SOME • BOOKS OF THE WEE1C.
[Under this headitig we notice such Books of the week as have not been reserved for review in other lornis„]
Horse Biblicae. By Arthur Carr, M.A. (Hodder and Stoughton, 6s.)—These twenty" Short 'Studies in the Old and New Testa- ments" are well worth reading. So much will be readily under- stood by all who know Mr. Carr's valuable contributions to Biblical exegesis. The first is an interesting paper on the character of Cyrus. (The Isaiah who speaks of him is described, we see, as a "prophet of the oxile,"—surely an hypothesis pre- ferable in every way to the idea that Hezekiah's Isaiah spoke of the coming deliverer by name.) That the personality of Cyrus made aprofonnd impression on the world is evident from Xenophon. He was a sort of "King Arthur." Of the other essays, we may mention "The Exclusion of Chance from the Bible," with which we may connect that on the "Election of Matthias," that on "St. Paul's Attitude towards Greek Philosophy," with its comment on the Apostle's use of the term coota, and "Baptism for the Dead:" Mr. Carr takes the much-disputed text (1 Cor. xv. 29) in its literal meaning. He well remarks that the new conception of the continued existence of the dead—new to that generation—must have had an overpowering effect. As to the objection taken from the " superstitious " character of the practice, surely it is not un- reasonable to suppose that the early Christians were exceed- ingly superstitious. How should they be anything else, newly cones' out, as they were, from a etate of mind in which superstition was practically the whole of religion ?
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