or Persian. "Take," says he, "the two following for examples. Ουκ αδυνατησει παρα τῷ Θεῷ παν ρημα, Luke i. 37; and ovn av ɛow✪ŋ naoa σags, Matt. xxiv. 22." (In English," With God nothing shall be impossible," and "There should no flesh be saved.") "These pas

sages in the New Testament Greek are," says Campbell, "phrases which, in my apprehension, would not have been more intelligible to a Greek author than Arabic or Persian would have been. Ρήμα for thing, and πασα ουκ for no one, or none, σags for person, &c., would to him, I suspect, have proved insurmountable obstacles." ** "This," says he, "is but a small specimen-not the hundredth part of what might be produced on this subject." (Prelim. Dis. I., vol. i., p. 30.)

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"It is true," says Campbell (Prelim. Dis. I., Part 2), "that as the New Testament is written in Greek, it must be of consequence that we be able to enter critically into the ordinary import of the words of that tongue." "But from what has been observed, it is evident, that though in several cases this knowledge may be eminently useful, it will not suffice; nay, in many cases, it will be of little or no significancy." "Classical use, both in Greek and in Latin, is not only, in this study, sometimes unavailable, but MAY EVEN MISLEAD. The sacred use and the classical are OFTEN VERY DIFFERENT."

The Biblical Repository, for April, 1841, has an article on "The Bible and its Literature," by Professor Edward Robinson. In this article Professor Robinson says, "The language of the New Testament is the latter Greek, as spoken by foreigners of the Hebrew stock, and applied by them to subjects on which it had never been employed by native Greeks. After the disuse of the ancient Hebrew

in Palestine, and the irruption of Western conquerors, the Jews adopted the Greek language from necessity;partly as a conquered people, and partly from intercourse of life and commerce, in colonies, in cities, founded like Alexandria, and others, which were peopled with throngs of Jews. It was, therefore, the spoken language of ordinary life which they learned, not the classic style of books which have elsewhere come down to us. But they spoke it as foreigners, whose native tongue was the later Aramean; and it therefore could not fail to acquire from their lips a strong Semitic character and coloring. When to this we add, that they spoke in Greek on the things of the true God, and the relations of mankind to Jehovah and to a Saviour―subjects to which no native Greek had ever applied his beautiful language, it will be obvious that an APPEAL MERELY то CLASSIC GREEK AND ITS PHILOLOGY WILL NOT SUFFICE FOR THE INTERPRETER OF

THE NEW TESTAMENT. The Jewish-Greek must be studied almost as an independent dialect, &c."

The change of meaning in many words of the Greek language, upon adapting it to the ideas and observances. of a revealed religion, was a matter of necessity: and that aside from the natural influence of the Hebraic idiom. Carry the Gospel to China, or Hindostan, or among the tribes of our American Indians; it brings them a multiude of ideas which are peculiar to revealed religion. To express these ideas, the old words of their language must receive a new meaning; or they must coin new words; or they must adopt words from the language of those who brought them the new religion, or from some other quarter.*

Said DAVID BRAINERD, "There are no words in the Indian

If, instead of a new religion, a new language is carried among a people professing the true religion, the words of that new language receive a new meaning the moment they are applied to the religious ideas and observances to which the language was before a stranger. Carry any heathen language into a Gospel land, or into a land of Hebrew rites, and of Hebrew ideas concerning the true God and revealed religion, and it is impossible that the meaning of such words as are applied to these new ideas should not be even more changed than is the idiom of the language in the construction of phrases. Such is the fact with regard to the New Testament Greek as compared with the classic, or even with the common dialect which prevailed after the conquests of Alexander.

A Baptist writer has attempted to explain this matter by referring to the "Irish-English" of an "Irishman, after having become acquainted with our language and able to speak it with fluency, yet you can detect them using phrases and words peculiar to their own vernacular tongue, and dissimilar to ours." This by no means meets the case, but is calculated entirely to mislead. The Irishman has religious ideas, to a great extent, common with us. An African or an Indian might learn our language, and yet speak it in a manner peculiar to himself. But what would be the effect upon their own language, when the Christian religion was once completely established among them? New ideas fill the mind of the benighted pagan, and lift up his thoughts to angels-to language to answer to our English words, Lord, Saviour, salvation, sinner, justice, condemnation, faith, adoption, glory, with scores of like importance."

Heaven-to God. He thinks of redemption, of faith, of holiness. His thoughts, his hopes, his intellect, his heart,-all are wonderfully transformed. "Old things pass away: all things become new." Are his lips sealed? Is he dumb? Are African converts never to speak to each other of the kingdom of God? The words of their language remaining the same, and applied to these new and wonderful ideas, is their meaning the same? Is the whole change expressed by referring to the brogue of an Irishman whose mother tongue was Irish-English, and whose ideas have never changed from pagan to Christian?

That such was the effect of adapting the pagan Greek language to the Christian religion, any one may see, who will sit down patiently and turn over the leaves of a Lexicon of the New Testament, which adequately discriminates and marks the transition.

The sole intent of all this discussion about the classic use and the New Testament use, is to show that the word baptize in the New Testament may have left its primary classic signification, and have received a GENERIC, SACRED use, equivalent to WASHING OF PURIFYING, without the least reference to the mode in which that "washing of water" is performed. Whether this be the fact or not, is to be learned not from the Greek classics, but from the New Testament itself. As to this matter of fact, Mark and Luke and Paul are better witnesses concerning what they themselves understood by the word baptize, than Xenophon, Aristotle, or than even that Hebrew of Hebrews, the Jewish Josephus, when he is using the word in the sense of the Greek classics, with no reference to its use as applied to a religious ordinance.

Will any Baptist make an issue on this point, and maintain that Apostles and Evangelists are not to be heard in evidence? Will any Baptist maintain that Evangelists and Apostles may not explain their own meaning in just the same way that heathen Greeks may explain theirs? Will any Baptist maintain, that where the testimony of the New Testament writers differs from that of the heathen Greeks, the New Testament witness is not to be heard before any heathen, and before all the heathen classics together? In fine, the question here is, Is the Holy Ghost a competent and credible witness as to the sense in which the Holy Ghost uses the word baptize?

JUDD ON MARK VII. 4.

Mr. Judd, in his reply to Stuart, p. 25, translates the passage, "And when they come from the market, except they faлtiσvrai, BAPTIZE THEMSELVES." In the same manner he makes the Pharisee, in Luke xi. 38, wonder that Jesus had not been baptized before dinner. As Mr. Judd maintains that baptize must and shall mean inmerse, he maintains that baptize not only may have its usual meaning here, but that " that meaning is absolutely required by the scope and harmony of the passage:"i. e., he will make the Scripture here testify that the Pharisees and all the Jews immersed their whole bodies before eating, as often as they came from the market. "Surely," says he, p. 37, "the Jews could have immersed themselves after coming from the market.” Surely they could, if they never went from the market, and took their meals where they could not. But Mr. Judd mistakes the question. The inquiry should be, not