present. If a writer or speaker is referring to an action or state of being that commenced in the past, continued to, and embraced the time of the narrative, he would very naturally employ a past tense. That state or act had special reference to the time then past, but included also the time then present. Isa. i. 11 affords a good illustration of this idiom. "I delight not "" (I delighted not, nor do I now delight, is the implication) "in the blood of bullocks, of rams, and of he-goats." Hence, although the tense is past in form, it is present in signification, and appropriately rendered, as in our English version, by a present. It is an affection that has existed for a long time in the past, and yet exists, and therefore the use of the past to denote it is really much more appropriate than our present tense would be, for this would leave us in doubt respecting all the past.

Take as another instance Ps. i. 1: "Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsels of the ungodly"; that is, who has not been accustomed to do so in time past, nor does he do so now. This is the sense. It denotes that which is habitual, embracing, of course, his present state, and hence appropriately expressed by a preterite, but rendered into the present. This construction will be appropriate in stating general truths—what has always happened. Isa. i. 3: "The ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his master's crib; but Israel doth not know, my people doth not consider in ." Prov. xiv. 19: "The evil bow n (from) before the good." Isa. xl. 7: "The grass drieth up (from the same), the flower withereth the same), because the Spirit of the Lord bloweth upon it."

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But if, on the other hand, the mind of a writer or speaker, when alluding to a present state or action, turns towards the future, or conceives of passing events as standing in relation with the future, he will naturally use the second or future tense to describe it. Prov. xv. 1: "A soft answer turneth away wrath " (Hiph. fut. from ), will cause wrath to subside. The implication is that it is doing so now,

and will in the future. Hence, although the future form is used, it is appropriately rendered by our present. Prov. xv. 20: "A wise son maketh a glad father." (ny, will rejoice, and is rejoicing the father). The twenty-third Psalm affords a good example of this use of the future for the present. In the first three verses all the verbs are in the future tense; but they are all rendered in our version into the present, except the first, which ought also to have been translated in the same manner: "The Lord my shepherd, I want not. He maketh me," etc. The Psalmist was evidently alluding to present experience. And so confident was he that this experience would continue into the future, that he uses the future form: "The Lord is and will be my shepherd; he leads and will lead me," etc.

This form is often used in making general propositions which will hold true in coming time. Consciously or unconsciously, the universality of the proposition leads the mind to forecast the future, and hence to use this form of the verb. Ps. v. 7: "The Lord abhors the bloody and deceitful man." Ps. i. 2: "In the law of the Lord is his delight; and in his law doth he meditate an, day and night."

This feature of the Hebrew gives it great power, especially in its poetry; for to poetry all time is present. And to the Hebrews, as to all people in their fresh, early existence, all history was poetical. The ability of a language to use the past and the future tenses as present-to bring all duration, so to speak, into the moment of narration-gives great freshness and vividness to its poetry. Not unfrequently we meet with parallel clauses where the writer gives additional force to the proposition by viewing it in both aspects, first employing the past tense, and then changing to the future. Prov. xxviii. 1: "The wicked flee but the righteous are bold n "The wicked man hardeneth face; but as for the upright, he from ) his way."

when no one is pursuing; as a lion." Prov. xxi. 29: (Hiph. pret. from ) his directeth 7 (Hiph. fut.

Herder, referring to this feature of the language, says: "Have you never observed, in the style of the poets or the prophets, what beauty results from the change of tenses? How that which one hemistich declares in the past tense the other expresses in the future? As if the last rendered the presence of the object continuous and eternal, while the first has given to the discourse the certainty of the past, where everything is already finished and unchangeable."

In every language it is the verbs that give strength and vividness to discourse. The Chinese call their verbs "living words," and all the rest "dead." "With the Hebrew," as has been said, "the verb is almost the whole of the language. The nouns are derived from verbs, and are, as it were, living beings, extracted and moulded while their radical source itself was in a state of living energy."

Give now to the verbs of such a language, through all their forms, the power of using their two absolute tenses in the sense of a present, the one augmented at the beginning, the other at the end, and always so inflected as to dispense with auxiliaries, and to express in a single word the person, number, and shade of thought and feeling out of which the action springs, and you have a language that is intensely poetic, and strong and massive enough to be the bearer of God's messages to men.

III. These two tenses the absolute past and the future -are capable of being used with a still greater latitude of signification.

1. The past may be used to denote a future action or event, when that action or event is one that has been decided upon in the plans and purposes of God. What is future to us is already done to his mind, and hence in speaking of it the past tense is employed, though the event is yet to take place.

This use of the verb gives great positiveness to the language of prophecy. Take, as an illustration, Gen. xv. 18: "To thy seed will I given this land." Have I given, etc. It is as though God had said to Abraham, "The decree

has gone forth, in my plans the event has long had a place, though the generations that are to inherit the land are not yet born." We can easily understand that the use of the past, denoting a finished act on the part of God, was much better adapted to confirm the faith of the patriarch than the use of the future would have been. And the same was true of all the prophecies so expressed. Isa. ix. 2: "The people that walk in darkness have seen a great light ." This prophecy had reference to the experiences of the nations at the advent of Christ. It was so applied by the evangelist, Matt. iv. 14-16. It had reference to wants yet to come, as the gospel shall be preached to the heathen. But being then already decided upon in the counsels of redemption, and virtually done to the mind of God, it could be described appropriately by the past tense, and might have been as appropriately rendered by the future, shall see, etc. The same construction occurs Isa. lii. 10: "All the ends of the earth shall see the salvation of our God."

When the past is so used, it is sometimes followed by a future in the same sentence to strengthen the affirmation. Jer. xxxi. 33: "I will put my law in their inward parts, and will write it on their hearts." The meaning is, "It is done in my counsels, I will secure its accomplishment in the times appointed." Another good illustration of this idiom may be found in Isa. li. 3: "For the Lord will comfort Zion; he will comfort all her waste places, and he will make her wilderness like Eden, like the garden of the Lord; joy and gladness shall be found therein."

2. In like manner the absolute future form may be used to designate a past act under certain circumstances. Thus Moses, when enumerating the sins of the heathen, says, Deut. xii. 31: "Their sons and their daughters have they burned in the fire." The act contemplated is one they have been accustomed to; it is natural to expect they will do it in the future. The deplorable feature in the case was that they would certainly continue this inhuman work;

and hence, though he is referring to an item of history, he does it in the use of the future tense.

Again the future is often used in animated description (as we use the present) to bring up past actions, and make them live and move before our eye; as when Balaam says, Num. xxiii. 7: "Balak, the king of Moab, hath brought me

from Aram." In like manner Isaiah (vi. 2) says of the seraphim which he saw: "With two of his wings he covers his face, and with two he covers his feet."

There is another common use of the absolute future. It follows a preterite to denote an action that transpired subsequently to that expressed by the preterite, though long since past at the time of the narration. The words of Job (iii. 25) afford a good illustration: "That which I was afraid of (from) is come (from xi) unto me." The first verb in this clause is preterite, the second, future, though both events had long before occurred. But the dread he experienced preceded the event dreaded, and hence there was a philosophical propriety in the use of the two tenses, and in this order. Since the Hebrew had no present, the mind seems to have gone back to the first of a series of events, and adopted that as a present, in so far, that whatsoever followed it would be with reference to it future, was in fact in the future at the time it occurred.

These two forms are frequently connected by the conjunction, and the particular time when the series of events occurred is sometimes indicated by adverbial particles or phrases.

IV. This last idiom borders upon, and prepares the way for the consideration of, two other forms more difficult to comprehend and interpret the wav consecutive (or conversive) preterite and future. These, as they stand in relation with the absolute tenses, have been called relative tenses. They are formed by prefixing to the preterite and future absolute. Grammarians differ as to the origin of this particle. Stuart says: "It is probably a fragment of the verb

to be. The Arabians constantly make their imperfect