The allusions are to a state of things in which believers had not lost their distinctive character, and in which they were separate from the world. The splendid amplification of the fifth chapter, has attracted universal admiration. Its resemblance to certain passages of the Apostle Paul, need not be pointed out to any mindful reader. The silence of the Epistle, moreover, on certain points which stand out glaringly on every page of the later fathers, is very instructive. If image-worship had begun in any shape, the line of argument pursued by the writer would necessarily have been unlike what it is; he would have been driven to the subterfuges and distinctions which grew out of the iconoclastic controversy, and which disgrace the arguments of Rome. The same remark applies to the denunciations of Judaism, in regard to set days. If Christians at that time had possessed a calendar of feasts and fasts, it would have been difficult to write the latter sentences of the fourth chapter, without a salvo for such observances. The writing proceeded from a time anterior to all ecclesiastical distinction of days and meats. Equally silent is our eloquent author concerning any claims of hierarchy. Not a word does he utter about sacramental grace, priesthood, distinction of laity and clergy, baptismal regeneration, the necessity of coming to an external catholicism for safety. But these are assumptions on which we perpetually stumble, in the fathers of the fourth and fifth centuries. In all these respects the air of the production is healthful and primitive. Nor does it contain, in its genuine portions, a syllable on which a Papist could build a plausible argument.

We remark, secondly, on the inadequate and erroneous view which the author takes of the Old Testament dispensation. This it is, as we have said above, which has led many to class the Epistle among Gnostical works. In our apprehension, however, these passages, though painfully aside from truth, only serve to corroborate the opinion that the work is of early date. In later periods, the Old Testament was assigned to its proper standing. But when early converts came over from gentilism to the gospel, unless belonging to the class of proselytes, they did not, like the Jews, pass through the Old Testament as a vestibule. In many cases, we may suppose it was long before even the version of the Seventy was put into their hands. One who at this stage should write a defence of Christianity, would be very apt to indulge in just such undiscriminating censures of Judaism as charaterise this Epistle. It is indeed one of the most obscure points in church history, to determine by what process the early converts from heathenism were brought acquainted with the Old Testament Scriptures and economy. What difficulties it has offered to the greatest Christian histo

rian of our age, may be seen in Neander's delightful but unsafe volume on the Planting and Training of the Church.

Our third remark is of a more pleasing kind. The Epistle to Diognetus abounds in the statement of vital Christian doctrine. Even our bald version cannot altogether conceal the sublimity of that passage of the seventh chapter, in which the writer sets forth the uncreated dignity of the Redeemer. Here we read, that when God would save men, he sent, "not some servant, or angel, or prince, or any of those who govern earthly things, or any of those entrusted with the heavenly provinces, but the Framer and Creator of the universe himself;" (an expression which certainly savours little of Gnosticism); and the words following rise in a climax unsurpassed in patristical eloquence. The value of faith is clearly asserted in the eighth chapter. But it is in the ninth that we have expressions concerning the method of justification, such as we have often toiled in vain to find in some church-fathers of the highest name. "By our own works unworthy of life," we are "deemed worthy of it by the kindness of God." The desert and impotence of fallen nature are strongly asserted. God" gave his own Son, a ransom in our stead; the holy for the lawless; him that knew not wickedness, for the wicked; the just for the unjust." The doctrine of justification, as something beyond mere pardon, is taught: "For what else was able to cover our sins, but His righteousness?" And he breaks forth, "O sweet exchange! O design past finding out! O bounties never to have been expected! That the iniquity of many should be hidden in One righteous; that the righteousness of One should justify many unrighteous!"

We have said enough, we trust, to draw the attention of inquiring students to the Epistle to Diognetus. By all means they should study it in the original. So doing, they will find much light cast on the history of the church, and of early opinion.

CRITICAL NOTICES.

Robinson's Greek and English Lexicon of the New Testament. New Edition. Longman & Co., London.

THERE are some amongst us old enough to remember the days when Schrevel found deference, and Hederic held sway as an oracular authority, among students of Greek. In no department of literature has greater improvement been visible than the transition from the old lexicons of the Greek language-with all their defects of arrangement both in the words themselves, and the meanings assigned to them, while every meaning and definition loomed through the mist of a questionable Latinity-to the lexicons of the same language now in use, and in which the student enjoys mental training of the best kind as he ponders the learning and philosophy exhibited in the arrangement, etymology, and history of the words, with the copious analysis of every shade of meaning attached to them. This new era in Greek lexicography may be held to date from the appearance of Schneider's third edition of his lexicon in 1819. Passow, in the successive parts and editions of his work, from 1819 to 1831, made a great advance even upon Schneider, adopted better principles in the simple matter of arrangement, and bestowed far more care in the historical development of the words. In the special department of Hellenistic Greek, Wahl and Bretschneider by their learned labours conferred signal benefit on the religious world, not to speak of the work of Schleusner, which, considering the state of lexicography at the time of its appearance, deserves respectful mention now that it is almost superseded by dictionaries of higher character, among which, so far as the illustration of the Greek Testament is concerned, the Lexicon of Dr Robinson holds no second place.

The author may be said to have undergone a lengthened training for the execution of his important task. He had translated the Clavis Philologica of Wahl in 1825, and after the diligent labour of many years he produced the first edition of his own lexicon in 1836. His translation, moreover, of the Lexicon of the Hebrew language by Gesenius familiarised him with subjects of research, a thorough knowledge of which is indispensable in order to understand the Greek of the New Testament. His labours in the constant prosecution of Biblical literature disciplined his mind still further in questions of lexicography. His travels and inquiries in the East, of which his "Biblical Researches" -by far the most important work of the kind since the days of Reland. -form the lasting memorial, enriched him with information, fresh and varied, of which he has availed himself in the historical articles of the present edition of his work. His official duties, moreover, had for many years consisted in the daily interpretation of the New Testament to large classes of young men, and he had kept pace with all that Wahl and Bretschneider had been doing in the improvement of their respec

tive works, and all the light which Winer, De Wette, and Meyer had been shedding on the genius and idiom of the Greek tongue as it appears in the New Testament Scriptures.

The result has been, that this new edition of his lexicon is beyond all question the standard work in the department of literature to which it relates. It is superfluous to praise a work of which the original edition has appeared in three reprints, and two abridgments, in this country. In the present edition-so vast an improvement upon the former, that it would be injustice to the author were his merits as a lexicographer to be tested by it-we have before us a monument of solid learning and successful industry, reflecting the highest credit upon its author, and upon the nation, now só fertile in scholars of mark and promise, to which he belongs. The slightest examination will convince any one of the great superiority of this lexicon, not merely to the edition of it which appeared in 1836, but to all lexicons which profess to treat of the same dialect. Every page teems with proof of the industry of the author, his faculties of lucid order and shrewd analysis, the judicial impartiality with which he sums up evidence, the care with which doubtful matter is avoided, and points yet in litigation are kept in abeyance, and the singular dexterity with which the extent of each article is adjusted, in proportion to the strength of its own claims on the notice of the inquirer and the relative value of the adjoining matter. Such rare tact in perspicuous brevity and condensation does the author evince, that with all its varied and important additions the new hardly exceeds the old edition in size.

The merits of the work will not be properly rated and understood if regarded simply in the light of a dictionary. It aspires to be a concordance and commentary also, and is in this respect to be discriminated from the lexicons which deal with the general subject of the Greek language. Considering that it refers to one volume only-the Greek Scriptures it will not be questioned that the value of the work is enhanced when, so far as possible, it is made useful as a concordance. A lexicographer has to vindicate the accuracy of his renderings and definitions, by an induction founded on the literature of the tongue to which the word belongs. Were it possible to embody in his references every instance in which the word occurs, throughout the entire range of that literature, so much the greater authority would his work possess. It is quite in the right direction, therefore, when Dr Robinson has multiplied his references so as to give us a concordance as well as a lexicon. But a graver question is raised by the degree to which the element of commentary is permitted to mingle in the work. It would be misplaced and irrelevant in all other lexicons. It must appear such a lexicon as the present, only as subsidiary to the explanation of the words discussed, not as the vehicle of the author's views and beliefs on extraneous topics, and there is a special necessity for the introduc tion of it, suggestive of the main criterion by which all lexicons of New Testament Greek must be tried and judged.

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In the modest but comprehensive preface to his work, Dr Robinson calls particular attention to the fact that "the language of the New Testament is the later Greek language as spoken by foreigners of the Hebrew stock, and applied by them to subjects on which it had never been employed by native Greek writers." There are in reality two controversies, often confounded, which have taken place in regard to the nature

of New Testament, or as Scaliger first named it, Hellenistic Greek. While at one time there was sharp contention among scholars whether it deserved the credit of attic purity--a contention which at least admirably proved, that error never can be enlisted in the service of truth without betraying the cause it is designed to maintain, for had the Purists been right, we would have missed all the advantage to the Christian evidence derived from the idiosyncrasy of the diction in which the later Scriptures were written, and like the speech of Peter, bewraying their Galilean origin;—there was another controversy of greater moment between Heinsius, who regarded the Hellenistic as a distinct and separate dialect, and Salmasius, who held that whatever departure may be traced in it from the standard of purer Greek, and whatever modifications from various causes it has undergone, it was in the main the Greek language as it existed in that age, and was generally known as zow διάλεκτος. This term was applied to the language in three stages of its history: first, when it was the common matrix of all the Greek dialects; secondly, when the Greek tongue was corrupted under the fusion of Greek interests which took place during the Macedonian ascendency, and grammarians, lingering over the ancient models of attic elegance, strove in vain to repress innovations on their beloved tongue; and finally, the same term was applied to the language when it spread over a wider sphere, and assumed new modifications from the various countries, such as Egypt and Palestine, over which it came to be diffused.

Whilexo diáλezros, in the latter sense of the term, must thus be taken as the basis, New Testament Greek derives a colouring and character from two powerful influences entirely peculiar to it, and which occasion the chief difficulty to a lexicographer. It was pervaded with a leaven of Hebraisms, for the inspired penmen of the New Testament were Hebrews. But more especially it was modified by the necessity under which these writers were laid of expressing revealed truth through the medium of a language, which, however copious and flexible beyond all comparison, had ripened to maturity before it became the vehicle of inspired thought and feeling. If it has been frequent matter of complaint that the words of common language are inadequate to the purposes of philosophy, how much greater the difficulty which the sacred writers encountered when called to enunciate the thrilling spiritualities of the gospel in language which had been previously appropriated to the theology and religion of heathenism! To banish the revolting associations which must have lingered around particular terms, when heathenism was yet fresh in the remembrance of men, and indeed an existing reality and actual object of contemplation,—to adjust a word so skilfully to the necessities of the case, that while they guarded against the confusion springing from the recollection of its usual import, their readers were not perplexed by the mysticism of a new nomenclature, to deepen the secondary meaning of a term till it was more thoroughly weaned from the materialism of its original significance, and to select fit epithets that terms of prevalent use in the levities of common intercourse might be "bathed in heaven," and hallowed for ever to the purposes of revelation ;-such were the difficulties over which they had to achieve a triumph, and no man can prepare a lexicon in explanation of their language who cannot appreciate the peculiar nature of these difficulties. It might seem an easy course for the sacred penmen to have invented new terms. The results which actually ensued when