The Great Meaning of Metanoia - An Undeveloped Chapter in the Life and Teaching of Christ

From the PREFACE. The first of these Essays appeared in the "American Church Review" for July, 1881 — following the memorable day in May when the Revised Version of the New Testament was issued. The paper was soon afterwards reprinted separately, and in 1882 was put into book form by the present publisher. Although its point was made timely by the revision, and by the astonishing fact that, in a work expressly undertaken in this age to correct the misapprehensions of a former age, a mistranslation involving such consequences had been over-passed and perpetuated, yet the Essay did not set out to be a criticism of the New Version in this particular. It could not help falling into something like it, but its main purpose was to draw attention to, and to be a popular exposition of, a word in whose enormous potentiality of meaning lay, as I believed, a more true and more catholic, a more spiritual and more philosophical, interpretation of Christianity....