the ἡμεῖς of λέγομεν ; it is the ἡμεῖς of πιστεύομεν. One perceives this intuitively before initiating any process of reasoning. The μeis now appearing are obviously not the oi Xeyovтes of λéyoμev, Paul, to wit, Silvanus and Timothy ; but they are the οἱ πιστεύοντες οι πιστεύομεν. The reference is to believers who are steeped in steadfast faith of the resurrection. From their faith in Christ's resurrection they draw faith in their own resurrection. The ues of this passage represents Paul and all the faithful who, with him, are convinced that, as Christ rose from the dead, so they, too, shall one day rise by His power, to share in His glory.

If consistency and logical sequence of Pauline thought is to be maintained, it becomes absolutely necessary to recognize here the corporate peis, which must have been constantly on the lips of the faithful among the first generation of Christians. It is more than probable that, among themselves and in conversation with the pagan world, they used this dissyllabic 'we' to designate themselves as a class apart. Being only a small handful amid vast masses of a pagan population, the first Christians, whose unity and mutual charity were so conspicuous, would instinctively, owing to a kind of natural contrast, use peis in speaking of their body. It was the readiest mode of marking themselves off from Tà ovn, and especially it was the most emphatic distinction between them and the οἱ ἀπολλύμενοι. In short, for many years, it must have been the most popular substitute for one of the many designations then in use, ἅγιοι, ἔκκλητοι, οἱ πιστεύοντες, ἀδελφοί, none of which was yet accepted as a common distinctive badge of the nascent community. We know that the word Christian' was first used at Antioch, and that the appellation came probably from outside. What interval intervened before it won its way to general acceptance as the corporate name? St. Paul does not use the word xploriavol. It appears χριστιανοί. as a definite appellative in St. Peter's first Catholic Epistle.

Thus within the short compass of these few clauses referring to the Parousia, we find two uses of queis: first that of associated authorship, the ternal peis; then appears the corporate hues, representing all believers. The word seems purposely chosen so as to include, in the most universal and comprehensive manner, absolutely all believers. Had St. Paul wished to claim for himself and associates exclusively the οἱ λέγοντες of λέγομεν—the privilege of

assisting at the Parousia in their lifetime, he should have suppressed the two added asyndeta (οἱ ζῶντες οἱ περιλειπόμενοι) oi and the corporate nueis as well. For the latter would then be superfluous. And his sentence must have run: λéyoμev ὅτι περιλειφθέντες εἰς τὴν παρουσίαν . . . ἁρπαγησόμεθα

Again, had St. Paul wished to make the announcement attributed to him by Rationalists; had it been his intention to predicate presence at the Parousia of the then living Christians and himself, two courses lay open. Either he could have retained the corporate nueis, and suppressed the qualifying or explanatory adjuncts; or else, instead of these futuristic asyndetic adjuncts, he should have inserted some clear, unmistakable and unequivocal qualification, of a kind in which Greek abounds. He could, for instance, much to the satisfaction of Rationalists, have written: ἡμεῖς οἱ ζῶμεν καὶ περιλειπόμεθα εἰς τὴν παρουσίαν He did neither; and consequently we are forced to conclude that the predication in question is made generically of the corporate body of Christians (μeîs) and specifically of such as shall be alive at the Day of Judgment. By using the corporate peis St. Paul gives us to understand he is speaking of the universality of Christians. By his subsequent determinant characterization, through the instrumentality of two gradational appositives, of less comprehensiveness, yet still of generic import, and also by means of connotation of future time, he limits his statement to the living remnant at the last day. Here it might be objected that the subject of TOTEUομev (we believe) is the genericwe.' Seeing that this word introduces Paul's argumentation proper, as distinct from the business announcement of Aéyouev, it might be alleged that the 'we of TOTEVOμEV is wrongly described as corporate; that it should be called generic. Certainly there are grounds for calling it an argumentative or generic we.' But the only persons who could argue in this way and adopt this Pauline line of thought are precisely the believers. So it matters little by which of these names it is called. The subject of TOTEÚομED is formally generic (being the 'we' of argumentation); but equivalently or inferentially it is the corporate 'we.'

To sum up. Thus far, with the help of analysis based solely on the solid foundation of well-established principles drawn from Greek syntax, as also from rudimentary textual criticism, there emerges what may be regarded as an

undeniably correct rendering of an oft-debated text: 'We Christians-those who shall be alive-those who shall be left to the coming of the Lord, shall in no wise precede them that are fallen asleep.

In this text there is neither affirmation, nor enunciation nor_insinuation of the proximity of the Parousia.

It may now be asked: Does this passage contain an assertion of at least the bare possibility that Paul and his audience might survive to witness the coming in glory? And the answer, I think, must be that from the analysis presented there emerges no explicit enunciation of even this possibility. It is, however, a logical inference from other Pauline statements, from other revelations concerning the Parousia. Many oft-repeated declarations of the Apostle make it evident that he was fully cognizant of the absolute uncertainty as to the time in which the great day of the Lord was shrouded. Yet he knew it would come at the end of the world. Could he, then, have excluded from his thoughts the reflection that it might come in his own lifetime?

Ever since the days of Paul, in every generation, in every age and century, the thought of this same possibility has been present to the minds of Christians, more intense in the few, scarcely conscious in the many. The possibility, however remote, is always there. So it must have been in the time of St. Paul; so it will be to the end of time. Our text does not deny this possibility; neither does it assert it.

J. DONOVAN, S.J.

EDMUND BURKE

BY JOSEPH J. MACSWEENEY

I

SHAKESPEARE and Burke are above talent.' Such was the remarkable tribute which Mackintosh paid to the genius of his opponent and contemporary. Like the great dramatist, Burke possessed the power of comprehending life, and of interpreting it in the fullest manner. He was a statesman rather than a politician, and statesmanship transcends politics as literature transcends the craft of mere writing. To consider him only as a politician and to ignore his right to be considered as a man of letters would be as fallacious as to consider Milton merely as a poet and to forget that he wrote Areopagitica. The genius of Burke cannot be partitioned, in him the realms of statesmanship and literature unite. Burke is best thought of as a subtle philosophical thinker, whose intellect played over themes of wide range and vast import, with an unexhausted poetic fancy, a penetrating comprehension, and a passionate enthusiasm, and as applying general political ideas to concrete practical problems in a manner hardly excelled.

*

Edmund Burke was born at Dublin in 1729. His father was a solicitor, and his mother's maiden name was Nagle. Edmund, like his brothers, followed the religion of his father, and the only girl remained a Catholic, which was the belief of her mother. As a child he was thus reared in an environment where his mind was early trained to recognize differences, and to form, by necessity, tolerant, if not large views. His schooling was fortunate, for he was sent to Ballitore, and placed under the care of Abraham Shackleton, a real educator, in whose hands the finelytempered spirit of the boy was not broken. On leaving Ballitore, he went, in due course, to Trinity College,

Dublin, where, however, the routine academic life was distasteful to him. His study was desultory, and mathematics, philosophy, history, and poetry, in turn, won his attention. Goldsmith, whose statue guards with his the entrance gate of the old Elizabethan foundation, was his only distinguished contemporary, but no intimacy appears to have existed between him and the wayward sizar. During these years of University life it is pleasant to picture him, as Lord Morley does, in one of his evening strolls 'taking his way, "where Liffey rolls her dead dogs to the sea," along the wall on the shore, where he delighted to see the sun sink in the waters, gilding ocean, ships, and city as it vanished.' Yet, despite the leisured life which this description might seem to indicate, Burke obtained his Arts degree in 1748. Two years later he crossed over to England, to pursue at the Middle Temple a course of study which was, as his friends thought, to lead to legal pursuits. But though he went to the Temple, he never reached the bar literature called him to her pleasant fields, and his home circle was displeased to find that, at a time when he should have held his first brief, he merely held an author's

pen.

His early life is not fraught with much interest: no romance hung round it which, as in the case of Goldsmith's early career, beat fiction to a frazzle. The industrious struggle to achieve success followed through obscure years. 'I was not,' he wrote in a Letter to a Noble Lord, 'I was not swaddled and rocked and dandled into a legislator. Nitor in adversum is the motto for a man like me. At every step of my progress in life (for at every step I was traversed and opposed), and at every turnpike I met, I was obliged to show my passport.'

During his first years in London, he cultivated a taste for debate, and took an interest in the drama, and it is interesting to find him, later, giving testimony to the relation of the stage to contemporary oratory, by telling the Commons that he believed there was scarcely one among them who was not in part indebted to Garrick for his oratorical skill. But Burke was no lover of the vanity of mere debate or of inane theatre-going; he had the healthy habit of spending much time at favourite country places,

1 It appears to the present writer that it is physically impossible for the sun to sink in the waters of Dublin Bay as it is on the eastern coast.