GIFT OF SEELEY W. MUDD and GEORGE I. COCHRAN MEYER ELSASSER DR. JOHN R. HAYNES WILLIAM L. HONNOLD JAMES R. MARTIN MRS. JOSEPH F. SARTORI to the UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA SOUTHERN BRANCH JOHN FISKE This book is DUE on the last date stamped below THE GREAT MEANING OF METANOIA AN UNDEVELOPED CHAPTER IN THE LIFE AND TEACHING OF CHRIST A NEW EDITION WITH A SUPPLEMENTARY ESSAY BY TREADWELL WALDEN NEW-YORK THOMAS WHITTAKER 1896 9 9 7 8 3 Copyright, 1896, By TRKADWELL WALDEN. 1ST S.O INSCRIBED WITH DEVOTED LOVE TO MY WIFE, GRACE GORDON WALDEN. "233 CLARENDON STREET, "BOSTON, October 15, 1881. " DEAR WALDEN : I have just read your ' Meta- noia ' through from beginning to end, and I want to tell you how much I enjoyed it, and how much I thank you for sending it to me. " It is full of inspiration. "It makes one think of Christian faith as positive and constructive, and not merely destructive and remedial. " It makes the work of Christ seem worthy of Christ. " I thank you truly, both for writing it and for giving it to me. ' ' Your sincere friend, " PHILLIPS BROOKS." PKEFACE. THE first of these Essays appeared in the " American Church Review " for July, 1 88 1 following the memorable day in May when the Revised Version of the New Testament was issued. The paper was soon afterwards reprinted separately, and in 1882 was put into book form by the present publisher. Although its point was made timely by the revision, and by the astonishing fact that, in a work expressly undertaken in this age to correct the misapprehensions of a former age, a mistranslation involving such conse- quences had been overpassed and perpetu- ated, yet the Essay did not set out to be a criticism of the New Version in this particu- lar. It could not help falling into something like it, but its main purpose was to draw attention to, and to be a popular exposition of, a word in whose enormous potentiality of meaning lay, as I believed, a more true and more catholic, a more spiritual and more philo- Preface. sophical, interpretation of Christianity. The Essay could have done as well for this with a little modification if the revisers had adopted a new rendering which was, in any degree, sympathetic with the real import of the original. As such, I am glad to say after the nov- elty of the New Version had passed the Essay seems to have been accepted : simply as an exposition in itself, that might at any time be in order; and as a contribution, called for under the circumstances, to the knowledge and the spirit which ought to in- spire that comprehensive English expression or that happy combination of words vary- ing according to their connection in the text which may venture sometime hence to represent the idea of Merdvoia ; a word of whose fullness, in its initial position, the New Testament itself can be the only adequate translation, for, in that initial position, it is the key-note of its whole strain. There was nothing new in the view itself. If there had been, it could not have been true. It was as old as the apostolic age. And the revival of it was only an attempt to uncover and clear out a partially choked well. Preface. The Greek expression lay directly under the eye of any reader of the original, manifestly opening down to a great depth, provided his eye was disengaged enough from preposses- sions to be alive to the fact. The word bore the hint of what it was on its very face : an intimation that the whole inward nature of man was appealed to, all its springs of action, all its possibilities of affection. Every scholar was aware of its literal meaning and that meaning alone was in itself enough to suggest the dropping of an exploring plummet. Why this was not done, why what was so obvious was overlooked, per- haps the second Essay may explain. Neither was there anything new in the endeavor to recover the lost meaning of the word. There had been, even so far back as the remote age in which its present custom- ary curb and covering had first been imposed upon it, an instinctive misgiving that its full depth had not been sounded. But the mis- giving had been overborne because it was not pronounced enough. The Reformation, also, developed a restiveness under the same ancient limitation for mud, as well as water, was being drawn up now but the restiveness Preface. wrought no real purification, because it was not articulate enough. At a later day that is, a hundred years ago an orthodox but independent Scotchman, Dr. George Camp- bell, exposed the whole imposition with startling distinctness, and succeeded so well in sweeping the fabric away that many since his day several recent translators among them owe all their new conception of the truth to him. But in both his and their contentment with the substitute "reforma- tion " for " repentance " there lay an implica- tion of externalism, which betrayed, appa- rently, a lack of insight into the spiritual pro- fundity of the original expression. The new rendering did not, also, popularly prevail, though pointing to the practical result in the life, because the old one, though falling short of the whole truth (" regeneration "), did at }ast reach down far enough to stir the oft- stagnant pool of the conscience and the heart. It has turned out that the absolute insight into the meaning of the word has in our own day been given to two scholars like De Quincey and Matthew Arnold, and has found its first distinct expression through them, be- cause, unlike all that have gone before them, Preface. their vision was unhampered by any theo- logical preconception, and by the necessity of looking for an available form of English translation. It was simply this which left their powers of perception clear ; both open- eyed to a palpable meaning, and free-handed in their statement of it. But they did not raise a signal-flag over the fact when they found it, as if it were a discovery, nor con- cern themselves especially in identifying the word with its issues. They took its evident idea as a matter of course, recognized it as the original spring-head of the Gospel, re- stored it to its natural condition, and passed on. Hence their brief and casual allusions to it have escaped the attention that was their due. I was far on in the preparation of the first Essay before I ran accidentally upon the passage in De Quincey, and well on in the second before I came as accidentally upon the coincidence with it and yet variation from it of Matthew Arnold the one indicat- ing the intellectual sweep, the other the ethical depth of the word ; but I have been glad indeed to owe to them both an encour- aging and illumining inspiration in the en- Preface. deavor to show that the principle enunciated by " Metanoia " in the outset of the Gospel was profound enough to be the underlying and prevailing idea of the New Testament from beginning to end, and to suggest the application of its interpretative potency to the teaching of Christ and His apostles. And this the most obvious thing in the world to do when once on the track of it is all that appears to be new. But even this could be only generally and superficially intimated in a review article. Still, such as it was, the idea was a surprise and even a revelation to many people. And there have been indications enough that it has since taken a wide hold. I do not re- ceive this impression only from the many earnest letters and other like evidences which have come to me, or from an occasional ref- erence in a recent commentary or expository paper, but from the fact that the view seems to have entered largely into pulpit teaching and current thought. It has been made the theme of many sermons, and it has given occasion to a number of printed essays and magazine articles, several even of a philo- sophical character. The word " Metanoia " Preface. itself has also become quite a familiar Eng- lish expression, not only for what it really means, but, I fear, in some cases where an ignorant enthusiasm has laid hold of it, for what it cannot be understood to mean. It has been made the ground, however, of one interesting suggestion, by a writer in the " Popular Science Monthly," who has copi- ously quoted the Essay, that the term " Met- agnostic " or, better, the words " Metanos- tic " and " Metanoetic " should displace the idea conveyed by " Agnostic," as expressing positively, affirmatively, and hopefully, in stead of negatively and despairingly, the at- titude even of the purely scientific mind in the presence of the Unknown. The sugges- tion, it seems, failed with Mr. Huxley, when presented to him, because a slight inaccuracy in the statement of the primary force of the proposed words gave him an opportunity to evade it ; but the idea has, however, gone far enough into usage to bring about the in- troduction of " Metagnostic," with this sig- nification, in the " Century Dictionary." It is all this and the like of it that has kept the memory of the Essay afloat these Preface. fourteen years and more, that has caused a continual inquiry for it, and that has now led to its reissue, after being long out of print. In publishing it again I ought to say that I have gone over the whole ground with much thorough and painstaking study, and have verified all its positions so satisfactorily that I have seen no reason to change any of them. Indeed, so largely and variously has the subject opened and enriched itself, both in its Scriptural illustration and its practical application, that the present little volume seems to stand yet only on the threshold of the whole contemplation. But I have been under an exigency of brevity in bringing it out, and can only hope that it may serve its purpose as an introduction, if no more. The book has fallen into a threefold form : first, the original Essay, slightly retouched and with a few notes added ; second, a Sup- plementary Essay, mainly to supply a strong point of view in which the other was neces- sarily lacking, but incidentally including such further intimations of the bearing of " Meta- noia" as could be thrown out by the way ; and third, a group of selected comments upon Preface. the subject by different distinguished hands five of them revisers to show that I do not stand alone in my estimate of its neces- sity and importance. The last in the list of these by no means the least is Phillips Brooks. I have also set the whole of the opening part of his note to me in the forefront of this new edition, partly under an impulse of personal affection, partly because of the comprehensiveness and force of what he wrote. He was my cher- ished friend for thirty years, a pride and de- light to me as I saw him advancing in the strength of the breadth and depth of the truth he proclaimed, and under the blessing which attended a pure, a noble, and a de- voted life. In these few words, out of his very heart, he seized with characteristic in- sight the vital point of the whole considera- tion, and they are of that very quality in thought, conviction, and expression which was the secret of his power both as a preacher and as a man. In the midst of the concen- tric circles drawn round the mark, as it was also recognized by the others that I have quoted, he thus laid his ringer upon the cen- tral white: Preface. " It makes one think of Christian faith as positive and constructive, and not merely destructive and remedial. " It makes the work of Christ seem worthy of Christ." In that he said all. T. W. CAMBRIDGE, MASS., December, 1895. CONTENTS. ESSAY I. THE GREAT MEANING OF THE WORD METANOIA : LOST IN THE OLD VERSION, UNRECOVERED IN THE NEW. CHAPTER PAGE I. The New Testament Idea of Metanoia. . . i II. "Metanoia" Mistranslated "Repentance" 13 III. The Intellectual as well as Moral Compass of Metanoia 31 IV. The Inaugural Action of Metanoia in the First Age 45 V. Metanoia the Method of Christ's Teach- ing 60 VI. The Metanoia of St. Paul Faith and Re- newal 71 VII. Metanoia the Word of Christ to the Pres- ent Age 83 NOTE. The View of Matthew Arnold . . 91 xvii Contents. ESSAY II. THE ECLIPSE OF METANO1A BY PCENITENTIA. CHAPTER PAGE I. An Impossible Expedient to End it : "Re- pentance " to be Made to Mean Meta- noia 95 II. Merdiwa Transfigured Greek 100 III. "Repentance" Persistent Latin 108 IV. The Roman Utilization of "Repentance " 117 V. The Gospel in the Shadow of the Law .. 123 VI. "Disastrous Twilight" in the Revised Version 130 VII. The Power of Latin Prescription 139 VIII. The True Interpretation 145 ASSENTING WITNESSES. A Word Introductory 152 The Comments of : I. The Right Rev. Brooke Foss Westcott, D.D., D.C.L 153 II. The Rev. Professor Alexander Roberts, D.D 154 III. The Rev. Howard Crosby, D.D., LL.D. 155 xviii Contents. LETTER PAGE IV. The Rev. Philip Schaff, D.D., LL.D.. 156 V. The Very Rev. E. H. Plumptre, D.D. . 156 VI. The Rev. Edward White 157 VII. The Rev. Professor Alexander V. G. Allen, D.D 158 VIII. The Rev. Professor J. F. Garrison, D.D. 160 IX. The Rev. Elisha Mulford, LL.D 163 X. The Rev. Edward T. Bartlett, D.D 163 XI. The Rev. Benjamin Franklin, D.D.... 165 XII. The Right Rev. Phillips Brooks, D.D. . 166 I AM COME A LIGHT INTO THE WORLD, THAT WHOSOEVER BELIEVETH ON ME MAY NOT ABIDE IN THE DARKNESS. John xii. 46. THE GREAT MEANING OF THE WORD METANOIA: LOST IN THE OLD VERSION, UNRECOVERED IN THE NEW. I. THE NEW TESTAMENT IDEA OF METANOIA. METANOIA is the Greek word and let- ter for letter an English one, if we desire it which bears the sublime burden of the original proclamation of the gospel. It represents the first utterance of John the Baptist as the herald of the Christ, and the first utterance of Jesus the Christ as the herald of the kingdom of God. It was their summons to mankind, preceding the an- nouncement of the power that was approach- ing, of the revelation that was at hand. If we recur to the image involved in the words "herald," " proclamation" the image implied in the narrative it was the note of The Great Meaning of Metdnoia. a trumpet outside the walls, and the call of a messenger to open the gates. In order the better to get at its meaning, let us now imagine some one who has never read the English New Testament, and who has had no especial bias given to his ideas by any theological system. All we will sup- pose for him is a knowledge of Greek and a spiritual instinct which will enable him to rise into the frequent transcendental mean- ing of the Greek of the New Testament. He knows enough to know that he is deal- ing with the record of a divine revolution in the affairs of men, and that the human lan- guage to which the account was committed is struggling to utter adequately the depth of inspiration behind it. He knows that the record was committed to writing only after the bearings of the his- tory were fully understood and the concep- tion of its meaning was fully matured. He knows that what is before him is a con- densation as to events, and a translation as to ideas ; in other words, if we confine the re- mark to the four gospels, that the historical part is as brief as it is profound, and that 2 The New Testament Idea of Metdnoia. the doctrinal part is not only briefly and pro- foundly expressed, but was transferred to the Greek from the Aramaic vernacular in which it was at first expansively spoken. He is prepared, therefore, to see not only a representative depth in each event, but, especially, a comprehensive force in every cardinal word. In the very outset of the life of Christ he comes upon the word " Metanoia," and in a connection which gives it the all-prominent place. He takes in the significance of its position at once. It conveys the summons of the herald, and of the herald who was freighted with the good news which the whole New Testament afterwards unfolds. Here in epitome, he naturally thinks, must be all the " Upward Calling" of God. No word, there- fore, in the New Testament can be greater than this. Hence he must interpret it as a condensed expression of what was originally said in large, and as an expression, also, which was fixed upon long after the event, when every- thing was understood, as the fit one to carry the great burden. If this is its anticipatory 3 The Great Meaning of Metdnoia. reach, if this is its heralding grasp, he natu- rally sets about inquiring what is its history and what its elementary weight. When we imagine such a fresh reader of the Greek Testament as this we place our- selves in the situation to pursue his inquiry. The literal meaning of " Metanoia," or, rather, the nearest expression to it in English, is " Change of Mind," a phrase too much worn by familiar use to be available as a render- ing, but an idea capable of many equivalent variations in the English tongue. It will be more convenient, however, for our present purpose to employ the phrase as if its native force had not been thus impaired. What word is more expressive than " Change "? what more comprehensive than "Mind"? " Change," in the radical sense we here intend, when applied to the "mind," ought to suggest something hardly short of a trans- mutation ; not of essence, of course, but of consciousness. We understand by a change of place the occupation of another place ; a change of condition, another condition ; a 4 77/ besides, into the very connection in which St. Paul used the metaphor. It is only when the situation is a divine one that man is found to be the temple of God. So long as he confronts only the spirit of the world, whether it be in the nature of things or in the nature of men, he is like Herod's temple, without the Shechinah. He is only in partial use ; his true occupation is gone, or has not come. But when " the Lord visits His temple," then the wisdom of the world finds no longer entrance, but "the wisdom of God in a mystery." In that change of 42 Intellectual Compass of Metdnoia. situation comes the wondrous Change of Mind. " Eye hath not seen," exclaims the Apos- tle, " nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him " not in the next world only, but in this. " Now," he continues, " we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit which is of God ; that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God." " Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you? . . . Let no man de- ceive himself. If any man among you seem- eth to be wise in this world, let him become a fool, that he may be wise." Such was to be the utter dispossession of himself, such the utter evacuation of the wisdom of the world, such the Metanoia, when he came to know " Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God." St. Paul, when charged with a message like this, may well have scorned to come with the " excellency of speech or of wisdom " which then captivated the imagination of men ; but no man ever lived who, " in demonstration of the Spirit and of power," made a greater ap- 43 The Great Meaning of Metdnoia. peal to the intellect, more riveted the intelli- gent attention of the world, and more elicited the admiration of the finest intellects the world has known. If ever a man was chosen because of his intellectual power, and if ever a man appealed to the understanding and struck home through every faculty and intui- tion which the understanding could summon, it was he. 44 IV. THE INAUGURAL ACTION OF METANOIA IN THE FIRST AGE. IF we have made our meaning clear and much that we have said has an ulterior refer- ence which will make it clearer the reader is now prepared to take up the historic moment when the gospel was inaugurated, and to contemplate the stupendous change of out- ward situation which then ensued. What an epoch it was! What a meaning lay in the Metanoia that was then proclaimed ! " The noetic faculty, or the faculty of shap- ing and conceiving things under their true relations," entered now upon its work, and the issue was to be a revolution in the whole human conception of life. Christ substituted His own wisdom for the wisdom of the world, and what we see recorded in the New Testament is, first, the natural process of the 45 The Great Meaning of Metdnoia. Metanoia this wisdom working through the intelligence upon the heart, the conscience, and the life ; and, next, the thoroughness of the result in forming a new spiritual con- sciousness in that age. 1 It was, indeed, the "beginning of mira- cles " : the water was turned into wine. What else could have taken place from His pres- ence at the bridal where heaven and earth were made one? The change was now in- evitable from the lower into the higher, from the temporal into the eternal, from the natural into the spiritual, from the human into the divine. Life took a new character and an- other meaning when He drew near. It was found to be His life. The letter of the Old Testament dissolved into the spirit of the New. The law disappeared, and the right- eousness which is by faith, red as the blood of a great Sacrifice, was found instead, filling the vessels of human purification to the brim. The good wine had been kept until now! Did ever the world see so mighty and so radical a revolution as came upon it then? 1 See Matthew Arnold's view of " Metdnoia " in a note at the end of the Essay. 46 Inaugural Action of Metdnoia in the First Age. Judaism gave way to a universal religion. The Mosaic night broke into the dawn of the perfect day. The Fatherhood of God was revealed to all men, and a brotherhood with the Son of God! Now were they the sons of God ! partakers of the divine nature ! This world was discovered to be within the boundaries of the other world, and death was merged into a resurrection of the dead! Righteousness and truth were to prevail, for the power of sin had been destroyed ! And the efficacy of all this lay in the person of the Christ. It was He who gave all this light. The order of human life reversed itself in Him. All conduct was to flow from a spirit within, not by a law without. Selfishness was turned into self-surrender and self-sacri- fice. The affections were to be set upon things above, not on things on the earth. The spirit was everything, the flesh profited nothing. In all human action was to be the consciousness of Eternity ; in all intercourse of man with man no less than the magna- nimity of God. As we said in the beginning, what strikes us first, as we open our New Testament, is 47 The Great Meaning of Metdnoia. the commanding position in which we find the word " Metanoia." It is the great initia- tory word of the first three gospels. How- ever they may vary in the way they begin the story, they unite in the way they introduce this. The summons to mankind, first by the Baptist, next by the Christ, is to a Metanoia a Change of Mind. And when we come to the fourth gospel, with its interior view of the life of Christ, it is to discover " Metanoia " also at the very outset, but in another form : in an expression which, characteristically of that gospel, carries us into the very depths of the selfsame idea. Let us combine the four accounts. Now we shall see it in its true perspective ; that is, successively in its intellectual, ethical, and spiritual development. In the very beginning we have the Christ, half philosophically, half spiritually depicted as the " Logos," the " Word " ; then as the " Light of men." What greater implication could there be that Christianity was directed through the understanding to the heart? Next, John the Baptist is spoken of as the 48 Inaugural Action of Metdnoia in the First Age. "witness" to this Light. He was to "go before the face of the Lord to prepare His way." The method of his preparation was to pro- duce, first, a powerful, controlling impression upon the intelligence of the people. His per- sonal appearance, his clothing like that of an ancient prophet, his ascetic look, his secluded life, the "voice," out of Isaiah, with which he spoke, the burden of his first announce- ment all were in keeping, and were calcu- lated to rouse the whole nation. The past came vividly back to their memory; the future was as vividly, though mysteriously and presagingly, brought to their imagina- tion. He came "proclaiming a Baptism of Metanoia unto sending away 1 of sins." His vocal summons was that of a herald. " Meta- noelte ! Take a New Mind upon you : for the 1 elf afaaiv, dphesis, a sending away, a letting go, a setting free. The Latin "remission," a sending back, as used in the English versions, savors too much of a letting off, and is too evidently a render- ing colored by its association with the punitive ele- ment in repentance. Metanoia is " unto the sending awayoi sins." That is, its natural effect is to set the soul free from the bondage of the disposition to sin. But Christ, in creating the Metanoia, takes away sin. It is His personal work. 49 The Great Meaning of Metdnoia. Kingdom of Heaven is at hand." And, as if his " voice " were not enough, he spoke also by this symbol whose meaning must have been universally understood to be a change from an old condition into a new, even such a change, as they esteemed it, as that from dark paganism to glorious Judaism. It now meant a change from dark Judaism to some far exceeding glory. It meant a change that would really, not typically, bring with it a sending away of sins. He thus expressively coupled this sign of a Change of Condition with his summons to a Change of Mind. It was no other than " a Baptism of Metanoia." His summons of the Pharisees and Saddu- cees to a Change of Mind was as revolution- ary and as radical as it well could be. In this he struck right at their views. He broke their illusions. "Think not to say within yourselves, We have Abraham to our father : for I say unto you, That God is able of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham. Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees." There must be fruit worthy of the Metanoia (rr\<; jweravo/af). The effect of these utterances upon the people was as distinctly intellectual as it Inaugural Action of Metdnoia in the First Age. was emotional. Their whole intelligence was roused to such a degree that they not only went down into the Baptism and sought prac- tical counsel for their future lives, but they were thrown into a state of "expectation." They were excited to inquiry. "All men reasoned in their hearts of John, whether he were the Christ, or not." Finally priests and Levites came down from Jerusalem to ask him, " Who art thou ? that we may give an answer to them that sent us. What say- est thou of thyself ? " Up to a certain point he had not an- nounced the Christ, but he had awakened every thought and association which could suggest Him. He would seem to have gath- ered this intense concentration of attention upon himself in order to acquire additional power in portraying the greater grandeur of Him who was coming. He made himself the dark background of the picture he now drew. He himself was but a voice. " One mightier than I cometh." He himself was not worthy to stoop down and unlace His sandals. " I indeed bap- tize you in water ; but He shall baptize you The Great Meaning of Metdnoia. in the Holy Spirit and fire." He is the real Baptizer; the Metanoia that is to come by Him is to come through the Spirit of God, and something more potent than water. With Him that Baptism and the Metanoia are one. "What I am, what I teach, what I summon you to, what I baptize in, are but foreshadows of Him." Powerful as was this picture, John drew still another. It was based upon a familiar scene in their every-day life. This Coming One was the great Harvester, whose win- nowing-fork should stir humanity to its depths, as so much grain on the threshing- floor, and throw it against the currents of the Spirit. The wheat would fall at His feet and go into His garner, but the stubble would fly beyond Him to become only fuel for fire. He painted these two strong pictures upon their imaginations pictures whose parabolic force would sink profoundly into their minds. Vague conceptions were they as yet as vague as the idea of a Metanoia itself must have been but there was a far-reaching sig- nificance in them which, as now united with the call to a Change of Mind, time would reveal and the reality would confirm." 52 Inaugural Action of Metdnoia in the First Age. The seed of much thinking was sown, and a kind of thinking that was sure to work its way into the life. It was not until after all this ; not until Jesus had come and been baptized ; not, in- deed, until He had returned to him after the temptation in the wilderness that John made known the fact that his own Baptism had had a still deeper purpose than had yet been suspected. Not only was it a sign of the Metanoia in view of the impending Change, not only did it convey a typical intimation of Him who should bring about this Change, but it had all along been the designed occa- sion when the Christ Himself, in bodily pres- ence, should be made known. John had been utterly in the dark as to who He was. He had been in even a greater state of expectation than the people. All he knew was that " He that sent him to baptize in water, the same had said to him, Upon whomsoever thou shall see the Spirit descend- ing, and remaining upon Him, the same is He who baptizeth in the Holy Spirit." "I knew Him not," he said afterwards ; " but in order that ['iva] He should be made manifest 53 The Great Meaning of Metdnoia. unto Israel, for this cause came I [dia TOVTO fjWov eyo)J baptizing in water." This remarkable statement cannot be too strongly reiterated in view of the significance we may attach to it. The symbol, Baptism, was put into John's hands not only, as we say, to express the impending Metanoia, the Change of Mind to which the people were summoned, but also to be the means by which the Christ, the consummate Agent of it all, should be made known to John him- self and to the people. Everything was in suspense until this supreme moment of per- ception, knowledge, realization, came. The Metanoia was not at the full until He was " made manifest." The fact further defines the word. John's own Mind was waiting to be informed. The Mind of Israel was waiting to be informed. Both were yet in the Pronoia. They were in the line of that information, but the know- ledge had not come. They stood on the verge of the Metanoia. When it should dawn it would affect every Mind according to its previous condition. The Change would be either an evolution or a revolution ; but in 54 Inaugural Action of Metdnoia in the First A ge. either case it would be a Change of Mind, an advance into a new stage of conscious- ness, a confirmation of what had already been dimly discerned, or a contradiction of what had hitherto been wrongly imagined. The one was John's position, ready for any de- velopment ; the other, in different degrees and forms, was the position of the people. Let it still be borne in mind that this was known as "a Baptism of Metanoia." Now Jesus Himself was to enter the rite. If it were " the Baptism of repentance" as it is ren- dered, why was He there ? What had it to do with Him, or He with it? This has been the puzzle of theologians, who labor under the prepossession of the old rendering. But that He should participate in and be the central glory of "a Baptism of a Change of Mind," in the large sense in which we understand that expression, would be sublimely consistent with His character as the Christ; and it would, moreover, give us an inner glimpse of His life, which would ally it still more with our own. We have reason to think that Jesus Him- self was in the background with the others, 55 The Great Meaning of Metdnoia. personally known to John, yet spiritually un- known to him ; personally known to many, yet spiritually undiscerned by them ; person- ally known to Himself in the deepest con- sciousness of what He might be, perceiving in Himself all the marks of the Christ, yet with that consciousness awaiting the seal of the divine confirmation. Israel, John, Jesus, were all, in these different degrees, in the Pronoia the Mind before it had crossed into perfect intelligence. The " Baptism of Metanoia" was therefore to be the manifesta- tion of Christ to Himself o& well as to them. 1 The event declares this to be the very fact. "When all the people had been baptized," then He also entered by the selfsame heaven- appointed gate it was "of heaven," not "of men" into the new order of things: the Kingdom of Heaven which was at hand. What 1 Was there no meaning in the event when, after three years of this transfiguring experience, suddenly "the fashion of His countenance was altered, and His face did shine as the sun," to a group of His disciples on the mount, and the divine words uttered at His Baptism were uttered again? Was there no meaning in it when the whole truth and reality of that vision of a change burst upon all of them in His resurrection from the dead? 56 Inaugural Action of Metdnoia in the First Age. happened ? As He came up out of the water the heavens were rent asunder, " and lo, a voice from heaven, saying, Thou art this is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased." " And I saw," said John, " and bare record that this is the Son of God." 1 What a Metanoia was there, to both Jesus and John ! The Pronoia was over with both ! The boundary had been crossed ; the veil had been lifted. The whole great advance had been made in a moment of time. Jesus, filled with the immensity of a now confirmed consciousness, " filled with the Spirit," went into the wilderness to breast the trial which l " By this anointing of the Spirit," says Ols- hausen, " the gradual development of the human consciousness in Jesus attained its height. . . . The Baptism, accordingly, was the sublime season when the character of the xp iaT > which was dormant in the gradually developing child and youth, now came forth and expanded itself. Compare the remarkable words in Justin, ' Dial. Tryph. cum Jud.,' p. 226: ' Though the Messiah has been born and lives, He is unknown, and does not even know Himself, nor has any power, until Elias shall come and anoint Him and make Him known to all.' " (Olshausen's "Com- mentary on the New Testament," vol. i., p. 271.) 57 The Great Meaning of Metdnoia. should come to Him as the announced Son of God. John emerged from the wilderness into the full light of the same Metanoia, into the blaze of the very consummation amid which he was to wane out of sight, to await the return of Jesus, and to say, " Be- hold the Lamb of God! This is He of whom I spake." And what a Metanoia had come, also, upon the disciples of John and upon Israel! With Jesus and with John the Change of Mind, as we say, was in the form of devel- opment, an evolution from one state of con- sciousness into another. But upon Israel it had come like a Change from darkness to light, from ignorance to knowledge, a revo- lution of consciousness, an inversion, as time went on, of all that they had ever thought or believed or felt. But let us return to the great final scene at the Baptism, which shed its splendor over the rite. The virtue never left it which entered it then. Henceforth it was consecrated into a sacrament, forever allied with a Change of Mind and of Life. Baptism, as it once de- 58 Inaugural Action of Metdnoia in the First Age. fined the Metanoia, was always to define it. For go now from the first three gospels into the fourth. What do we find there also in the outset of the record? We hear our Lord discoursing of a New Birth a birth from Above (dvuOev), a birth of the Spirit, and this as accompanying a birth of water! Even as it had been with the Master, so was it to be with the disciple. The full reve- lation of sonship in God was to break upon him, also, after he had ascended through the outward rite. Then the Spirit would meet the Mind openly, and renew it day by day. It also was to Change as it learned, as it was tempted, and as it suffered. Where is the harmony of the gospels, where is the harmony of the Gospel itself, unless the " Baptism of Metanoia " proclaimed by John the Baptist to the people was the same as the " born of water and of the Spirit " announced by Jesus to Nicodemus? So here, in the profoundest of the gospels, we have the profoundest exposition of the word. 59 V. METANOIA THE METHOD OF CHRIST'S TEACHING. WE are now fairly brought to the moment when Jesus Himself began to proclaim and to say, " The time is fulfilled, and the King- dom of God is at hand: Metanoelte! Take upon you a New Mind, and Believe the Glad Tidings." What a new and concentrated light falls upon the life of Christ if we look upon it as the process or action of creating the Meta- noia! With this single idea in view His whole method comes definitely before us. It was all comprised in the terms of the above announcement : " The divine epoch of the world has come! God is now to reign on earth! Heaven is all about you! Sin, sor- row, death, are no more! Peace, joy, eter- nal life, are yours ! The night is far spent ; 60 Metanoia the Method of Christ's Teaching, the day is at hand. Awake, awake! All is changed! Change ye! Believe not the world ; believe Me! I bring you good tid- ings of great joy!" Supernatural as this revelation was, it was, like Him who brought it, subject to the order of nature in human nature when delivered to mankind. That order, as we have said, is this : all inward " change " proceeds from outward "change." A change of outward situation induces a change of mental con- sciousness ; a change of mental consciousness induces a change of moral disposition; a change of moral disposition induces a change of outward life. Give a man a new con- sciousness and he will develop a new nature. Upon this natural order of the Metanoia did Christ proceed. He first revealed a change of circumstance. He filled the soul with knowledge altogether new. He com- municated to it ideas and inspired it with principles which brought about it the horizon of another world. Then, step by step, came the dispossession of the old nature till it had reached the vital center, the seat of the con- science and the will, and then, step by step, 61 The Great Meaning of Metdnoia. the moral transformation began. It was " the expulsive power of a new affection." The " world " was cast out like a deaf and blind spirit, and the once divine heart was left cleansed and free. And this was done, as we say, by occupying, first, the intellectual nature of man, by engaging the whole power of his understanding with the Truth. But the nature of that truth was such that it struck through to the heart ; for " truth " and " right- eousness," in His mouth, meant the same thing. Like the hymn we hear, the intellec- tual process, however full, was unnoticed in the greater fullness of the spiritual impression produced. It came from Him on fire with the vividness of His own consciousness, and its illumination, as well as its inspiration, was thrown through these out-looking windows into the inmost chambers of the spirit. But these intellectual windows were the first to blaze under the light that poured into them. His opening summons to the Metanoia was addressed to the intelligence, and without an awakened intelligence it could not have moved the people as it did. All His subse- quent preaching then became an education, an education by gradual revelation. He was 62 Metanoia the Method of Christ's Teaching. known as the " Teacher." He called His fol- lowers His " disciples " learners. " Every one," He said, "that hath learned of the Father cometh unto Me." " Hearken unto Me every one of you, and understand." " Per- ceive ye not, neither understand ? " "All things that I have heard of My Father I have made known unto you." His constant formula was, " He that hath ears to hear, let him hear ! " which applied as much to the inter- est felt by the intelligence as to the disposi- tion that lay in the will. His mode of teaching involved almost every form of arresting attention and pro- ducing an impression. He portrayed the Kingdom of Heaven in parables of the most diverse description ; some so plain as to clear up a whole situa- tion ; some so obscure as to hold in reserve a lesson, of which time would develop the meaning; some with intimations so vast, so stupendous, that the heaven and the earth seemed passing away. He spoke, sometimes, in startling enigmas which roused thought, conjecture, specula- tion, inquiry; sometimes in language as 63 The Great Meaning of Metdnoia. startling for its hyperbole, in order to vivify to the utmost an essential truth ; sometimes, again, in precepts so plain that the very chil- dren could understand them. Sometimes He spoke in statements which, like those to the woman of Samaria, widened as into infinitude the local horizon about Mount Gerizim or Jerusalem; which, like those in the Sermon on the Mount, revealed the divine profundities under the law and under all human life. He employed reasoning and argument. He appealed to the imagination ; He struck indelible pictures upon the memory. He was ever speaking of the "Truth." Even at the last He declared to Pilate that " to this end was He born, and for this cause came He into the world, that He should bear witness unto the Truth." His whole endeavor seemed to be to de- velop the capacity for Belief; and when it was developed it took the mental-ethical- spiritual name of " Faith " another Greek word elevated into a transcendental mean- ing, and expressing the idea of Metanoia in its highest, most concentrated, most effectual form. 6 4 Metanoia the Method of Christ's Teaching. He used every credential which He brought with Him to fasten His personality upon the age, and to make Himself a vivid and memorable, as well as a lovable, pres- ence forever. Every sign and wonder was worked as much to prove His origin and authority as to express His loving-kindness and tender mercy. He was the Sower who went out to sow. He left in that soil principles working, ideas germinating, thoughts springing, as well as feelings moved and affections stirred, the is- sues of which that soil very imperfectly com- prehended until the ripening moment had come. He threw a mystical shadow over life which was to deepen into an eclipse of all that was earthly. He set forward the boundaries of this world into the other world, and brought into this life the spirit of the heavenly life, the spirit of eternity amid things temporal. He revealed the existence of the absolute Right, the near presence of the love and of the will of God. With His disciples it was a constant, a growing Metanoia. At first they were full 65 The Great Meaning of Metdnoia. of joy, of anticipation, of triumph. They were not to fast : the Bridegroom was with them. The sombre word " repentance " were sadly inadequate to express all that He had created. Doubtless, here and there, some, like Peter, astonished by this exhibition of power, fell down at His knees, saying, " De- part from me; for I am a sinful man, O Lord;" or some, like Zaccheus, also power- fully impressed, offered the fullest reparation for an evil life ; or some, like the woman that was a sinner, loved much because they had been forgiven much. Such results were the inevitable, a"s they were the designed, conse- quence of His personal influence, and, sooner or later, they were to come upon all. But the influence began in the intellect awakened ; the intellect overwhelmed with a new percep- tion, which grew into a new conviction, into a belief in His authority, and a belief in what He revealed. And, as if to indicate to His disciples that the Metanoia was even then by no means complete, He told them at the close that " He had yet many things to say unto them, but that they could not bear them now. Howbeit when He, the Spirit of Truth, 66 Metanoia the Method of Christ's Teaching. should come, He would guide them into all Truth." "He should bring all things to their remembrance, whatsoever He Himself had said unto them." And, indeed, the Metanoia had not fully come. So little had they comprehended, so much in them still lay latent, that His death was a catastrophe which ended all their hope. Their Metanoia entered upon a new stage when He rose from the dead. Their "sorrow was turned into joy," as He had predicted. But even then the consummate hour had not come, .and even then they could not have fully taken in His last in- junction " that Metanoia unto sending away of sins should be proclaimed in His name," that they should "go and make learners of all the nations, Baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit." The Metanoia was not complete until the hour when the prophecy of John the Baptist was literally fulfilled ; until the Christ Himself was, so to speak, complete; until He came again, "Baptizing them in the Holy Spirit 67 The Great Meaning of Metdnoia. and fire ; " until, as the great Harvester, He thrust His winnowing-fork into the har- vest He had planted, and cast it against the wind of that Spirit, thoroughly to purge His floor. Then, in the outburst of that mighty wind, came the Metanoia complete complete so far as it was an instant realization upon the disciples, upon the age. The whole original impression of Him revived, and a deeper than that impression was inspired. The world went into shadow. The Kingdom of Heaven was on earth. They had " the Mind of Christ." But what was its first manifestation? A public phenomenon on the day of Pentecost. There was a vocal outburst of divine ecstasy. Whether they spoke in languages or in mys- tical utterances, it was the release of their pent-up souls when the full realization came upon them. The multitude cried in wonder, as they saw and heard, " What meaneth this ? " or in mockery, "These men are full of new wine!" Their amazement and skepticism were equally met by an illuminating speech from Peter : a statement of facts, an argument 68 Metanoia the Method of Christ's Teaching. from prophecy, irresistibly concentrated upon the event which had shaken Jerusalem fifty days before ; a speech which leaped from the supreme Metanoia of the moment and carried all its impalpable power into the minds before him. The same light then broke upon them. " Men! brethren! " they exclaimed, "what shall we do? " the very words of the multi- tudes to John the Baptist when all this was foreshadowed; and then they heard again the burden of the Baptist and of the Christ : " Mfiravor/aare ! Take a New Mind, and be Baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ." The same thing occurred when, shortly afterwards, a miracle was performed. There was another convincing statement, with the same exhortation. Observe the antithesis : "I wot that through ignorance [ayvoiav] ye did it. ... MeravoriaaTe ! Take a New Mind therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, so that [orrw^] times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord." How little the repent of our version takes in the compass of the counsel! They had repented already, in the usual sense ; 69 The Great Meaning of Metdnoia. they were deeply penitent, they were "pricked to the heart." But Peter made them under- stand that compunction or any other like feeling was not all. Their Minds must seize the new situation, so that God might send Him who was before proclaimed to them ) Jesus Christ. They were to turn from igno- rance to knowledge. 70 VI. THE METANOIA OF ST. PAUL FAITH AND RENEWAL. AND now one other stage, which will carry us even deeper into the Scriptural aspect of this subject. If ever there was an instance of Metanoia under all the conditions which could exhibit the fullest import of the word it was that of what is inadequately called the" conversion " of St. Paul. It would almost seem as if the Change of Mind in a man of such personal greatness, moral strength, and conspicuous record had been brought about in the sudden, public way it was in order to put into a concentrated form, and reveal on the grandest scale, a pro- cess and a fact which in ordinary cases could not be so visibly represented. We have here The Great Meaning of Metdnoia. in colossal proportions, and, potentially, in a moment of time, the Metanoia of which all Christian experience is made. That such a thing could and did take place in the case of a man of this intelligence has been cited as one of the strongest evidences of the Christian religion. What he was before the Change we know : First of all, one of the most richly endowed intellects and one of the most powerful na- tures ever known among men. Following upon that, intensified by his proud Judaism, by his narrow Pharisaism, by his profound knowledge of Jewish law and traditions, by his devotion to the religion of his fathers, he turned out a zealot in the cause of Judaism, so dark, bigoted, and bloody as to make him a leader in the persecution of the new faith. He had proved impenetrable to the story and teaching of Jesus, to the accounts of His miracles, even to the signs and wonders wrought in His name by the apostles. But in the very hour when his Mind was most turbulent, vengeful, and determined, Jesus meets him in the way. As soon as the conviction of his error had broken upon his Mind, as visibly as the great light which had 72 The Metanoia of St. Paul. blinded his eyes, his first inquiry was, like all previous disciples, "What must I do? " " I have appeared unto thee for this pur- pose," answered Jesus, "to make thee a minister and a witness both of these things which thou hast seen, and of those things in the which I will appear unto thee; delivering thee from the people, and from the Gentiles, unto whom now I send thee, to open their eyes, and to turn them from darkness to light." " Whereupon," St. Paul says, " I was not disobedient unto the heavenly vision ; but showed unto them that they should Take upon them a New Mind [fie-arofiv] and turn to God, and do works worthy of the Meta- noia [a|m TTjif usTavoiag]." When the scales had fallen from his eyes his Mind beheld no other vision than of Christ. He that had then met him was thenceforth ever before him. The narrow, prejudiced, sectarian Pharisee was "changed" into an apostle of Christianity so magnifi- cent, so enlightened, so large and liberal in his conception of it, that none of his new brethren could keep pace with him, as even all present ecclesiasticism is in danger of falling behind him. 73 The Great Meaning of Mctdnoia. All the marks of the Metanoia are here : It was the Mind changed through circum- stance ; for when he beheld the supernatural presence of the Lord, as actually risen from the dead, the whole vision of his error burst upon him. It was the Mind changed in understand- ing ; for he spent three years of solitude in Arabia, receiving the fullest indoctrination from Christ. It was the Mind changed by evolution ; for, with the root of the matter in him, he now grasped entirely the transcendent change of situation, and came forth able, above all others, to reconcile the old economy with the new, to proclaim the advanced principles of the Gospel with a profundity of spiritual dis- cernment which no one should ever exceed, and to be the most powerful advocate Chris- tianity should ever know. It was the Mind changed in disposition ; for, from the fierce, proud, intolerant, self-suf- ficient son of the law, he became the patient, humble, compassionate, affectionate servant of Christ, " all things to all men." It was the Mind changed by development ; for the same capacity for faith, for zeal, for 74 Metanoia of St. Paul. force and energy, for religious devotion, was now carried over and enlarged in the interest of a cause as new and as vast as the whole just revealed purpose of God in man. It was the Mind changed by revolution ; for it was a revolt from Judaism in its nar- row rabbinical form, a total break with the artificial, superstitious, selfish system under which he had been born and bred, and a leap into the large spiritual consciousness of Christ Himself. It was the Mind changed before repen- tance set in, which repentance accompanied, which repentance intensified, which repentance helped to fill with a due apprehension of the cross, but of the extent of whose growth in its change, of the extent of whose apprehen- sion of his Lord, the word "repentance" in its fullest theological acceptation could never follow, compass, or describe. Nothing less than the word " Metanoia " or some Eng- lish expression that shall be the full equiva- lent of the word can compass or describe it. For what was its most conspicuous, foremost feature ? A profoundly illumi- nated intelligence followed by a nature as profoundly penetrated. The " spiritual man " 75 The Great Meaning of Metdnoia. was there ; the " natural man " was there no longer. In the light of this word even the most unspiritual mind cannot fail in some degree of sympathy with St. Paul's enthusiasm in his work, or to understand the ecstasy with which he regarded the person of his Lord, or to know what he meant when he said that his "conversation," his daily life, was lived in heaven. The spiritual, so far as this, takes the look of the natural. When we open his epistles and read them from this point of view, with this word as their key, they all no matter what their occasion or what themes they passingly treat take the character of the summons to the Metanoia. Back to this, in some form, they always come. He rings, as we said, endless changes upon the word. The thought of it appears in in- numerable forms of expression. It would be one prolonged and many-sided illustration of the idea if we were to quote from him as pro- fusely as we would like. But our space will permit only a selection of a few passages where the most direct reference is made, and where the " noetic faculty " is also implied. He said to the Romans : " Be not con- 76 The Metanoia of St. Paul. formed to this world : but be ye Transformed by the Renewing of the Mind [juera//op0oi)<70e 7^7, avaKaivutoat rov voog, Rom. xii. 2]." He said to the Corinthians : " We have the Mind [i-ouv] of Christ (i Cor. ii. 16). . . . We all ... are Transformed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord (2 Cor. iii. 18). . . . If any man be in Christ, he is a New Creature : old things are passed away ; behold, all things are become New" (2 Cor. v. 17). He said to the Ephesians: "That . . . God. . . . may give unto you a spirit of Wis- dom [oo(piag] and Revelation in the Know- ledge [myv6osi] of Him [Christ] : the eyes of your heart being Enlightened ; that ye may know," etc. (Eph. i. 17, 18); "Henceforth walk not as the Gentiles also walk, in the van- ity of their Mind fvoo?], having the Under- standing [~y diavoia] darkened, being alien- ated from the life of God through the Igno- rance [ayvomv] that is in them. . . . But ye have not so Learned Christ ; if so be that ye have heard Him, and have been Taught in Him, even as Truth is in Jesus : that ye put off concerning the former manner of life, the old man ; . . . and be Renewed in the 77 The Great Meaning of Mctdnoia. spirit of your Mind [Voos] ; and that ye put on the New Man" (Eph. iv. 18-24). He said to the Colossians : " Seeing that ye have put off the old man with his deeds ; and have put on the New Man, which is Re- newed in Knowledge after the image of Him that created him" (Col. iii. 9, 10). He said to Timothy : "The servant of the Lord must ... be ... apt to Teach, pa- tient ; in meekness instructing those that op- pose themselves; if God peradventure will give them Metanoia unto Knowledge [e/f of the Truth " (2 Tim. ii. 24, 25). But we must now pass on to an occasion in which he used the word itself, and by force of circumstances less in a spiritual than in an intellectual and popular sense. When he confronted the Stoics and Epi- cureans in the Areopagus, roused to indig- nation by the evidences of image-worship around him, and to quick perception of the opportunity offered him by an altar to an Unknown God to him so near in associa- tion with the Unnamed God of his own peo- ple, but to them only, at the most, a philo- sophical dream when, in coming before such 78 The Metanoia of St. Paul. an audience, he had to burn his Hebrew ships, for he could beat no retreat upon the tradi- tions of his own religion, quote no Scriptures but those of their own poets, and reason with them only upon their own premises; when, if he spoke at all, he must speak to the in- tellect, and to an intellect which would care very little for an appeal to the heart, and not even understand an allusion to " sin " as a moral alienation; when all his tact and ingenuity were exerted to get uninterrupted to the " new thing " they desired to hear and he wished to announce ; when he had stated the nature of the one living and true God in a way to command their respect, and in a way to enlarge their conception of Him who should remain no longer " Unknown," if he could reveal Him to their understanding what did he say? " The times of Ignorance therefore God overlooked ; but now he com- mandeth men that they should all everywhere Change their Mind [Meravoetv] ; " namely, unto the Knowledge of One who was to "judge the world in righteousness." Without question St. Paul spoke as near as he could to the sense of classic Greek under such Attic circumstances, and we are not jus- 79 The Great Meaning of Metdnoia. tified in here interpreting the word in any other way. He could not have expected them to put the full construction upon it which lay in his own mind, and with which it must have vaguely rung in their ears as it came forth with the tone of his own intense consciousness. All that they could have understood was an appeal to " change their views"; to come to a conception of the Divine Nature more worthy of those who were " the offspring of God " ; to accept this great " knowledge " which he now communicated in place of the " ignorance " which their altar confessed. The very most that their usage could admit into the word he had employed was an ethical import, sometimes, though rarely, attached to it ; but it must have been in this instance very dimly discerned, if at all. If there was anything like "regret" to be felt, it was, most probably, only displeasure with themselves that they should have been so mistaken. Certainly nothing so strong as penitence could have been dreamed of by St. Paul. He was intent upon something be- yond, to which the intellectual impression or emotion he had created would be a stepping- stone, namely, "the Man whom God had 80 The Metanoia of St. Paul. ordained " the Christ. For this, and up to this, he would " Change their Mind." * How utterly inconceivable, at any rate, is a call to repentance, as it is translated in our version, both the Old and the New, in the connection of such an attempt to com- mend the revelation he proclaimed to the con- fidence and respect of these speculative men! We must leave to the reader the further examination of passages in the New Testa- ment where " Metanoia " in some form ap- pears, and is still rendered "repentance" in the New Version. Here they all are in a foot-note, and he can judge for himself whether, in every case (and in some cases most expressly), a more distinct reference to the Changed Mind, in the profound sense we have given the phrase, would not be an im- provement upon the more emotional and less fruitful idea suggested by the word "repen- tance" It will be found used, in many of these instances, not in a general, but in a 1 There is an appositeness between the inscription ArNQ2Ti2 6ES2 in the beginning of the speech, and the expressions ayvoia<; and fieravoelv at the end, which is very significant. 81 The Great Meaning of Metdnoia. special application, when its great meaning is curdled, as it were, into the expression of a single feeling repellent of sin under the revelation of righteousness; when thought, perception, knowledge, conscience, penitence, and the will are combined into such a strong revolt of the entire man from an evil course as to change the character of his life. A rendering which keeps any of these powerful and necessary elements out of sight is more than an unfortunate one. 1 l According to the text of Westcott and Hort. This text has been followed elsewhere in this edition of the essay when there has been a departure from the Authorized Version. Meravoiw: Matt. iii. 2, iv. 17, xi. 20, 21, xii. 41; Mark i. 15, vi. 12; Luke x. 13, xi. 32, xiii. 3, 5, xv. 7, 10, xvi. 30, xvii. 3, 4; Acts ii. 38, iii. 19, viii. 22, xvii. 30, xxvi. 20; 2 Cor. xii. 21 ; Rev. ii. 5 (twice), 16, 21 (twice), 22, iii. 3, 19, ix. 20, 21, xvi. 9, II. Meravoia : Matt. iii. 8, 1 1 ; Mark i. 4 ; Luke iii. 3, 8, v. 32, xv. 7> xxiv. 47; Acts v. 31, xi. 18, xiii. 24, xix. 4, xx. 21, xxvi. 20; Rom. ii. 4; 2 Cor. vii. 9, 10 ; 2 Tim. ii. 25 ; Heb. vi. I, 6, xii. 17; 2 Pet. iii. 9. 82 VII. METANOIA THE WORD OF CHRIST TO THE PRESENT AGE. IN all that we have now said we have shown ourselves anxious that, in the trans- lated New Testament, the Summons in the original proclamation of the Gospel should be made to appear as profound and significant as it really was, and thus be made to unite itself with the intellectual and spiritual life of the present century as keenly as it did with the first. We would have it a fresh, liv- ing, all-comprehensive, all-powerful Sum- mons now. We desire this, first, in order that the unity of the New Testament may be seen to lie in it from the beginning as in a germ, and to branch and flower from it in every part, as from a stem. We desire this, next, for the more impor- 83 The Great Meaning of Metdnoia. tant and vital reason that the ethical and practical character of the religion of Christ may be revealed in its real supremacy over the emotional theory which has so long dis- proportionately prevailed. But, above all, we desire it above all, from its including these and comprehending more because it implies the use of the entire nature of man, intellectual, moral, aff ectional, spiritual, his human part and his divine part, in the act of apprehending and appropriat- ing the truth of God. The whole Nous is appealed to, the whole Mind is engaged in seeing Him who is invisible, and in doing His will. For it is now the unhappy fact that the Christian religion is so specifically applied to one portion of this Mind and to one state of it that if the requisition were strictly insisted upon as a standard and test, many persons of the purest character and highest princi- ple would be denied the name of Christian, though palpably actuated by the faith and spirit of Christ. The penitential condition is not all, however much it may be. The rec- ognition of Christ may spring from a wider surface and even a deeper principle than The Word of Christ to the Present Age. that one agonized nerve in the retina of the soul. " METANOEITE! " It is a generous word, looking outwardly from the life that now is to that which is to come. Let us have its equivalent in gospel and epistle wherever it appears. Let it speak to this age, at least, in full, not muffled, articulation to this age with its wide speculation upon the mystery of being, with its agnostic revolt from the re- ligion that is preached, with its critical study of the historic Christ, and yet latent disposi- tion to believe in Him. " Metanoeite ! " It is time that the Herald uttered it again as He uttered it once. It bears to us the all-necessary message of con- tradiction and the all-necessary announce- ment of a revolution. It brings with it the true and everlasting tidings always news to blind and mortal men that the apparent conditions of this life are the illusion of flesh and sense, and that the real conditions of life are the very reverse of what we are prone to think and believe. The Eternal and the Spiritual are all ; the temporal and the mate- rial are but the shadows of that substance. 85 The Great Meaning of Metdnota. It were a bold word from any but a divine mouth, we should say, and yet the human tongue has been uttering it, virtually, all along in another sphere. What has been the procla- mation of Science in her own material world but " Metanoelte! Change your Mind from the near testimony of Sense to the distant wit- ness of Discovery " : Sense says, " The sun rises in the east and revolves about the earth ; the earth is the cen- tre of the celestial sphere." But Science Knowledge proclaims a contradiction, and, with it, a revolution : " It is the earth that goes round the sun ; the sun is but one of that starry host ; the blue firmament melts into illimitable space; it is an illuminated universe that lies out there, in which this ap- parently ponderous globe floats like an atom in a sunbeam." So Science, an echo of the divine voice, has enlarged, reversed, the whole conscious- ness of man. Her Metanoia has been pro- claimed not only here, but everywhere in her material field. Whithersoever she has gone, nature has inverted its apparent order, its phenomena have widened out into princi- ples that were once unknown, and the first 86 The Word of Christ to the Present Age. human impression of them has had to be revoked. It is an image, a parallel, of the Christian faith. The whole universe of the Spiritual is likewise being revealed to the knowledge of mankind. Time is declared to be of Eternal moment, and death the fullness of Life. We may discern the character of that other sphere by its inverse relation, point for point, to this. Given, then, we say, the intellectual realiza- tion of this to men, their moral consciousness will rise to it, their spiritual nature will en- large with it, their hearts and their lives will deepen to the measure of it. They will re- volt more and more from sin and from the world. This is conversion indeed ; this is the Birth from Above. We can now imagine how, under such a conception, the pulpit would awake to the grandeur of its work, how the Church would awake to the grandeur of her cause. The themes of the one, the methods of the other, would move with splendor and with power to one definite and mighty end : the Summon- 87 The Great Meaning of Metdnoia, ing of mankind to the Metanoia, this New Mind, and the announcement of everything on the divine side of life which would in- spire and create it. For we are just on the verge of a great epoch. All this intellectual activity in the material world is surely working towards a moment of reaction when the same intensity of movement will turn the other way, and the universal demand will be for a knowledge of the Spiritual. The voice of material Sci- ence, crying in the wilderness, will be found to have been preparing the way for this. It will turn out to have been uttering a word which has roused the " expectation " of this age. Out of all this agnostic dust and ashes shall mount again the cry, " Metanoelte! for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand." Let us see to it that neither the Bible, the Church, nor the pulpit gives, in that great re- vealing day, an uncertain sound. But our space is exhausted ; yet one word more to carry our theme to its most practical and highest point. We have said all when we say that " Meta- noia " and " Revelation " are correlative 88 The Word of Christ to the Present Age. terms, one always implying the other. As large, therefore, as we understand the Reve- lation to be, we must understand the Meta- noia to be. They are reciprocal, as they develop, in character and degree. In their meeting and blending within us, then, we become partakers of the Divine Nature and are saved. What begins with being a " Change of Mind toward God " deepens and broadens, as our nature turns all its disk that way, into that supreme reflec- tion of God in the soul, "faith in our Lord Jesus Christ." Faith is the Metanoia touched to the quick. Faith is the Metanoia when it has reached the vital fibers of our being ; " the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen " ; " God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, shining into our hearts, to give the light of the Knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ." So it is the Metanoia which is bearing us heavenwards in Him. " We are Transformed into the same image from glory to glory." " We were sometime darkness, but now are we light in the Lord." " We press toward the mark for the prize of the Upward Calling of 89 The Great Meaning of Metdnoia. God in Christ Jesus." More and more is the earthly nature dissolving away and re- leasing the heavenly one ; deeper and deeper is the transfiguration working within ; and it will not cease even when we have passed the gates of death, and " Heaven opens on our eyes ; our ears With sounds seraphic ring!" What will be the inburst of another world upon the soul but the Change of Changes, the supreme Metanoia of the Eternal Life! 90 THE VIEW OF MATTHEW ARNOLD. WE are glad to add the testimony of still another in- dependent scholar to the primary potency of the great Greek expression which opens the New Testament. This time the claim for it is entirely ethical ; the noetic element is not foremost, but follows an inward awakening of the moral consciousness, although that is first brought about by perception and thought. This striking conception of the word comes from Matthew Arnold, an equal master in Greek with De Quincey, gifted with the same philosophic and theo- logical insight, and a great Biblical student besides. In the case of De Quincey the view was a passing burst of inspiration over the word, and he makes no more of it. In the case of Arnold it comes in though also quite episodically as a part of a pro- found study into the genius of Christianity as it arose in Israel under the teaching of Christ. But he has an especial point to make a protest against the sub- sequent metaphysical and dogmatic perversion of the original Semitic simplicity of Christian truth, the product of what he calls the "Aryan genius" and it therefore does not fall in with his plan to make as much as he might have done either of the intellectual or the spiritual evolution of the principle so fully embodied, as we believe, in the expression. The The Great Meaning of Metdnoia. working of both is strongly suggested, but, it seems to us, the vital and causative connection between what he calls the "method" of Jesus i.e., Metanoia and what he calls His "secret" the utter renun- ciation of the lower self which culminated in " the word of the cross " is not as vividly drawn out as it might have been. But the point of interest now is his passing allu- sion to our word. In putting it here in connection with that of De Quincey we show not only the mag- nificent sweep of its meaning, from the ethical to the intellectual and back, but how completely the idea of repentance is thrown out of all association with it by two great scholars and thinkers whose imaginations had not been discolored by any theological preposses- sion and tradition, and who, as born and bred Eng- lish churchmen, knew exactly what "repentance" was understood theologically to mean. The follow- ing passages are from " Literature and Dogma" : " To have the thoughts in order as to certain mat- ters was conduct. This was the ' method ' of Jesus : setting up a great unceasing inward movement of at- tention and verification in matters which are three fourths of human life (righteousness'), where to see true and to verify is not difficult. , . . Watch care- fully what passes within you, that you may obey the voice of conscience. . . . This, we say, is the 'method' of Jesus. To it belongs His use of that important word which in the Greek is Metanoia. We translate it ' repentance,' a mourning and lamenting over our sins ; and we translate it wrong. Of ' Metanoia,' as Jesus used the word, the lamenting one's sins was a 92 TJie View of Matthew Arnold. small part; the main part was something far more active and fruitful, the setting Tip an immense new inward movement for obtaining the rule of life. And ' Metanoia, ' accordingly, is a change of the inner man. " Mention and recommendation of this inwardness there often was, we know, in prophet or psalmist ; but to make mention of it was one thing, to erect it into a positive method was another. Christianity has made it so familiar that to give any freshness to one's words about it is now not easy ; but to its first re- cipients it was abundantly fresh and novel. It was the introduction, in morals and religion, of the famous Know thyself of the Greeks ; and this among a people deeply serious, but also wedded to moral and religious routine, and singularly devoid of flexibility and play of mind. For them it was a revolution. . . . This is the true line of religion ; it was the line of Jesus. To work the renovation needed He concentrated His efforts upon a method of inwardness, of taking coun- sel of conscience." (Page 174.) " Christ's new and different way of putting things was the secret of His succeeding where the prophets could not. . . . He put things in stick a way that His hearers were led to take each rule or fact of con- duct by its inward side, its effect upon the heart and character; then the reason of the thing, the meaning of what had been mere matter of blind rule, flashed upon them. . . . The hardest rule of conduct came to appear to them infinitely reasonable and natural, and therefore infinitely prepossessing." (Page 94.) ' ' While the Old Testament says, ' Attend to con- duct,' the New Testament says, ' Attend to the feel- 93 The Great Meaning of Metdnoia. ings and dispositions whence conduct proceeds ! ' And as attending to conduct had very much degenerated into deadness and formality, attending to the springs of conduct was a revelation, a revival of intuitive and fresh perceptions, a touching of morals with emotion. . . . Man came under a new dispensation, and made with God a second covenant." (Page 96.) " At the Christian era . . . the time had come /or inwardness and self-construction a time to last till the self-construction is fully achieved." (Page 101.) It will be noticed that while De Quincey, taking the summons " Metanoeite " as a word to the whole world in all ages, gives rein to the whole intellectual consciousness, Arnold keeps it within its original bounds as addressed peculiarly to Israel, and ad- dressed not so much at first to the intellect of Israel as through a wondrous tact in teaching to the latent spiritual consciousness, the intellect then awakening to the rationale of the law. But this double witness of opposite minds from opposite directions to the same philological profundity in the word is very impressive. THE ECLIPSE OF MET^NOIA BY PCENITENTIA. I. AN IMPOSSIBLE EXPEDIENT TO END IT: "RE- PENTANCE " TO BE MADE TO MEAN METANOIA. THE suggestion of the theme of this Addi- tional Essay came about in the following way : During a recent residence in London we saw a notice in an American Church paper of a kind reference to the essay on Metanoia, by Dr. Brooke Foss Westcott, which seemed to indicate an agreement with the view we had taken. As Dr. Westcott (now the Bishop of Durham, but at the time Canon of West- minster, and Regius Professor of Divinity, Cambridge) had been one of the most distin- guished and influential of the scholars en- 95 The Eclipse of Metdnoia by Pxnitentia. gaged upon the revision of the New Testa- ment, and had been especially prominent in furnishing the Greek text which formed the groundwork of the New Version, we had rea- son to suppose that the reference might be accompanied with some allusion to the action of the revisers on the rendering of Merdvoia. But even aside from that, we felt that any expression of assent, however qualified, in coming from such an authority, would carry with it a weight and a consequence that would command the highest respect. A note of inquiry elicited this courteous reply : " 6 SCROPE TERRACE, " CAMBRIDGE, November 19, 1887. " There was a reference to your essay in a paper on the Revised Version, in the ' Expos- itor.' I have not a copy of the magazine at hand, but I think it was in the paper which appeared in August. " I intended to say that you had brought out with singular power and truth the mean- ing of Meravoia, while I could not see that the translation could be modified. " The preacher and the scholar must trans- figure repentance, even z& fides and gratia have 96 An Impossible Expedient to End It. been transfigured. In this work your essay will, I trust, be of eminent service." The above extract gives all of the reply that refers to the essay, and is introduced here because it adds materially to the force of one of the remarks in the passage from the " Expositor," which will be found below. This admirable statement, covering so briefly and yet so comprehensively the whole question, appears in one of a series of papers entitled " ' Some Lessons of the Revised Ver- sion of the New Testament,' by Rev. Pro- fessor B. F. Westcott, D.D., D.C.L., Canon of Westminster" (August, 1887, p. 86). As the passage is in the form of a foot-note, and bears no connection with anything in the text, it was apparently written in the proof after our essay had been read. The matter could hardly have suggested itself otherwise, as there had been no change in the transla- tion of Merdvota, and therefore no occasion for discussion of the subject. The statement has an especial interest, therefore, not only as having been drawn out by the essay, but 97 The Eclipse of Metdnoia by P&nitentia. also as conveying the mind of the revisers on the question of the rendering "repentance" If it does not explain their silence in passing over it, it suggests their difficulty in dealing with it. The passage is as follows : " One most important group of words, ren- dered in the Authorized Version 'repent] 'repentance 1 (^eravoelv, fierdvoia, fJErape- XeoOcu), offered great difficulties in transla- tion. "The first two Greek words (^eravoelv, [isrdvoia) describe characteristically, in the language of the New Testament, a general change of mind, which becomes in its fullest development an intellectual and moral regen- eration ; the latter (fj,ETaneheo6ai) expresses a special relation to the past, a feeling of regret for a particular action, which may be deep- ened into remorse. " It was of paramount importance to keep one rendering for the former words, which are key-words of the gospel, and it was im- possible to displace 'repent] 'repentance] which, though originally inadequate, are capable of receiving the full meaning of the original. 98 An Impossible Expedient to End It. " No one satisfactory term could be found for fjLETaniteaOai. In the passage where it oc- curs in the same context with uerdvoia it has been adequately rendered by 'regret ' (2 Cor. vii. 8 ff.) ; and elsewhere the limited appli- cation of the feeling has been indicated by the reflexive rendering 'repent one's self 1 never ' repent " absolutely (Matt. xxi. 29, 32, xxvii. 3 ; Heb. vii. 21); yet ' without repen- tance' (djtiTC|ue/l7/TOf) (Rom. xi. 29) is un- changed. " Dr. T. Walden has expounded the apos- tolic force of perdvoia with great power and truth in an essay on ' The Great Meaning of the Word " Metanoia," Lost in the Old Ver- sion, Unrecovered in the New ' (New York, 1882); but he has overlooked the fact that the idea of repentance, like that of fierdvoia itself, can be transfigured by Christian use, and that the force of words is not limited by their etymology." 99 II. Merdvoia TRANSFIGURED GREEK. WE are scarcely prepared to admit that we overlooked either of these points. As to the first " That the idea of repen- tance, like that of Meravom itself, can be trans- figured by Christian use." The " idea of repentance" it seems to us, is so deeply lined in the word " repentance " that the physiognomy of the term is fixed be- yond any power of essential alteration. Its intense look of sorrow may be and has been softened by Christian use into the expression of a pensive sense of unworthiness and guilt, and of a consequent mental determination which changes the character, the conduct, and the life ; but the " fashion of its counte- nance " cannot be "altered "further than this, nor can its " raiment become white and daz- Metdnoia Transfigured Greek. zling," even as Merdvoia was " transfigured " when it stood on the " high mountain apart " of the New Testament, and its "face did shine as the sun," and its " garments became white as the light." The analogy suggested by the event which is so sacredly connected with the thought of " transfiguration " is here so true to the fact that we cannot but employ the force of the allusion. Now every Christian idea was " described so characteristically in the language of the New Testament" that any word taken from common use to represent it was heightened even to heaven in its meaning. And it was especially in the nature of a Greek word to bear such a transcendental- ization. Indeed, we may be sure that the Greek was made the vehicle of the Gospel not only because it was historically so oppor- tune, but because it was philologically so available ; and no other of the three repre- sentative tongues that were heard around the cross could have uttered the message of the cross so well. The Jew arraigned the Christ and the The Eclipse of Metdnoia by Po&nitentia. Roman erected the cross; both were char- acteristically foremost on that ground; but to neither of them was intrusted " the word of the cross," which was to go into all lands and down to all ages. The Jew was as dumb as Zacharias was when he tried to give the benediction. He had lost his prophetic faith, as he had lost his Old Testament tongue. The Roman could only show " all the king- doms of the world, and the glory of them." His language was their law, the regulating outcome of the same genius that had con- quered them. It reflected the practical, material precision of his mind, but it was not, it never could be, except by infusion from without, elastic to the highest expression of spiritual ideas. It was not, it never could be, even under inspiration from above, equal to the adequate divine utterance of the truth whose " Kingdom was not of this world." Most remarkable, most significant was it, then, that the commission to reveal that truth was laid upon the idealizing tongue of the Greek; while the commission to order the Kingdom, to give direction to its mechanism, and to give names to its appointments, was 102 Metdnoia Transfigured Greek. assumed by the methodizing tongue of the Roman. Take now the words before us, Meravom and Repentance, which Bishop Westcott asso- ciates under what we may understand as the metaphor of transfiguration. They are thor- oughly representative. The one is the in- augurating word of the Greek New Testa- ment, the other is the inaugurating word of its Latin translation; and in its Latin form (Pcenitentia] it is, according to the Latin mind, a precise equivalent of the Greek. Merdvoia is a word of classic origin and usage, but of extraordinary scriptural devel- opment. A process of transfiguration, after the sacred analogy we are thinking of, did actually take place in it. The change in our Lord, as described by the evangelists, was an outburst of inward radiance. Light did not fall upon Him. // came from within Him. It was His own the latent effulgence in His human nature of His divine nature, prophetic of the glory that was about to be revealed in Him. In like manner the first word used of Him, the first word used by Him, according to 103 The Eclipse of Metdnoia by Pcenitentia, these evangelists, the word which opened His Kingdom when it was at hand, Meravom, rose, through a like inward capacity for ut- terance, into a word of light-giving power. It was " transfigured " indeed. It turned out to be an anticipation, in a single compressed expression, of the whole rationale of Chris- tianity as that new faith was afterwards un- folded in the New Testament. It held the whole idea and method of the coming reve- lation in germ. It contained the principle which made the religion of Christ absolutely original the principle of the radical renewal of the nature of man under the working of a Knowledge revealed to him from above, under the operation of a Spirit which came to him from above ; through which Knowledge and through which Spirit his nature was set free to do spontaneously, and not by legal regula- tion, all that it ought to do : " his flesh being subdued to the spirit," "sin could have no dominion over him: for he was not under law, but under grace." "There was there- fore now no condemnation to them that were in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of Life in Christ Jesus made men free from the law of sin and death." 104 Metdnoia Transfigured Greek. Hence Merdvoia was the "key-word of the Gospel," as Bishop Westcott finely says. It opened to and potentially entered into every- thing. No door called by any other name, such as " faith," no chamber known by any other name, such as " renewal," was beyond the application of this master key. Turn now to the expression which has undertaken to supply its place both in the proclamation and in the operation of the Kingdom of God. "Repentance " is a word of classical Latin origin and of Latin theological and ecclesi- astical descent. The core of it is not mind, but pain. The note of it is not of emancipa- tion, but of condemnation. The scope of it is not spiritual, but juridical. The working of it is not joyful, but sorrowful. Its face is turned in horror towards sin, not in rap- ture towards righteousness. It is a way to righteousness, but by the way of retreat. It flees the evil in fear of "penalty" of the puni- tive action of God or of its own conscience. In its effective operation it can take hold of the Mind, change the mental attitude, deter- mine the mental purpose, but it can never 105 The Eclipse of Metdnoia by Pcenitentia. alone renew the whole spiritual constitution of the Mind. It may be the beginning of amendment of life, but is not potential to the consummation of life. It is retrospec- tive, and it leads to introspection, often to in- tense spiritual self-consciousness, often to the most humble gratitude to God for salvation through Christ. In the awakening of Mera- voia it is always at hand, a powerful phase of it, an inevitable incident of it, a helpful, if not encouraging, attendant upon it. The Latin instinct amounted to insight when it made so much of pcenitentia as an element of Merdvoia, but the instinct over- shot the insight when in aiming at the one it lost sight of the other. All Christians have adopted the excellent word, because, so far as it goes, it is a true word ; and the above, we believe, is an accurate account of its theo- logical acceptation among us. But can it be " transfigured," even till it is as radiant as the word which illumined the face of Christ in the beginning, and illumined all His teaching and the teaching of His apos- tles to the end? Has it any interior capacity to develop such a new transformation? On the contrary, will it not prove utterly intrac- 106 Metdnoia Transfigured Greek. table under such a strain against its grain? We can imagine it disguised, but never trans- figured. We can imagine it glowing as with phosphorus, but never with genuine light. We can imagine it raised to such a power by a sort of conjuration, but what a mere apparition it would be ! Who of us can con- ceive of a word so intrinsically dark ever pass- ing itself off as conveying a conception so bright and so noble as this: "a general Change of Mind, which becomes in its fullest development an intellectual and moral Regen- eration "? 107 III. "REPENTANCE" PERSISTENT LATIN. LET us now turn to the other point which we are also hardly ready to admit that we overlooked " that the force of words is not limited by their etymology." This is said, of course, in the interest of the idea that "repentance" can be made to express the meaning of Meravom by ignoring the origin and usage of the Latin-English word. If now, we follow out the line of this sug- gestion, we shall be led into a more positive exposure of its claims. Our language is full of words which once possessed a signification that is now extinct, and which have since taken up an unlimited range of application because of their inde- pendence of all etymology. Our dictionaries are overrun with such hermit-crabs, occupy- 108 "Repentance " Persistent Latin. ing and dragging about the shells of words whose primary meanings have long ago out- grown or abandoned them. But pcenitentia has never been one of this sort. It has never exhibited any such facility in, or even any tendency to, shedding its shell. On the con- trary, its whole history shows that it has been endowed with an extraordinary determina- tion to hold on to its original meaning, and as extraordinary a capacity to accommodate itself to all circumstances, without forgetting tJie idea out of which it was made and the end tinto which it was appointed. If there ever was a word which has been as phenomenal for persistency in preserving its type, in both outer form and inner life, as other words have been phenomenal for the curious re- sults of a willing variation from what they once were, it is this very word, which we know so well in its English expression as " repentance" It resembles, as we recall its long career, that famous species of the nautilus which, from the outset, seems to be endowed with an instinct of predestination. The creature simply enlarges itself under the necessity of development that is upon it, without abandon- 109 The Eclipse of Metdnoia by Pcenitentia. ing anything that ever essentially belonged to it. As it outgrows its quarters it builds on one chamber after another to accommodate the expanding eras of its life. As it increases ex- ternally it is always the same, coiling closely about its original axis. As it develops in- ternally it is again always the same, clinging as closely to the seat of its original vitality, even keeping open communication, through the whole series of its dividing partitions, by a living siphuncular cord, with the cell in which it began. Poenitentia, in like manner, has ever ex- hibited a similar potency in enlarging the scope of its own application in just such a succession of chambers, and in developing just such an unchangeable purpose to mean exactly, and no more, what it was primarily in- tended to mean. You may look into its black mouth, and there is the self-same primitive cephalopod, still sufficient unto itself because occupying the sufficient mouthpiece of an idea which comes home to all ages and to all conditions of mankind. It comes so universally home because its origin was so primitively homely. Its whole meaning arose in and was represented by no " Repentance " Persistent Latin. the Sanskrit monosyllable Pu, to cleanse from dirt. Pcenitentia has always retained and has always sustained this primary idea of purgation. Its career has been marked by progressive historic stages, in every one of which this idea has in some way prevailed. When it developed itself among the pri- meval Greeks, it was noiv^, a word for blood- money. A murderer, say, by a redeeming paymentj/tfrg'Vfd' himself of all further respon- sibility to the relatives of the man he had slain. Their vengeance was satisfied; they no longer pursued him. Hence the word came to signify "vengeance." When the idea developed itself among the Latins it was poena; and it rose with Roman civilization into an expression closely identi- fied with the criminal law. It became a desig- nation for all grades of punishment inflicted under the law, whereby those who had of- fended or injured the community made their peace with it, satisfied justice in a word, purged themselves by bearing the penalty which had been fixed upon as measuring the degree of their transgression. To use another word from the same root, they expiated their crime against the state. To use still another, in The Eclipse of Metdnoia by Pxnitentia. they were purified in the eye of the law by what they had suffered. The term pxna thus belonged to the court of law and to the language of the judgment- seat. Whence our modern duplication of it in the legal phrase " pain and penalty." But the expression pcenitentia, which was formed out of it, and which represented the pain of one who thus bore the penalty of his misdeeds, was never a legal term. The law in that day did not concern itself with what the condemned criminal felt. But the popu- lar mind did, and put itself in sentimental sympathy with him. Hence came the com- ing of pcenitentia, as a current word in Latin literature for the sorrow or regret which fol- lowed when one had made a mistake or committed an error of any kind. It meant exactly the after-care which was conveyed by Mera/zeAem (Metameleia) in the Greek. It was too variously used to retain any strong reminiscence of its origin. Indeed, its range of application came to be very much that of " repentance " in our common speech. It re- lated to affairs or to morals, as the case might be, and indicated a feeling which mightbe fleet- 112 "Repentance " Persistent Latin. ing and shallow or profound and effectual, ac- cording to the levity or gravity of the occasion. When, however, pcenitentia was taken up by Latin Christianity it deepened into an ex- pression of very serious import. It rapidly revived all the ideas and associations that lay in pcena itself. It put itself first on high moral ground exclusively. It put itself next on divine juridical ground exclusively. It seems to have met Meravom near the close of the second century, when Christian ideas were beginning to find utterance in the Latin tongue. Up to that moment the universal church, even in Rome itself, spoke but one language the language of the New Testa- ment. But now the " Old Latin " version arose in North Africa, and the Latin lawyer Tertullian began to write. The springs which hitherto had burst from the hills were now made to send their living waters through a Roman aqueduct. Practi- cal and available precision of idea set in. The Latin version began to mould the theol- ogy of the age. It is quite evident that Merdvoia was al- ready in a condition to meet the new move- "3 The Eclipse of Metdnoia by Pxnitentia. ment half-way. It had degenerated from its New Testament use. It had subsided from its apostolic height. We have neither time nor space for reasons and conjectures why, as they suggest themselves in contemplating a period of which we know very little, except that there was a general declension after the Apostolic Age. But it would seem as if M- rdvoia had already lost its etymology, and now drew its signification from the idea of fj-erd and dvota, a return from madness or folly. We know at least this much: that Lactantius, a century later, so understood and interpreted it, giving his impression of its import in the rendering resipiscentia, a word which Beza afterwards worked for what it was worth, in his avoidance of the Romish poeni- tentia of the Vulgate. But at the time we are speaking of, Merdvoia, now possibly no higher than Metame'leia, appears to have assimilated itself very kindly with, pcenitentia, which, accordingly, with Roman promptitude and energy, at once undertook to dominate and direct the thought of the Church. After this a sad fate awaited Meravom itself. Having thus sunk its apostolic iden- 114 ''Repentance " Persistent Latin. tity, its degeneration went on in the usage of Greek ecclesiastical speech, till finally it sank so low as to stand only for a minor penitential genuflection ; so many " metanoias " say, bowings of the head for such and such a peccadillo ! Strangely and curiously enough, too, the original New Testament idea of it was only finally saved by the symbol with which it had been scripturally coupled, /Mimosa Meravotac. 1 " Baptism," a word adopted let- ter for letter by the Latin from the Greek, but coupled in the Latin version with poeni- 1 It is very clear to us that the " Baptisma" of John, as twinned with his " Metanoia," was a sym- bol of revivification an intimation of it as it was afterwards apostolically understood. The idea of water as a symbol of cleansing was obvious, com- monplace, and universal. But this rite was, in the whole tremendous manner of it, an invocation of the power of water in a way that was as profound, pecu- liar, and original as Christianity itself. It pointed expressly to the work of the Spirit, which was not to purify but to re-create. And it pointed as expres- sively to the work of water as the renewer and re- storer of life. We can only hint at this its sugges- tive coincidence with the meaning of Metanoia. The view can be impressively substantiated, but not now, and here. "5 The Eclipse of Metdnoia by Pcenitentia. tentia, in the sense of "purification," had in itself strength enough to keep alive in theo- logical thought its primitive and only true association with " regeneration." 116 IV. THE ROMAN UTILIZATION OF " REPENTANCE." BUT to come back to our main point. Let us follow very briefly, yet, we hope, sufficiently, the adventures of our nautilus pcenitentia. Tertullian tells us in the opening of his " De Pcenitentia " that all former general lit- erary notions of it must be dismissed ; that as a Christian word it meant "a passion of the mind, or grief for the offense of our former acts." This exclusive exaltation of it arose from the consciousness of sin in the sight of God, and from its consequent emotion, which was more a terror of His judgments than a delight in His glad tidings. Under the fear of Him and the flight from evil the life was changed. The sinner, awakening to the mad- ness of his course, took shelter in the Chris- tian community as in a city of refuge, and there, in that centre of light, his soul became 117 The Eclipse of Metdnoia by Pcenitentia. irradiated with the joy of faith, the conscious- ness also of having been redeemed, and hence of absolute security in the household which gathered around the table of the Lord. But in the practical working of that com- munity of grateful love in the saving presence of Christ, the sinful propensities of human nature proved too irrepressible ; the theoreti- cal horror, also, of evil in that age of specu- lation over it, in addition to this practical experience with it, proved too intense ; and the juridical tradition of the Old Testament, besides, was felt to be too authoritative (the New Testament had scarcely been put to- gether yet), for the idea of pcsnitentia to re- main in its single and simple form. The Roman genius for law and practical organ- ization, therefore, soon laid hold of it, and began to develop all its resources from that time on. The word began by meeting admirably, be- cause after a legal manner, a difficulty which had developed itself in the Christian com- munity from the very beginning. We find it spoken of as so applied in the latter part of Tertullian's treatise. He speaks of those 118 The Roman Utilization of '" Repentance" who had turned out derelict to the faith and delinquent to its righteousness, and who had therefore brought reproach upon the com- munity. The Church had to vindicate its own purity before the world, and yet, unlike the State under similar circumstances, it had to sympathize in mercy with the sinner. So potnitentia now came before it not only, as at first, with the signification of tears unto turn- ing, but of tears unto returning ; not only "pri- mary repentance" but "secondary repentance" as Tertullian terms it. Under the strange and pathetic phenomenon of the excommu- nicated the penitents, as they came to be called praying for restoration, a condition of things daily increasing in intensity and be- coming a fixed feature in the Church, the word soon concentrated most of its force upon the latter meaning. It developed a growing legal aspect as it elaborated itself in dealing both justly and mercifully with the crowd of peni- tents which thronged about the church doors and even groveled at the feet of the presbyters, pleading for readmission. There they were, making their appeal in every possible way, trying to purge themselves by voluntary aus- terities, to expiate their offense by self-punish- 119 The Eclipse of Metdnoia by Potnitentia. ments, and to make satisfaction to the authori- ties by such outward demonstrations of sorrow as would prove their sincerity. And all the Church could do was to cry, as it now sup- posed John the Baptist to have cried, " ' Pceni- tentiam agite! " " Do penance! " and to set about reducing the business of restoration to a system, the contrivance of various tests and conditions under which it could, with safety to itself and a good conscience towards God, " remit " the sin and readmit the sinner. Then began a question and controversy, which lasted for many generations, over the extent of the Church's authority to legislate against sin, and to occupy the judgment-seat, and to administer the prerogative of God in " pardoning " or " absolving." It was a blind work that it had undertaken, for it could not see into the heart ; it could only judge by the outside ; and it could only exact coarse external evidences of reforma- tion. The whole realm of the inward mind and of the inner motives was out of its prov- ince ; and therefore just so much of the King- dom of God as was " within " and that came not " with observation " was beyond its juris- diction. The Roman Utilization of " Repentance" Nevertheless the Roman genius rose to the occasion, and did not hesitate to construct the scales of divine justice with greater and greater ingenuity of elaboration, and with fitter and fitter adaptation to its own ready handling. It were needless to follow our nautilus pcenitentia as it went on from epoch to epoch, camerating itself around one crisis after another, and evolving a whole system of expiatory penalties, until it culminated fi- nally in the " Sacrament of Penance," a grand purgative transaction under hierarchical ad- ministration, with a jurisdiction extending, on the one hand, into Purgatory for the dead, and, on the other, into the equally question- able realm of Casuistry for the living. However, it looked at last as if the Latin creature had expended all its vitality and was about to turn into death and corruption, when it reached the climax of its assumption in the sale of indulgences, and the conse- quent reaction of the Reformation burst upon Christendom. One would suppose that the word would have perished in Protestant- The Eclipse of Metdnoia by Pcenitentia. ism after it had led the Church up to such a scandalous catastrophe as the loss of its hier- archical hold on the conscience and the future destiny of mankind. But no. The Refor- mation turned out to be only the reconstruc- tion of another chamber. The inexhaustible energy and persistency of a word which had so powerful an etymology, and a usage in idea which had all along been nourished by the Vulgate, now came forth in a new manifestation. Instead of drawing back into its shell and dying there, pcenitentia magni- fied itself the more. It began to secrete for itself a more roomy and refined compartment. Under the influence of the Vulgate it rose anew in almost every European version of the New Testament ; and in no version, though direct from the Greek, did Merdvoia in its high apostolic meaning find room enough to breathe. The Latin substitute re- mained in all its primeval force, still keeping up its suction from its Aryan origin in the idea of purgation, only dropping its coarse medieval accretions ; and so around it gath- ered again the fabric of the modern popular theology, still Latin to the core. 122 V. THE GOSPEL IN THE SHADOW OF THE LAW. IN the facile English tongue the Latin cephalopod pcenitentia put forth three ten- tacles under which English Christianity en- tered upon its practical conception of the Gospel. All three may now be found in the English Prayer-book happily only two of them in the American: "penance" in the sense of discipline ; "penitence" in the sense of contrition ; and " repentance " or " re-peni- tence" in the sense of such an effectual work- ing of either or of both as resulted in amend- ment of life. As " repentance" therefore, it took the fore- most place, and as " repentance" though often badly confounded with the other two, it was now expounded as identical in meaning with Mera'vom, dragging back the Greek idea into its own limitations, and so attenuating the The Eclipse of Metdnoia by Pcenitentia. substance of the Greek word as finally to put its ideal quality out of sight altogether. Me- rdvota was again Latinized out of its very soul, and its essence shrank away into a cir- cumstance. A scholar and theologian like Jeremy Tay- lor (who wrote his great treatise on "Repen- tance " about forty years after 1 6 1 1 , in order to correct the false impressions which were in- evitable to the word), might do his best to fix and distinguish the lost meaning, and to as- semble under the term " repentance " the ideas of "faith" and "renewal" and "reconcilia- tion," but the word was not to be so easily rarified out of its concrete force. With all his ingenuity it baffled and contradicted him. He could not make it " serve his turn," as he said it would. And so it will always stand for what it origi- nally was, and so it will always reverse the theory and the action of the Gospel. Its mis- leading tendency can never be expounded out of it. It will always give the Gospel a legal aspect ; it will always, therefore, dim the near Fatherhood of God in setting Him upon a distant judgment-seat ; it will always put 124 The Gospel in ttie Shadow of the Law. Christ in a wrong relation to both God and man ; it will always proclaim that man must be purged from sin by his own self-condem- nation and by his formal discharge from a Divine Tribunal, and not set free (dfeotg), first and essentially, through that renewal of his nature (Merdvoia) under the knowledge of God in Christ and the inspiration of the Spirit, by which only the strength of sin is undermined and the creative work of God in the soul resumed. It is useless, also, to deny or ignore the fact of this perversion and reversal of the ideally sublime and gracious message of the good tidings of great joy, in the presence of the forbidding systems of theology, partly in- herited from Latin sources, partly constructed by modern ingenuity, which have been nur- tured and sustained, as well as, to a degree, originally inspired, by this Latin conception of poenitentia. With the undying legalism which is imbedded in it ; with its undying reminis- cence of vengeance, of punishment, of expi- ation; with its undying suggestion that the Change of Mind is only a change of will wrought by fear; with its undying determi- nation towards a theory of radical corruption 125 TJie Eclipse of Metdnoia by Poenitentia. in which tears are an all-powerful cleansing agent ; with its too ready readaptation, there- fore, of the method in which human nature was dealt with in the Old Testament as itself a creature of the law, whether Mosaic or Roman it has erected a judgment-seat in the heavens and earth, and put upon the face of God the frown of outraged jus- tice, and lowered the great and graphic met- aphor which pervades the New Testament simply for convenience and vividness of expression in an age and to a people pene- trated with legal ideas into an actual divine reality ; pressing the pervading parable liter- ally, as corresponding point for point to the forensic and judicial arrangements which have come up in communities of men when dealing with evil. Even thus, as we conceive, has this court- room conception of Christianity been made its working theory, ever since the penitential idea was given this initial and commanding position in the New Testament and in the Church. "Repentance" when all its etymological potency is challenged and drawn out by its 126 The Gospel in the Shadow of the Law, use as a theological word, or rather as a dog- matic key-word as it is when it is put in the place of Merdvota dominates the whole conception of the Gospel. It not only, as we say, reverses the order of its thought, and gives a wrong deflection to its ideas, but it infects everything within its reach. It throws a shadow here and a color there even over the translation of the Greek Tes- tament, and sustains the Latin tinge which pervades the texture of its English every- where. It has thus obscured the absolute originality of the New Testament as com- pared with the Old. And it has thus facili- tated the perpetuation of Judaism in the Church that is, the dominance of external- ism in taste and sentiment ; of mechanism in methods of faith and devotion ; of artificial- ism in thought and feeling ; of literalism and conventionalism all that is fatal to mental breadth and spiritual depth, all that shuts the universal humanity of Christ out of the uni- versal heart. And yet " repentance " is a word of indis- pensable value to us if it can be kept where it originally belonged in Latin literature, and 127 The Eclipse of Metdnoia by Panitentia. where it really belongs now in common Eng- lish speech ; if it can be kept in the meaning it had in popular usage before its etymology was roused into activity by its adoption as a dogmatic principle, and before the call "Re- pent ye! " was understood to be the creative fiat of the new heavens and the new earth. We have to be grateful to the practical Latin genius for an expression which seizes upon all that poignancy of feeling with which the enlightened conscience turns against sin, and which describes with a dignity and depth given to no other word that sense of unworthiness and guiltiness which grows more and more acute as the standard of righteousness rises before every heart. In that, its true sphere, it is indeed a divine sequel to Meravom, the shadow which witnesses to the power of that refulgent word. When we "turn from the darkness to the light " which is the mean- ing of Meravom it is a remnant of the dark- ness, our individual, personal share of it, dogging our footsteps and keeping us humble amid all the glory that shines about us in the knowledge of Jesus Christ. May it always express the " Metame'leia " which it properly translates, and which Bishop Westcott defines 128 The Gospel in the Shadow of the Law. so well to be " a special relation to the past ; a feeling of regret for a particular action, which may be deepened into remorse," and we may take the liberty of reminding him, with Scripture authority for it (see Matt. xxi. 29, where the son who refused to go to work "afterward repented himself, and went") deepened also into such a revulsion of feel- ing as brings with it amendment of conduct. Most true is it, then, that, as Bishop West- cott says, " the force of words is not limited by their etymology;" but the remark cannot be applied, as he intends it to be applied, to " repentance" as an expression so plastic as to be easily moulded into the great meaning of MeTdvoia. The energy of its etymology is too monopolizing, too pervadingly positive, as all its history shows, when given a tempt- ing occasion. It has been even powerful, aggressive, and intrusive enough to put the light of Merdvoia under a bushel for ages, and no hopeful theory over the manipulation of words to suit our purpose ought to per- suade us to trust it again. 129 VI. "DISASTROUS TWILIGHT" IN THE REVISED VERSION. WE are so careful in making a strong point of this because the revisers themselves were evidently influenced by a contrary impression when they decided not only to let the trans- lation of Meravom alone, but decided also to pass so quietly over it as not even to awaken a suspicion or a question as to its absolute equivalence. Indeed, Bishop Westcott would seem to be giving their view of the matter, and speaking on their behalf, when he says, " It was impossible to displace ' repent] ' re- pentance] which, though originally inade- quate, are capable of receiving the full mean- ing of the original" This, it will be noticed, is his idea of the " transfiguration " of " repentance " put in a different way. It is an expression of confi- dence in the readiness of that Latin word to 130 "Disastrous Twilight" in the Revised Version. take the stamp of the Greek word so thor- oughly that its own original image would be obliterated, its own identity be lost. In de- fault of the power to get rid of it, it could be made to do. All that he had just defined Meravom to be " an intellectual and moral regeneration " all the " apostolic force " that we have claimed for Merdvoia, which he admits to be a true exposition, is to be put into it. Its etymology is to be ignored. Its history is to be ignored. Even its every- day usage is to be ignored. It is to be arbi- trarily understood to convey the " full mean- ing of the original " for which it has so long stood, and nevermore any meaning which it has all along had. It is only a Latin word with a Greek face. It spells "repentance" but it is to be pronounced " Metanoia." What a curious spectacle would be pre- sented if this could be done, and what a con- fession it would be of the impotence of our own tongue under the paralysis of a tradi- tion! A word which was once thought to be a translation, but which has since turned out to be a perversion, going back into the original by a process of absorption, and hence- forth depending upon the original for its defi- The Eclipse of Metdnoia by Pcenitentia. nition! This would be putting the moon into the eye of the sun and expecting the sun to shine. Neither luminary would then give its appointed light. It would be an eclipse of the greater by the lesser : Merdvoia turned into nought but a lurid ring, because of the ball of blackness at the centre of it. It was to avoid the possibility of just such a " disastrous twilight " that, as Bishop West- cott says, " it was of paramount importance " to keep the word "repentance" clear and absolute in the version, unmixed with any association with its own former idea. In the version it should represent Merdvoia, and Meravom alone. Then the reader of the Revised Version, having discovered that " repentance " was a translation upwards into the meaning of Meravota, would not be dis- tracted from that conception of it, either by anything which "repent" might mean in popular speech, or by what it might mean elsewhere in the New Testament itself. But out of this "paramount" necessity there arose a difficulty, as it turned out, which the revisers did not and could not suc- cessfully overcome. "Repent " had a double 132 "Disastrous Twilight' 1 '' in the Revised Version. in the New Testament that would not do\vn. There before them was Merafie^eoOai (" Meta- m61esthai "), formidable and unremovable be- cause of its rightful claim to both the physi- ognomy and the soul of the word " repent" as men generally use it on serious occasions. And Bishop Westcott is obliged to admit that in only one instance was it made to give way and go out of sight. Everywhere else it stood its ground, or rather its ground had to be yielded, because no other of its English kindred had weight and dignity enough to fill its place. So the two luminaries of the Greek orig- inal the one idea which rules the night of regret over things of the past, and figures so powerfully in the darkness of the Old Testa- ment as the reflection of a sun as yet unrisen ; and the other idea which rules the day of faith and righteousness, the sun that has since risen in the New are represented in the Re- vised Version under conditions of most singu- lar aberration and confusion. The lesser orb not only shines alone in its proper sphere six times out of seven, but also invades the day, even to hiding the very disk of the daylight, even to robbing it of its distinction as well 133 The Eclipse of Metdnoia by Pueniientia. as its function, even to making, through the mixture of the two, a ghastly monotone of all its twoscore and thirteen variants of light. Such, then, is the result of the endeavor to cope with these two words in the original. "Repentance " has been given a heightened or intensified signification wherever it stands for Uerdvota, and in its possession of this is to be its sole distinction. But when and where the distinction is to be made is left to the unlearned reader to find out for him- self. In one part of the New Testament "repent" means one thing, and in another part another thing; and so, between these two stools of "repentance" he is still in as much danger as before the revision, of fall- ing into that low conception of the apos- tolic idea which generally prevails. Let us, now, however, draw from this mix- ture of the two words in the English Version a fair inference as to what " the repentance of the Gospel " is supposed to mean. First, it is a retrospective act of the mind. Second, it is a feeling specifically directed against sin. "Disastrous Twilight" in the Revised Version. Third, it is this in such intense action that it brings about a change in the conduct and life. Fourth, it is this, also, in such effective action that it takes hold of the mind; so working upon the will as to change the men- tal habit and attitude, thus amounting to a conversion of the whole nature. Fifth, and this mental and spiritual atti- tude towards sin is the full import of the word Msrdvoia. Now the obvious thought that occurs to one is this : the whole of the above conception of "repentance 1 '' could have been easily put, by the New Testament writers, into the com- pass of Meraf/eAeta (" Metameleia") which means " after-care." Why did they not do it? The expression would have lent itself most kindly to such a purpose. It could have been made to rise to any measure of that idea under their heightening hands. Besides that, Mera- jtieAem and Merdvota were often very near in signification, as employed in popular speech among the Greeks. They ran in close par- allel on certain occasions so much so that one would do as well as the other ; though on other occasions they could diverge very The Eclipse of Metdnoia by Panitentia. widely apart. Why was MeTa^eAem so care- fully avoided, and Merdvoia so conspicuously chosen? Because the idea of an after-care concentrated upon sin was not comprehen- sive enough. It did not take in the regener- ative motive and principle. It did not sug- gest the illuminated condition and action of the whole Mind Mind in the sense of Noi>? under which sin would lose its hold, would become less and less a dominating and de- flecting thing, and faith become more and more a foremost and active instinct ; under which the nerve would be more firm, the eye more fixed, in the aim at the mark, in the run for the goal. Hence, then came the selection and uniform employment of Mera- voia, for the Mind turning from darkness be- cause of the coming of light. 1 1 There are two instances in the New Testament where the idea of Metame'leia, repentance, appears in express and designed contrast with the idea of Meta- noia, renewal of mind. The first is in Matthew xxi. 32, where the chief priests and the elders are charged not only with their failure to obey at first the proclamation of Renewal of Mind unto Faith in the coming Kingdom and the Christ, by the Baptist, who came to them "in the way of righteousness," but with " not even repenting 136 "Disastrous Twilight" in the Revised Version. The real potency of the new life lay in prospection, not retrospection. It lay in faith, not in fear. It lay in knowledge, not in sorrow. It was an awakening to right- eousness, and therefore a sinning not. And hence, then, this is the primary word the evan- gelists and apostles used, whether as initially proclamative or as potentially descriptive of the Christian life ; a word profound enough to comprehend, and far-reaching enough to themselves afterward " (oide when they saw the publicans and harlots " believing " him and entering into the Kingdom of God before them. The other is in 2 Corinthians vii. 10, where the Corinthians, having been restored to their spiritual senses after a recent demoralization, under the awak- ening light thrown upon their gross stupefaction by St. Paul, were told by him that now they had come to a Metanoia a very enthusiasm of righteousness " a Metanoia not to be repented of " (d/iera/ie^rov). Here is the only place, by the way, where the re- visers felt compelled to change " repent" into " re- gret." The phrase now runs, " a repentance which bringeth no regret" instead of " a repentance not to be repented of." St. Paul is also made to " regret," not " repent," his severe letter. How badly mixed were the ideas of the old trans- lators over these, in this striking instance, widely diverging words ! And this is all the revisers have done in clarifying their confusion. 137 The Eclipse of Metdnoia by Pcenitcntia. prophesy, the mightiest motive which could energize such a nature as that of man, namely, the personal power of the Son of God ; and the mightiest influence which could enter his inmost being to the upbuilding of his char- acter and life, namely, the inspiration of the Spirit of God. But what the apostolic mind refused to do, even with the legalism of the Old Testa- ment before it, the translating mind, under the influence of that very precedent and of a prevailing fashion of following it, has in- sisted upon doing. It has insisted upon im- posing the translation of the idea of Mera- jueAeta upon the idea of Merdvoia ; and it has undertaken to do what the original writers did not undertake to do to expand the idea of " repentance " (Merajite/lem) into the mean- ing of Merdvota. What is more remarkable still, it has undertaken to adapt " repentance " to that high expression of Faith unto the Renewal of the spirit of the Mind, even after it has been so thoroughly sophisticated and artificialized under its Romish use, and, we might add, after it has been since so habitu- ally limited by its Protestant interpretation. 138 VII. THE POWER OF LATIN PRESCRIPTION. Now how can we account for all this on the part of a body of men so learned, so judi- cious, so conscientious, and so courageous as the revisers undoubtedly were ? How can we account for their impression that " it was im- possible to displace 'repent,' 'repentance 1 "'? How can we account for their allowing themselves to be in a position under which the proper disposal of Meravom and Mera- /^Aem, and of the idea of " repentance " as supposed to be shared by both, should have "offered great difficulties in translation"? How can we account, also, for the general sentiment of the Christian world which made it so quiet under such a mistranslation that the question was never raised before the revision nor during it at least not raised enough to make it advisable to take the The Eclipse of Metdnoia by Paenitentia. slightest apparent notice of this gross and dangerous rendering when they passed their microscope over it ? The only answer is a very human and therefore a very humiliating one. It was all owing to the paralyzing power of a long- established precedent to the impalpable pressure of authority and example. It was all owing to the insidious influence of a Latin tradition, not only as felt in the general Latin texture of English speech, but as it had in this case become embalmed in a body of Latinized doctrine, most ancient and venerable ; in a theological spicery strong enough, when diffused in the Jerusalem chamber, to deaden even the sensibility of the alert intelligence which is now awakening to the dawn of a Greek age and a Johan- nine Christianity. Yes, strange as it may be to think such a thing, it was all owing to the long-armed Vulgate prescription, which had held every previous version of the New Testament in its grip, even from the days of the independent Tyndale, and the power of which was felt even by those who retouched his work at the close of the nine- teenth century, even as it was felt by those 140 T/'ie Power of Latin Prescription. who had retouched it in the opening of the seventeenth. What is more remarkable to observe is by way of showing ho\v persistent and special the descent of this tradition has been that it appears nowhere else in the version than in this one consecrated line. Whenever Noiig by itself, or in any of its other combinations, comes up in the translation, the revisers seem to breathe free, and render it with a full recognition of its noetic or intellectual ele- ment. It is almost an entertaining task to go over all these passages, and to see how fresh this atmosphere is all about them. We had written out the whole of them for inser- tion here, but this Supplementary Essay is already too long, and we can only give the references. Compare, in all cases, the Re- vised Version and the suggestive context. Noi)c, mind, understanding. The revisers, unlike the Authorized Version, have ren- dered it exclusively so, with the unfortunate exception of not drawing the line between it and 0pov7/jua, the dispositional idea of mental action. (Luke xxiv. 45 ; Rom. i. 28, vii. 23, 141 The Eclipse of Metdnoia by Pcenitentia. 25, xi. 34, xii. 2, xiv. 5 ; i Cor. i. 10, ii. 16, xiv. 14, 15, 19; Eph. iv. 17, 23; Phil. iv. 7; Col. ii. 18; 2 Thess. ii. 2 ; i Tim. vi. 5 ; 2 Tim. iii. 8 ; Tit. i. 15 ; Rev. xiii. 18, xvii. g.) Neoo), to see, to perceive, to understand. (Matt. xv. 17, xvi. 9, n, xxiv. 15 ; Mark vii. 18, viii. 17, xiii. 14; John xii. 40; Rom. i. 20; Eph. iii. 4, 20; i Tim. i. 17 ; 2 Tim. ii. 7 ; Heb. xi. 3.) No7//Lta, a perception, a thought, a purpose. (2 Cor. ii. u, iii. 14, iv. 4, x. 5, xi. 3; Phil, iv. 7.) Amvota, a thinking through, the mind, the understanding. (Matt. xxii. 37 ; Mark xii. 30 ; Luke i. 51, x. 27 ; Eph. ii. 3, iv. 18; Col. i. 21 ; Heb. viii. 10, x. 16 ; i Pet. i. 13 ; 2 Pet. iii. i ; i John v. 20.) Aiavorftia, thought, purpose. (Luke xi. 1 7.) "Avom, want of understanding. (Luke vi. 1 1 ; 2 Tim. iii. 9.) "Evvoji, thought, intent, purpose. (Heb. iv. 12 ; i Pet. iv. i.) 'AvorjTog, unthinking, not understanding. (Luke xxiv. 25; Rom. i. 14; Gal. iii. i, 3; i Tim. vi. 9 ; Tit. iii. 3.) "Ayvota, ignorance. (Acts iii. 17, xvii. 30 ; Eph. iv, 18; i Pet. i. 14.) 142 The Power of Latin Prescription. 'A.yv6r]fia, ignorance (involuntary). (Heb. ix. 7, margin.) 'E-ivoia, a thinking upon, thought, (Acts viii. 22.) 'Tnovoia, a surmise, (i Tim. vi. 4.) Upovoeu, to foresee, to perceive before. (Rom. xii. 17 ; 2 Cor. viii. 21 ; i Tim. v. 8.) Ilpovoia, foresight, forethought. (Acts xxiv. 3 ; Rom. xiii. 14.) 'Ayvoew, not to perceive, not to know. (Mark ix. 32; Luke ix. 45; Acts xiii. 27, xvii. 23; Rom. i. 13, ii. 4, vi. 3, vii. i, x. 3, xi. 25 ; i Cor. xi., xiv. 38 ; 2 Cor. i. 8, ii. 1 1, vi. 9 ; Gal. i. 22 ; i Tim. i. 13 ; Heb. v. 2 ; 2 Pet. ii. 12.) "Tnovoed), to conjecture, to surmise. (Acts xiii. 25, xxv. 1 8, xxvii. 27.) Karavoeco, to see or perceive clearly, observe, consider. (Matt. vii. 3; Luke vi. 41, xii. 24, 27, xx. 23 ; Acts vii. 31, 32, xi. 6, xxvii. 39 ; Rom.iv.ig; Heb.iii. i,x.24 ; James 1.23,24.) Here are surely instances enough if not all limited to close variants of Noew and NoOc, where their noetic or perceptive ele- ment, the very core of their meaning, is both recognized and rendered by the revisers, often with great spiritual significance. H3 The Eclipse of Metdnoia by Pxnitentia. But Meravoeo) and M.erdvoia, words from the same mental stem, variants of the same intellectual idea, appear fifty-three times in the Greek Testament, only to disappear in the version! Not a sign, not a suggestion, of their real quality is conveyed to the Eng- lish reader! They have been kept and set apart to preserve and perpetuate the Latin tradition of " repent" " repentance" The Greek pith has been pushed out of Merdvoia that it may pipe the Miserere \ 144 VIII. THE TRUE INTERPRETATION. IT would have gone far to soften this situa- tion if the revisers had asked their eminent colleague, who had already done so much in furnishing them with the purest Greek text, to furnish them also with a marginal note which should throw a distinguishing side- light into their metanoian "repent" and "repentance." If they had, it would prob- ably have been this : "A general Change of Mind, which becomes in its fullest development an intellectual and moral Regeneration." And if they had, these old Latin words, so pal- pably inadequate and incongruous, would have been on the way to be "displaced," both unceremoniously and soon. But as the margin has been left without this illustration, the only alternative now would seem to be the very unsatisfactory one which The Eclipse of Metdnoia by Pcenitentia, is intimated in Bishop Westcott's personal note to us : " The preacher and the scholar must trans- figure ' repentance] even as fides and gratia have been transfigured. In this work your essay will, I trust, be of eminent service." Which can only mean that, the revisers having failed to do it, or to do anything about it, the task of making the best of an inadequate and misleading translation is now thrown upon the pulpit and the com- mentators. This is not a pleasant fact to face: that the original Scriptures should, in any essen- tial part or in any vital word, be so incom- municable to the people, that the people must be dependent upon their teachers not only for exposition, but for revelation itself. Such, we take it, is not the true idea of a version, and one may well be impatient if the cause for it should not reside in the original, but in some conventionalism of habit or taste or theory or principle on the part of the trans- lators, which has abridged the capacity of our own language. And one may be sure that if darkness does still rest on any por- 146 The True Interpretation. tion of our version the fault lies in a hesita- tion to employ the full freedom of the Eng- lish tongue. But we do not say, in saying this, that any darkness, or shadow of dark- ness, still lingers over the work of the revis- ers because of their unwillingness to remove it through any such cause, or that they were conscious of any such cause, even in regard to this rendering of Me-dvota. Most especially do we personally feel this when we have the great scholar and preacher in mind who sat so high in the counsels of the revisers, and upon whose endorsement of our exposition of the Greek word we set so high a value. We have ventured to differ with him only on a question of judgment, wherein he may be wise and we unwise. He would not disturb a rendering around which for ages many venerable associations have gathered, and the removal of which would disarrange many doctrinal concep- tions. As he looks upon it, to "displace" it would be to displace a corner-stone ; and though he is ready to admit that it was " orig- inally inadequate," yet he evidently thinks less harm would result if it were quietly and The Eclipse of Metdnoia by Pxnitentia. gradually changed for another, which, though retaining the name, would be the genuine stone. Such a substitution, he thinks, would become practicable in the progress of public sentiment, or, as he calls it, " Christian use." Doubtless there are many who would agree with him in this method of meeting the enor- mous difficulty of repairing a very serious error which has so many ages for its sanction and a remote antiquity for its origin. Our own belief in the utter impractica- bility of this way of dealing with it we have now tried to express in the best way we could. We would make the change at once in the text of the translation. We would remove the idea and the words "repent" "repentance " from every part of the New Testament except where they represent the idea of Msra^eAem ; and we would have it so, that no sermon or treatise should employ the expressions except in the sense of "sorrow" or "regret." And we would do this now in the interest of truth, in the interest of genuine Christianity, in the interest of an age which does not fear to face a fact, whatever be the consequences. As we have said before, so we say again : 148 The True Interpretation. we do not believe in the process of " trans- figuration," when it is to be attempted upon a word of such a character, and containing in itself such a latent dogmatic force, as " re- pentance" The only safety is in letting it, dogmatically, alone, in dropping it, dogmatic- ally, out, and in retaining it only in its pop- ular and strictly Scriptural sense a regret for something that is past, and a regret that, in a matter of wrong-doing, may deepen into a " godly sorrow " ; and this " regret " we would always call "repent.'" All this we say be- cause we believe that, so long as the word is used for Merdroia, the characteristic key-note of Christianity will give not only an uncertain, but a radically reversing, as well as a mis- leading, sound : the world will lose the orig- inal and innermost, the initial and guiding principle of the religion of Jesus Christ. In regard to the instances mentioned by Bishop Westcott of the successful transfigure- ment of " faith " and " grace," despite their Latin perversion, it seems to us that they are hardly a parallel. Only theologians are familiar with any ancient association of those words which would despoil them now of their 149 The Eclipse of Metdnoia by P&nitentia. depth and beauty. They have become thor- oughly English. They have no harsh historic physiognomy to soften away. In neither of them are we obliged to lift off a Latin cowl in order to bare a Greek brow. The deep heart of their Greek originals is easily to be seen in the countenance of both. And now we must add, in view of the kind suggestion that in the work of "transfiguring " repentance, our essay may be "of eminent service," that we could look upon it with but little satisfaction if we thought that, after all, we had only succeeded in expounding the force of "repentance " in a way that reconciled the preacher and scholar the more to the old rendering, and had only helped, therefore, to confirm the esoteric position in which the word at present stands, namely, a position under which those who are learned may have one consciousness in reading it in the New Testament, and those who are not learned, another. In conclusion let us express again the im- mense satisfaction that we have taken in the remarkable definition of Merdvoia by this dis- 150 The True Interpretation. tinguished scholar and theologian, an eminent authority in Greek and a master in English, of world-wide fame. We place it with pride beside those of De Quincey and Matthew Arnold, as the expression of a spiritual per- ception and experience which combines the force of both: Meravom describes Characteristically in the Language of the Neiu Testament, a General Change of Mind, which Becomes in its Full- est Development an Intellectual and Moral Regeneration." ASSENTING WITNESSES. THE following letters extracts for the most part were written without a thought of publication. They are simple, unstudied, and spontaneous expressions of interest in the subject. They all refer, of course, to the first essay, and have been selected out of a large number (received from time to time since its publication) because of their sug- gestiveness, the weightiness of their indorse- ment, and their contributary character, in one way or another, to the substance of the essay itself. It was at first designed, when the reissue of the essay was thought of, to make each of them the base of a sort of excursus, of greater or less length the whole group of which, taken together, leading out into vari- ous aspects of the subject, and developing its Scriptural and theological, as well as its philo- sophical and practical relations and bearings. 152 Assenting Witnesses. The material for all this has, however, been laid aside, under an exigency which has made it undesirable for the present reprint, and the plan has only been carried out in the in- stance of the first of the letters. (See the second essay.) There were several others of striking character which have consequently been omitted, as the field of thought they opened required especial consideration in order to elicit their true value. From the Rt. Rev. Brooke Foss Westcott, D.D., U.C.L., Bishop of Durham, late Canon of Westminster, and Regius Professor of Di- vinity, Cambridge ; a member of the English New Testament Company of the Revisers : " There was a reference to your essay in a paper on the Revised Version, in the ' Expositor.' I have not a copy of the magazine at hand, but I think it was in the paper which appeared in August. " I intended to say that you had brought out with singular power and truth the meaning of Merdvoia, while I could not see that the translation could be modified. "The preacher and the scholar must transfigure '$3 Assenting Witnesses. ' repentance,* even as ' fides ^ and 'gratia' 1 have been transfigured. In this work your essay will, I trust, be of eminent service. " B. F. WESTCOTT." II. From the Rev. Alexander Roberts, D.D., Professor of Humanity in the University of St. Andrews, a member of the English New Testament Company of the Revisers, and author of the " Companion to the Revised Version of the New Testament, Explaining the Reasons for the Changes Made in the Authorized Version." This handbook ac- companied the issue of the Revised Version in May, 1881. " I have read with much interest your thoughtful and valuable paper on ' Metanoia. ' " The expression ' repentance,' 1 though plainly in- adequate as a translation of it, has so rooted itself in our language that it seems almost impossible to get rid of it. " However, we have manifestly entered on an epoch of revision, and I trust you will bring your suggestions under the notice of anybody that may be appointed, in order, if possible, to provide an Eng- lish version of the New Testament which may meet with general acceptance. . . . "ALEXANDER ROBERTS." 154 Assenting Witnesses. From the same at a later date. " I hope some effectual means will be found for bringing your original and striking exposition of Merdiwa under the notice of scholars in this country. " I shall see that it is submitted to those of my colleagues who are likely to take an interest in the subject. "ALEXANDER ROBERTS." in. From the Rev. Howard Crosby, D.D., LL.D., ex-Chancellor of the University of New York, a member of the American New Testament Company of the Revisers. " I think you are quite right. " I have always taught that the Metanoia of the Gospel was not a sorrow for sin, but an abandon- ment of sin. " Its classical meaning is ' a change of view and plan,' as in that intensely interesting part of Thucyd- ides where the Athenians order the destruction of the Mityleneans, and then on the next day repent. There is not a particle of mourning over sin in that. " Of course when one repents (fieravoeV) from sin there will be a godly sorrow, but this is not in the word. "The Metanoia of the Jews was, as you say, a change of view (and plan) from the pronoian condi- '55 Assenting Witnesses. tion. Those at Pentecost thus repented, although, doubtless, the majority of them were truly godly men before. "HOWARD CROSBY." IV. From the Rev. Philip Schaff, D.D., LL.D., Professor of Sacred Literature in the Union Theological Seminary, New York, President of the American Revision Committee, author of " A Companion to the Greek Testament and the English Version," etc. " Many thanks to you for your able, excellent, and truthful article on the meaning of Merdvota, which has my cordial approval. " Conservatism prevented a change, and the diffi- culty of substituting a precise equivalent in one word. " PHILIP SCHAFF." v. From the Very Rev. E. H. Plumptre, D.D., Dean of Wells, a member of the English Old Testament Company. " Pray accept my best thanks for your very sug- gestive paper. " I quite agree with you as to the inadequacy of the accepted rendering of Merdvoia, but I do not see any way to a better one as yet. 156 Assenting Witnesses. ' ' Resipiscence ' was an attempt, but it proved abortive. " ' Change of mind ' or ' principles ' or ' heart ' is cumbrous, and leaves the nature of the change unde- fined. " E. H. PLUMPTRE." VI. From the Rev. Edward White, author of " Life in Christ," " Mystery of Growth," etc. " LONDON, 1892. " Some one has sent me a copy of your tract on Mmzvom, but the sender has remained anonymous. " I thank the sender anyway and the author. " The argument has been familiar to me for fifty years, and I have always regarded it as unanswer- able and most important. " I learned its nature and irresistible force in early life by reading Dr. George Campbell's ' Preliminary Dissertations on the Gospels ' (Principal of Marischal College, Aberdeen, Scotland) (Preliminary Disserta- tion No. VI.), where a very precise, full, and decisive argument, both critical and spiritual, fixes the prac- tical sense of Merdvowz as you have done. " There are some valuable points brought out by Principal Campbell, which I think will interest you, in addition to your own. " No doubt Dr. Campbell's ' Dissertations ' are to be seen in some of your theological libraries. It is 157 Assenting Witnesses. a golden book, almost forgotten in the crowd of mod- ern works. " I trust that your endeavors will result in some wholesome teaching on the subject of the true Merd- voia in the United States. " EDWARD WHITE, "Author of 'Life in ChristS " VII. From the Rev. Alexander V. G. Allen, D.D., Professor in the Episcopal Theological School, Cambridge, Mass., author of "The Continuity of Christian Thought: A Study of Modern Theology in the Light of its History," etc. " I have read your paper on the ' Metanoia,' and am greatly delighted with it. " The thought of it goes deep down into the very heart of the Christian revelation, and when the full meaning of your position is taken, one can see that it is the hinge upon which a truer and larger concep- tion of Christianity must turn. " It seems to me that we have been thinking in the same direction. " You have brought out the importance of the fact that the new revelation found its first expression in the Greek language ; and to that language we must turn, if we are to get the fresh original idea in the mind of its first disciples. 158 Assenting Witnesses, " When the New Testament was translated in Latin there came a profound misapprehension of its central positions. ' Metanoia ' is one word. So an- other is ' grace,' and another is ' justification ' words which fall far short as Latin equivalents for the orig- inal Greek. " I have begun later than you in taking up the same issue; i.e., with the Greek fathers as the best interpreters of Christianity, because they were under the influence of that culture which was divinely ap- pointed to create a language for the new order. " The Latins disowned philosophy and human culture. They were inclined, like true Romans, to put all the mischief in the will ; heresy was a vicious wilfulness ; and the trouble with the will was a weak- ness or impotence toward right, which had been in- herited from Adam. This vicious direction of the will could only be overcome by omnipotent power bearing down all finite opposition, and this power which acts upon the will (grace) is conveyed through outward channels. " That was the substance of Augustinianism and of Latin Christianity. It disowned the intellect as having any vital connection with the regenerated life. " With the Greeks it was knowledge, which must overcome the ignorance of man ; but this knowledge carried with it the whole nature, as you have shown. ' ' The essay is a beautiful, clear, and original state- ment of a great issue. "A. V. G. ALLEN." Assenting Witnesses. VIII. From the Rev. J. F. Garrison, D.D., Pro- fessor in the Protestant Episcopal Divinity School, Philadelphia. " I hope the old saw, ' Better late than never,' will hold good in my acknowledgment, at this late day, of the interest and value of your article on ' Metanoia.' " I have had my pen in hand many times to do it, but there was so much I wished to say about it that each time I waited for a ' more convenient season,' until now, in utter despair of finding leisure for this, I cannot refrain longer to tell you how profoundly important I feel the points you make to be. " I have been so deeply impressed with them for twenty years that I scarcely or never use the word ' repent' 1 in any of its Bible references without paus- ing to reiterate the true meaning of the mental and spiritual process implied in the Metanoia. " And I am sure that many of our most disastrous failures in commending Christianity to unbelieving minds especially minds of a manly character have their cause just here. " You have thought so much on the bearings of the idea that I need not tell you how or why. " What I wanted, however, especially to enlarge upon were certain of the collateral relations of the word, and its psychological connections, which I have felt to be at the same time confirmations of your views and expressions of its great meaning. 160 Assenting Witnesses. " I can only hint at them, as it has been my in- ability to write more fully which has let me hitherto, and I doubt not but they have occurred to you. " I. One of these is the analogy of the use of the word in the Greek of the LXX., wherein very often the passages rendered ' repent,' 1 etc., in the Author- ized Version are given in the Septuagint by MrravoeZv, etc., with a most decided advantage to the clearness, consistency, and satisfactoriness of the passage. " 2. The remarkable significance of the word Noi)f and all its derivatives in the philosophic language of that age, as we learn this from the Greek, especially the Alexandrian, writers. And I more and more be- lieve that the language of the writers of the New Testament had much in common with this. " I cannot pause even to outline my grounds for this, but they are so strong to my mind that if I were in the middle instead of near the end of my mental life- work I would make it the theme of an elaborate volume. ' ' Now, in all the prevalent thought of that time, ' thought ' (vovf as its reality) and ' being ' were only two sides of one and the same essence. With them the Real was not, as with us, the Material, but the Noetic. What on the side of consciousness and ac- tual verity was votiv (thought), on its side of real ex- istence was elvai. To think was ' to be,' and ' to be ' was essentially thought. The Spiritual was the Real, and the only Real was the Spiritual. " (And herein lies the essence of the endless dis- cussion on the Real Presence. The hard-headed Latin could never see that anything was Real that he could not represent as quasi Material. ) 161 Assenting Witnesses. " Now, with this conception of voeZv, go back to Metanoia, and we have the complete expression and magnificent sweep of the full thought. In changing the votiv of the man he has become changed in the very essence of his Etvai ; ' all things have become new.' " I need not evolve the thought further. It lies at the foundation of the whole Alexandrian, or rather of the whole philosophic, thought of that age, and in Plotinus is developed to the dialectic system with which he hoped to rival Christianity, but which, by its one-sided character, made it only a sublime dream for the few instead of a divine life for the many. "3. As a relique of my old medical life. Insanity is not, as I think, an error of reasoning. Who rea- sons so inexorably as an insane man? ' I am my mind (vovf) tells me a king. Therefore I can and will do as a king.' And all he does follows on strict- est reasoning from his VOEIV. Change his essential accepted thought self and at once he ' is ' a differ- ent man. As he ' thought ' in his essential self, so he ' was.' His Mer&voia at once changes his entire ' being.' " I have often presented this as a terrible analogy to the condition of man as a sinner. By nature he ac- cepts as the essential fact of his being, in his thought, ' this world, self, sin, as all-real, all-sufficient.' Christ comes and says, ' Your whole being and thought are wrong. MeravoeZre : let your whole being and thought turn from this. It is a lie, and you and your life, based on it, a delusion ; for there is a kingdom of the heavens which is THE truth,' etc. 162 Assenting Witnesses. " Here, again, I only put a finger-mark; but the meaning of the whole is, I thank you very heartily for your admirable and needed paper. "J. F. GARRISON." IX. From the Rev. Elisha Mulford, LL.D., author of "The Republic of God," "The Nation," etc. " The essay has very great value. It gives the view of the term which I have long held. " This is the one term which connects most clearly the errand of St. John the Baptist with the message of the Gospel. " It has more direct and full significance than those to which I note a reference in Hausrath's ' Times of Jesus,' tr., ii., p. 120. "The grammarians have always underrated De Quincey. "ELISHA MULFORD." x. From the Rev. Edward T. Bartlett, D.D., Dean of the Protestant Episcopal Divinity School, Philadelphia. " I am greatly indebted to you for your essay on the great New Testament word. 163 Assenting Witnesses. " At a glance I saw much of its value, but now that I have carefully studied it I think it wonderful and of permanent worth for its scholarship and its true fervor, the like of which in combination I do not remember to have ever seen. " The ability with which you present your great subject and marshal your grand argument seems to me absolutely perfect, and should make this essay one that will be the standard monograph on the sub- ject. " If I could wish for any addition to your treat- ment of the subject it would be as to the fuller de- velopment of the truth that the change of the mind itself may precede and lead to a change of circum- stance the truth which Dr. Bushnell, e.g., brings out in those two tremendous sermons, ' The Bad Consciousness 1 Taken Away,' and 'The Bad Mind Makes a Bad Element,' in his ' Christ and His Sal- vation. ' " I did not mean to say this, but will venture to let it go, almost sure, though, that upon further study of your essay, which I intend to make, I shall find that you have given that truth all the emphasis it needed, and that I have been mistaken. "Again I thank you for the keen pleasure you have afforded me in your beautiful paper. "EDWARD T. BARTLETT." From the same at a recent date. " I am glad to know that a new edition of ' Me- tanoia ' is to be given us. Strong evidence that the 164 Assenting Witnesses. view you take has permanently impressed thoughtful men as one of deep value and importance has been meeting me ever and anon for years. " My suggestion when I saw you in Boston was to this effect: that you should go straight through the New Testament and carefully work out each pas- sage where the word occurs, or its cognates, and show how the real meaning can be put into good smooth English expression. Some work I am doing has led me to study the matter closely and to try to do this very thing. ... It would not take much space. An appendix of a few pages would surely be enough. Such a thing would be most timely. I beg you to do it. "EDWARD T. BARTLETT." XI. From the Rev. Benjamin Franklin, D.D., author of "The Creed and Modern Thought." " May I venture to express the great pleasure and sense of mental benefit with which I have read your article in the July number of the ' American Church Review '? " You have undoubtedly made an intrinsic contri- bution to the theology of the age, and given an illus- tration of what many have thought and some have said, viz. , that ' Catholic theology ' is as much alive in this age, and as well adapted to current thought, as it ever has been. " The article, while learned and able, of course, 165 Assenting Witnesses. is abreast of the age, and takes that humanly sympa- thetic yet distinctively Christian stand which primi- tive Christianity occupied. " As a work emanating from the theological school to which you are popularly assigned, it of course looks at the truth from its own point of view. " It does so admirably, however, and will, I hope, so permeate the mind of preachers that the Gospel, on its human side, may be better preached, and men induced to recognize and develop, in mind and heart, their original godlikeness. " B. FRANKLIN." XII. From the Rt. Rev. Phillips Brooks, D.D., Bishop of Massachusetts. " It is full of inspiration. " It makes one think of Christian faith as positive and constructive, and not merely destructive and remedial. " It makes the work of Christ seem worthy of Christ. " PHILLIPS BROOKS." 1 66 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY, LOS ANGELES This bookifc'due^&n the^tfet datetamped below. ' FEB Book Slip-25m-9,'59(A4772s4)4280 fll *! REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY A 000 604 425 9 u i K