city to city. "Lustratio municipiorum"-also the course or circuit of the sun-" lustratio solis."

So too in Ezek. xxiii: 15.5 to immerse is used to denote dyeing where denotes dyed attire, as Dr. Carson also

allows.

Similar transitions of meaning could be pointed out in lavo and and other words, were it at all necessary, and did time allow.

Now with such facts before us, to increase the number of which indefinitely, were perfectly easy, who can say that there is the slightest improbability in the idea that the word Barrit should pass from the sense to immerse, to the sense to purify, without reference to the mode? Can arra, tingo, and wash, pass through similar transitions, and cannot βαπτίζω ?

But what secondary sense shall be adopted cannot be told à priori, but must be decided by the habits, manners, customs, and general ideas of a people, and sometimes by peculiar usages for which no reason can be given. For example, no reason exists in the nature of things why βάπτω rather than βαπτίζω should pass from the sense immerse to the sense to dye-yet there is evidence that it did. On the other hand, it could not be certainly foretold that Barriga rather than Baw would pass to the sense to cleanse, and yet that it did so pass may still be true, and if true, can be proved like any other fact.

And the existence of manners and customs tending to such a result, renders such a result probable.

$5. Probabilities as to Barri2w.

Circumstances did exist tending to produce such a transfer of meaning in Barrigw, and therefore there is a strong probability that it was made.

As it regards Barw and tingo we have no proof that any peculiar causes existed tending to such a change of meaning as they are confessed to have actually undergone.

But as it regards Barriga, such a tendency can be proved to

have existed in the manners and customs of the Jews, for though no immersions of the person were enjoined in the Mosaic ritual, but simply washings of the body, or flesh, in any way, yet there can be no doubt that immersions and bathings were in daily use— and these, as well as all their other washings, were solely for the sake of purity, and held up this idea daily before the mind.

Hence, when after the conquests of Alexander, the Greek language began to be spoken by the Jews, it encountered a tendency of the same kind as that which had already changed the meaning of Barrw to color or dye; but far more definite, powerful, and all-pervading; for the practice of immersing to color was limited to a few, but the practice of bathing or immersing to purify, was common to a whole nation. Indeed the idea of purification from uncleanness pervaded their whole ritual, in numberless cases, and must have been perfectly familiar to the mind of every one.

The inference from these facts is so obvious that it hardly needs to be stated. As the laws of the mind made from βάπτω, to dye, to color, to paint, and from tingo, the same; so there is a very strong presumption that so general a use of immersion, to produce purity, would give to Barrig the corresponding sense, to purify. This does not, I am aware, prove that it did. But it opens the way for such proof, and shows that there is not the least ground for the vigorous efforts that are made to set it aside.

Even a moderate degree of proof is sufficient in a case like this, when the most familiar laws of the mind and all the power of presumptive evidence from analogical cases tends this way.

§6. Probabilities from the subject.

There is no probability à priori against this position from the general nature of the subject to which the word is applied, in the rite of Baptism. But the probability is decidedly and strongly in its favor.

No law of philology is more firmly established than this, that in the progress of society, new ideas produce new words and new senses of old words, and hence in judging concerning such new

senses we are to look at the nature of the new subjects of thought that arise.

Now that, in this case, the Greek language was applied to a new subject of thought is most plain, and that subject is the peculiar operations of the Holy Spirit; for that the ordinance of Baptism refers to these is admitted by all.

Hence if any external act had any peculiar fitness to present these to the mind, a presumption would be in favor of that act; and if the meaning claimed by me was unfit to present them to the mind, there would be a presumption against it.

But so far is this from being the fact, that directly the reverse is true. What is the peculiar effect of the operation of the Holy Ghost on the mind? Is it not moral cleansing or purification?

But no word denoting merely a mode of applying a fluid to a thing, or of putting anything into a fluid, conveys of itself any such idea. To pour, sprinkle, immerse, or dip, convey in themselves no idea at all of cleansing. The effect of the action depends mainly on the fluid, not on the action, and may be either to purify or to pollute. If clean water is used, the effect is to purify. If filthy water is used, the effect is to pollute. So Job says, "If I wash myself with snow-water and make my hands never so clean, yet shalt thou plunge me [Greek Barw. Heb. 3] in the ditch, and my own clothes shall abhor me." Here the effect of plunging is pollution, because it is not into clean water but into filthy. Hence, no external act has in itself any fitness to present to the mind the operations of the Holy Spirit.

On the other hand to wash, to purify, to cleanse, all direct the mind to the very thing done by the Holy Spirit-hence the presumption is entirely against the supposition that the word denotes an external act, and in favor of the meaning claimed.

§7. Philological principles.

There is decided philological proof in favor of this view. This I shall soon proceed to adduce. But the course which the argu

ment has too often taken, renders it necessary to make a few remarks on the principles of the reasoning involved.

It is commonly the case, that after proving that there are clear instances in which Barrigw means to immerse, it is assumed that it is violently improbable that it ever means anything else, and that, if it can but be shown that in a given passage it can possibly mean immerse, no more is needed, so that the main force of argument is not to prove that it does so mean from the exigency of the place, but that it may possibly so mean, and, therefore, in consequence of its meaning so in other places, it does so here.

Prof. Ripley reasons on these principles in his reply to Prof. Stuart, but Dr. Carson has more boldly and fully developed them than any writer on that side of the question with whom I am acquainted. He goes so far as to say, pp. 72, 73, that when one meaning of a word is proved by sufficient evidence, no objections to retaining this meaning in other places can be admitted as decisive, except they involve an impossibility. This he says is self-evident, and lays it down as a canon; and affirms, p. 70, that the man who does not perceive the justness of his positions is not worth reasoning with. Now that there is not the least ground for assuming the improbability of the meaning to purify, nay that the probability is decidedly in its favor, I have clearly shown. Of course to show that in a given case Barri2w can possibly mean immerse is nothing to the point. The question is, what is its fair, natural, and obvious sense in the case in question, not what it can possibly by any stretch of ingenuity be made to

mean.

Of old it was customary in the same way to try to prove that Sarra does not mean to dye, because some other sense is possible or conceivable-and as we have seen, Gale even goes so far as to maintain, that a lake is spoken of as figuratively dipped in the blood of a mouse-lest he should be obliged to admit the obvious sense that the lake was dyed, colored, or tinged, with the blood of a mouse.

But this mode of reasoning, as it regards Barw, is at last

candidly and fairly given up-and may we not hope that the same candor will at length lead to the same results in the case of the cognate word βαπτίζω ?

It may be further observed that the reasoning of philology is not demonstrative, but moral and cumulative; and that an ultimate result depends upon the combined impression of all the facts of a given case as a whole-on the principle that the view, which best harmonizes all the facts, and falls in with the known laws of the human mind, is true.

And where many and separate and independent facts all tend with different degrees of probability to a common result, there is an evidence, over and above the evidence furnished by each case by itself, in the coincidence of so many separate and independent probabilities in a common result. And to be able to prove that each may be explained otherwise, and is not in itself a demonstration, cannot break the force of the fact, that so many separate and independent probabilities all tend one way. The probability produced by such coincidences is greater than the sum of the separate probabilities: it has the force of the fact that they coincide-and that the assumption of the truth of the meaning in which they all coincide, is the only mode of explaining the coincidence.

That there are various independent proofs, that Barrigw as a religious term means to purify, and that these all coincide, and that this view harmonizes and explains all the facts of the case, I shall now attempt to show.

§ 8. A question about purifying.

In John iii. 25, καθαρισμός is used as synonymous with βαπτισ Mós, and thus the usus loquendi, as it regards the religious rite, is clearly decided.

The facts of the case are these, vs. 22, 23. John and Jesus were baptizing, one in Judea, the other in Ænon, near to Salim, and in such circumstances that to an unintelligent observer there