of these. For it should never be forgotten that ȧyán is purely a Christian word, no example of its use occurring in any heathen writer whatever; the utmost they attained to here was φιλανθρωπία and piλadeλpía, and the last indeed never in any sense but as the love between brethren in blood. This is Origen's explanation in an interesting discussion on the subject, Prol. in Cant. vol. iii. pp. 28-30. But the reason may lie deeper than this. "Epws, like so many other words, might have been assumed into nobler uses, might have been consecrated anew, despite of the deep degradation. of its past history; and there were beginnings already of this, in the Platonist use of the word, namely, as the longing and yearning love after that unseen but eternal Beauty, the faint vestiges of which may here be everywhere traced. But in the very fact that epws did express this yearning desire, this longing after the unpossessed (in Plato's

1 On the attempt which some Christian writers had made to distinguish between 'amor' and 'dilectio' or 'caritas,' see Augustine, De Civ. Dei, xiv. 7: Nonnulli arbitrantur aliud esse dilectionem sive caritatem, aliud amorem. Dicunt enim dilectionem accipiendam esse in bono, amorem in malo.' He shows, by many examples of 'dilectio' and 'diligo' used in an ill sense in the Latin Scriptures, of 'amor' and 'amo' in a good, the impossibility of maintaining any such distinction.

2 I cannot regard as a step in this direction the celebrated words of Ignatius, Ad Rom. 7: ò èμòs épws éσraúpwral. It is far more consistent with the genius of these Ignatian Epistles to take pws subjectively here; "My love of the world is crucified," i. e. with Christ, rather than objectively: "Christ, the object of my love, is crucified."

exquisite mythus, Symp. 203 b, "Epws is the child of Пevía), lay the real unfitness of the word to set forth that Christian love,' which is not merely the sense of need, of emptiness, of poverty, with the longing after fulness, not the yearning after an invisible Beauty; but a love to God and to man, which is the consequence of God's love, already shed abroad in the hearts of his people. The mere longing and yearning, which epws at the best would imply, has given place, since the Incarnation, to the love which is not in desire only, but also in possession.

§ xiii.—θάλασσα, πέλαγος.

6

áλaoσa, like the Latin 'mare,' is the sea as contrasted with the land (Gen. i. 10; Matt. xxiii. 15; Acts iv. 24). IIéλayos, closely allied with Πέλαγος, πλάξ, πλατύς, Tλá, πλaтús, plat,' plot,' flat,' is the level uninterrupted expanse of open water, the altum mare,'' as distinguished from those portions of it broken by islands, shut in by coasts and head

1 Gregory Nazianzene (Carm. ii. 34. 150, 151): Πόθος δ ̓ ὄρεξις ἢ καλῶν ἢ μὴ καλῶν,

Ἔρως δὲ θερμὸς δυσκάθεκτός τε πόθος.

2 It need not be observed that, adopted into Latin, it has the same meaning:

Ut pelagus tenuere rates, nec jam amplius ulla
Occurrit tellus, maria undique et undique cœlum.
Virgil, En. v. 8, 9.

lands.' Breadth, and not depth, save as quite an accessory notion, and as that which will probably find place in this open sea, lies in the word. Thus the murmuring Israelites, in Philo (Vit. Mos. 35), liken to a Téλayos the illimitable sand-flats of the desert; and in Herodotus (ii. 92), the Nile overHowing Egypt is said πελαγίζειν τὰ πεδία, which yet it does not cover beyond the depth of a few feet. A passage which illustrates well the distinction between the words, occurs in the Timæus of Plato (25 a, b), where the title of Téλayos is refused to the Mediterranean sea; that is but a harbour, with the narrow entrance between the Pillars of Hercules for its mouth; only the great Atlantic Ocean beyond can be acknowledged as ἀληθινὸς πόντος, πέλαγος ὄντως, And compare Aristotle, De Mun. 3; and again, Meteorol. ii. 1: ῥέουσα δ ̓ ἡ θάλαττα φαίνεται κατὰ τὰς στενότητας [the Straits of Gibraltar], εἴπου διὰ περιέχουσαν γῆν εἰς μικρὸν ἐκ μεγάλου συνάγεται πέλαγος.

It might seem, at first sight, as if this distinction did not hold good on one of the only two occasions upon which the word occurs in the N. T., namely Matt. xviii. 6: "It were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea" (кal Kaтα(καὶ καταποντισθῇ ἐν τῷ πελάγει τῆς θαλάσσης). But the

1

1 Hippias, in Plato's Gorgias (338 a), charges the eloquent sophist, Prodicus, with a φεύγειν εἰς τὸ πέλαγος τῶν λόγων, ἀποκρύψαντα γῆν, which last idiom reappears in the French 'noyer la terre,' applied to a ship sailing out of sight of land; as indeed in Virgil's 'Phæacum abscondimus urbem.'

sense of depth, which undoubtedly the passage requires, is here to be looked for in the KaTAποντισθῇ:—πόντος, which indeed does not itself occur in the N. T., being connected with Bábos, Béveos, perhaps the same word as this last, and implying the sea in its perpendicular depth, as Téλayos (=' æquor maris'), the same in its horizontal dimensions and extent.

§ xiv.—σκληρός, αὐστηρός.

IN the parable of the Talents (Matt. xxv.), the slothful servant charges his master with being OKλnpós, "an hard man" (ver. 24); while in the σκληρός, corresponding parable of St. Luke it is avσrnpós, 99 an austere man (xix. 21), which he accuses him of being. It follows that the words are to a certain degree interchangeable but not that their meanings run exactly parallel throughout. They will be found, on the contrary, very capable of discrimination and distinction, however the distinction may not affect the interpretation of these parables.

Σκληρός, derived from σκέλλω, σκλῆναι, 4 arefacio,' is properly an epithet expressing that which through lack of moisture is hard and dry, and thus rough and disagreeable to the touch; nay more, warped and intractable. It is then transferred to the region of ethics, in which is by far its most frequent use; and where it expresses the roughness, harshness, and intractability in the

moral nature of a man. Thus it is an epithet applied to Nabal (1 Sam. xxv, 3), and no other could better express the evil conditions of that churl, Looking to the company which oλnpós σκληρός keeps, we find it associated with such words as the following: avxunpós (Plato, Symp. 195 d); ἀντίτυπος (Theat. 155 α); ἀμετάστροφος (Crat 407 d); aypios (Aristotle, Ethic. iv. 8; Plutarch, Cons, ad Apoll. 3); тpaxús (Plutarch, De Lib. Ed. 18); атреπTOS (Diogenes Laertius, vii. 1. 64, 117); πονηρός (1 Sam. xxv. 3); ἀπαίδευτος. It is set over against evneckós (Plato, Charm. 175 d); μaλakós (Protag. 331 d); μaλbaкós (Symp. 195 d).

AvoTηpós, which in the N. T. only appears in the single passage already referred to, and never in the Septuagint, is in its primary meaning applied to such things as draw together and contract the tongue, which are, as we say, harsh and stringent to the palate, as new wine, not yet mellowed by age, unripe fruit, and the like. Thus, when the poet Cowper describes himself, when a boy, as gathering from the hedgerows "sloes austere," he uses the word with exactest propriety. But just as we have transferred 'strict' (from 'stringo') to the region of ethics, so the Greeks transferred avoτnpós, the image here being borrowed from the taste, as in okλnpós it is derived from the touch. Neither does this word set out anything amiable or attractive in him to whom it is applied. We find it in such company as the following; joined with andýs (Plato, Pol. iii. 398 a); äкpatos and ȧvýduvτos (Plutarch, Conj. Præc. 29);