The Millennial Harbinger - 1859 Author:Alexander Campbell Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: THY WAYS ARE EVERLASTING. A BISCUURSE DELIVERED IN THE CHURCH AT RETHANV, vA., OCT. 17lH RY JAMES M. MACRUH, OF PITTSRURGH. .'Rememher the former things of... more » old, for lam Oud, and there ii none lift. I tan God, and there is none like me, declaring the end from the be- ginning In thy ways is continuance, and we shall he saved, Isaiah 46 : 9, 10; and 64 : 5. The word ' religion' is the general and most comprehensive one in use in reference to the highest relations of man,—those, namely, in which he stands towards God. It is only used in the Com. Eng version of the New Testament to represent flp-?,ri4; but neither New Testament nor classical usage would entitle flpiiia to he represented by a word of so large signification. It is used once (Acts 26.5) in reference to Judaism ; again, (Colos. 2.18,) we find it used in refer- eBce to the superstitious " worshipping of angels," as the com. ver. renders here, not " religion of angels "—which would yield no suitable sense; and again in James (1:26.27) we read: " If any ma among you seem to he religious, and bridleth not his tongue, but de- eeiveth his own heart, this man's religion is vain. Pure religion he. fore God and the Father, is this, to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unspotted from the world."— Now this is decidedly the highest sense in which this word ii vned in the New Testament; but it by no means shows flpwrcm as an equivalent for the word 'religion,' as used by the English—speaking populations ; though we say the latter is a very suitable translation of the former word in this passage. With the striking eloquence which distinguishes this apostle's manner of writing, and which indeed has so much in common with poetry, that the same principles of interpretation which we appl...« less