CHRISTIAN OPTIMISM.
[To vas Emma OF TOL SPELTATOE.".1 Sia,—The writer of the suggestive article in your last issue on "Christian Optimism" has omitted, no doubt accidentally, our Lord's weightiest commendation on this mind and temper. The saying is recorded in St. Luke vi. 35. Its recovery for the ordinary reader of the New Testament is one of the many debts which he must owe to the Revised Version. In the Authorised Version the phrase is rendered, " hoping for nothing again," of which meaning the Greek is scarcely patient. In the Revised Version the true rendering appears, in the body of the text, as "never despairing," in the margin, as "despairing of no man." But as the weight of textual evidence here is in favour of the neuter gender (pariv jxdor(Correr, not fojaira), the former translation should stand. Here, then, triumphantly from the lips of the Master comes the Christian Nil desperandum !—I am, Sir, B. WEiTENOOED.
Theological College, Salisbury.
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