITORY TIMES for January. We have this month received copies of the Parallel Bible and Parallel New Testament, in cloth, from the Cambridge University warehouse. They are these (1) The Parallel Bible, in crown 4to, minion type, thin (not India) paper; a fine volume somewhat plainly bound, of which the price is 18s. (2) The Parallel New Testament, in crown 4to, longprimer type, leaded, and easily read, and published at 7s. 6d. (3) The Students' Large Paper Edition, in crown 4to, minion, fine smooth paper, with wide margin for notes. The price is 10s. 6d. (4) The same without the wide margin, and on thinner paper. Crown 8vo, at 4s. 6d., a convenient and comfortable size. (5) A pocket edition in pearl type, 16mo, of which the price is 2s. 6d. The binding of them all is needlessly plain, but in every other respect these editions are excellent, and should serve their purposes well. A Parallel Bible is by far the most useful copy for a working student.

THE LIFE OF OUR LORD UPON THE EARTH. BY SAMUEL J. ANDREWS. New and revised authorised edition. (T. & T. Clark. 8vo, pp. xxx, 651. 9s.) The old edition of Andrews' Life of our Lord upon the Earth, which has got to be known in this country by the title, "The Bible Student's Life of our Lord," has long been recognised as far ahead of all books written to guide us to a better understanding of the Gospels. Writers of lives of Christ, like Dr. Stalker, unhesitatingly place it first of all their authorities. We know at least one painstaking student who confesses to putting Andrews always beside his Bible when he goes from home: "It gives you so much, it saves you so much, and it is so rarely at fault." But the old Andrews' will not do any more. The new is better. The new is as much better as the old was better than its rivals. Many of us owe most of all we have about the history, chronology, and geography of the Gospels to our studies in the

book as it used to be, and we cannot but envy those who have now to begin upon this fuller, clearer, and more accurate edition. It has been not only revised and brought down to date; the whole book has been worked over slowly, carefully, with every new monogram and magazine article at command, involving a labour greater than the original writing of it, but producing a result far more valuable than if this had been its first production. The identity of the old is preserved, but it is a new book. Many matters both exegetical and archæological are still unsettled, but he who would know what has been done towards their settlement will find it here. One thing is puzzling,-why, in a land where degrees are said to be sown broadcast, the author of a work like this should still be plain Samuel Andrews.

ANTHROPOLOGICAL RELIGION. BY F. MAX MÜLLER, K.M. (Longmans. Crown 8vo, Pp. xxvi, 464. Ios. 6d.) This is the third series of the Gifford Lectures at Glasgow. One course is yet to come, and then Professor Max Müller shall have completed the most picturesque episode of his long and interesting literary life. His suc cessor is Principal Caird. Max Müller will be Gifford Lecturer no more. Things have not gone altogether right with these lectures. But undoubtedly the lecturer is not to bear the whole of the blame. Have things gone altogether right with any of them yet? And have they not gone farthest wrong when the conditions of Lord Gifford's will were most closely followed?

You may see at once from the preface to this work what has gone wrong at Glasgow. It is one of the strangest prefaces ever written. "To believe in miracles seems to be in the eyes of my opponents the one great test of orthodoxy. But they ought surely to know, if they are acquainted with the recent theological literature on miracles, that the whole controversy about miracles turns on the definition which is given of that term." Thus, you will observe, Professor Max Müller does not disbelieve in miracles. But, then, what is a miracle? What is the kind of miracle in which he

believes? He believes in the Resurrection of Christ, and even in the Ascension. For St. Paul has said of the former miracle, "If Christ is not risen, our faith is in vain." "Yes, but what did 'risen' mean to St. Paul? Was it the mere resuscitation of a material body, or was it the eternal life of the Spirit?" So, you have no sooner got your miracle than it is snapped from you. And the Ascension is more completely removed than the Resurrection. For "every miracle is of our own making, and of our own unmaking." reminds one of a game and a rhyme attached to it, which naughty boys play in the north of Scotland, of which it is hard to say whether the poetry or the morality is the more deplorable

"Nivvy nivvy nick nack,

Which han will ye tak?
Tak the richt or the wrang:

I'll try an cheat ye, if I can."

It

But Anthropological Religion is not all about miracles. Of the greater part of the book the It is an honest argument is unimpeachable.

search after truth, a search which runs into many curious nooks and corners, is always attractive, and often profitable.

THE ASCENSION AND HEAVENLY PRIESTHOOD OF OUR LORD. BY WILLIAM MILLIGAN, D.D. (Macmillan. Crown 8vo, pp. 374. 7s. 6d.) It was a circumstance worth recording that Dr. Milligan's work arrived on the same day as Professor Max Müller's. The one great lesson of this volume-it is the Baird Lecture for 1891-is this: that a miracle is a miracle whether you think it so or not, but it is a miracle to you according to the spiritual meaning and power you receive from it. It is not that the miracle is of our own making or unmaking, but that we are according as we let the miracle make or unmake us. It is needless to enter into the theological position or merits of the work. Professor Milligan's position is well known. Those who have followed with any care the recent literature in dogmatic theology know what to seek and what to find.

But it may be well to say that it seems to be the most important work which Dr. Milligan has yet published, and the most characteristic exposition of his own theological life. The subject is great, and he never forgets it; the work is not unworthy of the subject.

CANON AND TEXT OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. BY DR. FRANTS BUHL, Ordinary Professor of Theology at Leipzig. (T. & T. Clark. 8vo, pp. 259. 7s. 6d.) The publishers of Driver's Introduction to the Literature of the Old Testament could not have done a more seasonable thing than issue Dr. Buhl's Text and Canon now. Though Dr. Driver, by an unaccountable slip (which his colleague Dr. Cheyne corrects in the Expositor for January), omits all mention of Dr. Buhl's book, this is the kind of work which he would encourage every student of the Old Testament to pursue, and this is the book which, beyond all others, will afford the English student the materials for its pursuit. It is the very thing the reader of his book, and whoever has any intelligible interest in the Higher Criticism controversy, now wishes more fully to know. If the Scriptures of the Old Testament are arranged in such admired confusion, who misarranged them so, and when, and why? In the first part of this volume Professor Buhl offers, not exactly a direct reply to these questions, but the materials for a reply, in admirable clearness and brevity. And then, in the second and larger part, he deals with the closely related and even more important matter of the text, its present state, its history, the means we have for correcting or verifying it. The work is translated by the Rev. John Macpherson, M.A., who is not only a tried. and competent translator, but is himself an exact scholar in this department of study. His references to English works add appreciably to the value of the work for us, and perhaps for the German readers also, if they would consider it.

LEADING IDEAS IN THE GOSPELS. BY WILLIAM ALEXANDER, D.D., D.C.L. (Macmillan. Crown 8vo, pp. 332. 6s.) To begin at the end: This new and greatly enlarged edition of the Bishop of Derry's Leading Ideas, in a long appendix, seeks to answer the question, Who wrote the Epistle to the Hebrews? Dr. Alexander follows "the evidence produced by Dr. Franz Delitzsch, throughout his Commentary upon the Epistle to the Hebrews, which will probably remain the first authority upon the subject, and specially in the dissertation as to the authorship of the Epistle to the Hebrews." And Delitzsch's dissertation finds St. Luke the most probable author of the Epistle. As for Dr. Alexander's book itself, it is a