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complete, in that illustrious series of creeds which sprang into being after the Reformation?

In this conclusion we rest; to this conclusion we desire to bring all minds, of whatever doctrinal tendency, within our beloved church. We have no fear of the result, and we believe that no one else will have occasion to fear, so long as the present generous temper of unity and peace, of activity and growth, survives in our communion. While such a measure of liberty is granted, and the united church plants itself, not on a loose latitudinarianism, which admits all notions not absolutely and immediately destructive, but on a catholic and generous Calvinism, tenacious of the system, but wisely tolerant of varieties in theory and expression, we may safely forego the desire for changes in our standards, either on such specific points as have been named, or in the general interest of that type of Calvinism which is specially represented in the "theology of Richards and the Auburn Declaration." So long as these modes of viewing, stating, explaining, and illustrating the common system are admissible, we see no reason why every genuine Calvinistic mind should not be substantially satisfied.

These suggestions may fitly close with the following extract from the Pastoral Letter, sent out in 1838 by the first General Assembly of the New School Church, and addressed to all the churches and people under its care. Of the Committee that adopted it, the venerable Lyman Beecher was chairman, and• the style of the extract strongly resembles his, although a high authority regards it rather as from the pen of another member of the committee, the equally venerated James Richards. The words are full of present, as well as past, significance:

"We love and honor the Confession of Faith of the Presbyterian Church, as containing more well-defined, fundamental truth, with less defects, than appertains to any other human formula of doctrine, and as calculated to hold in intelligent concord a greater number of sanctified minds than any which could now be formed, AND WE DISCLAIM ALL DESIGN, PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE, TO CHANGE IT."

NOTE.-The writer of this article deems it due to himself to say, that he believes Christian Theology to be, in a true and important sense, a progressive science; that he does not regard the seventeenth century as having furnished a conclusive norm or limit of theological thought for the nineteenth; that he judges the

phraseology and teaching of the Auburn Declaration to be an improvement in several particulars upon those of the Westminster Symbols: that he humbly trusts and prays that the Presbyterian Church of the future may have yet clearer apprehension, larger knowledge, more inclusive faith respecting these great mysteries of grace; but that, so far as present creeds are concerned, he cordially, and after full examination, accepts the legal motto, STARE DECISIS. It should be added, that⚫ the responsibility of the editors of this REVIEW, for the present discussion, is limited entirely to their kind consent to its admission in these pages.

Art. II. THE STUDY OF THE HEBREW LAN

GUAGE.

By W. HENRY GREEN, D.D, Professor in Princeton Theological Seminary. WE propose, as we may be able in a brief article, to illustrate the importance of an accurate and thorough knowledge of the Hebrew in the interpretation of the Old Testament. We must get beyond the province of the beginner and the smatterer-beyond the mere work of making a translation as a linguistic exercise. We are to deal with language as the medium of thought and feeling. We are to hear what God the Lord will speak. We come to learn the truths which it was given to holy men to impart by divine inspiration, and to receive the impressions which they sought to make. Our aim is, or should be, to grasp these truths in the exact form and in the same clearness in which they lay before the minds of those to whom they were originally addressed, and to gather these impressions, as far as may be, without any loss of their original vividness and force. We wish these words to convey to us precisely what they were intended and adapted to convey to the contemporaries of the sacred writers themselves, neither less nor more.

In order to this it is essential that the thought should not be warped or distorted by the medium through which it is transmitted, but that it should be faithfully and accurately delivered to us in its own proper and genuine forms. This cannot be unless the language is to us what it was to those who

originally used it, and means to us just what it did to them. We must, so far as possible, get our minds into the same familiar and unembarrassed readiness to receive true and correct impressions from all its utterances, as they were. We must strive to be no longer foreigners to the Hebrew, but place ourselves, as far as this may be, in the attitude of natives.

We cannot accomplish this by merely fixing upon a tolerable English equivalent for each Hebrew word, and then transferring each sentence into English, word by word. We shall be greatly mistaken if we suppose that this mechanical process will yield, as its result, the precise counterpart of the Hebrew sentence. We shall doubtless obtain something that bears a vague and general resemblance to the original, but this is all. The vigor and beauty of the expression, its life and sparkle, will be missing, and perhaps even the very point and meaning of the thought may have escaped us. Words of one language cannot be exchanged for those of another by a fixed law of valuation, as foreign coins can be converted into our native currency. Words are the representatives of mental conceptions, or mental states; and are liable to the same variety of signification as those conceptions and states themselves. The Hebrew language represents the mind of the people that spoke it. It embodies their conceptions of the various objects of thought and knowledge, and of their mutual relations. And just as certainly as there are diversities in national character and national life, in the range of objects which address themselves to each people's observation or reflection, or in the aspects under which these present themselves, just so surely must their respective languages be incommensurable. The style of thought and mode of conception belonging to any one people must differ from that of every other, and this difference will be reflected in every individual element of their several languages. As a rule, those words which most nearly approximate each other in different languages, are not after all exact equivalents. They do not cover precisely the same tract of thought or extent of signification; or by reason of derivation or usage, or some special association, one wears a complexion differing more or less from the other.

Take one of the simplest of all illustrations, the term employed to denote the Supreme Being. The Hebrew El, or

Elohim, and the Greek Oɛós are alike rendered by God in English; but they suggest very different conceptions. El is the mighty One; it points to the Divine Omnipotence. Elohim is the adorable One; or, as is indicated by the plural form, the one who concentrates in himself all adorable perfections. The God of the Hebrews is a God of might, and one that is to be feared. Otós, like Zeus, and the Latin Deus, is from the same root with the Latin dies, day, and primarily describes the brightness of the firmament. It belongs to the worship of nature; it is a deification of the brilliant sky. And, besides, as the language of a pagan people it is infected with polytheism. It means not God, but a god-one of many deities, of many similar personifications of natural objects. This very word is indeed used of the Most High in the Greek Scriptures, but in a new and exalted sense; it had first been purged of its old associations of nature worship and polytheism, and transfused with Jewish thought by Hellenistic use. Its materialistic is exchanged for a spiritual meaning, as is the case in so many New Testament words, so that when the apostle declares ó 9805 pas έσ71, “God is light," no one thinks of the glowing sky, but only of the splendor of his moral perfections. And our word "God" is of a different meaning still. It is a simple offspring of Christian ideas, radically connected with "good," and indicating at once his benevolence and his moral purity.

When the Pagan Greeks and Romans called their Supreme Deity the Father of Gods and men, they thought of physical generation; it was from him they lineally sprang. When the Hebrew people called God their father, who had made them and established them, and who claimed Israel as his son, even his first born, it was with a totally different idea. They thought of his creative power and his gracious choice by which he had brought Israel into being as a nation, and as his own peculiar people, and of the paternal care which he continued to exercise over them. When the New Testament teaches us to address God as Abba, Father, it is with a different idea still-that of individual adoption to sonship in Christ, God's own eternal son by a mystical generation. The same word may thus have an entirely different meaning growing out of the conceptions of those by whom it is employed. We cannot interpret language intelligently and correctly, it will inevitably convey to us a per

verted meaning, unless we place ourselves in the very position of those who used it. We must think their thoughts. We must look upon things as they regarded them. We must learn to move in the same world in which they moved, and not put into their words notions which, however natural or familiar to us, were strange to them. We must divest ourselves of all that is modern or occidental in our style of thought, and for the time become, as far as may be, genuine Hebrews, in entire sympathy and accord with the old prophets and psalmists, and other Hebrew penmen-penetrating so far as possible into their exact state of mind, and making their precise ideas our own.

We

In order to employ the Lexicon in the most effective way to accomplish this end, the student must not simply glance at any given word, for which he is consulting it, and hastily picking out a meaning which will answer in the sentence that he has before him, pass on to the next. He wants to acquaint himself with that word before he looks further. It is as though we were to meet a stranger on the street; we bestow a passing glance upon him; a friend mentions his name, whereupon we bow and pass on. We have had a casual introduction; we may possibly recognize the stranger when we meet again; but we have not made his acquaintance. know very little more about him than we did before. The student who aims at thoroughness must seek to make the acquaintance of every Hebrew word he meets; he must, if possible, get upon intimate and familiar terms with them. He wishes to know something about their origin and historytheir character and associations-the estimation in which they have been held by those who knew them best. He must interrogate his Lexicon until he finds all this out. The article in the Lexicon under each particular word is intended to supply him with this very information-to give him, so to speak, the biography of the word so far as it can be ascertained; to gauge for him its precise standing and worth.

Thus, he needs, in the first place, to inquire into the derivation of words. The Hebrew has various terms to express anger, or excited passion, in different degrees or manifestations. But each of these places a different picture before us, thus:, from

, to breathe strongly, depicts a person as panting from excite

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