Answers to Correspondents.
WM. COTTRELL: We have nothing positive to show how often the ordinances of the church should be celebrated. That the question has been left undetermined, is evident from 1 Cor. 11: 26. Our custom here has been, once in each quarter. P. A. M., of N. Y.: The evil of which you speak is one which we would fain believe does not exist to a great extent among our people. Personal effort in behalf of the one to whom you refer, we think would be more effectual than any published appeal. W. H. KYNETT: “Even him,” in 2 Thess. 2: 9, are supplied words, and convey a wrong sense. The next word, the relative pronoun, whose, refers for its antecedent back to the word Lord in the preceding verse. Literally translated, the connection between verses 8 and 9 is as follows: “Whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of his mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of his coming, the coming of whom is after the working of Satan,” &c. The coming in both instances refers to Christ.—In regard to our duty under the coming decree, it is useless now to conjecture. If we are living near to God, he will then teach us what to say and what to do.—Matt. 1: 16, which says that Joseph was the son of Jacob, is harmonized with Luke 3: 23 which speaks of him as the son of Heli, by the fact that the Jews never permitted the names of women to appear in their lines of genealogy; so that when a family happened to end with a daughter, her husband's name was inserted in the genealogical reckoning, as a son of him of whom he was really only the son-in-law. Thus Joseph was really the son of Jacob; Mary was the daughter of Heli; but Heli having no son, Joseph the husband of his daughter, Mary, is put in as his son. Luke then runs back through the line of Mary, and Matthew through the line of Joseph. This explains all the apparent discrepancies between the two tables.