clue to the mind of the Spirit, if he only
understood the dialect of his own neighborhood! What a Babel-jargon it
would make of the Bible to take it for granted that the sense in which
words are _now_ used is the _inspired_ sense, David says, "I prevented
the dawning of the morning, and cried." What, stop the earth in its
revolution! Two hundred years ago, _prevent_ was used in its strict
Latin sense to _come before_, or _anticipate_. It is always used in this
sense in the Old and New Testaments. David's expression, in the English
of the nineteenth century, would be "Before the dawning of the morning I
cried." In almost every chapter of the Bible, words are used in a sense
now nearly or quite obsolete, and sometimes in a sense totally
_opposite_ to their present meaning. A few examples follow: "I purposed
to come to you, but was _let_ (hindered) hitherto." "And the four
_beasts_ (living ones) fell down and worshipped God,"--"Whosoever shall
_offend_ (cause to sin) one of these little ones,"--"Go out into the
highways and _compel_ (urge) them to come in,"--"Only let your
_conversation_ (habitual conduct) be as becometh the Gospel,"--"They
that seek me _early_ (earnestly) shall find me,"--"So when tribulation
or persecution ariseth _by-and-by_ (immediately) they are offended."
Nothing is more mutable than language. Words, like bodies, are always
throwing off some particles and absorbing others. So long as they are
mere _representatives_, elected by the whims of universal suffrage,
their meaning will be a perfect volatile, and to cork it up for the next
century is an employment sufficiently silly (to speak within bounds) for
a modern Bible Dictionary maker. There never was a shallower conceit
than that of establishing the sense attached to a word centuries ago, by
showing what it means _now_. Pity that fashionable mantuamakers were not
a little quicker at taking hints from some Doctors of Divinity. How
easily they might save their pious customers all qualms of conscience
about the weekly shiftings of fashion, by proving that the last
importation of Parisian indecency now flaunting on promenade, was the
very style of dress in which the pious Sarah kneaded cakes for the
angels, and the modest Rebecca drew water for the camels of Abraham's
servants. Since such fashions are rife in Broadway _now_, they _must_
have been in Canaan and Padanaram four thousand years ago!

The inference that the word buy, used to describe the procu