ing, as given by St. Stephen, is supported by the LXX. version in each of the above passages.

This correction of the corruption is also of importance, as giving a larger number for the seed, from whom the large numbers at the Exodus descended. To this I have also referred in my Reply to the Bishop of Natal, and shewn how the six hundred thousand who came out of Egypt with Moses, and were of an age fit for war, might have sprung from the seventy-five descendants of Jacob. But, it may well be asked, What became of the servants that Jacob had at the time of his going down to Egypt? That Jacob had servants at the time, and that they all went down into Egypt with him, and multiplied there, and that all their descendants came out of Egypt with Moses, must be beyond all doubt. Abraham had three hundred and eighteen men-servants, of an age fit for war, all born in his house, a hundred and ninety years before the descent of Jacob into Egypt (see Gen. xiv. 4; xlvii. i. 12; Exod. xii. 41). These, with the continued prosperity of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, must have gone on increasing, and with their descendants, as part of the seed that went down into Egypt, we need not insist upon seventyfive as being the true number of the descendants of Jacob at his going into Egypt, in order to account for the number who came out of Egypt with Moses. But the authority of St. Stephen, supported as it is by the LXX. version, and its context, must be an assurance of the correctness of the number which he has given. At least, such should be held by all who hold the inspiration of St. Stephen,-" a man full of faith and of the Holy Ghost."

As Dr. Kennicott, in his Dissert. on 1 Chron., chap. xi., page 272, says, "Wherever in two copies of the same writing, the one differs from the other in word or letter, or in the position of the same words or letters, every such difference is properly a various reading. And since every variation from the original of an inspired author is a variation for the worse, every such variation is properly a corruption. Consequently, though every various reading proves a corruption to have happened, every various reading is not itself a corruption, because one of the various readings may be the true reading, which obtained at first in the original."

But it may be said that there is no various reading, as evidence of any corruption of the passage relating the purchase of the sepulchre in Sychem by Abraham. True: none has, as yet, been discovered, and my reference to various readings, and my production of some striking instances as evidences of corruption, have been with a view to shew the extent and the nature of the

corruption to which the Holy Scriptures have been subjected; and if their corruption can be proved in so many and such important instances, it is not unreasonable to suppose that they may also have been corrupted in some others, which cannot be proved, and it is surely far more probable, under all these circumstances, that the text of Acts vii. 16 has been corrupted, than that St. Stephen could have confounded the purchase of the cave of Machpelah by Abraham with the purchase of the sepulchre in Sychem by Jacob. If it be suggested that the name of Abraham may have been inserted in Acts vii. 16, instead of Jacob by St. Stephen by inadvertence, surely inadvertence is far more likely to have happened to a transcriber, than to St. Stephen. But it may be, as I have already shewn, that the sepulchre at Sychem was first purchased by Abraham.

We need not decide which of these two solutions of this difficulty is the most probable one. It is enough for us to shew that the difficulty is open to both solutions without in the least affecting the value of the Holy Scriptures, or our reverence for them. Had it pleased Almighty God, He might have handed down to us His Holy Scriptures, both of His Old and of His New Covenant, as perfect as when they respectively came out of the hands of His sacred penmen; but He has not thought fit so to do.

Nor need we murmur or even regret that the Holy Scriptures have come down to us in the imperfect state in which we find them. Rather, we should rely on the wisdom and mercy of God for having handed them down to us as perfect as is needful for our present and eternal happiness. Nor need we fear to confess freely both the extent and the nature of the corruption, to which the Holy Scriptures have been subjected in their transmission to us. By doing this we shall disarm the adversaries of our holy faith, depriving them of a ground of cavilling at every discrepancy which they may discover. By this kind of candour we shall also save the faithful Christian from the disappointment of expecting more of perfection than he will be able to find in the oracles of God. We must not do evil, even the evil of concealment, that good may come, and the advocate who overstates his case, weakens it by his indiscretion. But the scheme of salvation, which is revealed in the Holy Scriptures, is perfect, and suffers not the least obscurity from the imperfection of its records.

To use the language of Dr. Kennicott in his Dissertation, page 271:

Every friend of revelation will be full of gratitude to the Supreme Being, who, as the Author of every good and perfect gift, gave these books

originally perfect, free from error and universally consistent. And if they have suffered some alterations in the less important articles by being transcribed in so many hundred and perhaps thousand copies during the long period of near two thousand two hundred years since the latest writer in them, he has the utmost reason to be thankful for the preservation of those several ancient versions (however imperfectly delivered down themselves in some instances), by the help of which he may be enabled to remove many difficulties found in the printed text of the original-not forgetting a proper thankfulness for the preservation also of such Hebrew MSS. as will either, of themselves, restore the true reading in any instances, however few, or will confirm the authority of the ancient versions, which afford much more plentiful assistance."

Such an admission of the value of ancient versions from one who devoted so much time and thought to the Hebrew text, should have great weight, as seeming to be dictated solely by the love of truth. Thus, in passages of the Old Covenant, where there are different readings, the true reading must be determined sometimes by the Hebrew text, sometimes by ancient versions, and sometimes by quotations in the New Covenant, as reason shall in each case decide, regard being had to the context and parallel passages. On the same principle reason must decide what reading should be regarded as the true reading, where various readings occur in passages in the New Covenant. Luffingcott. FRANKE PARKER.

The Conduit of Mount Sion.-When the English church was building on Mount Sion, some years since, a conduit was discovered. The mouth of it, which is in the incumbent's house, had been hermetically sealed, for fear of accident, for twenty-one years; but by the courtesy of the Rev. Mr. Barclay it was uncovered for Mr. Lewin's gratification. A party of eight made the descent of the shaft by means of a rope ladder. Lighted by candles, they traced the course of the conduit eastwards, and found it about high and wide enough to admit of them passing along in single file, with a roof covered with flat stones having openings in it at intervals, as if for buckets. The stalactites formed by the drip through the limestone soil were soft, and crumbled at the touch. After proceeding some two hundred or three hundred feet, their progress was blocked up by a disruption of the soil, when they faced about and groped their way westwards for some hundred and sixty feet. The sides generally had been cemented; but in one place the cutting was ascertained to be through solid rock. A low and narrow passage brought them to a sharp turn in the conduit, which, at a little distance in advance, was blocked up by a wall built across it. This was the conduit in which the high priest Ananias hid himself in the last days of Jerusalem, before its capture. In a popular tumult his palace in the upper city was fired, but he escaped to the palace of Herod: this was then besieged and taken, when he let himself down into the conduit and hid from his enemies; but on the following day he was discovered, dragged out, and assassinated. And it is also likely to have been the passage into which Simon BarGioras fled, on the successful assault by Titus, intending to work his way out beyond the walls by spade and pickaxe.-Builder.

THE TYPICAL CHARACTER OF DAVID: WITH A DIGRESSION CONCERNING CERTAIN WORDS.

All

WRITERS upon the types of the Old Testament have divided them into a variety of classes; but their different arrangements have not been by any means always equivalent in substance any more than in form. Even those who agree as to the general features of the Old Testament typical system, often disagree when they come to details. In fact scarcely any two writers can probably be found who harmonize in every respect. There are a few leading features nevertheless in which they coincide. writers who accept the supernatural origin of the patriarchal, Mosaic, and Christian systems, and who believe in the divine inspiration of the canonical Scriptures, concur in finding in the Old Testament types which are realized in the new dispensation. They agree in finding in certain rites, events, things, and persons, types of higher and more spiritual realities: at least we do not remember any one who would object to acknowledge types of each of the classes mentioned. Beyond this, they admit, on the faith of the New Testament, the realization of some of the types belonging to these classes. Here, probably, the difference begins: some refuse to accept as typical whatever is not affirmed to be so in the New Testament. Others, however, regard the typical indications of the New Testament as only laying down a foundation, basis or principle, upon which a complete typical system may be built; that is, it only supplies us with examples and illustrations of typical references, for our aid in all analogous cases. The former extreme undoubtedly checks imagination, and is conservative against all the licentiousness of criticism; but so much cannot be said of the latter, the main advantage of which is that it opens a new field for the operations of Christian wisdom as well as fancy, and new sources of spiritual edification. Thus, one party look upon the meaning of types as very much determined, and the number of types as quite decided; the other feel at liberty to interpret many other texts after the same man. ner, or, as some would say, by "comparing spiritual things with spiritual."

It cannot be doubted that the sympathies of the multitude are and have ever been in favour of making many things in the Old Testament typical of things in the New. These sympathies have given rise to the strange mass of exposition which finds the figurative everywhere, and never satisfied with the grammatical and historical sense, discovers everywhere what is variously designated-the allegorical, hidden, figurative, mysterious, symbolical, metaphorical, typical, spiritual, etc., etc. From the days

of Origen to those of Emanuel Swedenborg, and on to this year of grace 1864, examples of this liberty in all possible degrees are abundant.

An unwillingness to rest in the literal sense of Scripture, and to stop at what may be called its natural interpretation, manifested itself among the Jews, and hence the mysteries of their cabalistic system. So contagious has their example been, that Christian writers are even now continually publishing, as translations and expositions of the sacred Scriptures, works in which every law of grammar and every rule of interpretation and criticism are set at nought. The tone of such books may be very edifying and religious, their writers may be good and sincere men, and the doctrine throughout unobjectionable; but many men, quite as learned and as reverent, think that in these works the ideas are often imposed upon texts, and not taken out of them. Nor can it be otherwise, so long as a verbal or historical parallel is uniformly taken to be typical, symbolical, or prophetical. There are some who rob the Old Testament histories of their body, soul, and substance, by translating them all into allegories. This procedure is a very dangerous one, and is very fairly designated in a phrase we have already used,-as the licentiousness of criticism. To such vagaries there is no check but common sense; and only when men take leave of that, do they indulge in them.

Unquestionably, many things in the Scriptures are typical, many are allegorical, many figurative, in one way or another. But it is unnecessary and unsafe to push figurative interpretations too far, and the best expositors have always been characterized by sobriety and restraint. Of course we hold that the first work of an interpreter is to ascertain the literal sense which every proposition must have; the next is to discover whether or how far the figurative underlies the literal. Perhaps the most common fault of typical expositors is, to treat casual, vague, verbal, or general resemblances and parallels, as necessarily types. There may be correspondences and similarities where there are no substantial identities, and where no symbol or relationship was ever intended. Even of actual types and symbols, their contact with that to which they point may only be in one particular detail, incident, or circumstance. Thus a lamb or a heifer under the law might be typical of Christ, but only in so far as it was offered in sacrifice for sin. The qualifications which constituted the fitness of such an animal for sacrifice, might be also typical of Christ, but only as a sacrifice. The lamb, as a lamb, was no type of the Saviour, nor the heifer as a heifer. When John the Baptist said, "Behold the Lamb of God," he saw in