hich Bishop Westcott makes such impressive use, who can doubt, with any
fair show of reason--however frequent may be the interchange of the
particular prepositions in the first century--that, in those passages,
when St. Matthew wrote [Greek text] he did mean _into_; and that when St.
Paul used [Greek text], he did mean _in_, in the simplest sense of the
word?

But to the devout Christian we have a far deeper answer than the answer
we have just considered.

In the first place, does not the manifold wisdom of God reveal itself to
our poor human thoughts in His choice of a widespread spoken language,
just by its very diffusion readily lending itself to the reception of new
words and new thoughts as the medium by which the Gospel message was
communicated to the children of men? Just as the particular period of
Christ's manifestation has ever been reverently regarded as a revelation
of the manifold nature of the eternal wisdom, so may we not see the same
in the choice of a language, at a particular period of its development,
as the bearer of the message of salvation to mankind? Surely this is a
manifestation of the Divine wisdom which must ever be seen and felt
whenever the outward character of the Greek of the New Testament is dwelt
upon by the truth-seeking spirit of the reverent believer.

And is there not a second thought, far too much lost sight of in our
investigation of the written word of the New Testament--that just as the
writers had their human powers quickened and strengthened by the Holy
Ghost for the full setting forth of the Gospel message by their spoken
words, so in regard of their written words would the same blessed
guidance be vouchsafed to them? And if so, is it not right for us, not
only to draw from their words all that by the plain laws of language they
can be understood to convey to us, but also to do what has been done in
the Revised Version, and to find the nearest equivalent our language
supplies for the words in the original?

These thoughts might be carried much further, but enough has been said to
justify the minute care that has been taken in the renderings of the
written word of the New Testament by the Revisers, and further, the
validity of the deductions that may be drawn from their use of one word
rather than another, especially in the case of words that might seem to
be practically synonymous. It may be quite true that, in the current
Greek of the time, many of the distinctions tha