few years before the Ignatian Epistles, and the Shepherd' of Hermas, which belongs to a time somewhat after them, are alike without indications of the existence of a bishop in Rome. Dr. Lightfoot therefore believes that 'the episcopate, though doubtless it existed in some form or other in Rome, had not yet (it would seem) assumed the same sharp and well-defined monarchical character with which we are confronted in the Eastern Churches' (vol. i. p. 383).

Whatever the bearing of this phenomenon may be on the question of episcopacy, there is no doubt that it affords an argument of very great force for the early date of the Ignatian Epistles. The Bishop puts an unanswerable question when he inquires, 'What explanation can be given of this reticence [as to a Roman bishop] if the Ignatian letters are a forgery? What writer, even a generation later than the date assigned to Ignatius, would have exercised this self-restraint?' (ibid.)

It is plain that Ignatius, the bishop of a distant Eastern city, has the same conception of the importance and power of the Christian community at Rome which some country clergyman in old days might have entertained of the London congregations. It is easy for you, he thinks, to do whatsoever ye will. They would be able, by their interest in high places, to rescue him from the fate which was coming on him. And his greatest fear is that they may succeed in doing so' (Rom. i. ii.). Whether it is right of the saint to display such eagerness for death-whether he had a right to hinder any legitimate exertions which might be made to prolong his life—is a question which may be raised. But at least we may plainly see that Ignatius has nothing whatever of that desire for martyrdom, apart from earnestness of life, which afterwards displayed itself in some cases. His desire for death is due to the belief that death was for him the best way of glorifying God; and this does not appear to be necessarily a mistake. If Cyprian

once thought it his duty to save his life during a persecution, the time came to him afterwards when he thought it his duty to die; and it does not seem but that Ignatius may be right in his appeal,' grant me nothing more than that I be poured out as a libation to God, while there is still an altar ready;' 'Only pray that I may have power within and without, so that I may not only say it, but also desire it; that I may not only be called a Christian, but also be found one. For if I shall be found so, then can I also be called one, and be faithful then, when I am no more visible to the world. Nothing visible is good. For our God Jesus Christ being in the Father is the more plainly visible' (ibid. ii. iii.). He has no

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desire that any relics of him should remain; for he declares that he is God's wheat, ground by the teeth of wild beasts that he may be found pure bread. Rather entice the wild beasts that they may become my sepulchre, and may leave no part of my body behind, so that I may not, when I am fallen asleep, be burdensome to anyone. Then shall I truly be a disciple of Jesus Christ, when the world shall not so much as see my body. Supplicate the Lord for me, that through these instruments I may be found a sacrifice to God. I do not command you as Peter and Paul did. They were apostles, I am a convict' (ibid. iv.). He shows in these words a knowledge of the traditional connexion of SS. Peter and Paul with the Roman Church. And it is hard to see how anyone can deny that the same pen produced this passage and that in the letter to the Ephesians (cap. xii.) which declares that he knows who he is, and whom he is writing to he a convict, they fellows in the mysteries with Paul.'

He does not, in the ardour of his martyrdom, forget his bereaved flock at Antioch, but begs the Romans to remember in their prayers the Church which is in Syria, which has God for its Shepherd in his stead. 'Jesus Christ alone shall be its Bishop-He and your love' (ibid. ix.).

In the letter to the Philadelphians we return to the same tone of teaching which prevailed in the first three Epistles. There are the same exhortations to unity and the same persistent direction to find the centre of unity in the person of the bishop. In union with him alone, can the means of grace be truly enjoyed. 'Be careful to observe one Eucharist (for there is one flesh of our Lord Jesus Christ and one cup unto union in His blood: there is one altar, as there is one bishop, together with the presbytery and the deacons, my fellowservants), that whatsoever ye do, ye may do it after God.' In the words there is one flesh' Bishop Lightfoot correctly sees a reminiscence of 1 Cor. x. 17. 'We being many are one bread and one body.' Is it not also possible that the whole passage with its succession of 'ones' may be an application and extension of the 'one body and one spirit, one hope, one Lord, one faith, one baptism,' of Eph. iv. 4?

The Gnosticism with which Ignatius had to deal was mingled with Judaism, a compound which we also notice in the false teaching stigmatised in S. Paul's Epistle to the Colossians. And it is in this Judaic spirit that Bishop Lightfoot finds the explanation of a very difficult passage in Philad. viii.: 'I heard certain persons saying, "If I find it not in the charters I believe it not in the Gospel." The charters have by some

been taken to mean the original MSS. of the Apostolic writings which some required to see before consenting to believe. But it is much more probably expounded as referring to the Scriptures of the Old Testament: When I said to them "It is written," they answered me, "That is the question;" thus does the saint picture himself to us in argument with his opponents. It is hard to imagine a forger writing such a sentence. And here is Ignatius' expression of the characteristic difference between the Old Testament and the New: 'Good were the priests... But the Gospel hath a singular pre-eminence in the advent of the Saviour, even our Lord Jesus Christ, and His passion and resurrection' (ibid. ix.).

A happy piece of news has reached him since he wrote the Epistles from Smyrna. The persecution at Antioch has ceased, and the Church in that place has peace. The saint begs that a deacon may be sent from Philadelphia to congratulate the Syrian Christians. He lays extraordinary stress upon this suggestion, as an act of that Christian love which should bind in one the branches of Christ's family (ibid. x.).

One of the most noteworthy peculiarities of the Epistle to the Smyrnæans is the ascription to our Lord, after His resurrection, of the strange words: 'Lay hold and handle me, and see that I am not a dæmon without body' (Smyrn. iii.). Whence this citation is derived is a question which puzzled both Eusebius and S. Jerome. The latter believes that it is from the Gospel to the Hebrews, in which, however, he seems to be mistaken. The personal acquaintance of Ignatius with the Church of Smyrna appears in a list of salutations at the end, like those which conclude some of S. Paul's Epistles. At the head of these appears a message which has been made the foundation of theories as to the order of widows in the primitive Church. 'I salute the virgins who are called widows' (ibid. xv.). But Bishop Lightfoot, with great probability, explains the expression as denoting, not that women who had never been married were admitted into the order of widows, but that Ignatius considered the widows of the Smyrnæan Church to be virgins in their purity and devotion. We may observe in passing that we do not see any good reason why the Bishop's special Introduction to the Epistle to the Smyrnæans, should be on so much smaller a scale than the interesting prefaces which precede the other letters.

The Epistle to Polycarp holds the same place amidst the Ignatian letters, which the Pastoral Epistles have among the writings of S. Paul. It shows us the standard of duty which one who demanded so much reverence from the people for the

bishop, was disposed to set before the bishop himself; and it is a very high one. He is the bishop and overseer of his Church, or rather overseen by God the Father and Jesus Christ,' a correction which reminds us of Gal. iv. 9, 'ye know God, or rather are known of God,' and contains in it the deep-lying Christian principle that no godly acquisition of the believer's mind, and no godly act or ordinance of the Church at large, is sufficiently described when it is traced to human impulse, without mention also of that deeper source in God from which it originates. The following ministerial hint may be commended to the attention of clerics of all times: If thou lovest good scholars, this is not thankworthy in thee. Rather bring the more pestilent to submission by gentleness. All wounds are not healed by the same salve. Allay sharp pains by embrocations' (c. 2).

Widows are not to be neglected; meetings are to be held more frequently; slaves are not to be despised, but neither are they to allow themselves to grow proud, but to glorify God by doing better service than ever. And they are not to be cager to be ransomed out of the Church funds, that they be not found slaves of concupiscence. Evil acts (perhaps meaning magic arts) are to be avoided. The brethren and the sisters are alike to love their own wives and husbands. If anyone is able to abide in chastity to the honour of the flesh of the Lord, let him so abide without boasting. If he boast, he is lost; and if it be known beyond the bishop' (so Dr. Lightfoot renders, but others take it if he be known better than his bishop') 'he is polluted (Polyc. v.). And men and women about to marry, should ask the bishop's approval of their union.

The latter portion of the Epistle is addressed to the Smyrnæan Church, and shows that the whole letter was intended for public instruction as well as for the bishop's eye. The exhortation to send a delegate to Antioch is again urgently pressed, and Smyrna is requested to pass this request forward to the Churches which lie between it and Syria. Ignatius would have communicated to these himself were it not that his departure for Macedonia on the way to Italy cuts short his opportunities of letter-writing.

And so ends the series of the Ignatian letters. The critical reader can no doubt discover in them much subject of literary contempt. Yet when we think of the spirit they display, a spirit only to be described by the antitheses of which Ignatius himself is so fond, as worldly and spiritual, practical and enthusiastic, we see in them the stamp of a religion de

stined to victory. Here is a man who cares nothing for lifenay, is bent on losing it. Yet, instead of despising the earthly scene as one to be got out of and forgotten as speedily as may be, he regards the constitution of the earthly Church and the beliefs of man in his life below, as of intense importance. Such (as the saint himself is very conscious) is the temper which results from the Incarnation, by which the Eternal and the Earthly are united in one Person and one Faith; and we discern in the Epistles no unfit beginning of the long Christian history in which so many councils, so many books, and the work of so many lives have been devoted to the adorning of the Church on earth, as if earth were everything, and so many more to the spiritual world and the things beyond the grave, as if earth were nothing.

In conclusion, we must congratulate the Church of England upon a work which is not only an honour to its author, but to the community of which he is a ruler. Such trophies as these mark a solid progress in the Church's theological life, which keeps pace with her advances in practical energy, and both together offer to the world a reason for her maintenance and defence which is stronger than any amount of ingenious argument.

Letters from Hell, given in English by L. W. J. S., with a Preface by GEORGE MACDONALD, LL.D. (London, 1885.) The Spirits in Prison, and other Studies on the Life after Death. By E. H. PLUMPTRE, D.D., Dean of Wells. (London, 1885.)

THESE two books, different as they are in scope and in permanent value, testify alike to the absorbing interest and importance of that which Dean Plumptre calls this momentous question, compared with which all other controversies within the Church, that are now raging round us, sink into the category of the "infinitely little "' (p. 353), the Life after Death and the Eternity of Punishment. No one who is at all conversant with the opposition to the Faith, in its higher or lower forms, can be ignorant of the fact that nothing is more persistently brought forward in argument against Christianity than its teaching as regards Hell, or what is commonly sup