ence or pauper dependence cannot command. It will also protect them against themselves, and the private intermeddling of individuals. The presiding elder being largely responsible for the appointments, as he now is not, it will be his duty to give them such information and advice as may be necessary to right

action.

5. The plan will also protect preachers and societies against whims and notions which unaccountably attach to all classes of men, however honest and good. We hear of but one solitary individual who claims to be exempt, and that is the pope of Rome. He assumes to be infallible. Whether he is so or not we need not decide. But our bishops make no such claim. They are good men, but liable to be affected by little things, and to err in judgment. A preacher was present lately when a friend expressed to one of them the great affliction he had imposed on a brother in the matter of his appointment. The bishop replied, "I have little sympathy for him, because of the report he made on periodicals." That bishop believed in our periodicals. Others are profoundly impressed with our missionary work, and estimate men by the amount of their missionary collections, which they are required to report in open Conference. Some believe so firmly in thorough education that they judge men largely by their diplomas, and see little to hope from young ministers who have not been through the discipline of the schools. Besides, bishops are liable to be affected by the speeches and votes of brethren in conference session, or their particular bearing in private life, so as to be more or less warped in stationing them.

This liability is recognized in all departments of responsibility, showing the danger of leaving great questions to the decision of one man. The incorruptible Sir Matthew Hale, chiefjustice of the king's bench, declined a small present from a rustic neighbor, lest it might influence him in court. The President of the United States is forbidden to receive a present from a foreign government on similar grounds. Nor is he allowed to appoint many of his subordinates without the approval of the Senate. In our courts we require twelve men to settle very small differences, and allow an appeal. And how careful our judges are in impaneling a jury to shut out improper influence, and secure a verdict strictly according to law and evi

dence. Our British brethren made rules long ago to exclude irregular intermeddling with their Stationing Committee, that they might not be diverted from fair and impartial conclusions. But we have no similar rules, and our bishops are exposed on every side, and are almost compelled to make some appointments they would not make were the elders authorized to share the responsibility of their decisions.

The same liability exists in presiding elders, and has sometimes led to great injustice to pastors and societies on their districts. Under the proposed rule each elder will be restricted by his colleagues in this particular, because they will have to share the responsibility of his action.

But some may say, the elders are now doing just what we propose. This is a mistake, though they may be trying to do it. One has lately informed me that he and his colleagues have nearly every thing arranged for the next Conference, five months hence. So they had a year ago, but I happen to know that at the "reading out" last spring they were disappointed, as were many of the preachers and people. And they will be again. The spirit is willing, but the authority is weak. Cases have occurred where the bishop blamed elders for making arrangements, and overthrew them for no other reason, as was believed, than that he was not consulted. A few more such things as have occurred may create a wider agitation. After all, was not the bishop right? According to the Discipline the elder had no business to meddle with the annual appointments. Presiding elders have nothing to do with them, except in the case of a bishop's absence, when they are associated with the Conference and authorized to "regulate" them.* The Discipline says nothing about his making them or helping to make them. It is, indeed, made his duty "to attend the bishop when present in his district, and to give him, by letter, when absent, all necessary information of the state of his district. bishops required to consult them on the subject. information elsewhere, if they prefer it, and they sometimes do, so that the elders are as much surprised at some appointments as are others. My suggestion is, that we endow them with certain powers in this connection, that they may help the bishops where they most need wise counsel and support.

Nor are the They can get

* Discipline, T 168.

Ibid., 171, § 7.

Is it said that usage gives them a part in the business, and that the bishops do call them together and consult them? We admit it, but the usage is entirely optional with each bishop in his own administration, and gives no rights or authority to the elders. Some bishops depend largely on them, while others know, or think they know, enough without their aid, especially in difficult cases. But is it safe to leave such important interests to them in their circumstances? We practically say it is not, in every other department; why not apply the same rule of common sense to this?

This subject appeals especially to pastors and churches. Bishops can but approve of the measure proposed unless they covet power, or perchance consider a bishop mysteriously endowed by God with extraordinary wisdom to control these supreme interests. As to more than five hundred presidents, professors, agents, teachers, chaplains, etc., among us, they cannot feel the pressure of the itinerancy indicated, because they make their own bargains, and only go where they please, and their appointment by the bishop is merely nominal, to allow them to occupy their positions without leaving their respective Conferences. But the pastors and churches have much at stake, and should give the subject their prayerful consideration. If they will properly ask for some such change as we have suggested, and use fair and Christian means to obtain it, holding for the present all other questions, however important, in abeyance, it will be granted. It is so reasonable that it would have been adopted years ago but for the fact that it was complicated with other changes of damaging tendency.

But if the pastors and churches are satisfied with things as they are I have no more to say, and will quietly take my seat, hoping to have the credit of being sincere though I may be in error.

ART. V.-THAYER'S GREEK-ENGLISH LEXICON OF THE NEW TESTAMENT.*

THE publication of this lexicon unquestionably brings in a new epoch for English-speaking students of the Greek Testament. With most of them it will doubtless soon supersede all others for constant use, and will thus enter as a powerful factor into all scholarly interpretation of the New Testament in England and America. It will affect commentaries, sermons, Sunday-school expositions, and other religious literature. It will be employed as a weapon in doctrinal controversies, as a key to unlock difficulties in exegesis, as the chief help to the critical understanding of the Greek Testament. During its shorter or longer supremacy as our leading New Testament lexicon it is sure to wield great power within its realm. And so, like the subjects of a new sovereign, we naturally inquire, with no little solicitude, into the history and qualities of this newest authority. Here it is with its broad, clear, regal pages; but what is its lineage, and what its character?

DEVELOPMENT OF GREEK LEXICOGRAPHY.

To rightly appreciate this lexicon and understand its marvelously composite character, it seems necessary to review briefly the origin and growth of Greek lexicography. Following the preface of this book is a list of about three hundred and forty ancient authors who are quoted or referred to in the body of the work. These names represent the extensive extant Greek literature which has been minutely examined during many centuries by countless scholars. The vast mass of lexical material thus laboriously accumulated has been arranged and rearranged in various ages and countries, in accordance with many plans and in different degrees of completeness, until

*A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament; being Grimm's Wilke's Clavis Novi Testamenti. Translated, Revised, and Enlarged by JOSEPH H. THAYER, D.D., Bussey Professor of New Testament Criticism and Interpretation in the Divinity School of Harvard University. Pp. xix, 726. New York: Harper & Brothers. 1887.

The thick, agreeably tinted paper, the distinct and wisely varied type, and the press work approach very near to practical perfection. Some might prefer a thinner paper, like that of the last edition of Liddell and Scott, and a little clearer marking of the secondary subdivisions.

gradually a genuine science of lexicography has been developed which within our own century has attained an excellence leaving little to be desired. No literary works have so good a claim to the well-worn illustration of the coral reef as the great lexicons, for their foundations have been built up by the patient industry of numberless, and for the most part forgotten, toilers.

The beginnings of Greek lexicography are doubtless to be sought in the glosses or explanations written here and there upon the margins of early manuscripts to explain obsolete or foreign words (yλwooa). Separate collections of these words, with their interpretations for convenience, formed glossaries, which were the rude germs of the later lexicons. The next step was the extension of their scope so as to include the more difficult Greek words, which were explained in the same language, with some consideration of synonyms. The explanation of foreign words in Greek or Latin introduced the practice which led to bilingual dictionaries. Here were the principles of the modern lexicon, but in completeness and arrangement the work was very crude. Although China puts in her claim to the earliest of dictionaries, and sets its date at about 1100 B.C., and rudimentary dictionaries have been discovered on ancient Assyrian bricks, yet modern lexicography recognizes its beginnings and development as thus directly connected with Greek and Latin literature. Worthy of special notice in this connection are the Latin Glossary of Varro, "the most learned of the Romans," which was dedicated to his contemporary Cicero; the famous Onomasticon of Julius Pollux, each of the nine books of which was inscribed to the author's imperial pupil and patron Commodus; the Greek lexicons of Phrynichus in the second century, Hesychius in the seventh, Photius in the ninth, Suidas in the eleventh, and Phavorinus in the sixteenth. With the revival of learning and invention of printing there arose a great demand for Greek-Latin lexicons, to which the early printers responded in a princely fashion. The crowning achievement of this period was the immortal Thesaurus Linguæ Græcæ of Henry Stephens. The publication of its five mammoth folio volumes (in 1572) led him eventually to bankruptcy and insanity. Hallam says of this work: "In comprehensive and copious interpretation of words,