the caution is equally needed. The abnegation of reason is not the evidence of faith but the confession of despair. Reason and reverence are natural allies, though untoward circumstances may sometimes interpose and divorce them. Any one who has attempted to comment on St Paul's Epistles must feel on laying down his task how far he has fallen short even of his own poor ideal Luther himself expresses his shame that his 'so barren and simple commentaries should be set forth upon so worthy an Apostle and elect vessel of God.' Yet no man had a higher claim to a hearing on such a subject; for no man was better fitted by the sympathy of like experiences to appreciate the character and teaching of St Paul. One who possesses no such qualifications is entitled to feel and to express still deeper misgivings. TRINITY COLLEGE, February 18, :36. THE GALATIAN PEOPLE. WEE tians as an HEN St Paul carried the Gospel into Galatia, he was The Galathrown for the first time among an alien people differing widely in character and habits from the surrounding nations. A race whose home was in the far West, they had been torn from their parent rock by some great social convulsion, and after drifting over wide tracts of country, had settled down at length on a strange soil in the very heart of Asia Minor. Without attempting here to establish the Celtic affinities of this boulder people by the fossil remains of its language and institutions, or to trace the path of its migration by the scores imprinted on its passage across the continent of Europe, it will yet be useful, by way of introduction to St Paul's Epistle, to sketch as briefly as possible its previous history and actual condition. There is a certain distinctness of feature in the portrait which the Apostle has left of his Galatian converts. is clear at once that he is dealing with a type of character strongly contrasted for instance with the vicious refinements of the dissolute and polished Corinthians, perhaps the truest surviving representatives of ancient Greece, or again with the dreamy speculative mysticism which disfigured the halforiental Churches of Ephesus and Colossa. We may expect to have light thrown upon the broad features of national character which thus confront us, by the circumstances of the descent and previous history of the race, while at the same time such a sketch will prepare the way for the solution. It The names Celta. Ga Galli. of some questions of interest, which start up in connexion with this epistle. The great subdivision of the human family which at the dawn of European history occupied a large portion of the late, and continent west of the Rhine with the outlying islands, and which modern philologers have agreed to call Celtic, was known to the classical writers of antiquity by three several names, Celta, Gulate, and Galli. Of these. Celte, which is the most ancient, being found in the earliest Greek historians Hecatæus and Herodotus, was probably introduced into the Greek language by the colonists of Marseilles', who were first brought in contact with this race. The terra Galate is of late introduction, occurring first in Timeus, a writer of the third century B.C.* This latter form was generally adopted by the Greeks when their knowledge was extended by more direct and frequent intercourse with these barbarians, whether in their earlier home in the West or in their later settlement in Asia Minor. Either it was intended as a more exact representation of the same barbarian sound, or as seems more probable, the two are diverging but closely afffed torms of the same word, derived by the Greeks from different branches of the Celtic race with which at different times they came in contact. On the other hand, the Romans generally designated 1 On these terms see Ditfenbach Celtica . p. 5 s., Ulert Geogr der Griech. u. Am. Th. H. Asth. 2, p. 183 sq., Zeuss die Lautsolen u. Me Nach Sarstärime p. 6 sq., Tulerry Histoire des Gaulois 1. p. 28. 2 Hecat. Fragm. 19, 21, 22, ed. Müller; Herod. ii. 33, iv. 49. Both forms Κελτοί and Κέλται occur. Diod. v. 32, quoted in note 5. Timaus Fragm. 37, ed. Müller. Pausanias says (i. 3. 5) ὀψὲ δέ τοτε αὐτ τοὺς καλεῖσθαι Γαλάτας ἐξενίκησε· Κελ το γαρ κατά τε σφᾶς τὸ ἀρχαῖον καὶ παρὰ τοῖς ἄλλοις ὠνομάζοντο. See also the passages in Diefenbach Celt. 1. p. S. This seems the most probable in ference from the confused notices in ancient Triters. The most important Masage ls Diod. v. 32. Tous yap ÚTED May kato.koÛvtas by my μerogels Ka、 Tous maca más Almets CTL de TOUS ÉTÌ Tade Tv Ivenraiwv dobr Keλrous oroμάζουσι' τους δ ̓ ὑπὲρ ταύτης τῆς Κελ τικῆς εἰς τὰ πρὸς νότον νευοντα μέρη, παρά τε τὸν ὠκεανὸν καὶ τὸ ̔Ερκύνιον ὄρος καθιδρυμένους καὶ πάντας τοὺς ἑξῆς μέχρι τῆς Σκυθίας, Γαλατας προσαγορεύουσι K.T.\. See also Strabo iv. p. 189, and other passages cited in Ukert 11. 2, p. 197 sq., Diefenbach Celt. II. p. 10 sq. At all events it seems certain that the Gauls in the neighbourhood of Marseilles called themselves Celte. |