60 



THE REV. H. J. K. MARSTON, M.A., ON 



offering seems to foreshadow this, the skin of any man's burnt-offering 

 becoming the priest's who offered it; compare Gen. iii, 21, and 

 Lev. vii, 8, This is the best denied doctrine of Christendom. 

 So much for general remarks. 



That {see page 43, clause 4) " the Atonement is prior to 

 Christianity and wider than the Bible " is, I think, unquestionable. 



There are allusions in the book of Genesis to sacrifices and other 

 ordinances ; and the descendants of Noah must have carried away 

 with them traditions which they either lost by neglect or corrupted; 

 for I do not think that natural human ingenuity would ever have 

 discovered the doctrine of vicarious sacrifice. 



The reader (see page 45, clause 1), rightly says that " exegesis is 

 the key to theology " ; but (see page 45, clause 3) when he says " the 

 New Testament ought to have the first and the last word in this, as 

 in all religious enquiry, etc.," I must demur. 



Old and New Testaments have one author, God the Holy Spirit ; 

 and, until we have studied the Old, we cannot properly understand 

 the New. Further, the Old Testament was our Lord's and the 

 Apostles' only Bible ; its grammatical and idiomatic construction 

 are more in accordance with man's linguistic instincts than those of 

 Greek, and many of its idiomatic forms are, to coin a word, 

 " transverbated " into the New Testament Greek. Learned 

 expositors, ignoring this last fact, have been led into writing hopeless 

 jargon. 



In connection with this {see page 45, last line) is a reference to 

 " the stability of the laws of language, and especially of the Greek 

 language." What are these laws The Greek, and all other 

 languages but one, began at Babel, the seat of confusion, and 

 different languages have different laws. Chinese and Greek are 

 antipodean to each other in construction. 



In the same paragra23h (on page 46) it is suggested that " the books 

 of the New Testament should be studied with the grammar in our 

 hand." I suggest that for the words " the grammar " should be 

 substituted " a phrase-book of Hebrew idioms," which are, I believe, 

 much nearer the instincts of human expression of thought than the 

 elaborate and interminal^le inflections of Greek. 



I caimot go with the writer when he says {see page 48, clause 4) 

 " thus is effected an actual release from the habits and even from 

 the impulses of sni." It is important for a Christian to know what 



