supremely true. For to suppose that God affirms a contradiction is to establish that he is not supremely true, and this supposition destroys the conclusion wished to be deduced from it. But it is clear, as it appears to me, that the duty of sacrificing his salvation, upon the supposition that the glory of God requires it, is a condition not only impossible but contradictory. Why, according to the idea even of those whom we oppose, is God worthy of so great a sacrifice from the intelligent creature? Because God is supremely amiable. But if God demanded such a sacrifice, he would no longer be supremely amiable; consequently he would no longer deserve to be supremely loved. This would be a God whose strange glory would be requiring that which is least glorious to a perfect being, namely, to damn everlastingly a creature who would be entirely devoted to him. This would be a cruel and barbarous God, who would take pleasure in seeing men suffering eternally who were capable of resolving to suffer eternally for his glory. We conclude, therefore, that the example of Moses does not countenance such a system of disinterested love as the sacrifice of one's own salvation. It is added that God repented of the evil which he thought to do unto his people.' Profound ignorance or malice only could have induced Julian the Apostate to infer from this expression that God is subject to change. It signifies that God granted to Moses favour for Israel, or rather the delay of their punishment, whose numberless crimes afterwards forced, as it were, the Deity to destroy them. Thus when God yielded to the entreaties of Moses he said, 'Nevertheless in the day when I visit I will visit their sin upon them' (Exod. xxxii. 34). By the day must be understood those melancholy times in which God seems to unite in one period the crimes committed by a people in many others, and the Jewish people had seen various occasions of this kind. The Jews say even to this day what their fathers have said before them, that no misfortune comes upon them which has not an ounce of the golden calf in it. They celebrate even now the anniversary of the breaking of the tables of the law by a solemn fast; and St. Jerome and some other expositors have thought that the prophet Zechariah had this solemnity in view when speaking of 'the fast of the fourth month' (Zech. viii. 19). Thus far M. Saurin. It may be permitted to subjoin a few remarks. At the commencement of this dissertation the learned d Cyril of Alexan., tom. v., in Julian, lib. 5. • R. Isaac in Gemar. tit. Sanhedr., cap. 11, fol. 102. writer refers to the ambiguity of the original language, which he says may signify either that Aaron received the ear-rings in a bag or that he graved them with a graving tool, referring to the disputes on the subject as an argument for critical doubts. But we must beware of admitting the plausibilities of ingenious etymologists as evidence against the preciseness of historical statements. It is clear that the translators have committed an error in their rendering of Exod. xxxii. 4. The words are in n. The word signifies to tie up or bind, as well as to form into shape, and signifies a bag. Both these words are used in 2 Kings v. 23, where Naaman is said to have 'bound (or tied up) two talents of silver in two bags.' The rendering, therefore, of the passage in question should have been, and he received them, and tied them in a bag.' Having done so, he had them cast into a molten calf. The pulverizing of the gold and rendering it potable has very much perplexed many writers, as it is supposed that so difficult an operation of chemistry could not have been performed in the wilderness. But though Moses could not have accomplished this by simple calcination or amalgamation, yet this drink might have been made after the present method, by making use of the Egyptian natron instead of tartar, which is common in the East." It is not certain that the conduct of Aaron is exhibited in this discourse in exactly the proper light, or that it has in general been fully understood. A careful examination of all the details and references in Scripture will, we think, make it obvious that while it is a mistake to imagine that Aaron did not commit a great sin, his criminality was not precisely of the kind usually imputed to him. It did not consist in endeavouring to supersede the worship of the true God by substituting idolatrous worship, nor in countenancing the absurdity that the services of the true and a false religion might be legitimately intermingled, although, while facilitating the worship of the golden calf, he reminded the people, 'tomorrow is a feast to the Lord.' When Jehovah spoke to Moses on the subject in the mount he said, 'Thy people have corrupted themselves, they have made a molten calf. The guilt of the transaction is also imputed to the people in general in the Acts of the Apostles, in the speech of Stephen-to whom (Moses) our fathers would not obey, but thrust him from them, and in their hearts turned back again into Egypt, saying unto Aaron, Make us gods to go before us; for as for this Moses, which brought us out The reader will find some valuable remarks upon the arts implied in the fabrication and destruction of the golden calf in Dr. Memes' article, Fine Art among the Jews,' in the fifth No. of this Journal, pp. 60-70.-EDITOR. of of the land of Egypt, we wot not what is become of him. And they made a calf in those days, and offered sacrifice unto the idol, and rejoiced in the works of their own hands' (Acts vii. 39-41). In the apology by which Aaron attempted to avert the anger of Moses he pleads that he knew the people, that they were set on mischief,' and implies it was not he but they that made the golden calf. It seems, therefore, that he was not the instigator of this daring outrage, that he did not approve it, and made a faint opposition by reminding the people of the ensuing feast to the Lord on the morrow. What, then, it may be inquired, was the sin of Aaron if, adhering in principle to the worship of the true God, he neither originated nor sympathized with the idolatrous service? The answer is, he was a timid time-server; his principles were not strong enough for the occasion; he was afraid of personal consequences from the tumultuous gatherings of the multitude. He had the spirit of fear when the spirit of martyrdom was required, and partook largely of the character of that unworthy class of persons who are denounced in the book of the Revelations as the fearful.' His therefore was not so much positive rebellion as culpable timidity. It was a wrong to religion; it was a wrong to his own high character; it was a wrong to the God of Israel, whose servant he was, and whom he professed to obey. The creature's frown was more to him at the moment than the Creator's smile. This is precisely that miserable policy by which so many to the present hour dishonour their principles, disgrace their profession, and hazard their eternal welfare. They would fain have the crown of glory, but would be excused from the crown of thorns. PAUL'S REBUKE OF WOMEN PRAYING WITH UNCOVERED HEADS: A NEW INTERPRETATION OF I. CORINTHIANS, CHAP. xi. 10. By the Rev. Robert Knight. ALTHOUGH the principal object of the following remarks is the elucidation of 1 Cor. xi. 10, yet I do not intend to confine them to the examination of this particular portion of the chapter. The examination of any portion of the sacred writings may be naturally supposed to involve an examination of the context; but, in the present instance, this is not the only nor the principal reason for doing so, for, having been led to investigate the passage,, with a view of endeavouring to explain that part which is con sidered sidered obscure and which has received various interpretations, I have been brought to regard the whole in a different light from that in which I believe it has been hitherto almost universally. viewed, and to question the received interpretation of that part of it respecting which there has been among commentators no difference of opinion. Whatever minor differences there may be in the interpretations of the different commentators upon this passage, all of them, I believe, agree in this, that the censure of St. Paul is directed against the supposed practice of the Corinthian women praying or prophesying in their public devotional assemblies with their heads uncovered. In the fourteenth chapter of the same epistle, in which these words are found, and in the thirty-fourth verse, the Apostle says, Let your women keep silence in the churches, for it is not permitted unto them to speak;' and in the second chapter of his first epistle to Timothy, the eleventh and twelfth verses, • Let the woman learn in silence;' and again, But I suffer not a woman to teach, but to be in silence.' In these expressions there is not the slightest ambiguity or room for difference of opinion; they are plain and pointed, and conclusively prove that it was quite contrary to the will of God, and to that subordination in which she was placed, and therefore to apostolical order, as maintained in all the primitive churches, for a woman to speak authoritatively in the assemblies of Christians. Such being the case, the supposition that the Apostle's statements, in the present passage, refer to the apparel of the woman, can only be supported in two ways, either by conjecturing that, in speaking of her praying or prophesying with her head uncovered, he does not mean aloud, or as taking a leading part, but simply to her being present and joining in subordination or silently in the sacred services; or else, as Whitby supposes, Although the Apostle does not here approve of the woman's praying or prophesying in the churches, here he says nothing to the contrary, as intending to rectify that disorder when he spake of other disorders in the case of prophesying.' It would scarcely have been consistent with candour and common sense, much less with the wisdom and unfeigned sincerity of an inspired apostle, to take up any part of his epistle, with the censure of an impropriety in the doing of that which was radically wrong in itself, especially when that impropriety naturally sprang from the abuse with which it was connected, and when, moreover, he intended to forbid, in the same epistle, the abuse itself, and would therefore, with the abuse, remove the impropriety which was grafted on it. But But this is not the full extent of the inconsistency which such a conjecture takes for granted: for it farther supposes St. Paul to attack the outward semblance of insubordination, in the first place, while he leaves room by his silence for believing that that, in which the reality and substance of insubordination was manifested, was not censurable; or by placing it last in order, was at any rate only censurable in an inferior degree, or that he gives directions how that is to be done, which his subsequent charge proves that he intended should not be done at all; as if a parent should, in writing to a child, warn him against a practice, and, in the same letter, give him instructions how to follow it, and thus not only prove that he doubted his willingness to yield to his authority, but by placing the instructions how to follow the practice which he intended to forbid, first in order, give such a proceeding the greatest possible force. It may be said, in the second place, that the caution of the Apostle is directed, not against their taking a prominent part, but merely against their appearing uncovered in the public assemblies; but this position is equally untenable with the former. In the first place, this interpretation does manifest violence to the language of the Apostle, for it would certainly have been much more natural for him simply to have spoken against their appearing uncovered, if this was what he meant, than to have made use of a phraseology not only ambiguous and likely to be misinterpreted, but positively defective, as limiting a direction, which should guide them at all times, to particular occasions and circumstances. If, moreover, the Corinthian women had laid themselves open to rebuke for want of modesty and shame-facedness in their deportment, it was not likely that this would have exhibited itself more prominently in their devotional meetings than elsewhere or at other times, for when were correct feelings connected with their deportment more likely to exist in all their strength and holy power, than when they were under the teaching of God, and met together in his name? Hence it does not seem at all likely that the Apostle, in warning them against the manifestation of an improper spirit in their deportment, would have made use of an expression which would have limited this admonition to any particular place or circumstances, and less likely that he would have limited it to those in which it was likely to appear in its most mitigated form. 6 It has been supposed by some commentators that the declaration of the Apostle, That the woman should have power on her head, because of the angels,' refers to persons who introduced themselves into Christian assemblies with a view of detecting, if possible, some ground for accusation or calumny. The interpre |