A Practical Exposition
Reading edition
BY CHARLES GORE, M.A., D.D.
OF THE COMMUNITY OF THE RESURRECTION CANON OF WESTMINSTER; CHAPLAIN TO THE KING
VOL. II (CHAPTERS IX-XVI)
NEW IMPRESSION
LONDON JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET 1901
OXFORD HORACE HART, PRINTER TO THE UNIVERSITY
PREFACE
There would be no need for a preface to this second volume were it not that a very kindly and careful review of the first volume in The Guardian of May 24 last, requires a word of notice. The reviewer warns me off 'the dialogue system of exegesis.' Now no doubt this principle, like every other, may be abused. 'The Jewish objector' may, as the reviewer complains, be allowed to 'run riot.' Still I cannot doubt that the Jewish objector is a reality of an illuminative kind in the argument of such passages as Romans iii. 1-8, or the great passage (ix-xi), to which the first part of this volume is devoted. Of the other points of detail noticed by the reviewer—which a volume of this kind is not the place to discuss—many are confessedly doubtful, and some unimportant. On most of them I am still disposed to retain my former opinion, but I would, in accordance with my critic's wishes, alter 'the actual life' (vol. i. p. 203) into 'the principle of life,' and (p. 213) instead of saying that the principle of living by dying 'belongs only to a fallen world' say that 'it belongs, as St. Paul views it, though probably not in its ultimate law, to a fallen world.' I agree that in its deepest sense the principle appears to be an ultimate law of all created life of which the conditions are known to us.
C. G.
WESTMINSTER ABBEY, Conversion of St. Paul, 1900.