It will now easily appear that the objections to this interpretation are invalid, and most of them irrelevant. As specimens of their quality, we will take two sets of objections, one from a late popular commentary, the other from a popular religious paper. In the American edition of the Lange Commentary we find a reiteration and supplementing of Alford's objections.*

This writer affirms that “ἔπαθεν, θανατωθείς, ζοωποιηθείς, and πορευθεὶς ἐκήρυξεν, set forth events in chronological order." An assertion doubly groundless, which overlooks both the indefiniteness of the aorist in general, and the special fact that here the connection is broken and changed by the relative clause beginning έv , and by the naí.

He alleges also that "anɛinoaoi nоTE interrupts the chronological order, and plainly separates the time of Christ's preaching from the time of their disobedience." It is difficult to see on what grounds he can either support or attempt to support this assertion. It is nothing but an assertion.

It is said that πορευθεὶς ἐκήρυξε means “he went and preached." But this applies as well to a going from heaven to earth at that distant point of time and space, as to a going from earth to hell. The Old Testament idiom is "let us go down." Nor does the word compel us at all to understand a local and personal going; for in Eph. ii, 17, we are told that Christ "came and preached (Dôv evayyelíhato) peace to you," that is, to the Ephesians, to whom Christ never spoke a word in person. The "going" and the "coming" alike were by his inspired messengers.

It is said that "the object (vεúμara) designates not living spirits, but departed spirits." Certainly; such as they were when Peter spoke of them.

But, we are told in Alford's words, "the rois έv quλauņ πνεύμασι must describe the local condition of the πνεύματα at the time when the preaching took place." But why "must?" May not the writer, at his own option, describe them either as they were, or as they are? Especially when the latter descrip

* The editor in one passage seems to advocate two conflicting views: "Verse 20 describes the character of the spirits in prison; they were still disobedient [view No. 1], TOTÉ ŎTE distinctly marks the period of their disobedience"

[view No. 2].

.....

tion, indicating their doom, intimates also their incorrigibleness, and magnifies the patience that endured their "contradiction."

We are further told that the subject of the discourse is not the Logos, but the God-man, and the means by which he preached is not the Holy Spirit, but the Spirit of Christ, év o, Sс., пνεúμαтι. Has the objector never read in this same Epis tle (ch. i; 11), how the spirit of Christ "did testify" in the prophets?

We pass now to the objections of the popular newspaper, as found in the Advance of April 28, 1872.

(1.) "It is not the natural and obvious meaning." If true, this would be but a presumption easily removed. In multitudes of cases we do not take the most obvious meaning: e. g., "God is a rock: This is my body: Let the dead bury their dead." But it is not true. A correct translation makes this the natural and obvious meaning. (2.) "The words of Peter do not directly affirm any preaching by Christ through Noah, but at most only to persons disobedient in his days." No, the details of the case are otherwise supplied. The phrase, "the just shall live by faith," does not inform us that it is faith in Christ. We learn that elsewhere. (3.) "Such was not the interpretation of the early church, nor has it been that of the Greek or Romish churches, nor is it that of the ablest foreign critics at the present day." A statement too loose to answer definitely and briefly, and, as against the claims of Greek usage, too unimportant to contest. (4.) "It is difficult to show its pertinence to the immediate context. On the contrary, the relation of this interpretation (and of this only) is shown to be very clear." (5.) "This word 'spirit' does not easily stand for living men;" answered already. (6.) "The order of verbal arrangement is not natural for this thought, but should have been reversed." Natural enough in a right translation, "Went and preached to the spirits in prison, when once or formerly they disobeyed," etc. (7.) "The Logos or original Divine nature of Christ is not under consideration, but the God-man." It is Christ, not in the flesh or human nature, but in the Spirit or divine nature, as we are expressly told. The same distinction is made in the same terms, Rom. i, 3, and hinted at, ch. i, 11.

(8.) "It is without scriptural precedent to refer to the Logos such an act of inspiration as Noah's preaching; it would rather be referred to the Holy Spirit." It is not contrary to the Scriptures to refer the inspiration of the "prophets" to "the spirit of Christ which was in them," ch. i, 11. (9.) "The expression, 'went and preached,' would have been 'came and preached.'" No: went to that distant point of time; came and preached to us. (10.) "The successive expressions, 'put to death,' 'quickened,' and 'went,' are all aorist participles, and should be referred to the same period of time. Any reader of the original will see the violence of referring the last participle to a period more than 2000 years previous to the other two." A grammatical error as unconscious, doubtless, as it is remarkable and egregious in an "expositor." An aorist, even in the indicative, simply expresses "the momentary occurrence of an act" in past time indefinite, and two aorists have no necessary or even probable reference to the same point of time. Thus, in Heb. i, 1, 2, the aorist laλnoas refers distinctly to the time of "the prophets," the next aorist laλýσɛv to “these last days," hundreds of years later, and noiσer to the time of making "the world" or universe, "a period more than 2000 years previous." (11.) "The repetition of this same participle #opɛvDɛis in verse 22, to denote Christ's ascent from earth to heaven, calls here for the previous contrast of his descent into Hades." Does it? Is not a descent from heaven to earth a more direct contrast to the ascent from earth to heaven? (12.) "The word 'preached' (aorist tense) would more naturally have been in so distant an allusion, 'had preached,' pluperfect." Another of those perilous remarks on Greek usage. Any modern Greek Grammar would have furnished the information that the "generic aorist more frequently takes the place of the specific perfect and pluperfect" (Crosby); and Winer especially remarks that this takes place "in subordinate clauses specifying time," and "in relative clauses," of which this is one.

But further for here is error upon error-in citing a second case of mercy and patience, coördinate to the first, there was a good reason for stating that parallel fact in a verb of coördinate tense, the aorist. The same writer makes another equally perilous grammatical remark: "If it were the occasion in the

sense of time, the participle would probably have shown the same fact by being put in the present instead of the aorist,'went and preached on occasion or at the time of their being disobedient." It is difficult to understand precisely what is the mysterious notion here entertained of a present participle; but Curtius would inform the writer that the present participle "simply expresses an action in progress, whether it lie in the present, past or future."

We have taken pains to quote the latest forms of objection in their length and breadth and depth. They illustrate more points than we care to indicate. The writers themselves speak of them as "critical" and "exegetical," "sound exegesis." And one of these writers informs the world that the interpretation advocated by us "will be rejected by candid scholars as arbitrary and ungrammatical;" the other that "it seems to have been largely favored on dogmatic grounds." It is gratifying to find men whose eminent Greek scholarship qualifies them so to speak.

It will be observed that we have now maintained this position purely on grammatical grounds, reinforcing it by ample reference to grammatical treatises, and what is more, to the facts on which grammars are constructed. And we shall continue to hold this view until we gain further light ourselves, or until some one shall prove two things, (1) that the common translation is grammatical, and (2) that ours is positively ungrammatical and untenable-two things that, so far as we are informed, have never yet been done.

ARTICLE II-OUR NATIONAL BANKS.

THE success of our National Bank system, from its establishment to the present time, has been great, and, for the most part, we think, unexpected. It was put in operation under circumstances which, though perhaps almost necessary to its success, were still extremely adverse to its popularity. The country was involved in a revolution which threatened its existence. Public credit, on which the whole scheme was based, was well nigh destroyed. The managers of existing financial institutions were either positively hostile to the new plan or regarded it with doubt and suspicion. It came in the guise of an adventurer, avowedly hostile to established usage and to vested rights.

The banks then existing had done much for the government, and at a time too when doing for the government at all was regarded by many men as a matter of questionable prudence; and therefore they felt that they had a strong claim to consideration, and it might well seem that a scheme not only hostile to their apparent interest, but striking directly at their existence, would arouse their opposition and alienate their support. Radical defects were believed to exist in the proposed plan. Old prejudices against a government bank and a government currency were aroused, and the similarity of the project to the so-called "Free Bank system," which, except in a few localities, was not a favorite, by no means assisted in producing a favorable impression.

We have no space here, nor would it answer any good purpose, to recapitulate the arguments, the complaints, the prognostications, the expostulations, the warnings, the entreaties, which were everywhere directed against this new scheme; but any one who will turn to a file of newspapers or pamphlets of that time will find in correspondence, editorials, doings of conventions, and reports of committees, a mass of hostile literature of which he has for the most part probably forgotten the exist