The Object of this brief survey is to discover, if we can, from the surviving plays of Aeschylus how, in the opinion of enlightened and pious men of his age, the spirits of the dead were to be approached when it was thought desirable to do so, and to compare the methods which were then in use with those of other, especially of later, epochs. I speak of enlightened and pious men, for surely Aeschylus was both. Had he been born a generation later, he would probably have been something of a philosopher, influenced, as Euripides was, by the critical opinions of the contemporary sophists and investigating the fundamental assumptions upon which the traditional beliefs of his country rested. As it was, he, like his contemporary and acquaintance Pindar, came sufficiently early to take the form of their beliefs from tradition, with no more than revisal of details here and there (Pindar will not believe impious myths and does not know what to make of tales which represent the gods as fighting one another, Aeschylus is not sure that a god will really feel human passion for a mortal woman), ennobling the whole with their own lofty thoughts and feelings, in which the Athenian goes further than the Theban, for he was the deeper of soul and even the Apolline religion of Pindar, lofty though it is, the fruit apparently of a genuinely religious mind which had something mystical in it, lacks the sublimity of Aeschylus' attitude toward Zeus.

Three recent movements in Canada towards a clearer expression of Christian unity have special significance—the co-operation of the Theological Colleges affiliated to McGill University, the organization of the Church Unity League, and the negotiations for the organic union of the Congregational, Methodist, and Presbyterian Communions.

A quarter of a century has now elapsed since the foundation of Toynbee Hall in the east of London inaugurated the “University Settlement” movement in the vast and then almost inchoate capital of the British Empire; and the present time seems therefore appropriate for an attempt to form some estimate of the past results and future possibilities of the movement, which soon spread to other towns of England and Scotland. Yet such an undertaking is beset with serious difficulties. Throughout the whole history of the settlements there is indeed apparent an essential identity of purpose, an underlying uniformity of motive; but the individual institutions have been the outcome of the action of various bodies of persons whose aims, as formally expressed, seem often very diverse; different groups have laid the main emphasis on different objects and methods, and what has been counted as triumphant success by one group has been deemed of relatively small importance by another. Further, the wide range of the activities of the settlements, the multifarious nature of their interests and work, render it practically impossible for any one observer to comprehend the whole in his single survey; and the selection which he must needs make tends almost inevitably to be determined, and it may be even unfairly biassed, by his own personal predilections. Within this narrower range, moreover, there is no certain standard by which to measure success or failure; the value of the work accomplished by a settlement is not to be judged solely, or even chiefly, by the statistics of its classes and clubs. If it has realized its objects, however imperfectly, it has exercised upon the surrounding community, in conjunction with all other institutions that in any way and by any means make for good, a subtle and permeating influence which has resulted in a progressive amelioration of social life; but, for the very reason that this achievement is the result of a number of co-operating forces, the share of the settlement therein cannot be isolated or defined with any exactitude.

The interpretation of these verses and the textual problem which they involve has long been disputed among critics. With the ordinary text the difficulty begins with the word ἐμβριμησάμενος in vs. 43. It means ‘scolding,’ or ‘rebuking,’ and no reason can be seen for Jesus' adopting this attitude towards the man whom he had just healed. The matter becomes even more complicated if the variant readings in verse 41 be considered. The ordinary texts read σπλαγχνισθείς, ‘having compassion on him,’ but one of the earliest, Codex Bezae, reads ὀργισθείς, ‘being angry with him,’ or perhaps more accurately, ‘being in a passion,’ although nothing in the story explains why Jesus should have been in a passion with the unfortunate leper. With this agree several old Latin codices. It seems probable that ὀργισθείς is the original reading; it certainly is “hard,” and there was no reason why σπλαγχνισθείς should be changed to it, though the reverse change is not difficult to understand. Perhaps the explanation can be found in the punctuation. I suggest that it should be punctuated and translated as follows: ‘And there came to him a leper beseeching him and kneeling and saying to him, If thou wilt, thou canst make me clean; and he [the leper] put out his hand in a passion of rage and touched him. And he [Jesus] said, I will, be thou clean. And immediately the leprosy departed from him and he was clean. And he rebuked him and immediately drove him out.’

Kakuso Okakura died in Japan September 2, 1913. He was an “Admirable Crichton” in his way, a man of vast learning, which covered both sides of the world. He was graduated from the Tokio University in 1880 with honors in philosophy and English literature, to which he might have added honors in Oriental philosophy and literature had not the drift of education in Japan at that time been all in the direction of the Occident. He always kept in close touch with the Occidental world, and was for ten years the head of the Department of Chinese and Japanese Art at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.

The use of the term άλεεῖς άνθρώπων, “fishers of men” at Mark 1:17 (on which depends Matthew 4:19 but only indirectly Luke 5:10) has often been treated as a self-evident metaphor. “The words of Jesus summon Simon and Andrew to become disciples and heralds of the Kingdom of God,” Vincent Taylor says. Other figures might have sufficed for this dual purpose and the peculiar nature of the metaphor is not explored when the terms “disciples” and “heralds” are used. What is the relationship of disciples to Jesus and how heralds were related to the Kingdom is not made clear although the Markan term may have been intended to do something of this kind. It is insufficient to observe that, since the four men are depicted as fishermen, the summons is appropriately phrased.The metaphor has a Biblical background which provides some clue to the nature of their new calling or, since they are already fishermen, to a new type of fishing and a new catch. Riesenfeld underlines the importance of the phrasing of the call but does not enquire into its meaning.

Three years ago, Patrick Andrist published a study listing an impressive register of manuscripts containing Christian literature against the Jews. One item in particular caught my eye, because it targets a wider range of opponents: it is an anonymous sermon against the Hagarenes, the Bogomils, and the Jews, and, more specifically, their hatred of the cross. This work, meant to be read on the third Sunday of Lent, has been preserved in one manuscript only: Athos, 388 (16th c.; 8°; 994 folios), a voluminous paper codex with various contents. The text, which runs from fol. 426r (431r), line 19, to 427v (432v), line 40, was written by a quick but rather inaccurate hand, as is shown by the numerous abbreviations, the presence of two lacunae, and the lack of quite a few initial capitals, which should have been added by the rubricator. The sermon is of unknown date, but the In exaltationem uenerandae crucis et contra Bogomilos of Germanos II, patriarch of Constantinople-Nicaea from 1223–1240, gives us a clue, as a major portion of lines 9–83 of our sermon can be found in this work (PG 140.621–44). In this article I present the editio princeps of the Greek text, accompanied by both an apparatus fontium and an apparatus criticus.

There is a large and growing number of people, both Catholic and Protestant, who are coming to recognize Karl Rahner, S.J., as the most important Roman Catholic theologian of the present period. While a number of books and articles on Rahner are beginning to appear, most of them are limited simply to expositing his position. What has yet to be done in a satisfactory way is to think through critically his relationship to and significance for the wider theological enterprise, that is, in terms of the interconfessional discussion (as well as in terms of current secular reflection upon general human experience). Rahner's work deserves such consideration, although, because of the fact that since the Reformation and Vatican I Protestant and Catholic thought have tended to develop independently of each other, it is difficult for one schooled sufficiently in Rahner's tradition to understand his work to understand Protestant thought sufficiently well to make a discussion meaningful, and the opposite situation is also the case. Without claiming exemption from this handicap, I should like to make a beginning at the sort of clarification and critical analysis that seems to me to be needed.

One of the most engaging personalities of that most engaging of Christian centuries, the thirteenth, is Brother Salimbene of Parma. His life, begun in 1221, five years before the death of Francis of Assisi and ended, probably, about 1288, thirteen years after the birth of Dante, connects the mystical, devotional, ascetic piety of the Middle Ages with the rational, individualistic, personal attitude of the modern mind. A devoted member of the Franciscan Order and acutely sensitive to its historic significance, he spends his life in its manifold activities, and toward the close sets himself to the congenial task of putting down in order the most vivid impressions remaining to him of the men and things he has had dealings with.

Commentators have long noted that God's commandment to Noah to bring all animals onto the ark exists in two intertwined versions in the biblical text. In the first version, Noah is told to bring two of every species: “And of every living thing, of all flesh, you shall bring two of every kind into the ark, to keep them alive with you; they shall be male and female” (Gen 6:19 nrsv). In the second version, however, the animal kingdom is divided into pure and impure species: “Take with you seven pairs of all pure animals, the male and its mate; and a pair of the animals that are not pure, the male and its mate; and seven pairs of the birds of the air also, male and female, to keep their kind alive on the face of all the earth” (Gen 7:2–3). Noah then sacrifices some of the pure animals and birds after the flood (Gen 8:20).

A small gem in the possession of Mr. Henri Seyrig, Director of the French Archaeological Institute in Beyrouth, may be briefly described as follows:

Obverse. Inscription in five lines, μέγα τὸ ὄνομα τοῦ κυρίου Σάραπις. Crescent moon under the last line.

Reverse. Inscription in six and a half lines,μεγάλη τύχη τῆς ἀνικήτον νεωτέρας. Star after the last letter.

Brown and dark green jasper. Upright oval, 18 × 13 mm.

The obverse inscription, without κυρίου, encircles a bust a Sarapis engraved on a jasper in the British Museum; see British Museum Quarterly, 11, 33-34. Several more examples, all omitting κυρίου, are cited by Peterson (Heis Theos, 208 f.). Almost all of them treat the name Σάραπις as indeclinable. Evidently the sentence is a common acclamation, which requires no further comment.

The inscription on the reverse, which has not been found elsewhere in just this form, needs closer examination.

Aristides 15, 1–16, 1 has been recovered from the British Museum Papyrus 2486, and was published by H. J. M. Milne in the Journal of Theological Studies, October 1923, pp. 73–77. Some conclusions may be arrived at by comparing J. R. Harris's translation of the Syriac into Greek, as found in Text and Studies, vol. i, p. 25, with the Greek of the papyrus.

In 1941 Charles Virolleaud published a small corpus of tablets commonly referred to as the Rephaim Texts because they apparently involve the Ugaritic forerunners of the Biblical rĕpāʽîm. The meaning of these texts is often obscure, but at least the following seems clear: the rp’m are invited to someone's house or palace; after three days' travel by chariot they arrive at the grnt/meṭʽt, usually translated “threshing floors/plantations,” though the exact significance of the expression is not really clear; finally, the rp’m spend seven days in eating and drinking. This much is a least common denominator shared by all interpretations. When we get to more specific details, however, we find disagreement among students of these texts. Most of the disagreements arise from the differing ways in which the identity of the rp'm is understood.

The following Armenian text of Athanasius's Letter to Epictetus is found in two manuscripts of the Mechitarists at Vienna:

A. Cod. 629, ff. 66a–73b, 19th century, notragir, copied from an 18th century archetype at Ispahan.

B. Cod. 648, ff. 102b–105b, paper, 14th century, bolorgir, without word division and badly worm-eaten.

The version is different from that published by Tajezi, and belongs to an Armenian corpus of Athanasian writings compiled early in the eighth century. I have added a collation with Ludwig's edition of the Greek, but have deliberately refrained from discussing at length its relation to other textual authorities.

It is now some fifty-two years since the first modern edition appeared of any part of Hephaistion of Thebes' compendium of astrology. The editor very properly collected in his introduction the scanty facts relative to the author and the unknown friend to whom he dedicates his work. But, apparently a little annoyed by the too positive assertion of Salmasius that all astrologers of that date were pagans, he put forth the hasty theory that this astrologer was a Christian. He had indeed no difficulty in proving that a somewhat unorthodox or lax Christian might have been a devotee of astrology at the time, about A.D. 381, when it is likely that Hephaistion wrote; but he went too far in the further statement that “das Werk des Hephaestion selbst bietet sicherlich keinen positiven Anhaltspunkt, dass der Verfasser desselben Nicht-Christ gewesen sei.” This has been echoed by later writers, as A. Bouché-Leclercq, who says “Il est possible qu'Hephestion de Thebes … fût chrétien,” and Fr. Boll, writing shortly before 1912, when a good deal more of our author had been printed in the C(orpus) C(odicum) A(strologicorum) G(raecorum). He sums up Engelbrecht's arguments, that the work begins σὺν θεῷ and is dedicated to one Athanasios, who is called ὁσιώτατος (and by other complimentary superlatives) and so may have been a Christian priest, concluding that the theory of the writer's Christianity is arrived at “wohl mit Recht.” As it seems to me remarkable that three learned men, of whom one had edited the astrologer and the others had certainly read him, should have overlooked the cogent evidence that he was a pagan, I think it worth while to set forth the proofs, positive and negative.

Judging from his relatively few surviving letters, Paul—whether as Jew or Christian—was a person with both outer and inner conflicts. We know much less than we would like about these external confrontations and inner struggles, but time and again his letters show evidence of his wrestling with one or another serious ambivalence. Actually, it is not often a present struggle that is portrayed or revealed, for Paul writes with a remarkable maturity and with the confidence of one who has moved well beyond the tossing and turning of a continuing inner struggle. Yet at times, most notably in Romans 9–11, Paul's simple statement of a mature judgment still evokes, in the very restating of his conclusions, the intensity of the original ambivalence and conflict. A further indication that Paul was this kind of person is found, if only incidentally, in his dialectical mode of thinking: if he mentions “death,” at once he thinks of “life”; if he refers to “flesh,” immediately “spirit” crosses his mind, or if he speaks of “slaves” or “slavery,” then “sons” or “freedom” is instantly present.

The time may appear to many persons inopportune for the launching of a Journal of Theology. The tide of theological interest may seem to have ebbed so low as to leave no channel for such a venture; the profession of the ministry fails to win recruits; the queen of the sciences is deposed from her throne; critics are announcing the rout of the theological schools. The machinery of the churches, it is true, revolves with energy, but it does not seem to be geared into the wheels of the working world; and the deliberations of the theologians are frankly regarded by great numbers of people with indifference, if not with contempt. A distinguished railway president, on being informed that a promising youth had undertaken the study of theology, remarked, “Why does not so gifted a man devote himself to something that is real?”

In this article I shall argue that Friedrich Schleiermacher found the self that Immanuel Kant lost. Two steps are necessary to support this argument. First, I shall demonstrate that Kant knew that he had lost the self. Second, I shall demonstrate that Schleiermacher knew that he had found the self that Kant had lost. I am aware that these two demonstrations will not actually prove that Schleiermacher did find the self that Kant lost. I believe, however, that if we understand why Kant thought that he had lost the self and if we understand the way in which Schleiermacher believed that he retrieved this self, we shall be better off. We shall have discovered a way to reach beyond the limits of our own mental constructs and affirm the unity and integrity of life itself.

The basis of theistic belief is fortunately broader than the theistic arguments. People believe in God before they argue in favor of His existence, and the fortunes of theism are not inseparably bound up with any of the arguments framed in its support. No one, however, who is interested in the rational basis of theology can be indifferent to the fate of an argument which, whatever the philosophical objections to be brought against it, has in all ages of the world made a powerful appeal to human reason.