©amspmtetttr. OUE SPECIAL EUEOPEAN OOBBESPON- DENT. SCENERY IN NORTH ITALY. Geneva, Switzerland, July 16, ’67. Dear Editor: A rapid tour from Florence to Venice, thence to M ilan, and by Lake Maggiore and the Simplon Pass to this place, finds’us somewhat weary, and what wonder; for such a tour, such a panorama as has passed before our eyes, from day to day, is enough to weary stronger nerves than ours. As I write, there passes in review, before my mind, the climbing of the Appenines shortly after leaving Florence. As we get up among their heights, charming views spread before us., The cities, are all old, walled, built of stone and plaster ed so that every tower and house is white, withered tile rbofs. From the Appenines we look down upon the old city of Pjstoja. It lies in a beauti ful plain, miles in extent, dotted with white houses and church-towers rising from the endless sea of green vineyards, and forms a lovely pic ture. Soon all' is hidden from view, for we are passing through thirty-seven tunnels, all crowded into nine or ten miles, and have ten more before us, in passing on to the, city of Bologna, on the plain below: Leaving Bologna, we pass north eastward 1 towards Venice, and find ourselves in a level country, evidently the delta, formed by, the Adige and the Po, and as: the road; crosses the latter river we meet vessels from the Adriatic, different in shape entirely from anything we have seen before, with high,, pointed prow, and stern somewhat similar.. The same general construction is visible.in all the boath used here, down to the gondolas of Venice. The country is level as a floor and surpassingly rich,' covered with dense vineyards and fields of grain. The landscape has a ; sameness in its beauty, all the way from Borne to Milan. Bows of stunted, trees cross the wheat fields; and the vines are! trained on these trees. They'hang in festoons from one tree to the other, anfi the. luxuriant growth of the’vine, its large leaves and long shoots, make both the tree and festoon appear fufi, bushy, and bright. VENICE. We dee Venice in the distance, across the La goon, and reach it by a bridge of 320 arehes, three, smiles long. A crowd of gondoliers are waiting to row us to our hotel. It is quite a novel; feeling to glide silently through a city — L high houses on each side, other gondolas pass ing and repassing, every one black* totally black, with a black cloth pail thrown over the dome likecabin in the centre. r Byron was right when he said they looked 1 more like a hearse than any thing else. The black color is adopted in pur suance of an old custom, arising from a law en forcing the painting of every boat black to stop the reckless extravagance the‘people were run ning into, in adorning and .decking, their, boats with gold, embroidery, and every expensive trap ping,' each one trying to surpass his : neighbor. The city has an old lopk—not dilapidated, hut rusty. Gift “ Hotel de Ville” had been, in old days, a palace, with court-yard in the centre covered partly with glass roof, and having pretty orange and lemon trees-’ set around the court yard: We were refreshed to meet the first good bread we had tasted since leaving Paris, nearly a month ago. In Florence, Bome,and all through Italy, you can get only sour bread; 1 but in Ven ice, the celebrated Trieste flour spoke for itself at once. ■ ■- ; ' The great piazza in the city is that of St, Mark—-an open square about 500 or 600 feet across, surrounded on three sides by shops and caffes, and on the fourth by the Church of St. Mark, an old building with'uneven floors,and faded finery, and faded, falling mosaics on walla’and ceilings. In this square and the‘little piazza ad joining, which connects it with the,water front, where stands the Doge’s palace, all the great events, the displays, coronations, feasts, &c., in Venetian hißtory took place. There is no other open space in the city, save the forts and surrounding gar dens at the north and south ends of the town. The Doge’s palace looks very ‘faded. We enter ed it, were shown, the room of .the Council of Ten, the smaller adjoining chamber of the Coun cil of Three, the two doors out of this latter roomi one of which led the prisoner, to liberty, the other to the Bridge of Sighs and the dungeons in the prison adjoining. .We stood on the Bridge of Sighs, went down into two of the dark dun geons, where a little shelf ‘and a raised platform of boards, for a bench or bed, were the only fur niture, and all dark as night., Our gondolier took us to the Rialto, and we walked over it. ' It is full of Btores on both sides, and one of them is said to be the place where Shakespeare's man Shylock lived. One of our party entered and asked the shopman if his name was Shylock. Je ne comprend pas,” was the reply, but hd at once tried to sell us something that looked ‘ much like horse-blankets or rugs. They could not have, been the former, for we saw but one horse in Venice, and he was tied down in a boat, being carried away. There is not a cart, or wagon, or carriage in the whole city, and all day loqg it is as quiet as thpugh, it were a de serted town, Everything is transported by the and they run in every direction, crossing each other and tangling up; 66 as tomakea stran : g er lose himself utterly;'' &md Canal runs through the city in the shape of an S. It Is 100 to 150 feet wide at least. The smaller ones run in THE AMERICAN PRESYBTERIAN, THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 5, 1867. every conceivable direction, and are 20 to 30 feet wide. The houses are built on piles driven well down into the earth, with the masonry resting on them. The front steps run right into the water, and there is generally no pavement whatever in front of the house. We saw some handsomely ladies out visiting. The gondolier car ried their card up the steps, and. in a moment or two they emerged from the black cabin of the black boat, their bright blue dresses forming a striking contrast. Their gondolier wore a blue sash around his waist and looked prettily. Above many of the garden-walls, along these canals, we saw a profusion of oleanders in full bloom. The people live partly by the manufacture of glass beads and trinkets. This trade supports some 20,000, of them. Others make jewelry and fancy articles. There is very little commerce, and no large or important manufacturing inter est. GENEVA. By way of Milan and the Simplon road we came into Switzerland, and to the city of Geneva. We found this home of Calvin to be a bright, at tractive place. Its location, at the western end of Lake Geneva, is beautiful. The Bhone, which empties into the lake, forty miles west, a good sized stream, rushes out of it here, a broad, deep, rapid river, dividing the city into two parts which are connected by four bridges from 500 to 700 feet long- The city fronts on the lake in the form of a V, and large hotels and stores bor der on the quays. These, with the lake between them and the bridges, form a beautiful picture. The old cathedral rises above the houses, and we make our way to the place where Calvin thunder ed forth his anathemas„against the papacy, three hundred years ago. Through the crooked, nar row streets of the old part of the town, we wend our way up a hill and around into an old court yard, and are under the shadow of its ancient walls. We enter the little old side door with its old-time hinges, and are in front of the pulpit, with sounding-board overhead. The pulpit is new, but the sounding-board is the same which echoed Calvin’s thundering invectives. We sit in Calvin’s arm-chair, kept sacred in front of the pulpit, and we notice the high Gothic arches and stained windows, all similar to the papal cathe drals we have seen; but the body of the house is filled with benches for Protestant worshippers to sit in, and hear a true Gospel from Calvin’s pul pit. The tomb of the,Duke de Bohan, a leader of the French Protestants in the stormy days of Louis XIII., is near the entrance. On it lie his suit of armor, and his halberd by its side. We went to the cemetery to see the grave of Calvin. A little square stone,, less than a foot high, and eight or nine inches square, with the letters “J. C.” cut on it, is the only mark of the resting place of the great leader of us Presbyterians. He requested particularly that net monument should be raised over his grave, and some are of opinion that there js no.ceitainty that this is the spot; but the old sexton told me that the records of the cemetery point out distinctly the number of the plot and the date of his burial. We plucked a little flower and a few spears of grass from the sacred spot, and have pressed them. The. great Memorial Hall, which the Evangelical Society of Geneva, under Merle D’Aubigne have been build ing, is completed, and will be dedicated in a few weeks. This will he a perpetual monument to his memory. We' called on Merle D’Aubigne, but found him absent. His accomplished lady, however, gave us quite an interesting account of the state fit the Church in Geneva. In a population of 45,000 there are 30,000 nominal Protestants. There are fourteen Protestant churches, eight 6f which are National, four Free, one Lutheran, and one German Reformed. Some of the National churches are not fully evangelical. All have Sunday : schools, and are gfad to obtain teachers from the Evangelical College, of which Merle JD’Aubigne is President. The College has ' fifty students, all preparing for the ministry. All of them are poor young men, who come from France and Belgium, as well as from Switzerland. The College is supported by voluntary contributions in England and Scotland, but they want additional help from the United States, and it would certainly be a direct and telling work for our Church to help to evangelize | Europe by taking hold just here. Some of the students are sons of Papist parents in France, who have been turned out of house and home on their leaving their mother Church. There is also in the city a Young Men’s Christian Associ ation, which supports a Sunday-school in the suburbs, and which we found possessed of a good reading-room and library. We went to their meeting on Thursday evening—found twenty of them around a table studying the Bible together. Not one of them could speak English so as to in terpret what I said to them, but their President insisted on my telling them, in French, just what t had told him, as he understood me perfectly. It took all the French I knew to supply me with -words for half-an-hour’s talk, telling them of our own Young Men’s Christian Association and its operations-, of our Sabbath-schools and how we carry them on. They have 72 members—-admit none but Christian young men, who subscribe to very sure articles of evangelical faith, and appear to be a.-happy band. of Christian workers, They told ine that some of their theological leaders, Rationalists and Radicals, had a faith like India - rubber, that could be pulled out to any length or twisted to any shape, so that they had to be care- ful whom they admitted and what papers and journals came to their rooms. They sang sweetly together, their President prayed, and we parted, receiving many kind words for having hunted them up and cheered them in their work. Geneva contains many fine stores. Its people arc a busy, working set. Their schools and li braries, together with the thrift and energy visi ble everywhere, to say nothing of their splendid location on the emerald waters of the lake, with the snowy Mount Blanc ever in view, stamp the city as one of the very finest in Europe, and it was with great regret that we stepped upon the little steamer “ Leman” for a visit to the prison of Chillon, and thence onward on our journey. THE LAKE OF GENEVA. On the lake the prospect is most enchanting; the white fronts of the tall buildings of the city,' the old city higher and further back. The shores ascend gradually and are dotted with the villas of wealthy men from all parts of Europe. One of the Bothschilds occupies a grand slope, with the lake at its foot, and beyond is Mi. Blanc in its snowy whiteness.., Could there, be a finer lo cation in the world for a,villa? Beautiful tor?ns lie along the shores of the lake, vineyards fill the hill-sides behind them; but as you get on to wards Chillon,, on the south side the Alps rise abruptly and their summits are filled with patches of snow. Soon we descry'the walls of the old prison, sitting right on the edge of the water, where it has looked out on this lovely landscape for a thousand years. We went through it; saw the prison where Bonnivard trod his weary track for four years; saw where Lord Byron had cut his name on a pillar; trod the banqueting hall where knights of old had dined together and held high carnival with thC old dukes of Savoy, a large room with ceiling in quaint pannels, and with a fire-place; twelve feet long and seven, or eight high, round which they sat in olden days and drank their beer and .told their tales of tournaments and of exploits as Crusaders in far off Palestine. “THE'THEOLOGY OF THE BIBLE.” There has fallen into my hands, accidentally, a book pf which, or of its author, I had never heard. The subjects which it treats, and the manner of treating them,were familiar tome through other and far less pretentious publications. Indeed the mode of studying tfie Bible, which the author seems to claim as peculiarly his own, has been in use by myself for a dozen years, and with some of the results which it has had in the case of the author of this volume, though I should be sorry, to sity that all of these results had been reached by : nyself. The mode of study Of which he claims the pa ternity is, rejecting tbs theologies of the schools, or at least ignoring th iijn; to'follow out the key words of the Bible ;hrough the Hebrew and Greek, and gather th< meaning from the divine use of them and not ffo\n lexicons and theologic systems. To which he adds, as who does not, comparison with versions in various languages; as the Septuagint, the Vulgate, the Italian, the Douay, &c. I agree with him that such examination will make one see many things not written in the theological lectures to which students of semina ries pin their faith, and that much of the relig ious notions, which form the staple of the popu lar beliefs, will vanish away before it. One will soon find that our much lauded, and in many re spects justly lauded, English Yersion bears on the title page, a declaration which needs to be quali 4fied : “translated out of the original tongues.” for nothing is more manifest than that it was translated from the Latin, and possibly, as it says of other versions, with the original tongues “ dil igently compared and revised.” This volume of 632’ octavo pages reads thus on the title page : “ The Theology of the Bible : itself the teacher, and its pwn interpreter. Five versions of the Old Testament, and four of the New, compared with the originals. By Oliver Spencer Halsted, ex-Chancellor of the State of New Jersey. The just by faith, shall live again. Hahakkuk, 2:4; Bom. 1; 17; Gal. 3:11; Heb. 10 : 38. ’ Published by the Author, 417 Broad St., Newark, New Jersey, 1866.” The author is a smart man. Ido not know him personally; indeed never heard of him be fore. But he says so himself, repeatedly. With what gusto he relates how he has “ taken down” Princetonian Doctors of Divinity and Episcopal Prelates, with his superior knowledge of Greek and Hebrew. Two different men, at different 'times, used this language to him : “ Sir, You are a man of millions; nobody studies the Bible as you have studied it.” One man, he tells us, was so overwhelmed with a sense of his immense learning that he wished the power lay in his hands to appoint him to the headship of a Theo logical Seminary; another would give $50,000 for his knowledge of Greek and Hebrew. The au thor probably thinks his legal (raining is what has given him superiority over those whom he is ac customed to call “ Ecclesiastics.” It reminds me of an Episcopal clergyman, who expresed a desire to converse with myself on cer tain views, which I was known to hold. He said he would like to receive those views, if they could be Bhown to be true. “ But,” he was pleased to say, “there was something about his mental character—he would not say exactly that it was a certain balance of mind”—(what Ciceronian modesty!)' “which prevented' ’him from readily receiving fanciful doctrines.” “Perhaps,” he kindly added, “ it was his legal training, which he had, before studying for the ministry, that made him more cautious about evidence than some others.” That there is great ignorance of the Bible among Doctors of Divinity and Prelates, I dare say; and that the lectures at Princeton occupy so much time as to prevent the study of the Bible, I have no doubt; but seems hardly fair for this le gal gentleman to expose them in this way in con trast with himself whose extraordinary learning makes him “ one in millions/' The direct object of the book is to show how the Bible uses the Hebrew and Greek words which are 1 rendered in the English Version by ■'the words: soul, spirit, ghost, death, paradise, hell, satan, devil, heaven; and the word and sub ject, resurrection; and to whom the promise is made of becoming’ a child of the resurrection;” and the “ final cause,” may we not say, of this book—this new creation —'is to show that there is no soul, sprit, or ghost of man which can exist separate from the body—that when a man dies, that is the last of him, ais much as it is of a dog, unless he be restored by the power of God at the resurrection—that no part of a man has a con scious’existence between death and resurrection ; that only the righteous are raised at the resurrec tion, and that to the wicked death is annihila tion;’that the “ paradise” to which Christ and the dying thief went, was the garden or ceme tery in which they were buried, because the word means a garden ; that there is no per sonal spirit named Satan or Devil; no angels who are spirits also, because angel means messenger'; no hell but the grave and no heaven bnt the at mosphere or sky. The argument is 'of this sortif a preacher should say, “I write my sermons and extempor ize my lectures,” Mr. Halsted, with his legal training and 'knowledges of etymology, would say, “ that, sir, is impossible, for the word 1 sermon’ means ‘a speech,’ and the word lecture’ means ‘ a reading.’ “It is like the Baptist argument for immersion as the only possible meaning of Baptism. ' , The author undertakes to give, I think, all the texts in the Bible in which these words are used. This he might have done, with comparative ease, by using Hebrew and Greek concordances, and so have done a good service to those who cannot afford such expensive books. In three unpretend ing tracts by Miles Grant of Boston he might have found'nearly all that is really valuable in his pedantic and pretentious book. But he has undertaken to give the texts in full with his own translation and critical (?) remarks. I will give two specimens of the book—one from the former part of it and the other from the latter. They are given literatim etpunctualim. Page 5. “ Heb., And fashioned (as a potter fashioneth clay, says Gesenius, under itsa,') Jeho vah, that man 1 [referring to man in Gen. I f 26,-j -dust, or, of dust, of this earth, or, ground; and iphhh —blowed, breathed, into the appi of him— the breathing members—breathing places—of him, nshme —breath - spirit— soul— hhiim —of lives [plural; but uniformly rendered life,] and lived—existed—that man l [a Hebrew preposi tion, defined-, in ; by reason of; into; unto,] in— by reason'of— en phsh . chay-ah ; or, was made that man into, uuto, enphsh chay-ah.” He also translates the same verse (Gen. 2: 7,) from the Greek of the seventy thus; “ And figured— made an image of —fabricated (especially in clay, says Donnegan’s Gr. Lex.)—God tore—that— man, earth, or a heap of earth, out of this earth —ground; and inspired-—blew into—inflated— the prosopon —face—person—of him [face is often used for'person, as we shall see] pnoen— breath—zoes—oi life; and lived—existed—that man in—in consequence of— psuchen zosan [the same two Gr. words, and in the same case, used in Gen. 1: 24 ;] or was made that man into—up to—even to—pshucheh zosan.” Page 519. Luke 15 : 7. “ The. Gr. is, that, onto, so, joy shall be, —exist—era to ourano, ■ at, or, on, or, among, the heaven, —-the starry heavens, (as ouranos is defined by Donnegan.) or, in, or, within, the heaven, sky, (as the other lex icons define ouranos,') epi, upon, with respect to, by reason of, one prone to fault, or, sinful, having changed mind, e, than, used sometimes for, in a higher degree than, epi, upon, ninety-nine dikai ois, upright, or, just, which not need have of (a) change of mind: [upright, i. e., standing straight up, is a Hebrew and Greek word used for just, righteous: AV e use the expression, he is a straight up and down man And this is the sense in which man is said to have been made in the im age of God. God made him upright,—standiog straight up on two feet, —used for righteous-— -just and so, in a degree, in the image of God, who is just, righteous, holy. In no other sense can an image be predicated of God.”] Surely this incomparable scholar should be engaged by the Baptists to translate their new Bible. What a charming literalness in the trans lation; what acumen displayed in the criticism ; what beautiful arrangement of the punctuation marks. In the Baptist New Testament there is shown the same care to translate literally. An aorist is never translated with have. The trans lators have evidently kept their eye on the'para digrris in their “ Greek Lessons” with all the faithfulness of a school boy, and, if translating from the Prench, they would ! h'ap sai*d' l ‘ I have seen hitn yesterday,” and' nbi'for the world 1 sky , “I saw*' ,v 4 :‘ :v ?•*«! J'mW Most true is it that much of the prevailing theob'gy, where the meaning of these key-words to the Bible is involved, needs a thorough revision. The distinction of “ body, soul, and spirit,” with that of the associated adjectives, “ carnal, ani mal, and spJbitual,” and St. Paul’s use of “ ani mal body” and “ spiritual body,” should be care fnlly observed, and dwelt on until the people are familiarized with it. So also, the three words which the English Version so hopelessly con founds under the one word “hell;” so also the various words rendered “ world” in the common version ; and the words translated by “ devil.” So also the doctrine of the resurrection should be restored to its true place in our preaching, from which it has well nigh dropped out altogether. As it is, the people, uninstructed by their re ligious teachers, and necessarily led astray by the English Bible in their hands, are at the mercy of any shrewd errorist, who can show them that the word “ soul” in the Bible does not mean the im mortal part, and who argues that therefore man has no “ immortal soul;” that the word “ hell” in many places cannot mean the place of future punish ment, and, therefore, there is no such place; that the word usually rendered “ devils” does not mean the fallen angels; that the word “world” in the expression “ end of the world” does not mean the earth or planet on which we live ; all of which may be easily shown without leading to any such inferences as those which heretical speculators would urge. Mr. Halsted makes a most sweeping, and false assertion in the last sentence ,of his book where, speaking of the discordant sects of Protestant ism, he says, “ each sect composed of women and children more largely than of men iwt one of •whom, or of the pastors reads the scriptures in the languages in which they were written.” So manifest a falsehood is not without its meas ure of* truth. There is criminal neglect of the Bible in the languages in which it was written, and a slavish adherence to, and laudation of, the common version among the clergy! Not to speak of those very large denominations where a knowl edge of Greek and Hebrew is not required of the clergy, it is true that the ministers of the Churches which Require the highest degree of learning do yet neglect these things until, for any facile use, they are forgotten ; and yhen not for gotten no use is made of such knowledge in a way to benefit the people. I have myself heard a clergyman, by no means ignorant of Hebrew, quote the words “ living soul” as proof of man’s having an immortal part, when ten minutes, reading of his Bible would have shown him that, in the same connection, cattle and creeping things are also called “ living souls,” in precisely the same terms. Now when these shrewd “ no soul” errorists 0091 c in contact With the people of that charge, and show them how they have been deceived in such things, they will doubt much more that they have learned from his lips,' aud not knowing' when they'are safe will fall an easy prey to the man who has shown them the deception. Who has not heard from clergymen the text, “ The gates of hell shall not prevail against” the Church, used as though it referred to the devil and his angels, and satanic • agencies at work against the Church? So, too, in the picture of “ Death on the pale horse” the words “ and Hell followed after” are represented by imps and devils in the right hand upper corner. In both instan ces the word is “ Hades;” in the first it means that the Church shall never die out, and in the other that the place of departed spirits was ready to receive the spirits of the dead as fast as death killed them. The only way to antidote such books, as this of Mr. Halsted is to study and teach the truth in the same way as these men teach error. There is little danger from this book, for very few. clergy men and fewer laymen will read 632 pages of such stuff as I have quoted above, and it is near ly all such—scarcely an oasis in the desert. Al most the only interesting paragraphs are those in which the author displays his vanity in his suc cessful encounters with Doctors and Bishops. But there are many of; these annihilationists who are read, and will be read, by multitudes of people. The pen of H. L. Hastings will always be followed by many eyes, and will lead much greater numbers away from orthodoxy than a dozen Colensos or Geologists, whose works are brought to the notice, of the people only .by the attacks of the learned clergy, who think the an nihilationists and spiritualists beneath their dig nified notiee. I would,not have it thought for a moment that Hastings and Hudson hold most of the,errors of this author, who holds to no resur rection for -.the unrighteous in the face of the words:. “ All that are in-their graves shall hear his voice,” or these “ As in Adam all die, so in Christ shall ALL be made alive”- —who holds that the Holy Ghost is only the “ holy breath” of God, —that there are no, real,angels or devils who are spirits,—that the rfembns cast butby Christ were diseases,- —and that the Paradise promised to the penitent thief was the Garden or. Cemetery in which they were both buriednotwithstanding the probabilities that the dead body-of the- thief was cast out without burial. ■ It ought not to be possible'th'at this man could puzzle any clergymen, whether Princeton* Doc tors and Professors or ,not, on the first page of their Hebrew Bibles.; „ Systems, of metaphysical theology, and the accurate dovetailing of a theo logical philosophy,: might better wait until stu dents of divinity 'had learned to read the Word wroteit,'with'the safne facility with Which' they read 'the English?translation. 1 Beverly.
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