For my part, Callicles, I have faith in these narratives; and I look to be found of the judge in that day with a soul all undefiled. Having bidden farewell to the honors that most men covet, and looking at truth, I shall make my best endeavors after the utmost excellence of being, alike during life, and at death, when for me that time shall come.

These noble answers to the universal questionings of the human heart touching the hereafter have not lost for us, though we are blessed with a divine answer, their interest and value. Across the chasm of ages of time, across the wide interval that parts the religion of Christ from all religions of men, it is good to hold converse with men who, like Plato, found in the very nature of the human spirit and its instinctive aspirations the sure promise of an immortal life; who himself aimed and exhorted all others to value the soul above all price, and so to inform and enrich it by all knowledge and goodness, as to fit it for its true and high destiny. And these teachings find their peculiar and crowning interest as given by Plato the disciple in the last words of his master Socrates, in the last hours of that great master's earthly life, when standing on the very border of that life and of the life to come he was now to put to the crucial test the central truth of all those teachings, "that no evil can happen to a good man in life or in death." And well and worthily did he endure the test. When all about him were troubled and in despair, he only was serenely calm and full of hope. When as a criminal condemned to die, and soon to meet his fate, he would have seemed to need the comfort of others, it was his alone to comfort all that sorrowful and sorrowing prison company; and all his comforting thoughts and words came from the very source of their grief, from that death which in his view was no evil, but rather an unspeakable good. All the noisy clamor of the outside world, the rude discords of unbelieving and gainsaying men he heeded not, he scarcely heard, his ears already catching the notes of that celestial harmony on which he was meditating and discoursing. And what sweet and musical words are those which he uttered in that parting conversation:

"You seem to think me poorer in prophecy than the swans; for these when they are aware that they are to die, having sung all their life long, sing then more than ever, rejoicing that they are to go away to the god whose servants they are. But men, because of their own fear of death, falsely say of the swans that, lamenting death, they sing out their life for grief, not considering that no bird sings when it is cold or hungry or suffering from any other pain, not the nightingale itself, or the swallow or the hoopoe, which are said indeed by men to sing a song of lament; but it appears to me that neither these sing for grief, nor the swans

either. Rather, as I think, do these swans then sing and rejoice more than ever before because, being Apollo's birds, they are gifted with prophecy, and know beforehand the good things of another world. And I too seem to myself a fellow-servant of the swans, and a consecrated servant of the same god, and to have received from my lord no less than these the gift of prophecy, and so to be departing from life just as cheerfully as they."

"Such was the end,"-and these are the last words of the Phaedo,"such was the end, Echecrates, of our friend, of whom I may say that he was the best and the wisest and most just of all the men whom I have known."

JOHN L. LINCOLN.

PROVIDENCE, RHODE ISLAND.

THE WARNING AGAINST APOSTASY.

"For it is impossible for those who were once enlightened, and have tasted of the heavenly gift, and were made partakers of the Holy Ghost, and have tasted the good word of God, and the powers of the world to come, if they shall fall away, to renew them again unto repentance; seeing they crucify to themselves the Son of God afresh, and put him to an open shame."HEBREWS vi. 4-6.

THE great questions concerning divine activity and human activity

were sometimes discussed even by the Jewish mind. Pharisees and Sadducees leaned, as most men lean now, to the one side or to the other side. Jesus and the apostles leaned to neither side; yet they were not on a line midway between the two. They went boldly to the one side and boldly to the other side, as if to the human mind there could be no apparent contradiction. Biblical exegesis unbiassed by dogmatic theology is rare; yet in the examination about to be made we should come as near to independence of all theological systems as possible.

Γάρ (for) refers chiefly to καὶ τοῦτο ποιήσομεν (and this will we do). Do what? 'En tyy redecótyta gepwela (go on unto perfection). The writer has reproved his readers for their ignorance and weakness of faith. He had touched upon an important point in his favorite typology,Christ as the antitype of Melchisedec. But it occurred to him that that was too deep a subject for shallow Christians. He therefore checks himself, and begins at chapter v. 11 a remarkable digression, and does not resume the consideration of Christ as the antitype of Melchisedec till the last verse of chapter vi. Assuming that the epistle was written to Jewish Christians in Palestine, it is easy to conceive that many of the disciples had become negligent of (359)

the word of God, that is, of the gospel as it was to be seen in the Old Testament, and as delivered to them in its richly developed forms by the apostles, and discouraged on account of the trials to which they were exposed by the intolerance of their unchristianized brethren, were in danger of relapsing into ritualism. The writer therefore likens them to babes, to whom only milk can be given. The typology upon which he had entered, that part of it at least which had respect to Melchisedec, he represents as meat, solid food, which it would be impossible for them to digest. Solid food is for the perfect; that is, for those of mature age, adults. He exhorts them, therefore, in the opening of chapter vi, to attain to a higher position in knowledge and character, or, as he expresses it, to go on unto perfection, to attain maturity of Christian character. Here, chiefly, is the Touto (this), this will we do. Táp, then, assigns the reason why they will do it. It does not refer even subordinately to μὴ πάλιν θεμέλιον καταβαλλόμενοι . . . καὶ κρίματος αἰωνιου (not laying again the foundation . . . and of eternal judgment), for if the readers would do that and continue to do that, apostasy would be impossible. Nor does it refer (Bengel and Ebrard) to táv лep èxitρény 8 Oeós (if God permit); for that is a very subordinate clause, and is only a general recognition of their dependence. àôúvatov (impossible). This can have only one of the two meanings, it is difficult, it is absolutely beyond power. If the former is the meaning, it will follow that if the persons addressed should fall away it might not be an eternal fall. The warning, then, though even in that case powerful, would be much less powerful than if the restoration were declared to be absolutely beyond power. The usus loquendi is in favor of the stronger meaning. "With men this is adóvatov." (Matthew xix. 26.) "In which it was adúvatov for God to lie." (Hebrews vi. 18.) "For it is adóvatos that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins." (Hebrews x. 4.) "But without faith it is adóvarov to please him." (Hebrews xi. 6.) Compare x. 26, "For if we sin wilfully after that we have received the knowledge of the truth, there remaineth no more sacrifice for sins." The impossibility is affirmed of God, not, as Bengel says, of men. If it is merely impossible for men to renew apostates, or for apostates to renew themselves, it may be possible for God to renew them. The warning, therefore, against apostasy as a final thing loses almost all its power. To use Lünemann's word in his concluding remarks, the warning is a schreckbild, a scarecrow. The impossibility, then, is affirmed of God.

The writer proceeds to describe the persons whom it is impossible to renew. 1. They have been once enlightened. 2. They have

tasted the heavenly gift. 3. They have been made partakers of the Holy Ghost. 4. They have tasted the good word of God and the powers of the world to come. 5. They have fallen away.

1. Toùs draž qwritvras (those who have been once enlightened). We can easily believe that a very decided protest would have been made by the writer of this epistle had he been told that this word ywriter would come to be interpreted as meaning baptize. That this did come to be assigned as its meaning is a striking illustration of the influence of current opinions upon exegesis. Even as early as Justin Martyr, as is well known, φωτίζειν was to baptize, ὁ φωτιζόμενος was the candidate for baptism, and, as cited by Sophocles, wriSTÝPLOY is found in Joannes Moschus for Bantisтyptov (baptistery). That the word means baptize in the passage before us, or anywhere else in the New Testament, or that it contains even a remote reference to the rite, would not now be maintained. Professor Stuart defines it "instructed in the principles of Christianity," which is quite too narrow a sense; Lünemann, “through the preaching of the gospel have become sharers of the light which comes from the knowledge of Christianity as a whole;" Bengel, "perception of the gospel by faith;" Ebrard, "that knowledge of the truth with which conversion begins.' It is evident from x. 26 that light resulting in conversion is intended. "For if we sin wilfully after we have received the knowledge of the truth." This reception of the knowledge of the truth is affirmed of the affections and the will. See also πεφωτισμένους τοὺς ὀφθαλμοὺς τῆς davoias ipar, the eyes of your understanding being enlightened (Ephesians i. 18), τὰς πρότερον ἡμέρας, ἐν αἷς φωτισθέντες, the former days, in which, after ye were illuminated (Hebrews x. 32). The word is used in a similar sense in the Septuagint. It is to be noted that it is here indirectly applied to those who had lived in the darkness not of paganism but of Judaisın,-darkness of Judaism; not that Judaism, like paganism, was darkness in itself, for David, Isaiah, Anna, Simeon, were in light, but that these Hebrews were once ignorant of the Messianic meaning of their own Scriptures. Just as nominal Christians of the present day, however well educated at home and in the Sabbath-school in the letter of Christianity, are, when awakened to the consciousness of sin, in darkness relative to the way of forgiveness, so these Hebrews, though living in the light shining through Moses and the prophets, had been as truly in darkness relative to salvation by Christ as the idolatrous citizens of Rome itself. But the Holy Spirit applied the gospel to their hearts. It was enlightenment which issued in their conversion. "Ana (once) serves to remind them that their change was one which, from the