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 worshiped 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,”—­“The Lord Jesus Christ who shall judge the quick (living) and the dead,”—­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 “showing off” on promenade, was the very style of dress in which the modest and pious Sarah kneaded cakes for the angels.  Since such a fashion flaunts along Broadway now, it must have trailed over Canaan four thousand years ago!

The inference that the word buy, used to describe the procuring of servants, means procuring them as chattels, seems based upon the fallacy, that whatever costs money is money; that whatever or whoever you pay money for, is an article of property, and the fact of your paying for it, proves it property. 1.  The children of Israel were required to purchase their firstborn from under the obligations of the priesthood, Num. xviii. 15, 16; iii. 45-51; Ex. xiii. 13; xxxiv. 20.  This custom still exists among the Jews, and the word buy is still used to describe the transaction.  Does this prove that their firstborn were or are, held as property?  They were bought as really as were servants. 2.  The Israelites were required to pay money for their own souls.  This is called sometimes a ransom, sometimes an atonement.  Were their souls therefore marketable commodities? 3.  When the Israelites set apart themselves or their children to the Lord by vow, for the performance of some service, an express statute provided that a price should be set upon the “persons,” and it prescribed the manner and terms of the “estimation” or valuation, by the payment of which, the persons