RELIGIOUS ACTIVITY.

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1378, 2 March 1912, Page 9

RELIGIOUS ACTIVITY.

"A SHORT INTRODUCTION TO THE BIDLE." A REVIEW. Tho Kcv. John Dickie, M.A., Professor of Theology at Knox College, Duncdrn, sends the following short review of "A. Short Introduction to tho Bible," by Gilbert 'J'. Sadler. M.A. (Oxon), L.L.B. B.A. (Loud.). (Williams and Norgate, 1911):— This book is described by its author, a Congregational minister in London, and evidently, judging by his university degrees, a man of culture and academic ambition, as "a brief statement of tho main results of Biblical inquiry to-day." A good many of those "main results" are still under discussion among candid, open-minded students of Scripture. Scholars who know more about these matters than either Mr. Sadler or tho present reviewer are far from being of one mind in regard to much that he stales without qualification. But he gives us one sido of the question clearly, reverently, intelligently, and interestingly. He belongs to the "more advanced school. As regards tlie New Testament, for example, he occupies n position very similar to that of Dr. Moft'att. His work limy 1)0 comniemled to those who wish a bird's-eye view of the positions and findings, of such Biblical scholars. It is a sort of "advanced" counterpart to books liko Professor James Robertson's "Old Testament and Its- Contents," Dr. Marcus Dods's "Introduction to the New Testament,' and Dr. M'Clvmont's "New Testament and Its Writers." Probably it would give a more living idea of tho conditions under which the Scriptures came into beim; to am- careful, intelligent reader. But in the 'interests of historical truth, ono has to remember that all the learning is not vet on one side, in regard to questions like the authorship of Epbesians and Colossians, or the date and. authorship of I Peter. It is very interesting to note that some of the ablest and most learned defenders of what we may call the conservative position in recent years have been laymen, with no thcoloiical partv interest's to serve like Sir William Ramsay, an archaeologist, and Dr. P. Blass, "a grammarian and student of the ancient classics. There is no outside scholar of equal eminence' on the other side, so far as I can remember.