it is that, as originally uttered, they were intended to illustrate the gradual spread of Christianity in the world. The preaching to the Gentiles may, to the editor, have seemed no obstacle to the immediate coming of Christ, but the words, as originally spoken, may well have foreshadowed a still far-distant future. The "fulfilling of the law" may, to the editor, have involved the permanent validity of the smallest commandment, but, interpreted in the light of Christ's teaching elsewhere, it seems clear that the words must have had a much wider meaning,

The historian who notices points like these will shrink from the conclusion that upon such subjects the teaching of Christ was altogether and exclusively what the editor of the First Gospel represents it to have been, to the exclusion of representation of it to be found in other parts of the New Testament.

And this should lead us to what seems to me to be a right judgement upon the representation of Christ's teaching as found in this Gospel.

That teaching was no doubt many-sided. Much of it may have been uttered in the form of paradox and symbol. The earliest tradition of it, at first oral, and then written, was that of a local church, that of Jerusalem, which drew from the treasure-house of Christ's sayings such utterances as seemed to bear most immediately upon the lives of its members, who were at first all Jews or proselytes. In this process of selection the teaching of Christ was only partially represented, because choice involved over-emphasis. Paradox may sometimes have been interpreted as an expression of literal truth, symbol as reality, and to some extent, though not, I think, to any great extent, the sayings in process of transmission may have received accretions arising out of the necessities of the Palestinian Church life. Thus the representation of Christ's teaching in this Gospel, though early in date, suffers probably from being local in character. In the meantime much of Christ's teaching remained uncommitted to writing; and, not until S. Paul's teaching had made men see that Palestinian Christianity suffered in some respects from a too one-sided representation of Christ's teaching, did they go back to the utterances of Christ, and reinterpret them from a wider point of view; seeking out also other traditions of different aspects of His teaching which had been neglected by the Palestinian guardians of His words.

But in making such generalisations I am going beyond my allotted sphere as commentator on the Gospel, and I leave these questions now to judgements which are wiser than my own.

ANCIENT LITERATURE.