POSTAGE, Paid in Advance, 4 Cts. per No. or 16 Cts. per Year. DANVILLE REVIEW. CONDUCTED BY An Association of Ministers. JUNE, 1862. Φωτίσαντος δὲ ζωὴν καὶ ἀφθαρσίαν διὰ τοῦ εὐαγγελίου. DANVILLE, KY. PRINTED FOR THE ASSOCIATION AND SOLD BY MOORE, WILSTACH, KEYS & CO., 25 WEST FOURTH STREET, SOLD ALSO BY WM. 8. & A. MARTIEN, PHILADELPHIA; ROBERT CARTER & TRACT HOUSE, BALTIMORE. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1862, by JACOB COOPER, for the Association, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the Southern District of Ohio. CONTENTS. I. STUDIES ON THE BIBLE, No. I.-The Sins of the Patriachs. By Rev. E. P. Humphrey, D.D., II. THE SECESSION CONSPIRACY IN KENTUCKY, AND ITS By Dr. Ro. J. Breckinridge, III. IMPUTATION AND ORIGINAL SIN. Part III.- -(Con V. THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF 1862, OF THE PRESBY- By Dr. Ro. J. Breckinridge, 197 221 - 248 - 282 - 301 THE Association having purchased the entire interest in Vol. 1, including extra Numbers, and the stereotype plates, are prepared to furnish any number of copies that may be desired. Applications for these must be made either to the Publishers, or to Rev. JACOB COOPER, Danville, Ky. DANVILLE REVIEW. No. II. JUNE, 1862. ART. I.-STUDIES ON THE BIBLE, No. I. The Sins of the Patriarchs.* The term patriarch occurs four times in the New Testament. It invariably denotes the founder of a family or a race. It is applied once to Abraham, the progenitor of the chosen seed; Heb. vii: 4; twice to the sons of Jacob, from whom the twelve tribes took their origin and their designations; Acts vii : 8, 9; and once to David, the first in the royal line of Judah; Acts ii: 29. The corresponding term in the Hebrew text of the Old Testament is Roshe Aboth, describing the chief fathers of the tribes of Israel. Ex. vi: 14; Numb. xxxii: 28, etc. In popular language, however, they are styled patriarchs who stood in the line of men, beginning perhaps with Noah and ending with the sons of Jacob. The expression holy patriarchs is restricted to such of their number as are expressly declared to have been the servants of God, especially Noah, Abraham, Lot, Isaac and Jacob. The phrase, the sins of the holy patriarchs, stands for those flagrant immoralities into which they were betrayed, and brings us face to face with one of the wellknown problems of sacred history. The problem, when analyzed, resolves itself into three principal * AUTHORITIES AND SOURCES OF INFORMATION. Hengstenberg's Pentateuch, vol. II, p. 432, seq.; Havernick's Pentateuch, p. 187; Princeton Review, 1855, p. 24, seq.; Poli Synopsis Criticorum; Calvin's Commentary on Genesis; Kurtz's Old Covenant, vol. I, p. 212; Smith's Dictionary of the Bible; North British Review, Feb. 1860, Art. 4, "Silence of Scripture." 14 (197) elements. The first exhibits the heinous character of these sins. Noah was a just man, and he walked with God, and was a preacher of righteousness; yet after God had saved him from the flood, and had made with him a new covenant, he planted a vineyard, and drank the wine and was drunken. Righteous Lot, after being delivered from the overthrow of the cities of the plain, was seduced two days successively into drunkenness and incest, crimes of Sodom itself. Abraham, the father of the faithful, and the friend of God, was guilty of premeditated falsehood, first to Pharaoh, and then to Abimelech. Isaac, the heir to all the promises made to Abraham, followed his example of prevarication. Jacob, too, with Rebekah, his mother, practiced a preconcerted fraud on his blind and helpless old father, upholding the fraud by a series of audacious falsehoods. Such were their delinquencies, man by man. The second condition of the problem is found in the form given to the sacred record. The facts are plainly stated, but without any express animadversion. The historian describes in few words the misconduct of Noah and Lot, and says no more. He enters into the particulars of the derelictions of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, but he does not expressly condemn their conduct as derogatory to them or to their religion, or as offensive to God. Moreover-and this is the third element-it appears that these offenders were the objects of God's special favor and grace. God held frequent communion with Noah, saved him and his family from the waters of the deluge, and then entered into solemn covenant with him as the second father of the human race; Noah became intoxicated, even lying naked in his tent. Yet after this, God endowed him with the gift of prophecy. God chose Abraham to be the founder of the Church, the recipient and channel of boundless blessings. Yet, after he had beheld the Son of God in two distinct theophanies, he lied to Pharaoh. God granted to him other theophanies, and entered into a gracious covenant with him, and made sure to him the promise of a son; Abraham was again guilty of falsehood to Abimelech. Yet even after that, God gave Isaac to him, and revealed himself more fully to the patriarch as his God in the land of Moriah, and added to all his promises the word of his oath, saying, "Blessing I will bless thee, and in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed." Isaac's act of false |