The third work is a "Grammar of New Testament Greek" by the well-known and distinguished scholar, Dr. Blass, and is deserving of the fullest attention from every earnest student of the Greek Testament. It has been excellently translated by Mr. St. John Thackeray, of the Education Department {110b}. It is really hardly possible to speak too highly of this helpful and valuable work. Its value consists in this--that it has been written, on the one hand, by an accomplished classical scholar, and, on the other hand, by one who is thoroughly acquainted with the investigations of the last fifteen years. As his Introduction clearly shows, he fully accepts the estimate that is now generally entertained of the Greek of the New Testament, viz. that it is no isolated production, as regards language, that had no historic relation to the Greek of the past or of the future. It was not, to any great extent, derived from the Greek _translations_ of the Old Testament--often, as Dr. Blass says, slavishly literal--nor from the literary language of the time, but was the spoken Greek of the age to which it belonged, modified by the position and education of the speaker, and also to some extent, though by no means to any large extent, by the Semitic element which, from time to time, discloses itself in the language of the inspired writers. This last-written epithet, which I wittingly introduce, must not be lost sight of by the Christian student. Dr. Blass quite admits that the language of the Greek Testament may be rightly treated in connexion with the discoveries in Egypt furnished by the Papyri; but he has also properly maintained elsewhere {111} that the books of the New Testament form a special group _to be primarily explained by itself_. Greatly as we are indebted to Dr. Deissmann for his illustrations, especially in regard of vocabulary, we must read with serious caution, and watch all attempts to make Inscriptions or Papyri do the work of an interpretation of the inner meaning of God's Holy Word which belongs to another realm, and to the self-explanations which are vouchsafed to us in the reverent study of the Book--not of Humanity (as Deissmann speaks of the New Testament) {112} but of--Life.