it was best to give it in its original garb. Such a course, he conceived, would be more honest and straightforward, than to borrow, as many have done, the ideas of others, and express them in one's own words. And he has often availed himself of the choice language of others, (though almost never without acknowledgment,) even where the idea which they have expressed had occurred to himself independently. Nor has he scrupled to cite any author, whatever ban might be upon him, provided that the citation was in itself good; anxious to avail himself of precious metal from whatever quarter it might come: nor does it follow that a man's whole teaching is approved, because some of his thoughts happen to coincide with one's own. But the results of such research often fail in conveying any adequate idea of the time and toil expended by one who strives to be honest and accurate. These can only be appreciated, as it has been said, by those who have attempted the same themselves. They know what is involved merely in noting a reference or verifying a quotation. The citations from Chrysostom, where given in the English, are taken for the most part from the excellent version in the " Library of Fathers'," though the original has also been consulted continually only, where a good English version was found ready to hand, it was judged best to keep to this throughout. That these quotations are not yet more frequent arises from no misgiving as to their prime value, but simply from the fact that more were inaccessible. The writer is not unconscious of other authorities f Oxford: J. H. Parker, 1848. than those here cited, but owing to the difficulties which beset the course of the "inferior clergy," (as they are pleasantly called,) distance from libraries, the distractions arising from more pressing duties, and the like,-he determined to keep to those to which he could have continual access. Some of these may be found in the former of the two Appendices; while the latter contains certain general observations of the great Commentators, which it was judged best to reserve, and so collect together: a few specimens from those rich quarries which have as yet been wrought but little; but labour wherein, the writer cannot help thinking, would profit more than any amount of meditation in the so called theological literature of the present day; the sketchy, shallow, flippant volumes with which the Press teems, with their jargon of scholarship and ignorant and presumptuous intolerance; shreds of learning and patches of divinity; the froth and scum of study; the bane and Nemesis of a cheap Press. The minutest portion of that solid and satisfying material will be found to have more weight than the whole mass of this light literature; "religious confectionery," as it has been not unaptly termed. In no The reader thus forewarned will not be surprised at finding certain Prolegomena relegated to this Appendix, and is asked to pardon what may appear the very converse of a Hysteron-proteron. more satisfactory way, consistently with his design, could the Author compass his object; but this enables him to accomplish the end in view, and so conclude, without presumption, " Finis coronat opus." Though these Lectures then may contain little but what has been already said by others, it does not yet follow that they are a servile and unnecessary transcript. Identity of expression may proceed from coincidence of thought: and even where we borrow, it may be no unserviceable, as it certainly is no easy task, to collect from many sources one wholesome compound. Here as elsewhere, the Lord's saying in this same Gospel is recurring continually, " Other men laboured, and ye are entered into their labours." It is not therefore by way of deprecating criticism, but only to account for certain imperfections of which the writer is too conscious, that he has ventured to hint at certain difficulties, but for whose presence some of these imperfections might have been removed. But indeed such long labour, even when a labour of love,-liable as it is to the frequent interruptions of sickness and sorrow, of parochial and personal cares and duties, has yet its claims. and its satisfactions; and these can be realized and discharged only by those who share in the same spirit with the disciple of light and love". BLADON, Saint John the Evangelist's Day, 1862. The Writer cannot forbear citing, in a concluding note, the following suggestive extracts from Stanley's Sermons and Essays on the Apostical Age. The whole passage (pp. 264-266.) should be studied by all who can gain access to it. It is greatly illustrative of the Gospel on whose threshold we now stand. "But it is after all our own inward relations to the teaching of St. John which will best enable us truly to profit by it; and that not by any fanciful arrangement of mystical cycles, such as belongs rather to Etruscan soothsayers than to Christian students, but by the natural course of the history of the world. It is not that we are to expect to have a special interest in St. John, merely because he came the last in the series of the Three Apostles, but it is because in the very nature of things every long protracted struggle in human society must be marked by tendencies more or less resembling those which marked the end of the great crisis of the apostolical age; and if any such can be discerned in our own days, it is but natural to turn for instruction to the lessons which the highest wisdom provided under similar or analogous circumstances...... When we look at the intellectual temptations by which our own times are especially assailed, the tendency to lose sight of fact and reality in shadowy systems of philosophy which we have not strength to grasp, the confusion and dissolution of barriers which once fenced round our opinions and our duties, may we not fairly be reminded of some of the speculations which beset the Christian world at the close of the first Century? May be not be allowed to trust that as then in the first publication, so now in the revived study of St. John's writings, we may find our best refuge from the distractions of the time?...... May we not hope, that as the life of Western Europe was developed simultaneously with the study of the Apostle of the Gentiles, so... even in those great strongholds of primeval unbelief with which we are yearly brought into closer contact in the regions of the remote East, and on which all previous teaching seems to have made so faint an impression, there may be some divine chord which yet remains to be struck, some nobler aspiration than our dull senses have yet discovered, which may even yet be drawn within the range of that highest aspect of Christianity, of which the Apostle at Ephesus is the true representative!" And again (p. 270.):-" If our opportunities be indeed so great, what ought to be our responsibilities, and what judgment should those of us deserve who have been the heirs of all ages' only to criticise them in listless apathy; who have burst the barriers of form and opinion only to speak lightly of selfishness and sensuality; who have lost enthusiam without increasing in charity; who despise zeal, because we worship ourselves; who live in the age of St. John to be disciples of the Epicurean Cerinthus; who have tarried even to the days of the Son of Man, only to eat and drink, to buy and sell, to plant and build," until He shall indeed come in an hour when we look not for Him!" |