Few pilgrims visited Catterick. She could not remember any one coming to inquire about Mr. Lindsey, but some ladies from London, perhaps nine years since. Was there any one yet living who remembered Lindsey? Yes! there was old Thomas York, who lived hard by. The good woman would go with us to his house. She seemed as if she would gladly give up the whole morning to us. To Thomas York's we went. He was stone-blind and eighty-six years of age, but in the possession of all his mental faculties. He remembered Mr. Lindsey well. His father was Clerk in Mr. L.'s time. He himself was a boy of sixteen when Mr. Lindsey left. He was one of the children whom he catechised on Sundays. Mr. L. was a little active man. He remembered him running with his father (the Clerk) after the youths and men who were playing cricket on Sunday afternoons, to break up their game. At first it struck us as singular that Lindsey should have signalized himself so particularly by this special Sabbatarian zeal: for this was the chief impression left also on the mind of the Clerk's wife. But on referring to Mr. George Kenrick's account of his Sunday at Catterick, given in the Christian Reformer for 1838, p. 325, we found the explanation. These games were accompanied with much noise and violence, profane swearing and drinking. Such things might well occasion a man of Mr. Lindsey's piety to make a crusade against them. But, said old Thomas York, "people were very sorry when they went, for all he was so much again' the cricket." Mrs. Lindsey was celebrated for her attentions to the sick. She would visit people in bad fevers, and" for all that she never took any." Our old friend had seen a little of the world since the period he was now contemplating. He had been in the service of the Duke of Leeds for many years, and seemed to have had some charge in his racing stud. Indeed, within a year or two, (the Clerk's wife informed us with some degree of horror,) old Thomas had regaled himself with a trip to Doncaster races. This jockey-like character in our octogenarian may account for the peculiar stress which he laid on some of Mrs. Lindsey's modes of treating her patients: he said that when they were ill," she would often sweat them." Old Thomas had all his wits about him. The Clerk's wife had a general traditionary knowledge of the cause of Lindsey's relinquishment of his living. But Thomas evidently knew it of his own knowledge. He said, "he objected to what Church Prayer-Book says about three Gods-it was a contradiction." And then he mumbled with some feeling, in words which we fear will shock any orthodox reader, should the eye of such an one rest upon this page-but as the shock might be a wholesome one, we will run the risk-" at that rate," mumbled Thomas, "there might in time ha' been fower" (four). "We had," he continued, "some books from London about it in the house, but" (and he seemed to look about his cottage) "they're all lent or lost now, I suppose." It was now time for our early dinner, and we returned to our little inn for an hour. In the afternoon, my companion (why should I conceal it from you, Sir, that she was a parson's wife, sharing in the venerations and enthusiasms of her husband?) went into the churchyard and took a sketch of the old church. I wandered about, sometimes watching the progress of the pencil and sometimes looking at the venerable edifice before us, and the whole time thinking of those protracted struggles of conscience, and that final relinquishment of station and living and home and influence, which have made the name of Lindsey for ever venerable to all honest men, and especially to those who feel that the cause for which he made the sacrifice was a true cause, and an all-important one. While these feelings possessed my breast, and I thought of those twenty years of doubt and difficulty, and the coming out of the soul of the Confessor purified as by fire, I assure you, Sir, I could not keep my hat upon my head-I felt that I stood in the presence of so venerable a name. Yes! and not a name only; for if the spirits of the just now live in heaven, and if the memory of the past constitute a portion of their consciousness (and how can their identity be preserved, if this be not the case?) why should not the spirit of Lindsey watch over the spot of his greatest earthly trial and discipline, and he be present, as it were, in that quiet and green churchyard? At any rate, he was there to us, and the place was animated by the presence of a soul. At five o'clock the coach passed through Catterick on its return to Richmond, and we, with our big Church Bible, our sketch, and the memory of our happy yet solemn day, went with it. Let me, in conclusion, refer any readers there may be of this letter, to Mr. G. Kenrick's very interesting communication above alluded to. It will be seen that in some respects we were more fortunate than he -principally, perhaps, in meeting with Thomas York, instead of Sally; for certainly the reasons for Mr. Lindsey's relinquishment of the living were understood with sufficient distinctness both by Thomas York and by the Clerk's wife. If anybody in these times will condescend to think that the Unitarians of the last generation can have written any thing interesting, I would venture to suggest also that portion of Mrs. Cappe's Memoirs which treats of her intercourse with the Lindseys and their departure from Catterick. Mr. Belsham's Life of Lindsey is perhaps too obvious a source of information to render a reference to it necessary. I remain, dear Mr. Editor, yours with sincere regard, AN UNITARIAN MINISTER, LATELY out on a HOLIDAY. September, 1846. WAR AND CHRISTIANITY. I HAVE no faith in the virtues which grow out of war. The courage of soldiers ranks little higher than brute force. It abounds among the lowest and most profligate men; and the sense of honour is almost synonymous with the want of moral independence. When I think of the spirit of duelling and war in the Christian world, and then of the superiority to the world and the unbounded love and forbearance which characterize our religion, I am struck with the little progress which Christianity has as yet made. Has not Mahometanism acted more powerfully on the Mahometan mind? This slow progress of Christianity is to be explained by its uncompromising hostility to all the selfish and sensual principles, and by the grandeur of its moral purpose, and thus attests its divine origin.-Channing to Blanco White-Life, III. 97. SIR, CORRESPONDENCE. ON THE USE OF FOREIGN WORDS. I REQUEST a small portion of your periodical for a few ideas which perhaps may not be altogether useless. We injure greatly the expressiveness and elegance of our language by frequently having recourse to other tongues for words which might as well have been procured out of our native Saxon stock. The plea on which this is done is, that those foreign words enrich our language. But to enrich a language at the expense of perspicuity is to injure it. We cannot with propriety call these adopted words our own, and they produce this bad effect, that they allow those words which are truly our own to become obsolete; nor do the foreign words themselves become firmly incorporated into our language; they are fashionable for a few years, and then are replaced by others; and the language is thus rendered unstable,-French words being at one time in vogue, at another Latin, and at another Greek. Thus it is that while the German language, which has received comparatively few accessions of this nature, has remained stable and is remarkably copious, ours, which had nearly the same Saxon origin, has been constantly shifting, and has grown weak and impoverished. Indeed, the change which the English language has undergone since the days of Chaucer, is greater than that which the Greek has suffered since the time of Homer. I said that our language was obscured by this employment of foreign words, and I am ready to prove it. It frequently happens that, on foreign words being introduced by the learned and used in their true signification, they are misunderstood by common people, and are consequently soon misapplied. Thus we have altered the signification of one-half the Greek words adopted into our language; apology does not now correspond to droλoyía, nor energy to ἐνέργεια, nor homily to ὁμιλία; and I might multiply instances to a great extent. An Englishman of the present day is apt to be a little surprised at the title of Bishop Watson's "Apology for the Bible." It strikes us immediately that the Bible surely needs no apology. When we consult the Greek Dictionary, however, we find that apologia means a defence rather than an excuse. But why should it be necessary to refer to the Greek for the meaning of an English word? The common translation of the Scriptures in our language is, in some passages, not a little obscured by the practice alluded to, although on the whole the work cannot be called pedantic. The word baptize, for instance, is the Greek word Banτía curtailed of its termination and employed in our Bibles wherever the Greek word occurs in the original; but the word baptize, as we use it, signifies a very different thing, so far, at least, as the ceremony goes, from βαπτίζειν. The latter word, derived immediately from βάπτειν, το dip, implies a plunging of the body into water in token of conversion. Hence we hear of people being "baptized in Jordan," év T 'lopdávy (Matt. iii. 6). But how comes it that the same preposition, év, which is in this passage rendered correctly in, is only a few verses afterwards translated with, when it is preceded by the very same verb as formerly? We read in Matt. iii. 11, "I indeed baptize you with water.. He shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with fire." (See also Mark i. 8; Luke fii. 16; John i. 63; Acts i. 5.) Now, suppose we substitute for baptize the word plunge or immerse; how would this read-"I indeed immerse you with water"? By translating ev literally, the difficulty is at once removed, and we read, "I indeed baptize or immerse you I am surprised that Luther, using as he did the word taufen, which is not, like baptize, derived from the Greek, but a plain German word equivalent in meaning to its English derivative dip, has fallen into the same mistake-"Ich taufe euch mit Wasser." in water unto repentance; but he that cometh after me is mightier than I, whose shoes I am not worthy to bear: he shall baptize you in a pure spirit and in fire;"—that is, in innocence and virtue, the pure spirit (võμa äɣiov), or purity of spirit, signifying, as I take it, passive, and the fire representing active, goodness. There is also a word of Latin origin which has not a little tended to obscure the sense in some places in our Bibles, namely, the term Gentiles, which is commonly used to translate the Greek Tà em. Now we are told that the Gentiles were in relation to the Jews what & Bapßapo, the barbarians, were in relation to the Greeks; in short, that all the world except the Jews were included under the general name of Gentiles. But the English translators of the Bible seem to have thought that because in Greek corresponded to gentes in Latin, that it might be translated by Gentiles in English; and accordingly they have so translated it in most instances. That does sometimes correspond to the meaning we attach to the word Gentiles, I have no doubt, just as we may say the nations or the other nations (Tepa being frequently understood in Greek), in contradistinction to any one nation, such as the Jews. But that this cannot always be its meaning in the New Testament is clear, as for instance in the passage-Καὶ κηρυχθῆναι ἐπὶ τῷ ὀνόματι αυτοῦ μετάνοιαν καὶ ἄφεσιν ἁμαρτιῶν ἐις πάντα τὰ ἔθνη ἀρξάμενον ἀπὸ Ἱερουσαλήμ (Luke xxiv. 47). Now it seems to me that the word in question is too often translated Gentiles, as in Romans i. 13, where Paul is made to say in our version that he had often purposed to pay the Romans a visit, "that he might have some fruit in them also, even as among the other Gentiles." Paul surely did not here mean to make any allusion to the invidious distinction between his own countrymen and the other nations, which distinction it was one object of this very Epistle to do away with; and, to say the least, the mention of it in this place would have been useless. Paul claimed the honour of being an apostle to nations in general, while his English translators have made him merely the "apostle of the Gentiles." A translation of the Bible might, I think, easily be made without using this word. Edinburgh, July 21, 1845. J. G. MORE LIGHT! -a prayer The last words of Goethe were, "Dass mehr Licht hereinkomme"for "more Light!" THY ways are wonderful, O Lord, and Thou Half Thy fair world is plunged in deepest night; Shall these things be? Our faith, though strong, is blind; C. CRITICAL NOTICES. The Life of Jesus, critically Examined, by Dr. David Friedrich Strauss. Translated from the Fourth German Edition. In Three Volumes. London -Chapman, Brothers. HERE are three octavo volumes of a work which has come to a fourth edition in Germany, and been translated once into French and twice into English, put forth against Christianity. We say "against Christianity," well knowing what we affirm, because we think it important that the public should distinctly apprehend the tendency of the work, which goes to destroy not merely the logical, but the moral, value of the Evangelical narratives to such an extent, that, if Straussism prevails, and wherever Straussism prevails, the Gospel is extinct. And we think it important to make this explicit statement, because the title of the book may lead some to imagine that they may here find an exposition of the facts and teachings which ordinarily constitute "the Life of Jesus." But, among other novelties in theology and literature, we have now, on a large scale, new meanings forced on old terms. Of this practice it would be easy to exhibit from Strauss numerous instances, some of which are so gross as to border on the ludicrous. We do not, however, think that the assailants of Christianity will in the long run find their cause advantaged by this course. Englishmen, at least, are proverbially fond of fair play. Unbelief, when honestly entertained and openly avowed, is, like every sincere expression of opinion, entitled to consideration and respect; but it loses all claims to both when it assumes a guise, and has no right to complain if the veil is drawn aside. The title of the work is imperfectly set before the English reader. Why any modification of the original has been allowed, is, with other things, left unexplained. But "Examined" is not a translation of the German bearbeitet, which, being similar in form with our "belaboured" (the subject is indeed belaboured piteously), signifies, "set forth" or "expounded." Of the translation in general, we can report only that it is a scholar-like production, for no information as to authorship or object has been supplied. The incidental mention in the Latin Preface of the name of Hennell, gives us reason to suppose that the Leben Jesu owes its appearance in this handsome English dress to one who a few years since put out a volume in assailment of the Gospel. But why the translator's name is kept back we do not know. We are equally at a loss to divine why the Preface to this translation, which may be considered as the author's last word, is left under the covering of a dead language. For our enlightenment we have read the Preface, and can make no other guess than that it has been judged discreet to keep some parts of it from the ordinary reader. It appears that Strauss has gone to the length of adopting the extreme naturalism of one of his own scholars, Bruno Bauer. These are his words: “Within the last five years, men not flying from nor avoiding, but following, my footsteps, have, in going beyond the place where I came to a stand, truly aided and promoted the undertaking. I had thought that narratives handed down in the Evangelists, which I could not persuade myself to be records of actual facts, had either, after the manner of myths which are found among ancient nations, been formed by individuals who had superstitiously led themselves to believe that so had things taken place, or had in the mouths of the people obtained, from small beginnings, a compact form, and grown as they went. While this suffices for explaining the greater part of those things found in the three first Gospels which occasion doubt, it has lately been proved by Bauer, a most learned theologian of Tubingen, that the author of the fourth Gospel not seldom knowingly invented mere fables for the support and illustration of his own opinions, in such a manner that I feel I qualified the rigour of a critical procedure rather religiously than truly. But as the first Christian |