Dr. Ray Lankester in his book The Kingdom of Man under Nature's Insurgent Son' plainly pronounces that in at least one large section of life things have been perverted by human action. He declares that 'Man is Nature's rebel' and calls him 'the half-hearted meddler in great affairs.' He says 'It seems to be a legitimate view that every disease to which animals (and probably plants also) are liable, excepting as a transient and very exceptional occurrence, is due to man's interference'1; also, What we call the will and volition of man . . . has become a power in Nature, an imperium in imperio, which has profoundly modified not only man's own history but that of the whole living world and the face of the planet on which he exists.' There may be other and even larger matters than those in the Professor's mind in which man by the voluntary misuse of his powers has wrought disaster. Man's large and deep sense of his unrealized possibilities and his poignant self-dissatisfaction seem otherwise unaccountable; for these are as much matters for scientific consideration as the colour of a rose or the shock from an electric current. It is inconceivable that a consistent and harmonious evolution could bring forth states of mind and judgement in such striking condemnation of its results, if there were nothing amiss. Science gives evidence of some break in the upward advance of man due to some defect or fault in himself. A certain measure of freedom must have grown out of the evolution itself, or man could not in any sense have rebelled against Nature.

The earliest Biblical teaching concerning death occurs in the oldest section of Genesis, which possesses the necessary characteristic of all original language, in that it speaks of metaphysical facts under the forms and in the terms of the physical. Man's disobedience to the Divine dictate, by assuming an independent knowledge of what is good and evil, effected a severance from the principle of life and so brought that break which we know as death. This implies that but for the unfitness man's path would • ii 4 to iii 24.

1 P.

P. 33.

• P. 26.

have been an upward progress in himself and in his body. The translation of Enoch was just such an evolution; and since Moses and Elijah at the Transfiguration both appeared with their bodies, they come under the same law of progressive development. The tradition of the burial of the body of Moses may be only a mode of accounting for its disappearance. Speaking of the Transfiguration, I once heard Bishop Westcott say that it revealed the manner in which Jesus Christ would have passed into the heavens had He not been crucified. His Resurrection and Ascension being the permanent change in His flesh which was effected for a time in the Transfiguration was fundamentally the same. St. Paul teaches that the faithful at the great Parousia will undergo the very same translation. This appears to have been an early, perhaps the earliest, belief as to the manner in which immortality would have been entered upon but for the disobedience to God; and it is but the continuation and crown of the principles of evolution.

The fact of death, the cessation of all the operations of the living personality, and the inanimate body becoming corupt and finally formless dust, together with the loss of contact with the higher environment, could scarcely fail to cloud and dissipate the very idea of immortality; and even where the Messianic hope had come it could only leave the conceptions of a future life generally vague, various and confused. We see from the Books of Job and Ecclesiastes how some of the most wise and exalted minds felt in vain after some solution of life which immortality, if they could have grasped it, would have furnished. The law of Moses seems to leave out the idea of a future life, as if it were either so uncertain a question or so imperfectly conceived that it could not become a motive to righteousness of life. When in the later Jewish age the belief in a future life acquired general acceptance it was held under such crude forms that when Jesus would teach the resurrection of the dead He was under the necessity of conforming to the notion that the dead were 'in their graves.' But however defective the conception of a restored life after death,

the fact that the natural issue of disobedience was thus being turned aside by redemption shines with grace and glory in the truer faith of pre-Christian times. Not until the coming of Christ and His revelation do we see this restoration truthfully set forth; then life and immortality are brought to light.

It is an outstanding fact of the New Testament teaching that by His redemption Christ confers immortality upon all men: As in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.'1 Everyone shall be made to live again that he may be judged and rewarded or punished, because all this is a part of Christ's redemption; for 'He is the saviour of all men; specially of those that believe.' The unbeliever and believer alike are redeemed from the grave by Christ. There could be no reversion of the consequences of the break in the upward evolution of man except by the action and infusion of the vital principle; and the essential power in Christ and His redemption was the action and communication of life. This endowment with immortality is due to the power in Christ to accomplish the very ends indicated by Nature's upward evolution-the elevation of man himself and the glorification of his body.

The above statement implies that the future life continues probation and the possibilities of amendment with the certainty of restoration ultimately to righteousness of life. This will not be confined to any section or class; for judgment, correction, punishment can have no good purpose except the restoration of those subjected thereto. But as the evolution of life in Nature does not involve one species or grade only, so immortality and restoration to righteousness does not imply uniformity, but allows of diversities. If we look attentively at human life and at the teaching of the New Testament, we shall see that there are three great distinctions in righteousness-not merely differences in degree, but in kind. Goodness, or righteousness, is in some the expression of an inward life-the children of God; in others it is the prudential conformity to moral law-the hired servants; and in others again it is merely 1 Tim. iv 10,

1 I Cor. xv 22,

a falling in with moral environment, an automatic and will-less righteousness-slaves. These types may all be exemplified in those to whom immortality is given through Christ, the lowest rank being a merciful lot for such as have lost their wills, either because they have decayed from non-use or have been extirpated by misuse.

Science, Scripture and the Creeds agree in not asking us to believe in the resurrection of the dead body. Indeed, when that organism is dissolved and reduced to dust no body exists to be raised. The meaning of ȧváσraσis is added to by the use of the Latin resurrectio; for properly it means only upstanding, or rising up. St. Paul uses the term in such a way that he evidently understood by the rising up,' or resurrection as we say, the entrance upon or rising to immortality at death; for without it he says there is no hope for the future. The rising up is at death, and the rising up of the body takes place at the same time, in that we are not unclothed' but have' our changed body as the habitation of the spirit.1 From the natural body is formed the organism of the spiritual life. This we may believe will develop with the advance of the personal life, reaching at length its appropriate glorification. Thus will the body be used perfectly for the purposes of life, and fulfil the law of Nature that body is the servant of life.

And so we reach the conclusion, that the redemption effected by Jesus Christ is a taking up of the broken threads in the evolution of man: the very fulfilment of the promises, and the calling forth of the potencies, which were latent in Nature, for the bringing forth of which she was made and prepared.

1 2 Cor. v I.

ROBERT VAUGHAN.

ART. VII. THE EARLY PERSIAN LITURGY.

The Liturgical Homilies of Narsai. Translated into English, with an Introduction. By DOм R. H. CONNOLLY, O.S.B. of Downside Abbey. With an Appendix by EDMUND BISHOP. 'Texts and Studies,' Vol. VIII, No. 1. (Cambridge University Press.)

IN the following pages an attempt is made to give (in English) the oldest Syriac liturgy of the Persian family or rite. In all the Eastern rites there is a traditional framework into which are fitted different sets of the priest's prayers, which are used on different days or during different seasons. Each of these sets of prayers for the priest constitutes a different liturgy,' and the traditional framework is common to all the liturgies of the same rite and is used indifferently with all in turn, although it is usually printed along with the liturgy which is most frequently used and is regarded as the normal liturgy of the rite. Thus in the Byzantine rite this framework is usually printed along with the liturgy of St. John Chrysostom although it belongs just as much to the liturgy of St. Basil: and in the Persian rite it is usually printed (or written) along with the liturgy of St. Adai and St. Mari although it belongs no less to the liturgies of Theodore and Nestorius.1

Liturgical students are indebted (among many other obligations) to the Reverend Dom Hugh Connolly, O.S.B., for the publication of an English translation of some Homilies of Narsai, in which the author gives a full and detailed explanation of both the liturgy and the baptismal services of the Persian rite of his date, which may be put at about A.D. 500. By means of Narsai's homilies we can check the existing framework of the liturgies of the Persian family

1 Similarly in the Mozarabic MSS. the general framework is given with the first mass in the service-book.