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 an instructive fiction that the book was regarded when it was introduced into public reading in the church? Donaldson says: "If the book be not inspired, then either the writer fancied he had seen these visions, or tried to make other people fancy this, or he clothed the work in a fictitious form designedly and undisguisedly. If he did the first, he must have been silly. If he did the second he must have been an impostor." But as he believes the author to have been "an honest upright, and thoughtful man," he concludes that he did the third, "as multitudes of others have done after him, with John Bunyan at their head." If we took this view we could lay no stress on anything the author tells us about himself and his family. These details might be fictitious, as the angels, the towers, and the beasts of the visions. We could not even assume that his name was Hermas for the narrator of the visions, who bears this name, might be an imaginary personage But we ourselves feel bound to reject this as altogether mistaken criticism, and as an application to the 2nd cent. of the standards of to-day. To us it seems plain that, whatever the author intended, the first readers of Hermas did not receive the book as mere allegorical fiction. Bunsen (Hippolytus and his Age, i. 315) tells us that Niebuhr used to pity the Athenian (sic, Qu. Roman?) Christians for being obliged to listen to this "good but dull novel." If the authorities of the church regarded it merely as a novel, would they have appointed it for public reading? At the end of the century Clement and others shew no doubt of the reality of the visions Were the men of a couple of generations earlier likely to have been more severe in their judgments, and would an angelic appearance seem to them so incredible that one who related it would be regarded as the narrator of a fiction that he did not intend to be believed? The book itself contains directions to the rulers of the Roman church to send the volume to foreign churches. If we suppose it really was sent to them stamped as a prophetic writing by the authority of the Roman church, we have an explanation of the consideration, only second to that of the canonical Scriptures, which it enjoyed in so many distant churches. A man at the present day might publish a story of visions, and be persuaded that his readers would not take him seriously, but no one in the 2nd cent. would be entitled to hold such a persuasion, and if the book of Hermas was accepted as inspired, the writer cannot be acquitted of the responsibility of having foreseen and intended this result. Mosheim, ''de Rebus Christ. ante Const.'' 163, 166, holds that the writer must either have been "mente captus et fanaticus," or else "scientem volentemque fefellisse," the latter being the opinion to which he inclines, believing that the lawfulness of pious frauds was a fixed opinion with many Christians at the date of the composition we are discussing We maintain, however, that it is possible to disbelieve in the inspiration of Hermas without imputing folly either to him who made the claim or to those who admitted it We must not regard the men of the 2nd cent. as fools because their views as to God's manner of teaching His church were different from those which the experience of so many following centuries has taught us. A Christian cannot regard them as fools for believing that in the time of our Lord and His apostles a great manifestation of the supernatural was made to the world. How long and to what extent similar manifestations would present themselves in. the ordinary life of the church only experience could skew, and they are not to be scorned if their expectations have not been borne out by later experience. In particular, if we are to set down as fools all who have believed that supernatural intimations may be given in dreams, our list would be a long one, and would include many eminent names; and though modern science may regard visions as phenomena admitting a natural explanation, it is not reasonable to expect such a view from the science of the 2nd cent. What Hermas tells of his personal history and of the times and circumstances of his visions conveys to us the impression of artless truth. His information about himself is contained in incidental allusions, not very easy to piece together; and the author of a fictitious narrative would not have conveyed so obscurely what he tells about his hero. He would probably also have made him a man of some eminence, holding high church office, whereas Hermas always speaks of the presbyters as if he were not one of them, and could have no motive for making his hero one engaged in trade unsuccessfully and not very honestly, and an elderly man with a termagant wife and ill brought-up children. On the other hand, if the book be true history, it is very much to the point that Hermas should get a revelation, directing his wife to keep her tongue in better order, and his children to pay more respect to their parents; nor need we suppose Hermas guilty of dishonesty in thus turning his gift of prophecy to the advantage of his family comfort; for nothing can be more natural than that the thoughts which troubled his waking moments should present themselves in his visions. There is nothing incredible in the supposition that the pictures of the first vision did present themselves to the mind of Hernias as he relates them. They must have been very vivid, and have impressed him strongly. Still, it is a year before he has another vision. After this he begins to fast and pray and look out eagerly for more revelations. Finally he comes to believe himself to be under the constant guardianship of the shepherd angel of repentance, and he ascribes all the lessons he desires to teach to the inspiration of this heavenly monitor. But perhaps his language expresses no more than his belief in the divine inspiration under which he wrote, for elsewhere he states that he does not regard the personages of his visions as having objective reality, and those things which in the earlier part are represented as spoken to him by the church are afterwards said to have been spoken by God's Spirit under the form of the church. That be sincerely believed himself to be the bearer of a divine message appears to be the case. A summary of his convictions would serve also for those of a man in many respects very unlike, Savon-