INTRODUCTORY NOTICE TO THE HOMILY KNOWN AS THE SECOND EPISTLE OF CLEMENT

It is gratifying that our series is marked by tokens of critical progress, and not less cheering tokens of scientific research. The clearing-up of much that has perplexed us about Hermas; the Bryennios discovery; and, not least, the completion of this fragment, which has long been a scandal to patristic inquiry,-are surely such tokens. They enrich the reader with definite ideas on many collateral subjects. May they not stimulate American scholarship and American affluence to fresh enterprises of the same character for the advancement of learning, and the glory of the world's Redeemer and Illuminator?

The very early date to which this homily is now assigned makes its slightest allusions to the New-Testament canon of very great importance. I have ventured to indicate a few such, even where they may be mere allusions, not textual quotations: as, e.g., on1 and2 , slight indications of a reference to the Second Epistle of St. Peter and to the Apocalypse.3