THE TEACHING OF JESUS.
The Teaching of Jesus. By the Rev. D. M. Ross, D.D. (T. and T. Clark, Edinburgh. 2s.)—We are told upon the title-page of this book that it makes one of a series of " handbooks for Bible classes and private students, edited by Professor Marcus Dods, D.D., and the Rev. Alexander Whyte, D.D." The words "Bible class" suggest children, and the description is thus in a measure misleading. Dr. Ross's most interesting book has nothing whatever in common with the ordinary Sunday-school primer. It might, however, prove very valuable to one who was endeavouring to give to mature and thoughtful working men a reasonable in- terpretation of the Christian faith. The book begins with a short account of the formation of the New Testament Canon. At the outset of his work Dr. Ross throws off the tyranny of the letter. Christ committed His teaching, he declares, "not to writing, but to the loving hearts of faithful disciples." "his supreme interest," he goes on, "was not in written words, but in spiritual life, and for the quickening of this spiritual life Ho trusted less to the written word than to the influence of the personality of His disciples." The evangelists, Dr. Ross writes, "were no mere conscientious compilers of information. Themselves spellbound by their theme, they wrote their gospels not to gratify intellectual curiosity, but to minister to the spiritual life of their readers." His exposition of the actual teaching of our Lord he thus prefaces: "It is not material for a structure of doctrine which the teaching of Christ gives us, but suggestions, visions, flashes of insight for the quickening of the heart and the uplifting of the life. In our eagerness to crush Christ's thoughts into a system we may crush the life out of them and turn them into the mere dry formulae of an intellectual creed." Dr. Ross quotes from the newest authori- ties, and the book is admirably indexed. The volume as a whole is a timely illustration of how entirely compatible is the spirit of ancient Biblical piety with the new spirit of Biblical criticism.
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