DIOCESAN OFFICIALS.

Waiapu Church Gazette, Volume 27, Issue 9, 1 September 1937, Page 1

DIOCESAN OFFICIALS.

Bishop: The Right Rev. Herbert William Williams, M.A., Litt.D., 1930. Suffragan Bishop: The Right Rev. Frederick Augustus Bennett, L.Th., 1928. Chapter: Dean— The Very Rev. J. B. Brocklehurst. Archdeacons— The Yens. M. W. Butterfield, R. Hodgson, K. E. Maclean. Canons— The Revs. E. D. Rice, A. Neild, A. F. Hall, C. Mortimer-Jones. Lay Members— Messrs. E. G. Loten, H. J. Bull, R. Gardiner, G. C. Williams. Standing Committee.— The Right Reverend the Bishop of the Diocese, The Right Reverend the Bishop of Aotearoa, Very Rev. the Dean, The Venerable Archdeacon Hodgson, The Rev. Canon Hall, the Revs. J. J. Anderson, W. T. Drake, O. S. O. Gibson, Messrs. H. J. Bull, H. R. Clark, G, F. Gardiner, P. F. Hunter, E. G. Loten, R. E. H Pilson, R. P. Wilder.. , Diocesan Secretary and Treasurer: Mr. R. E. H. Pilson. Organiser General Diocesan Fund: Mr. I. S. Gardiner. Sunday School Organiser.— Miss Beattie. Editor of Gazette: The Rev. Canon A. Neild, 12 May Avenue, Napier.

thought is also shown by the reception given to a Unitarian divine, James Martineau (1805-1900), on whose shoulders the future colporteur George Borrow had been hoisted at school to receive a dwell-deserve beating. Martineau's "Types of Ethical Theory" (1885), "Study of Religion" (1888), and "The Seat of Authority m Religion" (1890) were of wide influence, but it was noticed as a defect that "whenever Our Lord's language is at issue with Dr. Mar-' tineau's philosophy the evangelists have been bad reporters." * * * The theories with which Colenso so outraged contemporary opinion had become the common coin of theology by the end of the century. The most original work was done abroad by such scholars as Wellhausen and Kuenen, but m England substantial achievements m Old Testament scholarship were made by W. Robertson Smith, A. H. Sayce, G. A. Smith, T. K. Cheyne, A. B. Davidson, and S. R. Driver. Among the great works are Robertson Smith's "Religion of the Semites" (1889) and "Old Testament m the Jewish Church" (1892) and Driver's "Introduction to the Literature of the Old Testament." By the end of the century the compilation of the Pentateuch out of the documents .desgnated J, E, P, D was all but universally accepted. * * * Such theories of sources belong to the Higher Criticism. It is so called m contradistinction to the Lower (or textual) Criticsm, Which seeks to restore ancient texts to the form m v/hich they left their authors' hands. In this branch of Biblical science amazing progress had been made. To trace this fascinating story it is necessary to go back almost to the beginning of the period under examination and to the sister city of Oxford on the banks of the Cam. When Oxford was thrown into a ferment m 1845 by the secession of Newman, there was a young man at Cambridge who watched these proceedings with critical eyes. The ■ mind of Brooke Foss Westcott (1825---1901) was turned, not to the Donatists and Monophysites, but to those new critical theories about Holy

Scripture which were beginning to be wafted to this country from abroad. He was elected a Fellow of Trinity m 1849, and was given three remarkable pupils — Fenton John Anthony Hort (1828-92), Joseph Barber Lightfoot (1828-89), and Edward White Benson (1829-96). When we consider what theology owes to these men we may perhaps wonder whether this "Cambridge movement" has not had an influence even greater than that which emanated from Oxford. Lightfoot's best work was done m his commentaries on Galatians (1865), Philippians (1868) and Colossians (1875), and m his studies of the Apostolic Fathers — Clement (1869) and Ignatius and Polycarp (1885). Of Westcott's many individual works perhaps the greatest, are his "Introduction to the Study of the Gospels" (1860) and his commentaries on St. John (1882), the Johannine Epistles (1883) and the Epistle to the Hebrews (1884). But the most abiding work accomplished by these Cambridge scholars was the critical text of the New Testament which Westcott and Hort provided after more than twenty years of labour. The inferiority of the manuscripts on which the translators of 1811 worked had long been recognised, and had been made still more manifest by the great palaelogical discoveries of recent years. The dominating spirit m the partnership was Hort, who possessed a truly scientific mind and m the fifties had been marked out as the "rising hope of the Cambridge school of botanists." It was he who wrote the famous introduction to the new text. He divided the textual material into four groups — Western, Alexandrian, Syrian and Neutral — and he based himself mainly on the so-called Neutral text as typified by the great Vatican codex. It has since been shown that Hort's Neutral text is m fact Alexandrian, and the dangers of leaning too exclusively on one manuscript have often been made manifest. But the permanent value of Hort's textual work can never be doubted; it was like a cleansing tide sweeping away the debris of centuries. (To be continued next month.)