kaphar, to cover with blood or water? It is not; for the word is frequently used and so translated, to purge or cleanse, and this, too, without either blood or water. See Exod xxx. 15, 16, and xxxii. 30. Num. xvi. 46, 47, and xxxi. 50, &c.

On page 274, you are surprized at my interpretation of the words kaphar and nusa. With respect to kaphar, when connected with sacrifice, I interpret it to cleanse or purge, and have the highest authority on earth for it, as just shown above. Surely this should not surprize my brother, especially when to his own written authority I have appealed. This acceptation of the word I proved beyond fair debate in my second number. After you had read it, you expressed no surprize; but said, "I see in all you have said little or nothing from which to dissent." p. 26. Here was approbation.

Your surprize must arise from my applying the word to men and things defiled ONLY, and not to the undefiled and holy God; nor to his holy law. This you plainly see is a death-blow to your system, and now you are surprized at my acceptation of the word kaphar; for if we admit that it, when connected with sacrifice, signifies to cleanse or purge, as the New Testament writers do, then it cannot apply to God, to cleanse or purify him. And yet! you do apply it to him; for you say, "We sometimes speak of vindicating and justifying God; and might, in the same latitude, speak of eleansing and sanctifying him." Yes, my brother, we can, and do, vindicate and justify God from all the hard speeches of ungodly sinners against him. We do the same for our innocent friends when calumniated by their enemies. But is this a justification from crimes they have done, or because they are defiled by sin? No. But can we, in the same latitude, say we have cleansed and sanctified them, when they were innocent and undefiled? But you say, indeed the scriptures speak of justifying and sanctifying God, and use these terms as active transitive verbs-as, that thou mayest be justified when thou judgest-sanctify the Lord God in your hearts. Was this a justification of God from guilt? Was this a sanctification or cleansing of God from defilement? No. How, then, can these expressions apply to him in the same latitude as they do to the guilty and defiled sinner? But we are speaking of the active verb kaphar. Is this word used in those texts adduced by you? This is the point.

The definition of sanctification is, either to make holy, or to set apart for a holy use. To sanctify the Lord cannot mean the first; for he cannot be made more holy, more pure; it must and does mean the second; that we must sanctify him, or set him apart in our hearts, as the only proper object of our religious service, love, and worship. When Jesus said, "I sanctify myself," he doubtless meant, I set apart myself to finish the work I came to do. Indeed, my brother, if we are in error, such proof from a man of such acknowledged learning, knowledge, and goodness, is calculated to confirm us in that error.

On page 274 you say, "But what say the Lexicons and Concordances on this word kaphar? Do they sustain you? They show, that to cover is the original and radical sense of this common verb; that the covering of the ark is called kaphoreth, a derivative from kaphar. The Arabic shows its ancient and common acceptation by the verb kafara, to hide or conceal; so does [do] the Syriac and Chaldea, as our best

Lexicons demonstrate." My dear sir, my authority for my definition of kaphar, to cleanse or purge, is paramount to all the Lexicons and Concordances on earth-it is revelation itself to which we must all succumb. I have just touched at this subject above, but will be a little more particular in order to set this matter forever at rest, that the verb kaphar, connected with sacrifice, signifies to cleanse, to purge, and not once in the Bible is it rendered to cover. This I shall first prove from the scriptures.

1. Heb. ix. 29. "Almost all things by the law are purged with blood"-as, the tabernacle-the altar-the woman after child-birththe leper-the man with a running issue-and every pardonable transgressor. In all these cases the word kaphar is used, and translated to make an atonement. Now the inspired New Testament writers mention these same cases, and universally render kaphar by the Greek wɔrd katharizo, and its cognate katharismos, the primary and only meaning of which is, to cleanse or purify; but never, in any case, to No Grecian will deny this. In this all the Lexicons sustain me. This would appear to be sufficient authority; but I add—

cover.

2. That the word kaphar signifies to cleanse or purge, I argue from the translation of king James' translators. See No. 2, pp. 17, 18. Here have I proved that the translators rendered kaphar to cleanse; but in no case have they rendered the word to cover, either literally or metonymically.

3. The Septuagint by all is acknowledged good authority. They, as before proved, commonly, if not universally, translate kaphar, when connected with sacrifice by exilaskesthai; which all Greek scholars know never signifies to cover; and which word I have proved signifies to cleanse and purify; and you yourself render it to expiate.

You complain of my manner of quoting your words, and to my use of dictionaries and translations. I am not convicted yet of any error in these things; not even by what you have preferred as a wrong quotation of mine. I had said that the Greek word hilasmos signified purification, and said, With this my brother accords. page 24, where he says, "Propitiation or purification is also an effect of atonement." You deny that this is a fair and veritable construction of language: I contend it is, and appeal to all good grammarians. You proceed"Then may I say in reply, its scriptural meaning is pitch; and with this brother Stone accords: for he knows, and will admit, that it is so found in Genesis vi 14" I admit that kaphar, not hilasmos, is thus rendered in this one text; and will farther grant, that if I were to render the noun wherever it occurs by pitch, the reading would be ridiculous. I admit also with you, that the word may signify to cover metonymically, though not once in the Bible so translated. What says Paul? What say the New Testament writers? What say the Septuagint? What say King James' translators? I have proved that they all translate the word kaphar by a word which no where signifies to cover. All your references to the word, as meaning to cover, and all Parkhurst has made, have no relation to the subject of our discussion; because no one of them is connected with sacrifice; and in fact not one of them is translated to cover. As you say your Hebrew Bible and Lexicon are before you, please examine them, and conviction of the truth of my assertion will be the result.

You wish and pray me to quit languages as old as the flood. Why?

Because the generality of our readers do not understand me. Of this I have heard no complaint. Ought we not to endeavor to inform their ignorance, and not suffer them to die in it? But you add, I put it to your good sense, if we had not better keep to the English and common sense. Did brother Campbell think of this when he gave the world a new version of the New Testament, with many critical notes on the original language? And will he blame me for giving a new version of but a few words from the Hebrew and Greek, and confirming that version by indisputable authority from the inspired Apostles and Prophets? I claim equal privilege with himself. I know my version stands much in the way of orthodoxy; but this is not my fault.

Un page 274 you say, "After reprobating my making the atonement the cause (of purification, reconciliation, and propitiation,) and purification, reconciliation, propitiation, &c. the effect of it, you come to the same conclusion yourself." What an inconsistent creature must I be! after laboring so long, and successfully too, to prove that atonement, purification, and reconciliation were the same; then afterwards to agree that atonement is the cause of these, and that these are only effects of it. I had said that your view must be that the victim itself by which the atonement was made, was called the atonement, and that if it were so, I should agree that purification, reconciliation, &c. were the effects. Who would deny this? You avow this to be your meaning. Now I ask my brother, By what authority do you call the victim for sacrifice the atonement? I cannot find it in the Bible, neither in the types nor antitype. If you can, I should be glad you would show me where. But you appeal to the majority of Christendom. This authority all weighed in the balance together, is not with me equal to one plain Bible text. But for what purpose do you appeal to the majority of Christendom? Is it to prove that the victim for sacrifice is called the atonement? This is the point. No: but to prove another thing, denied by nobody-to prove that they called the death of Christ the sacrifice, the atonement, the ransom. Now I am persuaded that all plainly see the difference between a victim and the sacrifice of the victim; and all will grant that the sacrifice of Christ is the cause of atonement, reconciliation, and purification. Now if you call the sacrifice the atonement, and say that atonement is the effect of it, then you make the atonement both the cause and effect of itself. We should be careful of blending metonymical and literal interpretations of truth. Christendom may be justified in calling the sacrifice of Christ the atonement metonymically, but literally it is the effect of it.

On page 276 you say that the death of Christ is a cause of our reconciliation to God, and of his being well pleased with us. This I hope all Christendom will grant; for who will deny, with the Bible in his hand, that we are reconciled to God by the death of his Son? And who will deny that when we are reconciled to God, then, and not till then, God is well pleased with us? Not before; for he is angry with the wicked every day! But is it, brother Campbell, any where stated in the Bible that the blood of Christ is the direct cause of God's being well pleased with us? This is the point to which I have often called your attention-this is the point to which I wish you to come up. This is the great point of difference between us, and must be settled with better proof than the fallible assertion of Christendom.

TO BE CONTINUED.]

B. W. STONE

A NOTE TO B. W. STONE.

Brother Stone-I HAVE had to divide your letter, because of its unusual length. I cannot find room for more of it at present, nor for a reply; and will only say, that, seeing you do not write for victory, but for truth, I regret that you should give your communications a single squinting that way. Any one who will turn over to my remarks on kaphar and nasa in the March number, p. 118, will see that you must have mistaken the drift of them, or that you are discussing a point on which there is no difference. You do not deny a single fact that I have stated; and yet one would imagine from the above remarks, that there is a real contradiction between us as to the manner in which our translators have rendered those terms. You also intimate that my objections against your translations of disputed words, and my complaint touching your throwing such an air of learning over the subject, equally oppugns my own efforts in the way of recommending a new version. Were It not that no one could impute to you any thing uncandid, I should have thought that you were playing off the controvertist here. I do, indeed, object to every religious controvertist turning critic on the original, and manufacturing arguments out of his own translations. This is at once taking the advantage of the audience or of the readers, and equivalent to a man in a rencounter getting behind a tree to escape the fire of the adver. sary. I will, before a tribunal of Hebrew or Greek critics, at any time engage to show that a hundred volumes of such criticisms as you have given us on the words kaphar and nasa, cannot affect the question at issue as much as one grave or acute accent over the vowel a. You have led the way in this field-not I. And I only say you cannot make one iota out of it. But I must dismiss the subject now.

A. CAMPBELL.

REV. J. L. YANTIS, OF MISSOURI,

Mr. YANTIS, an Old School Presbyterian, in a lecture delivered in Fulton, Boone county, Missouri, on the 28th of February last, as we are advised from a highly respectable source, made certain allusions to my sayings and doings, indicative either of great ignorance of them, or of very unkind feelings to me personally—or, perhaps, of both. It will doubtless be expected, from the public manner in which these allusions were made, and from the standing of Mr. Yantis, that I should at least notice them. This I should have done at a much earlier date, but for the fact of my absence from home at the time communications were received here, and from the additional fact that it was a considerable time after my return before my attention was called to the affair.

The subject of Mr. Yantis' discourse was Christian Union, and a main position was to show, that "there was nothing in the present state of the Christian world, or in the division of Christians into the many different denominations, with different creeds, &c. inconsistent with the unity for which Christ prayed in his text, John xvii. 21.” All denominations, like members of the human body, constituted integral parts of Christ's body. Presbyterians were one member; Methodists, another; Baptists, another; Episcopalians and Roman Catho

lics, &c. &c., other members of the same mystical body. He argued that as different creeds were not originally the cause of division, but rather a consequence of previous divisions, the destruction or abandonment of them was inefficient and futile. Here the preacher in a vein of pointed sarcasm assailed the Millennial Harbinger, holding up a number of it in his hand, under the character of my creed—asking, in political eloquence, "if such a creed could come it' in this community." In alluding to the Bible alone as our creed, he assailed the New Version with a repetition of the oft-repeated calumnies of his New School brother, the Rev. Mr. Landis, imputing to me no higher object than the difference in price between the common Testaments and the New Version-calling it moreover a misrepresentation, rather than a fair exhibit of the version of Campbell, Macknight, and Doddridge. The gentleman made no specifications, but in this wholesale way assailed the Harbinger, the new version, and their editor with the true spirit of a sectary preaching Christian union-discord at heart, with union upon the lip.

To sit down at this time of day and prove that the Millennial Harbinger is no creed-and to demonstrate that, on his showing, all the writings of all his brethren since the days of John Calvin to the aforesaid sermon on Christian Union, are parts and parcels of the yet unfinished, undefined, and interminable creed of Old Schoolism, already nine times old and ten times new since the days of the Long Parliament-to show that the sordid motives alleged in my case in selling the New Version at from 25 cents up to $1,25 or $1,75, according to size, print, notes critical, prefaces, maps, &c. &c. are ten times more attributable to the Presbyterians, who used to sell Campbell, Macknight, and Doddridge at $40,00, and together for half that sum; and that those good brethren of Mr. Yantis, who sell the Romans, Galatians, and certain books of the New Testament, for more than we sell the apostolic writings, were all a set of mercenary and avaricious priests, &c. &c. and had no other than sordid motives in the affair— would be, in my opinion, as unnecessary and uncalled for as to prove that Mr. Yantis has four creeds on his own logic. First, he has the Bible; second, the Westminster; third, the Comments upon the Westminster now in circulation among his Old School brethren; and fourth, his own nuncupative unwritten opinions upon these writings. These four he certainly has, if there be one grain of sense in his logic concerning the Harbinger as our creed.

If Mr. Yantis be the oracle of good nine times old and ten times new Presbyterian orthodoxy, or if there be any one more oracular than he in that denomination in Missouri, as I desire to visit that highly cele