party who had succeeded in putting it into the background. They were the party whom Tyndale accused of "knowing no more Scripture than they found in their Duns." They were the party who throughout the sixteenth century resisted every attempt to give the Bible to the people, and to make it the people's book. And they were perfectly logical in doing so. Their whole system was based upon the absolute inspiration of the Holy Scriptures, and even to a great extent of the Vulgate version. If the Vulgate version was not verbally inspired, it was impossible to apply to it the theory of "manifold senses." And if a text could not be interpreted according to that theory, if it could not properlybe strained into meanings which it was never intended by the writer to convey, the scholastic theology became a castle of cards. Its defenders adopted and in perfect good faith applied to the Vulgate the words quoted from Augustine: "If any error should be admitted to have crept into the Holy Scriptures, what authority would be left to them?" If Colet and Erasmus should undermine men's faith in the absolute inspiration of the Scriptures, it would result, in their view, as a logical necessity, in the destruction of the Christian religion. For the Christian religion, in their view, consisted in loyal devotion to the Church, and in gulping whole the dogmatic creed which had been settled by her "invincible” and "irrefragable" doctors.

But this was not the faith of Colet and Erasmus. With them the Christian religion consisted not in gulping a creed upon any authority whatever, but in loving and loyal devotion to the person of Christ. They sought in the books which they found bound up into a Bible, not so much an infallible standard of doctrinal truth as an authentic record of His life and teaching. Where should they go for a knowledge of Christ, if not to the writings of those who were nearest in their relations to Him? They valued these writings because they sought and found in them a "living and breathing picture of Him;" because "nothing could represent Christ more vividly and truly" than they did; because "they present a living image of his most holy mind," so that "even had we seen him with our own eyes we should not have had so intimate a knowledge as they give of Christ speaking, healing, dying, rising again as it were in our own actual presence. It was because these books brought them, as it were, so close to Christ, and the facts of his actual life, that they wished to get as close to them as they could do. They would not be content with knowing something of them secondhand from the best Church authorities. The best of Fathers were 66 men ignorant of some things, and mistaken in others." They would go to the books themselves and read them in their original languages, and if possible in the earliest copies, so that no mistakes of copyists or blunders of translators might blind their eyes to the facts as

they were. They would study the geography and the natural history of Palestine, that they might the more correctly and vividly realise in their mind's eye the events as they happened. And they would do all this, not that they might make themselves "irrefragable" doctors—rivals of Scotus and Aquinas-but that they might catch the spirit of Him whom they were striving to know for themselves, and that they might place the same knowledge within reach of all— Turks and Saracens, learned and unlearned, rich and poor-by the translation of these books into the vulgar tongue of each.

The "Novum Instrumentum " of Erasmus was at once the result and the embodiment of these views.

Hence it is easy to see the significance of the concurrent publication of the works of St. Jerome. St. Jerome was the Father of that school of theology and criticism which now, after the lapse of a thousand years, Colet and Erasmus were reviving in Western Europe. St. Jerome was the Father who in his day strove to give to the people the Bible in their vulgar tongue. St. Jerome was the Father against whom St. Augustine so earnestly strove to vindicate the verbal inspiration of the Bible. It was the words of St. Augustine used against St. Jerome that, now after the lapse of ten centuries, Martin Dorpius had quoted against Erasmus. We have seen in an earlier chapter how Colet clung to St. Jerome's opinion, against that of nearly all other authorities, in the discussion which led to his first avowal to Erasmus of his views on the inspiration of the Scriptures. Finally, the Annotations to the "Novum Instrumentum "teem with citations from St. Jerome.

The concurrent publication of the works of this Father was therefore a practical vindication of the "Novum Instrumentum " from the charge of presumption and novelty. It proved that Colet and Erasmus were teaching no new doctrines-that their work was correctly defined by Colet himself to be "to restore that old and true theology which had been so long obscured by the subtleties of the Schoolmen."

Under this patristic shield, dedicated by permission to Pope Leo, and its copyright secured for four years by the decree of the Emperor Maximilian, the "Novum Instrumentum" went forth into the world. FREDERIC SEEBOHM.

THE ELEMENTS OF MUSCULAR STRENGTH.

THERE is a certain science called physiology, which, though supposed by many to be the peculiar property of a few men belonging to one particular profession, has in reality the ambition of being some day recognised as the true basis of the art of living, as the supreme instructor and lawgiver in all things that concern the conduct of men's bodies. This is the goal to which it looks forward, though at present it touches practical life at points only few and far between. In health and in sickness men as yet trust in the main to what is called experience and common sense; they shun the teachings of physiology either because they have found its doctrines too unsteady and obscure, or because they have from time to time been duped by false professors passing counterfeit jargon for the true coin of science. And, on the whole, it is perhaps better that in daily life common sense should judge physiology, than that physiology should judge common sense. Nevertheless, time will not be wholly wasted, and common sense will often be usefully sharpened, if we now and then indulge in the habit of altogether shutting our eyes and ears to

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experience," while we ask what pure abstract physiology, what the physiology of the lecture-room and laboratory has to say about the cares and duties of the body in the midst of active daily life. Thus for instance we may, regardless of the maxims of the labourer and the athlete, inquire what may be learnt concerning a matter which comes home to by far the greater part of mankind-the best means of acquiring and maintaining muscular strength.

It hardly needs to be said that the subject is one of no little complexity. If a man's strength depended solely on the mass of muscle he carries, and if it were possible to add or take away muscle in the same way that one can add to or take away from the stuffing of a pillow-case, the problem would be a comparatively easy one. Unfortunately, such is not the case. A man's strength, though chiefly, is not mainly, much less solely, dependent on the amount of his muscle; and even if it were so, he is able to renew and gather flesh only under conditions of a most hidden and involved nature.

What, then, are the conditions of muscular strength? Looking at the body as a machine capable of performing a certain amount of work, what are the things which, during the performance of work, help or mar its usefulness? Certain conditions we may at once put on one side as at present at least beyond the range of physiology, namely, mental or psychical conditions; all that relates to the will, the purpose and inducement to work, all that relates to the

various feelings of trouble or joy, which make labour a burden or otherwise, and all that relates to skill, we may leave untouched. We may, for the present, consider man as a muscular machine, set going by some definite exciting cause, some stimulus of fixed amount. We may compare him, in an example hackneyed because truthful, to a steam-engine. We want to know how it is that, with the driver's hand always in the same position, sometimes this much and sometimes that much of work is accomplished.

In such a machine, then, the chief element of strength is of course the amount of muscular tissue. If a muscular fibre of a given length and thickness will raise say an ounce an inch high, ten such fibres placed side by side will raise ten ounces an inch high, or if joined end to end will raise an ounce ten inches high. The amount of work done is proportionate to the bulk of muscle employed. But by muscle we generally mean an organ which, besides the true muscular substance, the special contractile stuff which actually does the work, is composed of various other matters, such as fat and water; and muscles differ widely in the amount of fat and water they contain. Obviously the strength of a muscle will depend on its quality, on its being firm or flabby, on its possessing the proper proportion of contractile substance. The very contractile substance itself, too, being living matter, not only has different powers in different individuals, but also even in the same body and in the same muscle is liable to and actually does suffer change at every moment of its existence. Our "too, too solid" flesh is in reality liquid or semi-liquid stuff through which there are continually passing waves of molecular motion; and it is upon the order of these waves that the contractility of a muscle, its disposition to shorten when aroused by some exciting cause, in other words, its working capacity, depends. A strong muscle is a muscle which, in obedience to a command of a given intensity, to a given amount of stimulus, will lift a heavy weight; a weak muscle is one which, excited by the same stimulus, will lift only a light weight. The question of strength or weakness is determined by the molecular condition, for the time being, of the contractile substance. Thus a muscle of great contractile power may, by the use of some subtle poison, be reduced, within a few minutes, to a state in which it gives no contraction at all, even when urged by the strongest stimulus; and that, too, without any alteration in bulk, or any obvious change in its composition. Its irritability has been destroyed or suspended through recondite molecular changes induced by the action of the poison. When a muscle has been subjected to violent and repeated calls to action it becomes fatigued, and exhibits an unwillingness to contract; its irritability has been impaired by too great a strain. Similarly, by slight agents, we may produce slight changes in the condition of the contractile substance; such changes as, to a greater

or less extent, are always taking place in the living body. Every muscle lives on the blood with which it is supplied; from that blood it draws its supplies of food, and therefore of force; to that blood it gives back the material products which result from its vital actions. We may imagine a double current always flowing between blood and muscle. From the blood there pass certain substances which we may speak of under two heads, food and oxygen; and from the muscle carbonic acid and other matters, arising from the transformation of previous food. In every muscle there is, so to speak, a lesser circulation comparable to the greater circulation of the whole body. Interfere with this circulation, and a change in the molecular condition of the contractile substance, in the contractility, in the strength of the muscle, is the inevitable result. Diminish the supply of oxygen. or prevent the escape of carbonic acid, and the muscle loses power; diminish or deteriorate the food, or prevent the escape of waste products, and the muscle again loses power. The strength of a man, then, depends not only on the mass of his muscle, not only on the amount of true contractile substance he possesses, but also on the quality of that contractile substance as influenced by individual peculiarities and previous nurture, and on the condition, at the time of action, of that contractile substance as the result of a due harmony between blood and muscle.

There are, however, many circumstances affecting the working capacity of the body besides those which have directly to do with muscles. Thus the nervous element of strength, as distinguished from the mental excitements to work, &c., is one of great but perhaps underrated importance. We are supposing the animal machine to be set at work by a given stimulus; as, for instance, by the exercise of a given amount of will. That will, we are led to believe, does not act directly on the muscle, without the intervention of any other agents, or without the use of any instruments. On the contrary, in order that the will may reach the muscle, a whole train of processes have to be set a-going in a large tract of nervous matter stretching from (some part or other of) the brain down to the particular muscle or muscles engaged. And these processes, like the process of muscular contraction itself, are stringently dependent on the vital powers, on the irritability of that nervous matter, and therefore on its having been well nourished, on its being well supplied with food and oxygen, with good and sufficient blood, both before and at the time of its being put to work. The strength of the body hangs on the quality and condition of the nerves quite as distinctly as on the quality and condition of the muscles. Probably those sensations after voluntary efforts which we call fatigue, are due quite as much to nervous as to muscular exhaustion; and arise from the initial cerebral processes, the translation of the psychical into apsychical, material