contain a tautology, until we give to Swń (and to the verb v as well) the force which has been claimed for it here.

§ xxviii.—κύριος, δεσπότης.

THE distinction which the later Greek grammarians sought to trace between these words was this; a man would be deσTróτns, as respects his slaves (Plato, Legg. vi. 756 e), and therefore oikoδεσπότης, but κύριος in respect of his wife and children, who, in speaking either to him or of him, would give him this title of honor; "as Sara obeyed Abraham, calling him lord" (ÚρIOV AŮTÒV KANovoa, 1 Pet. iii. 6; cf. 1 Sam. i. 8; and Plutarch, De Virt. Mul. s. vv. Mikка κai Meyloтó). There is a certain truth in this distinction. Undoubtedly there does lie in kúpos the sense of an authority owning limitations,-moral limitations it may be— and the word implies that the wielder of this authority will not exclude, in wielding it, their good over whom it is exercised; while in SeoTÓTηs is implied a more unrestricted power and absolute domination, confessing no such limitations or restraints. He who addresses another as déσπOтα, puts a far greater emphasis of submission into his speech than if he had addressed him as kúpte. It was out of a feeling of this that the free Greeks refused this title of SeoTórns to any but the gods (Euripides, Hippol. 88: ǎvaş, Oeoùs yàp δεσπότας καλεῖν χρεών); and the sense of this

distinction of theirs we have retained in our use

6

of despot,' 'despotic,'

despotism,' as set over against our use of lord,' 'lordship,' and the like; the 'despot' is one who exercises not dominion only, but domination.

Still, there were influences at work, tending to break down any such distinction as this. Slavery, however legalized, is so abhorrent to men's inborn sense of right, that they seek to mitigate, in word at least, if not in fact, the atrocity of it; and thus, as no southern Planter at the present day willingly speaks of his "slaves," but prefers some other term, so in antiquity, as far as any gentler or more humane view of slavery obtained, and it was not contemplated merely in the aspect of one man's unlimited power over another, the antithesis of δεσπότης and δοῦλος would continually give place to that of κύριος and δοῦλος. The harsher antithesis would still survive, but the milder would prevail side by side with it. So practically we find it; one language is used as freely as the other; and often in the same sentence both terms are employed (Philo, Quod Omn. Prob. Lib. 6). We need not look further than to the writings of St. Paul, to see how little, in popular speech, the distinction of the grammarians was observed. Masters are now κúρioι (Eph. vi. 9; Col. iv. 1), and now deσTóтаι (1 Tim. vi. 1, 2; Tit. ii. 9; cf. 1 Pet. ii. 18), with him.

But, while all experience shows how little sinful man can be trusted with absolute unrestricted power over his fellow, how certainly he will abuse.

it-a moral fact attested in our use of despot' as equivalent with 'tyrant,' as well as in the history of the word 'tyrant' itself—it can only be a blessedness for man to think of God as the absolute Lord, Ruler, and Disposer of his life; since with Him power is never disconnected from wisdom and from love: and, as we saw that the Greeks, not without a certain sense of this, were well pleased to style the gods Seoπóraι, however they might refuse this title to any other; so, within the limits of Revelation, we find SeoTÓTηs, no less than Kúpιos, applied to the true God. Thus in the Septuagint, at Josh. v. 14; Prov. xxix. 25; Jer. iv. 10, and elsewhere; while the occasions on which God is styled deoπórns in the N. T. are these Luke ii. 29; Acts iv. 24; Rev. vi. 10; 2 Pet. ii. 1; Jude 5. In the last two it is to Christ, but to Christ as God, that the title is ascribed. Erasmus, indeed, with that latent Arianism, of which, perhaps, he was scarcely conscious to himself, denies that, at Jude 5, Seσπóτην is to be referred to Christ; giving only kúptov to Him, and SeoTÓTηy to the Father. The fact that in the Greek text, as he read it, Ocóv followed and was joined to deσπóτην, no doubt really lay at the root of his reluctance to ascribe the title of SeσTÓTηs to Christ. It was with him not a δεσπότης philological, but a theological difficulty, however he may have sought to persuade himself otherwise.

There cannot be a doubt that, in agreement with all which has been said, SeoTTÓTηs did express on the lips of the faithful who used it, even more than

Kúpios, their sense of God's absolute disposal of his creatures, of his autocratic power, so that "He doeth according to his will in the army of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth" (Dan. iv. 35). That to Greek ears it conveyed an impression of this kind is evident from a passage in Philo (Quis Rer. Div. Hær. 6), where he finds an evidence of Abraham's evλáßeia, of his tempering, on one great occasion, boldness with reverence and godly fear, in the fact that in his approaches to God he forsakes the more usual kúpɩe, and in its stead adopts the SéσTоra, in which there was implied a more entire prostration of self, an ampler recognition of the omnipotence of God.

§ xxix.— ἀλαζών, ὑπερήφανος, ὑβριστής.

THESE words occur all three of them together at Rom. i. 30, although in an order exactly the reverse from that in which it will be here found most convenient to consider them. They offer an interesting subject for synonymous discrimination; the aλaçov being, as we shall find, boastful in words, the ὑπερήφανος proud in thoughts, the ὑβριστής insolent and injurious in acts.

And first, as respects aλačov. This word occurs in the N. T. only in one other place (2 Tim. iii. 2) besides that already referred to; aλaçoveía also twice, Jam. iv. 16; 1 John ii. 16. Derived from

aλn, 'a wandering about,' it was applied first to vagabond mountebanks, conjurors, quacksalvers,

and exorcists (Acts xix. 13; 1 Tim. v. 13; Lucian, Revivisc. 29 : ἀλαζόνες καὶ γόητες), who were full of empty and boastful professions of cures and other feats which they could accomplish; being from them transferred to any braggart or boaster, vaunting himself to be in possession of skill, or knowledge, or courage, or virtue, or riches, or whatever else it might be, which had no existence in fact. Thus Plato defines ἀλαζονεία to be ἕξις προσποιητικὴ ἀγαθῶν μὴ ὑπαρχόντων: while Xenophon (Cyr. ii. 2. 12) describes the αλαζών thus: ὁ μὲν γὰρ ἀλαζὼν ἔμοιγε δοκεῖ ὄνομα κεῖσθαι ἐπὶ τοῖς προσποιουμένοις καὶ πλουσιωτέροις εἶναι ἤ εἰσι, καὶ ἀνδρειοτέροις, καὶ ποιήσειν, ἃ μὴ ἱκανοί εἰσι, ὑπισχνουμένοις· καὶ ταῦτα, φανεροῖς γιγνομένοις, ὅτι τοῦ λαβεῖν τι ἕνεκα καὶ κερδᾶναι ποιοῦσιν ; and Aristotle (Ethic. Nic. iv. 7. 2) : δοκεῖ δὴ ὁ μὲν ἀλαζὼν προσποιητικὸς τῶν ἐνδόξων εἶναι, καὶ μὴ ὑπαρχόντων, καὶ μειζόνων ἢ ὑπάρχει.

:

It is not an accident, but of the essence of the ἀλαζών, that in his boastings he overpasses the limits of the truth (Wisd. ii. 16), as appears plainly from Aristotle's description of him, who nowhere ascribes to him merely the making unseemly display of things which he actually possesses, but the vaunting himself in those which he does not possess; cf. Rhet. ii. 6: τὸ τὰ ἀλλότρια αὑτοῦ φάσκειν, ἀλαζονείας σημεῖον : and Xenophon, Mem. i. 7. Thus, too, Plato (Pol. viii. 560 c) joins ψευδείς καὶ ἀλαζόνες λόγοι: and we have a lively description of the aλalov in the Characters (23) of Theophrastus ; and, still better, of the shifts and