from infancy in the common belief. To hint that any part, or point, of that belief is contrary to the Scriptures is simply to shock them, even though the thing they believe-or fancy they believe-is infinitely more shocking than your hint. We must not, therefore, be impatient, but bear with our brethren. They will, by and by, and perhaps very soon, come round to us. One thing is very certain-we can never go back to them. Our discovery is too precious for that!

HILLSTEAD. The certainty that that discovery is no speculation of sentimental, but ill-informed, people, but the actual teaching of God's word, harmonising both with its letter and spirit, with his character and the nature of man, gives it such a hold upon the heart and understanding, that we cannot let it go. Besides, what a remarkable and suggestive fact it is that this precious light has been given to men who were faithfully labouring to awaken the Churches to the blessed hope of the Lord's glorious return! Loyal to one great truth, they were honoured with another; and I cannot but think that in the light of the Second Advent many of the difficulties which now perplex Christian men will shortly disappear. And now, dear friends, accept our thanks for your company and profitable conversation. We hope to see you again ere long, all being well, when some other topic of interest may engage our thoughts, and, under the Lord's blessing, make us wiser and stronger for his service, as long as he honours us with permission to serve him.

THE

PIOUS FRAUDS.

HE expression "Pious Frauds" in the following paper is not necessarily meant to convey the charge of deliberate and fraudulent perversion of truth for the purpose of leading men astray. Such things have been, as we all very well know; and the term pious frauds has therefore come to be popularly applied to the entire system of jugglery and legerdemain which has ever been the resort of priestcraft. At present it will be used mainly in reference to sundry mistaken meanings which have become attached to a variety of words or phrases in the Bible, such mistaken meanings retaining their vitality, or rather their hold on the popular mind, either by the effect of long habit or by virtue of their supposed assertion of some important truth. While uttering judgment in such cases, it may also be well to invite judgment; and as many valuable illustrations of this nature, besides those now under review, must have attracted the observation of our readers, all comers, with Mr. Editor's permission, will be welcome.

Job xiii. 15: "Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him." Commonly understood as the language of resignation, and perpetually quoted as an emphatic expression of acquiescence in the Divine dealings. But not thus was Job reasoning on the present occasion. His surging grief was rather pouring itself out in that self-assertion, of which his conscious integrity was the warranty. "Though he [even "the Mighty One," Greek] slay me, yet will I maintain confidence in this, that I can still plead my cause to his face." This meaning is sustained by the Septuagint version; and Job then goes on to say, in the language copied ver

batim by St. Paul in the Epistle to the Philippians, i. 19, "This also shall turn to my salvation," The passage in fact is just parallel with that occurring in Job x. 7: "Thou knowest that I have not committed iniquity, but who is he that can deliver out of thy hand ?" Job well knew, what his "comforters were so resolutely bent on denying, that he was a thoroughly honest man. All this hath come upon me, "not for any injustice in my hands; also my prayer is pure" (xvi. 16). "Far be it from me," he continues, "that I should justify you till I die, for I will not let go my innocence; but keeping fast to my righteousness, I will by no means let it go; for I am not conscious to myself of having done anything amiss." (xxvii. 5.) "Not done anything amiss "-the very same [Greek] phrase adopted by the dying thief to delineate the character of the suffering Redeemer. One might almost imagine it had become a popular term to denote a life of spotless innocence.

Haggai. ii. 7: "The desire of all nations shall come." Hymns, sacred odes, sermons, and historical treatises have, time out of mind, been engaged in illustrating the proposition supposed to be couched in the above words; namely, as setting forth the eager longing with which all nations would hail both the first and second advents of the Redeemer. Now, whether that proposition be true or not, and let it be admitted that the affirmative view of the question derives support from Malachi iii. 1, it is not the declaration of the prophet Haggai in this place; for his use of the word "desire" simply points to the earthly objects of the desires of the foreign nations, that is to say, to their choice portions, which should all be brought to Jerusalem; for the gold is mine, saith the Lord, and the silver is mine.-Minton.

Matt. xvi. 18: "On this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it." Let the question be asked of the ordinary run of readers what they understand by this promise, and ninety-nine out of a hundred will reply that "the powers of darkness shall not prevail against the Church." As the word " gate" sometimes stands for the high street or main entrance into a city, where the greatest throng of people passed and where kings sometimes sat in judgment, so in this place the term points, say they, to the legionary emissaries of Satan. And then as to the next word "hell," inasmuch as it would be absurd to locate these emissaries in Hades or the grave, where of course they would be powerless, some region of the nature of Gehenna must be invented or imagined as their place of ambush. But Gehenna happens to be one of the terrible features of the future, and is nowhere described as having any present existence. And so it comes to this,-that "the gates of hell," in the sense of "the hostile forces of evil," is a simple absurdity, and a chaos of terms. But let the legitimate word Hades be substituted in its unchanged form for that of hell, and let it take its proper place in our understandings, and the passage is simply a promise of a resurrection. "Because I live, ye shall live also. For as truly as I hold the keys of death and of Hades, no gates or bars shall exercise an overcoming force beyond the hour when I shall summon forth my people to immortality," or, as it is in Hosea xiii. 14, "I will deliver them out of the power of Hades, I will redeem them from death." And in Ezekiel xxxvii. 18," Ye shall know that I am the Lord when I have opened your graves, O my people, and brought you up out of your graves, and put my Spirit in

you." Gates of death is a figure of speech familiar to other prophetical writers also, as in Job xxxviii. 17, "Do the gates of death open to thee for fear, and did the porters of Hades quake when they saw thee?"

Psalm ix. 13: "Thou that liftest me up from the gates of death." Psalm cvii. 18: " They draw near to the gates of death." Job xvii. 16: 66 They shall go down to the bars of the pit, when our rest together is in the dust." For "bars of the pit" the Septuagint has here the single word Hades. Jonah ii. 6, "The earth with her bars was about me for ever," or as the Septuagint gives it, "I went down into the earth, whose bars are the everlasting barriers." It might be objected that the force of the term found in Matthew's Gospel" shall not prevail" is aggressive rather than restraining; and that if reference had been made only to the holding or restraining power of the grave, we should have had the future form, not of katischuo the verb actually employed, but of katischo, which more properly indicates the force of detention. It is presumed that this difficulty is amply met by recalling the many other passages and phrases in which death is unmistakably represented as an aggressive and victorious power. They are so numerous in fact that recital would be wearisome. Death does exercise an usurping domination, and one too of a most oppressive character, in spite of all illusory verbiage of a popular psychology. One more objection which may possibly arise must also be anticipated. It might be said, "If resurrection only be the theme of our Lord's behest, why is it represented as an attribute peculiar to his people, when he has elsewhere declared that the wicked shall rise ?" Alas, alas! what is a promise to one is despair to the other. Is it forgotten that the wicked shall be "re-turned to Hades ?" (for thus it seems we are to understand the expression "turned into hell" in Psalm ix. 17). By which it comes to pass that their final doom or second death in Gehenna becomes the superlatively tragic process issuing into their re-consignment to that Sheol, Hades, or land of darkness, oblivion, and contempt, from which there is never again "a coming forth."-C. L. Ives, M.D.

Isaiah xiv. 12: "How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning." [Lucifer, the Latin form of the original title signifying the Light-bringer.] The figurative language by which the dead chiefs in Hades taunt the king of Babylon when he has become like one of themselves, has a sort of resemblance to what we might imagine addressed to Satan. By some such process as this it must have been that the prince of darkness has come to be denominated the morning star or light-bringer. How inapplicable the epithet, must be obvious to all. Yet in modern days, the term Lucifer, in the imaginations of the ignorant, is actually associated with the fires of pandemonium. At what period the popular notions first began to prevail respecting Satan's prehistoric career, which found amplification in John Milton's poem, who shall determine? But we may be quite satisfied that no such preconceptions influenced the mind of Isaiah when the above vision received the impress of his inspired pen. Nor, coming down to later days, shall we discover that there was any objection to Lucifer as a Christian name. Why indeed should there be? In the third book of the ecclesiastical historian Socrates Scholasticus, there is a biographic notice of Lucifer, the godly bishop of Caralitanum, in Sardinia, who is described as flour

ishing in the fourth century, associating with Eusebius and Athanasius, and suffering banishment from the Emperor Julian. The Greek reading

of the passage of Isaiah now under treatment may conclude this note."How has Eosphoros [Hesperus] that rose in the morning, fallen from heaven! He that sent [his mandates] to all the nations is himself crushed to earth."

Isaiah lxvi. 24: "Their worm shall not die" (quoted also in the Gospels). How hopeless seems the task of upsetting a popular delusion, especially when that delusion has the sanction of the pulpit! "But surely," says one, "a delusion which for long centuries is sustained for good and pious ends, must have a value in it; independently of the fact that it is not as a delusion that its aid is invoked, but as a momentous truth." Very well, then let us by all means get at the truth, once and for ever, and ascertain where we stand in the matter of this "undying worm" which has found its way into ten thousand monitory appeals and descriptive odes. It is a very terrible statement, this prophetic warning. Let us not lose the benefit of it by misconception. Now, there cannot be the smallest doubt that "Skoleex," the earth-worm, whenever used in a poetic sense, either in sacred or profane writings, stands as the invariable emblem of corruption and death. On the very front and forehead of the thing therefore it looks suspicious when just one instance of its use is selected and made to stand for the antagonistic condition of an ever vitalised consciousness; nay more, for the central nerve of mental activity, for the very fountain of exquisite sensation : when pictorial imagery which to any unsophisticated mind can exhibit the victims only as lying under an irrevocable sentence of extinction, is tortured into a metaphor of unending life. And this perversity acquires a more and more damaging, it might almost be said, criminal, aspect, when it is seen to be engaged in the support of an unscriptural premiss. But, alas! how long we are in making the discovery! All-conquering custom still leads us captive; we bow without thought to the cumulative wisdom which has hitherto suffocated us, until at last the oracles of the grove are devoutly supposed to be ratified by the very voice which gives them the lie. Were it possible to doubt the real character of the metaphor now under discussion, some excuse might be allowed for an accidental variation. "A serpent's tooth" fastened to the living flesh. might indeed well represent the pangs of remorse, but what carcase on which the earth-worm feeds can ever be supposed cognisant of its touch? Let any reader just turn to the various passages recited in a Concordance under the word worm, and he will be satisfied. The Old and New Testaments and the Apocrypha all tell the same tale. These may suffice, though many other illustrations occur besides those discoverable under the English heading "worm." Here, of course, it would be possible to enlarge on many other kindred misconceptions fostered by those who advocate the eternity of evil men and things; all of them being capable of lucid adjustment in the light of that glorious revelation of life and immortality, of which the RAINBOW, among serials, is the most powerful, consistent, and fearless advocate. But the long-standing despotism which the above metaphor has exercised among preachers and hearers seemed to single it out as a fraud of so mischievous a character that it could not be too severely condemned.

John iii. 8: "The wind bloweth where it listeth," &c. . . . "So is every one that is born of the Spirit." As the method adopted in this pregnant discourse is to show that like produces like, that whatever are the attributes of the parent such also are the attributes of the offspring, that nature can never rise above her own level, and that spirit alone can generate spirit, the question must often have arisen, Why should not the two keywords "flesh" and "spirit" retain their respective powers throughout the argument? Why should we take upon ourselves to alter one of them, viz., "spirit," into "wind " just in one instance, and immediately afterwards allow it to resume its prior form? As we ordinarily read the eighth verse, the attributes of the wind are understood to resemble, not the attributes of the Spirit, nor the attributes of the Spirit's offspring, but they are supposed to resemble the offspring itself, whatsoever this may mean. Is there not some confusion here? The passage is confessedly difficult. Let us beware of enhancing its difficulty by conjectural treatment. A modern divine of advanced maturity has given us his opinion that this is one of the most difficult verses in the Bible, perhaps the most difficult of all. In such cases it becomes exceedingly hazardous for us to attempt elucidation by chopping and changing the translation. By all means let the uniformity of the original tongue tell its own tale; and if we cannot even then resolve the doubt, how should an ignorant South Sea Islander, for example, understand an ambiguous passage in the Bible which we may have translated for him, when he finds in that passage two different senses in the compass of a single verse, and has no resource but to take them both on our authority? If, therefore, we are resolved to begin verse 8 with "the wind," is there any reason why we should not conclude the verse with "the wind," and "The wind bloweth where it listeth," &c. . . . " so is every one that is born of the wind?" What acceptation would such a rendering receive from the majority of Bible readers? Mr. Govett, of Norwich, seems to entertain some such view, and in his treatment of the verse speaks of being "born of water and of the wind." But the difficulty always recurs: Are we right in departing at all from the term Spirit? It is true that in the Old Testament the original word, both in Hebrew and Greek, frequently stands for wind as well as Spirit, though this can hardly be said of the New Testament, where the writers both of the Gospels, of the Acts, and of the Epistles, in their narrative allusions to the wind, always adopt other words, not excepting the illustrious case of the Pentecostal wind. But not to lay a more than legitimate stress on this latter fact, do we not seem to stand in need of a most patent and intelgible reason for varying the translation of a word which rings as a keynote in the very heart of a closely compacted argument like that before us? Well, a reason has been adduced from the Syriac text. In that language, as in Hebrew and Greek, the word for Spirit [Rucho] is also capable of being used for wind; and it has been urged that the verbs in the passage before us, as also the pronominal affix to the noun "voice" being in the feminine, the application of "Rucho" to the Holy Spirit seems to have been contemplated. That version, therefore, reads as follows: "The wind bloweth where she willeth, and thou hearest her voice, but canst not tell whence she cometh and whither she goeth. So is every one born of the Spirit." (See "The Syriac Churches, and trans

say,