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them to destroy them utterly, and to break my covenant with them," we are bound to rely on the prophecy which assures us of our final redemption: "When he will avenge the blood of his servants, and will render vengeance to his adversaries, and will forgive his land and his people" (Deut. xxxii. 43).

NEWMAN.

TO CORRESPONDENTS.

66

as a man

We have received from a Friend a long letter addressed to him by Dr. PYE SMITH, in which this gentleman complains that we have represented him " either fascinated by the learning and ability of the German Neologists, or wickedly attempting, by art and disguise, to give currency to their principles." These two charges are extremely dissimilar; the former implying error in judgment; the latter criminality of design. We are not aware of any expressions in our Review on which the imputation of our making the latter charge against Dr. Smith could be grounded; we saw nothing in his discourse implying criminality of design, and no motives whatever were assigned. But it is very possible that one who first enters an infected atmosphere as a physician, may himself become infected; and the very term fascinated," which the Doctor uses, denotes an influence of which the subject is unconscious. This we do think to be the case with Dr. Pye Smith: he has read so many of the writings of the Neologists, that his works abound with their terms and phraseology; and, what is still more to be lamented, and which our Review endeavoured to demonstrate, he has imbibed some of their principles of interpretation-the same perversions of the letter, and denial of the plain grammatical meaning of the Holy Scriptures All this may very well consist with having written many books sincerely intended to refute some of the errors of Neologism; and if any of our remarks should induce Dr. Smith to break the fascination, to draw a stronger line of demarcation, and shew a bolder front of defiance against the enemy, we shall greatly rejoice. In the mean time, we beg to assure him that we neither felt, nor meant to express, any personal hostility against himself, but thought the principles of interpretation he maintains deserving of the severest reprehension.

We have also received a letter from Mr. J. A. HALDANE, not denying or retracting, but endeavouring to justify!!! his misquotation of Mr. Irving's words, as pointed out by JUSTUS in our last number. Such communications we beg to decline inserting.

Papers, "On the Grounds of separating from a Church," "On the Good and Evil of Religious Societies;" "On the Temple of Ezekiel;" "On the Marriage Supper;" and several shorter ones, have been received: also replies from "CLERICUS," and from "WARSAW," and various extracts from old Divines all of which we shall carefully examine, and decide upon as far as practicable for our next Number. Many other letters have also been received, by which we are obliged, and shall endeavour to profit.

In answer to HESPERIUS, we state, that the Jewish civil year commences with the new moon nearest to the Autumnal Equinox; and that the present year began on the 29th September 1829, A. M. 5590. Applications have been made to print in a cheap form, as tracts, some of the papers which have appeared in this Journal. Our kind friends are not perhaps aware that considerable loss is generally incurred by such small publications; but if these gentlemen would engage to take such a number of the tracts as would cover part of the loss, we should have pleasure in complying with their request.

We have received a letter from the Editor of the Christian Herald, a monthly publication on Prophecy, printed in Dublin. We should rejoice at the esta

blishment of such a work in every city of the empire; shall be glad to cooperate with every such labourer, and heartily bid him God speed. THE HOLY BIBLE, WITH THE PRINCIPAL NAMES IN ENGLISH.-Our attention has been called to a work, now publishing in monthly parts, professing to give, to an unlearned reader of the Scriptures, information which is much needed, concerning the different Hebrew names, especially those which designate the Supreme Being, and we have been requested to give our opinion respecting it. The work follows, in general, the authorized English version, only substituting those names which it proposes to illustrate in the text, and giving a few short notes explanatory of these substitutions, and a preface stating the general principles by which the author has been guided. Had this work been ably executed, it would have been of great utility; but it is quite the reverse, and can bring nothing but discredit on all the parties concerned. The author follows most of Hutchinson's vagaries, which led astray Julius Bates, Romaine, Parkhurst, and many abler men; and makes other blunders of his own, which even an English reader may in most instances detect, and in all instances understand when pointed out by another. The great majority of Hebrew scholars adopt that pronunciation of Hebrew names which the vowel points define; but the followers of Hutchinson take the consonants alone, and pronounce the words according to their own fancy; rejecting the vowel points under a supposition that they are additions made to the text so recently as in the sixth or seventh century of the Christian era. This supposition, of the recent origin of the points, has been often refuted: but were it not so, and did we believe that they had been added to the text by persons hostile to Christianity, the simple mode of recovering the pronunciation would be by observing how Hebrew names were spelt in the Greek of the New Testament, and from thence deducing general principles applicable to the pronunciation of the whole Hebrew language. This the rejectors of the points do not do, while they most inconsistently do have recourse to this method for defining, or rather for perverting, the etymology of those very words whose spelling they refuse to fix in the same way. For example: Eli and Elohim, the followers of Hutchinson spell Ali and Aleim; and this writer in his preface refers to Mark xv. 34, in explanation of the name which he spells Alehi. Now in Mark it is Eloi (Ews), and in the parallel passage in Matthew Eli (H), which is certainly decisive against Alehi or Ali, being the way in which is at present pointed in the xxiid Psalm: and is quite a different word from Elohi, which this writer most preposterously supposes to be a distinct name, whereas it is only Elohim dropping and taking zere from being in construction with a following noun. But the most absurd mistake into which this person falls, at least the worst that we have met with, and one of the most absurd that has ever fallen in our way in any book of the kind, is the derivation which he coins for Israel. He says, in the last page of the preface, "The name Israel has been printed (throughout his book) as it is spelt, to wit, Ishral, because it means an Ish in AL; or, in the New Testament language, a man in CHRIST." This is either disgraceful ignorance, or daring, reckless tampering with the word of God: for the etymology of this name is not left to conjecture, but is fixed by the word of God, at the very time when Jacob receives the name of Israel: "Thou hast power as a prince, with God

The man who could fall into such a complication of blunders as this, by first being ignorant of, or rejecting, an etymology fixed by Scripture; next, by shewing such marvellous ignorance as to throw away the radical & in WN, and the radical in Israel, is not deserving of any further notice. But we shall be heartily glad to hear of the discontinuance of a work which, in such hands, can only lead to further evil, and no balance whatever of good.

THE

MORNING WATCH.

DECEMBER 1830.

THE PERILS OF THE CHURCH, AND THE JUDGMENT OF

THE NATIONS.

IF F a man will attend to the connection which subsists between the progress of events around him in their bearings upon that sphere of action wherein his duties lie, and the development in himself of those powers which qualify him to fill the station in which the providence of God has placed him, he will find this to be true in his own individual experience, which as a general maxim every one admits,--That where there is a work to be done, God has ready at hand a proper agent. We mean not to take this to ourselves in a boastful or vain-glorious way: we desire not to overrate our own importance; not to assume that we have fully, and in the best manner, availed ourselves of the opportunities which God has given; our faults and deficiencies we know to be many: but, while we fully acknowledge this, we think it right to state the remarkable fact, that, at the very time when we were engaged in tracing from the prophetic Scriptures the character of the last Antichrist, his actings were beginning in a neighbouring country; and while God was speaking to us by his word, He was at the same time uttering his voice to all Christendom in a language which every one may read, telling them that "Babylon is fallen, is fallen;" that the last earthquake is now beginning; that the match is kindled to that mine which has been long prepared beneath the seat of the "mother of abominations," whose explosion shall be echoed back by Alleluiahs from all the hosts of God. "Rejoice over her, thou heaven, and ye holy apostles and prophets; for God hath avenged you on her.... And again they said, Alleluiah; and her smoke rose up for ever and ever" (Rev. xviii. 20; xix. 3).

But not only is the destruction of the Papal apostasy now begun, but also that of all the enemies and oppressors of the

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church; for now is come the time of which the Lord proclaims, "Woe to the multitude of many people, which make a noise like the noise of the seas; and to the rushing of nations, that make a rushing like the rushing of mighty waters! The nations shall rush like the rushing of many waters: but God shall rebuke them, and they shall flee far off, and shall be chased as the chaff of the mountains before the wind, and like a thistledown before the whirlwind. And, behold, at eventide trouble; and before the morning he is not. This is the portion of them that spoil us, and the lot of them that rob us" (Isa. xvii. 12).

Previous to the occurrences of the last three months we bad meditated over and arranged the substance of what we are now writing; and, seasonable as it may at present appear, the coincidence arises from the course of events having fallen in with our purpose, and not from our having changed our purpose for the events. And we have further to state, that the interpretations contained in this paper have been held by us for many years, and frequently communicated and examined in friendly intercourse; that we have not found occasion to change or modify them in consequence of recent occurrences: and we are firmly convinced that all the portents and meteor signs which shoot across our hemisphere will but fix our eyes the more intently on our pole-star, "the sure word of prophecy, the light which shineth in a dark place;" and the convulsions of the world," the sea and the waves roaring, and men's hearts failing them for fear," will only make us cling the more closely to the "hope which we have, as an anchor of the soul both sure and stedfast, and which entereth into that within the vail, whither the Forerunner is for us entered, even Jesus, made an high priest for ever after the order of Melchisedek" (Heb. vi. 19).

One unaccustomed to the study of the prophetic Scriptures can hardly understand the degree of certainty respecting the future which is from thence derived; and is apt to suppose that the confidence which the students of prophecy sometimes express, results from a hasty temperament, or an over-excited imagination-that rashness or fancy has led our conclusions, rather than sober-minded deliberate judgment. But we request those who are tempted to form such an opinion of us, not to be themselves precipitate, and to examine the grounds of our confidence with calm deliberation. We can assure them that it requires a very great exercise of forbearance and patience on our parts to reply to the frivolous objections which are sometimes brought forward. The force of an argument can only be felt by understanding the force of its terms and the nature of the subject to which it is applied. A geometrician does not expect one unacquainted with figures to have that certainty which he himself feels respecting a demonstration in Euclid.

The astronomer bears with the incredulity of ignorance concerning the sizes and distances of the planets, points on which his acquired knowledge has given him perfect certainty. The rustic cannot comprehend a reciprocal action between two bodies, direct as the masses, and inverse as the squares of the distances; and, ignorant of the means by which the heavenly motions are so accurately calculated, supposes such knowledge to be supernatural-wicked in many cases, presumptuous in all. The more violent of the opponents of prophecy are scarcely better informed in this department of knowledge, than were the opponents of Galileo in astronomy; and we would entreat them to bear in mind that instructive portion of history, and to follow out the successive steps by which we have attained such firm conviction of the truth of many interpretations of prophecy, the announcement of which conviction seems to our opponents reprehensibly presumptuous. Many of the interpretations of prophecy are closely interwoven with, and all of them greatly confirm and illustrate, the leading doctrines of our faith; and the process by which they are deduced is, mutatis mutandis, precisely the same as that resorted to for doctrine. Our opponents themselves illustrate and explain the different offices of Christ in the soul's salvation, by the history of the Patriarchs, of the Jewish nation and its deliverances, by the sacrifices and different ordinances of the Jewish ritual, and by the feasts and solemn days: we not only claim our right to do the same, but also extend the illustration to the whole body of Christ, the church-the collective members, as well as individuals.

It is strange, it is passing strange, that an apology should be necessary for this; since that which is applicable to the individual must be applicable a thousand-fold to the community, and since the usage of Scripture and the first and simplest application would attach to the church. Scripture addresses men as communities; most of its promises and denunciations are to bodies of men, whether churches or nations; and it seems the simpler course to apply them now to similar bodies of men; and the conduct of our opponents, in limiting the application to individual experiences alone, would seem the less natural process, and the rather to need an apology. "Ah, sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity!" is the burden of Isaiah: this is commonly applied to sinful individuals; and this application we do not object to, but insist upon applying it also to a sinful church. So also of his exhortations; as, "Hear the word of the Lord, ye rulers.....give ear unto the law of our God, ye people" (Isai. i. 10): and we cannot but apply to a church such passages as, "The vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel, and the men of Judah his pleasant plant: and he looked for judgment, but behold

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