are feminine they must be controlled by a noun of that gender, unanimously and analogously indicated as nuépa, “day." Will our friends give us the translation of the word σaßßátov therein ? But, behind all this growing usage of the LXX was that of the speakers of the West Aramaic often falsely called "Chaldee" and even "Hebrew," as in Acts xxi, 40-the vernacular of Jesus and the apostles. Through the Greek Testament and even into the English shine certain of the actual precious words of Jesus in his Aramaic tongue. They are found in Mark v, 41; vii, 34; x, 9, 10; xv, 34. Another word therefrom in 1 Cor. xvi, 20. In that language we have the names of the days of the week * as Mary taught them to her son Jesus. The allied ancient East Aramaic, or Syriac, had exactly the same. It should be noted in the correspondences made that "day" is masculine in Hebrew, but feminine in Greek: (i), (“day " m.), "one [m.] in the Shabba ”‡=? (ἡμέρα) f. μία (f.) τῶν σαββατῶν, (“day ” 7.) " one $ [f.] of the- - ??? Second day, "(D), ("day") "second in the Shabba = ?" ?" | First day, (ἡμέρα) δευτέρα σαββάτων, (“ day ") ' second of the Third day, (i), ("day") "third in the Sabbath"= ? (ἡμέρα) τρίτη σαββάτων, (“ day ") " third of the Fourth day, (i), ("day") "fourth in the Sab bath"? (upa) Téтpas σaßßátov, ("day") fourth of the ?" I Fifth day, (exactly the same formation). See Teaching, etc. Sixth day, a, "eve of the Sabbath." Mark xv, 42, “preparation" = παρασκευή = προσάββατον the "fore-sabbath." Seventh day, "the Sabbath." Josephus, Ant. 3. 6. 6; Tà ¿ẞdóμm σáßßara kahovμɛv, “the seventh [day] we call Sabbath." After examining this table who is there with the temerity to deny that in the dialect of Jesus and his companions the * See Lightfoot's Hora Hebraica, 1686, vol. ii, p. 389. According to him, also, the Jews were wont to speak of the first day of the week as, or the "day of the Nazarenes." + See Nestle's Syriac Grammar, 1889, p. 132. = as and They ‡ At various times the Talmudists spelled the word also used the Aramaic form Shabbetha, which the Greeks transliterated now as a singular neuter noun σάββατον, and now as a plural neuter noun σάββατα, with like singular significance. See Gesenius's Handwörterbuch, Elfte Aufl. The philosophy of this cardinal number will be later set forth. I See The Teaching of the Twelve for this form, which will be discussed hereafter word σάββατον or σάββατα meant not only a day, but also the period following that day until the next, which we call a week? One of the writers demands a case in Greek literature outside the New Testament in which oáßßarov is used for "week." It is close at hand, and occurs in connection with the Pharisaic fasting mentioned in Luke xviii, 12, which was later baptized into the Christian Church and morals. Abundantly established is it that the Pharisees fasted twice a week,t namely, "on the fifth day of the week, on which Moses ascended to the top of Sinai [Thursday];" and "on the second day, on which he came down [Monday]. This biweekly [sic] fasting has also been adopted in the Christian Church; but Monday and Thursday were changed to Wednesday and Friday (feria quarta et sexta), as commemorative of the betrayal and crucifixion of Christ." The process of weaning the early Christians from these Jewish twice-a-week fasts, and that by the ingenious substitution of two other days in the week, is laid bare in the lately found Teaching of the Twelve, which was published not much more then twenty years after the death of the apostle John and cites principles long settled at that time. In viii, 1, are found these words: Αἱ δὲ νηστείαι ὑμῶν μὴ ἔστωσαν μετὰ τῶν ὑποκριτῶν· νηστεύουσιν γὰρ δευτέρα σαββάτων, καὶ πέμπτῃ· ὑμεῖς δὲ νηστεύσατε τετράδα καὶ παρασκευήν. The writer dares render * See Taanith 12a, and McClintock and Strong, vol. iii, p. 489, col. 1. + Groundlessly does the article in this Review (November, 1897) deny this, alleging that "the Pharisees came into existence to revive the literal teachings of Moses. He never taught weekly fasts. There is no intimation of anything of the kind in the Old Testament or anywhere in the New, except by misrepresenting this passage of Scripture," that is, Luke xviii, 12. A tissue of misrepresentations is this entire passage. How strange that Jesus so sadly misjudged this animus of the Pharisees, but constantly cried against them, "Woe unto you, hypocrites! Why do ye make the word of God of none effect by your traditions?" Strange that the evangelists should so have misrepresented them as "fasting oft" and "washing their hands oft, holding the tradition of the elders," since Moses said as little about eating with "unwashed hands" as about "weekly fasts!" Ergo, they gave no heed, forsooth, to such things! In addition to a fuller and unbiased study of the Bible very informing would be a greater familiarity with such works as those of Schürer, Edersheim, Delitzsch, Weber, and Stapfer. Judith (viii. 6) religiously feasted (not fasted) all the Sabbaths. John Wesley's Journal shows how, in the days of his legal struggling, he adopted these two days of fasting as "kept by the ancient Church." It was done in the same spirit in which on March 28, 1738, just eight weeks and one day before his heart's strange warming at Aldersgate Street, he resolved "not willingly to indulge" himself" in laughter, no, not for a moment." The Friday fast he never outgrew, but sought to enforce it among "the people called Methodists." The history and fate of the attempt may be instructively studied in the various editions of the Discipline. * this exhortation only thus: "Let not your fasts be in conjunc tion with the hypocrites; for they do fast on the second day of the week and the fifth; but do ye adopt fasting during the fourth and Preparation!" That last was the sixth day of the week. What were the others by number referred to in the passage? But the most delicate point of all remains. It clearly reveals that we have here to deal with a Hebraism and Aramaism which has clothed itself in Greek words. The keen eye has noted that uíav is a cardinal numeral, not an ordinal, as in the other cases. Elsewhere we have had "second," "third" (Luke xviii, 33), "fourth," etc. But in all these seven passages alone, which are rendered "the first day of the week,” the numeral is really the cardinal "one." Thereby hangs a true tale, not a pious fiction. The fact is that the Hebrew, and after it the Aramaic, had no ordinal corresponding to "one." It therefore used the cardinal, not only as a cardinal, but as an ordinal also. The Revised Version now shows this peculiarity at the end of the first creative day. We have in Genesis i, 8, "second day;" 13, "third day;" and so on to 31, "sixth day." In verse 5, however, it is "one day," or, following the exact Hebrew order, "day one." With all the delicacy of the Bertillon system of identifica tion this mysterious cardinal μíav, "one," exceptionally used in just these seven cases of the day of the week where Greeks, Latins, Germans, and English would use their ordinal, "first," reveals the fact that we have here nothing but the slavish Greek wording of the Hebrew Aramaic phrase (i), or, "(day) one in the week," which in Matt. xxviii, 1, and parallels is Grecized as μίαν τῶν σαββάτων. In * Observe how this characterization of the Pharisees by Jesus appears as the standing term for them, even a hundred years later. +The Hebrew word meaning “head,” “chief,” not a numeral at all, is often used, and is usually rendered by the LXX by πрτоç and by the A. V. as "first." + Strangely corroboratory is the fact that in speaking of "the first day of" other periods than the week, as the days of unleavened bread," Matt. xxvi, 17; Mark xiv, 12, the ordinal рn is invariably used. The classical and anomalous use of πρTMη (followed too by the singular, caßßárov) in Mark xvi, 9, astonishingly credits the statement lately discovered that, as long suspected, the last twelve verses of that book are not Mark's, but were written by the "Presbyter Ariston, a disciple of the Lord." the light of its history and syntax it can be intelligently and honestly rendered other than "the first day of the week."* As a vital or corroboratory part of any argument for the sanctifying of the Lord's Day this traversed exegesis, instead of being a monumental discovery, is but a monumental blunder. Thereby our foes will have us in derision. Tell it not in Gath, Publish it not in the streets of Battle Creek; *Translating the New Testament into the most idiomatic Hebrew for the Jews, Delitzsch hesitates not to render Matt. xxviii, 1, as, "One [masc.] in the Sabbath," after the Hebrew Aramaic usage. Born a Jew, and for the larger part of a century a devout and scholarly Christian, he may be trusted to have known something about the Holy Scriptures. In order to prevent a misunderstanding, however, he renders Luke xviii, 12, by y, the word customary for “week,” when the order of its days is not in mind. Wilbur Fletcher Steele 27-FIFTH SERIES, VOL. XV. ART. VII.-JOHN WESLEY'S SCHOOL AT KINGS WOOD. METHODISM owes more than it knows to the fact that its founder was a gentleman and a scholar. The rector of Epworth gloried in the knowledge that he had given his three sons "the best education which England could afford," yet he little dreamed that the training received by John and Charles Wesley at Charterhouse and Westminster schools and at Christ Church and Lincoln colleges in Oxford would become a lever for raising the whole tone of education throughout the English-speaking world. Charles Wesley's poetry was itself an education for the early Methodists. All his classical learning, all his reading, all his studies of the English poets were brought to bear on his work as the hymn writer of the evangelical revival. Doors were thus opened into literature, and a tincture of scholarship given to the colliers, weavers, tinners, and common folk who sang the Methodist hymns at Moorfields, Gwennap, Kingswood, Bolton, and Newcastle. John Wesley's influence was not less decisive. He had to deal with common people and early mastered the art of simplicity, but never forgot the words of John Richard Green in his exquisite volume of Stray Studies, "I must confess that my own experience among the poor agrees pretty much with Edward Denison's, and that I believe 'high thinking' put into plain English to be more likely to tell on a dockyard laborer than all the 'simple Gospel sermons' in the world." Wesley's zeal for education found notable expression in the founding of his famous school at Kingswood, which celebrated its third jubilee in June, 1898. It has long since left its first home in the colliers' village near Bristol for a splendid site near Bath, but the third jubilee carries us back to the homely beginning of a scheme which might not unaptly be described, with all due regard to his wife, as Wesley's "thorn in the flesh." None of his schemes tried his faith and patience more than this institution at Kingswood. In the spring of 1739 George Whitefield had laid the foundation of a school for the colliers' children there. Wesley had to take over this unfin |