ality, and commenced degenerating into the observance of various ceremonies; nevertheless, there remained a considerable portion of virtue on the earth. The Dwápar Júg came next. It lasted 800,066 years. Men were then 7 cubits high, and lived 1000 years. Only one half of the excellence existing in the Satya Júg remained. Men were fond of praise and of domestic comforts; as to their external circumstances, they were generally wealthy and cheerful. Bráhmans and Khyatriyas were held in much honor. The last age is the Kali Júg, in which we live. It is to last 400,032 years-4,935 of which have already elapsed. Men in this Júg are to be 34 cubits high, and to live 100 years. This is the age of degeneracy. At the commencement of it, one fourth of the primitive virtue will yet be found on earth, but even that small portion will gradually disappear, and at the end, the whole earth will be filled with wickedness and sins of all descriptions. The principal signs of the Kali Júg are the following: Men will be discontented, envious, proud, earthly-minded, deceitful, licentious, calumniators, mean, cruel, enemies without cause, and so covetous as to break the bonds of friendship for the value of 20 caurís; for the same sum they will be ready to expose their very lives. They will deny support to their parents, when these are old or helpless. They will be bent constantly upon enjoyment; they will be gluttons, exceedingly fond of sleep, will worship women as gods. They will be subject to their wives, and pay more regard to their wives' relations, than to their own. much Women will not love their husbands, nor respect their fathersin-law. They will be much addicted to coquetry, destitute of modesty, very bold, unchaste, adulteresses, hypocritical, slanderous. They will have many children, but also much sorrow on their account. He who is strongest will be ruler in those days. Kings will be eager after the wealth of their subjects, but not after their welfare. Merchants will be unfair in their dealings, even when there is no necessity for it. When masters become poor, their servants will leave them; and when servants are sick or disabled, their masters will abandon them. When cows cease to give milk, instead of being carefully attended to in gratitude for former benefits conferred, they will be sent adrift and abandoned to their fate. Brahmans will be fond of good-living and women. They will neglect the ceremonies of religion, be vain of their knowledge, and study the shástras not to acquire wisdom, but for the sake of gain and wealth. He will be accounted the greatest pandit, who can talk most and be most sophistical in argument. Bráhmans will sell the Veds. The three honorable classes, (i. e. Bráhmans, Khyatriyas, and Vaishyas,) will forsake the employments of their respective castes. Súdras will adopt the manner of living of Bráh mans Pilgrimages will be abandoned, and the worship of Krishna forsaken. Ascetics will leave their hermitages, and return to live in towns; and the Jogís, who had renounced the world, will again be enamoured with sensual pleasures and objects. Much misery will then be felt; poverty will be great. Constant trouble and anxiety on account of taxes, and famine, will be experienced. From want of rain there will be great scarcity; men therefore will not derive any pleasure or enjoyment either in food, drink, sleep, or the company of their wives. They will lose all comeliness, and look like spectres. Trees will become exceedingly stunted in their growth. Cows will not be larger than goats, and men in proportion. Caste will be entirely lost; all will be mlechhas (unclean), the veds will be quite given up, and blasphemy be prevalent. Then Vishnu, not being able to bear longer with the wickedness of men, will be incarnate, under the name of Kalki, in a village called Shambála, and in the house of a Bráhman called Vishnu Sharma. The gods will then send him a horse, on which he will mount, and riding through the earth, will completely destroy all the wicked. On perusing the signs of the times, predicted to be characteristic of the Kali Júg, one cannot but observe how accurately some of them have had, and are having their fulfilment. The Hindus are very ready to adduce this fact, as a proof that their shástras contain a true prediction; and they argue from this, that therefore they must be of divine origin. There is however in this assertion more speciousness than truth, as the following two considerations may shew. 1. The framers of the Hindu system were perfectly aware of the absurdity of many of the doctrines they propagated as emanating from the Supreme Being. They must therefore have supposed that when these doctrines, which are so contrary to reason and common sense, should once be investigated, their fallacy would be discovered, and the theological system founded upon them, of course, abandoned. 2. They likewise were too well acquainted with the natural tendency of the human heart to evil, and with the extreme weakness and insufficiency of the motives to holiness held forth by them in the shástras, to expect that these motives would prove permanent restraints against vice and immorality. It required therefore no particular gift of prophecy to predict, that a system erected on so weak a basis would in process of time be destroyed. Precisely as when a man builds a house, and lays a rotten and unstable foundation, he will not, if he predicts that in the course of a few years the house, though firm as to its exterior appearance. will fall to the ground, acquire thereby the character of a prophet: he has only foretold what might naturally be expected, and what according to the common course of events must certainly come to pass. It follows from this, that the Hindu religion, resembling, as it does, this house, might naturally be expected to meet with a similar fate. The prediction referred to therefore, instead of in any way supporting the truth of that religion, will to a candid inquirer after truth, appear as a confirmation of its falsehood, and a proof of the duplicity of its authors. L. V.-Explanation of Scripture Difficulties, No. 1. 1. Genesisi i. 4 and 5, is rendered in the English verson as follows: These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created; in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens, and every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew; for the Lord God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was not a man to till the ground." It must be confessed that there is something very obscure in the former part of the fifth verse, and yet all the words are rendered according to the interpretation most commonly given of each in Hebrew dictionaries. There is, however, beside the common use of words, another excellent method of ascertaining the meaning of obscure passages; and that is, by examining the different senses in which the obscure term is employed by the same translators, and by applying them all to the pas sage in question, and then selecting the one most appropriate to the context. In translating from one language to another, particular attention to the general and specific meaning of the original words is required. To render a word by its general meaning, in passages where it is employed in a particular sense, will create one class of mistakes; and to render it by a particular meaning, in passages where it is employed in a general sense, will create another. An attentive perusal of the English translation of the scriptures will lead to the detection of a number of mistakes of both these classes: the wonder, however, is not that such mistakes should exist; but that the number of them is not much greater. In this verse the obscure term is It is most commonly rendered before, and yet in the following passages another meaning is given to it." But as for thee and thy servants, I know that ye will not yet fear the Lord God." Ex. ix. 30. "And Pharaoh's servants said unto him, How long shall this man be a snare unto us? Let the men go that they may serve the Lord their God: knowest thou not yet that Egypt is destroyed." Ex. x. 7. "Now Samuel did not yet know the Lord; neither was the word of the Lord yet revealed unto him." 1 Sam. iii. 7. This sense applied to the former part of the above passage would make it stand thus: "And every plant of the field was not yet in the earth, and every herb of the field was not yet grown." The interpretation therefore of the whole in plain English appears to be this: "These are the generations of the heavens and the earth from their creation, from the very day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens. When the plants of the field were not yet in the earth, and the herbs of the field were not yet grown; when the Lord had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was no man to till the ground, but a mist went up from the earth, and watered the surface of the ground." This recapitulation goes back to the commencement of the creation, and particularly refers to the period when the waters were gathered together, and the dry land appeared, which was previous to the earth's bringing forth grass and herbs yielding seed. 2. The plan above suggested of examining the different senses in which a word is employed by the translators, and fixing on the one which seems most appropriate to the context, while it is a most simple critical rule, would, if carefully acted upon, lead to the detection of errors, and the improvement of many passages of scripture. Thus for instance, the word is used in Exodus iii, 22, in a sense that is very rare, when it ought to have been used in its com mon acceptation. It means to ask, and to borrow; in the sense of borrow. ing, it occurs about six times in the Bible, but in the sense of asking, begging, requesting, petitioning, asking to give, &c. it occurs more than sixty. Now when a word is used with a general and also a specific meaning, the general meaning ought always to be adopted, unless the context requires the application of the specific., By this rule, let us examine several passages in Exodus, where the word occurs, "And I will give the people favour in the sight of the Egyptians; and it shall come to pass that when ye go, ye shall not go empty: but every woman shall borrow of her neighbour, and of her that sojourneth in her house, jewels of silver, and jewels of gold, and raiment, and ye shall put them upon your sons and upon your daughters, and ye shall spoil the Egyptians." Ex. iii. 21, 22. "Speak now in the ears of the people, and let every man borrow of his neighbour, and every woman of her neighbour, jewels of silver and jewels of gold." Ex. xi. 2. "And the children of Israel did according to the word of Moses; and they borrowed of the Egyptians, jewels of silver and jewels of gold, and raiment. And the Lord gave the people favour in the sight of the Egyptians, so that they lent unto them. And they spoiled the Egyptians." Ex. xii. 36. In all the above four instances the word is and the true rendering is, that the children of Israel, on their departure from the Egyptians, begged or asked of them presents according to the divine direction, and they gave unto them what they asked. Thus the spoils which the Egyptians had gained by the oppression of the Hebrews, were by the just providence of God wrested from their unlawful grasp, without any sin on the part of the Hebrews. It is common to this day, when persons are on the eve of their departure to a distant land, for their friends and neighbours to make them presents, which are designed as memorials of former friendship, or acquaintance. In asking these presents, therefore, the Israelites acted not as the enemies of the Egyptians, but as their friends; while the latter acted a corresponding part by giving them all they asked: however, it is evident they were influenced in doing so, not by love but by fear; "the Egyptians were urgent upon the people, that they might send them out of the land in haste; for they said, We be all dead men." They were willing to give them any thing to get rid of them. But if the word be rendered borrow, the whole aspect of the subject will be changed. The people will appear to have acted inconsistently with their circumstances, and to have been dishonourable in their dealings; and thus infidels will have too just grounds for accusing the sacred writer of encouraging immorality of conduct. To borrow, at a time when they knew they coul dnever return or repay what they borrowed, would be utterly inconsistent with common honesty; and to suppose that the Divine Being would give directions for such a procedure, would not only make him a partner in the evil, but at variance with himself; for he describes the character of the wicked, which he detests, as one "who borroweth and payeth not again." By rendering the verb according to its most common acceptation, all these objections are avoided. It is to be regretted that infidels should find any thing in the Bible on which to ground their sceptical remarks:-but it is to be remembered with gratitude by the true Christian, that all their objections, when fully investigated, are as groundless as those which they have raised against the passages which have here been explained*. 3. In the same chapter from which the last passage was quoted, viz. XII. of Exodus, there are two or three other verses, which appear contradictory. At the 19th verse, it is said, "Seven days shall there be no leaven found in your houses; for whosoever eateth that which is leavened, even that soul shall be cut off from the congregation of Israel, whether he be a stranger or born in passage, one of the very few mistranslated in our excellent version, is a most triumphant infidel argument! Drowning men eagerly grasp at straws.-ED. * This the land." From this it appears that the stranger, like the person born in the land, was to eat of the passover, but was not to eat with it leavened bread. Then in verse 43, it is said, "And the Lord said unto Moses and Aaron, This is the ordinance of the passover: there shall no stranger eat thereof." There is no way of reconciling this contradiction, beside that of referring to the original. We are anxious at once to know whether the same word is used in different senses, or whether in the Hebrew there are two terms used, both of which are translated stranger. In turning to the text, the latter is found to be the case. The word in the first instance is a stranger, and in the seconda foreigner ;-both rendered stran ger. Though stranger and foreigner are often used as synonymous, yet in the instance before us there is a manifest distinction, and by rendering the passage thus," There shall no foreigner eat thereof," the difficulty is solv ed, and the whole account rendered consistent with itself; for in the following verses, it is said, "A foreigner and a hired servant shall not eat thereof. And when a stranger shall sojourn with thee, and keep the passover to the Lord, let all his males be circumcised, and then let him come near and keep it; and he shall be as one that is born in the land." And again, "One law shall be to him that is home-born, and unto the stranger that sojourneth among you." 4. The term God, is one which admits of several renderings, as is confessed by lexicons and concordances. It commonly signifies the true God, as Genesis i. "God created the heavens and the earth, &c." It sometimes signifies false gods, as Ex. xx. 3. “ Thou shalt have no other gods before me.' It sometimes signifies angels, as Psalm xcvii. 7, "Worship him, all ye gods, i. e. all ye angels." It sometimes signifies magistrates, as Psalm lxxxii. 1. "He judgeth among the gods," i. e. judges or magistrates. Yet, though it is confessed by all that the word has these different significations, it is uniformly rendered in the English version by the one word God, either in the singular or plural number. This produces obscurity, and renders many passages unintelligible to persons unacquainted with the original. How much plainer in the cases above-mentioned, and in 1 Sam. xxviii. 13, would the passages have been to a common reader, if the word had been rendered according to its acknowledged meaning. In the last instance in particular, the obscurity is great, arising from the rendering of the word gods. "And the woman said unto Saul, I saw gods ascending out of the earth.” From the context it is plain she saw but one individual, and that was Samuel who had been a judge in Israel; so that the passage should have been rendered, "And the woman said, I saw a judge ascending out of the earth." And this is confirmed by the question and answer that immediately succeeded: Saul said, "What form is he of. And she said, An old man cometh up; and he is covered with a mantle. And Saul perceived that it was Samuel, and he stooped with his face to the ground, and bowed himself." 5. One observation more will close this paper. In Exodus xxxiii. 11, it is said, " And the Lord spake unto Moses face to face, as a man speaketh unto his friend." Then in verse 20, it is said, "Thou canst not see my face, for there shall no man see me and live." And again, Genesis xxxii. 30, it is said, "And Jacob called the name of the place Peniel; for I have seen God face to face, and my life is preserved." Either the word translated "face" is to be taken in two senses, or there is a contradiction in these passages. The former is doubtless the case. The word signifies either the essential person and character, or the external form or appearance, as appears from the following passages. It signifies, the countenance, the outward appearance generally in Gen. xl. 7, "Wherefore are your faces evil to-day?" But it often signifies the person or essential character, as Ex. xxxii. 11, "Moses entreated the face of the Lord:" Job xlii. 9, "And the Lord accepted the face of Job." The external forms by which God addressed himself to Moses were |