knowledge, is not always the same word in the original. In the New Testament we have gnosis (yvois) and epignosis (cryνwors.) Gnosis, with a single exception, is rendered, in the common version, knowledge. In 1 Tim. vi. 20, it is translated science. Epignosis is several times rendered acknowledgment, or the acknowledging; but there is no doubt a shade of difference in the exact import of these words. True, in this same epistle, the two words appear to be used in precisely the same relation-1st, in the case we are considering, where we have epignosis; and 2d, further on, in the 3d chap. 18th verse, where it is gnosis. But as epignosis involves and presupposes gnosis, this case presents no difficulty to the rule that would distinguish between them, for the less may always be predicated of the greater, since it is included in it, as the genus in the species. We should have been gratified, if it had pleased the learned translator of this epistle, to give us a note on these words.

The meaning of epi (ir) in composition with gnosis, seems to be reciprocity, mutuality, the running of one thing into another, and it requires no very profound metaphysical reflection to see that, in epignosis, there is a mutual and reciprocal knowledge or recognition between God and the believer, in which information is so laid hold of by the practical consciousness, as to become experience. It is inward, practical, experimental consciousness of the presence, and power, and faithfulness of God in Christ, working with us through the Spirit, for our redemption. Not the giddy acquisition of the intellect, which puffeth up, but that sweet experience in the heart of the abiding presence and love of the Father and the Son, which our blessed Saviour so graciously, in his last consolitary discourse, promised to those who love him and keep his words. "If any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God." (Jno. vii. 17.) Grace and peace will increase to fulness, and the soul shall be satisfied with God. Let us apply our hearts to this knowledge, and walking humbly with our God, go on to perfection until we shall know even as we are also known." (1 Cor. xiii. 12.) W. K. P.

THE BIBLE IN ONE HUNDRED AND SEVENTY DIFFERENT LANGUAGES. -The income of the British and Foreign Bible Society, the last year, was $625,000, being $40,000 more than that of any previous year. The Society has been the means of issuing nearly twenty-nine millions of copies of the Scriptures, in one hundred and seventy different languages.

THE VALUE OF THE BIBLE.

The value of the Bible to man as an individual, and to man in a state of society: or extracts from a Lecture delivered by Humphry Sandwith, M. D., before the Church of England Religious and Literary Society, January 10th, 1853.

YES, the Bible, in the vernacular language of a nation, is God's appointed instrument for meliorating the condition of society. Luther's and Tyndale's plan of giving the people the Bible in their native tongue, and grafting its lessons on the youthful mind, by an effective scholastic training, can alone secure a profound civilization. It is only thus that "the wild beast in the heart of the people can be tamed." A scripturally educated peasantry are not chafed by the idea of subordination; their amusements are no longer savage; nor are they quarrelsome and belligerent. The Protestant principle of penetrating the gloomy recesses of social barbarism by the light of biblical instruction, rebukes, by its contrasted results, the monastic principle of withdrawment. While the monks were praying, chanting, and counting their beads, a besotted world lay comparatively unheeded around them, the defenceless prey of the cruel rapine of the most demoniacal passions. Never was the civilization of the masses at a lower ebb than when monkish superstition was at its highest flow. Corruptions multiplied within the church in proportion as the corrective light of the Bible was obscured. Moreover, when the Scriptures were inaccessible to the world, and lay entombed in monastic libraries, abuses multiplied from the want of an authoritative standard of appeal. Well, therefore, might Erasmus inquire, in a querulous tone of remonstrance, "How chanceth it, that bishops in our days think it a goodlier thing for them to have each in his train three hundred horsemen, well appointed with cross-bows, javelins, and handguns, than to be accompanied with a good number of learned and virtuous deacons, and to carry about with them books of Holy Scripture? Why have trumpets and horns a sweeter sound in their ears than the reading of the Holy Scripture?" Again, in one of the noblest passages in all his writings, the same accomplished scholar of the sixteenth century exclaims: "I differ exceedingly from those who object to the Scriptures being translated into the vernacular tongues, and read by the illiterate as if Christ had taught so obscurely, that none could understand him but a few theologians; or, as if the Christian religion depended upon being kept secret. The mysteries of kings ought perhaps to be concealed; but the mystery of Christ strenuously urges publication. I would have even the meanest of women to read the Gospels, and the Epistles of St. Paul; and I wish that the Scriptures might be translated into all languages, that they might be known and read, not only by the Irish and Scotch, but also by Saracens and Turks. Assuredly the first step is, to make them known. For this very purpose, though many might ridicule, and others might frown, I wish the husbandman might repeat them at the plow, the weaver sing them at his loom, the traveler beguile the tediousness of the way by the entertainment of their stories, and the general discourse of all Christians

be concerning them; since what we are in ourselves, such we almost constantly are in our common conversation." Yet Erasmus does but re-echo the sentiment of Luther and Tyndale, who may fairly be called the deliverers of Europe; since they at once achieved, by a simple appeal to the Sacred Volume, a reformation which would forever have defied the puny efforts of cloistered sages. The triumph of the great German reformer at once emancipated the human mind on the Continent, as that of Tandale did the English mind; and European society felt at his heart the throb and glow of civil freedom. Rome boasts, I know, her culture of the fine arts. But though these may refine the senses, and even sharpen the intellect, they obviously fail to humanize the brutality of a priesthood who revel in the torture and destruction of their own species. No flippant sentimentality, produced by an excessive development of the imagination and culture of the senses, will ever suffice to cure the radical selfishness and cruelty of unregenerated human nature. Paganism itself was equally favorable to the fine arts, and yet was an accomplished persecutor of the primitive Christians. "There are some religions, in which the disposition in man to a taste for the fine arts, has a place assigned to it above that given to his moral nature. Protestantism has something else to glory in; and Christianity is distinguished from Romanism by the fact, that the moral element is its essence."

*

*

*

*

The men of this generation, however, possess as excellent opportunities as those of any former one, to ascertain the influence of the Bible in the production of a sound and satisfactory civilization. Protestant missions bring this question to a fair and open test. The civilization of barbarous tribes is being carried on to an almost unprecedented extent; and the great engine employed is the fixing of their spoken languages in a written form by vernacular translations of the Bible, which thus becomes the great teacher and moralizer of all classes of the community, by letting into their minds a flood of light on a variety of subjects altogether new to them; by suggesting a solid basis for laws and municipal regulations; by making public conscience itself the ally of government and legislation; and, above all, by its regenerating influence on the minds of the few, which infallibly raises the standard of religion and morals in the view of the many. "In the middle ages, Christianity was employed in civilizing the nations of Europe. Its progress, however, was remarkably slow; and the reason was, that the Christianity applied was a mixed and adulterated Christianity. The fatal principle was introduced, to treat the body of the people like children, not as men; and for Christianity they gave them superstition, hiding from them the manly and elevating truths with which it arouses the dormant spirit. So slow is man to learn, that the contrary experiment has been put in operation on a large scale only by two of the great and leading nations of the earth, Great Britain and the United States of America. The precise character of this experiment is, to make the plain, simple verities of Christianity, by the circulation of the Scriptures, and by preaching the Word of God, to bear on the moral and civil condition of the whole body of the people. I know there has been great debate about the philosophy of this fact; but I will go for the solution of the difficulty to the South Sea Islands and to South Africa, and I go there with a

confidence of finding it. Now it is a fact, and a most interesting one, that there are in those places whole communities of men, who were but a very short time ago savages, and as ferocious and as bad as perfectly savage men can be; and that these have been raised into civilization, and a civilization, too, more perfect than our own. And what is the solution of all this? That, from the very commencement of the process of their civilization, the verities of the Christian religion, in their simple form and majesty, were made to bear on their minds. They were treated as men, not as children; there was no superstition presented to nip the opening intellect, and to palliate vice, but the great truths of the Bible were taught in all their native simplicity. These were the very elements of civilization."

"THE BAPTISTS COMING UP TO OUR STANDARD."

WHEN two parties, who have been long separated by some real differences and many misunderstandings, begin to lay down their hostile arms and treat one another as friends, there should be, on both sides, the utmost respect and defference. Common politeness requires that both should abstain from all allusion to any thing calculated to revive old hostilities, re-open the closing wounds of a mutual strife, or sour the spirit of conciliation, which would throw its peaceful mantle over the demons of discord and smother them in its love. "Charity vaunteth not herself, seeketh not her own;"-and it were well if both Baptists and Reformers could sink themselves in their common efforts in the great and benevolent work in which they are mutually and so cordially engaged, and think only of the present and future demands which God, in his providence, is so loudly making upon their services. Pity and shame that, amid the din of battle, we should pause to quarrel about the origin of certain stripes in our banners!

The good man strives for the true, the beautiful and the good, but always in the spirit of peace. So the ends are reached, he quarrels not about the honor of the achievement. This would be selfish and human-whilst that is generous and divine. Still, there is more or less of the flesh about us all,—dragging us down to childish vanities about honor and fame. Some, too, are tenderly conscientious about the truth of history, and are fearful lest unmerited oblivion should cover the starting place, the fountain head, of some rivulet of good, that has poured its purifying drops into the great river of progress, and been lost in the general wave of gospel love. Cannot Baptists and Reformers alike look with placid countenance upon these amiable

weaknesses, and kiss away the frowns that it would be cruel seriously to reprove!

We have been led to express these reflections, by the following article from the Western Recorder, which we clip from the Christian Age. We trust the good editor of the Recorder has a larger and better soul, than to be so much hurt about the little matter referred to, as he makes out! The charge, by no means, involves an indictable offense, even were it true;—and if it is not true, there are a great many most excellent people that will be most heartily sorry for it. For our part, we could rejoice to see all the world coming up, not to our standard, but to the standard of Christ, without a word of reproach or boasting on the part of any, and our mutual differences so neutralized by the power of divine love, that each could rejoice in the beauty of his brother, and see only the weakness and unworthiness of his own heart. We trust that this spirit, even now, has a larger place in the feelings of our brother of the Recorder, than the orthodox indignation of his article seems to imply, and that he will think more forbearingly of those who, by vain speeches, provoke as vain replies.

Meantime, we commend to the special attention of our readers the very just remarks of one of the Editors of the Christian Age, which accompany the article from the Western Recorder. We take them from the issue for September 4th, in which excellent number, the reader will find several other most instructive and interesting articles, that we would be pleased to know had a wider circulation among our brethren. It will be a sufficient recommendation to state that they are from the pens of such contributors as brethren Walter Scott, Isaac Errett, and Prof. Jno. Young. W. K. P.

[From the Christian Age.]

In the Western Recorder, of August 27th, we find the following editorial:

QUITE A MISTAKE.

We are informed that a Reformer of some little note, has recently affirmed in substance that " Baptists were rapidly coming up to their standards; and the Baptists of Louisville especially endorsed and sympathized with them in their belief." Now, we have no desire to be deemed uncharitable, or to charge the author of such language with intentional misrepresentation. We feel assured, however, that such statements are purely fanciful. We are certainly aware of no such defection from the Baptist faith as is here indicated.

We cannot, of course, in a matter of this nature, be expected to represent the views and opinions of every Baptist. We are thoroughly satisfied, however, that very few, if any, intelligent members of our churches in this city, sympathize with or endorse the peculiar views of Alexander Campbell. Our own convictions are certainly