modern Greek, remarks, "There are indeed traces that this method, in its chief points, is really founded on an ancient method."

But we now return to the chief subject proposed in this paper, namely: the question, whether the Greek language should be taught in our schools and colleges with the pronunciation and accent of the modern Greeks. As we have said above, we need not insist on any of the views given by writers of the degree of relationship between the ancient and modern. Even if we should admit the claims to identity to be as small as might be demanded, what would be lost by adopting the pronunciation of the moderns? Is there any uniform system in use among us? None. We have rejected the Reuchlinian, but have we adopted the Erasmian? To a great extent we apply English sounds to the German letters employed by Erasmus to express the sounds of the Greek. According to Professor Robinson, our pronunciation of Greek is founded on our pronunciation of English and Latin! Can there then be any reasonable objection against renouncing so unreasonable a system as this?

The adoption of the pronunciation and accents of the modern Greeks would not necessarily require any teacher to retract any preconceived opinion, or to abandon any other favorite practice. All might still enjoy the same freedom as now, in inculcating their views of ancient and modern Greek, with the advantages of confronting one with the other in every lesson. Those who pleased might continue the most thorough drilling in the rules of quantity, scanning, and meters. Indeed, they would find much more time at their disposal for their favorite departments, from the new facilities afforded by the improved method, and be better able to descant on the interesting distinctions between ancient Greek feet and lines, which now afford so fascinating a branch of study to pupils. Our youth might be allowed the privilege of drinking deeper than now of the Pierian spring, and enjoy the harmonious and expressive Anglicized vocabulary of ancient meters, abounding in such mellifluous terms as Pherecratean, Antispastic, Glyconian, Dochmiac, etc. They might even dip in, and sound out the depths of the "Polyschematists and the Asynartetes;" and devote weeks or months to the

old method of solving the Epode of the Second Olympiac, Choriambic trimeter, the Brachycatalectic, the Trochaic dimeter, the Antispastic dimeter Brachycatalectic, the Poonic dimeter, the Asynartete with its Iambic syzygy and two Trochaic syzygies; and all the rest of that interesting, sensible family.

Previously to this exercise, the pupil would, of course, pass through all the imaginable inflections of a Greek verb; and, after committing to memory all the changes given in the grammar, in all the tenses, numbers, persons, and voices, he might have had the heartfelt satisfaction of knowing, that the greater part of them have never been used and never will be, except for the purpose of adding to the enjoyment of those who, like himself, are supposed to have a peculiar relish for such useful acquisitions.

But let us inquire: What would probably have been the result if the Reuchlinian system had prevailed in American schools and colleges? Greek would have been read with the pronunciation and accent used by a nation speaking a language which, all will admit, has some important relations to ancient Greek; and that pronunciation and mode of accentuation have advantages which practice cannot fail to make obvious. That they are practically applicable, and with success, is proved by the fact that they have been in use for at least several centuries. Unlike some other languages, particularly French, (which is the baldest child of Latin,) the sounds are easy to us, distinct and agreeable to the ear.* American students of Greek would probably have practiced conversing in that language even before the Greek revolution brought them in contact with Greeks. Certainly since that event the use of the language would have become

*It is easy to make an experiment with the modern pronunciation and accent, by reading in any Greek book by the following rules: Sound alpha like a in father; beta, v in vine; delta, th in this; epsilon, e in met; eta, e in me; theta, th in thin; iota, e in me; omikron, o in no, short; upsilon, when a vowel, e in me; when a consonant, v in vine; chi, hh in oh hear! omega, o in no, long. The other letters have the sounds given them in all grammars. Diphthongs-Alpha-iota, like a in take; epsilon-iota, e in me; omikron-iota e in me; omikron-upsilon, oo in boot; upsilon-iota, e in me.

In accentuation, lay the stress of the voice on the vowel or diphthong marked by an accent, whether it be acute, grave, or circumflex. The aspirates are not to be regarded.

common, as a living tongue; and men of education would, before this time, have been familiar with ancient Greek classics and modern Greek books and newspapers. What is much more important, the Scriptures of the New Testament in its original language, and the Old in its earliest version, would have been books of daily reading to thousands in families and Sunday schools, instead of the few clergymen who now monopolize the little Greek reading done in this country. Much of the long time taken from the life of every youth by his dull, laborious, and ill-requited Greek studies, would have been saved for other objects, and that portion of it devoted to the language would have been cheerfully spent in pleasing exercises, intelligible, rational and profitable, encouraging and strengthening to the mind, and preparing it to pursue with vigor its future courses. Instead of renouncing the language with joy on leaving the place of a pupil, he would choose the best books of antiquity for the companions of his leisure hours through life; and the libraries of our educated men would not be disgraced by the productions of the frivolous and immoral fiction-writers, who are daily weakening our national taste and polluting American society.

Can our professors of Greek be much longer content to continue their old, laborious and thankless task, Can parents be willing to subject their sons to a course of study so expensive in time and money, with such results as it has hitherto produced? The following extract of a letter from our reverend missionary in Athens, in reply to one addressed to him by the writer, will be read with the respect which it deserves; and offers a most appropriate confirmation of the views above given, which were written before the date of this letter:

"SCHOHARIE, August 23, 1864. "DEAR SIR-In answer to your inquiry, I would say that I am fully of the opinion, and have long been, that the ancient Greek should be taught in all our schools and colleges with the pronunciation and accentuation of the moderns, as now taught in Athens; and that the acquisition and use of the modern and living language is of the greatest assistance in learning the ancient, and in making it valuable to every student.

"This opinion I expressed many years ago to Professor Blackie of Edinburgh, to the late Professor Felton of Harvard University, and to many other distinguished scholars in various parts of Europe and America. Yours, truly, JONAS KING."

ART. VIII.-WARREN'S INTRODUCTION TO SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY.

Systematische Theologie einheitlich behandelt. Von WILLIAM F. WARREN, Doctor und Professor der Theologie. Erste Lieferung: Allgemeine Einleitung. 8vo., pp. 186. Bremen. 1865. It is an acute remark of D'Aubigné,* that "the cultivation of theological science has never produced a revival of Christian life in the Church." But this would only be a half-truth without the corresponding statement with which he completes it, that all revivals of Christian life in the Church have been followed by "creative epochs" of theological science.

The early Church had no scientific theology. Its first age was one of faith and of action-the age of nascent Christian life. But in the very progress of the action of the Church, the need of science soon appeared, as heresy after heresy arose and demanded clearness of apprehension and of definition on the part of the upholders of the faith. In the apostolic phrase, the Church was compelled to "add to its faith knowledge;" that is to say, to bring out the contents of the faith into the forms of human thought; first, as special statements of doctrine in controversial writings and in the creeds; and afterward, as scientific co-ordination of the doctrines, in systematic theology. What is true of the Church as a whole, is true also of every branch of the Church which has ever manifested, by its vitality and endurance, its right to live. The original period of its history, its age of revival and struggle, has been followed by its age of doctrine and science. An inevitable law compels every such organism to study and to develop not only its own mode of being, but also its own modes of apprehending and appropriating the contents of the faith. And this study and development is nothing else but scientific theology. So, in the Reformation period, we find the order of development to be, first, life, that is revival of true religion; then doctrine, in the controversies of the Reformers and in the creeds which soon grew up as the necessary expression of the results of those controversies; and, finally, systems of theology, in Melancthon

*Discourses and Essays, p. 318.

and his successors of the Lutheran branch on the one hand; and in Calvin and his followers of the Reformed branch on the other.

Methodism has followed this general law. As a genuine revival of Christian life, and in fact one of the two great revivals which have marked the history of the Church, (the Lutheran Reformation being the other,) it had its first period of youthful action and vital development in the early labors of the Wesleys and their coadjutors, as evangelists, in the special work to which they felt that God had "raised them up," namely, to "spread holiness." Then followed its period of doctrinal controversy, corresponding to the strife of the early Church with the first heresies, and to the battles of the Reformers of the sixteenth century with Romanist errors on the one hand, and with heretical tendencies on the other. To Methodism appears to have been assigned by Providence the task of developing the great central aim of Christianity, personal holiness; and of purifying theology, for the English-speaking races, from the corruption of Augustinism which Calvin introduced into the Reformed Churches; as Melancthon had purged it for the Lutheran Church, and some of the adherents of the Heidelberg Catechism had purified it for the German Re formed. It was in this field of controversy that Wesley, and after him Fletcher, chiefly labored; and to this day their writings constitute a collection of materials for the study of Christian Anthropology and Soteriology, and especially of the points involved in the so-called Calvinistic controversy, which no student, and certainly no professed theologian, can afford to neglect.

Wesley's theology was the growth of his religious life. Of systematic theology, as such, he seems to have had no conception at the beginning of his career, and in this respect he resembles Luther. Each of these great reformers, although both were great thinkers, nevertheless felt out his theological system rather than thought it out. They illustrated the truth (or rather half-truth) of Schleiermacher's theory that doctrine is developed from the religious consciousness; but they illustrated also the other side of that truth, which Schleiermacher never fully got hold of, namely, that the supernatural facts of Christianity, as recorded in Scripture, are the proper and necessary FOURTH SERIES, VOL. XVIII.-7