that should come, or do we look for another?” “Sotheli there the ship was to puttyng out the charge.”—­Dedis, xxi, 3.  Common Version:  “For there the ship was to unlade her burden.”—­Acts, xxi, 3.  Churchill, after changing the names of the two infinitive tenses to “Future imperfect” and “Future perfect,” adds the following note:  “The tenses of the infinitive mood are usually termed present and preterperfect:  but this is certainly improper; for they are so completely future, that what is called the present tense of the infinitive mood is often employed simply to express futurity; as, ‘The life to come.’”—­New Gram., p. 249.

OBS. 8.—­The pluperfect tense, when used conditionally, in stead of expressing what actually had taken place at a past time, almost always implies that the action thus supposed never was performed; on the contrary, if the supposition be made in a negative form, it suggests that the event had occurred:  as, “Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died.”—­John, xi, 32.  “If I had not come and spoken unto them, they had not had sin; but now they have no cloak for their sin.”—­John, xv, 22.  “If thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day, the things which belong unto thy peace!  But now they are hid from thine eyes.”—­Luke, xix, 42.  The supposition is sometimes indicated by a mere transposition of the verb and its subject; in which case, the conjunction if is omitted; as, “Had ye believed Moses, ye would have believed me.”—­John, v, 46.

   “Had I but fought as wont, one thrust
    Had laid De Wilton in the dust.”—­Scott

OBS. 9.—­In the language of prophecy we find the past tenses very often substituted for the future, especially when the prediction is remarkably clear and specific.  Man is a creature of present knowledge only; but it is certain, that He who sees the end from the beginning, has sometimes revealed to him, and by him, things deep in futurity.  Thus the sacred seer who is esteemed the most eloquent of the ancient prophets, more than seven hundred years before the events occurred, spoke of the vicarious sufferings of Christ as of things already past, and even then described them in the phraseology of historical facts:  “Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows:  yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted.  But he was wounded for our transgressions; he was bruised for our iniquities:  the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and by his stripes we are healed.”—­Isaiah, liii, 4 and 5.  Multiplied instances of a similar application of the past tenses to future events, occur in the Bible, especially in the writings of this prophet.

PERSONS AND NUMBERS.