the prediction of John the Baptist, when he said they should be baptized with the Holy Ghost and with fire, in reference to the Holy Ghost sitting upon each of them as with cloven tongues of fire. The peculiar appearance of the fire (that of tongues) was emblematic of the diversity of languages which the Apostles would be enabled to speak. The baptism of the Holy Ghost and fire denotes not only the miraculous influences of the Spirit by which the New Testament church was solemnly consecrated to God, but also his regenerating and sanetifying influences which, like fire, purify, soften and inflame the heart with love to Jesus. The Rev. Mr. Hole, in reply to me, says, 'now clearly fire cannot qualify Holy Ghost.' Why not? He assigns no reason, and I am not aware that any reason can be assigned. I am still of opinion that the term fire is exegetical of the phrase the Holy Ghost; and this Mr. Walker, one of your contributors, says may be the case. Mr. Hole says again, if it be replied that the expression means the Holy Ghost acting after the analogy of fire, as fire, or resembling fire; here we have,' he says, 'fire defining, not qualifying, and consequently the alleged examples become useless." What alleged examples? I suppose he means the examples of hendiadys which I have cited. Mr. Hole must be surely aware that whether the latter noun define or qualify, or explain the former, it does not alter the nature of hendiadys. I used the word qualifying in the greatest extent of meaning as signifying, defining, explaining, or whatever the noun following the copulative predicates of the one that precedes it. Mr. Hole says, he shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost, even with fire is clearly inadmissible.' Why so? The Rev. gentleman might as well say that the original is not admissible. The reason that he gives for the inadmissibility of the language is that the idea of fire is quite subordinate in the writer's mind to that of the Holy Ghost. But this is clearly no reason at all. Were it baptize with fire and (even) the Holy Ghost, it would be a different matter,' he thinks, for the main idea would then be last, as it ought to be' aliquando bonus Homerus dormitat. The writer in employing this language has evidently mistaken the nature of the figure in question altogether. It is the explanatory idea that ought to be last, and not the main idea.

After having endeavoured to supersede the construction which I have given of the passage under review, Mr. Hole brings forth one of his own. 6 By fire,' he says, 'is denoted something quite distinct from, and wholly different to, the Holy Ghost; that, in fact, it means the fiery baptism of judgment, the doom of God's judgment on the impenitent.' The word baptism in the language under consideration is employed to symbolize the work of the

Spirit.

Spirit. It cannot be an emblem of purification and of utter destruction a symbol of salvation and an emblem of the torments of hell at the same time. No word can have two meanings the one radically different from the other, especially in such a connection as the word baptism stands in the phrase under examination. Baptism, as a religious ordinance in the New Testament economy, is a sensible sign of an invisible grace; it signifies and seals our engrafting into Christ and our engagements to be the Lord's it is a symbol of purity of nature and a seal of final salvation to all genuine Christians to whom it is administered. A deliverance from the guilt and defilement of sin, and a participation in all the blessings of the covenant of grace, are uniformly the things signified by the ordinance of baptism. The divers baptisms enjoined under the Old Testament dispensation were also symbolical of inward purity. Baptism cannot therefore be an emblem of punishment or of utter destruction, inasmuch as it is always connected with inward purity and final salvation.

Mr. Hole attempts to prove that the word baptism is used as a metaphor of punishment by our Lord where he says, I have a baptism to be baptized with, and how am I straitened until it be accomplished? Can ye be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with? The sufferings of Christians for the cause of God and truth may be called a baptism, not simply as they are sufferings, but as they are significant of purity of heart and sanctity of character. The death of our Saviour too may be called a baptism, not as suffering or punishment, but because it was a proof of his internal holiness and devotedness to God, and because it was introductory to the exercise of his kingly office and investiture with all dominion both in heaven and in earth as mediator, as well as the means by which he laid the foundation of the everlasting happiness of all believers. The other passages to which the rev. gentleman refers to prove that baptism is used as a metaphor of punishment, have (in my humble opinion) scarcely the appearance of a relation to the point at issue. I must therefore conclude my review of Mr. Hole's production by saying that, in my opinion, he has completely failed to establish his interpretation of Matt. iii. 11.

Let us next examine the strictures which Mr. Walker makes

upon my mode of interpreting John iii. 5. I expounded the phrase ἐὰν μή τις γεννηθῆ ἐξ ὕδατος και πνεύματος as a hendiadys, and as signifying regeneration. This, I think, is clearly its meaning from the whole tenor of our Lord's discourse with Nicodemus. Mr. Walker thinks otherwise. On the supposition of hendiadys, he says, we should have expected the more important word to come first, and the qualifying one second, ἐκ πνεύματος καὶ ὕδατος.

It is perhaps scarcely correct to say that the more important word should come first, because it may so happen that the explanatory word may be as important as the one which it explains-as is the case in the phrases, God and our Father,'' God and our Saviour.' It is always necessary, however, that the explanatory or qualifying word be second, and the one explained the first. In John iii. 5, the expressions born of water and of the spirit, on each side of the copulative, signify the same thing, the latter expression being exegetical of the former. It does not appear to me that born of the Spirit and of water could properly be a hendiadys, as Mr. Walker suggests, because the latter phrase would not be so well understood as the former.

6

The leading objection, however, which Mr. Walker appears to have to my exposition is, that it obliges us to understand water as symbolical of the regenerating virtue of the Holy Spirit, contrary, as he supposes, to Scripture usage. Again, he says, I do not think that anywhere in Scripture water is used as the emblem of the sanctifying or purifying operations of the Spirit.' Now I freely confess that my exposition does require us to understand water as denoting the purifying influences of the Spirit; it is certainly based on this foundation, and if it be not solid, the superstructure which I have raised upon it must fall into ruins. I have not, however, the least fear of this result, because I think it can be satisfactorily shown that water is used by the sacred writers both in the Old and New Testaments as a symbol of internal purification. In confirmation of this sentiment I adduce the following portions of Scripture, namely, Isa. xii. 3; Jer. ii. 13; Ps. xxxvi. 8, 9; Prov. xiv. 27; Jer. xvii. 13; Zech. xiii. 1; Isa. xli. 18; xliii. 19, 20; xxxv. 6; xliv. 3 ; lv. 1 ; John iv. 10, 14, and vii. 37, 38, 39; 1 Cor. x. 4; Rev. xxii. 17, and vii. 17. I cannot at present enter upon a critical examination of these several portions of Scripture without prolonging this discussion to a greater extent than I wish. On John iv. 10, 14, and vii. 37, 38, 39, Tittmann's Commentary may be consulted with profit. Tholuck says of the latter passage that, under the water which is to be communicated by the Redeemer, and which is to become in man a fountain of life, Christ meant nothing else than the quickening energies of the Spirit of God. I am fully satisfied that Mr. W. has not brought forward any satisfactory evidence to invalidate my interpretation of the passage of Scripture under consideration.

As water is significant of the quickening and purifying influences of the Spirit of God, no argument has yet been adduced to prevent us from regarding Tit. iii. 5 as a hendiadys, and as meaning regeneration. The language runs thus, dia λouτρoũ, by the

washing,

washing, the word λourfov signifying the fluid, or the vessel that contains it: ayyevesías that has regard to regeneration, or that is symbolical of regeneration, even the renewing of the Holy Ghost; the phrase following the copulative being explanatory of the one that precedes it. In concluding this article I should like to call the attention of Mr. Walker, as well as the readers of your Journal, to a few of the mistakes which, I think, this gentleman has made in his observations on 1 John v. 6-11.

The great work of our Lord, he observes, comprehends two parts-the putting away the filth of our evil nature, and the forgiveness of sin. Now, in all seriousness, I would ask this writer is this all that he thinks the work of the Saviour comprehends? No ancient type, he thinks, was adequate to express the communication of a new nature, nor could any of the washings carry the thoughts beyond the getting rid of external defilement; and, again, he says the work of the Spirit was typified by oil. I cannot see, for my part, how these several statements can be reconciled with each other. In another place this writer observes that my exposition of John iii. 5 obliges us to understand water as descriptive of the regenerating virtue of the Spirit, rather than of the means by which the new nature is obtained, viz., dying and rising again with Christ, from which the quickening operation of the Holy Spirit is to be distinguished; the latter being in fact the result of the former. I do not know the meaning of the latter part of this sentence, perhaps the writer may design to teach the doctrine of baptismal regeneration. It was reserved, he thinks, for the ordinance of baptism, to present to the senses a complete idea of death and resurrection, by the burial of the person in the waters, and his rising again; and the thing signified was, for the first time, associated with a sign perfectly adequate to set it forth (Col. ii. 12; Rom. vi. 1-10; Matt. xxviii. 19). In these observations Mr. Walker has completely misrepresented the symbolical character of baptism. The texts which he cites have no more to do with a burial of the person baptized in water and his rising again, than they have to do with the doctrine of justification by the imputed righteousness of Christ. It is nowhere taught in the Bible that the emblematical significancy of baptism consists in immersion and rising again. The Rev. Peter Mearns has well explained Col. ii. 12 in the last number of the Journal, and Rom. vi. 1-10 ought to be expounded on the same principle. All explanations of the emblematic nature of baptism by immersion in water and rising again completely fail in giving a true representation of that ordinance.

ON

ON "THE SECOND SABBATH AFTER THE FIRST."

By J. VON GUMPACH.

Ἐν ἐκείνῳ τῷ καιρῷ ἐπορεύθη ὁ Ἰησοῦς τοῖς σάββασι διὰ τῶν σπορίμων· οἱ δὲ μαθηταὶ αὐτοῦ ἐπείνασαν καὶ ἤρξαντο τίλλειν στάχυας καὶ ἐσθίειν.—Matt. xii. l.

Καὶ ἐγένετο παραπορεύεσθαι αὐτον ἐν τοῖς σάββασι διὰ τῶν σπορίμων κ. τ. λ. Mark ii. 23.

Εγένετο δὲ ἐν σαββάτῳ δευτεροπρώτῳ διαπορεύεσθαι αὐτὸν διὰ τῶν σπορίμων κ. τ. λ. -Luke vi. 1.

IT not unfrequently occurs in the three first Gospels that the sacred writers differ from each other as to the more or less concise terms which they individually employ to express the same common import; and that the one particularises what is stated by the two others in a more general manner- —a variance of which the passages submitted to the attention of our readers furnish a striking illustration. Whilst both St. Matthew and St. Mark relate the incident mentioned to have taken place on one of those Sabbath days on which at that time our Lord, accompanied by his disciples, used to take a walk through the corn-fields, St. Luke states it to have happened ἐν σαββάτῳ δευτεροπρώτῳ. The meaning of this, evidently a technical term, which occurs in no other place, has from the days of the early Fathers been subject to various interpretations; numerous conjectures having been formed in regard to it, some of them remarkable for their peculiarity, none, however, for either a rational or a plausible character. The only point upon which the majority of, if not all, critics are agreed, is, that the Greek word deureρónρwros conveys generally the sense of 'the first in reference to a second.' In conformity with this opinion, Scaliger (Emend. temp. p. 557) asserted our oάßßatov SEUTEPOTPUTOV to be the first sabbath reckoned from the second day in Passover (na nne, Levit. xxiii. 11); and Lightfoot (ad Matth. xii. 2) having adopted the same view, it derived much additional strength from his authority, and has since maintained itself, almost to the exclusion of every other hypothesis. By Van Til and Wetstein the σάββατον δευτερόπρωτον was assumed to be the first sabbath of the second month (Ijar); and by Capellus and Rhenfeld the first sabbath in the year from the date of its second epoch, the Jews commencing their ecclesiastical year with the month of Nisan, and their civil year with the month of Tishri. Others have ascribed to our expression the meaning of the first of two succeeding sabbaths, or that of the first sabbath in the second year of the sabbatical cyclus. Others again have proposed still different interpretations.

Whatever may be the relative merit of these various conjectures,

they