the magnificent institution of the Baptist Temple might have made the writing of the article in the Cosmopolitan an impossibility. The whole enterprise was started by three young men, who went out from the Tenth Baptist Church and founded a mission, which began service in a tent, and which struggled for over ten years before the church building was completed. About thirteen years ago Dr. Russell H. Conwell was called to the pastorate of the church, since which time the membership has advanced to nearly two thousand. In 1891 the magnificent temple was built, which seats forty-six hundred-almost twice as many as the Academy of Music in New York. In 1891 the hospital connected with the temple was built. In 1893 a magnificent college was erected beside it. The college, in connection with its academies scattered through the city, will give instruction to as many as six thousand students this year. We said to Dr. Conwell the other evening, "Do you think the young men are deserting the Church?" He gave a hearty langh, which was more eloquent than words. He said: "It doesn't look so down our way. They often press into our church till not another seat is to be had; and then four or five hundred young men go down into an overflow meeting."

The critic is as much mistaken in his second proposition, that the pulpit of to-day is stupid, as in his first statement, that young men do not attend church. He severely criticises the kind of texts used in sermons to young men. He says that in ten years, out of thirty sermons he has heard to young men, fourteen were on the Prodigal Son. He says this is an inappropriate theme for such an hour; that it might be suited to the Five Points, but not to the respectable young merr of the city. He must not forget that the drink and social evils and the gambling habit are just as much devils on Fifth Avenue as at Five Points, though they may wear finer clothes and live in better houses. No words of Christ can ever be worn threadbare. One reason why young men have been attending the church in such large numbers is that ministers have preached on the Prodigal Son and other lessons taught by Christ. Dr. Kendig has just finished a series of six sermons on the Prodigal Son at the Calvary Methodist Episcopal Church of New York, which were listened to by eighteen hundred people, four or five hundred of them being young men.

The essayist says that ministers preach too long, and that young men will not listen to a sermon over twenty minutes long. He loses sight of the fact that the sermons of Bishop Simpson, of Beecher, of Spurgeon, of Phillips Brooks, and of most of the great preachers of the world have been nearer an hour in length than twenty minutes. He says, "Just here is where the Episcopal Church is adding so largely to its membership of young men by its twenty-minute sermons." We honor the Episcopal Church, which, by its ability and energy, has accomplished the difficult task of reaching the very rich with the one hand and the very poor with the other, in New York and some other cities; but we do not believe that that Church has a monopoly of young men in its communion. After consulting reliable statistics we do not believe that there can be more than eighty thousand young men who are members of that Church in the United States. Five denominations have more young men than that number on their rolls. The Baptists have six, and the Methodists seven, times as many young men as the Episcopalians. The young men in the Methodist Church outnumber, by sixty thousand, the whole number of communicants, male and female, in the Episcopal Church in the United States. We cannot believe that young men whose chief motive was to find a twenty-minute sermon would greatly bless any Church. The critic of the pulpit names Dr. Rainsford, of New York, as a model preacher to young men. For that distinguished minister's ability, character, and service to his fellows, especially to the poor, we have the profoundest respect. But a man who openly advocates church saloons, who stands on the platform of Cooper Union, when it is crowded with liquor dealers and their friends, to advocate a law opening the saloons on Sunday, we would hesitate to recommend as the ideal teacher or preacher for young men.

Mr. Bok says, "The modern pulpit is sluggish and stagnant." On the contrary, the pulpit was never as strong as it is to-day. Never since the world began did so many people listen to the Gospel from the lips of ministers as to-day. The pulpit in America is singularly strong. If Mr. Bok will hunt for the presidents of the colleges of the land, if he will search among the catalogues of new books, if he will peruse the secular magazines, if he will run over the religious and secular newspapers,

if he will open the folds of his own journal, if he will enter the temples where fifteen millions are regularly fed on evangelical truth, he will find that clergymen are in the front rank of those who direct the highest thought and best sentiment of the age. They are not, as a rule, "sluggish, stagnant" men, but men wide awake. The able and consecrated ministry of the past has been succeeded by an able and unselfish ministry in the present. There are dull ministers, as there are dull lawyers, doctors, and editors; but the intellectual average of the pulpit was never so high as now. Some may have entered the ministry for the glory there is in it; some may have gone into it as a means of livelihood. But the rank and file are in the ministry through their love for God and their fellow-men. In answer to our question, "Is the pulpit of America losing its power?" Dr. John Hall said, "No, it is gaining strength each year;" and Dr. Talmage said, "The pulpit is stronger in this country than ever before."

As to the stupidity of the pulpit the article specifies: "It is a lamentable fact that the average minister of the day is wholly out of touch with the times in which he lives. The young man has a right to expect that he will find the pulpit up to date." If the author of these words will sit down at some patriotic dinner, or attend some educational convention, or visit some institution of beneficence, or pass through the hovels of poverty or the slums of vice, or look at the front row of the reformers of public morals he will find that there is a minister not far away, with voice and heart and hand and life to work for God and native land. The thing that characterizes the ministry of to-day is the very thing which Mr. Bok says it lacks-its vital relation to the intellectual, social, moral, and religious questions of the day. The pulpit of the century has hardly furnished a preacher so up to date as Dr. Parkhurst. It is rather strange that the brilliant young editor should go to so stupid a profession, one so much out of date, to find a man who shall be responsible for at least one page of his paper every month. In answer to our question, "Is the pulpit losing its power?" Mr. Chauncey M. Depew said, "No, it is stronger in America than ever before. It is much in advance of what it was when I was a boy. It is better educated. It is in closer touch with the questions of the day. It is more up to date."

If Mr. Bok had been less partial his article might have done great harm. It might have excused many young men who do not attend church, but who never dreamed of blaining the minister or anyone else for their neglect of duty. It might have weaned from the Church young men who have been attending its services, by filling their minds with contempt for the ability or usefulness of the pastor. It might have prompted some clergyman to follow its foolish advice by adopting the themes or methods of treatment suggested. But, as there has been such a manifest misapprehension of the facts concerned, the article will only arouse public attention to the fact that the Church is not losing, but increasing, its hold on young men, that the ministry is not driving young men away, but is drawing them into the kingdom of God.

Ferdinand. C. Iglehart.

ART. V.-TEXT TAMPERINGS, AND THE LATE FOUND SYRIAC GOSPELS.

IN 1892 Mrs. Lewis and her sister, English women happily combining scholarly tastes, a thirst for discovery, and knowledge of a dozen languages, visited the Convent of St. Catharine, on Mt. Sinai. Said to shelter the remains of an elect lady assaulted and banished from Alexandria by Maximin II, the fortified church-monastery seems really to have been built by Justinian, in the sixth century, to protect from the wild Ishmaelites the hermits there secluding themselves. At present it is manned by, perhaps, a score of monks of the Greek Church. Its library numbers some fifteen hundred bound volumes, and is the refuge of half as many manuscripts, received "at sundry times and in divers manners" during a thousand years. From this library, in 1859, Tischendorf "borrowed" the lightly esteemed, but, in his eyes, priceless, Greek manuscript of the Bible, now famous and known by critics as N.*

While examining this library, scanning its crumpled, faded parchments, Mrs. Lewis espied on the margin of a page of a martyrology of medieval saints, in older ink and style, the plain Latin word for "gospel." By the kindly permitted use of chemicals, an original, nearly erased, and overlaid writing became fairly legible; and each page was photographed. Upon decipherment there was handed to the Bible-studying world a copy, made probably in the fifth century, of a Syriac version, made early in the second century, of our four Greek gospels, already united and revered. † J. Rendel Harris, Cambridge's noted paleographist, affirms that it is "superior in antiquity to anything yet known." Its most marked feature is its distinct reading in Matt. i, 16: "Jacob begat Joseph; Joseph (to whom was espoused the Virgin Mary) begat Jesus, who is called Christ." Verse 18, however, reads essentially as in our text: "Now the birth of the Christ was on this wise: when his mother Mary was espoused to Joseph, when they had not come together, she was found with child from the Holy Ghost." Other kindred variations are reserved for compara

*The Czar of Russia, as head of the Greek Church, afterward arranged for its deposit at St. Petersburg.

+ Published by Macmillan & Co.

Contemporary Review, November, 1894.