the eighteen. If there is not much warmth in these prayers, as there certainly is not, neither is there any of the vainglory and self-righteousness which are supposed to be characteristic of the Pharisees. And it should be borne in mind that there can be no great difference in date between these prayers and Ps. cxix. However, I will come down to a time when the Pharisees, if they ever became such as the New Testament represents them, must have long acquired that character. Here is a prayer which dates from the second century of our era, and is part of the liturgy still in daily use:--"Lord of the worlds! not trusting in our righteousness, do we cast our entreaties down before Thee, but trusting in Thine abundant mercies. Who are we? What is our life? What is our virtue? What is our righteousness? What is our deliverance? What is our strength? What is our might? What shall we say before Thee, O Lord God and the God of our fathers? Are not all the mighty as nothing before Thee? and the men of name as though they had never been? And the wise are without knowledge, and the understanding as those who are without discernment. For the multitude of their deeds is nothing, and the days of their life are a breath before Thee" (b. Joma. 87^b, mentioned by R. Joḥanan). Christians usually get their notion of what a Pharisee's prayer was like from Luke xviii. 11, 12; and I do not deny that Pharisees may sometimes have prayed after that manner. Nevertheless, what I have just recited is more true to the real spirit of Pharisaism than the prayer in the Parable. And even to that there is another side. A well-known prayer, still used in the liturgy, runs thus:--"Blessed art Thou, O Lord, our God, King of the world, that Thou hast not made me a Gentile ... a slave ... a woman." Much scorn has been poured out upon those who have offered that prayer, as if it were nothing but the utterance of arrogant vainglory. But, however it may sound to Gentiles, what the Jews meant, and mean, by it is this, that God is thanked for having given in the Torah the opportunity of serving Him, in the "Mitzvōth," which were not enjoined upon Gentiles, slaves, or women. It is not self-righteousness which is expressed in that prayer, but the acknowledgment of special obligation, a higher calling, in no way inconsistent with humility and reverence. The prayer in the Parable was doubtless intended by its author to represent Pharisaic piety in an unfavourable light; but the example I have just given is enough to show that a Pharisee would put a different interpretation upon it.