Recent studies of Ignatius the bishop of Antioch have been fresh and varied, upon the whole. Some of his theological ideas have been reconsidered, as for example his conceptions of the Trinity by Jules Lebreton (Recherches de Science Religieuse, 1925, 97 f., 393 f.) and Loofs (Theophilus von Antiochien adversus Marcionem, 1930, 194 f.). His relation to the gnostic movement occupies H. Schlier's Religionsgeschichtliche Untersuchungen zu den Ignatiusbriefen (1929), and emerges in Lietzmann's Geschichte der Alten Kirche, I (1932, 251 f.) and Walter Bauer's Rechtgläubigkeit und Ketzerei im ältesten Christenthum (1934, 65 f.). The psychological interest crops up in Dr. Streeter's ingenious account of his attitude towards church-orders (The Primitive Church, 1929), while wider surveys are furnished by Dr. F. A. Schilling (Mysticism of Ignatius of Antioch, 1932) and Dr. Cyril Richardson (The Christianity of Ignatius of Antioch, 1935). These monographs represent an advance upon the old-fashioned practice of grouping Ignatius among the so-called ‘apostolic fathers,’ or of estimating him in the wake of a ‘mystical succession’ headed by the apostles Paul and John.

‘All heresies issue out of your midst,’ said Liutprand to the emperor and his court at Constantinople, and the statement was essentially correct. But he went too far in implying that they flourished without interference by the orthodox regime, so that it was left to the Latins to exterminate them in the course of their westward spread. One could draw up a fairly long catalogue of sects which are known to have existed on Byzantine soil for a time, only to succumb to official persecution or to become extinct in some unrecorded manner. Practically all of these have passed on leaving no tangible trace of their peculiar beliefs or practices, yet a study of any one of them offers the opportunity of filling in to some extent the picture of life in the variegated Eastern Empire. The subject of this study is the latest of the several sects which arose in Phrygia, and despite a brief and limited history, did not disappear without having an emperor credited to it, nor without perpetuating its name in the variants whereunder the gypsies are known in Europe to the present day.

Saint-cultus is an element which mingles in the subject-matter proper to historians, liturgiologists and archaeologists. Sometimes they are tempted to draw conclusions with regard to questions belonging to their own fields of study in dependence upon the estimate which they have formed of some hagiological situation. Only too often the hagiological situation differs in some way from their idea of it, and the conclusion which they have reached is accordingly unsound.

The subject for our annual conference this year — Ethics and Theology — forces us to face one of the most difficult problems of religious thought, — the relation between God and morality. To this problem several solutions — all quite familiar — have been proposed and it will not be the purpose of my paper to suggest a new one of my own. In fact, as the sequel will show, I am very uncertain whether any completely satisfactory solution to the problem be possible. My aim is the much less ambitious one of placing the matter, with some of its difficulties, before the Society for discussion, in the hope that your collective wisdom may be able to throw more light upon this dark theme than the Society's benighted president for this year — who is no theologian — is able to contribute.

One of the simplest and most popular modes of conceiving the relation between God and the laws of morality is to equate righteousness with obedience to the divine will. God is good, we are told, and our goodness is to be defined as conformity to the will of God. One relatively superficial and pragmatic difficulty in accepting this view consists in the obvious fact that it is by no means easy to know with certainty what the will of God may be. Different philosophers, different prophets, different religions give us different and sometimes quite contradictory answers to this question.

During the first two centuries of the Roman Empire, as the Principate slowly developed, certain qualities and attributes of the emperor tend to become personified or regarded as permanent elements in the character of the ruler: it may be Clementia, or Indulgentia, or Munificentia, it may be the Greek Philanthropia or Euergesia. In this way they tend to acquire a special meaning, or rather a complex of special meanings. Two such words are Providentia and Aeternitas, and the object of the present study is to review some of the evidence (it would be difficult to collect all) and elucidate the significance which the word Providentia or the word Aeternitas might convey to a citizen of the Empire in the second century.

The text is written on a single sheet of papyrus cut from a roll; a join runs down the centre, and others are visible on either side. Top and sides of the sheet are more or less intact, but it is broken off at the foot and there is nothing to indicate its original height. We may perhaps assume that it would not be much over 30 cm., in which case anything up to fifteen lines of writing are now lost. The writing, which is along the fibres on the recto, is a rather large and loose cursive. The formation of the letters is haphazard, initial letters being not merely enlarged but often eccentrically so (e.g. the δ at the beginning of lines 12 and 18 and the λ of line 16). In addition the scribe was apt to let his pen run dry, making it necessary for him to re-write the last few letters when he had taken a fresh supply, so that in these passages the papyrus has somewhat the appearance of a palimpsest.

The present article contains notes and discussions designed to discover the sense of or to obtain sense from a number of difficult passages in the Hebrew Psalter.

12.8: אתה־יהןח תשמרם תצךנו. Only the Pesh. agree with the M. T. in its very difficult confusion of persons; the LXX and the Eth. Vs. both have the plural first person and the Targ. has the singular third person. As the first person comes in rather abruptly, the third person may be accepted; moreover, it involves the least alteration of the text, as תשמרם can then be taken as the remnant of an unmodernized תשמרמו ‘thou wilt keep him,’ since this suffix often has a singular sense. The antecedent is of course the man described as יפיח לו ‘him at whom one puffs' in v. 6, and the obscurity of this expression may be responsible for the half-hearted attempt to change the suffix from the third to the first person.

Sir Frederick Kenyon, in the introduction to his edition of the Chester Beatty Papyrus, points out the strong affinity of the text of this papyrus with ‘that segregated by Canon Streeter and others…and identified by them with the text of Caesarea.’ The object of this article is to raise the question whether or no the same thing applies in the case of the Gospel of Luke. The difficulty of answering the question is caused by the relative scantiness of the MSS. authority for the Caesarean text in Luke as compared with Mark. Among the best authorities for the Caesarean text of Mark are W, 28, 565, and the Old Georgian version. In Luke, however, the Caesarean readings in these Greek MSS. are very scanty, and the text of the Adysh MS. of the Old Georgian is not yet available. Again, in the case of θ and 700, the Byzantine reviser has left fewer Caesarean readings in Luke (especially towards the latter part of the Gospel) than even in Matthew, and far fewer than in Mark.

In the manuscripts and versions of the New Testament, in lists of books accepted as canonical, and in the works of ecclesiastical writers the Epistle to the Hebrews occupies three different positions: (I) Among the epistles addressed to churches, i.e. after Romans, after 2 Corinthians, and very rarely after Galatians, Ephesians, Colossians, and Titus. (II) After 2 Thessalonians, i.e. after the epistles written to churches. (III) After Philemon, i.e. at the end of the Pauline canon. Each of these positions represents the usage of some particular section, or sections, of the Church; and each is significant for the history of the canon of the New Testament. No other epistle ascribed to the Apostle Paul has been so variously placed in the canon as Hebrews.

‘Two hundred years from now,’ exclaimed William James, in one of his characteristically enthusiastic moods, ‘Harvard will be known as the place where Josiah Royce once taught.’ The approach of the twentieth anniversary of Royce's death is an appropriate time at which to inquire whether the prophecy — making allowances for the exaggeration of James's friendly generosity — is in a fair way toward being fulfilled. Has Royce's work so far stood the test of time? Or must we say that as the experimental interest bequeathed by James increases the calm assurance of Royce's philosophy must decrease? And with the growing seriousness which practical issues assume have we time or inclination left for speculations about the Absolute? Has not the war destroyed our faith in the world's reasonableness and forced us to take a less indulgently ‘idealistic’ and more frankly ‘realistic’ view?

Often we say this, but as often we are forced to remind ourselves that the ‘realism’ in which we take pride may have the virtue of looking the immediate facts squarely in the face, but may lack the sustained critical power which is eager to face other facts than those which are immediate. In that type of realism which is content to ‘take things as they come,’ there is a suggestion of an inability to see why they come as they do. As pluralists and empiricists, appealing to what we call ‘immediate experience’ for our data, we may say that our world is shot to pieces and that it cannot be put together again. But as philosophers and religious men we cannot leave the matter here and believe that we have seen through our problem or seen our job through.