A CONFERENCE QUESTION.

DEAR SIR,-Conference will this year be called upon to decide several subjects of much importance; but upon, no point will more. weighty results hang than upon that of the newly-proposed scheme for appropriating some or all of the "Educational Funds." Last. Conference the subject was discussed and referred to the Council to consider it in its legal aspect. The Council now propose certain modifications of rules so as to permit of some changes in this direction. The general idea of the change is that Conference should expend a part of all its funds for the education of poor children in the doctrines of the New Church, through and by means of a system similar to that which has been carried out for two years by the New Church Sunday-School Union. It is a part of the new scheme that Sunday schools as well as day schools shall henceforward participate in the beneficial expenditure of these funds. The essential point in it is that awards shall be made only upon results to be ascertained by written answers to graded questions set by the examiners. These awards may consist of money, or book, or other prizes, and certificates. I think all who have considered the question will agree that the results of the 1880 and 1881 examinations held by the Sunday-School Union prove that this is the best scheme yet devised for ensuring a thorough instruction of our scholars in the New Church doctrines. Yet, unhappily, out of our 6500 Sunday scholars in 52 separate Sunday schools, only 317 papers were worked by 19 schools. The teachers themselves cannot or do not yet take it up heartily. So long as this continues, our scheme, however admirable, will remain a comparative failure. Something is wanted to clear the way, and make it so inviting and reasonably easy as that every Sunday school and every day school in the Church shall heartily and fully enter into it and cooperate. Neither day-school teachers nor Sunday-school teachers generally are able to study and prepare these doctrinal and scriptural lessons with that fulness and method which is necessary to properly instruct classes for such examinations. The Morning Light weekly articles have partly met the want; but then it costs 1d. each teacher per week to obtain it, and even then the articles are but fragmentary and very brief.

What is now wanted is for Conference to provide suitable textbooks on the intended subjects for examination, and to supply schools gratuitously (or nearly so) according to applications. And why should not this be done from the "Education Funds"? They are sufficient. If the end is to be attained, the means must be provided. The experience of all who have been actually engaged in teaching proves that this is the present great want of the new movement, and the only question is, Who is to provide the supply? Private enterprise will not until the speculation is likely to pay. A very moderate expenditure (probably about £50) would provide in tract form one year's text-books; and these, if arranged so as to give the subject

matters of teaching in three grades, and upon a good method, might supply all that should be required by the examiners. These textbooks would at once multiply tenfold if not twentyfold the actual teaching done, and the papers sent in would probably be 3000 instead of 300.

Mr. J. A. Best of Birmingham originates the suggestion, and the last quarterly meeting of the Birmingham Society recommended Conference to adopt it; so that in some form or other it will surely be brought forward.

My object, Mr. Editor, in addressing you now is to draw attention beforehand to the subject, with a hope that difficulties may be more easily met, and time economized in the discussion.-Yours truly,

JOHN BRAGG. P.S.-Another part of the Birmingham recommendation is that money awards be made to day schools for passes, and book prizes or certificates to Sunday scholars.

THE REVISED GREEK TEXT OF THE NEW TESTAMENT.

DEAR SIR, The publication in the Intellectual Repository for July, and in Morning Light for July 2, of the address which it was Dr. Tafel's intention to have read at the annual meeting of the Swedenborg Society, opens a question of the greatest importance to us all. That question is not the fidelity or value of the Revised Version of the English New Testament, nor yet that of the accuracy of any emendations or alterations which the Revisers have introduced into the original Greek text, but it is that of the right of any man or of any body of men to attempt, upon the authority of the most ancient MSS. and versions of the New Testament which have been preserved, to restore just those readings which came from the pens of the sacred writers themselves. Any attempt to remove from the ordinary Greek text words or passages which have in one way or another crept in during the past eighteen centuries, and any effort to restore words or sentences which by the carelessness or ignorance of transcribers have been omitted, are to be discountenanced; since to do these things, with whatever motive, and with whatever result, is to add or take away "from the words of the book of this prophecy." Dr. Tafel has no hesitation in appropriating the awful condemnation of Rev. xxii. 18, 19, to every reviser of the Greek New Testament. Fearful indeed, then, must be the future lot of the Westminster company.

But, sir, if I understand Dr. Tafel at all, he puts forward, on behalf of the commonly-received Greek text of the New Testament, the claim of immaculate perfection. With any degree of knowledge as to the manner in which that text was formed, I cannot conceive of any rational mind conceding such a claim. The scholarly world outside the New Church abandoned the notion long ago. Never

perhaps was its impossibility more clearly shown than in the series of papers contributed by Mr. Noble to the Intellectual Repository fifty-six years ago. After the recent republication of those papers, I hoped we should have no more of a theory so completely exploded.

Perhaps, however, some of your readers who do not care to read so large a pamphlet as Mr. Noble's, may be glad to have a few facts briefly related which will help them to form a judgment upon this question. Those desirous of further information may be referred to the papers by Mr. Noble already mentioned, to Dr. Roberts' "Companion to the Revised Version," and, for still more minute information, to Dr. Tregelles' "Account of the Printed Text of the Greek New Testament."

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The first published edition of the Greek Testament was printed at Basle in the year 1516, and was edited by the illustrious Erasmus. The work of editing and printing this edition occupied less than six months. To use the words of Erasmus himself, it was rather tumbled headlong into the world than edited." The MS. authority used in the preparation of this edition was both very limited and comparatively modern. It is a recognised canon of all literary criticism that the modern MSS. of any work are vastly more inaccurate than those which were written many centuries earlier. Yet in the limited time during which Erasmus prepared his edition for the press he could not make the best possible use of the MSS. he did possess. For the Apocalypse he had only one mutilated MS., in which many verses were entirely wanting. In all such instances he himself supplied a Greek text by translating the passages from the Latin Vulgate into Greek. This was the case with the whole of the last six verses of chap. xxii. In other parts of the volume, also, he used the Latin Vulgate to supply what he supposed to be deficient in his MSS. Yet this edition of Erasmus is virtually the basis and foundation of that received text for which Dr. Tafel claims Divine authority and infallibility. Passages which have no authority whatever except the reverence of Erasmus for the Vulgate Version, have been perpetuated in the Textus Receptus to the present day.

It is quite true that the text of Erasmus' first edition was revised first by himself, and afterwards by others; still these revisions were never conducted upon any fixed principles; the alterations made were of the most arbitrary character, and the MSS. used of the modern class. The second edition of Erasmus was printed in 1519, and the third in 1522. Soon after this edition appeared the Complutensian Polyglot was published. The Greek text of the Apocalypse which it contains is far superior to that of Erasmus, although its editors had been actuated by the same regard for the Vulgate which animated him, and had also used it to supply the deficiencies of their Greek MSS. In the fourth edition of Erasmus he adopts in the Apocalypse no less than ninety readings from the Complutensian text to supplant the readings of his previous editions. "More corrections," says Tregelles, MIGHT have been made; but Erasmus seems to have

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forgotten what all the places were which he had himself turned into Greek ten years before to supply the defects of his MS. If it is wonderful," continues the same critic, "that he should have allowed such readings to remain, is it not still more wonderful that for three hundred years they have been repeated in the common editions, although their origin has been a matter of common knowledge?" The text of Erasmus was revised and reprinted by Robert Stephens, afterwards by Theodore Beza, and lastly in the two Elzevir editions. Who were the editors of the last is not known. For none of these editions were either ancient authorities or scientific revision called into requisition. Beza, indeed, possessed two MSS. of the sixth century, but made little if any use of them. Yet the Elzevir edition is the original of the Textus Receptus. When such vast claims are put forward for this text we are inclined to ask a few questions. Out of the vast multitude of cursive (modern) MSS. of the New Testament, no two of which agree in every place, what power or principle or instinct led Erasmus, and Stephens, and Beza to select precisely the fifty or sixty from which, and from which alone, an infallible text might be constructed? Since the Received Text has been derived from a considerable number of MS. authorities, amongst which, it is imagined, the Divine Providence has preserved the true reading of every passage, of one passage in one MS. and of another passage in some other, why did not Divine Providence preserve the true reading of every passage in one MS., and place upon that MS. some distinguishing mark? What power was it that led each of those mediæval copyists, from whose MSS. the revised text would in the course of time be formed, to inscribe the true text in those passages in which their individual copies would be followed, although they all differed, and even blundered, in other places? What power was it that guided Erasmus, and Stephens, and Beza in the selection of those readings by which they differed from each other, and by which it is supposed the last of them established the true text? What power was it that led Erasmus to use, in translating from Latin into Greek, precisely the words which John the apostle had previously used? If Divine Providence directed the selection of readings made by Erasmus, and Stephens, and Beza so as to produce a perfect text by their united labours, why did not Divine Providence accomplish the same end by the labours of one man? Finally, is it not a fact that Beza himself, from whose hand the Textus Receptus received almost its last touch, was often influenced in his selection of readings by his theological prepossessions?

I am not pleading, sir, for the perfection of what the Revisers have done. In many instances their judgment might have been modified, and even reversed, by a knowledge of the spiritual sense. The ground over which they have gone will have to be traversed by a company of revisers appointed by the New Church, and when that is done the question of various readings will not have to be ignored even by the scholars of the New Dispensation.

One or two inaccuracies in Dr. Tafel's address need a word of notice. He asserts that in the opening clause of the Lord's Prayer "the Revisers considered it their duty to alter the text of the Greek original in conformity with the ideas respecting heaven which prevail," etc. In this instance the Revisers have not altered the text of the Greek original. Amongst the instances which Dr. Tafel enumerates, in which he asserts that the Greek text has been altered, is John iii. 36, in which passage the Greek text has not been altered.

The reading in Rev. xv. 3, which Dr. Tafel says is required by the spiritual sense, is not to be found in any Greek MS., ancient or modern, and rests only on the authority of Erasmus' translation from the Vulgate.

The same remark applies to Rev. xxii. 6, in which Dr. Tafel again objects to the text adopted by the Revisers.-I am, dear Sir, yours faithfully, J. R. BOYLE,

COTTINGHAM, NEAR HULL, 7th July 1881.

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Periodical Literature.

WE have received from Brisbane in Queensland a series of papers from number 1 to 16, entitled the Telephone, a weekly journal of Christian spiritualism edited by a company of spirits and men. Among the spirit editors are Swedenborg, Clowes, Noble, and Hiller. We do not know whether among the men editors there are any New Church people. We have not seen any direct indication of it; and in one case when a spirit asks through a medium if any can inform him of the principles of Swedenborgians there is no reply, nor have we found any answer to the question in any subsequent number. Yet how should they be acquainted with Swedenborg and those who receive his teaching? Perhaps they have found these names in other spiritist publications with whom they may be a sort of stock-in-trade. The first number contains an introductory address from Emanuel Swedenborg. He is subsequently introduced to explain the difference between spiritism and spiritualism. In a general way those who believe in the literal sense of the Word, and who have confused notions respecting it, and all below them, are spiritists; while those who believe in the spiritual sense of the Word and in the higher views which it opens are spiritualists. Another still longer communication entitled "The Manifestation in the Flesh" gives a not unworthy view of the doctrine of the Incarnation; but we find that Swedenborg and the other New Church spirit editors all teach the universality of redemption, by which they mean the universality of salvation. Besides these spirit editors, which are the only ones named, Mr. Hyde and Mr. Presland are represented by quotations from their writings. Swedenborg by choice is disposed to limit his function to