be doubted that clerical acquaintance with the bible is more often formed from translations than from the originals-before we proceed to point out the extreme undesirableness of this second-hand application to the sources of divine truth.

The best proof that can be given of what we thus state as a fact is, that no provision is made in the education of the clergy for this great and desirable attainment. Indeed, with the exception of a few subsidiary arrangements, rendered necessary by the improved feeling of the present day on such matters, the clerical office receives no special training at all. Its general education, it is at once admitted, is mostly of a high character, coming, as the candidates for holy orders more frequently do, from the training of our great public schools and universities. In classical and mathematical learning, and especially in that requisite preliminary of high scholarship, a thorough grounding in the first principles and minute niceties of grammar, no class of men, probably, stands higher as a whole than the clergy of this country. Only wilful ignorance, or a feeling of envy, can deny to them, as a body, an essential soundness in these respects, which is most favourable if properly employed, for the erection of some degree of completeness of clerical training. But, as we have said, training there is none deserving of the name, and to the fault of a system more than to their own, is the defect we are speaking of to be attributed.

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It may be thought that a general knowledge of the Greek language, such as is necessary for graduating at a university, together with the special requirement made by the Bishops of a certain degree of knowledge of the Greek Testament as a condition of ordination, is sufficient as regards the Greek Scriptures; but such a conclusion can only be arrived at by those who entirely differ from us as to what constitutes sufficiency in the matter before It is true that a general knowledge of Greek is the very best, indeed the only foundation for a complete acquaintance with the Greek Testament and for its scholar-like criticism; but it is far from being the only requisite, since a special and peculiar application of such general knowledge is wanted, before that valuable art can be possessed. To illustrate our meaning, let us take the case of a youth who has been confined principally to Attic Greek prose writers, being called upon to study Homer. Here, at first, his scholarship would fail him. He would find himself in a new region with the peculiar products of which he is unacquainted, speaking Greek, it is true, but whose dialect, modes of thinking and customs, are widely different from those of Plato or Xenophon; so that, in many respects, a new grammar, and certainly a new critical apparatus, would be indispensable. Much more is this the case with the language of the New Testament, in relation to the classic

Greek to which so much attention is properly given in schools. The dialect is different, and is very peculiar; but this is not the only difficulty. The very acquaintance with the English version of the Scriptures, while a wonderful help to dulness or mediocrity in a partial viva voce examination, is really a stumbling-block in the way of real improvement, by blinding the mind to difficulties, and making that appear easy, which, without any such deceitful assistance, would be found replete with hard questions. Then the whole subsidiary literature of the Greek New Testament is extensive and various, and remote from the early associations of the school and the university. Classic ideas and images, and the facts of profane history, effect an entrance to the shrines of heathen divinities; but a different style of thinking, and a holier and better order of associations, can alone open the gates of the Temple of Jehovah, and admit to the Holy of Holies.

Hence it is that many excellent general scholars find the New Testament examination a serious matter, when they present themselves to the Bishop as candidates for the sacred office. They could manage to translate Aristotle's Ethics, and would not quail before a play of schylus or Aristophanes. They would not, in some cases, shrink from a few hours' exercise in composing Greek Iambics, and yet might be disconcerted when asked to render literally into English a few isolated passages from the Epistles of St. Paul. Such must be the result when the Greek Scriptures are temporarily studied for a purpose, instead of forming an essential part of the prolonged education demanded by the Christian ministry; or when, in fact, they do not receive an attention equally thorough with that given to profane authors. Let it be borne in mind that our observations are to be taken as applicable to the case as a whole, and admit of very many exceptions. In some quarters more solid instruction is given in the Greek Testament than in others, as a branch of general education, and higher attainments are demanded by the Bishops.

But, on the other hand, it must be remembered that a large and increasing number of the clergy have not that sound early education which we have attributed to the body. God, in his choice of instruments to do his work in the world, knows no respect of classes and conventionalities, and often endows with gifts and graces those who perhaps up to manhood are destitute of a learned training, and whom their own desires and the wishes of discreet friends point to the Ministry. And further, apart from any such indubitable call, various causes and motives bring into the service of the Church a number of men from the lower orders of society, greater every year; so much so, that in regard to learning, the character of the order threatens, if this state of

things is perpetuated, to be different from what it has hitherto been. Nothing has tended more to bring about this scholastic deterioration than Sunday schools on the one hand, by exciting a desire for the Ministerial office, and, on the other, the often unnatural growth of manufacturing towns and districts, which almost compels the Bishops, nolentes volentes, to ordain candidates of a far lower status than was formerly usual. Far be it from us to discourage the rising desire of any one for a station of such potentially pre-eminent usefulness as the Ministry, or to do anything but rejoice when difficulties are overcome, and a young man rises by his talents to a sphere higher than his station in life usually gives. Our wish is that men should be well qualified, and if so, we shall not regret that they come from the masses of our countrymen; but we do require in this argument that a full qualification should be demanded, come men whence they may. However excellent a thing it may be for a poor man, without any regular education, to become a candidate for the clerical office, that affords no sufficient reason for the admission of his claims, until they are shown to be well-founded.

The desire being excited for the Ministry by the various public performances in which the Sunday school often allows young men to engage, the Church has, in modern times, provided for them an education, in itself far below anything like completeness, though it may give the requisite position from which genius or industry may make almost any incursions into the field of learning. In various institutions, inferior to the universities, a very small portion of classical learning is required, and, as a necessary consequence of this, no adequate knowledge of the Greek New Testament is possible in those they introduce to the clerical order. In the college of St. Bees, for example, no Latin is required but GROTIUS DE VERITATE, and no Greek but some portions of the Gospels and Epistles. It is true that the Latin treatise of the Dutch theologian contains some pieces rather difficult of digestion, even by a competent scholar; and that the Gospels and Epistles, take them where we will, require some skill properly to construe them; but, after all, can such a meagre curriculum put a man in possession of anything worthy of being called scholastic fitness for the office of a biblical expositor? The bare idea is a burlesque and an absurdity, and cannot be soberly entertained for a moment.

And yet we anticipate at this stage of our observations an objection in some such form as the following. Because the students of St. Bees and similar colleges give most of their time to divinity and the Greek Testament, are they not, therefore, better qualified to be Christian Ministers than men who have had

only the general education of one of the universities, however high their standing there may have been? We reply, first, that we are not now inquiring which system makes the best biblical scholars, but rather denying that either can make them, in any competent sense; and secondly, we affirm that a little delusion lurks under the rather specious inference drawn from the men only studying the Greek Testament, to the neglect of other Greek authors. We know very well that a mere popular, and therefore hasty and imperfect view of the matter, will at once decide that a man who devotes two or three years to the Greek New Testament must be ipso facto a competent biblical scholar. But we deny the truth of this conclusion, and, as the subject is deeply important, and forms an intimate portion of our present investigation, we beg leave to examine it more closely.

If a man enters St. Bees because his imperfect education forbids his entering the Christian ministry in the Church of England in any other way (which is the case with most, although certainly not all), he will probably know but little of the Greek grammar. He studies it, and at once begins to apply its rules to the Gospels, which henceforth become the only subject of his study in the Greek language. Any one who knows anything of what an attainment a moderate knowledge of Greek really is, will see that two or three years thus spent, with Latin to grapple with and divinity lectures of various kinds to attend and study into the bargain, must leave the student very superficially endowed with the means of interpreting the Greek Testament for himself. And yet a man in such circumstances, gifted with a good memory, and early trained to an acquaintance with the English bible, can easily persuade himself and others that he is a Grecian of no mean abilities, because he can turn most parts of the original text of the New Testament into his mother tongue, and vice versâ, tell you what Greek terms correspond to the peculiar phrases of Christian doctrine and practice in common use. Let it be remembered that what we now attribute to the student is only realized in very extreme cases; but we will admit that it does occur, and make it the ground of what we have to say in reference to the necessary superficiality of the attainment we allow to be taken for granted.

Let it be inquired what is really gained when a man is able to turn the Greek Testament into English, part for part, and word for word, the English equivalents for the Greek words and phrases being the corresponding ones of the English Bible. Is it not evident that the gain is just nothing at all, when the feat is stripped of the mystification which the labour of the task and the appearance of scholarship throw around it? After all, the student translates the Greek by the English, and, for all purposes of inter

retation, is in precisely the same position as the more humble man he has left behind at his worldly calling, who is satisfied with the rendering of our translators, without turning it back again into Greek characters and words. Yet how often is the ability thus to Græcise the English translation confounded with a knowledge of Greek New Testament language! And how readily do thoughtless persons decide at once that such mental transmutation constitutes deep learning! As a popular preacher we remember hearing some time ago passed for a highly erudite divine when he told his wondering and delighted auditory that the WORD of St. John's Gospel was LOGOs in Greek!

Let us guard against its being thought that we are undervaluing the attainment we are speaking of, when its measure and capacity are properly understood. As a mental exercise and a source of pleasurable satisfaction it is highly to be prized, and, as a foundation for higher acquisitions, it can scarcely be too much appreciated. To read the Greek Testament fluently, so as to take it with us into our closets and use it at our devotions, is, as we shall presently notice, the zou σr, admitting the application of a force of almost any strength, provided the position be rightly estimated and improved. But in itself considered, as an isolated thing, and apart from all knowledge of the why and because of the Greek text being rendered into English in any specified manner, the acquisition we are speaking of is useless to an expositor. Well will it be if it is only useless, or only employed to assert a character for erudition not possessed. In too many instances such a knowledge of the Greek Testament has proved an occasion of the statement of crude and unsupported theories and doctrines. For our own part, we had much rather trust a preacher or interpreter who knew no language but his native English, than one who had the additional attainment of being able to tell every corresponding word of the New Testament in Greek-his philology extending no further.

If we now turn from the Greek New Testament to those Hebrew Scriptures, respecting which St. Paul reminds Timothy that they are divinely inspired, and profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, and for instruction in righteousness, we find the want of acquaintance with them even more indisputable and universal. For some knowledge of Greek a claim is always made on those who seek to ascend the pulpits of the Church of England and officiate at her altars; but, with some few slight exceptions by certain Bishops, no requisition is made of even a knowledge of the Hebrew alphabet. There are, indeed, some professorships of Hebrew, and various premiums and scholarships excite to an acquaintance with the language at our universities; and a testimony is thus borne to

VOL. V.-NO. IX.

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