As his acquirements became more widely known he received many honours. In 1846 the University of Glasgow, his own alma mater, conferred on him the degree of LL.D. In 1847 the United Secession Church and the Relief Church united to form what is now the United Presbyterian Church of Scotland, and Dr. Eadie was chosen Professor of Hermeneutics and Christian Evidences in the re-arranged Divinity Hali of that Church. In January, 1850, he received the degree of D.D. from the University of St. Andrew's.

His most elaborate works are a series of Commentaries on the Greek Text of the Epistles to the Ephesians, Colossians, and Galatians. As exegetical treatises they have been highly commended. The principles. of his exegesis are set forth by himself in the preface to his Commentary on the Epistle to the Colossians, in reply to a criticism of the Rev. Mr. Ellicott, now Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol:

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My aim in this volume," he says, "has been to trace and illustrate the thoughts of the inspired writer; to arrive at a knowledge of the truths he has communicated, by an analysis of the words he has employed. I have used every means in my power to ascertain the mind of the Spirit; and my eye being single, if I have not enjoyed fulness of light, my hope is that some at least of its beams have been diffused over my pages. As the purity of exegesis depends on the soundness of grammatical investigation, I have spared no pains in the prior process, so that I might arrive at a satisfactory result. One may, indeed, compile a series of grammatical annotations without intruding far into the province of exegesis, but it is impossible to write an exegetical commentary without basing it on a thorough grammatical inquiry. The foundation must be of sufficient depth and breadth to support the structure. Nay, after the expositor has discovered what meaning the word or clause may bear by itself, and as the Grammar or Lexicon may warrant, he has then to determine how far the connection and development of ideas may modify the possible signification, and finally determine the actual or genuine sense. For the only true sense is that which the author intended his words should bear."

In one respect the commentaries of Dr. Eadie are invaluable. They give in a condensed form the entire results of modern learning on the questions of which they treat. He omits nothing calculated to illustrate his subject. Whether his interpretation is correct or not, he gives a reliable and exhaustive account of the labours of critics at home and abroad, and thus enables the reader to judge for himself of the passage under consideration. This is not the place to enter into a discussion of matters of grammatical or dogmatic exegesis. But Dr. Eadie does not confine his commentary to such questions; and throughout his books pieces of manly trenchant criticism are frequent. Here, for example, is au extract on the subject of asceticism, illustrative of the Apostle's remarks in Colossians

"which things

ii. 22, 23, on "commandments and doctrines of men," have indeed a show of wisdom in will worship and humility and neglecting of the body; not in any honour to the satisfying of the flesh." We commend it to the study of Roman Catholic as well as Anglo-Catholic readers:

"The paragraph reprobates superstitious asceticism. The religious history of the world shows what fascination there is to many minds in voluntary suffering. Such asceticism threw its eclipse over the bright and lovely spirit of Pascal. The Oriental temperament feels powerfully the fatal charm. As if the Divine Being might fail to subject them to a sufficient amount of discipline, men assume the labour of disciplining themselves, but choose a mode very unlike that which God usually employs.

"The Brahmin kindles on his own bare head

The sacred fires, self-torturing his trade.
Which is the saintlier worthy of the two?

Past all dispute yon anchorite, say you.

"Such delusions are not confined to religious follies, for their origin lies deep in human nature. Men glory in being what their fellows dare not aspire to, and there is no little self-aggrandizement in this selfannihilation. When Diogenes lifted his foot on Plato's velvet cushion and shouted, Thus I trample on Plato's pride,' the Athenian sage justly replied, But with still greater pride.' The apostle utters a similar sentiment; the carnal nature is all the while gratified, even though the body, wan and wasted, is reduced to the point of bare existence.

"There is more pride in cells and cloisters than in courts and palaces, and oftentimes as gross sensuality. The devotee deifies himself—is more to himself than the object of his homage. The whole of these fanatical processes, so far from accomplishing their ostensible object, really produce the reverse; such will-worship is an impious invention; such humility is pride in its most sullen and offensive form; and these corporeal macerations, so far from subduing and sanctifying, only gratify to satiety the coarse and selfish passions; nay, as history has shown, tend to nurse licentiousness in one age, and a ferocious fanaticism in another. "The entire phenomenon, whatever its special aspect, is a huge selfdeception, and a reversal of that moral order which God has ests

...

blished. . . . . The unknown author of that very precious document, the letter to Diognetus, now rightly included by Hefele among the remains of the Apostolical Fathers, speaks in a style worthy of an apostle. He says of the Jews:

“But, indeed, I think that you have no need to learn from me their ridiculous and senseless alarms about their food; their superstition about the Sabbath; their boasting of circumcision, and their pretexts of fasting, and the observance of new moons. How is it right to receive some of the things which God has created for the use of man as fitly created, and to reject others of them as useless and superfluous ? How can it be else than impious to libel God, as if He had forbidden any good action to be done on the Sabbath-day? How worthy of ridicule their exultation about the curtailment of the flesh as a witness of their election, as though on this account they were the peculiar objects of God's complacency! Who will regard as a sign of piety, and not much more regard as a mark of folly, their scrupulous study of the stars, and their watching of the moon, in order to procure the observance of months and days, and to arrange the Divine dispensations and changes of the seasons-some into feasts and others into fasts, according to their inclination ? I imagine that you are sufficiently informed that the Christians rightly abstain from the prevailing emptiness and delusion, and from the fussiness and vain-glory of the Jews.""

These words should be "appointed to be read in churches" during Lent and other seasons when the rigidly righteous ostensibly "mortify the flesh" by indulging in rich and choice fish-dinners.*

Dr. Eadie appends a very appropriate and amusing note on a recently canonized Roman saint-a modern instance of this pride of sanctity covered with a robe of revolting humility. "Last year," he says, "(1854) a new saint was added to the Popish Calendar, by name Benedetto Giuseppe Labre, who had made his residence in the Coliseo for many years, and was noted by travellers for his craziness and filth. At the usual mock trial which takes place at a canonization, the pleading of the so-called Devil's Advocate against him was rebutted by the so-called God's Advocate in the following terms, literally translated from the paper :

"He was a model of humility, abstinence, and mortification, taking only for food remains of cabbage, lemon-peel, or lettuce leaves, which he picked up in the streets. He even ate, once, some spoiled soup which he found on a dunghill, where it had been thrown. All these facts are fully proved by the judicial documents laid before the tribunal.' . . .

"Having spoken at length of the wooden cup, all broken and rotten, in which he received his soup at the door of the houses, 'eternal monument of his voluntary privations,' the advocate proceeds: What more shall I say? A glance cast upon him was sufficient to discover in him a perfect model of poverty. His hair and beard were neglected, his face pale, his garments ragged, his body livid; a rosary hung from his neck; he wore no stockings; his shirt was dirty and disgusting; and to give of him a full idea, let us add, that he was so completely covered with vermin (piddochi), that in the churches many persons kept away from him for fear of catching them!'"

In this case, apparently, cleanliness did not care to be "next to godliness."

In it

Dr. Eadie's latest work is his "History of the English Bible."* he gives a minute account of the different English versions from the earliest translation to the Authorized Version, points out the errors of many renderings, criticizes, and often collates them; he shows how and when many of these were corrected, notices many that remain in our present Bibles, describes the persecution of the early translators, and recounts the struggles which resulted in the free circulation of the Bible in the vernacular. The work extends to about a thousand pages in octavo, and is as full of varied lore as a volume of "Notes and Queries." It would be beside our purpose to enter on a critical estimate of it; but we shall cull almost at random a few out of the many interesting pieces of information and anecdotes with which it abounds.

The history of the English Bible is exceedingly interesting as a history of the English language, and Dr. Eadie pays special attention to this aspect of it. The earliest attempt to convey Biblical information in Anglo-Saxon was the metrical history of Cadmon, composed near the end of the seventh century. From that time till the days of Wycliffe inany fragments of Scripture were translated, and there is remarkable correctness and force in many of the renderings of theological terms by translators who used the English language in its native purity, before the Latin element had been introduced. From Wycliffe's time to the completion of the Authorized Version the progress of the English language is not less identified with progressive improvements in the versions of Scripture.

Without reprinting several of the collations made by Dr. Eadie, we cannot well illustrate this subject; but we mention it as one which is deserving of more general study among men of educated tastes. Some curious old renderings may be noticed :

:

Psalm xci. 5: "Thou shalt not be afraid of the terror by night," is rendered by Coverdale, "Thou shalt not nede to be afrayde of eny bugges by night." Jeremiah viii. 22: "Is there no balm in Gilead?" is translated, "There is no triacle in Galaad." In the Authorized Version the return of Noah's dove to the ark is thus described: "And the dove came in to him in the evening; and, lo, in her mouth was an olive leaf pluckt off." Coverdale says, "She bare it (the olive leaf) in her nebb." The word neb is still in common use in Scotland; but it is of Saxon origin (nebbe, Sax.), and is to be found in several old English authors. Thus Shakspeare says,

"How she holds up the neb! the bill to him

And arms her with the boldness of a wife."

"The English Bible: An External and Critical History of the Various English Translations of Scripture, with Remarks on the need of Revising the English New Testament." By John Eadie, D.D., LL.D., Professor of Biblical Literature and Exegesis, United Presbyterian Church. 2 vols. 8vo. London: Macmillan and Co., 1876.

The blunders of typography, even in more modern editions of the Bible, are numerous and often sufficiently ludicrous. Thus the phrase, "there is but one God," is printed "three is but one God," in three several editions printed by Eyre and Strahan. A certain widow, Anderson, who long possessed the patent under which Bibles were printed in Scotland, comes in for more hard words than are usual in Dr. Eadie's writings. "Her Bibles," he says, "swarmed with deplorable blunders, and the gross carelessness of the printing was fostered by the want of all competition. Many of the errors are monstrous." An Edinburgh edition of 1791 has inserted the word "not" in a well-known passage, and reads,— "Make me not to go the way of thy commandments!"

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The number of Bible phrases which have become current colloquial expressions is greater than is commonly supposed. Dr. Eadie quotes the following as often uttered without any conscious recollection of their origin: "escaped with the skin of his teeth;" "at their wits' end;" "the root of the matter;" "the pen of a ready writer;" "burden aud heat of the day;" "merchant princes; nothing new under the sun;" "the one thing needful," and others, to which he might have easily added. The same may be said of Shakspeare, many of whose pithiest phrases are now colloquialisms, used by all, but identified by few as expressions coined by our great dramatist. And many of Shakspeare's finest and most expressive thoughts are clothed in forms derived from Holy Writ.

Here are two bits of history not generally known :

Halle, the old English chronicler, p. 806 (ed. 1808), records under date 25th year of King Henry VIII.: "This yere also, one Pavier, town clerk of London, hanged himself, which surely was a man that in no wise could abide to heere that the Gospel should be in Englishe, and I myself, heard him once saie to me and other that were by, swearing a great oath, that if he thought the Kyng's highness would set forth the Scripture in Englishe, and let it be red of the people by his authoritie, rather than he would so long live he would cut his owne throte, but he brake promise, for as you heard he hanged himself."

Strange stories have been told of some thick and strongly bound Bibles, and their instrumentality in saving life-as when a musket-ball struck against one hidden in the folds of a soldier's uniform, but was unable to pierce it through. The Pocket Bibles of Cromwell's soldiers were not meant to serve such a purpose, though they were usually buttoned between the coat and the vest over the heart. They consisted only of some extracts, divided into eighteen chapters, "which doe show the qualifications of the inner man that is a fit souldier to fight the Lord's battels both before the fight and after the fight."

The sense of the Scriptures has often been perverted in translation in