casion, when her friends were administering to her comfort and adjusting her pillow, she said, "God puts my pillow comfortable when I ask him, indeed he does; He makes such a nice cushion; Jesus and I do it so nicely together." And the same placid and christian resignation characterized her till the last. There was not the sound of a murmur. She was conscious that her end was near; and when her reason served her she seemed to possess strong faith and a bright prospect, and would sing,

of

"We shall drink of life's clear river,

We shall dwell with God for ever."

She had an enlightened view of the power and efficacy prayer; hence she said to her aunt, "O aunty, pray a good strong prayer for me, for I am very ill." That was the expression of a child, it is true, but it embodied the sentiment of the apostle James: "The effectual, fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much."

When too weak to say much, short petitions of prayer and little hymns she were familiar with were a great relief to her :

"Around the throne of God in heaven,

Thousands of children stand," &c.

lit up her countenance with more than ordinary expression of joy; and when the following verse was sung :

"I want to be an angel, and with the angels stand;
A crown upon my forehead, a harp within my hand;
There, right before my Saviour, so glorious and so bright,
I'd wake the sweetest music, and praise Him day and night."

After the words, " And praise him day and night," with a great effort she said, "I will." It was as if an angel had come and strengthened her that she might give her friends this last assurance of her peace and hope. "I will," she said, when she had not spoken previously for twenty-six hours. In this calm and happy frame she passed away to be with the angels, and with them to praise her Saviour day and night.

Her parents have felt this blow very severely; but, with great Christian fortitude, they have bowed to the will of Heaven. They may find a solace in the following lines by Longfellow :

"She is not dead, the child of our affections,

But gone unto that school

Where she no longer needs our poor protection,
And Christ himself doth rule.

In that great cloister's stillness and seclusion,
By guardian angels led,

Safe from temptation, safe from sin's pollution,
She lives, whom we call dead.

Day after day, we think what she is doing

In those bright realms of air;

Year after year, her tender steps pursuing,

Behold her crown more fair.

Thus do we walk with her, and keep unbroken
The bond which nature gives,

Thinking that our remembrance, though unspoken,

May reach her where she lives.

Not as a child shall we again behold her;

For when with raptures wild

In our embraces we again enfold her,

She will not be a child;

But a fair maiden, in her Father's mansion,

Clothed with celestial grace;

And beautiful with all the soul's expansion

Shall we behold her face."

JAMES B. KNAPP.

Queries and Answers.

No. I.

DEAR SIR,-Would you be kind enough through the medium of the Juvenile to favour me with your opinion on the words of our Saviour to Nicodemus: "Verily, verily, I say unto thee,

except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God." John iii. 5. Also to state if you think the words of the Apostle Paul, "Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death," &c., Rom. vi. 4, and the baptism of our Saviour and the eunuch favour the doctrine of baptism by immersion, and oblige, yours very truly, "A TRUTH SEEKER."

ANSWER." WATER AND THE SPIRIT." Many divines and biblical expositors think that baptism is referred to. All proselytes were said by the Jews to be born again; also, they that abjured error and embraced truth. Baptism being the symbol of the adoption of Christianity, or the renunciation of Judaism or idolatry, the subject of this rite, by a figure of speech, was said to be born of water. Of course we do not hold that baptism, whether administered by sprinkling or immersion, whether the subject be an adult or an infant, regenerates. The theory of baptismal regeneration pleases some ecclesiastics, and they maintain the tenet with a good deal of zeal and learned lore, but when they come to the subject in its concrete form, that is, to examine the characters of those baptised, how utterly baseless does their faith appear. Others maintain that baptism is not referred to at all by the term water; that the term water is an expletive, and that this passage is to be explained in the same way as Matt. iii. 11, the Holy Ghost and fire; the "fire" is not literal here. Fire symbolises the Holy Ghost. Also in Titus iii. 5, we read, "the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Ghost." The "renewing of the Holy Ghost" is explanatory of the "washing of regeneration." So "spirit" is explanatory of "water" in John iii. 5. Water symbolises the Spirit according to the teaching of Ezek. xxxvi. 25-27, which reads thus: "Then will I sprinkle clean water upon you, and ye shall be clean; from all your filthiness, and from all your idols, will I cleanse you. A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you; and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh. And I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes, and ye shall keep my judgments and do them."

There is not any analogy between being buried and baptism by immersion. The figure is not good. By no propriety of speech could the apostle call immersion a burial. It is time the advocates of immersion sought another explanation of Rom. vi. 4.

We do not think that the baptism of the Saviour and the

eunuch afford the least countenance to baptism by immersion. The prepositions eis and ek, translated "into" and "from" or "out of,” as every Greek scholar knows, prove nothing in the controversy favourable or unfavourable to the theories held by the christian church.

No. II.

DEAR EDITOR,-Would you kindly give me your opinion on the following subject, through the medium of our Juvenile Magazine? In the 11th chap. of Judges, 30th and 31st verses, it is written: "And Jephthah vowed a vow unto the Lord, and said, If thou shalt without fail deliver the children of Ammon into mine hands, then it shall be, that whatsoever cometh forth of the doors of my house to meet me, when I return in peace from the children of Ammon, shall surely be the Lord's, and I will offer it up for a burnt offering;" and at the 34th verse it is written, "And Jephthah came to Mizpeh unto his house, and, behold, his daughter came out to meet him with timbrels and with dances: and she was his only child; beside her he had neither son nor daughter." Now the question is, did he really offer her up as a burnt offering, and thus fulfil his vow; or in what way he may be said to fulfil his vow? By giving your opinion you would much oblige, yours truthfully, GEORGE CHURCH.

ANSWER. This is a most difficult passage, and it has given rise to many conjectures. As it appears to the plain reader it has something shocking and repulsive about it. This part of the Old Testament was originally written in Hebrew, it therefore appears to the English reader in the garb of a translation. The question occurs, is the translation well done? did the translator catch the spirit or meaning of the passage in the original? Let us examine. If our young querist has a bible with the marginal readings he will find the "and" in ver. 31 rendered in the margin "or." There is nothing forced in this rendering, for the Hebrew particle translated "and" signifies "or" also. The passage with this emendation will then be cleared of its difficulty, the meaning being thus: Whatever comes forth to meet me should be sacrificed for a burnt offering, if fit for sacrifice; but if not, should be consecrated to God. Jephthah's vow consisted of two parts: 1. That if a person met him, whosoever he may be, he should be consecrated to God; 2. If a clean beast it should be offered for a burnt sacrifice. His beloved daughter was the first to meet

him. She was not fit for sacrifice, but for consecration. She was in consequence of the vow of her father devoted to perpetual virginity, vers. 36 and 37. The grief of the father (ver. 35) was occasioned by the fact that she was his only child, and the vow involved the extinction of his name in Israel; and in relation to his daughter, she was devoted to a single life, which, especially among the Jews, was considered dishonourable. Num. xxxi. 15-40 may throw light on this question. The above appears to be the meaning of the passage. But it should be stated that some learned men take the harsher view, and think that Jephthah really sacrificed his daughter. We have already seen that the grammatical construction of the passage does not necessitate us to adopt this opinion. Thus an important point is gained. Besides, this view of the case is rendered improbable by the following considerations:

1. The harsher view would reduce Jephthah to the condition of a madman. He ought to have calculated the probabilities of being met first by a human being. Now if his vow involved the destruction of the first whom he met, he would be guilty of a homicide which nothing could justify. Or the first thing that met him may have been an animal unfit for sacrifice, an unclean beast, say a dog, the offering of which would be an insult to God. Such wickedness and folly as this view of the vow involves could not belong to one on whom God had put his Spirit, (ver. 29.)

2. If the daughter of Jephthah had been doomed to death, why did she require two months to bewail her virginity at the houses of her friends before she was shut up in the tabernacle, vers. 37 and 38. Rather bewail the tragic death that awaited her.

3. The phrase, "and she knew no man," ver. 39, seems to point out the line of life she had chosen, or rather her devotement. Why then, it has been asked, if this were all that was involved in the vow, did the daughters of Israel go yearly to lament the daughter of Jephthah? Letamoth, to lament, is rendered in the margin to talk with, viz., to condole with, or to comfort ber in her isolation.

If Jephthah sacrificed his daughter, such an act was contrary to God's law; he did not require the immolation. Whichever view we take of the case, Jephthah seems to have acted rashly, but having opened his mouth unto the Lord he would not go back, ver. 35.