enforced, serve as a restraint to human conduct, but it is reserved to a higher power to present the corrective force needed to regulate human nature. The world needs the gospel of the Son of God. Mankind in their progress to a higher civilization, absolutely, imperatively, need the blessed influence of Christianity. The gospel is the power of God-the power to revolutionize the human heart, to subdue human passions, to crucify those lusts which war against social and individual peace. Christianity, with its heaven-born power, elevates man in the scale of being, and furnishes him with a complete code of morals. Her inspiration has already been felt, for the influence of Christianity can be seen and appreciated at once by comparing those lands where the gospel has been proclaimed, with those which have not felt its power. And if the very presence only of Christianity in lands where its influence is necessarily partial and circumscribed, be attended with such blessed results, we can readily conceive what would be the condition of the world if all men were under its controlling power. Says a recent writer: The moral power of Christianity is also seen in its direct effects upon society and in its remote influences. What is it but Christianity that has discountenanced every form of licentiousness, and thrown in every age its shield of protection over the most sacred relations of the family and the rights of woman? What is it but Christianity that has curbed the violence of war, or given moderation to civil rulers, or guided with safety human governments, or repressed the arrogance of party spirit? Christianity has changed, wherever it has prevailed, the whole condition of society. By making supreme the authority of God, it has most effectually put down the tyranny of man and given a sure foundation to all the virtues.1 Mill, in his work "On Liberty," asserts "that many essential elements of the highest morality are among the things which are not provided for in the recorded deliverances of the Founder of Christianity." The Rev. Joseph Parker, D. D., thus combats this assertion: What are the essential elements of the highest morality? Would intelligent and loving reverence for God, be admitted to be one of them? If so, it is provided for in the recorded deliverances of the Founder of Christianity. Is the loftiest disinterestedness or the most generous magnanimity an essential element of the highest morality? Do justice, mercy, forgiveness and peace find any place among the essential elements of the highest morality? If so, they are provided for in the recorded deliverances of the Founder of Christianity." The disordered state of society in different periods of the world's 1 Lord's Natural and Revealed Theology, page 436. 2" Ecce Deus," pages 300, 301. history may be attributed to the absence of the conservative and hallowed influence of Christianity. Had Paris, for example, felt the influence of such a principle, she would have been spared the horrors of the French Revolution. Those bloody scenes were enacted in the midst of boasted intelligence and refinement, for the society of Paris was pronounced of the first order. There were, too, many men of mark and culture in that day, who were distinguished representatives of French philosophy and political science. According to the table given by Alison, the historian, the National Assembly was not deficient in the gifts of genius nor in intellectual attainments, composed as it was of clergy, nobles, lawyers, magistrates, men of letters, merchants, etc. But notwithstanding the brilliant society of France, its courtly polish and elegance, its vigorous intellect, the fact is beyond contradiction that the morals and manners of the people were depraved. The true spirit of Christianity was absent. May not the bloody scenes of the Commune in 1871 be explained on the same ground? The testimony of a single witness before the Court Martial is a sad commentary upon French civilization. Abbe Derchy testified that he had served twenty five years as a missionary among the savages and he had never witnessed atrocities equal to those perpetrated by the Communists. It may, therefore, be safely assumed that whatever may be the progress of a people in the arts and sciences, whatever be their state of intellectual culture, without the restraining and sanctifying influence of Christianity, they are liable at any moment to be disturbed by the most serious intestine broils and to become the easy prey of excited passions. All the moral and political disorders of the world may be traced to the condition of the human heart in its naturally depraved state. The gospel of Christ seeks to remedy all these evils by striking at the foundation on which they rest, and by purifying the source whence they spring. Our Saviour teaches that, "out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witnessings, blasphemies." (Matthew xv. 19.) Now if the fountain be pure, the stream will be pure also. If the human heart be regenerated and renewed, the result will be seen in human conduct. To remedy social disorders in any other way is a hopeless task. The human heart is the point to which the gospel is directed. It is in this way that Christianity seeks to influence society through the individual. The true Christian needs no human laws to deter him from transgression, for he is under the guidance of a principle more powerful than penal statutes. The true Christian refuses to commit robbery, arson, murder, etc., not because the law of his country forbids these crimes, but because he has the fear of God before his eyes, and is governed by an enlightened conscience which in turn is guided by the Word of God. If all men were true Christians, there would be no oppression, no wrong, no violence, no bloodshed. There would be no need for prisons nor criminal courts, penitentiaries nor houses of correction. Hence the prophet, as he peers through the mists of centuries, associates the period of universal peace and good will with the prevalence of the principles of the gospel of Christ. If we consider how admirably adapted to human nature are the precepts of the Saviour of mankind, we shall see at once the relation which a pure Christianity sustains to human civilization. "The carnal mind is enmity against God"; "the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked "; and in the gospel of Christ is disclosed the fact that by the divine agency of the Holy Spirit the heart may be regenerated and renewed. The Word of God furnishes a guide to the conscience, a rule of life to regulate human conduct and to give proper direction to the exercise of the will and the affections. It teaches man to shape his character according to its practical requirements and to live in view of the final account he must render, and stimulates him to aspire after those glorious rewards which the future shall unfold. When the human race attains the point of a complete civilization, it will be when the world has practically learned the two sublime lessons of our divine Lawgiver, Redeemer and King, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy soul and mind and strength, and thy neighbor as thyself." Under the transforming power of the gospel the spirit of mankind will then be the spirit of Christ. Bright will be the page of human history that thus records the triumphs of the Cross. CHARLESTON, S. C. L. H. SHUCK. THE GREEK OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. A Grammar of the Idiom of the New Testament, prepared as a Solid A Grammar of the New Testament Greek. By ALEXANDER Buttmann. WHAT is New Testament Greek distinctively? This inquiry naturally arises or recurs, as we look at the two solid volumes by Winer and Alexander Buttmann, which, with latest improvements and additions, some even specially made for his translations, Professor James Henry Thayer, of Andover, has rendered accessible to American and English students. It is certainly a suggestive fact, as to the importance of this inquiry, that Alexander Buttmann is a son of that Philip Buttmann whose classical Grammars, in successive editions, are now verging upon a century of authority. Notwithstanding his father's achievements in the realm of Greek scholarship, this Alexander was not left to sigh that there were no more worlds to conquer. Even in a sphere which Winer had made so peculiarly his own, he hoped and wished, to use his own language, that his work might succeed in winning for itself a modest place in this department of literature, behind or by the side 1 of its predecessor and master. This is the dignified and unassuming position of one who, after studying at the Universities of Berlin and Bonn, was for nearly twenty years a teacher in the gymnasium at Potsdam, resigning his office, in 1854, to devote himself to literary labors, as a chief result of which the present work appeared in 1858. It is, by common acknowledgment—including that of the latest English and American translators of Winer-the most important treatise since Winer's. The survey then of these volumes, and of the copious literature to which they refer, ought gravely to impress all who have to do with the professional or popular exposition of the Sacred Word. It ought to be peculiarly instructive to the college student contemplating the Christian ministry. He takes up a Greek Testament, and it is, in many instances, such plain sailing, after the intricacies of "the False Embassy," or of a Greek tragedy, that he may think it hardly necessary to devote a year, and then, perhaps, parts of two more, to an investigation of such a Greek style. He may be tempted to have for it something of the contempt which moved the ancients, who were acquainted with the classical Attic, and with the literary, as distinguished from the colloquial Hellenic. Slight attention to the circumstances of the authorship and translation of the works before us will correct any such hasty and unworthy impression. Even from Germany, the home of linguistic science, Professor Thayer reports this utterance of the lately deceased Meyer, whom he styles "the prince of New Testament expositors": "We theologians are still far too deficient in a comprehensive and positive knowledge of Greek Grammar." There is significance in the fact that such men as Doctors Edward Robinson, Conant, and Hackett, each busied himself professionally with the classics in earlier life, but found ample scope for their powers in the labors to which they soon passed, and which have made them the authorities they are in Biblical science. Only a brief and most general statement of facts can here be attempted, in answer to the question with which we set out. As the Attic dialect, with its Ionic basis, enriched from the other idioms of Greece, afforded the finest model of the prose style, and as Athens long remained the seat of letters, especially of philosophy and rhetoric, these circumstances necessarily operated to bestow an overshadowing prestige upon this dialect, from the fifth century before Christ. Through the conquests of Alexander the Great, it was introduced into Egypt, and overspread a great part of Asia. In its diffusion at home and abroad, while cherishing its own peculiarities, it contracted different local influences, and assumed the character of a general Greek language, usually called the common or Hellenic |