an analogous miracle is performed when the Bible is translated into languages that do not contain words to express many of its meanings, and it is understood by races that had no such ideas before. May we not carry the analogy further? Prophecy is God speaking through men to men, but His thoughts are higher than our thoughts. Necessarily, therefore, prophecy must always present difficulties to us: it calls for the exertion of spiritual intelligence on the part of the recipient; we have to learn a language which is foreign to us, conveying ideas which have had no previous part in us. Then at our last Meeting we had brought before us the unity of the spirit of prophecy from beginning to end of the book of Isaiah brought out in a wonderful fashion, and it was shown how God had revealed His purpose with mankind so many generations ago. Mr. GRAHAM supported the view of the Lecturer that God revealed through the prophet-not to the prophet-that which concerned His will in times to come. In its germinative nature prophecy was capable of various fulfilments. But the key to all was the knowledge of the intention of God to reveal Himself to the creature He made for the purpose by the incarnation of His only begotten Son. That purpose was apart from redemption, but as redemption had been made necessary by Adam's fall, so God's purpose was wrought out in it. Hence all prophecy must point to Jesus Christ, and will eventually find its full accomplishment at His coming again. Mr. SIDNEY COLLETT said: The Lecturer first told us that we were entirely dependent upon German theologians for a right understanding of the prophecies of the Bible. It is very difficult to comprehend how such a statement could be made, in view of the fact that it was that very German theology, which was probably more responsible than anything else for the lack of faith and materialism which was blighting our land to-day. No, the truth is, we are not dependent upon any human teachers in such matters. The Divine Author of the prophecies is also our Divine Teacher, see I John ii, 27: "The anointing which ye have received of Him abideth in you, and ye need not that any man teach you." "the Then, I could not agree with the Lecturer's remark that: writers of the Bible had more than their ordinary share of human failings!" It is true that the Holy Spirit, in His Word, has given us a Divinely faithful record of their lives, without any attempt at "hushing up" their faults, as a merely human writer would have done. But, that same Holy Spirit gives us their true character in II Peter i, 21, as "holy men of God"! Nor could I follow Mr. Clarke in, what seemed to be the essence of his Lecture, that prophecy was to be traced to some "insight" on the part of the prophets. This seems to me, if I may humbly say so, altogether wrong. For, in the first place, the prophets did not always understand their own prophecies! and apparently had, at times, to study their own writings, in order to understand the meaning of the Spirit's message through themselves. See I Peter i, 10, 11. But, more than that, we are clearly told in II Peter i, 21, just how prophecy did come, viz:-"holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost." And the word rendered "moved" really means swept along as by an irresistible torrent! which is the very opposite of anything in the nature of personal "insight." I am sorry to have to say that, as it seemed to me,-the Lecturer failed to give due importance to the work of the Holy Spirit in the inspiration of the Scriptures, and that lies at the very foundation of our faith. (See II Timothy iii, 16.) The Rev. JOHN TUCKWELL said: I am sure we must all be grateful for the very able paper to which we have just listened. At the same time there were one or two details upon which we could not all quite agree. 20. First of all, I do not think the Lecturer did full justice to II Peter i, The word which is rendered "private" ('ídios) means that which is "a man's own," and the word "personal" would beyond all dispute quite correctly represent it. The word rendered "interpretation" is nowhere else used in the New Testament. It is derived from the verb éλów, meaning "to release," "to loose," "to untie." The noun here used would thus carry in it the meaning of "a release," "a loosening," "a setting free," and in the matter of speech "an utterance," an expression." The sense of the passage is thus, "no prophecy of the Scripture is of any private or personal utterance." This is fully borne out by the next verse, which reads: "For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of 66 man, but holy men of God spake as they were borne up by the Holy Ghost." Again, I do not think the Lecturer made enough of the fact that prophecy in Scripture is distinctly represented as that which is supernatural and Divine. Moses in the book of Deuteronomy, xviii, 22, said "when a prophet speaketh in the name of the Lord, if the thing follow not, nor come to pass, that is the thing which the Lord hath not spoken." Scripture prophecy is thus something far more than the shrewd guess of a political prophet. We have an illustration in Daniel ii, where we are told how Nebuchadnezzar had a dream of the three great kingdoms that should succeed that of Babylon. After the last of these, we are told that "the God of heaven will set up a kingdom which shall never be destroyed," and we may be sure that that prophecy will be fulfilled, even as the prophecy of the preceding kingdoms was. This surely is supernatural knowledge, and not merely the foresight of political sagacity. A hearty vote of thanks was passed to the Lecturer, who replied briefly to the criticisms which had been made, and the Meeting adjourned at 6 p.m. 577TH ORDINARY GENERAL MEETING, HELD IN COMMITTEE ROOM B, THE CENTRAL HALL, THE VERY REV. HENRY WACE, D.D., DEAN OF CANTERBURY, VICE-PRESIDENT, TOOK THE CHAIR. The Minutes of the preceding Meeting were read and confirmed. The SECRETARY announced the election of Mr. F. T. Lewis as an Associate of the Institute. The CHAIRMAN said that the Rev. H. J. R. Marston, to whose thoughtful and eloquent addresses they had had the privilege of listening on previous occasions, needed no introduction to that Meeting. He would therefore, without further preliminary, ask him to give his address on "The Psychology of St. Paul." THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ST. PAUL. By the Rev. H. J. R. MARSTON, M.A., Rector of Lydford-on-Fosse, Somerset. I DEFINE psychology to be the science of the soul; or the ordered and ascertained knowledge of the facts of human consciousness. Perception, imagination, memory, appear to be the principal exertions of the faculties which we have within. Of these, imagination alone is not much noticed by St. Paul; indeed, there is perhaps only one passage in his recorded utterances which can be directly referred to this superb faculty. Christianity is not a school of psychology, yet it cannot fail to give a powerful impulse to that study. I may even hazard the opinion that Christianity created the atmosphere in which psychology breathes its most spontaneous and deepest inspirations. St. Paul was not a psychologist in the technical sense of that term; but his sympathy with the human frame in its mysterious inward working can be proved to have been profound and comprehensive. His handling of the problems of the soul can be proved to have been eminently sane, competent and masterly. To exhibit the method of St. Paul's psychology is the first object of this lecture. To argue from what we shall discover of his psychological gifts that he is a credible witness to certain wonderful experiences in himself and others, and so to demonstrate the truth of some points of his teaching, is the second object of my lecture. I cannot carry through this investigation without traversing some of the conclusions of what I may call the "Impressionist Interpreters" of St. Paul. Not without a touch of arrogance, they assert that until the present century St. Paul was not understood. They then proceed to reduce the apostle, who has according to them eluded the grasp of commentators from Jerome to Lightfoot, to the dimensions of a wandering Jew with an epileptic tendency and a mystical piety; a person strangely inadequate to have become the framer of the religious life of fifty generations. It is easy to see why these impressionists strive thus to reduce St. Paul. By that process they are able to reduce the supernatural to very meagre proportions. But by the same process they reduce the apostle to a figure strangely different from the noble personality with whom St. Luke has made us all familiar, and who may easily be discerned behind and within the epistles which he bequeathed to the Church. The materials on which they have to work are small and unsatisfactory, for the details of St. Paul's life are almost wanting until the time of his conversion. After that date he is the author of such fragmentary information as we do possess. I, therefore, prefer to take the apostle at his own valuation. I see him as he was: ecumenical and humane; large hearted, lofty in mind; blending with admirable sanity and poise elements in religion often thought to be incompatible. I discern in him the genuine author of the psalm of love, the man who was all things to all men, strong in weakness, in humility, at once teacher of nations and chief of sinners, the vessel of election and less than the least of all saints. This is the St. Paul of whose psychology I purpose to treat. The writings of the apostle furnish a fruitful field for this. inquiry. In the first epistle to the Thessalonians occurs the famous tripartite description of human nature as spirit, soul and body which attaches the teaching of St. Paul to the modern school of psychologists who insist so strenuously on the physical element in the science. In the seventh chapter of the Romans occurs the passage which, as an analysis of human experiences, stands alone in literature for depth and subtlety. But it is in the second epistle to the Corinthians that the psychological genius of St. Paul reaches the zenith. In this opinion I have the happiness to be supported by the learned Warden of Keble |