The Influence of Greek Ideas and Usages Upon the Christian Church

conditions could have been thought to be possible, and the result is now presented to the world.

A considerable proportion of the material for the ninth Lecture had been carefully elaborated; but some of it, and the whole of the material for the other three, was in the state just described. This of course added even more to the responsibilities than to the labours of the editor. In the body of the Lectures most scrupulous care has been taken to preserve the author's ipsissima verba, and, wherever possible, the structure and form of his sentences. But from the very necessities of the case, the hand had now and then to be allowed a little more freedom; connecting words, headings, and even here and there a transitional sentence or explanatory clause, had to be added; but in no single instance has a word, phrase or sentence been inserted in the text without warrant from some one part or another of these crowded note-books. With the foot-notes it has been different. One of our earliest and most serious difficulties was to find whence many of the quotations, especially in the ninth Lecture, came. The author's name was given, but often no clue to the book or chapter. We have been, I think, in every case successful in tracing the quotation to its source. Another difficulty was to connect the various references with the paragraph, sentence or statement, each was meant to prove. This involved a new

labour; the sources had to be consulted alike for the purposes of verification and determination of relevance. and place. The references, too, in the note-books were often of the briefest, given, as it were, in algebraics, and they had frequently to be expanded and corrected; while the search into the originals led now to the making of excerpts, and now to the discovery of new authorities which it seemed a pity not to use. As a result, the notes to Lecture IX. are mainly the author's, though all as verified by other hands; but the notes to Lecture X., and in part also XI., are largely the editor's. This is stated in order that all responsibility for errors and inaccuracies may be laid at the proper door. It seemed to the editor that, while he could do little to make the text what the author would have made it if it had been by his own hand prepared for the press, he was bound, in the region where the state of the MSS. made a discreet use of freedom not only possible but compulsory, to make the book as little unworthy of the scholarship and scrupulous accuracy of the author as it was in his power to do.

The pleasant duty remains of thanking two friends who have greatly lightened my labours. The first is Vernon Bartlet, M.A.; the second, Professor Sanday. Mr. Bartlet's part has been the heaviest; without him the work could never have been done. He laboured at

the MSS. till the broken sentences became whole, and the disconnected paragraphs wove themselves together; and then he transcribed the black and bewildering pages into clear and legible copy for the printer. He had heard the Lectures, and had happily taken a few notes, which, supplemented from other sources, proved most helpful, especially in the way of determining the order to be followed. He has indeed been in every way a most unwearied and diligent co-worker. To him we also owe the Synopsis of Contents and the Index. Professor Sanday has kindly read over all the Lectures that have passed under the hands of the editor, and has furnished him with most helpful criticisms, suggestions, and emendations.

The work is sent out with a sad gratitude. I am grateful that it has been possible so far to fulfil the author's design, but sad because he no longer lives to serve the cause he loved so well. This is not the place to say a word either in criticism or in praise of him or his work. Those of us who knew him know how little a book like this expresses his whole mind, or represents all that in this field he had it in him to do.

The book is an admirable illustration of his method; in order to be judged aright, it ought to be judged within the limits he himself has drawn. It is a study in historical development, an analysis of some of the

formal factors that conditioned a given process and determined a given result; but it deals throughout solely with these formal factors and the historical conditions under which they operated. He never intended to discover or discuss the transcendental causes of the process on the one hand, or to pronounce on the value or validity of the result on the other. His purpose, like his method, was scientific; and as an attempt at the scientific treatment of the growth and formulation of ideas, of the evolution and establishment of usages within the Christian Church, it ought to be studied and criticised. Behind and beneath his analytical method was a constructive intellect, and beyond his conclusions was a positive and co-ordinating conception of the largest and noblest order. To his mind every species of mechanical Deism was alien; and if his method bears hardly upon the traditions and assumptions by which such a Deism still lives in the region of early ecclesiastical history, it was only that he might prepare the way for the coming of a faith and a society that should be worthier of the Master he loved and the Church he served.

A. M. FAIRBAIRN.

OXFORD, July, 1890.