MY grammar has had to live and do its work in spite of the Great War, but the time for the Third Edition has come. In a letter Dr. Alfred Plummer says: "That so technical and expensive a volume should be already in a third edition in the fifth year of the war is indeed triumphant evidence of the value of the book. Scientific grammar is appreciated more widely than one would antecedently have ventured to expect." These few years have allowed time for a thorough verification of the multitudinous references. This enormous task has been done as a labor of love by Mr. H. Scott, of Birkenhead, England, whose patient skill has placed all users of the book under a debt of gratitude that can never be paid. He had already put his invaluable services at my disposal, but now his leisure permitted him to employ his really wonderful statistical knowledge of the Greek New Testament for the benefit of students. These extremely useful tables are found in the Addenda to this Edition. I am sure that all New Testament students will appreciate and profit greatly from these tables.

A brilliant student of mine, Rev. W. H. Davis, has found some striking illustrations in the papyri that appear in the Addenda, besides a number from my own readings. Dr. Davis is at work on the lexical aspects of the papyri and the inscriptions. If his studies lead him on to prepare a New Testament lexicon, the world will be the better for such an outcome.

Mr. J. F. Springer, of New York City, has also made some valuable contributions which appear in the Addenda. I am indebted also to Prof. Robert Law, of Knox College, Toronto, for errata.

I have watched with eagerness for criticisms of the book and have done my best to turn them to the improvement of the grammar. It is gratifying to know that ministers are using it in their studies as one of the regular tools in the shop. In the classroom only selected portions can be covered; but the preacher can use it every day (as many do) in his reading and study of the Greek New Testament. There are many ministers who read the Greek New Testament through once a year, some of it every day, besides the solid, critical study of a Gospel or Epistle with commentary, lexicon and grammar. This is the work that pays one a hundredfold in his preaching. My own reward for the long years of devotion to this grammar is found in the satisfaction that scholarly ministers are using the book for their own enrichment. I have been gratified to learn of laymen who use the book regularly.

Besides the correction of infelicities and errata that could be found here and there and the Addenda at the end of the volume I have inserted a detailed Table of Contents which will greatly aid one in finding topics in the various chapters. The minute subdivisions with page references will supplement the various Indices to great advantage. The Index of Greek words, large as it is, was still incomplete. It has been doubled in this edition by Mr. Scott's assistance. The Additional Bibliography records the most important recent contributions.

Death has been busy with New Testament linguists. Dr. Gross Alexander, of Nashville, has been claimed by death. Dr. George Heinrici, of Leipzig, is dead. Dr. Albert Thumb, of Marburg, has likewise passed on. Dr. H. B. Swete, of Cambridge, and Principal James Denney, of Glasgow, have also joined the great majority. These are irreparable losses, but there are others and even greater ones. Dr. Caspar Rene Gregory, of Leipzig, though seventy years old, volunteered for the army and was killed in battle in France. With his death perished the hope of a new and revised edition of Tischendorf's Novum Testamentum Graece for many years to come. A younger man must now take hold of this problem and make available for students the new textual knowledge.

Dr. James Hope Moulton fell a victim in April, 1917, in the Mediterranean Sea, to the German submarine. He was placed in a boat, but after several days succumbed to the exposure and cold. It was he who first applied in detail Deissmann's discovery that the New Testament was written in the current koinh< as seen in the Egyptian papyri. He had planned three volumes on the New Testament grammar. Volume I (the Prolegomena) appeared in 1906 (Third Ed., 1908). He had nearly finished Volume II (Accidence), but had done nothing on Syntax, the most important of all. His death is an unspeakable calamity, but his work will live, for his Prolegomena preserves his interpretation of the New Testament language. The Accidence will appear in due time (is already in press). Prof. George Milligan, of Glasgow, has completed the publication of the Vocabulary of the New Testament.

The workers die, but the work goes on. It is pleasant to think that Greek is renewing its grip upon the world. Professors Stuart and Tewksbury are preparing a grammar and lexicon for Chinese students of the New Testament. Japan will do likewise. Prof. H. P. Houghton, of Waynesburg College, Pennsylvania, is confident that Greek can be saved for the college and the university, for "it is the basis of true culture" (The Classical Weekly, Dec. 11, 1916, p. 67). There is nothing like the Greek New Testament to rejuvenate the world, which came out of the Dark Ages with the Greek Testament in its hand. Erasmus wrote in the Preface to his Greek Testament about his own thrill of delight: "These holy pages will summon up the living image of His mind. They will give you Christ Himself, talking, healing, dying, rising, the whole Christ in a word; they will give Him to you in an intimacy so close that He would be less visible to you if He stood before your eyes." The Greek New Testament is the New Testament. All else is translation. Jesus speaks to us out of every page of the Greek. Many of his ipsissima verba are here preserved for us, for our Lord often spoke in Greek. To get these words of Jesus it is worth while to plow through any grammar and to keep on to the end.

At the age of sixteen John Brown, of Haddington, startled a bookseller by asking for a copy of the Greek Testament. He was barefooted and clad in ragged homespun clothes. He was a shepherd boy from the hills of Scotland. "What would you do with that book?" a professor scornfully asked. "I'll try to read it," the lad replied, and proceeded to read off a passage in the Gospel of John. He went off in triumph with the coveted prize, but the story spread that he was a wizard and had learned Greek by the black art. He was actually arraigned for witchcraft, but in 1746 the elders and deacons at Abernethy gave him a vote of acquittal, though the minister would not sign it. His letter of defence, Sir W. Robertson Nicoll says (The British Weekly, Oct. 3, 1918), "deserves to be reckoned among the memorable letters of the world." John Brown became a divinity student and finally professor of divinity. In the chapel at Mansfield College, Oxford, Brown's figure ranks with those of Doddridge, Fry, Chalmers, Vinet, Schleiermacher. He had taught himself Greek while herding his sheep, and he did it without a grammar. Surely young John Brown of Haddington should forever put to shame those theological students and busy pastors who neglect the Greek Testament, though teacher, grammar, lexicon are at their disposal.

In Current Opinion for January, 1919, page 18, in an article called "Europe's Ideas of Wilson the Man," one notes a pertinent sentence: "President Wilson once told a member of the diploxx matic corps in Washington, who repeated it later in Paris, that if he were going to college all over again he would pay more attention to the Greek language, and literature, which American universities, on the whole, neglect." So the scholar-statesman feels. So the preacher ought to feel.

A. T. ROBERTSON.