We have an authority and message from God himself, justifying, in this respect, the conduct of Abraham. In Isaiah we read, "Who raised up the righteous man - that is, Abraham "from the east, called him to his foot, gave the nations before him, and made him rule over kings? He gave them as the dust to his sword, and as driven stubble to his bow. He pursued them, and passed safely, even by the way that he had not gone with his feet." Thus, by the mouth of Isaiah, God justifies the conduct of Abraham on this occasion. We then draw this inference, that all war is not essentially unchristian, in reference to nations, when their privileges are assailed by the aggressor on the one hand, or their blessings are threatened to be snatched away by the invader on the other hand. War itself is deeply to be deplored—generally, to be deprecated; it is the fruit of sin; it is the shame of humanity. But we see from God's word that there are crises when a nation may justly arm to vindicate its rights that are trodden down, or to repel the foe that would steal those rights or privileges from its possession. Of course, such a solemn thing as war needs to be deeply pondered; it ought to be truly justified in the sight of God as well as in the sight of man; but it is altogether an outrage, I think, upon common sense, as well as upon the word of God, to allege, as many do allege, that it is impossible to be a Christian and yet be a soldier; and that no Christian ever walks the quarter-deck. On this subject there is a fact which is better than a thousand arguments, and it is this: I am satisfied that as warm Christian hearts as ever beat are under blue jackets, and that many of our most pious men are soldiers. This is matter of fact, and being matter of fact it confutes the statement, that a soldier or a sailor cannot be a Christian. There are in these professions Christian men, as there are in any other profession upon earth; and if war be bad-and it is bad in itself, and to be very much deplored-yet I very much doubt

whether there may not be worse and more demoniacal disputes carried on in lawyers' offices than are settled on the battle-field; the mode of conflict may differ, but the spirit of it may be worse in the latter case.

Having noticed the account of the war upon Sodom, and the captivity of Lot, I call your attention to a very remarkable passage in this chapter: "And Melchizedek king of Salem brought forth bread and wine: and he was the priest of the most high God. And he blessed him, and said, Blessed be Abram." I have looked into three well-known translations of the word of God last week. The first I looked into is the Douay translation of the Old Testament Scriptures; and on examining this passage in the Douay translation, which is a translation from a translation of the Latin of Jerome, a father who translated the Scriptures in the fourth century, and which is authorized and employed in the Roman Catholic Church, I ́ found that the eighteenth verse was thus translated; and I wish you to notice it: "And Melchizedek king of Salem brought forth bread and wine: for he was the priest of the most high God. And he blessed him, and said, Blessed be Abram ;" and then the note given in the index on this chapter is this: "Here we have the figure and the type of the mass. Melchizedek being a high priest, did a priestly act in bringing forth bread and wine, and offering up the bread and wine as a sacrifice to God." Now, in our translation it is, "Melchizedek king of Salem brought forth bread and wine: and he was the priest of the most high God." In the Douay translation it is implied that the bringing forth bread and wine was a priestly act; in our translation it is implied that the bringing forth bread and wine was a hospitable act – a refreshment to a weary and way-worn warrior. Our translation is justified by the Hebrew; the Romish is not. To be certain, I purchased a new translation, recently issued under the authority of the chief rabbi of the synagogue in this capi

tal. This translation is by one of the first Hebrew scholars of the day, and is the authorized translation of the Jewish synagogue, and used now, I believe, by every Jew. I must say that in every passage that I have read it justifies our translation, and in many points it exceeds our translation in beauty and in accuracy. In this passage it is translated exactly as we have it: "And Melchizedek king of Salem brought forth bread and wine: and he was the priest of the most high God," not for. If it had been for, it would have justified the Romish, and implied that the bringing forth the bread and wine was a priestly act. And therefore the Jew, who understands his own language, of course, better than anybody else, justifies our translation. I give you an idea of the beauty of this translation, and its value as a Jewish one. I will read to you the first few verses of Genesis, which I read that you may see how faithful is our translation, and yet how very beautiful is this. "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. But the earth was desolate and void. And darkness was upon the face of the murmuring deep" (that is most accurate, and very poetical). "And the Spirit of God". a capital S is used- "and the Spirit of God was hovering upon the face of the waters;" that is much more correct than our translation. It implies that the Spirit of God was fluttering like a dove, as I told you before, upon the face of the waters. The Jewish translation is, "The Spirit of God was hovering." "And God said, Let there be light and light was. And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness. And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And it was evening and morning, one day. And God said, Be there an expanse in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. And God made the expanse, and divided the waters which were under the expanse from the waters which were above the expanse, and

it was so. And God called the expanse heaven. And it was evening and morning, a second day," or, as we translate it, "the evening and the morning were the second day." I would just wish to turn your attention to the fourteenth verse of the third chapter, where you will see that our translation is justified by this one. "And the woman said, The serpent beguiled me. And the eternal God said unto the serpent, Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field. Upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life. And I will set enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it," — the seed, not the woman, "it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel." It is thus that, in those passages where disputes have arisen about the accuracy of our version, the Jewish translation justifies our own. There is here no type, or hint, or prophecy of the sacrifice of the mass; and I may give another reason for it, namely, that in the Latin Vulgate, from which that translation which Jerome made is taken, the Latin translation is, "And Melchizedek king of Salem protulit panem et vinum.” Now, if it had been intended to convey the idea or type of the mass, the verb would have been different, namely, obtulit ; but it is not. It is panem et vinum protulit, which means that he brought forth from his house bread and wine, the refreshment to the weary warrior Abraham; and then he says, "He blessed him. Blessed be Abram of the most high God."

Our translation, with all its faults, is the nearest possible to a miracle. It is most faithful; and not the least decisive proof that it is so, is the continuous approximation of the Romish version to ours, not in meaning only, but also in words.

ABRAHAM'S VISION-HIS DOUBT -HIS DESCENDANTS SACRIFICE THE PATRIARCH'S DEEP SLEEP-APPARENT CONTRADICTION.

GOD here introduces himself to Abraham, the father of the faithful, and his own obedient and believing servant, in a vision. God, who "at sundry times," says the apostle, in the patriarchal, the Levitical, and prophetic dispensations, and in "divers manners," by dreams, by visions, "spake to our fathers, hath in these last days spoken to us by his Son;" so that we are to look for God's will, manifested to us, no more in visions, or in dreams, but only in the written page of his own holy word. It is final and complete.

He had given Abraham the promise that his children should be countless as the sands by the sea-shore, and that a great and illustrious family should spring from him. Abraham, not doubting the fact, but not seeing how that fact could come to pass, hesitated and queried, as is often the case with us; for we, too, believe that a thing will be, but we stagger because we cannot see how the thing will be, whereas we ought to feel, what Abraham ought to have felt, — for, believer as he was, he was not a perfect believer, - that the God who has promised the result will, in his own way, in his own time, and by his own instrument, accomplish that result.

The reason that made him ask the question, How? was, that he had no heir, no son born to him, and there was only Eliezer of Damascus whom he might adopt, and thus, through an adopted son, and not from his own, literally might spring