become new creatures in Christ Jesus just as in the present day fragments of the Gospel disconnected from the law, read in the Island of Madagascar and preached to Caffres, Zulus, Maories, and Fijians make new creatures of savages who know nothing of a previous dispensation or of a preparatory civilisation bringing them like school-masters to Christ.

We return now to the consideration of further reasons for the expectation of a new revelation, and we deem one of the strongest to lie in the existing evidence of a new state of the religious consciousness. scarcely known to the apostles even, but evidently the result of the cumulative teaching of the Spirit in the church since the days of the apostles.

This new state of the religious consciousness removes us from sympathy with the imprecatory Psalms, claims our admiration of the Gospel above the law, and has led us, without literal direction, to give effect to the principles of the Gospel; compelling us to abolish slavery, to deprecate war, to institute palliations for its miseries, to mission the heathen, to struggle in a thousand ways to elevate the masses, to grant equal laws, to prevent cruelty to animals, to make mercy a duty, and to worship Love as a God. Known under various names as the spirit of humanity, of philanthropy, of Christianity, we will call it the consciousness of common justice-and this word "common we use in the double sense of both universal and simple or essential. It is on account of the strength and the prevalence of this sentiment of common justice that the level of our spiritual consciousness is so much higher than that of David's contemporaries, and higher even than the orthodox interpretations given to New Testament revelations. The spirit within us appears often to clash with the letter, the word given requires further explanation from the Master who spake it; meanwhile it is his own spirit whispers "Peace," and bids us rely that common justice is Divine.

The general advance in the level of the religious consciousness, beyond what was current in the primitive church, beyond apparently what was felt by the apostles themselves, or if felt was not expressed, this we take to be another reason for expecting that further light suited to the altered powers of vision will certainly be vouchsafed. And by the clearer light of the later revelation communicating the complementary chapters which will give unity and meaning to the whole, it may be given future ages to discern how, just as we now decide with certainty that a human element mingled largely in the inspired compositions of David, so the writers of the New Testament, unable completely to obliterate the consequences of their Jewish training, and avowedly speaking sometimes without Divine authority, did unconciously adulterate their inspiration with human misconceptions.

Meanwhile, and until such further revelation has been given, let not the Christian reader scruple to rely upon the sacred and sanctifying convictions of the Holy Spirit, even when they seem to be contradicted by the letter of the Word. We reserve for another opportunity a fuller exposition and defence of our views of the function of the "Spirit" as interpreter of the Word; of the spheres in which "logic, grammar, and exegesis" must decide without appeal and of the sphere in which it is the duty and privilege of the individual Christian to recognise and

appropriate the intimations of the Supreme Interpreter, Suffice it to say here that in this interval between the last and the next supernatural revelation the Spirit pre-eminently exercises his promised function of the Comforter. "I will not leave you comfortless," said the Saviour to his sorrowing disciples, "I will pray the Father and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever; even the Spirit of truth, who shall teach you all things, and show you things to come." And surely this function of the Holy Spirit is one especially precious and necessary to us in this day; for if the state of the best part of the invisible church can be truly described in one word, it is in that of being "comfortless." Comfortless by reason of its extended knowledge of the laws of the universe; and of the condition of all the sentient creation of which man is the chief. Comfortless by reason of the expansion of its sympathies and the impossibility of happiness continuing unshaded by sadness when it is known to stand in contrast with the condition of the greater number. Comfortless by reason of the renewal of God's image in the heart of man, by the operation of the Comforter himself, making the soul which now participates in the sufferings of Christ a mirror for the reflection of all other known sufferings: not however a mirror of hard and insensible metal incapable of holding its reflections, but fatally dowered with the involuntary power of imparting permanence to its impressions. Comfortless by reason of the relentless rushing in of news upon this sensitive mirror, from all quarters of the globe, burdening the finite spirit with too large a portion of the sorrow of God, who knows it all, but whose present sorrow, like the non-luminous rays in the sunbeam, detracts nothing from the light of his blessedness, because nothing from the certainty of the world's broad day. Comfortless by reason of the silence in heaven and earth, when men are beheld in flocks attempting to dig up by the roots that Tree of Life -the one blessed treasure for the healing of the nations-whose roots are wrapped round the throne of God and the sap of whose branches is the blood of Christ. Comfortless by reason of the increasing distinctness with which difficulties and contradictions are perceived in the contents of Holy Writ and the yearning that exists in the hearts of the most reverential students of Scripture for a reconciliation between doctrines that are thought to have a literal basis in the Word and impressions of the Divine character that they know to be light from heaven. It was in gracious provision for this state of the church, inevitably supervening in the period of her spiritual progress from the First to the Second Advent, that the Spirit was foretold as the "Comforter" to come; sent down from "the Father of mercies and the God of all consolation that as "the sufferings of (the world) abound in us, so our consolation also might abound by Christ."

POSTSCRIPT.-At the conclusion of this series of papers it is fitting that notice should be taken of the strictures to which they have been subjected at the hands of Mr. M. W. STRANG in a letter that appeared in the March number; and again in an extract from a letter to the Editor published in July.

I am personally obliged to Mr. Strang for awakening an interest in the discussion by adducing the testimony of Hebrew scholars in favour

of a different rendering of 1 Kings ii. 9, to that which my comments implicitly sanctioned; but he is mistaken if he supposes that I had not considered with the anxiety of one not himself a Hebrew scholar, and with the care and absence of prejudice involved in any real pursuit of truth, all that I could find explanatory of the difficult passages in David's career and writings before presuming to write about them.

It would have been easy to have extended the articles to double their length had I given quotations from the authorities consulted and my reasons for assent or dissent. I confined myself to giving results only, feeling the imperative duty of being brief in an age when so many have so much to say.

Dr. Kennicott's rendering I had carefully pondered, but was unable conscientiously to agree with it. The case is briefly this :

It is not uncommon in the Hebrew language to omit the negative in the second part of a sentence, and to consider it as repeated, when it has been once expressed and is followed by the connecting particle." The translators of the English version had consequently frequently to supply the negative, as for example, "For the needy shall not always be forgotten: the expectation of the poor shall (not) perish for ever." (Psa. viii. 18.)

Parkhurst puts it in another way. He considers that although the most common meaning of the connective particle 1 (vau) is simply "and" or "but," yet there resides in it the power to carry the force of a preceding negative into the following clause. This power, be it understood is not constantly but only incidentally recognised in the use made of this particle by the Hebrew writers; in other words, its employment does not demand the transference of a preceding negative to the following clause but only suggests it.

In order to establish a connection between the first and the last clause of the 9th verse of 1 Kings ii., and so enable the connective particle to suggest a repetition of the negative, it is maintained that the middle of the verse must be understood parenthetically. Let us omit it altogether, and the English version will read: "Now therefore hold him not guiltless, but his hoar head bring thou down to the grave with blood." This is clear and logical. The rendering of Parkhurst with the same clause omitted reads: "Now therefore hold him not guiltless, neither bring down his grey hairs with blood to the grave." This if not exclusively a non-sequitur is too subtle to be probable. Kennicott's is better he

simply imports a negative without incorporating it with the connective particle. "Now therefore, hold him not guiltless, but bring not down his hoary head to the grave with blood." This, too, is clear and logical, and deriving apparent support from the manner in which Solomon dealt with Shimei in the first instance, the temptation is strong to accept it at once, without further inquiry, and rejoice in the relief which it affords.

It is true that the whole deliverance is due to an hypothesis,-to the supposition that a negative was intended when it was not expressed; and therefore demands the most rigid inquiry before expressing it in a translation. Why not, however, "rest and be thankful" even though in the acquittal of David, we accuse the letter of Scripture of painful ambiguity and the Authorised Version of error?

The true searcher after truth cannot thus palter with his conscience.

Further inquiry is demanded, and then the reader is struck by the parallelism between the injunction David gave respecting Joab and that given respecting Shimei, Of Joab he said: "Do therefore according to thy wisdom, and let not his hoar head go down to the grave in peace." Of Shimei, he said: "Now therefore hold him not guiltless; for thou art a wise man, and knowest what thou oughtest to do unto him: but his hoar head bring thou down to the grave with blood." It is in the highest degree artificial and improbable to import into the above directions a contrast instead of an identity of intention, and the reference to Solomon's wisdom is very unpleasant in such a connection. Certainly it was eminently "wise" (in a serpentine sense) for the accomplishment of his sinister design, instead of putting Shimei under restraint, to leave him absolutely free, only exacting an oath that he should not leave Jerusalem. We are not told that the oath was ever renewed, and the old sinner seems to have considered its restriction to have been tacitly relaxed when, leaving Jerusalem with no other evil intent than to recover some runaway chattels, he returned without misgiving to the city of the king. But Solomon was timely informed of the success of his plans, and in the trap which he set and in his treatment of the entrapped we see too clearly that he understood far better than Parkhurst or Kennicott what David really intended.

Much as we should like to be relieved by any new reading that could commend itself as true, we must honestly say what has been suggested wholly fails to carry conviction to our own mind, and we so decided before our first article was written.

Now we must notice Mr. Strang's remark in the July number of the RAINBOW. "By the way, I really wish Mr. Deacon would take a hint about David's relation to the 109th Psalm. It is too bad to continue to blame him for our own blunders."

I am left to conjecture that what is here alluded to is one or both of the following presumptions respecting the import of this Psalm.

The first I will consider in connection with the character of the Psalm as Messianic. It is supposed that the inspiration of God compelled David, in his typical and prophetic character to give utterance to language which he, in his human character would have hesitated to apply to his enemies. But we are immediately met by the insuperable difficulty that Christ's attitude to his enemies was precisely the opposite. It was no prophecy of Christ's prayer respecting his betrayers and murderers; for where David curses, Christ blesses. It cannot possibly be prophetic of God's judgments upon Christ's enemies, because not only is it simply a prayer of David to God, but to decide that the utterance of David's petition involved its acceptance and answer on God's part, would carry with it the denial of Christ's prayer absolutely; so that Christ in his office as an Intercessor, in the very first use of his power, plucked from the cross, is made wholly to fail; his prayer being rendered of no effect, by reason of the prior petition of David of a wholly opposite character.

The other hypothesis is that we have here, from the sixth to the end of the nineteenth verse, not David cursing his enemies, but his enemies cursing him; and it is to this solution-suggested by him in the February number that Mr. Strang perhaps more particularly refers. This inter

pretation, however, seems to us to require, as Mr. Ruskin would say, a "steam crane" for its accomplishment, and something very like "blundering" in any one suggesting it.

It is sufficient to point to Acts i. 20, where the last clause of verse 8 -which on the supposition is the language of Christ's enemies concerning Christ is quoted as a word of inspiration concerning Judas!

Let me at once avow my belief that David was a prophet, that he was a type of Christ, that he did as a prophet predict woe upon God's enemies, largely mingling therewith human passion and imperfection, and the ignorant errors of his age. But to me the sublimity of the Psalms in which his typical relationship to Christ appears, lies in the fact of the infinite disparity between the human and the divine,-the transcending superiority of the Antitype to the type, -a superiority so great as to manifest itself in absolute collision and contrast when the temper of mind cherished towards their enemies is respectively exhibited. Can anything more vicious in principle and consequences be imagined than a determination to equivocate over and condone the moral delinquencies of any character who is represented in the Scriptures as a type of Incarnate Deity? For an explanation of their faults we are referred to the Deity whom they prefigured. The human is made the measure of the Divine, and what is inhuman is declared to be superhuman. The darkness of sinful beings is maintained to be a revelation of him in whom is no darkness at all.

Whereas how true it really is, that by far the broadest surfaces of contact between type and antitype are to be found on the official side, and on the moral side very often angular divergence. Types of Christ are thrown upon the sands of time, like fragments of the cliff upon the shore true types are they of the towering rock, being indeed fallen parts of it-true types in everything but height. Finally, we beg the reader to note the use made of 69th Psalm vv. 22, 23, in Rom. xi., from which we see that St. Paul indignantly repudiates the irrecoverable condemnation of the enemies of Christ : "Have they stumbled that they should fall? God forbid !” *HENRY DEACON.

CHERUBIC PHENOMENA.

HE Cherubim

"THE

BY WILLIAM MORRIS, M.D.

Preliminary Observations.

are first mentioned in the record of man's expulsion from the Garden of Eden. As artistic symbols, they were the heraldic supporters of the throne of Jehovah in the holy of holies of the Mosaic Tabernacle. As phenomena they were present in the visions of Ezekiel; and in the prophetic drama shown in vision to John on the Isle of Patmos. And here a question of profound interest arises, touching their true significance and divine intent. They are mentioned and shown in manifest relation to the moral government of God. What, therefore, is the specific nature of their relation to the divine government over the human race, over the nation of Israel, and over the principalities

EE