would have dared to outrage public opinion to such an extent in the Middle Ages. It is evident, then, that the Ghetto theory is not borne out by history.

One of the main deniers of the classical learning of St. Paul, Archdeacon Farrar, in an able Excursus appended to his Life of St. Paul, proves, or at all events renders exceedingly probable, an intimate acquaintance on the part of St. Paul with all the rules of the Greek rhetorical teachers. But being taught in the schools of rhetoric implied a knowledge more or less full of Greek literature. The late Dr. Hatch, in his Hibbert Lecture, makes this plain in his chapter on Greek education. In fact, to a great extent, rhetoric was taken up with the study of the classic models of style. The a priori probability, then, distinctly is that Paul had a fair acquaintance with Greek literature. If it did not tincture his style more, that might easily be because the style of his Epistles is due to his amanuensis. No one can fail to observe the differences in style which separate the Epistles of the first imprisonment, Ephesians, Philippians, and Colossians, from Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians on the one hand, and from the pastoral Epistles on the other. Galatians is certainly autograph, and resembles more the earliest group of Epistles, yet it differs somewhat even from them.

But it is objected that if the Apostle had been acquainted with Greek literature he would have made many more quotations than he has. He has made three, as we all know. One in his speech on Mars Hill, Tоû yàp кai γένος ἐσμέν. The next is in 1 Cor. xv. 33, φθείρουσιν ἤθη χρῆσθ ̓ ὁμιλίαι κακαί. The last is in Titus i. 12, Κρῆτες ἀεὶ ψεύσται κακὰ θηρία, γαστέρες ἀργαί. But are these quotations so much fewer than might have been reasonably expected? Are busy men given to make frequent quotations from the poets in their ordinary correspondence? We, for our part, do not think so.

But such a thing need not be left to opinion. Let us take what may be regarded as fairly near equivalent to the Apostle's position; let us take collections of letters of people whose ordinary language was English, and see how many quotations are made from English poetry by the writers. In 1766 were published three octavo volumes, 1,240 pages, called Swift's Correspondence; they contain not only letters from Swift, but letters to Swift from Prior, Gay, Arbuthnot, Pope, Harley, and Bolingbroke. The whole space covered is about nine times the whole of the Pauline letters and speeches. If we exclude references to works by the correspondents, as, for instance, Gay's Beggar's Opera, and Pope's Dunciad, and to epigrams sent by one littérateur to the others, there are no quotations, and only three references. The contemporary writings of these littérateurs had not assumed the position of classics, and were referred to more from friendship to the writer than from reverence for their literary merit. So far as I can find, there are only two references to Shakespeare, and no quotations from him or any other author. Surely no one will assume that it was ignorance of literature that kept Bolingbroke or Harley, Gay or Arbuthnot, from making quotations.

But it may be said that, to some extent, these were fugitive productions, though Swift had preserved them and copies of many of his answers: in

that case, let us take Newton's Cardiphonia. This collection of letters extends to rather more than four times the size of the Pauline writings, and the number of quotations from literature is sixteen, almost entirely from Milton. This is a larger proportion of quotations than are in Paul; but we must remember that Paul had no Milton to quote from. It is true there was Ezekiel, the Jewish-Greek dramatist; but his dramas had as little claim to literature as have Ralph Erskine's Gospel Sonnets.

But further, the Pauline Epistles were written by one who had on him continually the care of all the Churches. The real parallel to the letters of Paul must be found in the correspondence of some of our bishops. A friend took the trouble to look on my behalf through the letters contained in the first volume of the Memoirs of Archbishop Tait, and in these letters there was not a single quotation from an English poet. Would it be fair to argue that the Archbishop had less knowledge of English literature, and less interest in it, than John Newton?

On the other hand, it may be argued that most of Paul's Epistles are really sermons. This is, to a great extent, true in regard to most of the Epistles to all, except the pastoral Epistles and that to Philemon. No one will venture to say that the late Cardinal Newman was ignorant of English literature, or was out of sympathy with it. I will take a volume of his Parochial and Plain Sermons. The volume I take up is the third of the "Silver Library Edition." I read over the whole volume, and I find only one phrase that is taken from an English poet. Archdeacon Farrar seems to regard the want of quotation from the Greek poets as being made more emphatic by comparison with the relative frequency of Paul's quotations from the Hebrew Scriptures; but Cardinal Newman excels St. Paul in the frequency of his Scriptural quotations. Yet, in a space of three or four times the whole of Paul's writings and speeches, Cardinal Newman, who has sometimes as many as six quotations of Scripture in a page, has only one quotation from an English poet. But if it be maintained that these are parochial and plain sermons, it may be answered that Paul's audience, so far as literary culture was concerned, save at Mars Hill and when he was before Agrippa, was generally less cultivated than Cardinal Newman's would be.

But we can take a volume of Professor Maurice's Lincoln's Inn Sermons. In that case there was a cultivated audience to be prepared for. When I take a volume of these sermons, I find that three quotations are enough for a volume slightly less than that of Cardinal Newman.

So far, then, as the rarity of quotation is concerned, there really is no proof that Paul was unacquainted with Greek literature. But it is argued the few quotations he makes are trite and commonplace. This may apply to the passage 1 Cor. xv. 33, "Evil communications corrupt good manners.' is quoted, it seems, from the Thais of Menander, which is known only by fragments, but Clemens Alexandrinus quotes the passage as from a tragedian, and Socrates attributes the passage to Euripides without giving references. It is a sentiment that might appear again and again, and may have been a proverb before it was put into verse.

No one can say that the quotation on Mars Hill is trite. But it is

answered, It must be trite because it occurs in two poets, Aratus and Cleanthes. A recent writer has endeavoured to demonstrate that many of Tennyson's finest things were echoes from earlier poets, but no poet was less trite than Tennyson. But further, St. Paul seems to be as thoroughly aware as his modern critics that this special sentence had been echoed by more than one of the Greek poets. What he says is, "As certain of your own poets have said,” ὡς καί τινες τῶν καθ ̓ ὑμᾶς ποιητῶν εἰρήκασι. That seems to imply a somewhat full knowledge of Greek literature. Archdeacon Farrar imagines that Paul, having been led to look at some anthology of Hymns to Zeus, came, as it were, by accident on this phrase. But it is an exact quotation from the poem of Aratus, his own countryman, and only by accommodation is brought from Cleanthes. Paul, then, must have known both Aratus and Cleanthes, though they were poetæ minimi.

As to the quotation in the pastoral Epistles, it is quite true that the first part of the quotation is trite. Eubulides had made his famous puzzle from the first three words, Κρῆτες ἀεὶ ψεῦσται. If Paul had stopped after quoting these three words, there would have been no proof that he knew anything of the poem from which the quotation was made, or of the poet who had written it. Paul, however, does go on, and, moreover, describes Epimenides with scrupulous accuracy as a prophet. Any one who reads Diogenes Laertius may see that the fame of Epimenides was much more as a prophet than as a poet or a wise man. Although the first three words are trite, as we have said, the rest of the quotation is not. Were a person to quote, "A thing of beauty is a joy for ever,

he would give no proof of a knowledge of the poetry of Keats; but if he added, "Its loveliness increases, it will never Pass into nothingness,'

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we must conclude the probability to be great that he has read at least 'Endymion." By parity of reasoning may we not argue Paul to have been acquainted with the poetry of Epimenides?

If an Indian Baboo" were to introduce a quotation from Addison with the statement, "One of themselves-a Secretary of State, too-said so and so," it would be naturally argued that the writer knew something of English literature. Paul knew that in the technical sense of the word Epimenides was regarded as a prophet-that is to say that he was an interpreter of the will of the gods. Even in the more limited sense of the word, prophet Epimenides might be called so, for tradition recorded instances of his foretelling what was to come. If, in addition to this, our "Baboo can say that a certain phrase occurs in more poets than one, we should say his knowledge of literature was demonstrated.

Further, a scholar manifests his scholarship not by interlarding his speech with quotations, but by suiting his quotations to a nicety to the situation. I think we can claim that Paul does this. On Mars Hill, addressing an audience of Stoics and Epicureans, he quotes the philosophic poets Aratus and Cleanthes; in writing to Titus, he quotes a Cretan poet, and describes him with scrupulous accuracy. Indeed, we may even see a suitability in quoting from a comedy named from a famous Hetaera when writing to Corinth, a city that enjoyed such a notoriety from its Hetaera.

506

EXPOSITORY THOUGHT.

THE FIRST PSALM.

BY REV. C. D. GINSBURG, LL.D.

THIS Psalm describes the ultimate happiness of the righteous and the misery of the wicked, thus depicting a condition of things when the Jewish community was divided into two classes. Being one of the only four Psalms in the first book of the Psalter, viz., Ps. i.-xli., which have no inscription (the other three Psalms are ii., x., xxxii.), its author and date cannot be ascertained. From its contents, however, it is manifest that it was written at a time when the Jewish nation was divided into two parties-the smaller and unpopular party, who adhered to their ancestral institutions, and who regarded the Divine Law as their rule of faith and source of ultimate happiness, in spite of temporal disadvantages and the derision of their neighbours; and the larger and more popular party, who regarded the Mosaic Law as antiquated, who revelled in luxury and merriment, defying the religion of their fathers. The theme of this Psalm, therefore, is the summum bonum which greatly exercised the mind of the Jews after they came in contact with, and were influenced by, the culture of foreign nations. Nothing can be inferred from Jer. xvii. 5-8 as to the date of the composition of this Psalm, since it is difficult to decide whether Jeremiah's words are an embellished paraphrase of Ps. i. 2-4, or whether the latter is a more concise and poetical form derived from the prophet in question. Indeed, it is more probable that the two descriptions are independent of each other, since the imagery also occurs in other parts of the Scriptures (comp. Ezek. xlvii. 12), as well as in extracanonical writings.

The form of the Psalm is didactic, and exhibits synonymous parallelism, which, however, is not uniformly carried out. The Psalm is divisible into two unequal strophes the first (ver. 1-3) the conduct and happiness of the righteous, and the second (ver. 4-6) the destruction of the wicked.

1. Blessed is the man. Better, happy is the man. The Hebrew word (ashre) is, properly, a plural noun in construction with the following genitive. This noun, which never occurs in the singular, like many other plurals, is used to denote the abstract, i.e., the happiness of the man. In these constructions, however, as is not unfrequently the case with substantives, the noun takes the place of the verb. As it is always applied to men and is quite different from another expression (baruch), which is also translated blessed, but which is ascribed also to God and man (comp. Gen. ix. 26 with xiv. 19; Ps. xxviii. 6, xxxi. 21 [22], with cxv. 15, exviii. 26), it is better to indicate in the translation the difference between these two words, especially as both the Authorized Version and the Revised Version give the rendering "happy is the man" in three passages where

(ashre), the word in question is used, (comp. Ps. cxxvii. 5, Prov. iii. 13, xxviii. 14). It is to be remarked that the exact phrase only occurs once more in the Hebrew Scriptures, and that also in the Psalms (cxii. 1), where, however, the genitive (i.e., man) is without the article. The usual genitive, however, by which ashré (N) is followed to express the phrase "happy is the man" in the Psalms, and which is peculiar to this book, is not ish (), but ha-gaber (7217). It is this expression which occurs

four times (xxxiv. 8 [9], xl. 4 [5], civ. 12, cxxvii. 5) and is translated in the first three passages "blessed is the man," and in the fourth is rendered by "happy is the man"-a needless variation exhibited both in the A.V. and in the R.V. The phrase is not an exclamation, i.e., “O the happiness of," &c., but the recognition of a fact, i.e., "happy is," &c. The ancient Jewish sages already pointed out that the expression, ashré, connects the Psalter with the Mosaic Law. Moses concludes his farewell benediction with "happy art thou" (Deut. xxxiii. 29), whilst David begins the Psalter with this very expression (Galhut on Ps. i. 1). That which Moses pronounces of the whole nation, David brings home to every individual.

That walketh not, or that hath not walked, as in the Prayer-Book Version. The Hebrew verb has no special form to indicate whether it is past, present, or future. The action is described as completed or commencing and in progress-perfect or imperfect. Both these principal tense forms or moods, however, are often used to express general truths known by experience as having regularly taken place in the past, or as continually recurring, and are often represented in English by the present tense. Hence the time of an action must be determined by the context (comp. Ps. x. 3). The Psalmist contrasts here, as we said above, the two classes into which the people of his days were divided; the new and popular school who despised the Mosaic Law, deriding the wisdom of their ancient fathers as antiquated, and the small, old orthodox class, who clung to the ancient Law, regarding it as the source of all wisdom and happiness. In thus contrasting them the Psalmist refers to the custom which prevailed in his time, and which still obtains to this day in the East. In the East, where dwellings are very small, and where the heat during the day is very great, the people congregate in public thoroughfares towards the evening. Here some walk up and down consulting together about the questions which agitate them; others stand together in groups on the pathways, whilst others again sit together in casinos merrymaking and mocking. Happiness, however, is not to be found in the hilarity of these ungodly multitudes, but among those who do not join in their walks, gatherings, and places of resort. Accordingly the three verbs, walketh, standeth, and sitteth, are descriptive of the usual manner in which this multitude employed their time; whilst the three nouns, ungodly, sinner, and scornful, exhibit no gradation in sin, but are simply a necessity of the rhythm, being in parallelism with the three verbs as well as with the three modes of spending their leisure, viz., in consultation, on the pathway, and in the place of resort. It is to be remarked that whilst the words