petitioners for his pardon, that they believe he is penitent. Is this pardoning act against law? No it is done according to the supreme law of the land. And is the law of God against his promises? Is not mercy in him from eternity? What shall hinder him from pardon ing the penitent? Man by feigned repentance may deceive man; but God, who knows the heart, cannot be deceived.

In my next I will notice your objections to my views from the beginning. B. W. STONE.

BROTHER STONE:

LETTER V.-T. B. W. STONE.

My dear Sir-PERMIT me, with all respect for your superior years, to make a few suggestions on some points of order:

1st. The numeration and titles of our letters are out of order. For example, the first article in your November Christian Messenger, is a letter to me, titled "Atonement-No. IV." The next article is my letter to you, titled "Letter III.-To B. W. Stone." The next is your letter to me, titled "Atonement-No III." In this way receding, a few more essays and you will get back to No. I.! This, in my optics, is all confusion. Neither we ourselves nor our readers can refer to any of these essays with accuracy or intelligibility. I may be to blame for so much of this as arose from the loss of your third article. But I move an amendment. I have therefore placed at the head of these articles their proper caption, and intend to do so hereafter.

2d. It also appears to me that there is a series of letters on hand without any connecting thread of argument: for example, instead of replying to my Letter IV., printed in your last, you print a new letter on a new subject. In this way we might print each a score of letters and develope no point, except how far we agreed or disagreed upon one of the most vital points in the Bible. True, you inform us at the close of your last, that you intend in your next to notice my objections to your views "from the beginning." I suggest to your experience whether a detailed and regular reply to each letter would not be better than a wholesale replication once in a long time.

3d. With all deference I would add a third suggestion. You sometimes seem to be fighting over the battles which some thirty years ago you waged against Kentucky orthodoxy, instead of endeavoring to come to an understanding among ourselves on what the scriptures teach on atonement. For example, at the close of the first paragraph of your last letter you say, "So the blood of the Lamb of God is the means appointed of God, by which he cleanses and forgives the penitent obedient believer.' "This," you add, "I will now endeavor to make appear." 99 But who of us doubts or denies this!! Then come six pages of your Messenger filled with references to the Hebrew nasa, and the Greek anaphero, in proof that nasa signifies not to bear punishment of sin, but to bear sin away, to forgive it. This affects the questions debated by you thirty years ago, but is not called for in the present discussion. I have not introduced either nasa or anaphero into this investigation. But all this seems to me irrelevant to any thing yet between us; for whether correct or incorrect, it demonstrates

not in what way the blood of Christ is the means of pardon. That it is the means of pardon we both agree, and you need not prove it. But in what way is it the means of pardon? This you have not yet shown, and your six pages of criticisms and references reach not this point at all.

4th. Hear me once more upon your illustration, as also partaking somewhat of the same ambiguity and irrelevance. You introduced it for one purpose, and then command us to apply it to another. The first sentence is, "How the death of Christ bears away our sins, or takes them away, I will endeavor to illustrate by a figure;" and at the end of the figure you tell us, "This figure is introduced only to show what principle leads to repentance and forgiveness-the goodness of God." Unless you mean the death of Christ bears away our sins by bearing repentance to us, I can see no relevancy between the introduction and application of your figure. May I be permitted to add, that in the six pages of Hebrew and Greek references, as well as in the illustration which follows them, the grand point is strangely forgotten or overlooked. The difficulty is not about the necessity of his death in order to reconciling us to God; but it is about the necessity of his death in order to God's pardoning us. Would you have one to believe that you make our repentance or reconciliation to God the only reason why he should forgive us! One might suppose that the drift of your letter before indicated the following to be the philosophy of your atonement:-The death of Christ is to be contemplated merely as a proof of God's goodness-that his goodness perceived in the death of his son, induces repentance; and that this repentance super induces the pardon of sin. Hence the only necessity for the death of Christ to have occurred, is its superior fitness to produce repentance, which of itself alone when called into being constrains forgiveness. And would you have any one to think that Christ's death occurred simply to demonstrate God's goodness; and that this demonstration occurred simply to induce repentance, and that repentance alone superinduces forgiveness? Brother Stone, you must be explicit in this point, else we shall be greatly misunderstood. if not traduced by our opponents. For my part, I will stand up before the universe of God, not only in affirming, but in attempting to prove, that the death of Jesus Christ our blessed and only Lord, was, and is, and evermore shall be, AS NECESSARY TO DEMONSTRATING THE JUSTICE AS THE GOODNESS OF GOD IN FORGIVING SIN. To unite mercy and justice in forgiving the sinner, was, in my view, the supreme end of God's sparing not his own son; and I trust on this vital point there will be no difference between us. Come up to it frankly and explicitly, brother Stone; the brethren and the community desire to understand us clearly on this great subject.

After the pains you have taken in this long epistle to enlighten the community upon nasa and anaphero, it will be expected that I should write something less than six or sixty pages indicative of my views. Allow me, then, to make a few remarks on the inductions you have laid before us. Time was when such array did intimidate your old antagonists, and awe into acquiescence the uneducated and speculative community. But in this more sceptical and inquisitive age we may concede all, at least much, of what you have advanced, (and cer

tainly 1, for one, do,) and yet contend that it positively and actually avails nothing at all as respects the great point at issue.

That nasa is often rendered as you say, is unquestionably true; but just as true it is that if there be any word in Hebrew or Greek that imports or could import bearing sin as a burthen, a load, and suffering under it and for it, or as a punishment; these are the words that can and do express it.

I need not inform one of your learning that nasa is found hundreds of times in the Hebrew Bible; and that, in the judgment of our most learned biblical critics and lexicographers, it is found in more than twenty-five different acceptations. Nay, you know that it is one of the most extensive roots in the Hebrew language. If I were to go into the detail, I shall engage to produce numerous and clear instances of its denoting to impose heavy burdens, to load beasts, to impose grievances, taxes, and usury, to bear sin in a vicarious manner, to bear punishment, &c. &c.; and from these facts, which can be fully substantiated from the Hebrew Bible, of what value is the induction which you have been at pains to collect? Anaphero, too, is only found ten times in the Greek Testament, and in half of these, at least, it is incapable of the translation you give it. Please consider Heb. vii. 27., where it oecurs twice, and cannot signify to bear away; and also xiii. 21.; as well as 1 Peter ii. 5. and 25. Consult also James ii. 21. I will not, unless compelled by the high regard I have for your learning and your virtues, go into these inductions; for surely our numerous readers would not thank us for our pains.

I will only add, after requesting you to brush the dust off your Parkhurst Hebrew Lexicon, and if you choose to refresh your memory, you may look into Roys, (not a work of high authority, except as a concordance,) and you may find from one to two hundred occurrences of this interesting word, diverse from those you have given I sey, I will only add that your reasonings and inductions on nasa leave Isaiah lii. 4, 11, 12, as it was. If, indeed, this whole chapter do not teach that the Messiah did suffer for us, the just for the unjust-that he both bore our sins, and bore them away-that he was wounded for our transgressions, bruised for our iniquities, stricken of God, and afflicted for our offendings-that it pleased Jehovah to bruise him, to put him to grief, and to make his soul an offering for sin-it can prove, it does prove, nothing at all.

Speculators aud system-mongers, unable to make these scriptures tally with their notions of justice and expediency, have contended against the language of Apostles and Prophets as figurative and farfetched, and sought to substitute for the doctrine of the Spirit a vocabulory of their own, more agreeable to their respective theories. I fear some may imagine a squinting of this sort in some remarks of yours, as the following:-"Does law or justice admit of such substituted punishment?" What law, or what justice? In return I ask, Does law or justice admit of the punishment by death of an innocent person? My dear sir, we have many very imperfect logicians among system-makers as well as in other classes of society. They dash on Scylla while steering from Charybdis. We see the divine law impinged when something impinges our theory of God's justice; but we do not see that while we are protecting the law we are dishonoring

the character of God by imputing to him the sacrifice of his Son most unjustly and cruelly. For, mark what I say, if the Messiah, God's Son, did not die under the imputation of sin, as a sin-offering, and for us sinners, all the logicians in America will not convince me that it was just to suffer him to die at all. And who allowed his death! Was he not delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God? He asked to be spared; but God could not spare him and save man; and therefore he submitted, saying, "Not as I will, but as thou wilt." He spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all.""Awake," said Jehovah, "O sword, against my Shepherd-against the man that is my fellow-smite the Shepherd, and let the sheep be scattered." We know who has applied this to the Father and the Son.

I have weighed the above italicised proposition, and am sorry to discover that it does not seem to have impressed its momentous weight upon your mind. Why, my dear sir, if God's only and well beloved Son could be murdered according to prophecy, by his counsel and foreknowledge, by his own immutable will, without any sin done by him or imputed to him, who could feel safe in the universe of God, though innocent as Jesus, and pure as the throne of Jehovah? When, then, you ask, "Does law or justice admit of such substituted punishment!" remember what the denial of it implies and involves. I ask, Do law and justice admit of the punishment by death of an innocent person! Nay, what moral law justifies the suffering of an innocent person? Every demurrer against the imputation of sin with whom I have debated, is stricken dumb just at this point. Any one that can show me the justice and the law of reason that sanctions the death of those dear innocents whom Herod slew, whom God has slain in the deluge, in Sodom, Egypt, and Jerusalem, that he slays every day by the scythe of death, I will in return show to him the justice of substitution and imputation-I will justify the death of the Messiah as a sin-offering by all the facts, documents, and reasons by which he justifies events innumerable, occurring still in the fortunes of every family in the observation of every man of sense and reflection.

As I have not now room for a full exposition of my views on this subject, I must defer till another moon. Meantime, my dear sir, I will send you this, in proof, a month before the number appears, that you may have time to explain yourself before the next number be due. Come up to the points now elicited, and leave the Westminster Divines and your orthodox opponents to themselves. We have the Bible, and that is enough. Our brethren are anxious for the full examination of this whole subject.

As ever, yours,

A. C.

CHARITY TRUE AND FALSE.

JAMESTOWN, Ohio, December 16, 1840.

Dear brother Campbell-FAULT-FINDERS are, of all visiters, the most unwelcome: nevertheless, among this class are found true philanthropists: true charity is often met with in the person of a fault-finder;

but it is rarely met with in the person of a flatterer. But, by a strange misnomer, the flatterer is said to be the charitable man, and the faultfinder the uncharitable one; at least this obtains in religion. The man that speaks well of all religions is said to be a very charitable man; but he that finds fault with them, or any of them, is said to be uncharitable in proportion to the number of faults he finds out; and the man's Christianity is measured by his charity, with this sense attached to the word. Perhaps no word has been perverted to a greater extent than the word charity, when figuratively used. Literally it means the giving of alms, and figuratively it means the enlightening of minds or understandings; but it never did mean praise or flattery; or, at least, that is not the scriptural meaning of the word. The conferring of benefits on others is what I understand by the word charity; and the pointing out of faults for the purpose of amending them, is certainly within the range of the true meaning of that word. But if the approbation of error or bad actions be the meaning of that word in any degree, I have always been ignorant of its meaning. It does seem to me that charity requires the pointing out of faults, where amendments may be made; but where no amendment can be made, as in the case of bodily deformity, and shall add mental deformity-yes, I will; for I believe there are deformed minds as well as bodies-it would be of no use to point out the deformities.

But some man will say, 'If you find fault with all religions but your own, you will certainly be very uncharitable. You ought to allow other people's religion to be as good as your own.'

To such a man I would say, If you can point out faults in my religion, and will not do it, you are no friend of mine, for error may lead me to destruction; and if you make no effort to save me, you have no If I am in ignorance, and you see me there, charity, or love, for me. and make no effort to extricate me, what better are you than the Priest and Levite were, who found a man among thieves, and took no care of him?

Never mind my faults in husbandry, or economy, or in my fortunes, or in my dress, while you see a fault in my religion; for, above all things, I desire to be right in religion. But that you may really mend my faults, I desire, that you will not caricature my religion, and then go to finding fault with the ugly picture you have made. Do not make a hump where there is none, and then point your finger at it; but, above all, I beg of you not to give my religion some unpopular name, Look at it as it really and then find fault with it because of the name. exists, and then find all the fault you can; but be sure that you measure by the rule made by the Apostles, for that is the only rule that is of the right length-a!l others have been sprung or warped by hard straining.

These thoughts are not very well clothed; but they will do for a friend to look at by the fireside, if not to go among strangers. M. WINANS

Affectionately yours,

GREAT LIBRARY The largest library in the world is said to be the one in the British Museum. It contains more than half a million of printed books, and a hundred and twenty thousand manuscripts. The next largest is the Royal Library of Paris, in Equator. which there are over four hundred thousand books, and eighty thousand munuscripts.