Many will no doubt remember the excellent sport which Socrates makes of Prodicus, who was possest with this passion to an extravagant degree (Protag. And instructive as in any language it must be, it must be eminently so in the Greek-a language spoken by a people of the subtlest intellect who saw distinctions, where others saw none who divided out to different words what others often were content to huddle confusedly under a common term who were themselves singularly alive to its value, diligently cultivating the art of synonymous distinction (the ἀνόματα διαιρεῖν, Plato, Laches, 197 d) and who have bequeathed a multitude of fine and delicate observations on the right discrimination of their own words to the after-world. The value of this study as a discipline for training the mind into close and accurate habits of thought, the amount of instruction which may be drawn from it, the increase of intellectual wealth which it may yield, all this has been implicitly recognized by well-nigh all great writers-for well-nigh all from time to time have paused, themselves to play the dividers and discerners of words-explicitly by not a few, who have proclaimed the value which this study had in their eyes. We shall have done much for those who come to us for theological training and generally for mental guidance, if we can persuade them to have these continually in their hands if we can make them believe that with these, and out of these, they may be learning more, obtaining more real and lasting acquisitions, such as will stay by them, and form a part of the texture of their own minds for ever, that they shall from these be more effectually accomplishing themselves for their future work, than from many a volume of divinity, studied before its time, even if it were worth studying at all, crudely digested and therefore turning to no true nourishment of the intellect or the spirit.Ĭlaiming for these lectures a wider audience than at first they had, I cannot forbear to add a few observations on the value of the study of synonyms, not any longer having in my eye the peculiar needs of any special body of students, but generally and on that of the Synonyms of the New Testament in particular as also on the helps to the study of these which are at present in existence with a few further remarks which my own experience has suggested. I have never doubted that (setting aside those higher and more solemn lessons, which in a great measure are out of our reach to impart, being taught rather by God than men), there are few things which a theological teacher should have more at heart than to awaken in his scholars an enthusiasm for the grammar and the lexicon. Yet, feeling the immense value of these studies, and how unwise it would be, because we could not have all which we would desire, to forego what was possible and within our reach, I two or three times dedicated a course of lectures to the comparative value of words in the New Testament-and these lectures, with many subsequent additions and some defalcations, have supplied the materials of the present volume. The time itself was too short to allow this, and it was in great part claimed by more pressing studies.
The long, patient, and exact studies in language of our great Schools and Universities, which form so invaluable a portion of their mental, and of their moral discipline as well, could find no place during the two years or two years and a half of the theological course at King’s College.
THIS VOLUME, not any longer a little one, has grown out of a course of lectures on the Synonyms of the New Testament, which, in the fulfilment of my duties as Professor of Divinity at King’s College, London, I more than once addressed to the theological students there.
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