When William Cowper introduced these verses into The Task in 1785 the gigantic Handel Commemoration of the preceding year still rang fresh in the ears of thousands of Englishmen. In 1783 several musical amateurs had proposed to commemorate the centenary of Handel's birth and the twenty-fifth anniversary of his death by a series of stupendous Handel performances on a hitherto unprecedented scale, and the first great Handel Festival had accordingly taken place in Westminster Abbey in the late spring of 1784, warmly patronized by George III and the greater nobility, and enthusiastically attended by more than three thousand persons from every corner of the kingdom. A vocal and instrumental band of 525 performers, “inflamed and actuated by the Muse of Handel,” made this mammoth celebration “the most splendid tribute ever paid to posthumous fame,” and current periodicals exhausted every superlative in praising the grand occasion. The European Magazine reported that “the immense volume and torrent of sound, was almost too much for the head or the sense to bear — we were elevated into a species of delirium.” The performance was in “so superior, and so exalted a stile, that it must not be subjected to the rules of pettyfogging criticism,” since “so grand and beautiful a spectacle, with at the same time a feast so rich and perfect, has not been presented to the public eye within our memory.”

Parlant de la carrière terrestre du Sauveur, Augustin dit: “ainsi apparut-il, un homme d'entre les hommes, Dieu caché.” Cette formule saissisante met en relief l'aspect particulier sous lequel le ministère de Jésus se présente dans les évangiles canoniques. Selon les hagiographes, Jésus cherchait à cacher sa nature véritable, ses miracles, sa doctrine, sa présence même, et, pourtant, il ne cessa pas de se manifester. “Il ne voulait pas qu'on le sût, mais il ne put demeurer caché” (Mc. 7, 24). Les pères de l'église, de Justin à Athanase et Chrysostome, insistaient sur ce clairobscur dans l'image évangélique du Fils de Dieu. Les miracles et les faits de Jésus révélaient depuis le baptême la divinité cachée dans la chair, dit à ce propos Méliton de Sardes. Mais les esprits forts haussaient les épaules. Si Jésus veut ne pas être reconnu et pourtant on le reconnait, c'est donc que sa volonté est impuissante.

The writings of mystics always seem nonsense to the non-mystical, and apparently nothing will ever explain the one to the other. The chief difficulty is, perhaps, the freedom with which the mystic contradicts himself, and this he does largely for three reasons. First, the mystic despairs of language as an expression of his ideas, and often treats words and figures of speech loosely just because they mean little to him themselves, since he apprehends most completely in silence. Yet sometimes, in the second place, the inconsistency is studied, and the mystic is trying to suggest an a-verbal idea, doing so by a process which may be compared to the “resultant” of stresses in physics: for by two pulls at an angle to each other one may move an object between them in a direction different from either pull. Or, the same figure, one may make a wind blow a sail-boat in a path directly against itself by going off on a sufficient number of mutually correcting tacks. In the same way the mystic often feels that one of the best devices he can use to express himself is to build up verbal inconsistencies. So he declares that he goes to glory through humiliation, loses himself in order to find himself, dies in order to live, and in these statements creates an impression different from the literal meaning of any single word he uses. In art he similarly makes a monogram of cross and crown.

I start by making two assumptions, as being facts known to every serious student of antiquity. One is, that Aeschylus was not only a poet but a theologian. The other is, that practically every Greek of that time, if he thought at all concerning deity, did so along mythological lines. The second postulate perhaps needs a little exposition. We have long got rid of the error which supposed the myths, or any of them, to form a kind of “pagan creed,” belief in which did or might constitute a test of orthodoxy. We know that creeds are rather rare phenomena, confined to a few religions, of which that of classical Greece was not one. No one in all Hellas was expected to declare that he believed in the Labors of Herakles, and no heresy hunts were started if someone doubted that Prometheus stole fire from heaven. Decent regard for the official cults was, indeed, in a general way, required of everyone, and the public conscience was liable to be shocked if some too bold thinker proclaimed that he did not accept the tacit assumption on which all such cults must rest, if their followers reflect on them at all, namely that certain beings superior to man exist. But everyone had from early childhood heard traditional tales about those beings, which agreed pretty well in their main outlines, no matter whether the teller or the hearer was Athenian or Boiotian, Spartan or Argive.

Most of the objects to be discussed in this paper belong to the class known as “Gnostic” amulets. That term has been so widely accepted that there is something to be said for retaining it; for even those who recognize its inaccuracy find it a convenient designation for things that cannot easily be brought under any other descriptive name.

The attitude of the early church toward the problem of participation in warfare has been not a little studied and controverted. The data with regard to participation and the attitude toward it have been assiduously compiled by a series of investigators among whom four may be mentioned for their distinctive and permanent contributions. Adolf Harnack in his Militia Christi pointed out that the early Christians rejected the militia of the world in favor of the militia of Christ. In theory the Church was pacifist until the time of Constantine though in practice some Christians were in the legions. James Moffatt in the course of a fruitful survey called attention to the shift in early Christianity from marital to martial metaphors. Whereas in the Old Testament infidelity was called adultery, in the New Testament and the early church it is described as desertion. Such militant terminology could be used by the early Christians “without the slightest risk of misconception” because their pacifist principles were so well known. C. J. Cadoux in The Early Christian Attitude to War set the entire problem in the broad context of theological and political thinking. His work remains the indispensable point of departure for all subsequent investigation. Leclercq supplied in French translation the recorded acts of the soldier martyrs and the texts of the extant inscriptions which mention Christians in the army.

Various concepts bearing the label of “the world” have held an important place among the categories in terms of which men of many times and places have organized their experience. The present article attempts a case study of a single one of these — that developed by Jehovah's witnesses.

A hymn to the Creator ascribed to Plato deserves attention, even if both form and content show clearly that it is of much later date. Such a poem is preserved in the Anthologia Latina, where it is introduced as a translation from Greek made by “a certain Tiberianus.” This interesting document, in thirty-two verses, may be translated as follows:

“Almighty, borne by age-old heavens, amid Thy myriad virtues Thou art ever One, and no one can measure Thee with number or with time. Now (if by any name it is meet to invoke Thee) Thou shalt be invoked by the unknown name in which Thou, the Holy One, dost rejoice, whereat the mighty earth trembles, and the wandering stars stand in their swift course. Thou art One and likewise Many, Thou art First and Last, Thou art at once the Center and the Survivor of the universe. For Thou art without end, yet Thou bringest an end to the swift passage of time, and on high, from eternity, Thou dost behold harsh fate swept on with immutable whirl, Thou dost behold lives enclosed in time and again led back and returned to the upper spheres — so that the vitality, exhausted by births, which the universe has lost may return to it and may again circulate through the (celestial) bodies.”

The exact status of the fourth tractate included among the Opuscula Sacra of Boethius is still uncertain, though the other theological works are now almost universally accepted as genuine. Boethian scholars of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were generally inclined to reject Tractate IV. Viktor Schurr, in the outstanding recent work devoted to the theological treatises, takes the same view, basing his judgment upon the lack of a title indicating authorship and upon the notation ‘actenus Boetius’ found between Tr. III and IV in Codex Augiensis XVIII (saec. IX). Schurr, like some of his predecessors, was strongly influenced in this conclusion by the doctoral dissertation of E. K. Rand. In that study Professor Rand attacked the authenticity of the unsigned treatise with vigor but also with prudence, tempering, in certain instances, the views of earlier proponents of his own position. Though he concluded that Tr. IV was not genuine, he made no secret of the uncertainties of the case.

The object of this short note is to check the date of the ‘Historia Augusta,’ which is usually determined from a number of very special allusions, by its attitude towards a matter of universal interest — religion.

Euhemerus is one of the most elusive and disconcerting writers in the Hellenistic period. He survives chiefly in the pages of Diodorus Siculus, who almost certainly had not taken the measure of his author. Our other chief source of information comes from the translation made by the poet Ennius, which in turn is known only through the works of later writers, who cited him for purposes of their own. Other authors have paid Euhemerus the compliment of imitating him, and something of their work has survived, also in fragments. Philo of Byblus wrote in the same spirit, and recent excavations at Ras Shamra have shown that his Phoenician History must be taken much more seriously than has been the fashion. Under these circumstances it may be worth while to re-examine the Euhemeristic tradition in an attempt to define its characteristics and its influence on the writing of history.

The following study is an analysis of Augustine's exegetical method with especial reference to an assessment of its critical element. The object is to find out what kind of argument the Bishop of Hippo used in his expositions of Scripture, and to pass judgment on it in terms of the canons of modern critical method. There is obviously an immense difference between what we on the one hand and what St. Augustine on the other would call a “good” argument. It seems to me profitable to inquire into this difference.

In the year 1883 Bouriant copied an inscription from a stone in the parapet of the bridge at Coptus. His transcript was sent by Maspero to Miller, who presented it before the Académie des inscriptions et belleslettres. From Miller's edition it was reprinted by Cagnat in 1908 and by Preisigke in 1913. The text is dated Pachon 23 in the eighth year of Trajan, i.e., May 18, 105 A.D., and contains the dedication Ἴσιδι τῇ χώματος. A dedication to Isis of the embankment is thoroughly Egyptian and has a parallel in the much earlier trilingual stele from Tentyra, which bears a dedication to Ἴσιςι θεᾷ μεγἰστῃ ἐπικαλουμένῃ Θερμούθι τῇ ἐπὶ τῷ χώματι καταντίον τοῦ δρόμου τῆς Ἀφροδίτης. There must have been a number of chapels up and down the Nile sacred to Isis of the embankment.

There is a saying of Jesus, found in Mark x. 15 and Luke xviii. 17, which seems to have exercised considerable influence on the imaginations of early Christians. “Whoever will not receive the kingdom of God as a child shall not enter into it.” Another form of the same saying apparently interprets it in relation to conversion and regeneration. “Unless you turn and become like children, you shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew xviii. 3). A further development of the same thought is to be found in John iii. 3: “Verily, verily, I say to you, unless a man is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” And in John iii. 5, after Nicodemus' misunderstanding, the saying is finally clarified: “Unless a man is born of water and spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.” Justin thinks of the two sayings as closely related, for in Apol. i. 61. 4 he conflates them: ἂν μὴ ἀναγεννηθῆτε, οὐ μὴ εἰσέλθητε εἰς τὴν βασιλείαν τῶν οὐρανῶν.

An interesting sidelight on our knowledge of the mystery cult of Mithras in antiquity is provided by a group of provincial Roman sculptures which represent Mercury carrying the infant Bacchus. The popularity of the representation, attested by at least thirteen votive reliefs and three statues, and the concentration of these monuments in the region which is today Alsace-Lorraine are facts which need explanation. The subject is not unknown in other provinces of the Roman Empire, but it appears in isolated examples of sculpture and minor arts unlike the unified group from Germania Superior and adjacent territory, which in geographical distribution and in iconography is unique.