stopped, and himself degraded from his office, if he openly avowed his disbelief in such doctrines?

If it was reported to the managers at home, that any missionary taught such doctrines to the heathen, would he be admonished or dismissed the service? Would he not be rather applauded for his faithfulness and zeal, in propagating the pure, and distinguishing doctrines of the Gospel? Presuming, then, that such doctrines are taught to the heathen, permit me to ask, what an intelligent heathen might be expected to say to such Missionaries? He might surely with great propriety say something like the following:--"Gentlemen missionaries-You have been at some trouble, and considerable expense in coming here to teach us about your God and religion. While we thank you for your good intentions, we must say that we cannot change our own gods for yours, or add one more to the gods we have already, unless he is a good, kind, and merciful God. Our own gods are crucl enough, but if your God be as you describe him, to receive him as our God, would only be to add to our miserable condition. We have had all the tender feelings of our hearts torn to pieces, in seeing our infants and relations tortured to death to satisfy our present gods. But bad as they are, none of our gods ever made such cruel demands on us as yours do on you. No, none of them ever demanded us to believe, that our eternal felicity would be increased, by beholding others in misery, and that we ourselves must be willing to be damned for their glory or we never could be saved by them. You have come a great way to tell us that all our gods are but dumb idols. Perhaps this may be true; but unless you suppose us heathen devoid of all feeling and common sense, how could you ever suppose, that we would renounce our earthly cruel gods for an eternally cruel true one. Return to your employers, with our thanks for their

good intentions towards us, and when we send Missionaries to your country, they shall bring you thousands of gods all better than the one you propose to us. Bad as our gods are none of them like yours, allows a devil to ruin us here, and torment us forever in the world to come. Our fathers knew about your devil, and you have borrowed a considerable part of your creed from what they were taught many years before your religion existed, and yet you come to tell us things which we knew long before, as wonderful revelations from your God. Whether your impudence is not as great as you think our ignorance to be, you may reflect about, on your passage home. Fare you well."

To conclude. If we wish the heathen to cast their idols to the moles and to the bats let us cast our devil and many other idol opinions, out of the Christian religion, and let us both say, what have we any more to do with idols or with the devil; the Lord he is our God and we will serve him.

END OF THE FIRST PART.

AN INQUIRY

INTO THE EXTENT OF DURATION EXPRESSED BY THE TERMS OLIM, AION, AND AIONION, RENDERED EVERLASTING, FOREVER, &c IN THE COMMON VERSION, ESPECIALLY WHEN APPLIED TO PUNISHMENT.

SECTION I.

ALL THE TEXTS NOTICED WHERE OLIM OCCURS IN THE OLD TESTAMENT, BUT IS RENDERED BY WORDS WHICH DO NOT EXPRESS OR IMPLY ETERNAL DURATION.

TAYLOR, in his Hebrew concordance, on the word olim, says, "The word is applied to time, and signifieth a duration which is concealed, as being of an unknown or great length, with respect either to time past or to come." After quoting some texts, which he supposed proof of this, he adds; "it signifies eternity, not from the proper force of the word, but when the sense of the place, or the nature of the subject to which it is applied requireth it; as God and his attributes." As he refers to no text to show, that when applied to punishment it signifies eternity, it may I think be inferred, that he did not think it was ever so applied. Parkhurst on the word olim, says, "it

seems to be much more frequently used for an indefinite than for infinite time." And in his Greek Lexicon, on the words aion and aionios, he says, that the Hebrew word olim answers as the corresponding word for these two words in the Greek of the Seventy, "which words denote time hidden from man, whether indefinite or definite, whether past or future." Professor Stuart, in his letters to Dr. Miller p. 128. commenting on Mic. v. 1. says: "the words kedesh and od, rendered by Turretine, eternity, are like the Greek aion, that also signifies any thing ancient, which has endured or is to endure for a long period. The question when these words are to have the sense of ancient or very old, is always to be determined by the nature of the case, i. e. by the context."

Concessions, such as these, from critics on the language of Scripture, ought to lead every man to examine, if these terms are ever used in the Bible to express the endless duration of punishment. Mr. Stuart's rule, if applied with attention to the general usage of these terms, would soon cool the zeal of many people, who seem to dwell with peculiar delight on, the endless duration of punishment to their fellow creatures. It is evident, that the translators of the common version were fully aware, that olim was often used by the sacred writers to express a limited period of time, for 1st. They render it continuance, Isai. lxiv. 5. 2d. ancient, and apply it to landmarks, Prov. xxii. 28. To people, Isai. xliv. 7. To paths, Jer. xviii. 15. To high places, Ezek. xxxvi. 2. To nations, Jer. v. 15. To times, Psalm lxxvii. 5. which is explained to mean old. Had olim in these texts been rendered eternal, or everlasting, as in some other places, the impropriety would be very manifest. We would then have had an eternal landmark, an everlasting people, eternal paths, and everlasting high places; yea, an everlasting nation, and