common and on smaller provocation until some more fiendish and brutalizing method is resorted to. The enlightened mind cannot fail to realize that such crimes cannot be committed without injury to those who commit them. The fire may consume the victim, but the crime leaves black scars on the living which do not heal. There is a penalty for all this which we shall not escape. The thoughtful must shudder as they contemplate this downward drift. Where will it end?

The "American's" editorial is gloomy in the extreme, but there are times when the prevalence of the spirit of gloom is the only possible sign of hope. Such editorials indicate a feeling out of which reform must come, and the reform is well started when the community recognizes the magnitude of the evils confronting it. In this case especially does the dismal editorial give sign of hope, as it shows that the evil of lynching cannot much longer be palliated as "a bad means to a good end." The community is finding out that the end is bad as well as the means, and will in the end render its judgment accordingly. When wrong can no longer hide as the agent or support of right, its end is near.

The responsibility for the wrong is National and not Southern, for the feeling back of the wrong has been that of race

charged with a crime from falling into the hands of a mob. That would discourage lynching, for obvious reasons. In case neither of these laws should discourage it sufficiently, let the Legislature give the Governor explicit power to send troops into any county where, in his judgment, the sheriff is clearly not doing his duty; to send troops into the county to handle the mob and run them down and drag them to prison, just as Federal troops in the West have often run down and dragged to prison murderous Indians and white desperadoes. I have always been, and am now, a States-Rights Democrat; but I say, with no sort of hesitation, that if Mississippi cannot put a stop to the lynching of negroes within her borders-negroes, let us remember, who are citizens of the United States as well as of Mississippi-then the Federal Government ought to take a hand in this business; for the Constitution of the United States, along with the Constitution and laws of Mississippi, is shoved aside and trampled down every time a lynching occurs in this State.

When such sentiments as these receive such expression in the very center of the Black Belt, there is no occasion for de

spair, but merely great occasion for agitation everywhere which shall awaken the public conscience and remove the fast accumulating disgrace from our Nation and our race.

.

number of negroes, there have been almost as many lynchings of the members of that race in the West as in the South. The only section whose record is clear is the one in which the two races are not brought together in any measurable degree. The atrocities of the past month in the South, therefore, must nowhere serve as the occasion for sectional self-righteousness, but everywhere for race humility. The most encouraging words that have been spoken concerning these atrocities have come from the South, and to those already quoted we wish to add those recently addressed by the Rev. Quincy Ewing to his congregation at Greenville, Miss., in regard to the remedies which the public should adopt. Said Mr. Ewing:

Elect a Legislature with manhood enough, with moral backbone enough, to pass a law simply imposing a big money fine upon any County in which a lynching occurs. Elect a Legislature with decency enough to want to. stop lynching, manifested in the passing of a law vacating the sheriff's office and making the sheriff forever ineligible to any office of any kind who surrendered a prisoner to a mob, or did not do all that could reasonably be expected of him to prevent anybody

tions

A good translation is a very difficult work of art. It cannot be accomplished by merely converting the original word into its nearest English equivalent. The translator must be at home in both languages; he must have more than a lexicographical and grammatical acquaintance with the foreign language; he must know its idiom and be able to think in it; he must know and love his author, appreciate his spirit, share his intellectual and spiritual life; he must be able, not merely to translate one set of words into another set of words, but one life into another life-in New Testament translation, for example, not merely Greek into English, not merely New Testament Greek into modern English, but the first century into the twentieth century, and Orientalized Hebrew into modern AngloSaxon. Moreover, he must not only recognize, he must feel, another truth, and a very important one. The mental attitude of the twentieth century is one of curiosity, and that is not reverential;

the moral attitude of America is democratic, and that is not reverential. The attitude of the ancient Hebrew was essentially an attitude of reverence toward God and the unseen world; the Hebrew cultivated what the phrenologists call marvelousness, while we have done our best to eliminate it. But he who would translate the Bible into modern English must preserve this spirit. The scientist goes boldly up to investigate the burning bush without hesitation; the translator, if he is to give us the spirit of the Hebrew, must recognize that he is on holy ground and must take the shoes from off his feet. Thus, to translate the Bible into our vernacular requires more than painstaking scholarship; it requires a poet's imagination, a subtle appreciation of refinements of thought and feeling, a spirit of reverence coupled with an ability to clothe it in modern forms, a rare mastery of both the Greek and the English languages, and a skill at embodying in carefully selected words what would otherwise involve a paraphrase or an annotation.

In the translation of the Epistles in the New Testament, especially those of Paul, there are added difficulties in the way of the translator. Paul was emphatically a Hebrew; he was born a Hebrew, was bred as a Hebrew, lived until mature age in the strictest sect of the Hebrews, and, despite his later Christian experience, to the end of his life felt and thought as a Hebrew. But his mission was to the pagan Greeks and Romans, chiefly to the former; and in this mission he endeavored to translate the Hebrew religious life into terms which would be compre hensible to the pagan Greeks and Romans. Hence to translate Paul is to translate a translator; it is to render into the English vernacular of the twentieth century the work of one whose object it was to render into the thought of the first century the essential principles of a religion Oriental in its origin, and, as to its fundamental conceptions of God, duty, and life, born ten or twelve centuries before Paul's time. Paul's method of composition increases the translator's difficulties. For he was in temperament an orator, and his method of composition was the oratorical one. He dictated to an amanuensis; his auditors were in imagination before him; he used frequently the argumentum ad

hominem; he imagined an objector and held a dialogue with him; in the rapidity of his thoughts he sometimes left great gaps in his discourse; at other times he interpolated qualifications of his statement and qualifications of his qualifications. Sometimes he is led away by the fervor of his feeling into splendid bursts of eloquence, as in his psalm of love and in his mystical picture of the resurrection. The translator who simply gives us English words for the Greek words, approximating as nearly as he can to an interlinear translation, does not truly translate Paul at all; while he who ventures upon a greater freedom is always in peril of substituting his own theology for the often fragmentary and not always consequential and consistent thought of the Apostle.

To illustrate these remarks let us take a familiar fragment from one of Paul's Epistles. We give it here in the language of the Revised Version:

Love suffereth long, and is kind; love envieth not; love vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not its own, is not provoked, taketh not account of evil; rejoiceth not in unrighteousness, but rejoiceth with the truth; beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.

To understand the real meaning of the Apostle in the chapter from which these words are taken, the translator must first of all realize to whom they were addressed: to the Corinthian church, torn by factions, its members envying each other's gifts, using them for display not for service, with eager appetites gluttonizing and becoming drunken at the love feasts of the church, taking offense at imaginary slights, gossiping over each other's faults, now glorying in the completeness of their knowledge, now pessimistically ready to abandon their faith in immortality and return to the Epicurean counsel, "Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die." There is in this thirteenth chapter of Corinthians scarcely a phrase which has not its oratorical reference to some antithetical practice in the church which is addressed. All this Dean Stanley brings out in his paraphrase; but the translator must at least hint at it in his translation. With the concealed yet clearly implied rebuke involved in this chapter there is also a climax, or rather a series of climaxes, such as belongs to oratorical literature. These several clauses are not

merely a succession of independent aphorisms which might be placed in any other order; each clause leads to its successor, thus: "Love in silence endures all experiences; is confiding in them all; when it can no longer confide, it still hopes for the best; when it can no longer hope, it still patiently endures." The rendering "believes all" destroys this climax and makes the Apostle praise love for its credulity, and this in curious disregard of the fact that Paul rarely if ever uses the word pisteuo (miτevw) to represent mere belief; and yet this is the translation of both the Authorized Version and the Revised Version.

Let us turn to another and less familiar passage, the opening verses of the third chapter of Romans. Here Paul carries on a dialogue with an imaginary objector. Paul has previously laid down the doctrine that God deals with pagan and Jew alike; the objector interposes, and a dialogue ensues which may be represented as follows, though we do not offer this representation either as a translation or as paraphrase:

Objector. What, then, is the use of circumcision?

Paul. Great; for to the circumcised revelation has been intrusted for the world. Let me ask you a question. Do you suppose the Jews' inability to perceive repentance and faith in the pagan makes God unable to perceive them? God will be true in his judgments of mankind though all men judge falsely

of each other. . .

Objector (shifting his ground). If our unrighteousness commends God's righteousness, why does he condemn us? You make him unrighteous in punishing what promotes his glory.

Paul (indignantly). God unrighteous! He who judges the world a false judge!

Objector (persistently). But if my false life makes God's truthfulness clear, why am I judged a sinner?

Paul. Ah! You assume what I have been reported as saying, Let us do evil that good may come. The report is a slander. He who assumes that utters his own condemnation.

That this is a dialogue is scarcely suggested by either the Authorized Version or the Revised Version; and yet it can be understood only as the reader shares in Paul's vividness of imagination and intensity of feeling.

These remarks are suggested by two translations of the New Testament recently offered to the public, "The Historical New Testament" and "The Twentieth

Century New Testament.”1 Each has its value, but neither supplies the need which we have here attempted to indicate. "The Historical New Testament," while of value to the student for the new light its translation sometimes affords, and still more for the scholarly prolegomena which accompany that translation, does not give, and scarcely suggests to the reader, the oratorical and dramatic character of Paul's Epistles. They still appear, as they do in the Authorized and Revised Versions, like theological tractates-which they are "The Twentieth Century New Testament" renders the original into not merely the language of the twentieth century, but into its colloquial language. If not irreverent, it certainly does not preserve in its literary form the spirit of reverence so distinctly characteristic of the Hebrew race.

not.

man.

It is said of Jowett's "Plato" that Jowett wrote the dialogues as Plato would have written them if he had been an EnglishWe want to see a translator who can write Paul's Epistles as Paul would have written them had he lived in this age and this country. This will not be done by merely substituting you for thou, and brothers for brethren, as is done in the "Twentieth Century New Testament." Such changes in mere verbal forms are of very little importance. The translator must not be merely a twentieth-century American, but also an Hebraic Paul. Even then his work will never take the place of the Authorized Version. That will always be the classical New Testament; though possibly in time the Revised Version may be the classical Old Testament. Nevertheless, such a translation as we have suggested would make clear many a passage which is now obscure, and would serve the purpose of a commentary to many readers of the Bible who never use a commentary. Moreover, it would give vitality of meaning to some passages which have lost their vitality because of their familiarity. But neither Mr. Moffat's volume nor the " 'Twentieth Century New Testament" seems to us to accomplish this purpose. For such a translation the world still waits. The first will be of value to the students of the New Tes

1 The Twentieth Century New Testament. F. H. Revell Co.. New York. The Historical New Testament. By James Moffat, B.D. Charles Scribner's Sons, New York.

tament; the second will perhaps serve to introduce the New Testament to some readers who are now unfamiliar with it. But the one is too purely a scholarly translation, the other is too purely and in some respects too specifically a vernacular translation, to fulfill the requirements of such an interpretative rendering of the New Testament Epistles as is needed, and as we believe would be welcomed, by the great body of Bible readers and of Bible students.

Strength-Giving Sympathy

It has been said that nothing shows the quality of a man so much as the source to which he turns for comfort. It is equally true that nothing shows one's estimate of another more than the sort of comfort one offers him. This is shown in the way different persons deal with a child that is hurt. One talks about the hurt, exclaims over it, caresses and pities. Another apparently disregards the hurt or makes light of it, and seeks at once to occupy the child with something else, until he forgets his pain, and laughter takes the place of tears. Often the child would hardly think of his hurt were not his mind fixed on it by supposed "sympathy." But that is the truest sympathy which seeks to spare him, not so much the suffering of the hurt as the suffering of thinking about it, and the emotional disturbance and nervous weakening which come from cries and complaints and fears.

That is the truest sympathy which feels for the child, not simply as undergoing now the smart of a burn or a sting or a cut, but as one who is sure to meet much suffering in the world, and whose success and happiness depend largely upon his being able to rise above it, or apply himself to other things in spite of it.

A little girl had to be taken to the surgeon for a brief but painful operation. The surgeon sought to relieve her fears by assuring her that it would not hurt much. Distrusting him, she turned to her grandfather, who accompanied her, asking, "Will it hurt, grandpa ?" "Yes, my child, it will hurt badly," was the reply. Instantly she put out her arm and submitted to the operation without a murmur. It was false sympathy which prompted the

surgeon to give the false assurance. It was actually true sympathy which led the grandfather to declare the truth-sympathy with her strength and courage.

True sympathy seeks not the sensibilities and the emotions, but the mind and the will. It seeks the latent strength rather than the manifest weakness.

And this is Christ's sympathy. A striking expression of it is found in Mark's Gospel, where we are told that Jesus saw much people, and was moved with compassion toward them because they were as sheep not having a shepherd; and he taught them many things. He showed his sympathy by teaching as much as by feeding or healing. We know from the accounts of the Evangelists what sort of teaching it would be. There was no appeal to the sensibilities, no flattery of the sentiments. Christ sought to reach the heart by the truth. There is perpetual significance in the fact that he himself speaks of the Comforter whom he was to send the Paraclete, the Advocate, the Helper-as the Spirit of Truth. Christ's comfort is not only true comfort, but it is comfort which comes from receiving the truth and allowing it to have its full effect upon mind and heart and will. He exalted those to whom he spoke by thus dealing with them as able to receive the truth. He showed his sympathy by addressing the best that was in them, that which ought to subdue and exalt all the rest.

His appeal lay to their possibilities, for here was the source of the greatest suffering and the means of the noblest comfort. Genuine sympathy suffers as often because another does not suffer as because he does. That which moved Christ's compassion was just that which the multitude realized-and realizes-the least. Such sympathy seems sometimes to disregard the feelings of the sufferer. Christ never does that; he remembers that we are "dust," but he also remembers that we are made in the image of God. He deals first, not with the "dust," but with the image, and the future that is involved in it. He sympathizes with the present pain, whatever it is; but far more with the deeper-lying self, with all its potentialities of pain and joy, its certainties of toil and struggle and suffering, its possibilities of achievement, of triumph, and of " peace by conquest."

The Spectator

America's homogeneity was the subject of a striking sentence in Frederic Harrison's "Impressions of America" in a recent "Nineteenth Century:" "From Long Island to San Francisco, from Florida Bay to Vancouver's Island, there is one dominant race and civilization, one language, one type of law, one sense of nationality. That race, that nationality, is American to the core." The Spectator fully realized the truth of this generalization in a recent transcontinental trip. Not only are Americans American from New York to California, but they are more and more coming to be molded on something of the same outward pattern. We wear the same kind of collars and cuffs in San Francisco that we do, say, in Troy, New York, and they are made by the same manufacturers and sold at the same price; the cut of our clothes is much the same; our houses, the finer ones at least, are becoming more and more alike, inside and out; our newspapers are planned on the same lines, and sometimes owned by the same men, at both extremes of the continent; the songs we sing are the same, the popular novels we read are the same, even the slang we (some of us) speak is the same.

Time was when we were more differentiated, more sectional, more idiosyncratic and provincial. Mark Twain, somewhere in his delightful book "Roughing It," shows a picture of an ordinary clay pipe. In the old days whereof he tells, this article, he says, sold for one cent in New York, for five cents in Chicago, for ten cents in Denver, for fifteen in Salt Lake City, and for a quarter in San Francisco. Now, alas it can be bought all over the country for one cent, and the wherewithal to fill it commands also a uniform price. This is an illustration of what has happened in hundreds of ways. The Wild West has been toned down till it is not so different, after all, from the tame East. In his transcontinental trip of six or seven thousand miles, for instance, the Spectator saw no Indians except at one little town in Nevada, and those he saw there were such as he would like to forget. He saw no hilarious cowboys "shooting up the

town;" and the cowboy story he best remembers, the classical one of the tenderfoot who said "thanks, he would take a little pale sherry," and was thereupon told that he would take whisky, that he would take it straight, and that he would like it, too, was told as illustrating a phase of Western life that has passed. The Spectator saw no "road agents;" and though these gentry are still occasionally heard of, they are usually wholesale men, confining their attention to express cars and safes. In a word, the Spectator found that "one civilization" is fast taking the place of the diverse civilizations or degrees of civilization that formerly characterized the various sections of our country.

This is not to say, however, that one does not still see picturesque peculiarities of costume and note exceptional qualities in the men and women one meets. Far from it. But individualized characters are generally found among the older men and women. There was one old settler who happened to drop in for a Sunday call on the friends whom the Spectator was visiting in Colorado. He dated from the time when Indiana was "out West;" had had a hand in the Lovejoy antislavery troubles; had known Lincoln when the latter had time to go on fishing and camping trips, and had wrestled "back holts" with the sinewy Presidentto-be; had been a surgeon in the army, and had sent scores of Union men on their way to freedom from Southern prison pens by reporting them dead and giving them a chance to get away alive. Then, too, there was the big Californian with the sombrero, who climbed on the stage at a little town near the boundary of the Yellowstone Park. What a strange story he had to tell of the search for a man who a year ago was suddenly swallowed up in the great National park, and of whom no slightest trace has been found, in spite of the searching of a hundred men for many weeks last year and this. There was also the countrified-looking old man with the goat beard, who seemed in appearance a genuine "hayseed," but was really a railroad bridge builder of wide, experience, responsible position, and much worldly wisdom. There was the big Polander, a thoroughly Americanized sugar expert,