To Correspondents

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Apr 26, 1870

To Correspondents.

M. M. KENNY: 2 Chron. 22: 2, as compared with 2 Kings 8: 26, is undoubtedly a mistake of transcribers. It cannot be correct; for it would make Ahaziah two years older than his father. Dr. Clarke says that the Syriac and Arabic, have twenty-two in 2 Chron. 22: 2, the same as 2 Kings 8: 26. How the inaccuracy has crept into other versions, he explains as follows: “It is probable that the Hebrew text read so originally; for when numbers were expressed by single letters, it was easy to mistake, מ, mem, FORTY, for כ, caph, TWENTY. And if this book was written by a scribe who used the ancient Hebrew letters, now called the Samaritan, the mistake was still more easy and probable, as the difference between כ, caph, and מ, mem, is very small, and can in many instances be discerned only by an accustomed eye.”

N. KEYSER: It is astonishing that any one should appeal to 1 Pet. 3: 4, to prove the immortality of the soul, as you say the Disciple elder did; and yet, viewed from another standpoint it is not astonishing; for persons wedded to that unnatural and unscriptural dogma, must, from the very nature of the case, be driven to every conceivable shift to sustain their cause. It is easy to see from the 3d, 4th, and 5th, verses in connection, that Peter is speaking of an adorning which men and women do not possess by nature, but which must be put on; hence it is not an immortal soul, possessed, as they claim, by all without distinction of character, of which he is speaking. This adorning he calls in verse 4, the hidden man of the heart, and explains what he means by it in this instance by calling it “a meek and quiet spirit.” The incorruptibility brought to view is moral incorruptibility; for it is of moral graces that he here speaks. This hidden man of the heart is the same as the “new man” of Eph. 4: 24, which we put on when we put off the old man. The old man, the carnal mind, is corruption and corruption only; the new man, the renewed mind, Christ formed within, the meek and quiet spirit, the heavenly adorning, all expressions for the same thing, is incorruptible. All that is necessary to avoid the misapplication made by the Disciple elder, is to keep in view the main fact that this hidden man of the heart, is something which we do not have by nature, but which we must put on before we possess it.