whose intolerance and conceit co-exist in an equal ratio, to whom the gall of bitterness is a delight. The attack is cowardly, inasmuch as there is no body of laymen on whom he would make equally offensive observations. Would he dare the experiment on the Army or Navy? Would he dare to name with equal violence the frequenters of the gambling-houses, with which the metropolis abounds? Ere he again. employs his pen, we trust that he will have experimentally followed the wise man's advice ΓΝΩΘΙ ΣΕΑΥΤΟΝ. ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE SCRIPTURES FROM INTERNAL In addition to the proofs derivable from the conterminal proximity of the Edomites and other people to the Israelites, and the contiguous possessions of the Canaanites, an intercourse of a different description, which will substantiate the argument on which we insist, may be shewn, not speculatively, but on the authority of the Sacred Records. The laws enacted in favour of strangers undoubtedly authorise the supposition, that there were then strangers, to whom they applied; and that such strangers were as capable then as hereafter of admission into the congregation; and we can prove, that such were to be found among the Israelites before they reached Canaan. In Exodus xii. 38, a mixed multitude, clearly distinguished from the native Israelites, is recorded to have accompanied them on their egress from servitude; when Jethro also visited Moses, he was, in all probability, accompanied by attendants, some of whom may have remained with the twelve tribes journeying onwards to the inheritance divinely promised to their forefathers; and shortly after the sin at Taberah, a mixed multitude, expressed indeed under a different Hebrew term, is stated in highly distinctive words to have been among the congregation. The marriage of Moses with an Ethiopian woman, and the mention of the Kenites and Kenisites are corroborations of the argument. Thus, we indubitably see a channel through which the more elevated notions of God in Gentile philosophy-through which analogies between Biblical facts and Mythological perversions of themon which infidels, arguing against Christianity, have insisted, must have flowed. Notwithstanding all that has been written on each side of the question, it is difficult to decide, whether Sabæanism, or the worship of the heavenly host, or the pyreal rites, were the first in order. The very early mention of Ur, which must have derived its name from the latter, though we accredit neither the Judaic nor the Mohammedan legends, added to the luminous appearance, which the lightningignited bituminous regions of Babylonia must have displayed, and occasionally still display, and to the idea of the image of a present God, which the sun exhibited to the primitive superstitious races of mankind, forcibly shows the antiquity of Magianism. But it is most clear from the ancient Persian writings, that fire itself was not worshipped, although it was hallowed as a symbol of the Deity; and it is equally certain from an examination of them, that this religion, divested of the pyreal additaments, most closely resembled the patriarchal. Nor is it strange; for whatever might have been the obliquities which the grand defection at Shinar might have occasioned, some branches of the three Dynasties, especially of the Shemidæ, must have transmitted through successive generations distinctive criteria of patriarchal worship. Moreover, as the genius of the Mosaic were in the patriarchal institutes, here also we develope one cause of the general similarity; and shall, if we critically examine every ramification, find all, in various ways, attesting the truth of the Bible. The corruption which primitive rites acquired in their transit to the Gentiles, and the deformation, by which things borrowed from the Mosaic ritual were obscured, constitute the strongest possible evidence that our Sacred Books, in which all these retain their original purity, are authentic, and based on divine communications. Human civiliza tion was too imperfect, and idolatry was too prevalent for so pure a religion to have existed on the earth, without the intervention of the Deity. We take not into the argument the defections of the Israelites ; for they belong not to it: we exclusively look at the religion which was revealed to man, and affirm, that it contains internal proofs of a revelation, and ample demonstrations, that unassisted man could not have invented it. آذر Fire was used at the earliest sacrifices, and was equally required under the law; but wherever God was worshipped according to the mode which he had prescribed, in that beauty of holiness which became both the Divine Being and his mortal adorers, it was never perverted from its proper use. But, how different was the case among the Gentiles ! Some originally viewing it as the emblem of God, and accounting the sun to be its fountain, soon lost sight of their emblematic doctrine, and ascribed to it divine honours; others more openly declared it to be a Deity arrayed in omnipotent attributes. The world indeed by knowledge knew not God, and worshipped the creature instead of the Creator, who is God blessed for ever. To the ancient Persians fire was a fruitful source of Pneumatology. They furnished the firmament with angels, and assigned to one called Azar, the guardianship of the solar orb; after the planets they named their seven Atishkadahs or fire-temples, and as it were to bring each part of the system into a general unison, affirmed that they were lighted by the sun. Now it is to be borne in mind, that they who followed this religion, appealed to the patriarchs as their authorities; and that they laid claim to Abraham in particular, from one of whose traditionary successors the sixth fire temple received its name. It may also be noticed, as a curiosity, that as the Hebrews often compounded their own names with the Tetragrammaton, so the Magi, more properly the Mughan, compounded theirs as frequently with that of fire. From the fabled angel of fire, arose the legend of the Salamander, called in Syriac works, from whence the English name was derived: because this angel was believed to live in fire, as his proper element. Some naturalists, not aware of this explanation, have attempted to identify the imaginary pyreal lizard with the of Moses, the xaλaßarns of the Septuagint, and the Stellio of Jerome. In this they were led astray by Jonathan Ben Uzziel. In fact, many ancient legends, which it is not here our business to discuss, arose from this worship. But when we consider the great transaction in the plain of Shinar, its bituminous and continually ignited materials, we must assume that the ancient Chasdim or Chaldees worshipped this element more early than the Persians; and when in the fires of Moloch we retrace the system in a more degraded state, yet still joined to solar and sidereal superstition among the Canaanites and all the apostate family of Ham, we cannot deny its extension over the ancient world. Could it have arisen from misrepresentations of that sublime vision, in which the fate of Abraham's descendants were scenically pourtrayed to him? Or are we to refer it to some older declension from revealed religion, which may have had an effect on the assemblage at Babel? When God was manifested in the Shechinah, and when under the Law the perpetual fire flamed on Jehovah's altar, knowing that the sons of Ishmael and Esau had also their sacred fires, derived from the faith of their fathers, we may reasonably imagine that the attention with which the religion of the wonder-working God of Israel must have been watched by the Canaanites, and the conterminal nations, must have been directed to the office of fire in the Jewish sanctuary, and that this office was misrepresented to support the general apostasy. In India, Egypt, Babylon, Greece, and Rome, and even among savages, we discern the influence of fire-worship; but the general analogy must be referred to colonists and the trading caravans. How elevated is the religion of the Bible above these superstitions! The practice of burning alive, which seems to have had almost an universal prevalence, was very old: for we read of its existence in the time of Judah. The ordeals of the Mosaic law were also imitated by the idolaters. The Hindús enumerate eight, one of which is strikingly similar to that of the water of jealousy in the Pentateuch; nor are those of fire and hot irons dissimilar from some of which we read in the sacred page. The corresponding custom of the Gabr and of our Saxon ancestors, the Amphidromia at Athens, and the parallels in other places, shew that it was one and the same system, varying perhaps inconsequentially according to national habits, which degraded the pagan world. When we find in the Persian writings that the Mubidi Mubidán, the High Priest, covered his mouth as he approached the the sacred element, lest his breath should pollute it, and likewise sanctified himself with water, shall we, reading the book of Leviticus, hesitate to pronounce that this was borrowed from the enactments of the Jewish law? Those sacred fires, near which councils were holden by pagan Arabs and others, and the various fires discussed by the Arabian author Nuveiri, receive cach a similar explanation. The solar rites, which cannot be separated from the preceding, included among their followers all but those Jews who adhered to their law; and that they were of very deep antiquity, we are certified by the book of Job. From the solar the sidereal worship easily flowed; and as the stars received their names from different animals, or were rendered commemorative of mythological legends, these semi-deified brutes attended by heroes, both real and imaginary, who had received this profane apotheosis, were addressed by the prayers of abject mortals. Even fowls, and creeping things of the earth, as the Apostle says, received their homage. Divination, all-various augury, and the most servile fanaticism, as matters of course, resulted from this ignorance of the true God; but whilst thus the world lay in darkness, unconscious of HIM by whom all things were made, in the narrow boundaries of Palestine the lamp of Divine truth was still burning, often very faintly, yet never extinguished; and when the Jews had overclouded his revealed Scriptures by the absurd traditions and doctrines of men, the Son of God was manifested in the flesh, resolving the type into the antitype, and darting the light of Divine truth to the nations which were seated in the shadow of death. As Creuzer observes, the Kaßeipoi, of whom so much has been written, were connected with the planetary worship; their name is an evident deduction from the Hebrew Scriptures, in which God is either equivalent terms and clearly originally the) גבור or,כביר represented as same), thus affording to us an incontrovertible proof, that the idolaters collected what they could from the Jewish worship, and applied what they could collect with fearful disfigurations to their own Pantheon. So that whatever of parallelism, near or remote, we can trace between the various opinions of the Gentiles, and the true worship of the Jews, instead of asserting an independent character, proves the integrity and antiquity of the Bible, and carries with it marks of derivation from it which cannot be mistaken. It is very clear that the patriarchs believed the immortality of the soul; but how could they have believed it without at the same time believing a future state, in which that immortal soul should exist? It is manifest also, that such was the belief in the time of Moses. Hence flowed the doctrine far and wide. It was symbolized in the legend of the Phoenix, which itself originated in the solar rites, but was accommodated to this grand tenet, and may be recognised in the Kuknus and Humai of Persian romance-in the Fong and Hong of China-the Foo and Kirin of Japan-the Rokh of the Arabs, called Simorgh by the Persians and the bird of Ygdrasil in the Voluspa. In Ægypt and Æthiopia it may also be detected. Even some of the Fathers entertained reveries about the Phoenix, which are as much traditions as any other parts of their writings, and a Syrian naturalist actually quoted John x. 18, in support of it. The likewise in Job xxxix. 18. has been confidently claimed as this bird; yet the only ground for the claim is the antecedenta nest; but if the former word be intended to express a bird rather than the sand, as in our version, it is positively certain that the root gives to us no clue to determine of what species the bird was. It is possible, however, that may be identical with and allude to Job's possessions* (for we take no account of קן * And I said, I shall die with my possessions, yet I shall multiply days as the sand. This proposed translation has the advantage of admirably harmonizing with Job's history. A variation in transcriptions between conceivable, even if had not the Dagish. קני and is very קנני the modern lexica, and the vowel-points, in a criticism of this nature), instead of nest; in which view of the verse if we accept sand as in our version, the words will clearly shew Job's belief of the resurrection, as in that splendid passage which we use in our funeral service. This we believe to be its meaning. What has been attributed to the Phoenix has also been attributed to the palm-tree, and the chinar or sycamore. Some too have explained Job's allusion by the palm-tree. This arose from the Greek word implying either the Phoenix or the palm-tree, and from the interpolation of σréλexos in some early manuscripts of the Septuagint version of this passage, causing a change of case in the following word, and restricting it to the latter, according to the notion of the librarius. We are, however, persuaded that Job referred neither to the palm-tree, nor yet to the Phoenix. UNITARIAN MISINTERPRETATIONS OF THE SCRIPTURES. THE observations which we made in the preceding Number have shewn that the favourite passage which the Unitarians confidently quote, if interpreted according to the genius of that particular dialect of the Greek language in which the Apostles wrote, overthrow their theory, and prove the absolute Divinity of Jesus Christ. The same we shall find to be the case as we pursue our inquiry. It is argued that we must make a distinction between the sender and the sent; and accordingly consider Jesus Christ as the ambassador of the Father. Yet, at the same time, it is admitted by the Unitarians that he is the Son of the Father. Now as his filiation is decidedly mentioned in the Scriptures in a manner totally different from that in which God is the Father of the human race, it is plain that there must be a corresponding difference in the nature of his Sonship. When then he himself declares that he and his Father are ev, as in the Gospel of St. John, it is equally evident, that he asserted his co-equality, therefore, his co-divinity with the Father. As this ev is a Greek translation of the word which Christ uttered, we hesitate not to say, that the word which he spoke was ONE; when therefore the law revealing God pronounced on Sinai, that the Deity was ONE; and Christ, as it were referring to this Divine annunciation, stated that HE and his Father conjointly were ONE; we wander away from criticism and right reason, if we assign to HIM an essence inferior to that of the Eternal Father. Equal to the Father was he, as touching his Godhead, which is our question; inferior only as touching his manhood, yet whilst he was man, was he plenarily God. The Jews of Christ's day must have understood him far better than modern * In vindication of sand as preferable to any bird, see Gen. xxii. 17. xxxii. 12. Joshua xi. 4.: Judg. vii. 12.: 1 Sam. xiii. 8. and many other passages. Homer Пl. ii. 800. says in the same manner, : Λιην γὰρ φύλλοισιν ἐοικότες, ἢ ψαμάθοισιν So in II. ix. 385, Οὐδ' εΐ μοι τόσα δοιη ὅσα ψάμαθὸςτε κόνιστε. |