We must first set this verse in its context. Paul has given in chapters 5, 6 and 7 of the Epistle to the Romans three definitions of that life which, according to 1.17, is promised for the man who is righteous by faith. In chapter 8 he goes on to define it further and finally as life in the Spirit, that is, life in obedience to God's law established in its true character by God's gift to us of His Spirit. The basic statement of this definition is contained in verses 1–11. In verses 12–16 the meaning of obedience is clarified. Its substance is summed up in verse 15. Obedience to God's law is to call God ‘Father’ in all seriousness and sincerity, in gratitude and joy. This, as Barth has pointed out, is in principle the whole of our obedience; for it naturally involves seeking wholeheartedly to please Him in thought, word and deed, and to avoid displeasing Him. Verse 17 by its movement of thought from sonship to heirship effects the transition to the subject of Christian hope, with which verses 17–27 are concerned. Life in the Spirit, life under God's law as established by His Spirit, life in obedience to God, is life characterised by hope. The content of the hope is indicated by verses 18, 19 and 21, its present painful context by verse 20.

The commentaries make heavy weather of this section. The reader who comes upon the usual translation with delight, as he recognises a vivid statement of God's forgiveness, is correspondingly mortified by scholarly disagreement about its interpretation.

The rapidly deepening river of Indian christological thought is fed by a number of streams. The main current is of necessity the biblical witness, which has to be expounded afresh in every country and age. To this are added the various ecclesiastical channels by which theological thought has reached India; the Syrian in the South, and the many types of Western theology which have always been influential, and still continue to be so. From the other bank there comes the stream of Indian culture, in particular the philosophical systems of Sankara and Ramanuja, and the bhakti tradition of devotion to a personal God. To all these is added, like the rain, the continual influence of the Holy Spirit, who, in India as elsewhere, is ever drawing from what is Christ's and making it known to men (John 16.14). There has therefore been in India, as one might expect, a departure from some of the traditional christological formulations of the West.

Ch. Dodd in According to the Scriptures argues that the early Church had a distinctive method of biblical study. Quotations and citations of the OT were employed in oral tradition, and by some NT writers, as pointers indicating larger contexts or whole sections of scripture. That such sections of the OT were in common use is demonstrated by two or more NT authors independently referring to the same passage, although perhaps to different verses. Furthermore Dodd holds that the early Church used these longer passages to provide witness to ‘the determinate counsel of God which was fulfilled in the gospel facts’. This body of OT reference material, and its application to the NT events, underlies the theological expositions of the Church, especially that of Paul, the fourth evangelist, and the author of Hebrews.

With notable exceptions the churches have been more faithful in the Christian education of children than of adults but the pressures of this secular age are raising the question of adult Christian education in different branches of the Church. It is the purpose of this article to provide the context for a reappraisal.

Of the many efforts of the socio-religious school to describe and direct the course of American Protestantism, Professor Harvey Cox's The Secular City1 is by far the most impressive. The title itself with the explanatory sub-title: ‘A celebration of its liberties and an invitation to its discipline’, announces the end of the self-flagellation period we have been enjoying for far too long. Had he performed no other service we should still be most grateful to Professor Cox for his affirmation of our generation, his willing walk into the twentieth century, and his insistence that the Church of Jesus Christ join the present human race. At last a theologian has defended the (telephone) ‘switchboard’ and the (motorway) ‘cloverleaf’ and has exposed the unhealthy and hypocritical business of attacking the only kind of life any of us really intends to live.

The contribution of J. N. Farquhar to Protestant missionary thought is the central theme of a recent important book. Not to Destroy but to Fulfil is, however, much more than a study of one of the most distinguished apologists and students of comparative religion in the early twentieth century. It is a vigorous and thorough investigation of the missionary encounter of Protestant Christianity with Hinduism from 1858 to 1914, in which the theological dialogue in its various phases is set before the reader. The book will have a further special appeal to Scotsmen, for whom many of the names cited will evoke personal memories from the past.