BY THE RIGHT REV. G. A. CHADWIC II. Christ's Attitude to His Own Death. 1. The Word "Perfect" in the New Testament. BY THE REV. JOSEPH AGAR BEET, D.D. IV. Notes on Obscure Passages of the Prophets. BY THE REV. PROFESSOR T. K. CHEYNE, D.D., OXFORD. V. St. John's View of the Sabbath Rest. BY THE REV. G. MATHESON, M.A., D.D., F.R.S.E. VI. The Linguistic History of the Old Testament, and Maurice Vernes' Dating of the Documents. BY THE REV. PROFESSOR E. KÖNIG, D.D., ROSTOCK THE CURE OF SOULS. Practical Theology. Crown 8vo, 6s. Yale Lectures on By JOHN WATSON, M.A., D.D. (Ian Maclaren). "Dr. Watson's good sense, thorough earnestness, saving touch of humour, and wide experience make him an admirable guide to the young man who would fain come as near as may be the conception of the ideal minister."-Glasgow Herald. BY THE SAME AUTHOR. Second Edition, completing 15,000. THE MIND OF THE MASTER. Crown 8vo., printed on Antique Paper by Messrs T. and A. CONSTABLE, Edinburgh, Gilt top, 6s. "We can cordially recommend the book as an able, suggestive, and most readable work on a subject of perennial interest.”- -Glasgow Herald. WITH OPEN FACE; or Jesus Mirrored in Matthew, Mark, and Luke. By ALEXANDER BALMAIN BRUCE, D.D., Author of "The Parabolic Teaching of Christ," etc. Crown 8vo, gilt top, 6s. "By reason of the masterly simplicity and clearness of its statements it will prove itself suitable and acceptable to the general reader, and, at the same time, will be found interesting and useful to that class whom he has in view in the more recondite work to which, in his preface, he refers."-Scotsman. THE TABLE-TALK OF JESUS, and other Addresses. By the Rev. GEORGE JACKSON, B.A. Third Thousand. Crown 8vo, buckram, 35. 6d. "These sermons palpitate with actuality, and are up-to-date in the best sense of the word. Mr. Jackson is alive to the problems which attract and agitate the minds of his hearers during the days which intervene between Sundays. He lives in the present, and deals with the real difficulties and the real needs of those to whom he preaches."-The Methodist Times. BY THE SAME AUTHOR. FIRST THINGS FIRST. " Addresses to Young Men. Seventh Thousand. Crown 8vo, cloth, 3s. 6d. 'These addresses are short, full of force, and effectual in the lessons they convey. He is no waster of words; he points a truth in a few brief, incisive phrases, and preaches a sermon in a paragraph. Above all, they are manly in tone, and have the sterling ring of sincerity."-Dundee Advertiser. THE LADY ECCLESIA. An Autobiography. By GEORGE Matheson, M.A., D.D., Minister of the Parish of St. Bernards, "The work abounds in splendid passages, whose significance none can fail to understand; and the climax, in which Ecclesia conquers the imperial power, approaches the sublime."-Christian World. LONDON: HODDER AND STOUGHTON, 27, PATERNOSTER ROW, E.C. CAVOR MASS. "THE MIND OF THE MASTER." THIS is a superficially attractive and a deeply disappointing book. It has such gift of phrase that one thinks it might easily have been a work of art, but it is not. And it has such flashes of insight that one looks to it for fresh and real teaching, but gets nothing of the sort. Let us linger for a moment with the style, meaning thereby the expression of thought, and not such slips as that by which in the first sentence of chapter viii. a verb is left without a nominative. There is an unpleasant flavour of Renan, in his most sugary mood, in the expression which tells us about Jesus "in a moment of fine inspiration" (p. 117). Of course, if this expresses Dr. Watson's settled opinion, it is not with the style that we must quarrel. But if he believes (as we gladly think he does) that the Spirit in His organic completeness abode upon " Jesus, that the words which He spake were not His own, but as He heard He spoke; that as long as He was in the world He was the light of the world; that He whom God sent spoke the words of God because God gave not the Spirit unto Him by measure; that He was one with His discourse (ù rís ei; . . . Τὴν ἀρχὴν o, Ti Kai λaλ vuîv, John viii. 25), being Himself the Word, the Truth, and the true Light,-in that case, to speak of "moments of fine inspiration," as if inspiration ebbed and flowed in the breast of Jesus, is not only nonsense, but very mischievous nonsense indeed. What is in question is not the révwois, but the efficient equipment of the Logos. It is our hope that such expressions (and we shall find many such) do not indicate erroneous doctrine, but only defective grasp on doctrine; that they are the utterance of a man of TOL. V. 1 I letters moving about in the world unrecognised of theology, and that the handwriting is uncertain because the pen is in an unsteady grasp. Here is a good specimen of theology unrecognised :"When one says 'I believe' in the Nicene Creed, he means that he assents to the theological statement" (p. 152). He neither says nor means anything of the sort: what he declares is belief in the God of whom the formula is predicated, and he dwells on the formula only because it defines and clears his conception of the God whom he says that "I believe in." The belief which the Nicene Creed requires is exactly that "faith," with which Dr. Watson contrasts it. But one is greatly helped to disparage the creeds by ignoring their exact contents. And here, again, is a curious specimen of unsteadiness of the pen. In one place we read that "a prophet has many things to say to his generation; one only is his message. Jesus treated every idea of the first order in the sphere of religion; His burden was Life" (p. 67). But again we are told that "every prophet of the first order has his own message, and it crystalises into a favourite idea. With the Master, it was the Kingdom of God" (p. 319). How in the name of reason are these two assertions to be reconciled? Here is another specimen of inadequate and evasive thinking. "Jesus never succeeded in public save once, when He was crucified: He never failed in private save once, with Pontius Pilate " (p. 110). As if Jesus had no private intercourse with Iscariot. But what is Dr. Watson's notion of success? If he means lasting and solid effect, then all the public words and works of Jesus, from the Sermon on the Mount to His defiance of the High Priest, are a success prodigious and eternal. If he means immediate and apparent success, then the Cross consummated the failure of the life of Jesus. |