BOOKS.
HORIE PETRIN/E.* •
THERE is hardly, we think, enough that is new in this book to have justified its publication in its present form, so soon after the appearance of Dr. Howson's lectures on "The Evidential Value of the Acts of the Apostles," a work which contains by far the most important part of the substance of this little volume.
Especially are we disappointed in not finding in it any such discussion as we should have expected of the authenticity of the Second Epistle of Peter, for which this was clearly the placc- We are far, however, from saying that this little treatise is valueless. To those who have not read the book published last year, it will appear of considerable interest. But the title sug- gests more than the book actually performs. Moreover, there are passages in this little book which look like what Lord Wetnyss spoke of the other day, in relation to a resolution of his own, as mere "padding,"—the following, for instance, on the fifteen days spent by St. Paul with St. Peter, on St. Paul's first visit to Jerusalem after his conversion :—
" It is remarkable that by those who have meditated and written carefully on Holy Scripture so little stress has been laid on this fort- night spent together by these two apostolic men. Hardly any period of the same duration can be named more full of interest and more suggestive of thought. The exact specifying of fifteen days' has something in it to attract attention. It reminds us of that specify- ing of 'seven days' which we find more than once, and in connection with very various places, in the Acts of the Apostles. Probably St. Peter and St. Paul spent two Sundays together, joining with other Christians on those days in prayer and in the breaking of bread.' But it is the personal communion of the two men, and the influence exerted by each upon the other, to which our attention is, under pre- Hone Pdrince; or, Studies in the Life of S. Peter. Bs J. S. Howson, D.D., Dean of Chester. London: The Religious Tract Social'. sent circumstances, chiefly directed. Peter would discourse of his Master and of the things of which he had had a loving and living ex- perience; he would speak of Galilee and of the Resurrection : and perhaps we may trace the effects of these days in St. 1aul a mention of Galilee, whin preaching at Antioch in Pisidia, and in his manner of writing to the Corinthians concerning the Resurrection. Certainly he seems to speak of himself in this matter as having been destitute of a privilege which `Cephas ' and others had possessed. Last of all He was seen of me also, as of one born out of due time.' And, to turn to m hat is most to our purpose, to speculate upon the permanent results which may have been produced in St. Peter by this precious time of close companionship with St. Paul, is it not reasonable to believe that the theological training of the latter, his strong logical faculty, his intimate 'revelations' in the Gospel, may have had their effect, over afterwards, in the teaching of the former ? Divine in- spiration made use of such opportunities, as of other opportunities. By certain destructive critics the resemblance of St. Peter's teaching in his First Epistle to the language of St. Paul in some of his epistles has been mentioned as a suspicions fact. What if, through the natural consequences of this memorable companionship at Jerusalem, vague suspicion of fraud is turned into reasonable evidence of truth ?"
Why has the exact specifying of fifteen days something in it to attract attention ? And why does it remind us of the exact specifying of " seven " days, more than any specified period of days would remind us of any other exact specifying of days, whether in ancient or in modern times ? This is the kind of remark which, by its laborious and unmeaning emphasis, injures writings on evidence. And as for the " may-have-beens " and " what-ifs " in the latter part of this passage, one is forced to say that eNidence which consists in "may-have-beens" and " what-ifs " is not evidence at all. However, this is one of the weakest pages which Dr. Howson's little book contains, and we are bound to say that very few of the 160 pages or so which we find, in it are nearly as empty of substance as this. It is a pity that he should have swelled the little volume with even a
few pages as feeble and helpless as the passage we have just extracted.
As a specimen of better work, where Dr. Howson points out a real, though only a latent and quite unconscious connection between the incidents in the Gospel which specially affected St. Peter, and his teaching and action after the resurrection and ascension of Christ, we may take the following remarks of Dean Howson on the adaptation of the Galilean training of St. Peter to produce the teaching which we find in his First Epistle, and to produce also the most original part of his apostolic policy in the early years of the Church at Jerusalem :—
"The miracle of the coin in the fish's mouth is unique in its nature, and it is connected, by all the features of a most marked indi- viduality, with this Apostle. Those who received the customary tribute money for the Temple came to Peter and said, Doth not your master pay the tribute And Peter, with his usual impetuous haste, answered Yes.' He could not bear the thought that his Master should ho thought defective in regard to any religious and loyal duty. But when Peter was come into the house, Jesus pre- vented him.' This singles him out from among the rest ; and still more is such the effect of the concluding words, 'Take the piece of money, and give it unto them for Me and thee.' It would be well worth while, if general edification were our purpose, to dwell on all the instruction contained in the remarkable words addressed by Christ to Peter on this occasion, as, for instance, on the one hand, that he was Lord of the Temple, and the injunction, on the other hand, that we cannot be too careful to avoid placing stumbling-blocks in the way of the ignorant. Bat another part of the instruction is more in point here. The duty of paying tribute, whether secular or religious, is most clearly inculcated in the story of this miracle. Now St. Peter not only says in his First Epistle, 'Submit yourselves to every ordinance of man, for the Lord's sake; honour all men ; honour the king;' but he adds that we are to do this 'as being free,' and yet not using our freedom so as to do harm. And Christ said to his Apostle by the side of the lake, 'Then are the children free; notwithstanding, lest we should offend them, go thou to the sea, and cast a hook.' Can we fail to see in this part of the epistle a reflection of the Lord's Galilean teaching, especially when we remember the words that were spoken in Peter's hearing on another occasion, Render to Cresar the things that are Cresar's, and to God the things that are God's?' And if incidents connected with the Sea of Galilee had elements of power- ful training for this Apostle's future life, we can still more definitely localise sacred influence of this kind in the city of Capernaum. This was the Lord's own city.' It also became the home of St. Peter. If we place these two facts together, they give to us a result full of meaning. Let us briefly employ two miracles to illustrate this general statement, it is difficult to think of the centurion whose servant was healed at Capernaum without calling to mind another centurion with whom Peter, a few years afterwards, was in close intercourse at Cmaarea. The admirable character of the two men must have left a deep and permanent impression upon his mind. The testimony, too, of the Jews was remarkably similar in the two cases. In the former instance they besought the Lord earnestly that ho would grant the centurion's request, 'saying that he was worthy for whom ho should do this : for he loveth our nation, and he bath built us a synagogue.' In the latter instance the messengers who come from Creearea to Joppa boar testimony to Peter that Cornelius is a lust man, and one that feareth God, and of good report among all the nation of the Jews.' Nothing could be snore likely to prepare Peter for the work which he was destined to do afterwards at Caesarea than the occurrence which took place at Capernaum. He had heard his Lord say of a heathen soldier that he had not 'found so great faith, no, not in Israel,' and that ' many shall come from the east and west, and shall tit down with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven.' Such words must have found a lodging among Peter's thoughts, though they waited long before he was conscious of their full power. The silent lcoseniug of prejudice is often imperceptible to the prejudiced mind itself."
That, so far as it goes, is genuine criticism. It brings out the connection between St. Peter's early and his later life, in cases where there was evidently no conscious reference in the mind of the later writer to the words of the earlier writing, though we canlhardly think it possible that St. Peter would have written or acted as he did in the latter part of his life, if he had not passed through the earlier experiences to which the Dean of Chester refers us.
To take another illustration of the same harmony between St. Peter's memory of our Lord's teaching and his own sub- sequent teaching, Dean Howson holds that the fifth verse of the fifth chapter of his First Epistle, "All of you be subject one to another, and be clothed with humility," translated in the Revised Version," Yea, all of you, gird yourselves with humility to serve one another," embodies an implicit and unconscious reference to Christ's action in girding himself with a towel and washing the disciples' feet at the Last Supper, though the word used by St. Peter is a word implying (as it ought to imply) a much more constant and habitual wearing of humility, than the word in St. John's Gospel implies in relation to the towel with which our Lord performed the temporary office of washing the Disciples' feet:— "The word used in this latter phrase is very singular. The use of any word describing 'clothing' would hardly be expected in describing humility. Unless some special thought were in the writer's mind, humility would more naturally be spoken of as an inner growth of grace in the heart, as, indeed, it is elsewhere spoken of in this very epistle, where we read of that ornament of a meek and quiet spirit, which is in the sight of God of great price.' But the word itself is, as has been remarked, very singular. It denotes a servile garment purposely employed for a menial task—an article of dress adapted and fastened on for the occasion. Even if it were otherwise, it would bo difficult to believe that St. Peter could have written this without remembering how the Lord washed his disciples' feet, and what he said on that occasion, and specially to Peter him- self. If any reader of these pages had been Peter, could he have written it without this recollection ? The Lord put on a servile garment for the occasion—lie girded himself' before he addressed himself to that menial, gracious task, which was a parable in action never to be forgotten. This being so, how much force, how much life, is given to St. Peter's admonition ! When his words come to us loaded with this loving, overwhelming remembrance, they bring to us all the weight of what our Saviour did and said on that sacred evening before the Crucifixion."
These are instances of the value of this little book, but we must say that if Dean Howson had given us less repetition of what
he published last year on The Evidential Valve of the Acts of the Apostles, and more careful criticism of the two Epistles of Peter, especially of the Second, on which, though he appears to incline to its genuineness, he says hardly anything, we should have thought the book a great deal more appropriate to the title given to it, and more worthy of the Dean's critical reputation. Nor can we say that we feel perfectly satisfied with such fragments of criticism of the two epistles as we do get. Take the criticism on the question whether the Babylon of St. Peter's First Epistle is the true Babylon, or the metaphorical Babylon of the Apocalypse,—in short, Rome. Dean Howson quotes the dedication,—" Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, to the elect who are sojourners of the Dispersion, in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia," and remarks upon it thus :— "Now, in approaching the question, on which so much has been written, whether it was really the literal Eastern Babylon, or the great city of the West described under an allegorical name, from which St. Peter sent this letter, we have a strong prima facie argu- ment, in the geographical order in which at the outset he ranges the Churches addressed by him. He begins with the north and sweeps round to the west. This would be quite unnatural in the case of one who was writing from a city of the West ; but it would be an easy and obvious order to follow, when writing from a city of the East to residents in the provinces distributed siecordirg to this succession. This may seem, at first sight, a somewhat trivial argument ; but it is really a strong one, because it rests on an obvious naturalness in the style of writing."
Now, no argument can be weaker than this. Whether a writer who writes from the east or from the west would find it more natural to begin with the north, and sweep round to the west, mast depend, wholly, surely, on the natural bias of his own mind. Some would think of the more distant Churches first
and of the nearer last, others would think of the nearer first and the more distant last ; but who can say which would be the more natural to any given writer, unless he had before him a very great number of instances of the usual leaning of that writer's sentiment in matters of this kind ? That argu- ment seems to us to come to nothing. The next passage has more force in it. It refers to the closing verses of the First Epistle,—namely, "By Sylvanus, our faithful brother, as I account him, I have written unto you briefly, exhorting and testifying that this is the true grace of God : stand ye fast therein. She that is in Babylon elect together with you, saluteth you. And so sloth Mark, my son. Salute one another with a kiss of love. Peace be unto you all that are in Christ." On this the Dean writes :— "A still stronger argument in favour of the literal interpretation of the word 'Babylon' in this verse is the fact that an allegorical interpretation is altogether out of harmony with the tone and tenor of the passage, and of the whole epistle. Silvanus is a literal mes- senger, definitely described by his true name. We should expect the same kind of language to be used of the place of wilting. The epistle, too, deals with doctrinal statements and practical exhorta- tions, and is altogether destitute of tint mystical character which makes the metaphorical use of the word so evidently natural in the Apocalypse."
This is strong, so far as it goes, but as St. John, who was St. Peter's great friend, habitually speaks of Rome in the Apocalypse as Babylon, St. Peter may well have contracted from him—even if he did not know the Apocalypse—the habit of giving to Rome this name, especially in close contrast with " the elect." We should have supposed ourselves that a great deal must depend on the criticism of the Second Epistle, which, if it be attributable to St. Peter, would tend to give consider- able support to the notion that St. Peter had adopted a good deal of the phraseology of the Apocalypse. The two Epistles, taken together at all events, would, if they were from the same writer, suggest a familiarity, if not with the Apocalypse itself, at least with usages of speech which, though among the quieter and simpler phrases of that imaginative book, are still very characteristic of the Apocalypse. In the First Epistle there is the passage (v., 8) "your adversary the Devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about seeking whom he may devour," with the intimation following it that these trials can last but "a little while," which at once suggests the passage in the Apocalypse (xii.,12),—" the Devil is gone down unto you, having great wrath, knowing that he hath but a Biwa time." In the Second Epistle, there is the passage (ii., 4) about angels committed to "pits of darkness," which directly suggests the Apocalypse ; the passage (iii., 8) about a thousand years being but as one day, which, though it may recall the 90th psalm in the first place, has also, as it seems, a secondary reference to the thousand years of the Apocalyptic vision ; the passage about "the new heavens and the new earth," after the dissolution of the old, which directly suggests the passage in the Apocalypse (xxi., 1) ; and the passage about the "day star rising in your hearts" (i., 20), which, again, suggests the morn- , ing star of the Apocalypse (xxii., 16). Our own judgment, then, would be that if both these Epistles proceeded from the same band, it might well be that Babylon, in the First Epistle, was used by St. Peter in the sense of St. John, since the two Epistles together distinctly suggest a certain amount of familiarity in the writer with the usages of language in the Apocalypse. But whether the most sober criticism would or would not attribute the Second Epistle to St. Peter, the present writer would not like at present to express any opinion. If it would, the Second Epistle would be a signal illustration of the influence of St. John's richer im- agination on his friend's mind. If it would not, then pro- bably Babylon in the First Epistle ought to be accepted in its literal sense, as the name of the great Eastern city. These are matters of which we earnestly wish that Dean Howson had given us a more elaborate study.
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