Some of our readers may feel a little shy of consulting Dean Farrar's

works, owing to his leaning to Higher Criticism, but any reader who is sure

of his ground, will find Farrar's work a delight as well as a mine of

teaching.  He says in his preface:

`My chief object has been to give a definite, accurate, and

intelligible impression of St. Paul's teaching; of the controversies in

which he was engaged; of the circumstances which educed his statements

of doctrine and practice; of the inmost heart of his theology in each

of its phases; of his Epistles as a whole, and of each Epistle in

particular as complete and perfect in itself'.

His mastery of the English language makes quotation a difficulty -- for

on almost every page are passages worthy of repetition.  Take for example his

words in explanation of the apostle's words that he `lived a Pharisee'.

`We know well the kind of life which lies behind that expression.  We

know the minute and intense scrupulosity of Sabbath observance wasting

itself in all those abhoth and toldoth -- those primary and derivative

rules and prohibitions, and inferences from rules and prohibitions, and

combinations of inferences from rules and prohibitions, and cases of

casuistry and conscience arising out of the infinite possible variety

of circumstances to which those combinations of inference might apply -

- which degraded the Sabbath, a delight, holy of the Lord and

honourable, partly into an anxious and pitiless burden, and partly into

a network of contrivances hypocritically designed, as it were, in the

lowest spirit of heathenism, to cheat the Deity with the mere semblance

of accurate observance'.

This is about one third of the paragraph.  By the time it has been read

and pondered, one realizes more than ever, the reason why the redeemed Saul

of Tarsus became the champion of liberty.

As a sample of Farrar's translation take these few verses from 2

`All that he could preach of himself was that Christ was Lord, and that

he was their slave for Christ's sake.  For God had shone in the hearts

of His ministers only in order that the bright knowledge which they had

caught from gazing, with no intervening veil, on the glory of Christ,

might glow for the illumination of the world.  A glorious ministry; but

what weak ministers!  Like the torches hid in Gideon's pitchers, their

treasure of light was in earthen vessels, that the glory of their

victory over the world and the world's idolatries might be God's, and

not theirs' (2 Cor. 4:5 -7).

Fault could be found with every line of this rendering if we are

looking for literality, but no one acquainted with the original will deny

that it is helpful to let Farrar go on in this free and easy way, for while

the letter is not followed with great exactness, he does enable us to

perceive the spirit of the passage.  And that was his confessed intention.

In the Preface he had already written:

`I wish above all to make the Epistles comprehensive and real.  On this

account I have constantly deviated from the English version ... I have