;. V vi-^M^ f '- LIBRARY UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. OF" Mrs. SARAH P. WALS WORTH. Received October, 1894. Accessions No . 5*7*1 *5~*y . Class A/b . i NOAH AND HIS TIMES : EMBRACING THE CONSIDERATION OF VARIOUS INQUIRIES RELATIVE TO THE ANTEDILUVIAN AND EARLIER POSTDILUVIAN PERIODS, WITH DISCUSSIONS OF SEVERAL OF THE LEADING QUESTIONS OF THE PRESENT DAY. BY THE REV. J. MUNSON OLMSTEAD, M. A. AUTHOR OF "THOUGHTS AND COUNSELS FOR THE IMPENITENT," "OUR FIRST MOTHER," ETC. BOSTON: GOULD AND LINCOLN, 59 WASHINGTON STREET. 1854. Entered according to Act of Congress in the year 1853, by J. MUNSON OLMSTEAD, In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. DAM RE I, L & MOORE, PRJMTKES. PREFACE. THE difficulties connected with the writing of the fol- lowing work were so fully anticipated by the author, that not until some time after a demand in this day for one of the kind was, in conversation with some literary and Christian friends, insisted on, and himself warmly urged to undertake it, could he obtain his . own consent to engage in the effort. No contemporaneous historic pen had left aught concerning the period to be surveyed a period of almost a thousand years, and lying back near the beginning of time commencing with the year of the world 1056, and extending to 2006 ; and the sum of what the pen o inspiration had afterward recorded, was comprised within the compass of a few short chapters. A large portion too of the subjects soliciting investigation were intrinsically difficult to be handled. If, in the great absence of historic detail, it migjit be thought that the investigations and discoveries of modern science could 17 PEEFACE. yield important aids as indeed justly it might yet the writer could not but be aware that even those aids would not be rendered available without a large measure of labor and research. He had previously written a work bearing on a proximate prior period, and therefore, it might be said, was experimentally aware of the ob- stacles to be met with in the composition of such a work. The consideration that to a large number of minds the field lay in a territory almost utterly unknown, and, as respects other minds, over and around which error on the one hand and skepticism on the other hovered, at length brought him to the determination to commence, and impelled him to prosecute to completion, the undertaking. The subjects more largely discussed, are the Deluge, in that variety of aspect in which it is to be contemplated ; the statutory Death Penalty ; the Shinaric occurrences ; and the question as to the Unity or Plurality of the Hu- man Races. As to the first of these, viz. the Noachic Deluge, of the various inquiries instituted, those which have more than others engaged the author's attention, relate to the reality and modus of the occurrence ; the existence or absence of Physical Evidence of the Scrip- turally narrated event involving the question respect- ing the Epoch of Creation ; together with the Extent of that Inundation. In regard to the second, that is, the statutory Death Penalty, never, it must be confessed, PREFACE. V was there a more urgent call than now for the presenta- tion of correct views upon it. As to the Shinaric oc- currences, these involve matters of no small interest, especially in relation to Language, and the Settlement, locally, of mankind over the Earth's surface. And the Question relative to the Unity or Plurality of ancestral origin of the Varieties of Humankind never before en- listed such a degree of interest as at present. What is regarded as adding peculiar moment to this latter ques- tion is the manner in which important Scriptural doctrines will be affected, according to its decision one way or the other. Of the various other matters treated in the volume as to most of them, briefly indeed it is not deemed requisite here to make mention, inasmuch as they are particularly specified both in the Table of Contents, and at the head of the several pages of the work. The reader will naturally cast his eye over the former ere he proceeds to the perusal of the book. The writer cannot but entertain the belief that those who do this will have some desire to see what is said concerning them hi the body of the volume. The aids which in the investigation of the topics dis- cussed were received from other authors have been in some form indicated in their proper places in the work. His facilities for examination of the best authorities, Yl PREFACE. before and during the composition of the volume, were not inconsiderable, and he cannot but feel grateful for the free access to those of them belonging not to his collec- tion, which was so generously afforded. THE AUTHOR. NOVEMBER 15, 1853. CONTENTS. INTRODUCTION, 13 EVENING FIRST. Import of the name Noah Why the name given Noah's Contem- poraries The Antediluvian Events he witnessed Genealo- gical Table of Patriarchs from the Creation to the Deluge Antediluvian Puberty A prominent Event of Enos's day What its character The names of the Patriarchs expressive,.. 16 EVENING SECOND. Enoch's Translation Its influence Doctrine of a Future State When Noah became pious The Cainite Line Nominal Similarities The Cainite Lamech Antediluvian Arts, 28 EVENING THIRD, Antediluvian Arts, continued The State of Science Inquiry as to the origin of Alphabetic Writing Date of the Sabbatic In- stitution, 41 Vlll CONTENTS. EVENING FOURTH. Who the " sons of God " spoken of in Gen. 6: 2 Who the Giants in Gen. 6 : 4 Increasing Degeneracy Mournful Corruption Unrestrained Violence This state how caused The Divine Displeasure excited "The Lord repented," its meaning,.... 56 EVENING FIFTH. The Divine Resolve The Command given to Noah Children of the Patriarch Order of the birth of the Three sons Amount of Antediluvian Population A strange Conceit Characteris- tics of the Patriarch Import of 1 Peter 3 : 19, 20, 71 EVENING SIXTH. The Patriarch's Fidelity The Ark Its Dimensions Of what constructed Where built Its particular Construction How long in building " Noah's Carpenters " Date of Naval Ar- chitecture The warning, how promulgated Righteous, how many A Curious Story, . 80 EVENING SEVENTH. Distrust of Geology unreasonable Science and Scripture harmoni- ous The Ark entered The Noachic Deluge begun At what Time of the year Circumstances recounted The ungod- ly, how affected The melancholy Scene The Patriarch's Emotions Infidel Cavil The Dispensation not unrighteous, . . 98 EVENING EIGHTH. The Form of Prayer ascribed to the Patriarch Noah how occupied in the Ark The Eight why preserved Genesis real History Remarks on right Interpretation Traditional Evidence of the Noachian Deluge, 110 CONTENTS. IX EVENING NINTH. Traditional Evidence of the Noachic Deluge, continued Remarks on Proof from Tradition Mythological Evidence The Apa- mcs.ii Medals Additional Memorials, 123 EVENING TENTH. Inquiry as to Physical Evidence of the Flood of Genesis Theories and Geological Facts considered, 136 EVENING ELEVENTH. Inquiry as to Physical Evidence of the Flood of Genesis, contin- ued Theories and Geological Facts considered, 149 EVENING TWELFTH. Facts as to Drift, etc. The forementioned Facts and Gen. 1:1,2 not in conflict Inquiry as to Physical Evidence of the Noachic Deluge, concluded, 161 EVENING THIRTEENTH. On the Extent of Noah's Flood, 174 EVENING FOURTEENTH. On the Extent of Noah's Flood, continued Call for the Dis- cussion, 187 EVENING FIFTEENTH. The Flood of Genesis produced not solely by Natural Causes In- quiry as to the Ark's Resting place, 200 EVENING SIXTEENTH. Inquiry as to the Ark's Resting place, continued Egress from the Ark Earth's altered appearance Legend of the Seven Sleep- CONTENTS. ers A striking Allegory Remarkable Transition The grateful Return The Altar and Sacrifice Character of the Oblation The Sacrificial Rite, its Rise and Design, 212 EVENING SEVENTEETH. The Sacrificial Rite, its Rise and Design, continued, The Precept in Gen. 9: 1 The Dominion of Dread Grant of Animal Food Why this Grant The Specified Restriction The Eating of Blood prohibited Wherefore the Prohibition,.... 224 EVENING EIGHTEENTH. The Eating of Blood, wherefore prohibited Exaction for Blood- shedding The Statutory Death Penalty 236 EVENING NINETEENTH. The Statutory Death Penalty, continued, 248 EVENING TWENTIETH. The Statutory Death Penalty, continued, 259 EVENING TWENTY-FIRST. The Statutory Death Penalty, continued The Flood of Noah not to reappear The Covenant against it The Bow of Promise The Occupation entered upon The Planting of the Vine- yard The alleged Sin of the Patriarch, 271 EVENING TWENTY-SECOND. Carpings of Skepticism The Patriarch's Predictions At what Time uttered Names of the Three Sons prophetic Advan- tages from the Past "The Seven Precepts " Approach to a new Era Increase of Numbers 284 CONTENTS. XI EVENING TWENTY-THIRD. Extending of Settlement The Land of Shinar entered The Phrase "From the East" considered Additional as to the Ark's Resting place The View of Adelung Date of Migration to Shinar What the name " Peleg " indicates Query as to the Immigrants Whether All or only Part of the Noachidae entered Shinar The Unity of the Shinaric Band not long to remain unbroken, 294 \. EVENING TWENTY-FOURTH. Inquiry as to the Primitive Language Concerning the Origin of Language Abuse of Linguistic Unity Divine Determination against the Return of Antediluvian Wickedness Ambitious Aspirations at Shinar The Tower of Babel, why erected, 308 EVENING TWENTY-FIFTH. The Babelic Tower, its Design Size and Form of the Tower Character of the Act of the Babel Builders Inference relative to the Patriarch Who were the Builders Who dissented from the Enterprise The Divine Interference The Confusion of Tongues: Inquiry as to its Character, 321 EVENING TWENTY-SIXTH. The Confusion of Tongues : Inquiry as to its Character, continued Historic Notices and Traditions of the Events at Babel The Chieftain Nimrod Genealogical Table of Postdiluvian Patri- archs to the time of Abraham Concerning Date of Events, Amount of Population, etc., 333 EVENING TWENTY-SEVENTH. References to Decree of Distribution The Idea of a Previous Division The Dispersion considered Geographical Settle- ment of Tribes or Families A. Descendants of Japheth B. Descendants of Ham C. Descendants of Shem, 346 Xll CONTENTS. EVENING TWENTY-EIGHTH. Descent of all Mankind from Noah ; or the Unity of the Human Races The Five Varieties of Blumenbach, viz. : the Cauca- sian, Mongolian, Ethiopian, American, and Malay : The Leading Characters of Each, . .' 359 EVENING TWENTY-NINTH. Descent of all Mankind from Noah ; or the Unity of the Human Races, 372 EVENING THIRTIETH. Demand upon Advocates of Plurality Archaeological Objection against the doctrine of the Universal Descent of Mankind from Noah considered, 38o EVENING THIRTY-FIRST. Consideration of the Archaeological Objection, continued Scripture Chronology The Common Chronology may be retained A frequent Error in Tables Antediluvian Longevity Post- diluvian Reduction of term of Life How to be accounted for The Life of the Patriarch how eventful ; and what the Magnitude of the Events The Patriarch's Influence, how benign and lasting His Memorial with us, 398 NOAH AND HIS TIMES. INTRODUCTION. IT was about sunset on a day in the middle of November, of the year 185-, that three young men were seen crossing the beautiful green plat termed " the square," in the delight- ful borough of , and entering the mansion of a Mr. . This gentleman, who was for several years employed in an important professional vocation in , had, on account of somewhat impaired health, retired from that station, and, with his small family, had recently come to reside in this charming locality. It was a borough noted not only for its beauty, but for the elevated and excellent character of its population. Belonging to the families of its residents were some fifty young men, who had formed the resolution to avail themselves of every facility within reach for augmenting their intellect- ual stores, and preparing to be otherwise than useless drones in whatever community, severally, they should be afterward assigned their permanent abode ; and having learned that among his various other acquirements, Mr. had turned his attention somewhat specially, and from choice, to those de- partments of knowledge which sustain an interesting connection with Sacred History, they had held a meeting, and after 2 14 INTRODUCTION. deliberation had appointed the three young gentlemen alluded to, to wait on him with an invitation and request that he would favor them with a series of Evening Lectures upon Noah and his Times. This invitation Mr. promised to take into consideration, and, if they would call the succeeding evening, to give them, then, an answer. Upon their calling, at the time appointed, they received in substance the following reply : So far as falls within the com- pass of my power it will afford me pleasure, young gentlemen, to comply with the invitation and request which you were the commissioned organ in conveying to me last evening. The range of topic which has been suggested is extensive, and will require brevity of treatment of any one part of it. At no previous period was a discussion of the questions which will come before us so important, for never before since man was breathed into being was there the same amount of effort put forth to array Science against Revelation to represent the testimonies of the former as conflicting, and utterly irreconcilable, with the testimonies of the latter. Anti-bibli- cal prejudice, in connection with more or less scientific pos- session or pretension, has specially exerted itself, in -our day, to prove the prime sacred historian to have fallen into many serious mistakes to have penned numerous untruths. It will be our endeavor, among other things, to show that it is not quite so clear as some would have us believe, that the historic statements of Moses are unworthy of credence ; to try to make it appear that as Nature does not, so neither does Scripture, proclaim a falsehood ; that their utterances, so far as both have any thing to say on the same subjects, are not discrepant eminently harmonize. This will indeed constitute but a part of our endeavor. Attempts will also be made to explain the import of a large number of hints given by the archaic writer in that succinct but comprehensive por- INTRODUCTION. 15 tion of the Word of God the first eleven chapters of Gen- esis, and to exhibit some variety of opinion among authors respecting their meaning. As those from whom you come profess alone a desire for instruction, as their number is small, and my vocal power at present quite limited, my efforts before them must not be expected to partake so much of the character of lectures from a platform, as that of conversational or familiar exer- cises. These also will be brief. Please say to the body of whom you are a committee that the exercises will consist of two per week (Tuesday and Fri- day evenings,) until the series shall be completed ; and that on Tuesday evening next, Providence permitting, will be had, in the hall where they are accustomed to assemble, our First Exercise. EVENING FIRST. YOUNG GENTLEMEN : Whilst I appear before you with some distrust of my ability to satisfy your reasonable desires and expectations, I cannot at the same time say that it is with reluctance. Your age, your thirst for knowledge, and the intrinsic interest and importance of the subjects upon the investigation of which you desire to enter, were all such as to urge me to accept of the respectful invitation which through your committee was presented me. In addition, I am thus furnished an occasion to enlarge my acquaintance with truths and facts which at no previous period engaged so interested and general atten- tion, or about which doubt or incredulity has so much hovered. NOAH AND HIS TIMES : To the Sacred Annals we must resort where else can we ? for prime and reliable infor- mation in regard to these ? I say, where else can we ? for no history save that of which Moses is the writer, reaches within centuries of the period in which that patriarch was engaged in acting his part on this sublunary theatre. Yet within how circumscribed a compass is embraced all that the writings of that sacred archaic historian contain respecting them. A few short chapters what can be penned in some half a dozen hours and you come to the end of all that the first inspired annalist has to say about them. Noah : The first mention which the pen of history makes IMPORT OP THE NAME NOAH. 17 of him is in the closing part (verses 28 32,) of the 5th chapter of Genesis. The original terms expressive of his name, TO noach, and cm nahham, denoting rest and comfort, have so much resemblance to each other that we may regard the language as an instance of that paranomasia which is of not infrequent occurrence in the sacred writings. By the prompting of the spirit of prophecy was probably the be- stowal of this name by his father Lamech. Precisely in what sense, however, there was to be in the person of this son a fulfilment of the prediction, is perhaps indeterminable. Bishop Sherlock was of the opinion that the curse upon the earth inflicted in consequence of Adam's sin had, in connec- tion with the progressive increase of corruption and crime, been growing more and more severe ever since the Fall, so that the exertion and toil requisite to bring from the ground a sufficient sustenance for life had become almost intolerable. And those words of Lamech upon conferring the name, and as a reason for it, " This same shall comfort us concerning our work, and the (sorrowful) toil of our hands, because of the ground which the Lord hath cursed," (Gen. 5 : 29,) he supposes to refer to a general expectation that by the inter- vention or instrumentality of some distinguished personage, the rigor of the curse was to be greatly abated, and the earth measurably restored to its primitive fertility and ease of cul- tivation. This personage he conceives that the Sethite Lamech (Sethite, in distinction from one of the same name, the fifth in descent from Cain,) under divine suggestion, recognized in his new-born child, and bestowed upon him a name in accordance with the fact. The prediction thus un- derstood he maintains has been verified by the event ; that the earth, from the time of the flood, was in a good degree restored from the curse laid upon it at the Fall, and is still enjoying the effect of the blessing bestowed upon Noah. Says Bishop Patrick on this point : There was a general 2* 18 WHY THE NAME GIVEN. curse upon the earth for the sin of Adam, and a particular one for the sin of Cain. Now God, Lamech foretells, would in great measure take them both off, and bless the earth to the posterity of this same man (Noah,) who perfected the art of husbandry, and found out fitter instruments for culti- vating the soil than had been previously known. The He- brew interpreters generally expound the declaration, " He shall comfort us concerning our work and the toil of our hands," thus : He shall make our labor in tilling the earth more easy less toilsome to us. Dr. Shuckford (in his Connexions, vol. 1, p. 93,) advances the idea, that Lamech was probably informed from God, that his son Noah should obtain a grant of the creatures for the use of man ; and knowing the labor and inconveniences they were then under, he rejoiced in foreseeing what ease and comfort they would have when they should obtain a large supply of food from the creatures, superadded to what could be produced from the ground by tillage. Ainsworth, in his Annotations, says that this prophecy his father uttered of him, as he that should be a figure of Christ in his building of the ark, and offering of sacrifice, whereby God smelled a savor of rest, and said he would not curse the ground any more for man's sake. And Dr. J. Pye Smith, in his article Noah, in Kitto's Cyclopedia, remarks that the declaration, " This same shall comfort us," &c., contains an undoubted allusion to the penal consequences of the fall in earthly toils and sufferings, and to the hope of a Deliverer excited by the promise made to our First Mother. That this expectation was grounded upon a Divine communication he thinks is to be inferred from the importance attached to it, and the confidence of its expression. We have thought it proper to cite this variety of opinions in detail, because of its relation to the very name of the patriarch whose Life and Times are to be so much with us NOAH'S CONTEMPORARIES. 19 the theme of meditation. Suffer me, in conclusion on this point, to remark, that while the father of Noah, in the con- ferring of this appellation, may perhaps have had respect to the precious Messianic promise relating to the seed of the woman, and might even have hoped, possibly, that he had obtained that promised seed ; yet it may be imagined more probable that Lamech spoke by the spirit of prophecy, which revealed to him, thus early, that our patriarch would be an extraor- dinary person ; and not only a great comfort to his parents and relatives amidst their toils and sorrows, but likewise a great blessing to mankind ; with especial reference to the preservation of the human species with him in the ark, which typified the salvation of sinners by Jesus Christ. Noah lived, in all, 950 years. Six hundred of these he passed in the Old World, so to speak, and three hundred and fifty in the New. He was born, according to the Hebrew or Usherian chronology, Anno Mundi, 1056, and died A. M. 2006 that is, according to the chronology just referred to, two years before the birth of Abraham. You see, then, young gentlemen, the extent of the field over which you have requested me to lead you. With nearly all of the Antedilu- vian Patriarchs Noah was contemporary I mean, he was on the earth a portion of the same time that they were. He was not acquainted with Adam, nor even with his son Seth, being born 126 years after the death of the former, and 14 years subsequent to the decease of the latter. With all those of Adam's sons and daughters, however, who were born twenty or more years posterior to Seth's birth, and lived to as great age as did Seth, he might have been acquainted ; and if he lived in the same part of the world and had in- tercourse with them, he could from their lips have learned what they heard their father Adam relate about the creation about paradise, its locality, its scenery, beauties, and the situation, enjoyments, and avocations of the primal pair whilst 20 THE ANTEDILUVIAN EVENTS HE WITNESSED. there was a retention of their innocence ; of the temptation in its various particulars ; of the guise and manner in general in which the Tempter appeared ; what he uttered ; the sort of wiles and arts he practised ; of the Fall, and the way in which Jehovah appeared to and accosted our first parents ; their emotional experience, efforts for concealment, arraign- ment, trial, and ejectment from the garden ; how and where they were afterwards situated ; the dealings of the Lord with them during their subsequent lifetime ; the special events they witnessed and scenes passed through ; together with those interesting particulars relating to the kind and measure of intercourse Jehovah had with them, and disclosures he made to them. Or, as Adam lived until Noah's grandfather, Methuselah, was 243 years old, and Lamech, his father, 56 ; and as the former lived till the very year of the Deluge, and the latter departed this life only five years prior to that event, Noah could have enjoyed the privilege of hearing each of these recount what they may have heard from Adam's and Eve's lips concerning the objects and events a moment since men- tioned. As to those antediluvian patriarchs whose names are re- corded, it is worthy of note and you may see it by looking over the Table I will, before closing this Exercise, give you that Noah lived back in Enos's (Adam's grandson's) time, eighty-six years : in Enos's son Cainan's lifetime, 179 years ; lived as a contemporary with Mahalaleel, 234 years ; with Jared, 366 ; with Methuselah, his grandfather, 600 years ; and with his father, 595 for Noah's father, as you will discover by the table, died five years before his grand- father. Accordingly, Noah was witness to a not inconsider- able portion of the events which transpired anterior to the Flood, as well as those occurring during the period of 350 years subsequently. Accept, young gentlemen, of a copy, each, of the Table to which I have alluded. Compare it at ANTEDILUVIAN PUBERTY. 21 your leisure with the Genealogical Record which the sacred historian has furnished in the 5th of Genesis. ** || JB| 09 i 0) o 8 . ACCORDING TO THE HEBREW TEXT. .a * IN I'll 9 ji M co <-* ^ K*> .6 rt rt ^ p> O n^ Q fi*s r^ +J LJ S 0) "5 M > W.3 M c3 1 3 P 1 130 800 930 930 Seth, 130 105 807 912 1042 235 90 815 905 1140 325 70 840 910 1235 Mahalaleel, 395 65 830 895 1290 460 162 800 962 1422 622 65 300 365 987 687 187 782 969 1656 874 182 595 777 1651 Noah, 1056 500 950 2006 Our patriarch (Noah) was in the 600th year of his age when the overflowing Flood came (Gen. 7: 11) which diluvial event occurred in the year of the world 1656. It is noteworthy that all the antediluvian patriarchs, except Noah, visited the earth ere the first father of our race left it. La- mech ; Noah's father, as has been already hinted, was a half- dozen years beyond half a century old at the time that Adam encountered the dying strife. These all, Noah solely excepted, might receive from their first father's own mouth a full and minute account of the scenes he witnessed, and the events transpiring in time's dawn. Whether, in the genealogical record contained in the 5th of Genesis, the son whose name is given was the first or eldest child of each patriarch, or whether these all, or a part of them, had children born to them antecedently, cannot, except in Seth's case, be determined, any more than it can be cer- tainly determined whether those antediluvians arrived at maturity as early as mankind do now, or whether they ripened then more slowly, and in proportion as they lived 22 A PROMINENT EVENT OF ENOS's DAT. longer. Upon that statement, (Gen. 5 : 6,) " Seth lived an hundred and five years and begat Enos," Bishop Patrick re- marks, that we must not think Seth lived so long before he begat any children any more than that Adam had none till he was 130 years old, when he begat Seth. We must consider, says he, that Moses sets down only those persons by whom the line of Noah was drawn from Seth, and Abraham's line from Noah, by their true ancestors, whether they are the eldest of the family or not. Seth, he continues, it is likely had many other children ere Enos was born, as Methuselah, we may be confident, had before the birth of Lamech ; and Lamech had prior to the birth of Noah, though Moses does not mention those elder children of Lamech, because he was here concerned only to inform us who was the father of Noah. If the antediluvians did arrive at puberty as early as human beings do now, it surely is not improbable that every one of them had children born to them, and in not a few cases quite a number, anterior to the one in each case whose name is given for the youngest period in which any of them, after Adam, is spoken of as having a son born, is at the age of 65 years, and only two at so early a period of life even as that; whilst the majority were over a hundred; one 162, another 182, and gtill another 187, before the birth of the recorded son. As Adam's grandson, Enos, lived until Noah was fourscore and four years old, the latter may have become directly, per- sonally, acquainted with the event have obtained a more certain knowledge in regard to it, than, as will soon appear, his descendants, at least modern, have acquired related in Gen. 4 : 26 to wit : " Then began men to call upon the name of the Lord." We do not lay claim to so large a share of pre- sumption as to venture to speak positively concerning the import of these words, as used in the original. The language has been the source of much perplexity and trouble to biblical critics and expounders. This has arisen in part from the paren- WHAT ITS CHARACTER. 23 thetic character of the sentence, and its extreme brevity ; but more still from the varieties of signification of the verb ibn halal, which may be understood as denoting both to begin, and to profane. If the former rendering be adopted, then the declaration contained in the passage will be, "A beginning was made for calling by or upon the name of Jeho- vah. If the latter be chosen, then the passage may be read : " Profanation was committed for calling the name of Jehovah," i. e., applying the divine name to other objects. Among those biblical expositors who have selected the first of the two meanings specified and we believe they constitute the major number there is still some variety of interpreta- tion of the clause, yet of an affiliated or kindred character understanding the words to indicate an event favorable to piety. That variety may be summarily presented : Then began the worshippers of Jehovah to be distinguished by the appellation, sons of God. (This interpretation was adopted by Aquila, Piscator, Diodati, Hackspan, Leclerc, Bishop Patrick, Wells, Deserer, &c. Deserer's note merits citation : " Some pious families began to call themselves sons, in the Hebrew idiom equivalent to disciples, learners, of God, in order to distinguish themselves from the sons of men, those who disregarded the instructions of divine authority, and gave themselves up to wickedness.)" Then commenced not a first offering of prayer to the Lord, since our first parents, Abel, Seth, and many others, were previously, no doubt, true supplicants and worshippers but an increase of the spirit of true religion. Then the godly " began to stir up themselves" as Matthew Henry has it, " to do more in religion than they had done perhaps not more than had been done at first, but more than had been done of late, since the defection of Cain. Or now there was so great a reformation in religion that it was, as it were, a new beginning of it." Then began among men an extension of religious privileges. Then commenced they the erection of temples, being desirous to offer worship to 24 WHAT ITS CHARACTER. the Lord of Hosts in public and solemn assemblies, and not solely, as formerly, in their closets and families. Then be- gan the pious to make a more open and formal profession of religion giving to the church of God a more thoroughly organized form, and marked visibility in this way rendering more distinguishable and wide the distance between the friends and the enemies of God ; and increasing the obstacles to all improper and injurious association betwixt the former and the latter. We will only further remark, on this side, that the Syriac version, and the Latin of Jerome, both make JZnos, exclusively, the agent of the verb : " Then he (Enos) began to call upon the name of the Lord." On the other hand, as the word bbn halal, denotes also to profane an obvious instance of which you may witness by turning to Lev. 19 : 12, there have been not a few who have understood the declaration in the passage referred to, to be made of the ivicked considering the meaning of the historian to be, that the most holy name which belongs to the Creator and Possessor of heaven and earth alone the name Jehovah was now profaned by wicked men; being im- piously given unto creatures, particularly the sun, and other heavenly bodies. This is the more common view among the learned Jewish writers and the learned Selden and several others join them in it. The Jewish writer, Maimonides, in his Treatise on Idolatry, holds forth this view, and has dis- cussed it at some length. You will not tire if I give it you : " In the days of Enos, the sons of Adam erred with great error ; and their error was this : They said, forasmuch as God ' ath created these stars and spheres to govern the world, and set them on high, and imparted honor unto them, and they are ministers that minister before him ; it is meet that man should laud and glorify, and give them honor. For this is the will of God, that we magnify and honor whomsoever He magnifieth and honoreth: even as a king would have them that stand before him ; and this is the honor WHAT ITS CHARACTER. 25 of the king himself. When this thing was come up into their hearts, they began to build temples unto the stars, and to offer sacrifice unto them, and to laud and glorify them with words, and to worship before them, that they might in their evil opinion obtain favor of the Creator. And this was the sort of idolatry, &c. And, in process of time, there stood up false prophets among the sons of Adam, who said that God had commanded and said unto them, Worship such a star, or all the stars, and do sacrifice unto them thus and thus : and build a temple for it, and make an image of it, that all the people, women and children, may worship it ; and the false prophet showed them the image which he had feigned out of his own heart, and said it was the image of such a star, which was made known to him by prophecy. And they began after this manner to make images in temples, and under trees, and on tops of mountains and hills, and as- sembled together and worshipped them. And this thing was spread through all the world, to serve images with services different one from another, and to sacrifice unto and worship them. So in process of time, the Glorious and Fearful name (of Jehovah) was forgotten out of the mouth of all the living, and out of their knowledge, and they acknowledged him not. And there was found no people on the earth that knew aught save images of wood and stone, which they had been trained up from their childhood to worship and serve, and to swear by their names. And the wise men that were among them, as the priests and such like, thought there was no god save the stars and spheres, for whose sake and in whose likeness they had made these images. But as ; r the Rock Everlasting, there was no man that acknowledged Him or knew Him, save a few persons in the world, as Enoch, Methuselah, Noah, Shem, and Heber. And in this way did the world walk and converse, till that pillar of the world, Abraham, our Father, was born." That the world was, even thus early, in such a melancholy 26 THE NAMES EXPRESSIVE. state with regard to morals and religion as to favor this view, has by some been understood to be indicated by the name jEnos, which signifies sorrowful his father, a good man, and grieved at the degeneracy, present and prospective, of a large portion of mankind, being prompted to confer the name on this account. It was customary in those times, as it has indeed been in later, to bestow names on children according to the occurrences in life, or the expectations of parents. Hence also Enos, perceiving the posterity of Cain to deteri- orate, morally, as time progressed, was affected by this fact, and feared the consequences of it as to themselves, and that the moral contamination might spread and seriously affect others, and therefore appropriated to his son the name Cainan a word signifying Lamentation, or as some define it, Possessor, as if apprehending that this his child might become possessor of a like moral malady with that which he witnessed Cain's descendants disseminating. Though Cainan had his name from the wickedness of Gain's family, yet he himself was resolved to maintain the true worship of God in his own, and therefore called his son Mahalaleel, i. e., a Praiser or* Worshipper of God. In the days of Mahalaleel, as tradition tells us, a defection occurred among the progeny of Seth, who went down from the elevated or hill country where they dwelt, and allied themselves to the daughters of the Cainite stock; and therefore Mahalaleel denominated his son Jared, which signifies descending. Jared, to guard against the very general corruption, devoted himself and his descendants more zealously to the service of the Lord Almighty, and accordingly designated his son by the name Enoch, which means a dedication. Enoch, by the spirit of prophecy, foreseeing the destruction which would come upon the world, immediately after the death of his son, called him Methuselah the first part of which (methu) signifies he dies ; and the other part (selah) denotes the sending forth (as of water), indicating what actually at length occurred, for THE NAMES EXPRESSIVE. 27 Methuselah died in the year of the deluge. Methuselah, perceiving the wickedness in the posterity of Seth, as well as that of Cain, to grow every day worse and worse, called his son Lantech, which intimates a poor man, humbled, and afflicted with grief, for the present corruption, and fear of future punishment. And Lamech, conceiving better hopes of his son, gave him the name Noah, the import of which we have already stated. These all had " sons and daughters," probably a large number of each, but the historian, under the guidance of the Spirit, has not furnished us with a catalogue of the nu- merous collateral branches, but only of the principal persons by whom, in a right line, the succession was continued down to Noah, and thence to Abraham, the Founder of the Jewish nation. <?$5*fe EVENING SECOND. YOTJNG GENTLEMEN : One of our patriarch's more immediate ancestors there was, whom, on account of his comparatively brief stay on the shores of time, Noah never saw. We allude to his great grandfather, Enoch, whose removal from the world took place Anno Mundi 987, i. e., 69 years anterior to Noah's introduction upon this earthly platform. Yet his ears had heard his father, grandfather, and others, speak so much about him, that it seemed to him almost as if he had had a personal and some- what intimate acquaintance with him. This Enoch a very different character, by the way, from a son of Cain by the same name was in some respects one of the most remarka- ble personages of antediluvian times. We learn from the epistle of Jude (14th and 15th verses) that he was a prophet of God, foretelling not alone clearly, but in glowing terms, a judgment to come ; and likewise a preacher of righteousness, and a bold, unflinching reprover of the ungodly of his day who, en passant, had not only become, at this so high period of antiquity, numerous, but excessively daring in their impiety. How the apostle Jude was put in possession of what he states in the verses to which we have alluded, there have been vari- ous conjectures concerning. The Jews ascribed to him, among other things, visions and prophecies in abundance, and had a curious tradition that these were arranged by Enoch in a book ; that this book was delivered to his son Methuselah, ENOCH'S TRANSLATION. 29 who, before his death, put it into the hands of Noah, who pre- served it in the ark ; and after the Flood that this book was made known to the world, and handed down from generation to generation. That this is improbable, we need hardly take the pains to declare. There was, however, an Apocryphal Book of Enoch, which its translator, Archbishop Laurence, thinks was written in the reign of Herod. That it was com- posed at least thus early, appears supported by the fact of its being alluded to by Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Clemens Alex- andrinus, Origen, &c. ; and from its being likewise quoted on various occasions in the Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs, which Nitzsch has shown to belong to the latter part of the first or the beginning of the second century. It has been the opinion of some, that Jude cited in substance what he men- tions from it ; and really there is a remarkable similarity, as you will perceive by comparing those verses in Jude to which we have referred, with the following language from the Book of Enoch : "Behold he comes with ten thousands of his saints, to execute judgment upon them, and destroy the wicked, and reprove all the carnal for everything which the sinful and ungodly have done, and committed against him." These words constitute the second chapter of the volume. The conjecture has been entertained by others, that Jude either quoted a traditional prophecy, or had the words apparently cited by him immediately suggested by the Holy Spirit. That Enoch was a man of extraordinary sanctity that he was such for one of his day not only, but for any period of the world none, after what the Spirit of Inspiration has averred about him, will be inclined to question. It is asserted of him, that " he walked with God" a form of expression im- plying the closest fellowship with Jehovah which it is possi- ble to enjoy this side of the city of glory. Such a similitude to the spirits of the upper sphere did he, and that, too, early in antediluvian life, bear, that Infinite Love would not suffer him any longer to tarry at such a distance from the measure- 3* 30 ITS INFLUENCE. less Fountain of bliss. "Wishing to have him where sin and sorrow are unknown nearer, much nearer his blazing throne within the encircling effulgence of his glory the Supreme Arbiter, without waiting for him to throw off his mantle, caught him up, and far beyond the gaze of mortals suddenly bearing him, set him down on sunnier heights than mortal vision witnesses. What an exemption from humani- ty's common lot ! With the " King of Terrors," this man never had to maintain a conflict. He obtained the laurel without drawing the blade. In the expressive brevity of In- spiration, " Enoch was translated that he should not see death ; " " he was not, for God took him." Noah, as well as others, heard a great deal about that won- derful occurrence the translation of this his ancestor ; it was still a fresh theme as well as frequent, of conversation, when he was a boy ; it had been but as yesterday since it had occurred, according to the appearance and reckoning of antediluvian times. It was a memorable event truly sufficient to kindle amazement at any period of the world. Very early in life it became a very prominent theme of meditation with our patriarch. He pondered it with intense interest. The evidence it afforded of a, future life of an existence other than earthly, would, it is to be presumed, be not one of the least likely to arrest and hold his attention. Adam had died; Eve, Abel, Seth had died these ere he had stepped on this planet. Since he had become a sojourn- er upon it, his own eyes had witnessed the mortal throes of at least some of his species. He had witnessed the apparent cessation of their being ; had observed the change which had come over their once active forms. Their once spark- ling and rolling eye he had seen grow dim and moveless ; their hands, those executive members, drop by their side, saying in substance as they fell, we have finished our work. He had marked the vital current to stop and freeze in their systems. He knew where all that had been visible of them DOCTRINE OF A FUTURE STATE. 31 had been deposited. None of them did he witness returning to life ; none of them had he seen moving again among the living. Is there then no future life ? he soliloquizes with anxiety. Where is my great grandfather, Enoch ? Did any one see his eye grow dim ? his hands fall ? his feet refuse to do their office ? Who has seen him die ? What has become of this man, my ancestor ? Who can say that he has borne him away and buried or otherwise disposed of him ? He has not ceased to be r he exists somewhere, though not apparently where mortal vision can behold him. But if he, though re- moved, exists, is his case altogether peculiar ? Does, will, no other one have an existence after removal? Thus Noah's mind operated, reasoned ; and thus also other antedi- luvian minds doubtless moved and reasoned. Enoch, indeed, might have been borne aloft, Elijah-like, as in their sight. His neighbors may have seen the chariot bearing him into the blue heavens ; might have inquired, Whither is he going ? and received such an answer as to silence all doubt in regard to a state of existence beyond this life. The antediluvians needed a lesson on this subject ; they needed to be taught that there is another state of being ; and their great Creator in mercy presented as to their eyesight the immensely inter- esting and important truth. And when our patriarch became a preacher, as we shall see hereafter that he did, he doubt- less insisted much on this doctrine, as now we call it, as a not trifling or unimportant reason why they should not, in the language of the epicure, " Live " while " they live " an ar- gument, and it ought to have been a potent and influential one, why they should not live a life of impiety why they should not provoke but please the Supreme Disposer of their immortal destiny. Some have doubted whether the doctrine of a future state is any where held forth in the Old Testament. Dr. Warbur- ton, who seemed to take pleasure in advancing or advocating some new and startling opinion, and in attacking ordinarily 32 WHEN NOAH BECAME PIOUS. received truths and established principles, has, in his Divine Legation of Moses, (vol. 2, pp. 553-568,) set forth the idea that the Mosaic covenant contained no promises directly re- lating to a future state because, as he argues, Moses was secure of an equal providence, and therefore needed not sub- sidiary sanctions taken from a future state, without the belief of which the doctrine of a universal Providence cannot ordinarily be vindicated, nor the general sanctions of religion secured. We wish you to examine Dr. Warburton's reason- ing when convenient. To me it appears strange that any should hesitate about admitting the doctrine in question to be one of the great things revealed under the ancient economy, since good men, even before Moses, (as we learn from Heb. 11 : 13, 16,) were animated by views of a future state ; as he (Moses) himself plainly was (see verses 24-26 of the same chapter) ; and the promises of heavenly felicity were con- tained even in the covenant made with Abraham, which the Mosaic could not disannul. We have not time even to refer you to the numerous passages of the Old Testament, teaching, as we think, and -plainly, this truth. All that we are concerned to say at present, is, that the historic fact rela- tive to Enoch's translation, as well as that of Elijah, is of such a nature as to impel us to infer the truth respecting which we have spoken.* That our patriarch's soul was warmed and. set on fire by the contemplation of this event, so full of meaning, seems to us unquestionable ; and by it we may imagine that he was stimulated to become an imitator of this wonderful saint, whom God so early received within the gates of pearl ; and * That Old Testament saints indulged an expectation of a state of ex- istence beyond this life is indicated in the following, among numerous other passages, viz. : Gen. 49 : 18 ; Ps. 16 : 9-11 ; Ps. 17 : 15 ; Ps. 73 : 17, 27; Job 19: 25-27; Eccl. 3: 15, 16,21; Eccl. 7: 12, 18; Isa. 3: 10, 11; Isa. 26: 19; Isa. 35 : 10; Ezek. 18: 19,21; Dan. 12 : 2. Let the promises of the Old Testament likewise be carefully inspected. Look, as a specimen, at the following : Dan. 12: 13 ; Hag. 2: 23 ; Zech. 3 : 7. THE CAINITE LINE. 33 that he attained, at least so early as the noon of life, such a character as to piety, that what was said of Enoch was like- wise said of him, that he " walked with God." (Gen. 6 : 9.) Just at what period of life Noah became pious, we are not told ; with such a degree of information, however, we are furnished as to know that when he was no farther advanced than 480 years, i. e., 120 years before the Deluge, he was signalized for his piety. So different was he then from all others on this terrestrial ball, as to be specially distinguished in the divine regards and dealings toward him, (Gen. 6 : 8.) He had, without a peradventure, been, for years previous, stemming the tide of iniquity which had risen to a high pitch some time before, and had been attaining a greater and still greater doleful altitude, until it threatened to bear every thing before it sparing nothing of the semblance of excel- lence or goodness on the globe. To maintain a character for pious devotedness in such a world as this, with so many obstacles in the way, is, under the now existing circumstances, by no means of easy accom- plishment ; requires, indisputably, great strength of the reli- gious principle ; special divine superintendence and gracious influence. How much more difficult to maintain such a character, such an elevation of the spiritual thermometer, under the circumstances at that time existing ! circum- stances which we shall ere long somewhat specially consider. If we turn our attention to the Cainite branch of the An- tediluvians, it may be remarked that as Cain came into being almost as soon as his father, being probably not more than one or two years his junior, and as it is presumable that he was not for a greater number of years than Adam an earthly sojourner, he must have ceased to be seen among the living^ ere our patriarch's birth. It is to be believed also, that several of Cain's older children had journeyed into the land of souls. With some of his younger, had his place 6f residence been near, he might have been a junior contempo- rary not only, but have had an undesirable acquaintance. 34 THE CAINITE LINE. But Cain, from a sense of guilt ; from a strong aversion to everything having the semblance of piety ; and from regard to his own safety, for notwithstanding what the Lord had told him, he no doubt had fearful apprehensions of having Abel's blood avenged on him, and consequently, instead of being desirous to be located in immediate propinquity, wished to get and keep, if not at a respectful, at least at an unannoy- ing and safe distance from the other branches of Adam's progeny, from these causes the belief is to be entertained that he wandered and at length fixed on some locality as a place of abode, far eastward from where his parents, brothers and sisters had their residence. Hence our patriarch may have come in contact with none of them in the earlier part of his antediluvian sojourn. Yet from childhood, or adoles- cence, he may, through one or another channel, have received some information in regard to them ; something concerning the immoralities prevalent among them ; about their infi- del opinions, or idolatrous rites and practices rites and practices which, as you have heard, probably originated, if they did not become notorious, so early as the days of Enos. The sacred penman has given us no very minute or ex- tended history of the Cainites. He has afforded us a brief genealogical list the names of the heads of some genera- tions but did not, as he condescended to do in the case of the Sethites, tell us so much as the term of life of any of them. " Look," says Dr. Kitto, (Bib. Illustrations, vol. 1, p. 98,) " at the two lists of the descendants of Cain and of Seth respectively. In the former are simply names, inter- rupted by a snatch of old verse, by the account of some equivocal proceedings of Lamech, and by a hint concerning the invention of arts. In the genealogy of the line of Seth, the persons acquire distinct individuality. Not only the names are given, but how old they were when favored with a son, how long they lived after, and what was the sum of their age. The interruptions in the (Sethite) list have no respect to inventions or any such matters, but have reference THE CAINITE LINE. 35 to the religious character or religious hopes of the individ- uals. The Cainite list is of the earth, earthy ; the Sethite list has a savor of heaven, and yet is of the highest interest, being in fact the basis of chronology and history." " The righteous shall be had in everlasting remembrance but the memory of the wicked shall rot." I will, young gentlemen, present you a table containing the genealogical list of the Cainites, drawn from Gen. 4 : 17 22 ; and, for the sake of easy comparison, in a sort of parallelism, the genealogical list of the Sethites. Here it is : ADAM EVE. Cain Abel * . Seth. Enoch. Enos. I I Irad. Cainan. I Mehujael. Mehalaleel. Methusael. Jared. I I Adah Lamech Zillah. Enoch. Methuselah. Jabal. . Jubal. .Tubal-Cam. .Naamah. Lamech. Noah. Japheth Shem Ham. 36 NOMINAL SIMILARITIES. You observe in this list some remarkable similarities and resemblances between Cainites and Sethites as to name. You find, for instance, the father of Methuselah bearing the same name with the son of Cain ; and the son of Methuselah the same name with the son of Methusael. There are strik- ing resemblances in sound between other names of the two branches. This is hardly to be wondered at, considering that there was but one language in existence among mankind before the deluge. The resemblances, however, except in the two cases which are alike, are rather in sound than in sense. The inference from resemblance, and from the import especially of the names given to some of Cain's progeny, in favor of the piety of these latter an inference which has by some been drawn does not appear to me to have a very firm support, inasmuch as the religious aspect of those names in the case of the Cainites may be, and probably in fact was, that of idolatry. Something worthy of note is given us in relation to the Cainite Lamech. His is the first recorded instance of polyg- amy, (Gen. 4:19;) a practice which directly contravenes the original ordinance of Heaven, that two only should con- stitute one flesh; and for introducing which, Lamech is con- demned to infamous notoriety as long as the sacred narrative shall be read. Those who desert God's church and ordi- nances, young gentlemen, lay themselves open to all manner of temptation. Highly favored and blessed are they who have the checks and restraints which these impose. Perhaps it may not be out of place here to remark, that the words of this Lamech to his two wives, (Gen. 4 : 24, 25,) have very much perplexed biblical interpreters. A tradition (Jewish) says that Lamech, growing blind, when hunting killed Cain ignorantly, believing that he killed some beast ; and that afterward he slew his own son, Tubal-Cain, who had been the cause of this murder, because he had directed him to shoot at a certain place in the thicket where he heard something stir. THE CAINITE LAMECH. 37 Onkelos, who wrote the first Chaldee Paraphrase on the Pentateuch, takes quite a different view, however, from this. He reads the words with an interrogation : " Have I slain a man to my wounding ? and a young man to my hurt ? " Ac- cordingly he paraphrases the passage thus : " I have not killed a man that I should bear the sin of it, nor have I de- stroyed a young man, that my offspring should be cut off for it." Shuckford has improved this interpretation by supposing that Lamech was endeavoring to reason his wife and family out of their fear of having the death of Abel revenged upon them, they being of the posterity of Cain. As if he had said, " What have we done that we should be afraid ? We have not killed a man, nor offered any injury to our brethren of any other family ; and if God would not allow Cain to be killed, who had murdered his brother, but threatened to take seven-fold vengeance on any that should kill him ; doubtless they must expect much greater punishment who should pre- sume to kill any of us. Therefore we may surely look upon ourselves as safe under the protection of the law and of the providence of God. As the Hebrew particle " for " has sometimes a conditional meaning equivalent to if, although, supposing that, Lamech's words are susceptible of a hypothetical interpretation. " Sup- pose that when designedly and dangerously wounded by a murderous weapon in the hand of a ruffian, I should slay my assailant, whether a grown man or a daring youth, yet as it would be done in self-defence, I should not incur the guilt of murder. For if the man that should have killed Cain, who slew his brother without provocation, were to be punished seven-fold, then he who should undertake to inflict vengeance upon me for slaying a man in my own defence, shall be pun- ished seventy and seven fold." Thus one sinner takes liberty to sin from the suspension of judgment toward another. Bush, in his note on the words, says, " The speech was perhaps prompted by Lamech, having witnessed the mischievous 4 38 THE CAINITE LAMECH. effects of some of his sons' newly invented instruments of iron and brass, which probably began to be wielded to the in- jury or destruction of human life." The Chaldee renders the passage, '< For I have not killed a man that I should bear sin for him : nor destroyed a young man that my seed should be consumed for him." The speech is in hemistichs, according to the genius of the Hebrew poetry, and, as it seems, was not written by Moses, but handed down by tradition. This Lamech, Josephus says, had by his two wives seventy- seven children. How many soever he had, the archaic record gives us the names of but three sons and one daughter. Yet we have no reason from this circumstance to infer that he had no more than three, any more than that the other antedilu- vians were the parents of no other children than those whose names are on record. Perhaps in regard to no one item do the conceptions of ordinary readers come farther short of the reality, than concerning the number of the proximate offspring of these millenary parents who lived beyond the flood. Think of the number, we will not say of years merely of centuries in which the process of pro-creation with parental couples would ordinarily continue. Josephus's statement, touching the number of Lamech's offspring, does not appear to us exaggerated. Probability favors the idea that this Cainite bigamist was the father of a greater rather than of a less number. Being the seventh from Adam, as was the Sethite Enoch, this descendant of Cain was probably a contemporary with that holy man ; though, being possessed of a very dissimilar char- acter, and consequently unprepared to ascend with him in his chariot of fire to paradise, it may be presumed that mercy permitted him to continue so much longer an inhabitant of earth as to live four or five centuries contemporaneously with Noah. Infinite benevolence not seldom suffers very bad men to tarry in this world until their face is covered with wrinkles and their head with snows, inasmuch as it is the best world ANTEDILUVIAN ARTS. 39 they are likely ever to have to live in. Whether our patri- arch's ministrations of remonstrance and love ever reached this sinner may be considered doubtful. It does npt appear to me a wild conjecture that he died as he lived a poor, impenitent, unreformed creature. Concerning the sons of this Lamech we mean the three whose names are given by the historian there is something truly noteworthy related : that is, that they were the inven- tors or special promoters of useful arts. It is said of Jabal, that he was " the father of such as dwell in tents, and have cattle," (Gen. 4: 20,) Hebrew, " the father of the inhabitants of the tent," Chaldee, " the master." The original author, de- viser or founder of any particular craft or vocation, is styled the father of such as prosecute it. The nomadic mode of life, although not entirely unknown before, for sheep had pre- viously, even so early as Abel's time (Gen. 4 : 2,) been kept, demanding a measure of superintending vigilance and care, such as belongs to a shepherd, yet appears to have been then organized into a distinct form of social existence. As this mode of life required frequent change of locality for the accommodation of the flock or herd with renewed supplies of water and pasturage, there was a call for such a sort of hab- itation as was easy of erection and of transfer. Neces- sity, therefore, suggested and at length led to the invention of tents, in the room of more permanent and costly structures. Here is a fact not unworthy of note, because of its bearing on a favorite theory of not a few, as to the primeval condition of the human family. Instead of the rude tent, pertaining specially to the roving, savage mode of life, being of earliest invention or adoption, thirteen centuries passed ere this sort of structure was known. Fixed habitations were of prior origin, and these in such clusters sometimes as to constitute cities and villages a mode of life indicating the higher con- dition of social being. Indeed, the first born man, mark it, built a city, (Gen. 4: 17) ; the tent came later by more than 40 ANTEDILUVIAN ARTS. a thousand years. Cast this fact, young gentlemen, you may in the teeth of those who would warmly contend for the, to them, fond hypothesis that man advanced progressively to civilization from a savage state. Houses preceded tents; towns and cities went before encampments ; the settled was anterior to the wandering and nomadic life. Confirmatory of this, our first father, immediately upon leaving the garden, entered on agriculture (Gen. 3 : 23) an employment not favorite with savages, and one demanding a fixed residence. Of Jabot, another son of the polygamist, it is narrated that he " was the father of all such as handle the harp and organ," (Gen. 4 ; 21). It is not to be imagined that the ear of an antediluvian had never been previously regaled by strains of melody. Not only had the feathered songsters been pouring forth, from the beginning, their notes of sweetness, but the human voice had oft charmed the listener with its ravishing music. But now appears to have been the period when instruments were invented to aid the human voice, or add to the pleasures of man by enlarging the resources of this choice fine art, instruments of greater compass or power than men's vocal organs. Upon the precise form and construction of those instruments of which Jubal is here said to have been the inventor, there can of course be no pronouncing with certainty. The harp was doubtless a stringed instru- ment played upon by the hand, as was David's, or, as Jose- phus intimates, with the plectrum or bow. The organ which Jubal invented and gave instruction upon, is not to be supposed to resemble the modern instru- ment bearing that name. It was a wind instrument composed probably of a few pipes of unequal length and thickness, joined together ; being nearly identical with the pipe of Pan among the Greeks, or that simple instrument termed a mouth- organ, which is still in common use in some parts of Europe. For my sake, as well as yours, we here conclude the evening's Exercise. EVENING THIRD. YOUNG GENTLEMEN: You remember the topic with which we closed the last Exercise. Tubal-cain, another son of Lamech, the bigamist, but by a different wife, the sacred narrator introduces to our notice as " an instructor of every artificer in brass and iron," (Gen. 4: 22). As brass is a factitious metal, composed of copper and zinc, it may be believed that instead of it, literally, copper is here meant. Observe you will that this artificer is not here spoken of as the "father" or inventor of the art of working these metals. It is hardly to be presumed that all the agricultural and architectural operations prior to his time could have been prosecuted without any use of metals. The language does not imply this. But from it we are led to believe that this man so greatly improved the art, and so excelled in the manufacture of the various implements of husbandry, architecture, and other instruments of utility and convenience, and as this was getting to be a period of violence weapons of attack and defence, that he became famous for his ingenuity and skill, and a very successful instructor of others. From the name of this artificer is thought to be derived the Vulcan of the Greeks, the fabled god of smiths. So great appear to have been Tubal-cain's improvements in metallurgy, and so useful a man to have become in his line, that scarcely an ancient nation can be found that has not preserved some traditional notices of him. 42 ANTEDILUVIAN ARTS. Of a sister of Tubal-cain the pen of the sacred historian makes mention but gives us naught concerning her but her name. Yet this, be it observed, is more than is said of any of the fairer sex save three, from the Creation down to this time. Tradition says more of her than does Moses, yet even it is very taciturn concerning her only reporting that she was the inventor of the arts of spinning and weaving. The word Naamah signifies fair or beautiful. Was her beauty productive of such effects as to lead to the inscription of her name on such a tablet ? or what else was the cause of its mention ? Let those who would fain find out the cause of everything, enlighten us in this simple matter, if they can in weightier things about which Scripture is silent. " To what she owed her fame," says one, "a fame of 6000 years must remain inscrutable. As one finds among the ruins of time some old gray monument, too important and distin- guished to have been constructed for a person of mean note, but discovers thereon only a NAME, which the rust of ages has left unconsumed so is it with Lamech's illustrious daughter." Whether among the Sethites, and other lines of Adam's descendants, arts were equally the object of attention, we are not in possession of the necessary data for definitely ascer- taining. It is hardly to be supposed that they were inferior to the Cainites in inventive genius or in enterprise ; but as the sacred annalist could find something of a higher nature to record in reference to the Sethites, even the exalted, sub- lime things of religion ; and as he could discover naught better to proclaim of the Cainites, than that among at least a portion of them, arts were cultivated he may thence have been led to be entirely incommunicative or taciturn on this point respecting the former. It is, indeed, possible that the absence of regard for higher interests may have so directed all mental force, among the progeny of Cam, into the chan- nel alluded to, as that they may have excelled the other ANTEDILUVIAN SCIENCE. 43 branches of Adam's family, particularly the progeny of Seth, in this particular. On the whole, from the intimations already referred to in the brief antediluvian annals upon the subject ; from the amount of knowledge imparted to our great primogenitor at the first, and subsequently added to, progressively, during his protracted career ; from the length of antediluvian life, pre- senting a rare opportunity for advancement in this respect ; from the facility afforded by universal and entire uniformity of language ; from the vast extent as to numbers as well as territory to which the population of the world before the Flood must have reached ; from the necessity of their inven- tion and cultivation largely in order to the sustenance, not to say comfort, of said population ; from the fact, additionally, of which we are put in possession by the record, respecting the building of a vessel of such construction, and so im- mense dimensions and capacity, as the ark requiring some variety as well as perfection of mechanical facilities, as well as knowledge and skill in their application and use ; together with the far from diminutive enterprises, the great, magnifi- cent undertakings of Noah's descendants so soon after the deluge as the Scriptures intimate, from all these circum- stances combined, we have forced upon us the conclusion, that the arts must have arrived, during the antediluvian period, at quite a prominent and far-reaching stage of ad- vancement. And what shall we say concerning antediluvian science ? Why, such a question is of itself sufficient to ereate a smile on the ruddy faces of those who are accustomed to imagine the primal state of man to have been one of savageism. Men of this idea find it extremely difficult to conceive how the human kind could have succeeded in emerging from their caves and forests, and approximating in any considerable de- gree a state of civilization, in a period so short as that inter- vening between the creation and the deluge. As we are so 44 ANTEDILUVIAN SCIENCE. feeble-minded as to believe that Moses did not write a book of fables ; or that man was first a savage or, as some savans have seemed sincerely to imagine a monad, or at most an ape ; as we believe savageism to be a degeneracy from a primal state of high civilization ; and was, if we except mor- ally, unknown until some time posterior to the Flood we thence feel no special reluctance to the dropping of a few words about what we a moment ago hinted at, viz., the state of science among the antediluvians. From what has been said by us respecting the advanced stage to which the arts attained in the first age of the world, it is to be inferred that those sciences bearing particularly on practical life, must have h :d some sort of existence, and even have made consid- erable progress since science, if not in form, yet in sub- stance, must lie at the basis of and give birth to them. But not alone those sciences bearing the most intimate relation to the arts are we compelled to infer to have had an exclusive existence. The Mosaic history affords us such intimations as to lead us to the conclusion that others were not altogether unknown. Availing ourselves of those intimations, we pro- ceed to observe, first, that if our primeval progenitor was possessed of such an acquaintance with zoology as we are con- strained from Gen. 2 : 20 to believe he was, it is not irrational to conclude that he would not be so mute, selfish, or regard- less of what related to the comfort and elevation of those immediately descending from him, as to impart none of his knowledge of this interesting branch to them. And if be gave them instruction in this science, it is equally probable that they would not altogether fail to give tuition to their offspring. And thus an acquaintance with this science would in greater or less measure be transmitted from one genera- tion to another till the time of the Flood, and through our patriarch to cis-diluvian times. Nor are we left without at least some feeble intimations in the Mosaic record, that ANTEDILUVIAN SCIENCE. 45 the science of astronomy was not altogether unknown among the inhabitants of the Old World. Time, for instance, was evidently, even then, divided into days, and months, and years ; into summer and winter ; and it is reasonable to infer that the causes of such changes as originated these divisions would not wholly escape the investigating notice of that man who came directly from the Creator's hands, and was, by the same Being that formed him, endowed confessedly on other subjects with no inconsiderable share of knowledge. And if he after any manner became the possessor of some knowledge in this department, a transmission of it would be made to his proximate offspring, and by them to theirs, and so onward ; and thus no one of the generations of the Old World would fail to be reached by some measure of instruction relative to the subject. Josephus says, not Moses, you may there- fore give as much or as little weight to it as you please, that they of Seth's time, " were the inventors of that peculiar sort of wisdom which is concerned with the heavenly bodies and their order " in other words, were the cultivators of the science of astronomy. (Ant. ch. 2, p. 27.) Again ; if the prime head and educator of the antediluvians our first father had not a formal and full acquaintance with, yet that he had a knowledge of some essential principles in bot- any, is shown by the fact that he knew how to distinguish " seed-bearing herb " and " tree in which is a seed-bearing fruit," with " every green herb." (Gen. 1 : 29, 30.) In the history of Noah we are furnished with intimations not only that he was so well acquainted with zoology -as to distinguish between " clean and unclean beasts," and to execute the office of receiving into the ark a specified number of every kind of living creature to do which without mistake in any instance would require no small measure of. zoological knowledge, but, it would seem that of botanic science, particularly of some of its important elements, this our patriarch could not have 4* 46 ' ORIGIN OF ALPHABETIC WRITING. been very ignorant. The vine, the olive, the gopher, are spoken of in such a manner as clearly to intimate a knowledge of their qualities. In regard to mineralogy let us in a word re- mark that the antediluvian population were at least possessed of such a measure of knowledge of it as to distinguish met- als, and understood the leading qualities of the more import- ant of them. The question has been much agitated among savans, When and where originated Alphabetic Writing ? So ad- mirable and useful is this art, that in the absence of reliable historic testimony tending to its decision, we cannot reasona- bly be surprised at it. As has been the case in regard to numerous other matters, different nations of antiquity have claimed the honor of its invention. The pretensions of no one of them have appeared to have anything very substantial to sustain them. * That the art is quite ancient no one does or can dispute. A large number of writers, Jewish and Chris- tian, ancient and modern, have contented themselves with tracing its origin to the time of Moses, alleging that God taught him the form and use of alphabetic letters in the ex- emplar of the two tables containing the Decalogue, written, as the text assures us, with the finger of God, whatever interpretation may be given to that form of expression. In- deed, on this very expression some have essayed to found an argument in favor of its origination at the time of that stu- pendous Sinaitic transaction. The main arguments in support of the position that the art of alphabetic writing was commu- nicated to the great Jewish leader at the period alluded to, may be found set forth by Dr. Winder, in his History of Knowledge. If so important an art had an existence before the Flood, it seems amazing to those entertaining this opin- ion, that, whilst inferior arts are noticed, no mention of it should be discoverable in the record of those earlier times. And between the Flood and the giving of the Law at Sinai ORIGIN OF ALPHABETIC WRITING. 47 there were various periods and transactions, say they, during which, had alphabetical letters existed, they would not only have been of the greatest utility, but next to indispensable, and could scarcely fail of being mentioned. Such periods and events were some of those occurring between the Deluge and the departure of Abraham from Chaldea ; at the subsequent death of Sarah in Canaan, when Abraham bought the cave of Ephron from the sons of Heth verbal exclusively the whole transaction ; at the time of Isaac's marriage, or the event of his league with Gerar, when Jacob went to, tarried with, or returned from Laban ; the affair of Joseph's trans- fer to Egypt, his servitude, and his preferment there ; the descent of the Israelitish family to that land, their heavy oppression, and the stupendous miracles connected with their deliverance. Not only is there no written mention made of these at the period of their occurrence, but all these trans- actions, and all the correspondence between the parties, as well as all the communications of Heaven, were effected by verbal intercourse. A common additional argument in favor of so compara- tively late a date of the origin of the art we are speaking of, is the absence of any special necessity for the existence of such an art in order to the transmission of information to succeeding times, at a period when the lives of individuals extended to wellnigh a thousand years. By three persons, for example Adam, Methuselah, Shem could be handed forward to Abraham and his times all the knowledge attained by them of transactions occurring during the interval of two thousand years and more from the Creation. How differ- ent this from having to rely for information, concerning the incidents of so protracted a season, on the testimony of the memories of a great number of persons. Urged likewise it might be, that such, in various other respects, was the state of things in the earlier periods of the world, as little to de- 48 ORIGIN OF ALPHABETIC WRITING. mand the existence of sucli an art as that of writing par- ticularly that of alphabetic writing.* On the other hand : For the earlier existence of this art the following arguments may be, and most if not all of them have been, urged. 1st. The silence of Scripture upon the subject would sug- gest that so important and essential an art had been known before otherwise the archaic historian would probably have added this extraordinary and divine revelation to the other parts of his information respecting the transactions of Sinai. 2d. The population of the world became so multitudinous, and so widely dispersed, some time anterior to the flood, as to render very desirable and requisite some other mode of communication than the traditional or oral. * The facilities for communicating or handing down information, orally, from the time of Adam to that of Abraham, may be perceived by a glance at the following table. Adam was contemporary with Years. Lamcch, 56 Methuselah, 243 Jared, 470 Mahalaleel, 535 Cainan, 605 Enos, 695 Noah was contemporary with Years. Lamech, 595 Methuselah, 600 Jared, 366 Mahalaleel, 234 Cainan, 179 Enos, 84 Shem was contemporary with Lamech, , 93* Methuselah, , 93 Noah 448 Abraham, 150 ORIGIN OF ALPHABETIC WRITING. 49 3d. In the first ages of the world it would be inexpressi- bly important to preserve, in some fixed or stable form, the knowledge of God, of creation, of the fall, &c., &c. Few persons repeat a thing in the precise words in which a detail was given to them ; and the most trifling change in expres- sion may either destroy or much alter the sense. It was a matter of vast moment that the most exact account should have been preserved of the creation of the world, the apostacy of man, &c., as well as many prophecies of deepest interest to unborn generations. Lists of numbers, genealogical lists, such, for instance, as are to be found in the 5th, 10th, and llth chapters of Genesis lists, chronologically, as well as other- wise, of immense consequence, would hardly be entrusted to uncertain memory, solely, to transmit to future times. " The book of the genealogy " of the antediluvian patriarchs is evidently represented as a written record, (Gen. 5:1.) Inspect, in that 5th chapter, the record of their names, their generations, residues of life, and total ages. Is it probable that these all, embracing thirty large and unconnected numbers, rising from 100 to near 1000 years, would be left to be hand- ed down to the days of Moses by oral tradition merely ? Nor is it scarcely to be credited that a history of centuries, including minute circumstances, changes, and conversations in many different countries, would be entrusted to any barely verbal medium of transmission. 4th. The opinion has been entertained by some writers of distinction Dr. J. Pye Smith is of the number that Moses received important aid in writing the earlier part of the history he penned, from previously existing docu- ments several distinct compositions, marked by their dif- ferences of style and by express formularies of commence- ment. The eminent author just named refers us to the fol- lowing apparently distinct compositions, requesting it to be observed, however, that the evidence is not equally clear in every case, viz., First : Gen. 1 : 1 to 2 : 3 ; Second, 2 : 4 to 50 ORIGIN OF ALPHABETIC WRITING. 3:24; Third, ch. 4 ; Fourth, 5 : 1 to 6 : 8 ; Fifth, 6 : .9 to 9 : 29 ; Sixth, ch. 10 ; Seventh, 9 : 1-9 ; Eighth, 9 : 10- 26. Chapter 36th, of Genesis, is also regarded by him as a separate document. This opinion relative to separate docu- ments is maintained also by Calmet. It strikes some as an objection to this view, that it seems to carry with it an im- pingement of the inspiration of Moses. This however does by no means follow, any more than a quotation from a heathen author by Paul (see Acts 17 : 28) is to be properly consid- ered to militate against the inspiration of that apostle. 5th. It is believed that the Book of Job is the most ancient written document extant. Job himself lived, I know not how long before, but certainly before the Exode. Hales says two hundred years before. Our version of the Scriptures fixes the time of this patriarch at B. C. 1520, i. e., 29 years anterior o the departure of the Israelites from Egypt. Now in perusing the book going under his name, you will find decla- rations proving that letters and looks were known to him and his countrymen, who were a people quite distinct from the Hebrews. Look at Job 19 : 23, 24 ; " Oh that my words were now written ! Oh that they were printed in a book ! that they were graven with an iron pen and lead, in the rock forever." Also, Job 31: 35; "Oh that mine adversary had written a book." Could such expressions have been used, would they have had any meaning, if the art of writing had been then unknown ? And could there have been even such terms as book and pen, or what these terms indicated, had the things themselves no existence? If then it be granted that the Book of Job was written, and such expres- sions were current, anterior to the Exode, it becomes evident from Sacred History that writing was not only in use before the law was given on Mt. Sinai, but that it was also known amongst other patriarchal tribes than the children of Israel. Lightfoot and others think that Elihu wrote the book of Job. Now he was a descendant of Nahor, the brother of Abraham, ORIGIN OF ALPHABETIC WRITING. 51 and might thus be possessed of whatsoever arts the family of Terah had inherited from Noah. In Job 9 : 25, the patri- arch exclaims, " My days are swifter than a post." Does not this imply the regular transmission, from place to place, of written intelligence by appointed messengers ? 6th. Prior to the giving of the law at Sinai, Moses had been commanded to write the important transactions which occurred during the progress of the Israelites from Egypt to Canaan. " And the Lord said unto Moses, Write this for a memorial in a book." An account of the discomfiture of the Amalekites is the first thing said to have been written by the historian. This battle was fought ere the people left Rephidim, (Ex. 17 : 13, 14,) whence they departed into the wilderness of Sinai. 7th. Another argument which we will present on this side of the question is the following : One of the places conquered by the Israelites after they entered Canaan was Debir, the original name of which was Kirjath-sepher, the meaning of which is, the City of Books ; or Kirjath-sannah, the City of Letters, (Josh. 15 : 49 : Judges 1:1.) Where could the Canaanites have obtained their knowledge of letters or of books ? Not from the Hebrews, with whom they were unacquainted, or at war. From other sources they must have derived them. Being descended from Canaan, the son of Ham,, the Canaanites had probably preserved and cultivated the same arts and sciences which Mizraim, another son of Ham, carried into Egypt, (Gen. 10 : 6.) If, young gentlemen, after duly weighing the arguments which have been presented by us on both sides of this inter- esting question, you should on the whole conclude that alpha- betic writing originated at a period at least earlier than the giving of the law at Sinai ; a question still remains to be agitated, whether its origin was so early as before the Deluge^ or at least as to fall within the lifetime of our patriarch. Some of the arguments already advanced you have ob- 52 ORIGIN OF ALPHABETIC WRITING. served to favor the opinion that it was not unknown in ante- diluvian times. Was there a genuine book of Enoch ? Did that man of God, the seventh from Adam, write one? If it could be determined that he did, it would carry the origin of writing, either alphabetic or symbolic, to within a period less, at least, than 1000 years after the creation, and so prior to Noah's time. In the earlier part of this Exercise, allusion was made to what Josephus has said respecting the inventions and discov- eries of the Sethites in Astronomy. That historian has added : " And that their inventions and discoveries might not be lost before they were sufficiently known, upon Adam's prediction that the world was to be destroyed, at one time by water, and at another by fire, they (the Sethites) made two pillars, the one of brick, the other of stone ; they inscribed the discoveries upon them both, that in case the pillar of brick, should be destroyed by the flood, the pillar of stone might remain, and exhibit those discoveries to mankind ; and also inform them that there was another pillar of brick erected by them. Now," adds Josephus, " this remains in the land of Siriad to this day." If any faith were to be reposed in this statement of Jose- phus, it would go to confirm the idea that writing of some form or sort was not unknown or unpractised before the flood. We acknowledge it to be a flimsy basis on which to erect an argument. The story does not, in our view, possess the strongest marks of verity. If all mankind were to be de- stroyed by water, there would then be none to whom those records on the pillars could be conveyed after the flood ; if not all mankind, then those remaining could have otherwise conveyed to the postdiluvian world, a knowledge of the in- ventions or discoveries, the arts and sciences, whatsoever they might be, of the Old World. Besides, those Sethites who could have faith enough to erect such pillars, and exe- DATE OF THE SABBATIC INSTITUTION. 53 cute such inscriptions, would also be apt so to heed and profit by the warning or prophecy, whether coming from Adam or Noah, as to prepare to escape the destruction, and, by a pro- longation of their life, convey to the New World, a knowledge of all that was valuable as to science or art, invention or discovery, of the Old. Some Jewish and oriental traditions ascribe the invention of writing to Seth, the son of Adam ; others to the Sethite Enoch ; but little or no weight is to be attached to them. Yet they do show this, that there was an opinion prevailing to a greater or less extent, anciently, that letters were not of postdiluvian date. In conclusion on this topic, let us in a word remark, that I know not how many have, along with Calmet, been inclined to entertain the idea that alphabetic writing was not, any more than oral language, of human in- vention ; and that when God gave the one, he communicated also that invaluable boon, the other. We know not where, preferably, to introduce the question, Had Noah and his contemporaries any knowledge of the Sabbatic Institution ? Had that choice means of moral re- straint and improvement, and of the cultivation of a right spirit toward the Infinite One, an existence so early as antedilu- vian times ? It is possible that such an interrogatory may have a startling effect upon the mind of some that hear me. You have all, probably, been accustomed to regard the statement made in Gen. 2 : 3 as the history of an occurrence taking place immediately after the six days* work of creation was completed ; that at that so ancient period the Sabbath was instituted. Several biblical interpreters, however, have not been of this opinion, to which number belonged, for instance, Limborch, Leclerc, and Archdeacon Paley. These have regarded the passage in Genesis just referred to, as pro- leptical or anticipatory, and referring to the period when the law of the Sabbath, along with other legal institutions, was given to the Israelites in the wilderness. It does indeed 54 DATE OP THE SABBATIC INSTITUTION. seem a somewhat remarkable circumstance, that there is by the sacred historian* no direct mention made of the Sabbath be- tween Gen. 2 : 3, and Ex. 16:23. It is this silence of the his- torian that is urged as a principal argument in favor of the sentiment to which we have adverted. Yet that declaration in the second chapter of Genesis has in itself every appearance of being in the strictest sense historic in other words, as relating an event occurring immediately after the creation . and the reason assigned there for its institution, " Because that in it he (the Lord) rested from all his work which God created and made," does satisfactorily to our mind indicate it. As to that silence of Moses to which allusion has been made, it appears to us that it cannot warrant our inferring that the Sabbath was not known or at all observed by pious pa- triarchs of earliest times, since probability is far from favor- ing the idea that they had no stated time for rest or devotion ; or that they were left destitute of so salutary an institution. Besides, it might be argued on the same principle, that the Sabbath was wholly lost sight of or unobserved from Moses to David, since in the history of that so great inter- vening period there is no mention of the day. On the same ground, moreover, it might be pleaded that among the Israelites there was no recognition or observance of the rite of circum- cision from their settlement in Canaan to the circumcision of Christ, since no notice is taken of such a thing in all that intervening time. Again: There are not obscure indica- tions that the hebdomadal division of time was observed by the early patriarchs, and that the Sabbath was regarded as the day for religious worship. Look at Gen. 4: 3, " And in process of time," &c. The words rendered " in process of time " literally signify " at the end of days ; " or, " at the cutting off of days " at the close of a section of days a very natural expression for the end of a week. If such be the meaning, it would seem to refer to the division of time just previously mentioned, and also the use of this day for DATE OF THE SABBATIC INSTITUTION. 55 sacred exercises. The same hebdomadal division of time appears to have been observed by our patriarch. The com- mand to enter the ark was given seven days ere the coming of the waters of the flood. (Gen. 7 : 4-10.) Seven days elapsed between the times of sending forth the dove. (Gen. 8 : 10-12.) Are there not here discernible indications that this division of time was not incidental that it was a settled one and observed according to an original com- mand ? Seven days, or a whole week, were devoted by Jo- seph to the mourning for his father. Job, also, and friends ob- served the term of seven days (Job 2 : 13). Again : The first mention of the Sabbath in Exodus occurs before the giving of the law (Ex. 16 : 23) ; consequently, the obligatoriness of the Sabbath is acknowledged, irrespective of the Mosaic law ; and when alluded to there, mark how it is done. Who can help seeing that it is spoken of as a thing then already known ? The hebdomadal method of dividing time, it is worthy to be observed, prevailed even in those heathen nations who can be supposed to have had no knowledge of the law of Moses. And we actually find that they accounted one day of the seven more sacred than the rest. Thus Heriod styles the seventh day, the illustrious light of the sun, And Homer says, E36o[taT7] 6' tjireiTa K.arri'kvd ev ispov " Then came the seventh day, which is sacred or holy." All the nations of the East, indeed, have in all ages made use of this week of seven days, for which it is difficult to account without admitting that this knowledge was derived from the common ancestors of the human race. Without adding any more in reference to this question, we trust you are prepared to admit with us that the blessing of a Sabbath was not withheld from the primitive world. EVENING FOURTH. YOUNG GENTLEMEN : This evening's exercise we open with a brief consideration of a novel event, an event which appears first to have occurred soon after the memorable close of the pilgrimage of Enoch. This we state in part on the authority of Josephus, who makes it to have begun to take place near the com- mencement of the eighth generation from Adam. The event was a matrimonial alliance entered into between parties that ought never to have come together. " The sons of God " be- gan to intermarry with the " daughters of men." (Gen. 6 : 2.) Should you inquire, Who were these parties ? you would probably deem me not a very competent instructor if I should not be able to render an immediate and satisfactory answer. And yet even among eminent men there has been some diversity of opinion on this point particularly in ref- erence to the first named, "the sons of God" The Apocry- phal Book of Enoch, which we have had occasion before to mention, speaks of them as angels, (ch. 7:2). Josephus also calls them angels, (Ant. ch. 3, sec. 1st). Many of the Christian Fathers of the first three or four centuries, e. g. Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Clemens Alexandrinus, Tertullian, Cyprian, Lactantius, and even Eusebius, entertained a similar opinion. Coming down to our own time, you may perhaps be somewhat surprised to learn that Dr. Kitto is disposed to favor this view. (Bib. 111. vol. 1, p. 132,) WHO WERE "THE SONS OF GOD." 57 If " the sons of God " be understood to be angels, then the phrase, " the daughters of men," indicates females of Adam's progeny, not of any one line definitely but of any line or branch indifferently, so only they were "fair," or of every line promiscuously. Now there are in our view some serious objections against interpreting the phrase, " the sons of God," after the manner which has been spoken of. The angels if these be the creatures understood must of course have assumed human bodies, since " spirits " merely, such as are the an- gels in their ordinary mode of being, (Ps. 104: 4,) would be illy prepared to take to themselves " wives of the daughters of men." And if for this purpose they assumed human bodies, did they assume them permanently ? If not, but, after having ac- complished the mischievous, nefarious, lecherous end for which they assumed them, put the bodies off, they would be exceed- ingly unfaithful and treacherous husbands. Good angels, sure- ly, they could not have been, for these want no wives of the daughters of men. Quite too wise as well as holy are they to desire any such incongruous alliance. If they did enter into the conjugal relation at all, (which we are assured they do not, Mat. 22 : 30,) they would seek, for partners, crea- tures considerably different from any of the fallen, however "fair" of Adam's offspring. In two or three respects, we may be sure, they would be guilty of no such conduct as is attributed to the " sons of God " spoken of by Moses in the 6th of Genesis. If angels at all, they must then have been evil ones spirits from the pit. Now there is the following serious objection to this idea that though in the Scriptures good angels are in a few instances denominated " sons of God," yet evil angels, never. This thought also is not un- worthy of mention : They who understand " the sons of God" in the 6th of Genesis to mean angels, understand the giants spoken of in that chapter, to be the product of such strange and incongruous alliance. What an abnormal and wondrous 58 WHO WERE "THE SONS OF GOD." sort of creatu res, then, must these giants have been ! what marvellous hybrids semi-diabolic, semi-human ! Not at all amazing that a Flood should be produced and hastened by such a race ! Some expositors attempt to arrive at the import of the phrase " sons of God " by a resort to the genius and idiom of the Hebrew. They have, for example, observed a lofty mountain to be called " a mountain of God ; " a great rush- ing wind, a " wind of God ; " and kings, magistrates, or mighty men, to be sometimes denominated " sons of God." Hence they have concluded that the phrase "sons of God," in the place in question, should be understood to denote so?is of the mighty. They would therefore make the passage mean, that certain great or mighty ones among the antedilu- vians began to select wives from among the beautiful daugh- ters of men of low station. This interpretation is exposed to the objection that it does not appear to account for the conse- quence which the sacred writer intimates to have followed from the kind of intermarriage which he had in view. The query then returns upon us, Who are " the sons of God " specified in Gen. 6:2? That idea, it may be re- plied, which is embraced, we believe, by most modern exposi- tors, is probably much nearer the truth, is indeed the correct one, that they were of the posterity of Seth. The pious are God's regenerated and adopted children ; are de- nominated the " sons and daughters of the Lord Almighty," passim, in the Bible. Comparatively, these Sethites were of a pious race ; numbers of their ancestry were truly godly belonged to God in covenant. On account of this relation- ship to a pious ancestry, and to a greater or less number of contemporaries who had not openly, and some not in heart, forsaken God ; from this cause rather than from real moral likeness to Him whom they should have in a most important respect resembled for there had already been a sad deteri- oration among the Sethites the distinctive appellation was WHO THE GIANTS. 59 still retained; the accustomed phraseology, more strictly appropriate as applied to their progenitors than to them, was still used, hence are, in the passage of sacred history re- ferred to, denominated sons of God. The " daughters of men " are so called in contradistinction from the sons or daughters of God ; were of the Cainite instead of Sethite stock ; bore no intimate and endeared rela- tion to God ; were never transferred from their connection with a fallen and depraved ancestry, to a gracious connection with the Father of spirits. Hebrew, " daughters of the Adam" not only descendants of fallen Adani, but retaining the likeness of him as fallen. Do you ask, Who were "the giants " of whom mention is made in Gen. 6:4? The original word nephilim, here translated giants, literally means f oilers, from naphal, he fell. Accordingly, by eminent critics has the passage been so inter- preted as to make it speak merely of " men of violence ; men who beat down, oppressed, and plundered the weak and defenceless." Aquila translates nephilim,, men who attack, who fall with impetuosity on others. Simmachus renders it Eutiot, violent men, cruel, whose only rule of action is vio- lence. The term has no particular reference to stature. The Septuagint translates the original word by gigantes, from two words, signifying to be born of the earth, or earth- born ; a term from which we learn both the origin and im- port of the English word giant. It would appear then that from the Hebrew term here translated giants, we can derive no authority for attaching to the word in our version the idea of vast stature. It is indeed not altogether improbable that the men of the Old World were both in stature and strength superior to those of the present day; an inference dedu- cible from antediluvian longevity long life being commonly the effect of uncommon constitutional vigor. Arrived we now have, young gentlemen, where we may begin to feel the suction of the awful maelstrom ; where every 60 INCREASING DEGENERACY. thing is to be discerned tending toward a tremendous cataract or whirlpool so tremendous indeed as to threaten to shatter or ingulf every thing. One of the most marked events, not alone of Noah's time, but in this world's history, are we ap- proaching ; on the confines we are of two worlds, as the accustomed phraseology allows us to say, the end of the Old World and beginning of the New. Drawing towards the close of his fifth century, as to age, is our patriarch. Witnessed with, oh, what sadness had he, for some time previous, the increasing degeneracy, not only of other lines of the first father's descendants, but even of the best the Sethites. In their social and moral state these last had stood preeminent. The Church of the living God, even, had had from its beginning an existence chiefly among them. There had Jehovah specially found a resting place, and a seed to serve him. Some of the progeny of Seth of earlier times had lived so near to God as to attract the world's gaze. One had even been borne embodied as- on angel-wings to heaven. But times are now altered. The children of this choicest line, for the most part, are not what were their fathers. The lamp of piety burns feebly, emits but few rays. The forms of religion have been somewhat kept up, but the life and power of godliness, with mournfully few exceptions are, and for a season past have been, wanting. What a record does the pen of inspiration now give us of the population of the globe ? Hearken : " God saw," the All- seeing eye saw it was such a condition as specially to attract the notice of the Omniscient and Infinitely Holy One, " that the wickedness of man was great in the earth." But this is not all ! He saw that " every imagination of his (man's) heart" of man's not the heart of a few, but of the race " was " not alone partially " only evil " ; not solely sometimes, or by turns " continually" (Gen. 6 : 5.) This language is to be understood intensively. There is, it is true, no good thing, no holiness, in man by nature, either MOURNFUL CORRUPTION. 61 as to his state or exercises. But it is not this latter which is intended to be taught as a formal truth in this place. There is here meant to be denoted a specialty as to degree a mar- vellous excess, as well as universality, of wickedness. Lis- ten again to the Divine Testifier : " The earth was corrupt before God, all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth," (Gen. 6: 11, 12). What a state of moral degeneracy is here denoted ! What a one vast putrid mass spread before the gaze of Infinite Purity ! If you picture to yourself every thing unclean in taste and feeling, in conversation and con- duct ; universal in extent and enormous in measure, as to what is here averred, you will then have before your mind's eye some image of what is denoted by the language here used by the sacred writer. The sin of idolatry, which is an awfully corrupt thing before God, is one of the items here in- cluded. The people's doing corruptly, (2 Chron. 27 : 2,) is explained in 2 Kings 15 : 35, by their sacrificing and burn- ing incense in the high places. This flagrant wickedness, (which was probably not unknown among the Cainites for some time ere this,) was perpetrated " before God," openly, publicly, without disguise, to his very face, and every where. There is likewise indicated an absence of all personal, do- mestic, and social virtue and purity, and the abounding of the opposite in thought and feeling, in speech and behavior. Every spring, fountain, was turned to filthiness. Sin is an unclean thing before God. Other forms of iniquity may be considered as signified, profanity or blasphemy a casting of contempt in word and conduct on every thing sacred ; every elevating sentiment, every ennobling principle set at naught, reviled, repudiated ; and all that is vile and degrading embraced, fostered, encouraged. Listen to what the inspired annalist additionally declares concerning the condition of the world at this period. " The earth was filled with violence," (Gen. 6 : 11). How mourn- fully emphatic this language ! Violence was " the order of 4 s^^ 62 UNRESTRAINED VIOLENCE. the day," so to spealr. No security to any thing valuable or precious, to reputation, chastity, property, personal, do- mestic, social or civil rights ; or even to life itself. Rude, defamatory utterances ; malicious, hostile treatment ; rapes, rapines, excessive oppressions and cruelties ; mobs ; noisy and bloody strifes ; wars ; murders, these were every where to be witnessed : these filled the world. I say, the world, for mankind had greatly multiplied, as Gen. 6:1, properly in- terpreted, indicates. The human population had become vastly numerous as well as wide-spread. Cast your eye again, young gentlemen, on that language we just quoted : "The earth" not some circumscribed locality, or small spots here and there, solely. " Filled " not barely had a little sprinkling. With " violence " not a little indulgence of wrong impulses ; not merely an inconsiderable exhibition in the life of dishonest, covetous, rapacious, lewd, malicious, oppressive, cruel, murderous propensity and purpose. But was there no government, no law, no penal code ? you will naturally inquire. Amongst the Cainites there probably not only was not, but never had been much of either. The character of their ancestor, and his example and influence, would naturally lead to nothing very wholesome of this sort. Among the Sethites, and other branches of Adam's progeny, particular patriarchal governments had existed ; patriarchal authority had, from the beginning downward, been more or less exercised and respected ; and as those lines multiplied as to ramifications and numbers, municipal regulations, some form or forms of civil government, would be called for and indispensable. But as corruption increased, authority would become more lax ; laws more lenient, less exactive ; and what laws were enacted would be by degrees unexecuted. What is government or law but the creature of public senti- ment ? What, when enacted, is a wholesome law worth, if there be not principle, virtue, energy, or courage enough in being to enforce it ? At the time we are now speaking of, THIS STATE HOW CAUSED. 63 there was probably little of what was worthy of the name of government or law in existence. Corruption had come to such a pitch wickedness highhanded, flagitious, had ob- tained such an ascendency and prevalence, that law and order were trampled under foot ; wild anarchy for the most part existed and triumphed. Every one did, we will not say what was right in his own eyes, but what he listed ; and from the hints given by the archaic historian, we see what that would be, " only evil." Desire you to know, by what means, after what manner, the world before the Flood became so enormously corrupt ? the earth so filled with violence ? One prominent circumstance leading to so deplorable a state of things amongst the antediluvians, and which is indi- cated by Moses, was the intercourse, even to intermarriage, which was introduced, about the midlife of Noah, between " the sons of God " and " the daughters of men," in other words, between the Sethites and Cainites. If we put any confidence in what Maimonides has related, sometime since quoted by us, concerning what occurred in the days of Enos ; or if we will compare Genesis 6 : 5, with Rom. 1 : 21, 23 ; if we bring to mind what St. Jude says about certain un- godly men in his days, who, after being represented as " de- nying the only Lord God," adds, " Woe unto them, for they are gone in the way of Gain (Jude, verses 4, 11) ; and if we consider too what took place so soon posterior to the Flood in relation to that sin we shall probably arrive at the conclu- sion that idolatry began to prevail early, and now prevailed ex- tensively, among the wicked and accursed progeny of Cain. On those other enormous sins of the Cainites their infidelity and awful profligacy the heinous sin of idolatry being, so to speak, grafted, then ; for the posterity of Seth, who had professed the true worship, to enter upon terms of intimacy ; to incorporate themselves with the Cainite race ; to enter even into matrimonial compacts with them : the sons of Seth 64 THIS STATE HOW CAUSED. to take to wife the daughters of Cain, joining with them in the most intimate of human relationships, how could this fail to be otherwise than of exceedingly corrupting and fatal consequence? To the Israelites God knew and intimated what would be the effect of an alliance of this kind with the idolatrous nations, when he said, (Deut. 7 : 2, 3,) " Thou shalt make no covenant with them ; neither shalt thou make marriages with them ; thy daughter thou shalt not give unto his son, nor his daughter shalt thou take unto thy son : For they will turn away thy son from following me, that they may serve other gods." This matter Balaam understood quite well, when, perceiving that every other avenue was closed to the effecting of the injury of the children of Israel, counselled the Moabites to commence a familiarity with them. And the sad result we are told : " The people," i. e., the Israelitish people, "were called unto the sacrifices of their gods ; and the people did eat, and bowed down to their gods," (Numbers 25 : 1, 2.) Abraham also proved himself well aware of this peril, when he manifested such anxiety and uneasiness lest his son Isaac should marry a Canaanitish woman. Hence it is likewise to be inferred that the sin of the Sethites, after all the light and privileges they had en- joyed, and favors and blessings they had received from God, was very heinous, to go and mingle and intermarry with the profligate and idolatrous Cainites. They could not but have foreseen that the consequence in all probability would be their seduction from the true worship of Jehovah, as well as into the paths of vice and profligacy. If tradition reports the truth, the heinousness of their conduct is still far- ther enhanced, being committed against solemn and repeated warning, and in the face, too, of an oath. The tradition ad- verted to purports that Adam, and Seth, and Enos, each, when dying, called the different branches of his family about him, and gave them a strict charge that they should always live separate from, and have no manner of inter- THIS STATE HOW CAUSED. 65 course with the impious family or descendants of the mur- derer Cain ; and, moreover, that it was the custom of the Sethites in particular, at certain times to swear by the blood of Abel which was their solemn oath that they would not run counter to this charge or warning. Even thus early though the principle had not been wrought into a maxim, it was a clear suggestion of reason, or a deduction from ob- servation or experience the idea was not destitute of exis- tence, that " evil communications corrupt good manners." For some centuries the Cainites on the one hand, and the Sethites, and, we may add, other lines of our first father's descendants on the other, kept separate, partly from a regard among the latter to the repeated monitions or charges which they had received, and the solemn oath taken ; partly from an abhorrence of idolatry and of other gross sins and enormities of the Cainites ; as well as because the places of their residence were not contiguous to one another. Cain is understood as having gone a good way distant from the other branches though just how far is not known. The phrase, " land of Nod," gives us no definite information on this point. Nod being the original word for a vagabond, the land of Nod means the land of the vagrancy of the wretched outcast. It had no name till Cain went thither. All the geography that Moses has afforded us concerning it is no more than barely that it lay eastward from Eden. As to what distance at how many scores or centuries of leagues eastward from the prime abode of the first human pair no shadow of a hint is given. The rapid and vast multiplication of numbers in the two lines of Cain and Seth, leading to a correspondent spread as to location, brought portions of them at length to the inhabit- ing of proximate territories ; when young men of the Seth- ite branch coming in contact with* some of the fairer of the fair sex among the Outcast's posterity, were so tempted by their beauty that they could not rest easy until they had pro- 66 THIS STATE HOW CAUSED. posed and contracted marriage with them. Had the Sethitc race possessed the sterling principles and the abhorrence of wickedness which belonged to their ancestors, no temptation of this sort could have been strong enough to overcome them ; but, as we hinted before, there had occurred already a melancholy decline. The influence which this conjugal union exerted upon the husbands was very baleful ; but the effect of it upon their progeny still more so. What can be expected of chil- dren, having such mothers, but the worst type of character and conduct ? Vastly more is the moulding of character, the shaping of the sentiments and the life, in the power of moth- ers than of fathers. Unprincipled, abandoned, idolatrous, excessively wicked Cainite mothers ! what the results upon the rising race, but of a kind the most lamentable and evil ? Moreover, what a mischievous and corrupting influence would such a posterity diffuse all around them ! But although this alone is particularly specified by the sacred writer, there were yet other causes at work to produce that universal and excessive degeneracy and wickedness which he mentions. The great length of life to which the unregenerate antediluvian population attained, doubtless was the occasion of contributing not an inconsiderable share. What, in any age, and under any circumstances, is to be looked for from unsanctified human nature but gradual dete- rioration, without special gracious influence, a progress from bad to worse ? The principles belonging to the unre- newed human heart not only grow and strengthen with increasing years, but impel the possessor onward in a de- scending or receding course ; the distance, whatever may to the casual or superficial observer be the appearance, is con- stantly widening between him and God, and so between him and all that enters into true moral excellence and goodness. A life continued through half a score of centuries appears so wellnigh changeless and interminable ; is adapted to occasion such an absence of fear in regard to death's attack, and of THIS STATE HOW CAUSED. 67 apprehension respecting judgment's doom, as to rid the wicked of wholesome and needful restraints ; as naturally to embolden them in a course of unrepentant ungodliness ; to produce increasing recklessness and fearful and approximat- ingly incorrigible obduracy ; to make them of gigantic effi- ciency in the ranks and cause of the Adversary ; to prolong, enlarge, and widen their injurious and ruinous influence over the younger portions of the race, not only those to whom they are more especially related, but those far greater num- bers with whom they may more or less come in contact. We may likewise in part account for the deplorably sunken and awfully corrupt condition of the human race, at this period, from still another cause ; and that is, there was then in existence among the inhabitants of the globe but one lan- guage, and so no obstruction, as to this particular, pre- sented to the most general as well as intimate intercourse. Had the state of public sentiment or the general tone of mor- als been good, such facilities for intercourse as would be afforded by the universal prevalence among the family of man of one and the same language, would have been, and in a high degree, not only intellectually, but morally beneficial. But owing to the fact that even in the best preceding periods, notwithstanding all that grace had done, the majority were wicked ; that for a while before the period of which we speak, nearly the whole of mankind were so, and a consider- able proportion very wicked, this facility for free, unob- structed and general intercourse was attended with its evils ; facilitated the dissemination of the various phases and forms of vice and crime, as well as deepened the hue of everywhere abounding iniquity. Let it be additionally considered, that this universal preva- lence of one language would, along with other existing cir- cumstances, naturally lead to what has been very commonly regarded as a fact, that the antediluvian population, large, multitudinous as it had become, was more dense in proportion 68 THE DIVINE DISPLEASURE EXCITED. to the whole number, i. e., were, wherever communities were settled, crowded more compactly, than any postdiluvian period, even up to our day, has witnessed : the conse- quence of which would be, the more easy and rapid spread of corruption and hydra-headed iniquity. Such a direful, dreadful state of moral pollution, vice, vio- lence so extreme in degree, and so uncircumscribed, ex- tending, raging, every where ~ could not but be inconceivably offensive to that Being Supreme who is "of purer eyes than to behold evil, and cannot look on iniquity ; " and ex- ceedingly the more so from the fact that the family of man, in all its branches, had not, from the Fall downward, been the objects of entire judicial abandonment on the part of the Deity; but had, if we except the accursed race of Cain, been very kindly and graciously dealt with ; had, through various media, in numerous ways, been afforded means and facilities for forming an acquaintance both with truth and duty. In his abounding benevolence, God had set pious fathers and mothers and more remote progenitors and relatives to imparting instruction, counsel, admonition, and warning ; had in a direct manner, from time to time, spoken to them preceptively and tuitionally ; had imparted to them, and that too, very early, precious gospel intimations, as in the PROMISE and the SACRIFICE ; had made communications through Vis- ions, and Voices, and Dreams, and Angelic Ministries ; had prophesied to them through Enoch, and enlightened them as to a future and immortal life immortal life for the whole man through the marvellous translation of the last named ; and, for a while past, moreover had preached to them by our patriarch (2 Pet. 2 : 5.) Considering all these things, and, perhaps we might safely say, a good deal besides which tjie brief antediluvian record does not include superadded to nature's utterances; taking into account all these that antediluvian population should have been a holy, God- fearing, and God-serving people, surely, instead of what, at "THE LORD REPENTED" ITS MEANING. G9 the season of which we are speaking, they are represented by the archaic writer to have been. So desperate, on the contrary, in despite of these things, had become the character and conduct of the human family, as to fall short utterly of the great end for which they had been brought into being ; and thus in the strong and strange sounding language of the historian, " it repented the Lord that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart," (Gen. 6 : 6.) Perplexed, no doubt, have some minds been at this form of expression. Difficulty have they encountered in arriving at a comprehension of its import, or in reconciling it with what they have conceived the Infinite Divinity to be. It seems to impinge one or more of his attributes ; to indicate, at the least, that the Supreme Being had been sorely disappointed in regard to man ; that the latter had not deported himself as the former, when he made him, had expected that he would. And is God then not omniscient ? Did he not know the end from the beginning? Spread out before his vast, illimitable mind, were not absolutely all phases of being, con- dition, character, conduct ? Known unto him from everlasting were not all things that ever have been and ever shall be ? Let it be remarked of that language quoted which has given rise to such perplexity, that it presents one of the many instances of the anthropopathia ; a mode of expression adapted by the graciousness of Divine condescension to the fmiteness of human capacity, particularly to that stage of culture which has not the mastery of abstract phraseology ; a condescension which kindly stoops to convey spiritual sen- timents in language borrowed from sensible and familiar objects, and from the well understood passions and emotions of men. Disappointment and sorrow are indeed not properly predicable of the All-knowing and Infinitely happy God. All the ingredients which enter into man's repentance, then, do not enter into that which is predicated of the Lord. But, 4* 70 "THE LORD REPENTED" ITS MEANING. when man repents, he changes his course acts differently from what he did before. A father is sorry that he has ex- pended so much money in the education of his wayward and profligate son, and so determines that he will expend upon him no more. An artisan constructs a machine or instrument which does not answer the end that he designed or thought he might reasonably expect from it ; it is useless ; it is an incumbrance ; and so he, instead of taking pains to preserve, destroys it. Now it is this latter that is imported when the word " repent " is used in reference to Jehovah. Mankind had not answered the great end for which they were made ; had not deported themselves as the Lord had a right to expect ; and his providential kindness and care he deter- mines shall not be exercised toward them as formerly. He will alter his dispensations ; will change his course ; deal differently toward them from what he had done. The idea of disapprobation enters into repentance in man's case ; and so it does, though in a different relation, into the repentence which the Scriptures affirm of God : disapprobation of the thing as it is. You have the idea. Your patience will not be further taxed, this evening. EVENING FIFTH. YOUNG GENTLEMEN : Such deep and universal corruption as that to which we had our attention directed in the last exercise, the sovereign Lord of all resolves shall not be perpetuated ; such a raging torrent of horrible wickedness and diabolical violence he de- termines shall not flow down in unbroken, uninterrupted suc- cession, to unborn generations, one after another, for all coming time. He prefers that the future generations of his human creatures should not be the offspring of those who had become so contaminated by iniquity and so demonized in vio- lence ; and whose reproductions would have thereby been injurious to themselves and to human nature. He is exceed- ingly unwilling that such vices and crimes as had become general should be continued as the settled character and habit of the human order of being. His benevolence moved him to the adoption of a course which would be followed with the attainment of the greatest aggregate of good. If, by utterly destroying a generation so depraved and mis- chievous as the one then existing, all succeeding generations down to the last gasp of time would receive vast benefit, could the infinitely good Ruler over all fail to do the thing ? particularly when justice, instead of remonstrating against, would urgently, eloquently, plead for it. He to whom be- longeth dominion was so wise as well as benevolent as greatly 72 THE DIVINE RESOLVE. to prefer a new production of mankind from a particular and single stem, selected out of the preexisting society for that purpose, than to continue the corrupt and corrupting mass that was then encumbering and cursing the earth. Besides, Jehovah has a character as moral governor to sustain before all the holy of the universe ; to vindicate from all imputation, and defend from all suspicion. God is infi- nitely holy ; hates sin with a perfect hatred ; and he is deter- mined to throw forth such a manifestation of his abhorrence of it as would not be forgotten in all coming time. He is a just God, and he will not continue to treat so leniently a race so sunk in sin, so desperate and diabolical in habit, so polluted and blood-reddened with crime, as to allow occasion for any of his creatures, in any age to come, to infer that justice is not an attribute of his nature that righteousness belongeth not to Him. No, no ; He will not so lose sight of his own glory. Though benevolence, and patience, and mercy are not absent from his heart, he will, he is determined to inter- rupt the flow of the dark tide. By one tremendous display of his power he will sweep the putrid and putrifying mass from the globe. He tells Noah, so peculiar a man is he so different from the rest one whom the historian in words of emphasis says had u found grace in his sight " God lets this man know what his determination is. His Spirit, through the media and means we a while since specified, had labored to restrain, circumscribe, lessen, annihilate, the abounding ini- quity : to lead men to a sense of duty, and to a regard to what was honest, kind, lovely, and of good report ; to recognize their solemn responsibilities and their true interests ; but in vain. The obdurate, infatuate, and infuriate race grieved and vexed that Spirit ; resisted and spurned his influences ; " set at naught his counsel, and would none of his reproof." "And the Lord said," i. e., to himself: " I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth ; both man, and beast, and creeping thing, and the fowls of the air," THE COMMAND GIVEN TO NOAII. 7o | _ (Gen. 6:7;) and this purpose he states to Noah in a succeed--/ ing verse (v. 13th). He then proceeds (verses 14-16) to command our patriarch to build an ark, particularizing the form and dimensions; and, in the verse following, (17th,) he declares the means by which his determination shall be exe- cuted, viz., by " a flood of waters" But why, some might be disposed to exclaim why should the beast, and creeping thing, and fowls of the air partake in the destruction ? Why must they be involved in the ruin, since they had no participation in the sin ? The response which we are dis- posed to give to this is, that the animal tribes being made for man's use and as a kind of appendage to him, they hence are involved in his calamities. Man's sin brings ruin upon his comforts as well as upon himself. Besides, God is the origi- nal and prime proprietor of all things, and may do what he will with his own. Situated, moreover, as the animal tribes here are, and having no immortal part to fit for a felicitous future, a cessation of existence can be to them no great evil. And does the Lord hasten to the execution of his solemn and tremendous purpose ? No. The vessel itself which our patriarch was enjoined to make, could not be built in a day. Not only was it to be a vast structure, but of so many com- partments, and contrivances, and conveniences, and so thor- oughly constructed for safety, and with a view to the answer- ing of the ends in full of its construction, as necessarily to require no little time to complete it. Even to provide the materials would consume a considerable season. But besides this, God has an attribute of mercy as well as of justice ; he is long suffering and pitiful as well as holy and righteous. Notwithstanding the superfluity of naughtiness and the deluge of sin everywhere prevalent, and constituting a deep, dark flood he holds back the deluge of water ; stays the over- flowing and angry flood and for no less a period than one hundred and twenty years, (Gen. 6: 3.) And here we 74 CHILDREN OF THE PATRIARCH. ought not to fail to notice the incidental corroboration af- forded by this circumstance, to the duration, ascribed by the record, to human life before the flood. Dr. Kitto has called the attention of his readers to this point in his Biblical Illustrations, vol. 1, p. 138 : "A hundred and twenty years," says he, " would have been too long, according to the present duration of life ; for many who were not born when the judgment was first denounced would have died before it was accomplished ; and so long a delay of judgment would have weakened the force of the denunciation, and would have al- lowed most people to view it as a thing not to happen in their time, and which therefore they would but lightly re- gard. But one hundred and twenty years was less than the eighth of the average duration of antediluvian life ; and, in respect of warning, was not more to that generation than nine years would be to us. It was therefore an interval just long enough for effective warning, without being so long as to allow any man that lived, to deem that he might neglect that warning without danger." From twenty to twenty-six or thirty years subsequently to the first intimations received by our patriarch concerning the Divine intentions to destroy the population of the earth for their wickedness, there were born unto him the three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth. At the birth of the elder of these Noah was in his 500th year, (Gen. 5 : 32 and 6 : 10.) Though no mention is made of it in the extremely brief archaic record, it would nevertheless be unreasonable to suppose that our patriarch had had no children born unto him anterior to this period of his life. Judging from the time that the other antediluvian patriarchs, according to the specifications of the historian in the previous part of the fifth chapter, had become parents, we might infer that Noah's children, previously born, had amounted to a large number, but, under the pernicious influences of their time, having gone in the way of Cain ; ORDER OP THE BIRTH OF THE THREE SONS. 7.) become undistinguishable from the multitudes of the incorri- gibly ungodly ; the memory of them was not retained was left to rot. These shared the fate of the millions whose example they had imitated. If Noah had had them wholly under his own paternal and wholesome influence they doubt- less would have formed a different character, and come to a different end : For he probably was pious ere he became a parent; even, as has been previously intimated by us, in quite early life. But he would have been obliged to withdraw or withhold them from all but strictly domestic association in order to a successful preserving of them from danger of con- tamination from a corrupt and ungodly world ; and our patri- arch had not early experience, or observation, or rigor enough to adopt so restrictive a course with his earlier children. As the three whose names are mentioned were born posterior to the intimations he had received relative to God's purpose to destroy mankind for their iniquities, he would naturally be led to the adoption of a faithful and effective restraining regimen in reference to them. Of the three sons of our patriarch whose names are given in the record, though Shem is the first in order as to the mention, yet Japheth was the elder, as you may perceive by looking at Gen. 10 : 21 ; and this seems inferable from 1 Chron. 1 : 5, &c., his descendants being first given in the genealogical roll there found. Shem was next in age to Japheth, for we learn from Gen. 9 : 24, that Ham was the youngest. "We are aware that some have thought Ham to have been the second of the three, because he is almost invariably mentioned between the other two ; but this argu- ment, derived from order of mention, is of no weight against positive testimony ; and if such an argument were decisive in this case, it would settle it as a fact that Japheth was younger than Ham, since his name usually comes last in the record. Their father being in his 500th year when the eldest 76 AMOUNT OF ANTEDILUVIAN POPULATION. of the three was bora, (Gen. 5 : 32 ;) and in his 600th year* when he entered the ark, (Gen. 7 : 11 ;) and, two years after the flood, Shem, at the birth of Arphaxad, being 100 years of age, (Gen. 11 : 10,) and so 98 when the flood came on, you perceive that Japheth must have been two years the senior of Shem. And, if there was the same difference in age between Shem and Ham the younger, then Noah was in his 504th year at the birth of this last, and Ham in his 96th year at the commencement of the Deluge. Should it be inquired why Shem, though not the oldest, is always first named by the historian, it might be answered, because the genealogies and the chronology are kept up in his line ; and the principal parts of the sacred history relate to his descendants. And though Ham was the youngest, yet he is always named next, because the sacred history has more to do with his descendants than with those of Japheth we mean so far as circumstantial detail is concerned. From what has been observed respecting the age of Noah when his three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth were born, along with the fact of there being the interval of but two years between the birth of Japheth and Shem, and probably (reasoning from analogy) between the latter and Ham, may we not derive suggestive aid in arriving at some correct idea concerning the numbers to which the human popula- tion amounted anterior to the Deluge ? If Noah and other autediluvians began to sustain the parental relation, severally, *Noah is indeed, in Gen. 7 : 6, said to have been 600 years old when the flood of waters was upon the earth ; but this expression is afterward ex- plained that it was in the 600th year of his age, (see 1 1th verse). " Annus inchoatus pro perfecto habetur." A distinguished Jewish author lays it down as a rule to be observed, that part of the month or year is as the whole. This is so in regard to day also, as is evident in the case of our Sa- viour's resurrection. Dr. A. Clarke, remarking on the clause in the llth verse, " in the 600th year of Noah's life," says, " This must have been in the beginning of the 600th year of his life, for he was a year in the ark, (oh. 8 : 13,) and died 950 years old, (ch. 9 : 29.) It is thus evident that when the flood commenced he had just entered on his 600th year. AMOUNT OP ANTEDILUVIAN POPULATION. 77 we will not say at 20 or 30 years old, but at the age of 80 or 100, and continued having children born to them up to the age of 500 and over, as is revealed as the case with father Noah ; and if the interval, as to births, was on an average not much if any more than that between the birth of Japheth and Shem, i. e., two years, then the population of the globe prior to the deluge, making all reasonable allowance (from every cause or circumstance) for death's doings, could not have been small ; must have become very numerous. During the last two hundred years of the Old World we may, it is true, believe that the increase would not be proportionate to what it had been for a similar period preceding, (though the regular increase should have been much greater,) because " violence was then great in the earth," hurrying thousands, yea, probably millions to an untimely end. Yet, taking even this noteworthy circumstance into the account, the inhabitants of this planet must have become immensely numerous. Not alone from the great number of children which antediluvian parental pairs would have born to them, let it be observed, would the population become great; but from the circum- stance, moreover, of many generations flourishing in a meas- ure simultaneously, occupying the earth for a greater or less period together, as a consequence of prevalent longevity. Without a resort to any extravagant tabular computations, such as Winston's, for example, (see Rees's Cyclopedia, Art. Antediluvians,) we might be justly charged with acting irra- tionally, did we set narrow limits to the number of inhabit- ants of the Old World, for centuries before the flood came on. Japheth, Shem, and Ham were severally married previous to the Deluge, (Gen. 7 : 13 ;) yet they either had no children antecedently, or these did not live ; since they carried none 1 with them into the ark. Eight of human kind alone found refuge there, (1 Pet. 3 : 20). If you have any desire to become wise above what is writ- ten in regard to the names borne by Noah's wife and the 78 A STRANGE CONCEIT. wives of his three sons, look into Bedford's Scripture Chro- nology, pages 140, 141, where you may read, " The Oriental writers call the wife of Noah by several names, as Titsiah, Naamah, and Aritsiah ; this last meaning earthly, because like the earth she was the mother of all living. Another writer is so positive as to say that the name of Noah's wife was Haical, the daughter of Narausa, the son of Enoch ; and that his three sons took them wives of the daughters of Me- thuselah, and that the name of Shem's wife was Salit ; the name of Ham's wife Nahlat ; and the name of Japheth's wife Arisisah. It is probable," continues Bedford, " that the wives of Noah, Shem, and Japheth, were of the posterity of Seth, and that none of these married into the race of Cain, because they were esteemed to be men of piety and virtue, and there- fore most likely to observe the command, which seems to be handed down from their ancestors, that they should not marry into strange families. As for Ham, his character was differ- ent from the rest, and therefore a curse was entailed on his posterity for his immoralities. So that since Plutarch tells us that some called the wife of Ham, Namaus, it is easy to conjecture that she was Naamah, the daughter of Lamech, sister of Tubal-cain of the race of Cain, the last person mentioned in that line, and the only woman before the flood of whose birth Moses takes any notice." We cannot omit to say, young gentlemen, that this last conjecture, though curi- ous, is certainly very incredible. Naamah, the daughter of the Cainite Lamech, was probably born too long before Hani to become his wife, inasmuch as her father, as was on a former occasion intimated, was, like the Sethite Enoch, of the seventh generation from Adam, and may consequently be inferred to have been contemporary with him. If Ham was rendered a worse man than he otherwise would have been, through the in- fluence of a wicked wife, he needed not to go among the Cain- ites to find one of that character; for just before the flood the women of the Sethite line, even, as well as of the multitudinous CHARACTERISTICS OF THE PATRIARCH. 79 other lines, had been involved in and been carried away by the generally raging tide of corruption. Scarcely has a hint yet been dropped concerning the char- acter of our patriarch. The period of one hundred and twenty years, intervening between the first intimations received by him respecting the divinely intended submergence of the world with its multitudinous and guilty population, and the actual occur- rence of the threatened punitive event, afforded occasion, as you all cannot but perceive, for the exhibition of prominent leading traits, mental, moral, and religious, in the man whose history we are particularly considering. To continue godly, un- unswervingly, unflinchingly godly, whilst in its various, almost countless forms, ungodliness was every where prevalent and popular not only, but guileful, unscrupulous, bold, unblushing, malignant, persecuting, and untiringly active, required a large amount of mental strength, and of firmness and resolution in favor of truth and righteousness. Noah was firm immova- ble as a rock. He fully and uninterruptedly maintained his integrity as a friend and servant of God. Naught in the form of allurement could draw, or of menace and terror drive him from a strict and becomingly rigid adherence to the principles which have the approval of Heaven. No pusil- lanimous shrinking ! Earth and hell seemed leagued against him ; but their arts and power were insufficient to weaken or mar his fidelity to the Infinite King. Ridicule, mockery, scoffing, derision, reproach, menace ; whatever malevolence or cunning could suggest, or deep and multiform depravity invent these were tried upon him, repeatedly, protractedly but wholly in vain. The same man of God was he still ; or rather did he become more and more the giant in vigor, and the rock in firmness. Familiarity with the sight of vice and wickedness, which has ordinarily such a tendency to relax the muscles and weaken the nerves of virtue, appeared to have the diametrically opposite effect upon him. The more he witnessed of iniquity, the greater became his detes- tation of it, and to it did he oppose a bolder, firmer front. 80 CHARACTERISTICS OF THE PATRIARCH. He was eminently a patient man. If ever human creature was, this man you must acknowledge to have been deeply tried. With much had he to meet which is grievous to flesh and blood. From what we have just been declaring in rela- tion to what was brought to bear against him, it is manifest that something more than his integrity or loyalty was sub- jected to trial. His patience also was put to the test. He bore his troubles well ; we say not " like a man ; " rather might we in truth say, like something more than man. Re- taliation, revenge, spite, complaint not a word do we hear of aught of this sort in his case. In Ezek. 14: 14, his 1 name is thrown in with that of one whom Holy Writ repre- sents as the patientest of men. He was exposed to much scoff and insult. Whilst engaged in collecting the materials for the construction of the vessel which was intended to float upon the waters, and whilst occupied in building it, ridicule would ply its weapons diligently, no doubt ; ridicule than which human sensibilities have found scarcely anything harder to be borne. How many will shrink and wither, and abandon an enterprise, or desist from the prosecution of an allotted task, or cease the pursuit of a course prescribed by duty, rather than continue to encounter its terrible inflictions or bear its thrice-dreaded stings. Yet our patriarch persisted in the execution of what was assigned him, in the face of, notwithstanding it all, and kept his soul in patience. And then, again : Consider the faith of this man, as to its measure and its influence. The Almighty had indicated his purpose to destroy mankind for their wickedness and the means by which his purpose should be accomplished. Now, unbelief might have said, Surely this cannot be God's voice ; it does not sound like a Divine denunciation or direction. Will God find it in his heart to destroy every living thing, innocent children even, and cattle, and creeping things ? 'And where will he find water enough to drown the world ? And how will those living things which appear to have been desig- CHARACTERISTICS OF THE PATRIARCH. 81 nated, be collected, and after what manner preserved in the ark ? A thousand difficulties might by unbelief be suggested, from month to month, during the progress of one hundred and twenty years, to turn him aside from the prosecution of such a work as that of building the ark, or the effecting of its comple- tion. And whilst officiating as a preacher of righteousness for so occupied, in a greater or less measure, we are assured he was, (*2 Pet. 2:5;) while prosecuting the work of going from place to place extensively, and warning the people of the impending storm ; giving them notice of the threatened judgment; and calling them to repentance for their iniqui- ties ; to an abandonment of their vicious and highly criminal excesses, that so they might escape both temporal and eternal destruction, Satan and wicked men might very fre- quently suggest what might naturally tend to originate doubt in Noah's mind whether, indeed there was ground on which to base a reasonable or certain conclusion that a flood would visit the earth and destroy the living things, rational and irrational, upon its surface, unless mankind relented and changed their course. 4 Yet, in the case of our patriarch, faith had such potency, this principle was so operative and influen- tial, that he perseveres in preaching, remonstrating with and warning the ungodly generation, and in building the ark ; no cessation of effort was there to bring mankind to a reformation of their manners, and the restoration of the true religion and Avorship among them up to the very month and day in which the appointed period of Divine patience or forbearance was to terminate ; or at least until the ark was finished and ready to receive the allotted inmates. What faith, what faith was that which reigned in the heart of our patriarch, enough to excite the admiration of human kind in every age down- ward ! Can we fail to be struck with amazement at its large degree and its effective energy ? " By faith Noah, being warned of God of things not seen as yet, prepared an ark to the saving of his house ; by the which he condemned the world, 82 CHARACTERISTICS OF TttE PATRIARCH. and became heir of the righteousness which is by faith," (Heb. 11 : 7.) Noah's courage is by no means unworthy of note. If there ever was a truly and eminently courageous man, where can you succeed better in finding him than in the person of our patriarch ? We have said he was " a preacher of righteous- ness." It is comparatively easy to prosecute such a calling where public sentiment is on the side of order and virtue ; but a hard and even perilous business amidst abounding corruption, and when every thing evil and iniquitous receives the public sanction and is popular. Yet this man went forth, undaunted, undismayed, instructing, counselling, reproving the people ; and telling them that within such a space of time the Almighty Sovereign would by a flood sweep them from life, unless they should seasonably repent and turn unto Him, the only true God and their legitimate Ruler. How many even of the Lord's professing people are ashamed or afraid to avow their abhorrence of the evils which they see commonly practised. "What numbers, through a base timidity of spirit, will wink at if not actually yield compliance with what their hearts condemn, through fear of reproach or of becoming unpopular losing caste. Instead of exerting themselves the more in opposition to sin because it is countenanced by the multitude, they cease altogether to oppose the ^torrent ; the voice of remonstrance is hushed ; they become mute in regard to prevailing abominations if they do not even become apologists. Noah lent no countenance to sin ; he boldly reproved it in whatsoever form and by whomsoever committed ; and against its perpetrators denounced the overwhelming judgment of the Omnipotent and Infinitely Just One. We need more men of courage, of iron nerve and dauntless heart, and on the altar of whose souls flames the love of God, in our day; men who are not afraid to be singular when the cause of godliness requires it ; and who, where fidelity and duty demand, are CHARACTERISTICS OF THE PATRIARCH. 83 not unwilling to expose their popularity, and temporal interests, and if need be, what is so much dearer even as life, to hazard, so that the Ruler Supreme may be pleased and served. Our second father could not have proceeded in the building of the ark even, unless he had been remarkably courageous. He would have shrunk away from the work in fear for his life, long ere its completion, had he had but a modicum of the spirit of a coward within him. Perseverance, under the circumstances, exhibited a moral heroism such as is not superabundant in our or any age. And omit we will another important feature, doubtless, of our patriarch's moral constitution or character, if we fail to hold him forth as a man of benevolence and compassion. It was not in wrath that Noah went to and fro, teaching and admonishing, rebuking and warning the corrupt inhabitants of the Old World ; but, on the contrary, in love and pity. He did not pant for their overthrow. He ardently desired their escape from the menaced judgment. He longed for their reformation, so iniquity should not be their ruin. Their prospective destruction must have wrung many tears from his eyes ; caused his heart to bleed not a little ; and he no doubt offered much prayer to God, as well as much exhor- tation to men. Not that he would have them saved in but from their sins. He could not have conceived it best, in the face of God's decision, to have their evil customs and iniquitous practices perpetuated handed down from father to son in endless succession. If there could be no reformation he would give his vote for no preservation. He would take sides with God, ay, and with man too, as to coming generations. Benevolence, broad, expansive, would demand that no such dark moral flood should forever roll over the world. He no doubt preferred, in coincidence with the Lord's preference, a flood of waters to a flood of sin. Noah, it may be believed, so executed his office as a preacher, as to show to the guilty inhabitants of the world 84 IMPORT OF 1 PETER, 3: 19, 20. before the flood, that he really desired their welfare ; wished their salvation, not their destruction. "Whilst their unbelief, as well as love of sin, le'd them to reject his counsel as un- called for, they could not really harbor a suspicion in regard to his honesty or good will. They thought him not a bad man, but a weak, credulous, visionary, deluded, infatuated one. Hence his teachings and remonstrances, his admoni- tions, exhortations, and warnings, were in vain. Those ante- diluvians were incorrigible. And here let me remark that the words in 1 Pet. 3: 19, 20, which speak of Christ, by his Spirit, as having "gone and preached unto the spirits in prison, which sometimes were disobedient when once the long suffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was preparing," have appeared to some very mysterious in their import, whilst by some others they have been so interpreted as to favor the doctrine of a purgatory. The meaning appears to be, that the Mediator, God the second person, had, by his Spirit, in- spired his servant Noah to announce to the wicked antedilu- vians the approaching deluge, and preach repentance to that incorrigible generation, who persisted in their sins, and were in the prison of hell, (that is, the adults among them,) at the time the apostle wrote; being confined there till the judgment of the great day. For they had " some time been dis- obedient " and unbelieving, even during the one hundred and twenty years of God's long suffering, after the deluge was pre- dicted, but before it was sent. At that time Noah was occupied in preparing the ark, showing his faith by his works, and calling them to repent and seek mercy from God. But they unani- mously and obstinately rejected his message ; and thus they were destroyed by the flood ; whilst only eight persons had their lives preserved in the ark, being delivered from the waters and carried above them: so that the floods which drowned all others without exception, concurred in their deliverance. EVENING SIXTH. YOUNG GENTLEMEN : It is a high commendation of our patriarch, a truly notable encomium, which was given by the sacred writer, in the closing verse of the 6th chapter of Genesis. " Thus did Noah ; according to all that God commanded him, so did he." Said of him more particularly may we understand this to be, in reference to his compliance with the divine directions respecting the building and replenishing of the ark. (Genesis 6: 14-21.) Viewed in all its circumstances, Noah's was one of the sublimest instances of obedience ever rendered by a fallen man to his Creator. That which he was commanded to build was a vast structure a work of years. The labor and expense necessary to be incurred in the procuring and preparing of the materials, and in its erection, must have been immense. It was a strange vessel, as well as large one the like of which exactly, whatever other water-craft might have before fallen under his observation, he had never previously witnessed ; to be constructed moreover for an unwonted emergency ; and the derisive assaults and re- proachful merriment, if naught more serious, which, in ob- servance of the directions he had received in regard to it, he would from the unbelieving, profane and impious crowd, be obliged to encounter, would be almost beyond endurance. Year after year floated by ; no discernible symptoms of 5 86 THE PATRIARCH'S FIDELITY. the menaced judicial or punitive visitation made their ap- pearance, apart from those barely which the proclamation of the patriarch, and the gradual, protracted preparing of the ark, indicated. Yet under the impelling influence of a faith which staggered not, and of regard to the command or will of Heaven, he entered upon and continued a course of laborious action, steadily, for a not inconsiderable series of years. Boldly faced he reproach ; meekly encountered he scorn. Instead of swerving or shrinking at all from the execution of the bidden task, under the apprehension or unavoidable per- ception of the unpopularity of such a procedure, he persisted in it to the consummation. Received a commission he had from the Lord pertaining to the instruction and warning of the people. That commission he concealed not through fear ; he perverted not out of regard to personal convenience or advantage. He proclaimed the predicted judgment of God, and protested with holy earnestness and eloquence against the sins of his contemporaries their debauchery and in- justice, their idolatry and violence. May we imitate this noble model, young gentlemen. It may indeed throw us into the category of singularity ; but whose fault will that be ? Was it Noah's fault that he was a singular character in the Old World ? a man of peculiar habits or conduct ? Was it not the fault of those whose character and conduct were of so discrepant a type from his ? of those who refused to listen to the voice of Heavenly love, and to observe the man- dates proceeding from Infinite authority ? And would not Noah have paid a very unbecoming deference to the worldly and degenerate multitude, had he, yielding to their influence or will, consented to disregard the expressed will of Heaven, and to perish with them, rather than secure the divine ap- proval and his own salvation ? Let us not, then, carry our complaisance to so culpable and fearful an extent, where we have such a God as ours to serve, and such a soul as ours at stake. We may feel and express our regret at being THE ARK ITS DIMENSIONS. 87 compelled to be singular; may assure those from whom we differ that we are not so for singularity's sake ; but that, like Noah, we feel disposed to obey God rather than man, where both cannot at the same time be obeyed ; and that we deem it incomparably better to be saved with Noah and his little family, than to perish with the multitude. The vessel which our patriarch was commanded to build for the preservation of " the eight souls," was, as has been intimated, one of no inconsiderable size. Its dimensions are specified in Genesis 6:15. From that account it will ap- pear to you to have been an immense structure by far the largest floating edifice ever borne upon the waters. This will hold true, without, as some have done, taking the cubit in the verse referred to, to indicate the geometrical cubit, which contains six of the ordinary. The word cubit is derived from the Latin cubitus, the lower arm. It is used, to denote the distance, the number of inches, between the elbow and the extremity of the middle finger. The length of the cubit has in different nations varied according to the diversity in size or stature of the people respectively, or the length of the lower arm the distance from the elbow to the end of the middle finger of their men of average size. The lesser or common cubit is reckoned at eighteen inches. The Egyptian, or, which is probably the same, the Hebrew cubit, was twenty- one inches and 888 thousandths nearly twenty-two inches. According to this measure, the ark was in length about 547 feet ; in width ninety-one feet, two inches, and in height forty-seven feet, two inches. But taking even the shortest cubit, that of eighteen inches, it was still a structure of immense capacity. Says Bush, in his note on Genesis 6: 15, "Taking the cubit of least length, it is capable of demonstration that the vessel must have been of the burden of 43,413 tons." " Now," con- tinues he, " a first rate man-of-war is between 2,200 and 2,300 tons ; the ark consequently possessed a capacity of storage equal to that of eighteen ships of the line of the largest class ; 88 OF WHAT CONSTRUCTED. which upon a moderate computation are capable of carrying 20,000 men, with stores and provisions for six months' con- sumption, besides 1800 pieces of cannon." The chief material which the Lord directed to be employed in the construction of the ark was gopher-wood, ^Si ^y atze gopher, mentioned nowhere else in the Scriptures. What particular kind of wood this was, we can be aided in ascer- taining, only from the name ; the country where the wood is supposed to have been procured ; or from the traditional opinions respecting it. The Septuagint have rendered it " square timbers ; " and Jerome, in the Vulgate, renders it " pitched wood." Some have adopted the opinion that a kind of pine tree is intended, and the Persian translator IMS the pine ; but Celsius objects that this kind of tree was never common in Babylonia and Assyria. The Chaldee version and some others give the cedar, because it was always plenti- ful in Asia, and was distinguished by the incorruptible nature of its wood. But cedar is a very general term, and correctly applied only to different kinds of juniper, which, though yielding excellent wood, never grow to a large size in any warm country. It may be considered doubtful whether gopher is the name of any particular species of tree. Atze go- pher, (Hebrew,) perhaps indicate trees or woods of pitch, i. e., such as fir, pine, cypress, turpentine, cedar and other trees of a pitchy kind, adapted to the purpose of ship-building. If any particular sort of tree of this description be intended more than than another, it is probably the cypress, (nvrrpiaaog)) as the radical consonants in the Greek and Hebrew words are the same, and as the cypress is eminently distinguished for its durability, and the power of resisting injuries incidental to other kinds of wood ; while its resinous properties would tend to render it impervious to water. The greater number of writers, for such reasons as those just stated, have under- stood the cypress to be meant ; and this opinion is supported by such authorities as Fuller, Bochart, and Celsius. WHERE BUILT* 89 As to the tradition mentioned by Bedford and others, that Noah, failing of success in reclaiming his superlatively impi- ous and obdurate contemporaries, and finding himself and family in manifest danger of some mortal violence for his good will, departed from the land where he had formerly resided, and settled in a desert region called Cyparisson, (so named from the abundance of cypress trees growing there ;) and, because of the facilities thus afforded, there built the ar k, suffice it to say, that no sufficient evidence can be adduced in its support. Probability seems to us to favor the idea that to impress them more fully with the certainty of the threatened judgment, our patriarch began and continued to prosecute his task openly, and in the sight, so to speak, of all men. It appears probable, moreover, that he assured the multitude of that region from day to day, and endeavored to have the intelligence borne abroad, that what he engaged in doing was by divine command, and that the object of his la- bor was to preserve himself and household from the ruin which was impending over the world. And thus every plank he added, and every spike he drove, would be an additional warning of the certain and terrible doom which awaited them, unless by timely repentance and reformation it should be averted. As for hazard of losing his life, Noah knew that it was not to be apprehended. He had the unwavering con- viction in his mind that if God assign a human creature a duty to perform, that creature, cherishing the spirit of obedi- ence, is immortal until the allotted work be done. We can account for Noah's preservation in an age when holiness was so hated, pious admonition so repugnant, and when violence so reigned, on no other ground than that of special divine protection. " The name of the Lord is a strong Tower ; the righteous runneth into it and is safe." It may not be amiss to glance at some other specified par- ticulars relative to the ark's construction, (Gen. 6: 14-16.) " Rooms shalt thou make in the ark," Hebrew, nests. These 90 ITS PARTICULAR CONSTRUCTION. were cells, or stalls, or small apartments, into which the inte- rior of the structure was laid out, for the different kinds of animals. " With lower, second, and third stories shalt thou make it." This shows that there was no waste space in this vast fabric. Every foot of its enormous area, from bottom to top, was carefully laid out in receptacles for the accommo- dation of the living inmates intended for it. The larger animals probably were assigned their place in the lower story ; smaller in the second ; birds, reptiles, &c., in the upper. " A window shalt thou make to the ark." The term window is probably used here collectively, indicating the means of admitting light ; a transparency or at least translucency ; if not something equivalent to glass, at least something ad- mitting a measure of light. " And in a cubit shalt thou finish it above;" or, to a cubit shalt thou reduce it at the top seeming to indicate that the roof in which the translucency or series of windows or skylights was set, sloped upward to a ridge at the top, of about a cubit in width. " The door of the ark shalt thou set in the side thereof." This aperture must have been of considerable size, intended as it was for ingress, among others, of some large animals. Prof. Bush thinks the word translated door is to be taken in a collective sense, implying a number of openings in the different stories of the ark, designed for entrances for the animals, and after- wards for the admission of air, and the discharge of ordure. These apertures, he says, might ordinarily be closed by lattice work. Although in Hebrews 11:7, and 9 : 4, the same Greek word, kibotos, is used to denote the ark of Noah and the ark of the covenant, yet the Hebrew terms are different that denoting the former being tebat, and the one indicating the latter arun. The exact form of the ark of Noah is not stated by the sacred historian the specified length and breadth and height leaving certain other matters indeterminate. As it was constructed not so much with a view to progressive HOW LONG IN BUILDING. 91 motion, as to float for a given time upon the water, it is not necessary to suppose it to have been modelled like the hull of a modern ship ; or placed in a sort of boat, as in the com- mon figure. The simple idea given in the history is that of an enormous oblong box, secured upon a strong and thick rafting floor. Had it been built from a keel, with a curving bottom like a ship, it could not have well rested on the dry land after the flood, without falling over upon one or the other side, to the imminent danger of all its tenants. Moreover, it is obvious that it was unfurnished with rudder or sails. " Thou shalt pitch it within and without with pitch." The pitch here spoken of was some kind of bituminous substance, which from its soft and pliable qualities was well adapted to smearing over the ark, and closing every chink and crevice. A coat, spread over the inside and outside, would make it perfectly water proof, and the more so as the substance itself would, it is probable, be constantly acquiring greater hardness and tenacity. Should you, young gentlemen, be asked this question : " How many of the one hundred and twenty years was Noah actually employed in providing the materials and building the large vessel ? " what would be your reply ? That he was the whole of those years thus occupied, Bedford (see his Chro- nology, p. 21, note,) by comparing Gen. 6 : 3 with 1 Pet. 3 : 20, thinks to be very evident. But although the ark was a vast structure, and was confessedly the work of years, yet it has by more or less been imagined that a considerably shorter period than the forementioned was abundantly sufficient for the accomplishment of the task ; and they imagine that such a length of time as the whole period of forbearance to be thus occupied, would require a concurrence of miracles to prevent that part of the vessel which was first built from suffering decay ere the last part of it should be finished. As to the time employed in providing the materials and in building it we will not be able to come to a determinate conclusion until, 92 "NOAH'S CARPENTERS." especially, we can ascertain how many workmen, besides Noah and his three sons, were occupied in its construction. You have heard, we presume, the story about Noah's carpenters ; how, though employed in building the ark, they did not enter it ; helped others to the means of salvation whilst themselves, through unbelief, perished. The like of which occurs even at this day, numbers, by their contributions, helping others to the means of grace, who, through the improvement of them, enter first the gospel ark, and then heaven, whilst the former, through unbelief, enter neither ; perish in their sins. We hinted, we believe, before, that intimations were proba- bly received by our patriarch, concerning the divine intention to destroy mankind by a Deluge, years anterior to the time in which he received a command from God to prepare an ark for the saving of himself and household. Is it not note- worthy, that Noah and family were saved by the same ele- ment by which the rest of mankind perished ? the like of which takes place in reference to the gospel ; which is a savor of life to some, while it is a savor of death unto others. Was the ark, built by Noah, the first example of naval architecture ? Did the art of the shipwright originate in this remarkable structure ? We think not. It can scarcely be believed that man had been so long on the earth, so vastly multiplied as to numbers, and of course so extended as to settlement, without a resort to some means, and convenient means too, for crossing rivers and even seas. It is incredible that the state of the arts should have been so low amongst the antediluvians, with all the advantages which they enjoyed, as that they should remain, up to the period under considera- tion, destitute of all knowledge of an art with which the most savage nations on the globe in modern times are not unacquainted. Besides, the very instructions given to our patriarch in regard to the making cf the ark, are of such a character, so few and so general, as to imply that they were DATE OF NAVAL ARCHITECTURE. 03 addressed to one who would be at no loss as to the working out or filling up of the details. So large a vessel, and answering, as it would appear, so exactly the purpose for which it was de- signed, and yet with such a paucity and vagueness of directions, we may be assured, could not have been constructed by a novice ; by one who had never before seen a floating building. The progress of the arts among the antediluvians, of which we have on a former occasion spoken, likewise forbids the supposition that this was the first naval structure. But, say you, if nautical craft had been previously in existence, and the mariner's vocation understood, why did not mul- titudes of the antediluvians avail themselves of these facilities for escaping a watery grave ? A very rational question, truly. The reply to it which we would give is, that the same cause which kepft the Israelites so long out of Canaan, and which keeps so many sinners in every age from entering the ship that plies between earth and heaven, ope- rated to prevent the inhabitants of the Old World from having recourse to any means of escape from the inundation caused by the descending torrents, and by the rapid rush of waters already on the earth. They were overtaken unexpectedly ; not so much from a want of antecedent warning, but from a want of belief in the truth of the message that God had caused to be borne to them. They perished just as sinners in Christendom do now through unbelief. Concerning what part of the world it was in which Noah built the ark there has been some diversity of conjecture. We say, conjecture for where Moses has given no direct or definite information respecting matters so ancient, much of what professes to be knowledge is better entitled to the name of conjecture. One supposes, strangely enough, that he built it in Palestine, and that he planted the cedars of which he made it, in the plains of Sodom. Another conceives it to have been built near Mount Caucasus, that outlying member of the Asiatic highlands. A third, in China, where 5* 94 THE WARNING, HOW PROMULGATED. he imagines Noah dwelt before the flood. The greater num- ber of writers appear to favor the idea that it was built in Chaldea or Babylonia, where history relates that there was so great a quantity of cypress, in the groves, in the time of Alexander the Great, that that prince built a whole fleet out of it, for want of other timber. And the conjecture appears confirmed by the Chaldean tradition, which makes Xisuthrus thought to be another name for Noah set sail from that country. Bedford has a chapter, entitled, "Of the place where Noah built the ark," (Chronology, chapter 9th). " The place," says he, " where Noah and his family built the ark was most probably in the land of Shinar, near the river Tigris on the northeast side of Babylon ; " and he refers to Bochart's Phaleg, lib. 1, ch. 4, in confirmation of his opinion. In Gen. 6 : 8, we have the words, " With thee will I estab- lish my covenant" words addressed by the Lord to our patriarch. In them there is reference to an express arrange- ment into which the Deity entered, to save Noah and the other seven from the general ruin. This was said to him immediately subsequent to his reception of the command and directions in regard to the building of the ark ; and it served, no doubt, to encourage and animate him in the commencement and prosecution of so arduous and expensive an undertaking and one which, as has been formerly intimated, would subject him to much mockery and opposition. We, a few evenings since, spoke of Noah's officiating as a preacher of righteousness ; of his admonishing and warning the inhabitants of the Old World, and calling them to repent- ance. Now, if there were no others to promulgate the intelligence and spread the warning, would not most of the multitudinous and extended population of the globe have re- mained ignorant and unwarned of what awaited them ? And, had all received the monitory notice and urgent call to refor- mation, of what avail would it have been if the Almighty Sovereign had determined to destroy all mankind, with the RIGHTEOUS, HOW MANY. 95 * bare exception of " the eight souls ? " To such interrogatories, the response may be given That, had none beside Noah, cordially and with dutiful assiduity, engaged in the tuitionary and monitory work alluded to ; had the people of one neighbor- hood, and then another, and still another, as they received the information and warning from the lips of our patriarch, but conversed and clamored about, and grumblingly and noisily trumpeted forth what had been proclaimed to them by this herald of God ; or, on the other hand, had the multitudes who actually heard him, duly regarded his monitory utterances, and wisely heeded and improved his warm and kindly intend- ed calls, and made them the theme of conversation in tfre company of all with whom they, one after another, came in contact, why, then, some time ere the expiration of the one hundred and twenty years, the substance of Noah's promul- gations, it might be rationally believed, would have reached the entire human family then occupying a place on the earth's surface. And as to the second question, if, upon receiving the intelligence, call, and warning, a general repentance and reformation had ensued, the opinion may be indulged, that, as in the case of Nineveh, (Jonah, 3d ch.,) a respite or release from the threatened doom would have been granted. May we not entertain the idea that, had even a few of them exer- cised contrition, and, by faith, sought admission into the ark, it would have been opened to as many as it could contain ? and, moreover, that, if still larger numbers had, in humble and penitent faith, prepared arks, they also might have been preserved ? In Genesis 6 : 8, 9, it is remarked, that " Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord ; and that he was a just or righteous man, and perfect in his generations." As this language is emphatic, and is apparently expressive of a peculiarity, you may be tempted to inquire Was there at that time no righteous man on the globe, excepting this patriarch ? no human being beside, who enjoyed the divine favor? Our 96 RIGHTEOUS, HOW 'MANY. answer is No one, as the language seems clearly to inti- mate, of the same generation with our patriarch, (Gen. 7:1); no one born as late as he, excepting, of course, members of his own family. We are, indeed, not informed by the record, that any of " the eight souls " embraced in the covenant, so " Jj* called in the eighteenth verse, was pious beside Noah himself. Some infer, from the so individual character of the language used, that no other than he was truly pious. We have been accustomed to regard some of the rest, particularly Noah's wife, and Shem and his wife, as, at that time, the subjects of divine grace. We have also been disposed to look with respect upon Japheth and his conjugal companion. There are historic intimations, certainly, quite favorable to Japheth's character ; that, for instance, in Genesis 9 : 23. Noah's father was, probably, a righteous man ; and he, as you were in a former Exercise told, lived until five years before the flood. Noah's grandfather, Methuselah, may also be believed to have been a renewed man, and a subject of the divine favor ; and he lived, as you have heard, until the very year of the deluge; yes, and to the very month perhaps week. You remember, we formerly spoke of the meaning of the name Methuselah, and that his father Enoch gave him this name prophetically, as indicating that his death and the coming of the flood should be simultaneous. Methuselah, (from methu and sela,) has been understood to mean about this : when he is dead, shall ensue an emission or inundation of waters, to the destruction of the whole earth. This in- genious conjecture of Bochart, in his Phaleg, may be con- sidered as carrying with it more of the air of probability, than any other account of his name. Not only did he die the very year of the flood, but, Jewish writers will have it, seven days before, referring to Genesis 7:10; and that he was taken away from the evil to come. One Jew has chosen to be even more minute as to the time of his removal. Let me, as a morceau, give you this Jew's story. A CURIOUS STORT. 97 He relates that " when Noah had entered the ark, he stayed there for some time, and the flood came not ; which, when he perceived, he said unto God: O, thou Lord of the world, wherefore hast thou brought me into the ark? either that thou shouldst kill me, or that thou shouldst preserve me alive ? And God answered him, That I might preserve thee alive. And Noah said again, If it is so, why do we sit here in the ark, and the flood doth not come ? It had been better* for us to have tarried on the earth. And God answered again, and said unto him, There is still one old man upon the earth who is perfectly just, and for his sake the flood cannot come upon the earth, as long as he lives. And Noah said again, O, Lord of the world, who is that just man ? And God answer- ed him, It is Methuselah, thy elder. And Noah said, Since this is so, bring him in to us, that so the flood may come upon the world, as thou hast said. And God answered, He shall not live above a week, and when he is dead and buried, the flood shall immediately follow. Within which space of time Methuselah died, and the flood came accordingly." This story is taken from Bedford's Chronology, closing part of chapter 10. EVENING SEVENTH. YOUNG GENTLEMEN : We now enter, more directly, upon the consideration of an interesting and thrilling portion of sacred history ; the most remarkable physical event which, since man's creation, the world has ever witnessed; and, contemplated in a moral aspect, as an event occurring under the divine administration, and with which God is represented as having, so to speak, specially to do, it ought not only to excite our interest, but deserves to be pondered thoroughly. The portion of history to which we allude, is commenced in the seventh chapter of Genesis and concluded in the eighth. You will not consider me as asking too much, if I request you to have your Bibles open before you at this part, for the sake of more easy and ready reference. In relation to the event here brought prominently to view, the truth of the history that narrates it has been, especially of late, and is still, a good deal called in question. Some pious minds, even some biblical expounders, have become alarmed at the promulgated results of geological investigation, and, more especially, at the positiveriess and boldness, in certain quarters, of geological hypothesis and inference. That a portion of what is termed science, is "science falsely so called," it requires, indeed, no large amount of sagacity to discover. That skepticism has, of late DISTRUST OF GEOLOGY UNREASONABLE. 99 years, been greatly emboldened by the progress of geological discovery, and has manifested a very strong anxiety to create, and, in every way, magnify, at first sight apparent discrepan- cies between science and revelation, or the works and the word of God, we must have been actually asleep if we have not discerned. And some pious readers and expositors of Scripture, having been unwilling in the least to modify their interpretation of the sacred history relating to the creation and the deluge, have so doggedly set themselves against, and resolutely decried, ascertained and settled geological facts unhesitatingly denouncing them as fancies as, no doubt, to increase the evil which they would wish to see suppressed; as to confirm the before unconfirmed skeptic, and kindle flickering unbelief into something more nearly approximating a flame. It is our ardent wish, that the friends of the Bible should indulge no fears lest the progress of science, in any of its departments, should tend to undermine the Christian fabric, or ignore the sacred Scriptures as a divine revelation. From the advancement of true science, we may justly expect to derive important aid in arriving at a correct understanding of different portions of the word of God. As Christians, hail we, with more than stinted joy, every step taken on the threshold, and to be taken in the interior of the great temple of nature. It aids us in treading, with clearer, safer, firmer step, and with a soul elevated and kindled into ravishment, the more magnificent and beautiful temple of God's special revelation. We have no sympathies, then, with the decriers of geology, or of any other true science. We look for good, and only good, finally to flow, from its every spring, to the cause of that precious religion which the Holy Scriptures were given, by the great Author of all good, to teach. That " a little learning is a dangerous thing," was discovered before the modern discoveries were made in geology and its cognates. A smattering of a thing may leave the mind in a fog, encir- 100 SCIENCE AND SCRIPTURE HARMONIOUS. cled in which, it may run on some dangerous shoal or rock, and founder or go to wreck ; but those who penetrate beyond, without meeting with any disaster, will find a region of whole- some atmosphere and clear sky, where the rays of nature and revelation delightfully commingle, and prove to each other subsidiary in constituting a bright and glorious day. Within reach of the candid inquirer, there is ample inde- pendent evidence, indeed, that the Bible is what it professes to be : the Word of the living God. There is evidence external, historical, from prophecy and miracle ; and there is delightful evidence internal ; and, whilst the former is to be held in high and grateful appreciation, we may say of this latter, that the plain, unsophisticated, and sincere reader of the sacred pages cannot help but find it, ay, and feel it too. Many, such is their depravity, or perverse obstinacy, or reckless obduracy, will not read in order to find either of the kinds of evidence alluded to. You, young gentlemen, do not need that we should stop in our historic course, or turn aside, to deliver a series of lectures on the evidences in support of the Scriptures as a divine revelation. You have not lived to this day, or been the sons of such sires, without having studied and become thoroughly, as well as intelligently, con- vinced, that the Bible is neither a stupid nor a cunningly devised fable. As to the true Christian and more than one of you, we are happy to believe, is such he has, superadded, experimental evidence, that our sacred volume is neither from Satan nor wicked men. Let what has been now dropped suffice on this head, only adding, "Let God be true, but every man a liar; " and that if any dogma or tenet, professing to be the result of scientific investigation or discovery, contravene any plainly revealed or correctly understood truth or fact taught in the Bible, the former should not be received as true is not entitled to credence. There may be a misinterpreting of parts of nature, or of parts of revelation, one or both : if of either, a discrep- THE ARK ENTERED. 101 ancy of course will ensue ; there will be a want of harmony in the opinions entertained or embraced ; truth and error will come in conflict. In order to coalescence there must be a review and a correction of the misinterpretation, on which- soever side it lie. This being done, there will appear no hostile or warring utterances between the two great things of which God is alike the author : the volume of Nature, and that inestimably precious volume which we call THE BIBLE. He who addresses you thinks he has just as much reason to believe the universe to be a lie, as he has to believe the con- tents of the Bible to be but "old wives' fables" It is hardly requisite to say, that he finds no reason to believe either. Let us now proceed with the history. The allotted period of the divine forbearance having ex- pired, and the ark being ready, Noah is commanded by the Lord to enter it, with his wife, his three sons, and their wives, (ch. 7:1.) What else he was directed to introduce, may be seen stated in the second and third verses. You dis- cover, in the second verse, a distinction indicated between beasts clean and unclean. Such distinction existed both before and after the flood ; but, it would seem, not precisely on the same ground. Before, the unclean were so considered and called, solely because they were not to be used for sacrifice ; after, because there were some which were not to be made use of either for this purpose, or for food, (Lev. 11 ; Deut. 14.) Wish to know you may, young gentlemen, how all the living creatures which were to become inmates, together with the provisions requisite for their sustenance, could be got ready, and stored in the ark, so expeditiously. Michaelis has advanced the opinion that our patriarch occupied much of the one hundred and twenty years of forbearance and warning in collecting these together. But we might then ask, how without a special revelation could Noah have ascertained that his collection was complete ? Arid how, without an incredible 102 THE NOACHIC DELUGE BEGUN. knowledge of Natural History, could he have avoided over- charging his vessel with specimens of varieties of the same species of animal ? Is it not much more credible, as well as much more in accordance with other parts of the transaction, to suppose that the various living things which were intended for the ark, were preternaturally guided to this their destined place of shelter ? At the end of seven days the intermediate period being allowed for the admittance and arrangement of every thing in their appropriate places in the floating edifice the heavens began to pour down rain, and those portions of the globe where the waters were stored to pour forth their liquid treasures over the before dry land, (ch. 7 : 11.) The first of these you observe to be expressed in the highly figurative and beautiful, but peculiar phraseology, " the windows of heaven were opened." The original term tvo^ia aruboth being applied to such windows as are made of lattice work, Prof. Bush, from this circumstance, in connection with the declaration of their being opened, makes the language imply that the water, instead of gently descending in drops, as if mada to percolate through a net-work medium, fell in tor- rents like waterspouts, as if the windows had been opened for this purpose on hinges, and every obstruction were removed. If this be not fanciful, then the marginal rendering of " sluices or flood-gates," though wholly paraphrastic, is well suited to" the idea. This intensive interpretation of the phraseology just quoted, and that which is given by the same expositor to the language respecting the " breaking up of the fountains of the deep," do not, indeed, as we may have occasion here- after to see, accord with the tranquil theory of some dis- tinguished modern geologists. We will here merely drop the remark, that it would not greatly surprise us, if, after a pretty thorough examination of the modus of the flood's occurrence, you should find yourselves favorably inclined to the opinion that the truth somewhere interlies the two ex- AT WHAT TIME OF THE TEAR. 103 tremes. That strong expression, " the fountains of the great deep were broken up," indicates that all the waters of the globe, wherever those vast liquid stores lay, were lifted and made to overspread the previously dry portions of the earth. We are not necessitated to entertain that unphilosophical no- tion of many of the old writers, that the phrase " fountains of the great deep " denotes a vast ocean or numerous minor but very large bodies of water situated in the interior of the earth ; and the event predicated of them to mean the belching out of these upon the before desiccate surface. The phrase- ology is adapted to popular impressions on the subject, and imports in general that the waters issued from their ocean- beds, and other terrestrial repositories, and overspread the in- habited dry land. It utterly and immeasurably surpasses all possibility for the human mind, in its extremest stretch, to conceive of the stupendousness as well as fearfulness of the occurrence so summarily but sublimely stated in Gen. 7: 11. We shall act more wisely and profitably, young gentlemen, in contem- plating it with wonder and awe, than by the labored employ of a multitude of words in bootless efforts to explain it. There is specific mention made, by the prime historian, of the period of the year when the Noachian Flood com- menced, (ch. 7 : 11) ; but as the year began differently in Noah's and in Moses' time from what it does in ours, perhaps you may not all feel prepared at once to say to what part exactly of our year " the second month and seventeenth day of the month " of the sacred historian, corresponds. Who among you will volunteer an opinion ? If you all are too modest, the speaker must offer one. The Israelites had their ecclesi- astical or sacred year, and their civil year. The former com- menced with the month Nisan, alias Abib, agreeing with parts of March and April. The latter, which alone prevailed among them prior to their departure from Egypt, began with Tisri which, according to what may perhaps be accounted 104 CIRCUMSTANCES RECOUNTED. the best authorities, commenced about the time of the autumnal equinox, i. e. about the 20th of September. The " seventeenth day of the second month " (Marchesvan) would accordingly correspond with our 6th of November. On that day the rain began to fall, which continued falling for forty days and nights in succession, (12th verse,) that is ? until the 16th of December. At the same time the earth's watery treasures began to move from their accustomed repos- itories, in order to the accomplishment of the fearful deter- mination of the Deity. At the end of one hundred and fifty days, (five months from the commencement of the Deluge,) the ark, on the 7th month and 17th day of the month, found some sort of repose. On the 10th month and 1st day of the month, the mountain tops became visible. On the llth month and llth day of the month, the raven was sent forth. On the 18th, and again on the 25th of the same month, the dove was sent out, which returned. On the 12th month, and 2d day of the month, the dove was again sent out, which returned not. On the 601st year, that is, of Noah's age, the 1st month and 1st day of the month, the waters were dried up from off the surface, the body of the earth still being saturated with water. On the 2d month of the last mentioned year, and 27th day of the month, the ground being fully dried, Noah and family made their egress from the ark. The aggregate period that these were in the floating vessel you thus perceive to have been one year and ten days. If the seven days of preparatory arrangement, immediately preceding the com- mencing rain's descent, be included, then the whole time would be a year and seventeen days. And did not those seven days discourse so eloquently of the nearing judgment of God, and of the fearful perils of the ungodly, as to move at least some of them to cry for mercy and earnestly seek protection ? "Whilst the solemn and striking spectacle of the animals in succession, and then of THE UNGODLY HOW AFFECTED. 105 the Noachic family, passing into the ark was presented to their gaze, was no salutary impression produced on the superlatively wicked multitude who witnessed it ? It would seem not, not the least. Or if any of the crowd began to feel some qualms of conscience, or some misgiving apprehen- sions, these were too slight, or too late, to be of any avail for their succor. "And the Lord shut him in," (ch. 7 : 16). Af- ter the waters had actually commenced rushing from their aerial and earthly repositories, numbers for the moment might have crowded toward the rising vessel, importunate for that admission which they had before slighted. But too late ! An immovable barricade forbade all farther ingress. And the rapidly rising, rushing tide would allow but an awful shriek, and all is over ! If the advance of the commencing flood was slow enough to admit of it, then those deeply solemn and affecting scenes would have been witnessed, descriptions of which have prob- ably fallen under your notice of animals and men in the various localities, the numerous and widely extended portions of the globe where they dwelt, fleeing in awful affright and dismay to high and still higher eminences for safety or escape, as the rising, threatening tide in altitude progressed. Here are a few descriptive touches of the kind alluded to : " The various tribes of creatures were driven, day by day from one resource to another, until none was left. The men who hoped that the waters would soon subside, or whose re- treat from their towns and villages was cut off by the sur- rounding waters, may be conceived to have retreated to the towers and the trees, watching with horror the gradual rise of the waters, and dropping off, one by one, in fatigue and want, from the extremest boughs into the encroaching flood, even before its waters reached them. For those who retreated to the high lands, there was even a more terrible lot than for those whom the waters soonest slew. Thousands, who had succeeded in reaching the mountains, must have 106 THE MELANCHOLY SCENE. perished with hunger, even before the waters swept off the miserable remnant of their numbers. With them, how soon did the joy of escape to a station of fancied safety from the waters, give place to the consciousness that they were without food or the means of obtaining any, upon the mountains, and must speedily perish there unless the waters soon subsided. But they did not subside. They rose ; and, in their rise, narrowed, day by day, the area of possible existence. The young and tender died the aged died men in their strength died till at last, some sole survivor, who had seen all the dear companions of his prime perish before his eyes, stood alone upon the mountain, and rushed to meet the flood in his frenzy, or sunk into it in the listlessness of his despair." If the waters of the deluge did rise slowly and the period which the history allows for them to reach their cul- minating point affords a plausible ground for the belief that they did then this picture is not overdrawn. Then the horrors of the scene or scenes presented immeasurably surpass all power of description. And if, indeed, on the other hand, as others believe, the tide rose with such rapidity or suddenness, as almost instantaneously to render all flight to fancied places of security impossible then, too, it is not in the power of words to convey an adequate description of the terrors of the scene. Then what countless simultaneous death-struggles ; then what an aggregated, measureless, horrific death-groan of an expiring world ! Had you a sufficiently broad-sweeping vision to survey at a glance the globe, we might ask you to tell us, where, among the countless myriads of previously living things overspreading the earth, there is to be discovered, outside barely of the Noaehic receptacle, one, one, retaining life. Sunk beneath the mighty waters, all ! From his ark our second father looks out upon universal desolation ! Sin and unbelief what have ye done ? God is just ! Ay, and merciful too merciful to them that believe ! They find safety ride securely over the billowy deep ! Behold the THE PATRIARCH'S EMOTIONS. 107 * goodness and severity of God ! Is sin a small evil ? Is un- belief a safe one ? " And to whom sware he that they should not enter into his rest but to them that believed not ? So we see that they could not enter in because of unbelief." Let them fear and repudiate it who would not perish. Is faith or piety a vain thing ? What else put and preserved that son of Lamech in the floating vessel ? And what else puts any human souls in heaven ? Can we, young gentlemen, barely cast our eye over the brief simple narrative of that vast diluvial destruction of life, with a heart void of welling emotion ? And think you that our patriarch could have been an eyewitness, as it were, of the wide death-struggle, and heard the groans and shrieks of a dying world a simultaneous sighing out of universal life with no stirring impulses ? especially, when, among that innumerable throng crowding the gates of death, were not a few near relatives of his own ; probably, as we have formerly hinted, even a considerable number of his own earlier born sons and daughters ! At the same time we cannot say that there was in his soul any warring against the administration of the Universal Sovereign. His language, doubtless, over the boundless desolation wa?, " Righteous art thou, O Lord, and upright are thy judgments." You, no doubt, as well as myself, have witnessed in certain quarters, wondrous ebullitions of sympathy and commiseration for the destroyed ; and heard from their lips exclamations of amazement at the reported conduct of the Destroyer. They cannot reconcile such a procedure with the ideas they have been accustomed to entertain of the Supreme Being. What wonderful concern for his honor ! And several of these sympathetic and compassionate souls are so staggered at, that they absolutely cannot be so weak or credulous as to be- lieve the alleged history, in which this so-called narrative is contained, to be true. Their reason and all their better im- pulses compel them to think either that Moses did not write 108 INFIDEL CAVIL. this story, or else that he was somehow deceived, and under this deception was led to ascribe to the Almighty's agency what he had naught to do with ; or, that the writer had been misinformed in regard to an event, which, though related to him as having occurred in the time of his predecessors, yet never happened, at least except in a very circumscribed de- gree ; a very limited inundation, such as has often occurred since those early times ! Now we shall not turn apologists for God ; he needs no apology for his conduct from us ; is fully able to sustain his own honor, vindicate his own character. Nor are our kind offices vastly needed to maintain the correctness of Moses' knowledge or statements. We would prefer commending to scoffers and skeptics to read the Bible a good deal more than they have ever yet done ; and with more of a modicum of the candor that they have ever yet brought to the perusal of our Sacred Book. And if any superaddition, in the way of counsel, be requisite, wo would recommend to them the ex- amination of some of the more able of the many treatises on the Evidences of the Authenticity and Inspiration of the Holy Scriptures ; of both which we mean the Scriptures and the Treatises they may safely be affirmed to be dis- creditably ignorant. Cavillers have appeared to be particularly distressed at the thought, that young children, who confessedly had done no evil, should, and in such vast numbers too, be cut off along with the adult population. Now to this, a word in response. " All souls are mine," says God ; and if he choose to take any to himself ere they have made a long tarry in the body, no one has any right to find fault. The children alluded to were very kindly dealt with in being exalted to the divine abode, in lieu of being left to grow up under deleterious and ruinous parental and social influences, such as they would have risen up from childhood to maturity under, had no deluge occurred. Besides : More than a sin- THE DISPENSATION NOT UNRIGHTEOUS. 109 gle miracle would have been requisite to preserve the infantile whilst the adult population were destroyed; and to sustain them through childhood and adolescence, without human adult instrumentalities employed in their sustentation. The removal of such a number in the dawn of being, though from the prison to the palace, was indeed an administrative act solemn in its character. But let not God be charged fool- ishly. To us or others no great share of mental discernment can be justly attributed, if we or they cannot discover wisdom and benevolence to have been prominent qualities of the dis- pensation. No, no. The broad besom of Omnipotence did not sweep the world of its entire living tenantry, causelessly, wantonly. " Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right ? " Nor, as we may well believe, was this thing done without a great struggle first, in the heart of God, between Justice and Mercy. The occurrence, viewed as an act of divine admin- istration, would have worn a very different aspect, had no in- timation or warning been beforehand given to the guilty population of the globe, of Jehovah's displeasure with their wickedness, together with his intention to destroy them, and at such a specific period, unless by repentance and reforma- tion they should avert the doom. We have heard how assiduous and faithful was God's servant Noah, in instructing, remonstrating with, and warning the people. And whose fault was it but their own, if they did not profit by the min- istrations ? Nor do we feel disposed peremptorily to declare that absolutely all did fail in this particular. In the interval of one hundred and twenty years, whilst many must have died, may not some of that number have been deeply, and to themselves advantageously, impressed by what of truth and counsel fell from the lips of the " preacher of righteousness," and by the threatened judgments of an offended God ? EVENING EIGHTH. YOUNG GENTLEMEN: You will have no objection, we suppose, to hear the form of prayer which Noah is said to have used whilst he and his fam- ily were tenanting the ark. It is not necessary to say, that it was not sent down to us by Noah ; and that Moses has left no statement about it ; but " some Oriental writers." How they knew just after what manner he prayed, or exactly what words he employed, you will excuse us from telling you, for a reason which you will deem satisfactory : because we do not know, and have no means of knowing. The form runs thus : " O Lord, thou art truly great, and there is nothing so great as that it can be compared to thee. Look upon us with an eye of mercy, and deliver us from the deluge of waters. I entreat this of thee for the love of Adam, the first man ; for the love of Abel, thy saint ; for the righteousness of Seth, whom thou hast loved. Let us not be reckoned in the num- ber of those who have disobeyed thy commandments ; but still extend thy merciful care to us, because thou hast hitherto been our deliverer, and all thy creatures shall declare thy praise. Amen." It is brief, you see, and has in it a measure of appropriateness. Many have not been so felicitous in the choice of words. Noah, who had "walked with God" before the deluge, no doubt was engaged much in directly devotional exercise during its prevalence, and whilst in his floating NOAH HOW OCCUPIED IN THE ARX. Ill house ; but as, under the circumstances, his heart must have been so full of emotion, as well as his intellect of thought, and as out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh, it is very improbable that he confined himself to any such sum- mary form of prayer ; and, not less so, that he offered suppli- cation unto God, and asked for mercy and safe deliverance, only for the love of Adam and Abel, and for the righteousness of Seth. Think, young gentlemen, of the strange situation, for a year and more, in which this man of God was placed. How much to arouse his mind and move his heart ! If he had not crowds of great and solemn thoughts, and warm and big emotions, he then was not the man we take him to have been. If our patriarch had been a very good, but a weak man one of small mental calibre, or destitute of the quali- ties in general which constitute what may be called a great and efficient man it is reasonable to think, that God would have never committed or entrusted so much, and matters of unspeakable moment pertaining both to the Old and New World, to his execution, care, or management. Among the numerous themes which would naturally occupy the great mind of such a man, whilst in his big vessel, upon the wide, watery waste, would be the amazing greatness, power, wis- dom, holiness, justice of God ; the character and practices of the population of the Old World ; the evil and demerit of sin ; the state of the recently living millions of the globe, and what must ensue to them whilst traversing the long line of a future interminable being ; together with the amazingly, unaccountably distinguishing providential and gracious conduct of the Lord Almighty toward himself and the seven others the sole survivors of the myriads of Adam's progeny sheltered from even the fear of evil. And in conjunction with or as immediate sequences of such thoughts, what fervid and expanded feelings must have come thickly looming up from his inmost soul. 112 THE EIGHT WHY PRESERVED. Wide of the truth in our conceptions would we get, were we to conceive that the second father of our race found his life, whilst in the floating house, a dull, stagnant one. Besides the interesting and busy occupation which his soul in all its faculties found whilst a moving dweller on the mighty deep besides the abundant intellectual and emotional products to which it gave birth the physical man was not exempt from all occasion for the taxing of its energies, or the putting forth of its activities ; and this not in the case of Noah ex- clusively, but of the whole family. The appetites and what pertained to the health and comfort of subhuman cotenants bird, beast, reptile would make such demands, neces- sarily, on other than the mental powers, that there was no danger of time hanging heavy on their hands, or appearing to move sluggishly. Busy hands make busy wings. Bather a mysterious or strange proceeding it may to some appear, that the Infinite King should have chosen to remove all of mankind, except eight persons, from the earth, and yet not the whole. As the Omnipotent could so easily have created an entirely new and holy race of intelligent beings, why did he not choose to remove all of the apostate family of man, in preference to what he did ? It would, as one of the apparently least benefits resulting from it, have saved that vast expenditure of time, property, and labor incurred in the construction of the ark, and the replenishing of it with, and the support for so considerable a period of its numerous animal tenantry. As for Noah and any members of his household that were pious, these, it might be said, could, by the Sovereign Disposer, have been transferred from this low, dark vale, to glory's lustrous summits, immediately before the submerging judgment was caused to visit the globe. Jehovah could indeed, without any great draught on his almightiness, have brought into existence a new and holy race in the room of the apostate and corrupt species of creatures which had so failed to answer the great end for GENESIS REAL HISTORY. 113 which God's fingers formed them ; but there was no greater reason why he should have taken this course now, than immediately subsequent to our first parents' fall. Besides, he had early committed himself against this course. The fulfilment of the First Promise would forbid the destruc- \ tion of the entire human race. The purposed manifestation of certain features of his own infinitely glorious character, moreover, would preclude it. Neither in our first nor second father's time would God suffer Satan utterly to defeat his great end in bringing into existence mankind. It may also be added that Infinite Wisdom preferred taking advantage of the stock of knowledge and experience of our patriarch in the founding of a new world. As the Biblical account of the Noachic cataclysm is be- fore you, there is no call for a rehearsal of all the particulars, relative to this memorable occurrence, which are there given. But, says growing and emboldened incredulity, Did an event, corresponding in all its features with this account, ever occur ? There are, perhaps, greater numbers in our day than there have been in any preceding age, who seem not backward about saying, in reply to such a question, No. This is in substance a denial, either that Moses wrote this account ; that he was a credible and inspired writer ; or, that he meant the first eight or ten chapters of Genesis to be taken in the light of literal history. This leads us to remark, in reference to the part of the Bible now before us, what we have previously said in relation to the entire Book, that, as you did not, at the outset, prefer such a request, so we cannot consent to pause in our prescribed course, to deliver a series of lectures in proof of these several points. Nor, as the evidences in re- gard to these are so ably and amply presented in numerous accessible works, is such a thing at all requisite. That the writer of the earlier chapters of Genesis intended what he wrote to be understood in the light of myth, allegory, or poetry, common sense, to say nothing more, rejects the idea. Dog- 114 REMARKS ON RIGHT INTERPRETATION. matic as to some, not to you, it may appear, we are willing with confidence to aver, that the scribe who drafted that doc- ument designed to throw from his pen naught other than plain, unsophisticated, sober history. Figurative phraseology is indeed not wholly abstained from ; and a speaking according to appearances, instead of philosophically or scientifically, we find. It should not, we think, be regarded as inconsonant with the honor of God's word, that its references to natural objects should be, in the character of thought and expression, such as comported with the conceptions, impressions, grade of knowledge, of the age in which they are delivered. The Sacred Scriptures deal not in scientific or logical distinctions or rigid definitions. They were addressed to the heart and understanding in popular forms of speech, such as the mass of men could readily comprehend. Thus the sun is spoken of as rising and setting ; and when language of this sort is met with, we, of this age, do not suppose it to be used with astronomical correctness, but only according to appearances. The great object of Scripture being to teach the world reli- gious truth, not to serve as a text-book of science, the lan- guage employed to describe natural phenomena must have been adapted to the state of knowledge among the people to whom the Scripture was addressed. You perceive then how there may occur instances of apparent contradiction between the statements of Science and Revelation. The latter may describe phenomena according to apparent truth ; whilst the former describes the same according to the actual truth. Had the language of Revelation been scientifically accurate, it would have defeated the object for which the Scriptures were given ; for it must have anticipated scientific discovery, and therefore have been unintelligible to those ignorant of such discoveries. Or, if these had been explained by Inspiration, the Bible would have become a text-book in physical science, rather than a guide to duty and eternal life. Since, then, Science and Revelation treat of the same subjects but inci- TRADITIONAL EVIDENCE OF THE DELUGE. 115 dentally, " we ought," as the respected author of the "Reli- gion of Geology " observes, " only to expect that the facts of science, rightly understood, should not contradict the statements of revelation, correctly interpreted" It is, young gentlemen, too much to expect of finite, fallible humanity, that all misconception or misinterpretation of every thing, either in the department of nature or of Scripture, should have been wholly avoided ; and equally too much to expect that it will all speedily end. There are men we would say it kindly who are exceedingly tenacious of the opinions they have embraced, however hastily, from how insufficient exam- ination or data soever these opinions have been formed. The men alluded to, act or feel, in reference to said opinions, as if they were infallible, could not possibly have fallen into a mistake. There will be, especially with some of these men, a very tardy abandonment of confidence in their infallibility. Hence we look for the clashing of arms, the maintenance of conflict between portions of the interpreters or rather misin- terpreters referred to, not wholly to subside for some time to come. But this digression has been extended beyond what was designed. If the Bible contain a divine revelation, a thing which we fully, firmly, and, as we think, on thoroughly examined evidence, believe, then its statements its correctly un- derstood, rightly interpreted statements need no confirma- tion from extraneous or foreign sources ; from natural or from traditional utterances. Yet it is possible for our confidence in the correctness of our interpretation of a scriptural document or statement, to receive confirmation or strength, when na- ture's or tradition's testimony is of like import with it. If such a remarkable event did transpire as that of the scripturally reported Noachian Deluge, although the number surviving the catastrophe, to transmit it, was small, yet we would naturally expect that some notices of it would, by 116 TRADITIONAL EVIDENCE OF THE DELUOE. tradition or orally, be handed down from one generation to another, and more or less extend to different portions of the descendants of the Noachic family. And so we find it. Traditions there are existing, in various, not only contiguous, but widely distant, nations of the globe, more or less distinct, relating to this stupendous physical occurrence this unpar- alleled and marvellous inundation. We say, relating to this; for, upon their presentation, you will be able to trace such features as will leave your mind in no dubiety as to their primary derivation, or appropriate reference. You will observe, a thing which we would naturally expect, that these traditions mostly partake less and less of distinctness, in proportion as we recede from the quarter of the world where the ark rested. But, in giving an abstract of these traditions, it is difficult to decide where it is best to begin. This, however, is, perha'ps, a matter of no great moment. Our mind runs, naturally, first to the Orient, there being the theatre of those particular occurrences specified by the inspired narrator, respecting the deluge. Suppose we com- mence with Chaldea. The tradition of that country runs thus: "The god Chronus appeared to Xisuthrus in a vision, and warned him, that, on the fifteenth day of the month Daesius, there would occur an inundation, by which the race of man would be destroyed. He therefore ordered him to build a vessel, and into it to take with him his friends and connections ; and to convey every thing essential to the sustaining of life on board ; together with specimens of all the different living creatures, birds and quadrupeds ; and to trust himself fearlessly to the deep. In compliance with these directions, Xisuthrus constructed a vessel, in length five stadia, (i. e., about three-fourths of a mile,) and two stadia in breadth. Into this he collected every thing he had prepared, and last of all entered it himself, with his wife, children, and friends. After the flood had been upon the TRADITIONAL EVIDENCE OP THE DELUGE. 117 earth, and was in time abated, Xisuthrus sent out birds from the vessel, which, finding no food or place for rest, returned to him. After the lapse of some days, he sent them forth again, and they returned with their feet tinged with mud. He, subsequently, made with them a third trial, and they returned no more : from which he inferred that the surface of the earth had appeared above the waters. He according- ly made an opening in the vessel, and, on looking out, found that it was stranded upon a mountain, which he afterwards ascertained to be in the land of Armenia." (See Cory's Ancient Fragments for it in full.) Berosus, a Chaldean priest, who lived two hundred and seventy years before Christ, gathered from traditions exist- ing in his region the following. After stating that before the flood there was a great city of giants, called Aeno, situated near Libanus, who governed the whole world, his account pro- ceeds thus : " There was one among the giants who reverenced the gods, and was more wise and prudent than all the rest ; his name was Noa ; he dwelt in Syria, with his three sons, Sem, Japet, Cham, and their wives, the great Tidea, Pandora, Noea and Noegla. This man, fearing the destruction which he foresaw from the stars would come to pass, began in the seventy-eighth year before the inundation, to build a ship covered like an ark. Seventy-eight years from the time he began to build this ship, the ocean of a sudden broke out, and all the inland seas and the rivers and fountains bursting from beneath, (attended with the most violent rains from heaven for many days,) overflowed all the mountains ; so that the whole human race was buried in the waters, except Noa and his family, who were saved by means of the ship ; which being lifted up by the waters, rested at last upon the top of the Glordyaean mountain, of which it is reported, there now remaineth some part, and that men take away the bitu- men from it, and make use of it by way of a charm, or expia- 6* 118 TRADITIONAL EVIDENCE OF THE DELUGE. tion to avert evil. We must therefore allow from these premises, that which both the Chaldeans and Scythians write of, that after the earth was dried from the waters, there were no more than the above mentioned eight persons in Armenia, and that from these all men upon earth sprung ; and for this reason it is, that the Scythians justly call Noa the father of all the greater and lesser gods, the author of the human race, the chaos, and seed of the world." Among the ancient Persians was likewise found the tradi- tion of a general deluge. Alluded to only wildly is the subject in the Zendavesta ; but among the ancient books of the Parsees who inherit the worship and notions of the ancient Persians is one which states that the world having been corrupted by Ahriman, the evil one, it was thought necessary to bring over the world a universal flood of waters, that all impurity might be washed away. Accordingly the rain came down in drops as large as the head of a bull, until the earth was wholly covered with water to the height of a man, and all the khaufaters (the creatures of the evil one) perished. The waters then gradually subsided, and first the mountains and then the plains appeared once more. In this tradition there is the deficiency of a family preserved in an ark, which we find in even remoter regions. But it is stated that after the flood there was a new creation of men and animals. The ancient Egyptians were manifestly not unacquainted with the doctrine of a general deluge, though the details of their belief have not been transmitted to us. The Egyptian historian Manetho, as quoted by Syncellus and Eusebius, speaks of certain inscribed pillars, which were set up by the Thoth, the first Hermes, and the inscriptions on which were after the deluge transcribed into books. Plato also states in his Timceus, that having questioned a certain Egyptian priest on the subject, he was informed that the gods, wishing to TRADITIONAL EVIDENCE OF THE DELUGE. 119 purify the earth by water, overwhelmed it by a deluge. On this occasion certain shepherds and herdsmen were saved upon the tops of the mountains ; but those who dwelt in towns were swept away by the rising waters. Whether this statement applied to the general deluge might indeed admit of doubt, were it not that the religion of the ancient Egyptians abounds in Noachic memorials, which fix the true purport of such statements. From another source also we gather the following : The Noah of Egypt appears to have been Osiris. Typhon, a personification of the sea, enticed him into an ark, which being closed, he was forced to sea ; and it is a curious fact, that he embarked on the 17th day of the month Athyr, the very day, most probably, when Noah entered the ark. The famous tradition of Deucalion's deluge, as preserved among the Greeks, has so close a coincidence with that of Noah, that the accounts possessed by us seem to read like amplified reports of the record in Genesis. Philo, the Alex- andrian Jew, who was well acquainted with both sacred and pagan literature, plainly affirms that Deucalion was Noah. His words (translated) are, " The Grecians call him Deuca- lion, but the Chaldeans style him Noah ; in whose time there happened the great eruption of waters." Another author says (in Gr.), "O Noe Xisouthros para Chaldaios." Of this deluge of Deucalion we have two accounts : one by Lucian, and another by Ovid. That by the last named is the most poetical, as well as the most full in descriptive details ; whilst that of the first mentioned is most consistently in agreement with the Mosaic details throughout. As your countenances express a desire to hear them, we will present you with an abstract of each. After giving an account of the giants assailing heaven by piling mountains on mountains, and then of the " impious, arrogant, and cruel brood " that sprung out of the " impreg- 120 TRADITIONAL EVIDENCE OF THE DELUGE. nant earth " from their blood, the Roman poet, Ovid, pro- ceeds (Dry den's translation) to say, " But Jove Concludes to pour a wat'ry deluge down, And what lie durst not burn, concludes to drown. Impetuous rain descends ; Nor from his patrimonial heaven alone Is Jove content to pour his vengeance down : Aid from his brother of the seas he craves, To help him with auxiliary waves. Then with his mace the monarch struck the ground, And rising storms a ready passage found. Now seas and earth were in confusion lost, A world of waters and without a coast. A mountain of stupendous height there stands Betwixt the Athenian and Bseotian lands, Parnassus is its name ; whose forky rise Mounts through the clouds and mates the lofty skies ; High on the summit of this dubious cliff, Deucalion wafting moored his little skiff. He with his wife were only left behind, Of perished man ; they two were human kind ; The most upright of mortal man was he, The most sincere and holy woman she, When Jupiter, surveying earth from high, Beheld it in a lake of waters lie He loosed the northern wind ; fierce Boreas flies To puff away the clouds and purge the skies." [Ovid's Metam. lib. 1.] Lucian's account, which may in distinction from the former be also called the Grecian, is on this wise : " The present race of mankind are different from those who first existed ; for those of the antediluvian world were all destroyed. The present world is peopled from the sons of Deucalion ; having increased to so great a number from one person. In respect to the former brood, they were men of violence, and lawless in their dealings. They regarded not oaths, nor observed the rites of hospitality, nor showed mercy to those who sued for. it. On this account they were doomed to destruction ; and, for this purpose, there was a mighty eruption of waters from TRADITIONAL EVIDENCE OF THE DELUGE. 121 the earth, attended with heavy showers from above, so that the rivers swelled, and the sea overflowed, till the whole earth was covered with a flood, and all flesh drowned. Deu- calion alone was preserved to re-people the world. This mercy was shown him on account of his justice and piety. His preservation was effected in this manner : He put all his family, both his sons and their wives, into a vast chest, (or ark,) which he had provided ; and he went into it himself. At the same time animals of every species, boars, horses, lions, serpents, whatever lived upon the face of the earth, followed him by pairs ; all which he received into the chest, (ark,) and experienced no evil from them. As to what hap- pened after this, there is an ancient tradition among those of Hierapolis, that in their country a great chasm opened and received all the water; whereupon Deucalion erected altars and built the temple of Juno over the chasm." Thus far from Lucian. Plutarch mentions that Deucalion sent out a dove from the ark, whose return indicated a continuance of the deluge ; but its neglect to return, when sent out the second time, or, as some say, its return with muddy feet, showed that the waters had disappeared. Analogous traditions are found scattered over the whole peopled globe. There had been an expression of some doubts whether such a belief prevailed among the Chinese. But, says Sir William Jones, " I may assure you, after full inquiry and consideration, that the Chinese believe the earth to have been wholly covered with water, which, in works of undisputed authority, they describe as flowing abundantly ? then subsiding, and separating the higher from the lower stage of mankind ; and that the divisions of time, from which their poetical history begins, just preceded the appearance of Fohi, (Fohee,) in the mountains of China." (See Asiatic Researches, vol. 2 : Dis. on Chinese.) The antiquities of the Chinese reach no higher than the times of Noah, for Fohi was their first king. The age of Fohi has been thought, by 122 TRADITIONAL EVIDENCE OF THE DELUGE. some writers, to coincide with that of Moses' Noah ; and Shuckford even says, there are many reasons to conclude Moses' Noah and the Chinese Fohi to be the same person. (See Shuckford's Connexions, vol. 1, p. 29.) But we must postpone the further consideration of the voice of tradition to another evening. EVENING NINTH. YOUNG GENTLEMEN : Of the Hindoo tradition relative to the deluge, the follow- ing is Sir Win. Jones's abridged account, as it is contained in the poem of the Bhagavat : " The demon Hayagriva having purloined the vedas from the custody of Brahma, while he was reposing at the close of the sixth Manwantara, the whole race of men became corrupt, except the seven Bishis, and Satyavrata, who then reigned in Drevira, a maritime region to the south of Carnata. This prince was performing his ablutions in the river Critamala, when Vishnu appeared to him in the shape of a sm'all fish ; and, after several augmen- tations of bulk in different waters, was placed by Satyavrata in the ocean, where he thus addressed his amazed votary : ' In seven days all creatures who have offended me shall be destroyed by a deluge ; but thou shalt be secured in a capa- cious vessel miraculously formed. Take, therefore, all kinds of medicinal herbs and esculent grain for food, arid, together with the seven holy men, your respective wives, and pairs of all animals, enter the ark without fear; then shalt thou know God face to face, and all thy questions shall be answered.' Saying this, he disappeared ; and, after seven days, the ocean began to overflow the coasts, and the earth to be flooded by constant showers, when Satyavrata, meditating on the Deity? 124 TRADITIONAL EVIDENCE OP THE DELUGE. saw a large vessel moving on the waters. He entered it, having in all respects conformed to the instructions of Vishnu, who, in the form of a vast fish, suffered the vessel to be tied with a great sea-serpent, as with a cable, to his measureless horn. "When the deluge had ceased, Vishnu slew the demon, and recovered the vedas, instructed the Satyavrata in divine knowledge, and appointed him the seventh Menu, by the name of Vaivaswata." (Asiatic Re- searches, vol.2; on Chronology of the Hindoos.) "And, according to the Pauranias and the followers of Buddhu," says Capt. Wilford, "the ark rested on the mountain of Aryavarta, Aryawart, or India." (Same work, vol. 6, p. 521.) Some further particulars have been given by Sir Wm. Jones, from the Hindoo traditions, respecting this Satyavrata, which present a still more striking coincidence with the his- tory of Noah, subsequent to the deluge. " To Satyavarman, that sovereign of the whole earth, were born three sons : the eldest Sharma ; then Charma ; " (in the common dialect, ac- cording to Wilford, pronounced Sham and Cham ;) " and the third Jyapeti by name. They were all men of good morals, excellent in virtue and virtuous deeds ; skilled in the use of weapons, to strike with or to be thrown ; brave men, eager for victory or battle. But Satyavarman, being continually delighted with devout meditation, and seeing his sons fit for dominion, laid upon them the burden of government, while he remained honoring and satisfying the gods, and priests, and kine. One day, by the act of destiny, the king having drunk mead, became senseless, and lay asleep naked ; then was he seen by Charma, and by him were his two brothers called, to whom he said, i What has now befallen ? in what state is this our sire ? ' By those two was he hidden with clothes, and called to his senses again and again. Having recovered his intellect, and perfectly knowing what had passed, he cursed Charma, saying, ' Thou shalt be the ser- TRADITIONAL EVIDENCE OF THE DELUGE. 125 vant of servants ; and, since thou wert a laughter in their presence, from laughter shalt thou acquire a name/ Then he gave to Charma the wide domain on the south of the snowy mountains ; and to Jyapeti he gave all on the north of the snowy mountains; but he, (Satyavarman,) by the power of religious contemplation, attained supreme bliss." (Vol. 3d of Asiatic Res.) Among the aboriginal tribes of the American Continent, even, exist traditions of the deluge. The Mexicans, for instance, had traditions of a flood which destroyed all the human family except one man and his wife, who escaped in the hollow trunk of an ahahuete or cypress tree. The chil- dren born numerously to them, after the subsidence of the waters, were dumb, until they received the gift of speech from a dove, which came and perched itself on a lofty tree. Humboldt, in his Vues des Cordilleras, informs us that there are Mexican paintings of this event extant, in which Coxcox, the Noah of the Mexicans, and his wife, Xochi quetzal, are seated in the trunk of a tree, covered with leaves, and float- ing amid the waters, while Matalcueje or Chalchiuhege, the goddess of water, pours down her floods upon the earth. In the different representations of this scene, men are seen swim- ming and perishing in the waters, and birds are discovered fluttering and dying upon the surface, where they through exhaustion have fallen. In Humboldt's work just alluded to, there is an allegorical painting (plate 15) in which a serpent, cut asunder, but still living, is seen shut up in a tank of water, from the midst of which rises a plant. To the left is a woman crowned with a garland ; while to the right is represented a man shut up in a kind of jar. A personage is likewise represented, to whose victorious arm the miserable condition of the serpent is to be ascribed. The allegory thus pictured has reference, says Humboldt, to the serpent which poisoned the water the source of all organic life ; to the victory over him, like that 126 TRADITIONAL EVIDENCE OP THE DELUGE. of Krishna over the dragon Kaliya ; to the seduction of the world, and to its purification by water. Here can we fail to trace the deluge, as well as other prominent Scripture inci- dents ? According to Humboldt and Herrera, the Mechoachans, a people in comparative propinquity to the Mexicans, believed that mankind, becoming forgetful of their origin and duties, were punished by a universal deluge, from which the priest Tezpi, and his wife and children, were alone preserved. He shut himself up in a large chest of wood, into which he put all kinds of animals and all useful seeds. When the Great Spirit ordered the waters to subside, Tezpi sent out a bird called aura, (the Zopilote, a species of vulture,) which, finding food in dead carcasses, returned ; then several other birds, till at length the humming bird returned with a branch in its beak. The inhabitants of Cuba related, " that an old man, know- ing the deluge was to come, built a great ship, and went into it, with his family and abundance of animals ; that he sent out a crow, which did not return staying to feed on the dead bodies ; and afterward returned with a green branch ; " with other particulars, as far as Noah's sons covering him when drunk, and others scoffing at it, &c. (See Herrera's History of America, as quoted by Catcott, p. 72.) "In Peru" says Herrera, in the same work, " the ancient In- dians reported that they had received by tradition from their ancestors, that many years before there were any Incas, at the time when the country was very populous, there happened a great flood ; the sea breaking out beyond its bounds, so that the land was covered with water, and all the people perished. The Guancas inhabiting the vale of Xausca, and the nations of Chiquito in the province of Caliao, add that some persons remained in the hollows and caves of the highest mountains, who again peopled the land. Others of the mountain people affirm that all perished in the deluge, only six persons being REMARKS ON PROOF FROM TRADITION. 127 saved on a float, from whom descended all the inhabitants of the country." The natives of Terra Firma believe, that " when the universal deluge happened, one man, with his wife and children, escaped in a canoe, and that from them the world had been peopled," &c. " The most barbarous of the Brazilians," says Herrera, " have some knowledge of a general deluge ; it being their opinion that the whole race of mankind were extirpated by this means, except one man and his own sister, who being enceinte before, they by degrees repeopled the world." The Brazilians near the coast had a very particular tradition of a deluge, which grew out of a quarrel between two brothers, and which rose until the earth was entirely submerged. All mankind were destroyed ex- cept the two brothers and their wives ; who were saved by climbing trees on the tops of the mountains. The Crees, a tribe of Arctic Indians, Dr. Richardson (a companion of Franklin in his polar expedition) says, " all spoke of a uni- versal deluge, from which one family alone escaped, with all kinds of birds and beasts, on a huge raft." " Even the Indians of the Choctaw tribe" (says Dr. Hamilton, in his Friend of Moses, page 322) " had, it is well known, when they first came into contact with the whites, traditions handed down from their remotest ancestors, of a mighty deluge, from which a small number of persons only escaped on a raft. In these North American Indian traditions a muskrat figures as the substitute of Noah's dove." The tradition of a general flood, we are by good authority informed, is found among the natives of the South Sea Islands. The inhabitants of Tahiti, being asked concerning their origin, replied that " their Supreme God, a long time ago, being angry, dragged the earth through the sea, when their Island was broken off and preserved." Now if any feel themselves able, we confess we do not, to account philosophically or rationally for such remarkable and wide-spread coincidences as are traceable between these 128 MYTHOLOGICAL EVIDENCE. traditions and the Scriptural account of the deluge of Noah, without supposing them all to refer to one and the same event. The ark : why find we so frequent mention made of it as the vessel in which the survivors were preserved, when a vessel of some other form might be more naturally imagined as the means of preservation ? And, more es- pecially, whence the notion of sending out the dove and the raven, to ascertain the state of the earth's surface ? And why into the earliest and the fabulous periods of a nation's history is the deluge of tradition thrown back ? "Admit these traditions to be all founded upon the Noachian deluge," as one remarks, " and all difficulties vanish ; but deny this identity, and we need a miracle, greater than would be re- quired for a universal deluge, to resolve them." But to other than such oral or written traditions we might resort to find proof confirmatory of the Mosaic account of the event we are considering. It might be shown that memorials of the Noachic deluge were wrought into the very structure of heathenism. The ancient systems of mythology and polytheism have been shown to be filled with idolatrous com- memorations of that occurrence. Look at Bryant's " Analy- sis of Ancient Mythology," or that more recent work, Har- court's " Doctrine of the Deluge," and you will see this in lengthened and amplified detail exhibited. "We cannot con- sent to fatigue you with a recital. We will but give you "a brick as a specimen of the building." In the character of Inachus, Atlas, Dionusos, Janus, Zeus, Saturn, and several other gods and goddesses among the Greeks, Noah and his sons may be distinctly recognized. In the Orient, our patri- arch was called Noas, Noasis, Nusus, and Nus. Hence the Greek Dionusos, the prototype of the Latin Bacchus, whose name has generally been supposed to be derived from Dios, the genitive of Zeus, and Nuse, a city of India ; or, more probably, the city took its name from Nusus, since there were many other cities of that name, as well as mountains, in MYTHOLOGICAL EVIDENCE. 129 various parts of the world, mostly distinguished, however, for the cultivation of the vine. This Dionusos the Greeks made a great warrior, " who went with an army over the face of the whole earth ; and taught mankind, as he passed along, the method of planting the vine ; and how to press out the juice and receive it in proper vessels." Such an allusion, young gentlemen, to the character and some of the most striking incidents in the life of Noah can hardly have been accidental. In the ancient sacred mysteries, too, as well as in the histories of the individual who survived some terrible catastrophe, there is frequent reference to the door of the ark, and the imprisonment of Noah within it, for a time. " The entrance through it," (the door,) says Bryan t ? " the ancients esteemed a passage to death and darkness ; but the egress from it was represented as a return to life. Hence the opening and shutting of it were religiously recorded. And as the stay in the ark was an intermediate state between a lost world and a world renewed, this was also alluded to in their hieroglyphical representations. We accordingly find Janus with two faces ; having a retrospect to what was past, as well as a view forward to what was to come. They styled him Patulcius and Clusius, in allusion to the history above given. The person preserved is always mentioned as preserved in an ark. He is described as being in a state of darkness, which is represented allegorically as a state of death. He then obtains a new life, which is called a second birth, and he is said to have his youth renewed. He is on this account looked upon as the first-born of mankind ; and both his antediluvian and postdiluvian states are com- memorated, and sometimes the intermediate state also is spoken of." The author just quoted from, supposes the Triad of Plato, Proclus, and other ancient writers, to have been derived from the deification of the three families of which our patriarch was the head. This has indeed by some been supposed to 130 9 MYTHOLOGICAL EVIDENCE. have reference to the Trinity of the Scriptures ; but these give evidence in other parts of their writings that such a doctrine was unknown to them. The patriarch and his three sons are likewise, in other connections, alluded to by the ancient mythologists. " In the ceremonies of heathen worship," (quoting the lan- guage of a writer in the Biblical Repository, vol. 9, page 91,) " the ark was a very conspicuous object. There was the sacred Baris of the Egyptians, made use of in celebrating the rites of Osiris ; the ship of Iris at Rome, carried yearly in procession, and the sacred cups in the form of boats, called Cymbia and Scyphi, which were used in a similar manner. The deification of the ark, or rather of the genius of the ark, is very manifest in the names and characters of numerous hea- then deities. The ark was distinguished by the terms Theba, Baris, Arguz, Aren, Arene, Laris, Boutus, Boeotus, Cibotus, etc. And from these names were formed different divinities. But as the terms have various degrees of correspondence, a relation more or less remote was supposed to exist between the deities formed from them. Sometimes we perceive a confounding together of the ark and Noah ; but this is not unexpected, for the whole of the heathen mythology consists of an absurd mixture of truth with error." " In this connection," the same writer goes on to say, " the famous Ogdoas of the Egyptians should be mentioned. This consisted of eight persons sailing together in the Sacred Baris or ark. And there is not small reason for believing that the famous Argonautic Expedition, celebrated by the Greeks, was fabulous, and that its history in fact was derived from the history of the Noachian deluge." Among other mementos of this catastrophe incorporated into ancient mythology, we find the dove, the raven, and the rainbow. The latter, according to Moses, having been con- stituted the token of a covenant between God and man, was held in uncommon regard for many ages. But the dove is MYTHOLOGICAL EVIDENCE. 131 found in almost all the mythological histories. It was regarded as a peculiar messenger of the gods, and emblem of peace and good fortune. On the other hand, the raven, which, unlike the dove, disappointed the hopes of Noah by never returning to the ark, was generally regarded as a bird of ill omen. Among the ancient Amonians the name of the dove was Ion, lona, or lones ; hence the Oinas of the Greeks. This bird was assumed by the Babylonians for their national ensign, having been depicted upon their military standards. They were hence styled lonians, or children of the dove ; and their city lonah. These titles are given in Jer. 25 : 38 ; also 46 : 16 ; and 50 : 16. We are told that it was a custom among the ancient mariners to let fly from the ship, during a voyage, a dove or a pigeon, in order to predict by its movements the success of their voyage. It was thought to be the best time for sailing, when the sun and the seven stars near the head of Taurus were in conjunction. Hence these stars are called Peleiades or Pleiades, the doves. The goddess Venus appears to have been the ancient lonah ; and hence in her history are numerous allusions to the dove of Noah and the deluge. (See Bib. Rep. vol. 9, p. 91.) Similar allusions to the Noachic deluge are afforded in the mythologies of other nations besides those of Greece and Rome. They are to be found, e. g., in the histories of the Phenician Sydyk, Dagon, and Agmenes ; the Assyrian Derceto and Astarte ; the Egyptian Isis, Osiris, Sesostris and Oannes ; the Chinese Fohi, and the Hindoo Menu, Buddhu, and Vishnu. Although there is much room here for the play of a fertile imagination, yet the allusions are frequently too striking, and the coincidences too remarkable, to allow us to impute all to fancy, and they justify us in coming to the conclusion that the deluge of Noah formed a principal ground- work of ancient mythology. Before leaving altogether this branch of the subject, permit me to refer you, in the briefest manner, to two or three matters 132 THE APAMEAN MEDALS. partaking of the character of ancient memorials of the deluge. The first of these that I will name are the famous Apamean medals I mean certain imperial bronze medals of the city of Apamea, in Phrygia. Whilst they bear on one side the head of different emperors, there is inscribed on the other, in the language of Eckhel, " A chest swimming upon the waters, in which a man and woman appear from the breast upwards. Without it, with their faces turned from it, advance a woman robed, and a man in a short garment, hold- ing up their right hands. On the lid of the chest stands a bird, and another, balanced in air, holds in its claws an olive branch." (See Eckhel's Doctrina Numorum Veterum.) In Lecture Ninth of his work on the Connection between Science and Revealed Religion, Dr. Wiseman remarks on this : " The small compass of a medal could hardly give a more expressive representation of this great event" the Noachian deluge. "We have two different scenes, but manifestly the same actors. For the costume and heads of the persons standing outside, do not allow us to consider them others than the figures in the ark. We have these individuals first floating over the waters in an ark ; then standing on dry land in an attitude of admiration, with the dove bearing the symbol of peace above them. But the most interesting circumstance yet remains. On the front panel of this ark are some letters, and the discussion of their import has been the subject of many learned dissertations. Bianchini published two copies of this medal, on one of which he reads NOE, and on the other NEO, the former of which readings Falconieri also gives upon another medal. Eckhel, after examining the dif- ferent explanations given by others, etc., concludes that as the entire scene represented on the medal, bears manifest reference to the Noachian deluge, so must the inscription on the ark ; and that consequently it is the name of that patri- arch. This he illustrates from the coins of Magnesia in Ionia, on which is the figure of a ship, bearing the inscrip- ADDITIONAL MEMORIALS. 133 tion ARGO ; no doubt for the purpose of clearly specifying the mythological event to which it refers, the expedition of the Argonauts." But, it may be asked, what could have induced the Apameans to choose such an event for their symbol on their coins ? To this we have the reply, That it was customary for cities to take, as their emblems, any remarkable event which was fabled, or reported to have happened there. Thus the city of Thermae, in Sicily, has Hercules upon its coins, because he is supposed in mythology to have there reposed. Now this is precisely the case with Apamea, or, as it anciently was called, Celeene. For the Sibylline books, which, however spurious, are sufficient testimony of the exist- ence of a popular tradition, expressly tell us, that in the neighborhood of Celaene stands the mountain Ararat, upon which the ark reposed. This tradition, evidently, having no reference to Deucalion's deluge, the seat of which was Greece, is sufficient to account for the adoption of such a* representation upon the Apamean coins. Hence, too, prob- ably, arose another ancient name of this city, Kibotos, (Gr. the Ark,) as Winkelman has shown ; and this name is the very word used by the Septuagint and Josephus in describing Noah's ark. You may see a plate in the work of Wiseman, referred to, giving a striking representation of these medals. In the same work, likewise, there is brought to our notice an extremely curious monument, which is considered as bearing no other explanation but such as has been given to the Apamean medals, that is, as commemorative of the deluge. It was found in the year 1696, by a workman, whilst engaged in excavating a monument in the vicinity of Rome. It came, we are told, into the possession of the antiquarian Ficoroni, and a minute account of it was pub- lished by Bianchini, in the following year. An engraving accompanies it, a copy of which, together with a description, you may find in Dr. Wiseman's ninth lecture. We hope you 7 134 ADDITIONAL MEMORIALS. will, at the earliest opportunity, look at the representation, and read the description there given. You will be both entertained and instructed by it. Of this monument, it will not be an easy matter to give any other explanation than what must obviously strike one's mind at once that it alludes to the destruction of the human race, with the excep- tion of a few, who, with pairs of animals, were saved in some species of ark or chest. In a series of pictures representing ceremonies in honor of Bacchus, found in the lava-whelmed city of Herculaneum, appears, we are told, what may with some probability be supposed to offer the form which the ancients imagined the ark to possess, and what well enough accords with the idea we have entertained of it. Upon her shoulder a woman is carrying a square box, having a projecting roof, and at the end a door. Being borne in a commemorative procession, it is manifestly a sacred Thebat or ark. Its door at the side, and its projecting roof, show that it was not a bare chest ; whilst the absence of the usual characteristics, and the occasion of its use, indicate that it is not a model house, or a votive offering. It is not unlikely that those of the monuments called Druidical, which bear the name of kistvaens, and in which the stones are disposed in the form of a chest or house, were intended as memorials of the ark. At least it has been shown by Davis, (Celtic Researches,) that the ark was not only typified among the Celts by rafts and islands, but by a stone ark or chest, which is precisely the meaning of kist-(chest)-vaen. (See Kitto's Cyc. : art. Ark.) The opinion is indorsed by the respected author of Bible Illustrations, (vol. 1, p. 157,) that the sacred mountains of various lands are to be viewed as " commemorative of the mount on which the ark rested, and which was venerated as the spot of ground, once isolated among the waters, to which the nations of mankind may all trace they- origin." And the ADDITIONAL MEMORIALS. 135 same writer intimates it to be an idea entitled to belief, that the "high places" on which the Jews were wont to offer their worship, had the same reference. He even imagines it probable, that the pyramids of Egypt, and, still more, the tall masses of broken masonry which yet appear in the Babylonian plains, were intended to represent or symbolize the mountain from which the Noachida3 had gone forth. Finally, we would remark, that the conjecture has not, to some, appeared improbable, that the "mounds," those mountains in minia- ture which are to be found in such numbers both in the eastern and western world, were designed for a similar end. EVENING TENTH. YOUNG GENTLMEN : Justly may it be thought by you high time for us to in- quire whether, in addition to the evidences adduced in the two preceding Exercises, any physical proofs exist of the Noachic cataclysm ; anything on the globe, the theatre professedly of such an occurrence, that may with propriety be regarded as corroborative of the statements contained in the seventh and eighth chapters of Genesis. Are there any discernible marks, any distinguishable traces, on or be- neath the earths surface, of an event corresponding in its prominent features with what is distinctively denominated the Noachian Deluge ? A minute and full narrative of human belief or opinion relating to this point, as well as to the cause or causes oper- ating to produce the catastrophe, along with the manner of occurrence, would constitute both a long and a curious por- tion of history. To give such a narration in regard to each, would occupy more time than either you or myself would, in our limited evening series, consider desirable. With some brief notices of opinions concerning them, severally, we must at present content ourselves. In Sir Charles Lyell's work, entitled Principles of Geology ; and in Dr. John Pye Smith's Relation between the Holy Scriptures and some parts of Geological Science ; as well as INQUIRY AS TO PHYSICAL EVIDENCE. 137 in Dr. Edward Hitchcock's Religion of Geology, may be found a somewhat full statement, especially taken together, in regard to these ; - and to which works we take pleasure in referring you. That the earth, particularly its crust, has undergone great changes since this planet's original formation by its Creator? you do not need to be informed. Whether any, and if any, what distinguishable portion of these changes may be correct- ly attributed to the instrumentality of the Noachic Flood, is a matter concerning which you may, in this connection, be justly desirous to hear at least a little. In what we shall attempt touching this, will be almost unavoidably intermingled, here and there, some historic notices of opinion pertaining to the instrumental cause or causes, and mode of occurrence, of the Noachic cataclysm. Dr. Thomas Burnet, following Des Cartes, entertained the opinion that anterior to Noah's Flood, our terrestrial ball was so different in the appearance of its surface from what it ever since has exhibited, as to have presented to the view a perfectly round body, without eminences, valleys, or sea ; " an orbicular crust, smooth, regular, and uniform," investing the face of the abyss or deep ; that this crust, being heated by constant, unvarying action of the sun, became dry and chinky, and by the rarefaction and expansion of the inclosed vapors, clave, burst, and fell down irregularly into the water, crowd- ing the latter up, thus producing an inundation, and drowning the former inhabitants. Thus, according to this author, our ocean is a part of the ancient abyss ; the rest of this latter remains in the internal cavities with which the sea has still a communication. Islands and sea-rocks are the small frag- ments, and continents are the large masses of the ancient crust. As both the rupture and fall of this crust were effected in a confused manner, it is not surprising that the surface of the present earth should be full of mountains, gulfs, plains, and irregularities of every kind. 138 INQUIRY AS TO PHYSICAL EVIDENCE But, according to the theory of this cosmologist, not only was the earth's surface thus altered at the time of Noah's flood, but the earth itself, relatively to the sun, changed as to its position. By the diluvial catastrophe, the violence of the shock which the earth received was so great, that the plane of the equator and that of the ecliptic, which were before coincident, became variant in the measure which ever since has existed: whence arose the difference of seasons, which, of course, did not belong to the antediluvian earth. These views were set forth in extenso, and in a style ornate and attractive, in a work published, a part in 1680, and the remainder in 1689, the full title of which, curiously enough, runs thus : " The sacred theory of the Earth ; containing an account of the original of the Earth, and of all the general changes which it hath already undergone, or is to undergo, till the consummation of all things." If this theory of Burnet, young gentlemen, were regarded by us as true, then, whenever we looked upon a mountain, or any eminence ; or into a valley of either a greater or less extent or depth ; or abroad upon the sea, or any considerable body of waters ; or witnessed, as we are not unwelcomely compelled to do, the changing seasons, we should have confirmatory evidence, through the medium of sight afforded us, of the truth of the Mosaic History in reference to the Noachian Deluge. The correctness of those views of Burnet, which we have specified, was early called in question. That they were tmphilosophical, appears to have been believed by Newton and La Place, and to have been elaborately shown by Keill. And that they are unscriptural, must be obvious to any care- ful reader of the Mosaic account, which expressly mentions mountains as the standard of altitude of the diluvial waters, as well as indicates, in the form of promise, that every thing pertaining to climatic variations, or mutations of seasons, should be restored to its ancient state, (Gen. 7 : 19, 20 ; 8 : OF THE NOACHIC DELUGE. 139 22.) It might be added, that by denying a sea to the ante- diluvian earth, as you have seen Burnet's theory to do, it comes directly in conflict with that scriptural statement concerning the work of the third day, that " the waters under the heavens were gathered together unto one place, and the dry land appeared ; and that God called the dry land earth, and the gathering together of the waters called he seas" (Gen. 1 : 9, 10.) Yet, strange to say, Burnet was of the clerical profession, and no doubt imagined his theory to be not only philosophical, but scriptural. How accommodatingly does a man's belief often shape itself to his wishes ! Yet, of the work of this author, let me say, that though it was but "a fine historical romance," as BuiFon afterwards called it, it nevertheless, in Burnet's time, met with laudations from some high sources, and was treated by numbers as one of profound science. Living in an age when the word geology is so much on the tongue, and the utterances of that science which the word indicates, so widely promulgated, you cannot be. wholly un- acquainted with palaeontology^ or the subject of "fossil organic remains" It was not until the latter part of the sixteenth century that there was, in Christian nations, any marked interest taken either in these or any thing else pertaining to geology. In 1517, some excavations being made at Verona, in Italy, for the purpose of repairing the city, brought to light marine shells and other organized fossils, which led to the agitation of two or three interesting questions respecting them. One of these questions related to their nature and origin. First, Were they the remains of once organized and living creatures? or were they merely simulacra, or resemblances? Fracastoro was one of a few who main- tained, that they were once real animals. The major num- ber contended, that they never belonged to living things were simulacra solely. Next, How did they originate? If they once belonged to living creatures, all who were not 140 INQUIRY AS TO PHYSICAL EVIDENCE: actual atheists, were prepared to ascribe their origin to the Great First Cause. Those who thought them to be only resemblances, were divided in opinion as to their origin, a part maintaining that the Almighty made the layers of rock with these marks or figures in them, just after the manner in which they are found ; others, that they were produced by " a plastic force," which, it was said, had power to fashion stones into organic forms. Andrea Mattioli embraced the notion, and was followed in it by numbers, that a certain " materia pinguis," or " fatty matter," existing in the earth, and set into fermentation by heat, gave birth to fossil organic shapes. Fallopia, of Padua, conceived that petrified shells were generated by fermentation in the spots where they are found ; or that they had in some cases acquired their form from the " tumultuous movements of terrestrial exhalations.' (See Lyell's Principles of Geology, vol. 1, p. 38.) In the same spirit Mercati, who published, in 1574, faithful figures of the fossil shells preserved by Pope Sixtus V., in the museum of the Vatican, expressed an opinion that they were mere stones, which had assumed their peculiar configuration from the influence of the heavenly bodies ; and Olivi, of Cre- mona, who described the fossil remains of a rich museum at Verona, was satisfied with considering them as mere " sports of nature." Palissy, a French writer, undertook, in 1580, to combat the notions of many of his contemporaries in Italy, in regard to petrified shells. Of him Fontenelle, when pro- nouncing his eulogy in the French Academy, a century and a half later, said, He was the first who dared to assert in Paris, that fossil remains of testacea and fish had once be- longed to marine animals, that they were not mere freaks of nature. In opposition to the prejudices of the age, (1688,) Hooke. and some others with him, we are told by Lyell, argued against the idea, that nature had formed fossil bodies for no other end than to play the mimic in the mineral king- dom, maintaining that figured stones were really the sev- THEORIES AND FACTS CONSIDERED. 141 eral bodies they represent, or the mouldings of them petrified ; and not, as some have imagined, a lusus naturce, sporting herself in the needless formation of useless beings. (See Lyell's Prin. of Geol., vol. 1, p. 45.) Those of you, young gentlemen, who have inspected speci- mens of these fossils, whether on the spots where they reposed in or were taken from their rocky beds, or arranged on their shelves in cabinets, can have, we are persuaded, but one opinion about them. Not a lingering doubt can with such remain that the vital principle once had place within them. Freaks of nature ! such freaks ? Impossible ! As to the Almighty Creator, that he could form all the layers of rock which encircle this earthly ball, with all the figures in them which we call animal petrifactions, who entertains a doubt ? But then, would he ? Would he so exert his power as to impinge his wisdom ? as to cast reflection on that attribute ? What ! the Infinite God exercise his puissance and skill in organizing, with utmost nicety, matter into nameless varieties and count- less numbers of exactly and minutely organized resemblances to the forms of living things ! And for what end ? One worthy of the Infinitely Wise ? Who will say, Yes ? Those who have held, or, if such a supposition can be entertained, do hold what we call animal petrifactions to be mere simulacra, and produced, moreover, by "a, plastic force " or a "materia pinguis" can hardly escape the imputation of being " without God in the world ; " of holding a tenet atheistic in its character or bearings ; of nullifying or ignoring one of the strongest evidences of the Divine Existence; we mean, marks of de- sign ; signs of contrivance and skill. The controversy or discussion regarding the nature and origin of fossil organic remains, which we mentioned as started in the beginning of the sixteenth century, did not cease with the termination of that century ; if it did altogether indeed with that of the two following centuries. But another question in regard to these remains, and 142 INQUIRY AS TO PHYSICAL EVIDENCE! which, as having a special bearing on the topic on hand, we have now to do with - a question much and warmly discussed at the time and place we specified, had respect to the cause and manner, including locality, of their deposition. They marine as well as other fossils are to be found, so to speak, every where ; on mountains as well as on plains reposing in, helping to compose, the rocky strata which encase the earth. Now, as we intimated, the additional question which was started by the simple occurrence at Verona, was, How were they brought into the situations which they occupy ? With the exception of a few, Fracastoro at their head, the answer was, They were deposited there by Noah's deluge. And from that time onward for three hundred years shall I say up to this day ? the same question was agitated ; and until recently within a comparatively few years past the major part even of the learned, returned the answer a mo- ment since stated : They were brought and deposited where they are by the deluge of Noah. A large number of writers, living at different periods of the three centuries preceding the present, might be named as holding and attempting to support the tenet embraced in the answer just given ; but we will quote only a few among the more recent. " It may also be observed," says the Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge, Art. Deluge, " that in the regions far remote from the Euphrates and Tigris, viz., Italy, Switzerland, Germany, Eng- land, the United States, etc., there are frequently found, in places scores of leagues from the sea, and even on the tops of high mountains, whole trees sunk deep under ground, as also teeth and bones of animals, fishes entire, sea-shells, ears of corn, etc., petrified ; which the best naturalists are agreed could never have come there, but by the deluge." Says the Evangelical Church Journal of Prussia, (see Literary and Theological Review, vol. 1, p. 424,) " Equally certain must the fact of a former flood, overflowing the mountains, appear to the naturalist, (even independent of the Bible, and of the THEORIES AND FACTS CONSIDERED. 143 traditions of many ancient nations agreeing with it,) when he finds millions of shells upon the highest mountain tops," etc. Even Rees's Cyclopedia, Art. Deluge, states, and without any correction, that " the present external surface of the earth, its internal constitution, the arrangements of its various strata, the remains of marine animals and petrified shells found at great distances from their original habitation, incorporated with the earth, or on eminences far elevated above the level of the sea, etc., have been alleged as exist- ing monuments of a deluge, and evidences of its universali- ty." And what may seem strange to you even that really able and scientific man, Mr. Kirby, so late as in the year 1835, said, in his Bridge water Treatise, among other things respecting the deluge, that " the heavens and earth which are now, are different from the heavens and earth which were destroyed at the deluge ; and the latter has evi- dently been reconstructed, and vegetable and animal remains have been mixed with the dislocated materials and as it were detritus of the original world." This scientific man does indeed confess that he had no such acquaintance with the science of Geology as to qualify him to speak intelligently on such a subject. His words are, " My own knowledge of Geology and its principles, as now laid down, is too slight to qualify me to compare them with what has been delivered in Scripture on the subjects here alluded to" that is, the general subject of the deluge. " What a pity," says Rev. Pres. Hitchcock, " after such a confession, that he should have undertaken to theorize upon some of the most difficult parts of that science, and to defend the wild hypothesis of the physico-theologists of bygone centuries." Mr. Kirby indeed shows a fact that may somewhat amaze you in his Treatise referred to, that he had adopted, with slight modifi- cations, the essential features of the hypothesis of dissolution and re-consolidation of the earth by the deluge, set forth by Dr. Jphn "Woodward, in the latter part of the seventeeth century. 144 INQUIRY AS TO PHYSICAL EVIDENCE : This last named writer, having assumed that all the geological changes which appear to have taken place in the earth's crust were produced by the deluge ; and perceiving that the solid strata to a great depth must have been once in a fluid state, in order to envelop so many relics of organic nature, adopted the idea that " the whole terrestrial globe was taken to pieces and dissolved at the flood ; and that the strata settled down from this promiscuous mass, as any earthy sediment from a fluid." (Essay towards a Natural History of the Earth Preface- 1695.) Believing that it will be agreeable to you to hear something additional in reference to this hypothesis or theory of Woodward, we will give you a brief abstract from Recs's Cyclopedia : " Taking the sev- eral strata for the sediments of a deluge, and considering the circumstances of those fishes, shells, and other exuvisB found in them, this author drew several illustrative infer- ences as First : That these marine bodies, and other spoils of salt-water fishes, were borne forth out of the sea by the general deluge ; and on the return of the water to its ante- cedent bed, were left behind upon the land. Secondly : That while the flood covered the globe, all the solid matters, as stones, metals, minerals, and fossils, were totally dissolved, and the cohesion of their corpuscles, with those of the less solid bodies, as earth, flesh of animals, and vegetables, were sustained promiscuously in the water, and made one common mass. Thirdly : That all the mass, thus sustained, was at length precipitated to the bottom ; and that according to the laws of gravity the heaviest settled first, and the rest in order. And that the matters thus subsiding, constituted the several strata of stone, earth, coal, &c. Fourthly : That these strata were originally all parallel, even, and regular, and rendered the surface of the earth perfectly spherical ; and that the whole mass of water lay upon them, and constituted a fluid sphere compassing the globe. Fifthly : That after some time, by the force of an agent eate<J within the earth, these THEORIES AND FACTS CONSIDERED. 145 strata were broken on all sides of the globe, and their situa- tion varied ; being elevated in some places, and depressed in others ; whence mountains, valleys, grottos, etc., with the channel of the sea, islands, etc. In one word, the whole ter- raqueous globe was put, by this disruption and dislocation of the strata, into the condition in which we now behold it. Sixthly : That upon the first disruption of the strata, and the depression of some and elevation of other part:?, which happened towards the end of the deluge, the mass of water fell back again into the depressed and lowest parts of the earth, into lakes and other cavities, and the channel of the ocean, and through the fissures, whereby this communicates with the abyss, which it filled until it came to an equilibrium with the ocean." After having given you this cited account of Woodward's theory for doing which you will be better able fully to ap- preciate the reason after a while than now it will be expe- dient for us to lay before you, from the same source, a few sentences setting forth some of its objectionable features : " To this system it has been objected, that it is absurd to suppose that before the deluge there were no mountains, since we are expressly told that the waters rose fifteen cubits above the tops of the highest mountains ; on the other hand, it is not said that the waters destroyed or dissolved the mountains. On the contrary, the mountains remained firm in their original situation, and the ark rested upon that eminence which was first deserted by the waters. Besides ; it can- not be reasonably imagined that during the short time of the deluge, the waters could dissolve the mountains, and the whole fabric of the earth. Can we suppose that in the space of forty days, the hardest rocks and minerals were dis- solved by simple water, and yet that shells, bones, and other productions of the sea, were able to resist a menstruum to which the most solid materials had yielded ? Dr. "Woodward asserts that the materials of the different strata are arranged 146 INQUIRY AS TO PHYSICAL EVIDENCE : according to their specific gravities. To this it has been objected that we every day see solid rocks placed above clay, sand, pit-coal, bitumen, and other comparatively light bodies. If indeed it were uniformly found, through the whole earth, that the upper stratum was bitumen, followed successively by strata of chalk, marl, clay, sand, stone, marble, and metals, it would in that case be probable that all these materials had been precipitated at once ; and this, Dr. Woodward confident- ly affirms. Whereas, the most superficial observer need only open his eyes to convince himself that heavy strata are often found above light ones ; and, consequently, that these sedi- ments could not be deposited at the same time, but must have been transported and deposited, as Mr. Buffon says, by the ocean at successive periods." As a matter of history, young gentlemen, you may feel inter- ested in knowing that this notion, a prominent, leading one in Dr. Woodward's theory, and, we. may add, Dr. Burnet's, and some others' too, of a dissolution and reconsolidation of the earth at the deluge, continued to be a .favorite with philoso- phers for nearly a century. Mr. Catcott, whose Treatise on the Deluge was published in 1761 between seventy and eighty years after Woodward's work appeared not only gave a prominent place in it to the hypothesis of the Earth's dissolution and reconsolidation at the time of the Noachic inundation, but would have his readers believe with him, that the sacred Scriptures teach this doctrine. After quoting with approbation that strange idea of Hutchinson in his Moses's Principia, that the " windows of heaven," mentioned in the account of the Flood, mean, " passages of the airs " through the cracks in the earth's crust, he remarks : " As there are other texts which mention the dissolution of the earth, it may be proper to cite them. (Ps. 46 : 2,) ' God is our refuge therefore will not we fear though the earth be removed,' (Hebrew, bemot, be changed, be quite altered as it was at the deluge.) Sixth verse : ' He uttered his voice, THEORIES AND FACTS CONSIDERED. 147 the earth melted] (flowed, dissolved to atoms.) Again, (Job 28 : 9, 10,) * He putteth forth his hand ' (the expansion, his instrument or the agent by which he worked) * upon the rock ; he overturneth the mountains by the roots ; he caused the rivers to burst forth from between the rocks' (or broke open the fountains of the abyss). ' His eye ' (symbolically placed for the light) ( saw ' (passed through or between) 1 every minute thing ' (every atom, and so dissolved the whole). 'He (at last) bound up the waters from weeping' (that is, from passing through the shell of the earth, as tears make their way through the orb of the eye ; or as it is re- lated, Gen. 8 : 2, He stopped the fountains of the abyss and the windows of heaven). 'And brought out the light from its hiding-place ' (i, e., from the inward parts of the earth from between every atom, where it lay hid, and kept each atom separate from the other, and so the whole in a state of dissolution ; his bringing out those parts of the light which caused the dissolution would of course permit the agents to act in their usual way, and so reform the earth.)" You see, young gentlemen, the kind of Scripture proof which Catcott brings. You may scarcely be able to keep your minds from harboring the idea that the interpretation was constructed to suit a favorite theory ; nor find it remark- ably easy to keep wonder out of them how such an exegesis could satisfy any able or respectable mind that the Sacred Scriptures do teach what they are here produced to estab- lish. Some philosophers or theorists who accorded in opinion with Burnet as to the existence, beneath the crust of the earth, of a vast abyss of waters, did not resort to or fix upon precisely the same means that he did for bringing those waters upward and outward so as to cause a deluge, or sub- mergence of the outer crust, its dissolution, and the mingling of the innumerable particles which had composed it with the before living things which had existed on the exterior crus 148 INQUIRY AS TO PHYSICAL EVIDENCE. and in the interior abyss. Catcott resorted to a pressure of the air on the crust's surface, so as to force out the liquid store from its subterraneous repository. Some others, to caloric, causing an expansion of the waters of the abyss, and consequently a pressing and rising of them upward, thus shattering the crust, or dissolving it by passing through the pores : Such heat reaching the water of the great abyss from the crust that had been long and powerfully operated on by the sun's rays, or else from the solid nucleus beneath. For illustration on this point we might refer you to some curious calculations made by Sir Henry Englefield, to show how a slight expansion of the waters, conceived to have place with- in the globe, might produce a general deluge. He assumes that the solid crust of the globe is 1000 miles thick ; and that beneath this is an abyss of waters 2000 miles thick ; leaving a solid central nucleus 2000 miles in diameter, i. e., 1000 miles each side of the centre of the nucleus. Assuming that the temperature of the whole globe, before the deluge, was 50 Fahrenheit, and that from some cause it was suddenly raised to 83, he finds, since water expands one twenty-fifth of its bulk from freezing to boiling, that this in- crease of heat would be sufficient to deluge the earth. If the cause of the elevation of the temperature were then removed, the waters would contract to their original bulk, and leave the continents again dry. EVENING ELEVENTH. YOUNG GENTLEMEN : Instead of one vast subterraneous abyss, many philosophic theorists have preferred to substitute a large number of in- ferior abysses in the earth's interior, and these abysses communicating with seas of greater or less dimensions on its surface. Then to bring these waters, with their living tenants, forth from those abysses and seas on to the dry land, for the purpose of effecting a general submergence of the latter, different means have been imaginatively resorted to. Dr. Halley's resort was to the appulse or impingement of a comet, causing an instantaneous change in the polar and diur- nal rotation of the globe. The great agitation that must have been thus occasioned would force the waters from their previous repositories upon the dry land, and, as he observes, among other things, would be sufficient to account for all those strange appearances of heaping vast quantities of earth and high cliffs upon beds of shells which were previously in the abysses and seas, and raising up mountains where none antecedently existed. Mr. Wm. Whiston, who published his "New Theory of the Earth" in 1696, has an ingenious hypothesis, similar to that of Dr. Halley, with respect to the primary cause of the deluge, but much more largely applied and explained. He shows, from several remarkable coinci- dences, that a comet, descending in the plane of the ecliptic 150 INQUIRY AS TO PHYSICAL EVIDENCE: towards its perihelion, passed just before the earth on the first day of the deluge ; the consequences of which would be, first, that this comet, when it came below the moon, would raise a prodigiously vast and strong tide, both in the small seas which, according to this hypothesis, were in the antedi- luvian earth, for he allowed no great ocean there, as in ours, and in the subterraneous abyss; and that this tide would rise and increase all the time of the approach of the comet towards the earth, and would be at its greatest height when the comet was at its least distance from it. By the force of this tide, and also by the attraction of the comet, he judges that the abyss must put on an elliptic, or rather an exactly oval figure, whose surface being considerably larger than the former spherical one, the outward crust of the earth, incumbent on the abyss, must accommodate itself to that figure, which it could not do while it remained solid and conjoined. He concludes, therefore, that it must of necessity be extended, and at last broken, by the violence of the said tides and attraction ; and have innumerable fissures made quite through it, out of which the included water issuing, was a great means of the flood ; this answering to what Moses speaks of " the fountains of the great deep being broken up." Again ; the same comet, he shows, in its descent towards the sun, must have passed so close by the body of the earth as to involve it in its atmosphere and tail for a considerable time ; and, of consequence, it must have left a vast quantity of its vapors, both expanded and condensed, on its surface ; a great part of which, being rarefied by the solar heat, would be drawn up again into the atmosphere, and afterward descend in violent rains upon the earth : and this he takes to be what Moses intimates by " the windows of heaven being opened," and particularly by the forty days' rain. It may be proper to remark what appears fatal to the cometic hypothesis both of Halley and Whiston that their main instrument has been since shown a very insufficient THEORIES AND FACTS CONSIDERED. 151 one to produce the effects which they attribute to it : we al- lude to the ascertainment, by comparatively recent observa- tions, of the fact that certainly some and probably all comets consist of matter so attenuated that were this earthy ball to come into direct collision with one r it is doubtful whether we should be conscious of it. Dr. Hitchcock, quoting from WhewelPs Bridgewater Treatise, says, " They have no more solidity or coherence than a cloud of dust or a wreath of smoke, through which the stars are visible with no perceptible diminution of their brightness. These discoveries, admitted now by the ablest astronomers, have doubtless given the final quietus to this cometic theory of the deluge ; though we perceive that some geologists on the continent still cling to this hypothesis." (Biblical Repository, volume 9, p. 108.) Ray, an eminent naturalist, and a contemporary of Burnet and Whiston, had recourse to the hypothesis of a shifting of the centre of gravity of the earth ; somewhat after the manner in which Dr. Halley explains magnetism by a mass of me- tallic iron in the earth, which has a revolution distinct from that of the earth, and is of irregular form. As the attracting centre changed, it would cause the waters successively to deluge and desert the different parts of the surface. The author of the article in the Biblical Repository from whicfy. we recently quoted, gives the name of a distinguished professor of our own day who has suggested the following ingenious hypothesis, to bring the waters of the earth's abysses over the dry land. He supposes " vast galvanic ar- rangements to exist in the bowels of the earth, which might have generated vast quantities of hydrogen, oxygen, and car- bonic acid by decomposition, and that these gases, occupying the upper portions of subterranean cavities, would, as they accumulated, force the waters out, and cause them gradually to overflow the land, but after their escape the waters would flow back again into these internal reservoirs." It is hoped that your large stock of patience will not become 152 INQUIRY AS TO PHYSICAL EVIDENCE: entirely exhausted if we hint at another hypothesis. It is one which has been much in vogue, and has received coun- tenance from several able geologists. This hypothesis em- braces the supposition that the sea, (taking this last term in a collective sense,) and the land changed places at the Noach- ian Deluge ; that our present continents, by" earthquakes," "subterraneous fires," "volcanic agency" each of these forms of expression has by different writers been used were raised up from their before humble position beneath the primitive ocean, and the contents of the latter, at that time and by that means, poured over upon the previously dry land. Hooke, as appears from his " Discourse of Earth- quakes," published in his Posthumous Works at the begin- ning of the eighteenth century, embraced this idea. " During the great catastrophe," says he, " there might have been a changing of that part which was before dry land into sea by sinking, and of that which was sea into dry land by raising, and marine bodies might have been buried in sediment be- neath the ocean in the interval between the Creation and the Deluge." Toward the close of the same century we find M. DeLuc, Professor of Philosophy and Geology at Gottin- gen, embracing and defending, for the most part, these views : We say, for the most part for he differed from Hooke in supposing all the fossiliferous strata, so far as he had any understanding of them, to have been deposited during the period of the deluge itself. (See DeLuc's Letters on the Physical History of the Earth). So late as within the last half century we might say the last thirty or thirty-five years, two works have appeared from English authors lit- erary or theoretic rather than scientific or practical geologists defending the hypothesis substantially set forth by Hooke. We allude to Granville Penn and George Fairholme, Esqs. These writers suppose the primary rocks to have been created just as we find them, for the original framework of the globe. The secondary rocks they maintain were de- THEORIES AND FACTS CONSIDERED. 153 posited between the Creation and the Deluge ; and the tertiary strata, along with the diluvial, by the Deluge. This theory of course requires us to suppose that the antedilu- vian continents were sunk beneath the ocean at the deluge, and our present ones were then raised above the waters. There is a theory relating to the Mosaic Flood's occurrence which appears to we know not how many, very plausible. It has a resemblance in one of its features to the last men- tioned. The theory to which we refer, supposes the bed of some ocean to have been by volcanic agency elevated ; that the waters of said ocean with their living contents were thus . thrown over the adjoining territories ; and that the mighty wave thus produced would not stop till it had swept over all the continents and islands. "Whilst this theory has the ad- vantage of requiring less water than most if not all of the other theories mentioned, to bring about a general submer- sion, it is liable to an objection which has been indeed urged against it, to wit, that all parts of the earth could not have thus been enveloped simultaneously ; that the territory first inundated must have been left dry ere the wave had reached other portions of the continents. And an additional objection has been urged : that such a violent rushing of waters over the land as would thus be caused, appears unlike the scrip- tural account, and would seem greatly to imperil the ark, with both its human and sub-human tenantry. As to most if not all of the theorists to whose views we have been adverting, there manifestly prevailed in their mind a full and firm belief in the truth of the Mosaic record contained in the seventh and eighth chapters of Genesis ; and, understanding somewhat concerning the spread and de- position of marine as well as other fossil organic remains, and being entirely at a loss how to account for such diffusion and deposit in consentaneousness with their apprehensions of the teachings of the earliest portion of sacred history, they referred these phenomena, in the manner we have seen, to the Flood of Noah. 154 INQUIRY AS TO PHYSICAL EVIDENCE: Such has been the advance of geological science within the last half century ; such the results of extensive and un- tiring investigation, during this period, in that line that a writer can no longer be considered as moving his pen intelli- gently, who ascribes the formation of the earth's fossiliferous strata, either in whole or in part, to the Noachian deluge. The time, we are aware, has been, when such a declaration as this last would have been accounted tantamount to an ab- negation of the truth of the Mosaic writings. After our former averments, it seems hardly necessary to affirm, in a formal manner, our full and unwavering belief in the authen- ticity and divine inspiration of every part and parcel of our Canonical Scriptures. We hope we shall not be understood as asserting our firm belief in the correctness of every one's interpretation of every part of our sacred volume. On the contrary, we are constrained to believe that the very first verse of the Bible, and the second, have, in a chronological respect at least, not escaped misinterpretation. In regard to this we may have occasion to say a few words hereafter. About to lay before you certain facts, let us premise, that a thing indeed hinted at in the preceding Exercise the idea formerly entertained by large numbers, and still by some, that all the rocks composing the earth's crust, in- clusive of their contents, were by the Omnipotent created just as we now meet them ; and that the supposed remains of animals and plants, fauna and flora, which a not inconsider- able portion of them contain, and which occur in all states or stages from a comparatively slight change to a complete conversion into stone, were never real animals and plants, but only resemblances, is advocated by no man who with science and care has examined rocks and organic remains. Every scrutinizing and candid observer has had forced upon him the conclusion that the former of these, so far as the crust of the globe has been explored, to the depth of several miles, have been the result of second causes ; that is, are now in a THEORIES AND FACTS CONSIDERED. 155 different state from that in which they were originally created ; and that the latter are the remains of once living creatures. Proceed now we shall to the statement of the few facts to which we made allusion observing, that important aid in the presentation of them is derived from Dr. Hitchcock's recent work, entitled The Religion of Geology. First. The fossiliferous rocks, or such as contain animals and plants, are not less than six or seven miles in perpendicu- lar thickness, and are composed of hundreds and thousands of alternate layers of different kinds, all of which appear to have heen deposited, just as rocks are now forming, at the bottom of lakes and seas ; and hence their deposition must have occupied an immense period of time. The process of forming rocks by the accumulation of mud, sand, and gravel, is very slow. In general, such accumulations at the bottom of lakes and the ocean do not increase more than a few inches in a century. It is certain that since man existed on the globe, materials for the production of rocks have not accu- mulated to the average density of more than from one hun- dred to two hundred feet. The evidence of this position is, that neither the works nor the remains of man have been found any deeper in the earth than in the upper part of the superficial deposit called alluvium. Had man existed while the other deposits were going on, no possible reason can be assigned why his bones and the fruits of his labors should not be found mixed with those of other animals, so abundant in the rocks to the depth of six or seven miles. In the last six thousand years, then, only one six-hundredth part of the stratified rocks would seem to have been accumulated. Even if we admit that this deposition progressed in particular places much faster than at present, a variety of facts forbids the supposition that this was the general progressive mode of their formation. Second. During the deposition of the stratified rocks (in the larger portion of which fossil organic remains are found,) 156 INQUIRY AS TO PHYSICAL EVIDENCE: a great number of changes must have occurred in the matter of which they are composed. Hundreds of such changes can be easily counted, and they often imply great changes in the waters holding the materials in solution or suspension ; such changes indeed as must have required different oceans over the same spot. Such events could not have taken place with extensive elevations and subsidences of the earth's crust, nor could such vertical movements have happened without much intervening time, as numerous facts evince. Here we have evidence of vast periods occupied in the secondary pro- duction and arrangements of the earth's crust. Third. The remains of marine and other animals and plants, found in the earth, are not mingled confusedly together, as we should certainly be compelled to look for, had they been brought over the land promiscuously by a deluge ; but are found arranged, for the most part, in as much order as the drawers of a well-regulated cabinet ; though, by the way, as the celebrated Hugh Miller has shown, not so as to confirm the truth of the " development hypothesis " set forth anew in the " Vestiges of Creation" but, on the contrary, after the manner to confute it. In general those animals and plants seem to have lived and died on or near the spots where they are now found ; and as countless millions of these remains are often seen piled together, so as to form almost entire mountains, the periods requisite for their formation must have been far otherwise than short. Could they have been in dura- tion other than immensely long ? Fourth. It is an apparently well-established fact, that there have been upon the globe, previous to the existing races, not less than five distinct periods of organized existence ; that is, five great groups of animals and plants, so completely in- dependent that no species whatever is found in more than one of them, having lived and successively passed away before the creation of the races which now occupy the surface. Other standard writers make the number of these periods of ex- THEORIES AND FACTS CONSIDERED. 157 istence as many as twelve. Comparative anatomy testifies that so unlike in structure were these different groups, that they could not have coexisted in the same climate and other external circumstances. Fifth. In the earliest times in which animals and plants lived, the climate over the whole globe appears to have been as warm as it is now between the tropics, or even warmer. And the slow change from warmer to colder appears to have been the chief cause of the successive destruction of the different races ; and new ones were created, better adapted to the altered condition of the globe ; and yet each group seems to have occupied the globe through a period of great length. Sixth. Among the thirty thousand varieties of animals and plants found in the rocky strata, very few living species have been detected ; and even these few occur in the most recent rocks ; while in the secondary group, not less than six miles thick, not a single species now on the globe has been discovered. Hence the present races did not exist till after those in the secondary rocks had died. No human remains have been found below those alluvial deposits which are now forming by rivers, lakes, and the ocean. Hence it is to be in- ferred that man was one of the latest creatures that was placed on the globe. Seventh. The present continents of the globe, with perhaps the exception of some of their highest mountains, have, for a long period, constituted the bottom of the ocean, and have been subsequently either elevated into their present position, or the waters have been drained off from their surface. This, Dr. Hitchcock says, though regarded with much skepticism by many, is as satisfactorily proved as any principle of physical science not resting on mathematical demonstration. (See Religion of Geology, p. 21.) Now if all, or the main part, of what we have been just stating as facts, be such, and not fancies, and eminent 158 INQUIRY AS TO PHYSICAL EVIDENCE : scientific investigators of the earth's strata numbers of them, too, not only Christians, but Christian divines unite in the opinion that they are demonstrable and manifest facts, what is the conclusion to be drawn from them, touching the point before us ? Who that receive them as real and true, thoroughly weigh them, and compare them with the memorable diluvial event described by the sacred historian ; its comparatively recent occurrence ; its transient character, being in all but of three hundred and seventy -five days' con- tinuance ; and other characteristics, as set forth in the seventh and eighth chapters of Genesis, can ascribe the formation of the earth's fossiliferous strata, in whole or in part, to the Noachian deluge ? Will not such feel themselves constrained to infer, that the fossil organic remains imbedded in the rocky strata of the earth's crust, are not to be regarded as present- ing traces of the cataclysm described by Moses ? Let us next proceed to inquire whether, in the drift or alluvium above, there may not be discovered indisputable traces of the Noachic catastrophe. So it used to be very commonly thought. We can spend but a short time in ex- amining whether this opinion is or is not correct. Here allow me to remark that, if you will look into Dr. Buckland's Reliquiae Diluviance, published in 1823, you will see that that eminent geologist, when he penned that work, thought that there were on the present surface of the earth discoverable and decisive effects of the diluvial waters. As an item in proof, let me read the following single sentence, found on page 237 : " An agent thus gigantic appears to have operated universally on the surface of our planet at the period of the deluge ; the spaces then laid bare by the sweeping away of the solid materials that had before filled them, are called Valleys of Denudation ; and the effects we see produced by the water in the minor cases I have just mentioned, by presenting us an example within tangible limits, prepare us to comprehend the mighty and stupendous THEORIES AND FACTS CONSIDERED. 159 magnitude of those forces by which whole strata were swept away, and valleys laid open, and gorges excavated in the more solid portions of the substance of the earth, bearing the same proportion to the overwhelming ocean by which they were produced, that modern ravines on the sides of mountains bear to the torrents which, since the retreat of the deluge, have created and continue to enlarge them." Dr. Buckland wrote this passage after exploring the drift or, as it was usually called, diluvium of the British Isles, and in reference to the results of his observations. That celebrated palaeontol- ogist, Baron Cuvier, who had remarked, that he "thought, with DeLuc and Dolomieu, that if there be any thing settled in geology, it is this, that the surface of our globe has been subjected to a great and sudden revolution, the date of which cannot be carried much farther back than five or six thousand years," speaking of the mud, gravel, and bones of the Kirk- dale caves, proceeds thus : " Most carefully described by Prof. Buckland, under the name of diluvium, and exceedingly different from those other beds of similarly rolled materials, which are constantly deposited by torrents and rivers, and contain only the bones of animals existing in the country, and to which Mr. Buckland gives the name of alluvium; they now form, in the eyes of all geologists, the fullest proof to the senses, of that immense inundation which came last in the catastrophes of our globe." (Discours sur les Revolutions de la surface du globe, etc., p. 141.) In his Bridgewater Treatise, published in 1836, Dr. Buckland lets us know that he had abandoned the opinion advanced and argued in his Reliquice, respecting the geolo- gical evidence of a deluge, so far as relates to the Noachian. His language on page 94 of that Treatise is : " Discoveries which have been made since the publication of this work, (the Reliquiae Diluviana?,) show that many of the animals therein described, existed during more than one geological period preceding the catastrophe by which they were extir- 160 INQUIRY AS TO PHYSICAL EVIDENCE. pated. Hence it seems more probable that the event in question was the last of the many geological revolutions that have been produced by violent irruptions of water, rather than the comparatively tranquil inundation described in the Inspired Narrative. It has been justly argued, against the attempt to identify these two great historical and natural phenomena, that, as the rise and fall of the waters of the Mosaic deluge are described to have been gradual and of short duration, they would have produced comparatively little change on the surface of the country they overflowed." Arguments to sustain the affirmative of the question, Is there geological evidence of an extensive deluge, (the Noachian is not specified,) since the earth assumed essentially its present form ? you may find adduced in the tenth volume of the Biblical Repository, pp. 335-374. Justice could not be done either to that side of the question, or to that article, by at- tempting a synopsis. It is hoped that you all will, at the earliest opportunity, read it in toto for yourselves. And here suffer -me also to recommend the perusal ot that work of Dr. Buckland, lately referred to his Reliquiae Diluvianae. It will bring you to an acqaintance with some interesting phenomena, to what cause or causes soever they may justly be attributed. EVENING TWELFTH. YOUNG GENTLEMEN: In support of the position that most of the cases of accu- mulations of drift, the dispersion of bowlders, and the polish and striae of the rocks in place, occurred prior to man's ex- istence upon the globe, and cannot have been the result of Noah's deluge, allow me to give you an abstract of a few arguments, which you may find more fully presented in Dr. Pye Smith's " Scripture and Geology," Lecture Fifth ; and Dr. Hitchcock's " Religion of Geology," parts of Lectures First, Second, and Fourth. First. Since the geological period now passing com- menced, called the alluvial or pleistocene period, certain changes have been going on which indicate a very great an- tiquity to the drift period. Instance the formation of deltas and terraces. Of deltas take a single example. The amount of sediment which is carried down the Mississippi and de- posited yearly, is at such a rate as to have required 14,200 years to form the whole delta in the manner it exists. As to terraces, they occur along some of the rivers of this and other countries from 400 to 500 feet above their present beds, and around our lakes to the height of nearly 1000 feet. Yet scarcely anywhere, since the memory of man, have even the lowest of these terraces been formed, save on a very limited scale, and of a few feet in height. 162 THE FORE-MENTIONED FACTS Second. The organic remains found in the alluvium con- siderably above the drift, are many of them of extinct species. Now the presumption is, that extinct animals and plants belong to a creation anterior to man, especially if they exhibit a tropical character as those do which are usually assigned to the drift, since we have no evidence of a tropical climate in northern latitudes until we get back to a period far anterior to man. Third. No remains of man or his works have been found in drift, nor indeed till we rise almost to the top of the allu- vial deposit. Even ancient Armenia, says Dr. Hitchcock, has now been examined geologically with sufficient care to make it almost certain that human remains do not exist there in drift, if drift is found there at all. Fourth. The agency producing drift must have operated during a vastly longer period than the three hundred and seventy-five days of Noah's Flood. It could be shown that extensive erosions which are referable to that agency, and the huge masses of detritus which have been the result, must have demanded centuries and even decades of them. Nor will any supposed increase of power in the agency explain the results, without admitting a long period for their action. Fifth. In the Noachian deluge, water appears to have been the principal agent ; but in the production of drift, ice was at least equally concerned. If you all have not those works in your possession to which reference has been made relative to this subject, you may see some of these facts, the last among the rest, set forth in Mrs. Somerville's Physical Geography the latter part of first and second chapters. In the light of such facts as those which have been now stated if facts they be how untenable appears the notion that even the drift exhibits distinguishable traces of Noah's deluge. Had you, young gentlemen, never had any previous intima- AND GEN. 1 : 1, 2 NOT IN CONFLICT. 163 tion respecting these facts, together with those relative to the fossiliferous strata, presented in the preceding Exercise ; and had you known naught about any interpretation of the first part of Genesis other than what has been (though we are in- clined to think incorrectly) denominated the more literal, and certainly until of late has been the more common, you would probably feel alarmed at the apparent discrepancy between these facts and the Mosaic history in regard to the time, etc., of this world's creation. Ere proceeding farther in the direct consideration of the Noachic deluge, it is not only proper, but a regard for sacred truth demands, that we should first show that no real discrepancy exists between the facts brought to view and the averments of the inspired historian at the com- mencement of the book of Genesis. " In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth." Here are taught two things : First, That " the heaven and the earth " had a " be- ginning" were not from everlasting. Secondly, That they had their beginning from "God" not from chance not from any source beside him. No indication is to be discerned in that first verse, in regard to the chronology of " the begin- ning " there spoken of. Those interpreters who have made it belong to the first of the six geogonic days the beginning of the first of those days, and who understand the work there summarily described, to be that of the primary part of the first day, have had no sufficient authority for so doing. And the formal announcement contained in the second verse appears plainly to show that the archaic writer did not mean to have it understood that no interval passed between the transaction recorded in the first verse and that of which men- tion is made in the third. The history of the six days' work, the best biblical expositors now consider to commence with the last named verse. The language of Moses indisputably will allow an indefinite interval to have elapsed between the transaction related in the first verse and what is narrated in the third and succeeding verses of the chapter. Such an 164 THE FORE-MENTIONED FACTS interpretation appears to us the more rational, apart from all consideration of the interesting principles or facts brought to light and established by modern geological investigation. It certainly dissipates all semblance of collision between geology and revelation in regard to the period of this planet's exist- ence. It gives the geologist full scope for his largest specu- lations concerning the age of the world. It permits him to maintain that its primary condition was as unlike to the present as appearances allow him to infer ; and affords him time enough for all the mutations of mineral constitution and organic life which its strata are thought to reveal. It sup- poses all these passed over sub silentio by the sacred penman, because irrelevant to the object of revelation : What is de- clared in the first verse and the second being deemed all that it was requisite to state respecting what transpired anterior to the work of the six geogonic days. You are aware that the interpretation of the first part of Genesis, of which we have spoken, is not a novel or unheard of one. Besides what Dr. Pye Smith relates in regard to the views of certain biblical expositors who lived before geology, as a science, had an existence, such as Justin Martyr, Gregory Nazianzen, Basil, Origen, Theodoret, and Augustin, it seems to us proper, and for some reasons expedient, to refer to the opinions of some distinguished biblical interpreters of modern times. " By the phrase, ' in the beginning,' " says Doeder- lin, " the time is declared when something began to be. But when God produced this remarkable work Moses does not pre- cisely define." " Were we to concede to naturalists," says Baumgarten Crusius, " all the reasonings which they advance in favor of the earth's early existence, the conclusion would only be, that the earth itself has existed much more than 6000 years, and that it had then already suffered many great and important revolutions. But if this were so, would the rela- tion of Moses thereby become false and untenable ? I cannot think so." "The detailed history of creation in the first AND GEN. 1 : 1, 2 NOT IN CONFLICT. 165 chapter of Genesis," says Dr. Chalmers, " begins at the mid- dle of the second verse ; and what precedes might be under- stood as an introductory sentence, by which we are most appositely told, both that God created all things at the first, and that afterwards by what interval of time it is not specified the earth lapsed into a chaos, from the darkness and disorder of which the present system or economy of things was made to arise. Between the initial act and the details of Genesis, the world, for aught we know, might have been the theatre of many revolutions, the traces of which geology may still investigate," etc. " A philological survey of the initial sections of the Bible," says Dr. J. Pye Smith, "brings out the result: First, That the prime sentence is a simple, independent, all-comprehending axiom, to this effect that matter, elementary or combined, aggregated only or organized, and dependent, sentient, and intellectual beings, have not existed from eternity, either in self-continuity or in succession, but had a beginning ; that their beginning took place by the all-powerful will of one Being, the Self-existent, Independent, and Infinite in all perfection, and that the date of that beginning is not made known. Second, That at a recent epoch, our planet was brought into a state of disorgani- zation, detritus, or ruin, (perhaps we have no perfectly appro- priate term,) from a former condition. Third, That it pleased the almighty, wise, and benevolent Supreme, out of that state of ruin to adjust the surface of the earth to its now existing condition, the whole extending through the period of six natural days." " My firm persuasion is," says Dr. John Harris, " that the first verse of Genesis was designed by the Divine Spirit, to announce the absolute origination of the material universe by the Almighty Creator ; and that is so understood in the other parts of holy writ ; that, passing by an indefinite interval, the second verse describes the state of our planet immediately prior to the Adarnic creation ; and that the third verse begins the account of the six days' work." 8* 166 THE FORE-MENTIONED FACTS " Our best expositors of Scripture," says Dr. David King, of Glasgow, " seem to be now pretty generally agreed that the opening verse in Genesis has no necessary connection with the verses which follow. They think it may be understood as making a separate and independent statement regarding the creation proper, and that the phrase, l in the beginning,' may be expressive of an indefinitely remote antiquity. On this principle the Bible recognizes, in the first instance, the great age of the earth, and then tells us of the changes it underwent, at a period long subsequent, in order to render it a fit abode for the family of man. The work of the six days was not, according to this view, a crea- tion in the strict sense of the term, but a renovation, a remodelling of preexistent materials." Citations, young gentlemen, could be greatly multiplied having respect to this point, but a labor of this kind must be deemed now supererogatory. Such an interpretation of nature and Scrip- ture as is set forth in the work entitled, " Epoch of Creation" while it will secure the preferences of some, cannot, we are convinced, at this late day, be generally entertained. The motives of the writer are indeed to be respected, it having manifestly been his desire and aim to subserve the cause of science and religion. If, therefore, his effort prove a failure which we have no doubt it must while such failure will not itself yield him positive gratification, it will at least not ignore his good intentions, nor be followed by qualms of conscience. That interpretation of the initial part of Genesis of which we have signified our approval, but which we were not hasty in adopting, can, we think, alone be sustained as the correct one. Particularly interested it is believed your minds will be in the confirmation which it receives from the facts ascertained or settled by the progress of geological in- vestigation. Had it been so that the world's prime existence and man's had been contemporaneous, then we should expect AND GEN. 1 : 1, 2 NOT IN CONFLICT. 167 the remains of human kind and their works to be found in- termingled with the remains of other once living creatures in the different fossiliferous strata, even the lowest ; whereas, on the contrary, no human remains, as you have heard, have been discovered in the rocky layers composing the crust of the globe ; nor in any, says Mr. Richardson, " since the ac- cumulations of silt or mud, which date from the most modern era, the yesterday, as it were, in the infinite history of the past. It is only in these accumulations of the historic period that we discover the remains of even the most ancient fami- lies of mankind. In the solid rocks, we repeat, no traces of man are discernible ; but a still stronger proof," continues this writer, " of the modern " (he means comparatively modern) " date of our species, exists in the obvious fact, that if man had really been an inhabitant of the earth during the earliest history," (meaning during the earliest period of the earth's existence,) " his skeleton, or the mere fragments of his os- seous structure, would have constituted the least of those rel- ics which he would have bequeathed to the soil of which he was an inhabitant. We should have discovered his mighty and majestic works, which so far transcend in duration his own ephemeral existence. We should have found his cities and his structures overwhelmed in the waters of ancient seas, or buried beneath the ejections of primeval volcanoes ; his majestic pyramids sunk in the beds of ancient rivers ; his mountain temples hewn on the surface of the deepest and the oldest rocks. We should have encountered his bridges of granite and of iron, his palaces of limestone and of marble ; the tombs wldlch he reared over the objects of his affection, the shrines which he erected in honor of his God. But in the absence of these or any other traces of man in any save in the most superficial deposits, we are compelled to acknowl- edge the chronology of Holy Writ ; to recognize the com- plete and satisfactory accordance of science with revelation ; and to admit that the existence of man has not extended beyond the five or six thousand years upon the earth, which 168 INQUIRY AS TO PHYSICAL EVIDENCE the Scriptures assign as the period of his creation." (See Richardson's Geology, pp. 90, 91.) But, let us suppose you to say, Is it not marvellous that such an event as Moses describes the Noachian Flood to have been, should leave no visible evidences behind of its occurrence ; and does not the infidel seem to be thus fur- nished with a pretty powerful weapon with which to contend against the truth of the Mosaic history respecting it ? In the way of reply, let it be specially noted, that we do not deny that there are any visible or discoverable traces on the earth's surface, or beneath it, of the Noachian deluge ; but any clearly distinguishable traces. We have meant to say, and to produce facts to show, that there are no physical phenomena or appearances beneath or even upon the earth's surface, concerning which it can, with absolute certainty, be affirmed, These are the effects of the Flood of Noah ; these are determinate proofs of its occurrence. We proceed now to consider, very briefly, how this absence of distinguishable traces may be accounted for. First : On the supposition that the theory advanced by Hooke, and subsequently advocated by DeLuc, Fairholme, and others, be true, so far as relates to the mutual interchange of sea and dry land at the time of the Noachic Flood, i. e., that our postdiluvian ocean beds were mainly antediluvian dry land, and vice versa, an idea which is a revived favorite with at least some in our day, (see Friend of Moses, &c.) then are we thereby afforded a very convincing reason why our present earth, (dry land,) should afford no visible, distinguishable traces of the Mosaic inundation. And althou^fc geologists of no mean attainments think that " the facts of geology forbid the idea that our present continents formed the bed of the ocean at so reeent a date as that of the Noachic cataclysm," vet as the author of the Friend of Moses has intimated the bare fact of the so remarkably general absence of human osseous remains and human works of art from the present OF THE NOACHIC DELUGE. 169 habitable parts of our globe, seems very strongly to favor that idea. If the antediluvians and their works were buried beneath the present oceans, one of the best of reasons is fur- nished why the remains of these are not discernible on or be- neath the surface of our present continents ; and will go far, to say the least, toward accounting for the absence of other diluvial traces from our postdiluvian dry land. Or, Secondly : If the tranquil theory, advanced and advocated by Dr. Flem- ing and Sir Charles Lyell, and embraced by numerous other savans, be received as true, we may see why no distinguisha- ble physical traces are left of the Mosaic inundation. Let me give you a few sentences from the writings of some of these men regarding this point. Dr. Fleming, who we believe led the way in advancing the tranquil theory, uses the following language : " I have formed my notions of the Noachian deluge, not from Ovid, but from the Bible. There the simple narra- tive of Moses permits me to believe that the waters rose upon the earth by deyrees, and returned by degrees ; that the flood ex- hibited no violent impetuosity, neither displacing the soil nor the vegetable tribes which it supported, nor rendering the ground unfit for the cultivation of the vine. "With this con- viction in my mind, I am not prepared to witness in nature any remaining marks of the catastrophe ; and I feel my respect for the authority of revelation heightened when I see on the present surface no memorials of the event." (See Edinburgh Phil. Journal, vol. 14, pp. 214, 215.) "I agree," says Mr. Lyell, " with Dr. Fleming, that in the nar- rative of Moses there are no terms employed that indicate the impetuous rushing of the waters, either as they rose, or when they retired upon the restraining of the rain and the passing of a wind over the earth. On the contrary, the olive branch brought back by the dove seems as clear an indication to us that the vegetation was not destroyed, as it was to Noah that the dry land was about to appear." (Principles of Ge- ology, vol. 4, p. 216.) That able geological writer, Dr. 170 INQUIRY AS TO PHYSICAL EVIDENCE Macculloch, says, " There is nothing in this history (the Mo- saic) from which we can infer a state of turbulence or violence in the water. There is nothing to make us suppose that the deluge could have disjoined islands, excavated valleys, or deposited alluvia. It is deficient alike in the two needful powers, motion and time. In this plain narrative, the water rises during a short period, and subsides through one not long, leaving on an eminence that vessel which was to preserve and perpetuate man. Of the Mosaic deluge in particular, I have no hesitation in saying, that it has never been proved to have produced a single existing appearance of any kind, and that it ought to be struck out of the list of geological causes." Yet the man who expressed himself thus, is so very decided in his views of the supreme authority of the Bible over all science, that we find him saying, " If there were aught in Geology which contradicted that Word, I should be among the first to say, the science is in error." (See A System of Geology with a Theory of the Earth, and an Examination of its Connection with the Sacred Writings, by John Macculloch, F. R. S., London, 1831, vol. 2, pp. 32, 33.) " It has been justly argued," says the Rev. Dr. Buck- land, (Bridgewater Treatise, p. 95,) " that as the rise and fall of the waters of the Mosaic deluge are described to have been gradual, and of short duration, they would have pro- duced comparatively little change on the surface of the coun- try they overflowed." Thirdly. But supposing we should not espouse, in its length and breadth, " the tranquil theory " of Dr. Fleming and Mr. Lyell, and we feel a little inclined to agree with Mr. Harcourt in thinking that the latter of these gentlemen " has carried his theory of tranquillity to a degree which borders upon ridicule," when he lays so much stress, in proof of it, on the circumstance of " the olive leaf," which the dove brought back, as remaining through the cataclysm ; sup- posing we should admit that there was some degree of OF THE NOACHIC DELUGE. 171 violence and tumult in the commencement, continuance, and retiring of the diluvial waters, and that therefore some traces of them or their doings must have been left behind, yet will any man, capable of estimating the effects of geological agencies, maintain that these traces, being superficial, must have certainly remained to the present time ? Dr. Hitchcock, (see Bib. Repository, vol. 10, p. 334), touching this point, says "Even admitting that the scriptu- ral account would lead us to infer that not a little of violence and tumultuous action attended that event " a thing, by the way, which Dr. Hitchcock, when he penned that article, believed " it does not follow that its effects could be distin- guished thousands of years afterwards. Currents of water could have affected only the surface of the globe, and their effects would be similar to those now produced by rivers and floods. Yet as they would be spread over the whole surface, and not so much confined as rivers to a particular channel, they would be less striking, and sooner obliterated. They would consist principally in the removal of the softer parts of the surface, and the abrasion of the harder parts. But simi- lar processes have been going on ever since the last deluge, almost everywhere ; and whether after the lapse of centuries we should be able to distinguish diluvial from alluvial action, it is impossible to say. Perhaps the traces of Noah's deluge might be all obliterated. If they are all gone, then, the fact argues nothing against the scriptural account." Suppose, young gentlemen, that in our opinion there are many and very considerable effects remaining at this day on the earth, of the inundation described by the sacred writer, yet the bare fact of our being unable to identify them to single them out from effects produced by other instrumentalities, or to distinguish them from more modern and local disturb- ances, and present them as certain evidence, this inability, where a modicum of modesty has existence, will effectually prevent a resort to or an urging of such appearances, how- 172 INQUIRY AS TO PHYSICAL EVIDENCE ever plausible or probable, in proof of the diluvial occurrence which we are considering. There is one thing that we may affirm with confidence ; it is, that geology presents no facts that afford any presumption against the occurrence of that stupendous cataclysm which the Scriptures bring to our notice. On the other hand, she will admit that " in the ele- . vation and subsidence of mountains and continents, and in volcanic agency generally, of which geology contains so many examples, we have an adequate cause for extensive if not universal deluges ; nor can she say how recently this cause may have operated beneath certain oceans, sufficiently to have produced the deluge of the Scriptures. So that, in fact, we have in geology a presumption in favor of, rather than against such a deluge." Having such testimony as that of the Iraelitish Moses, such abundant evidence as is accessible that he wrote as he was moved by the Holy Ghost, and so his testimony deci- sive in favor of the transpiring of the diluvial event which he has narrated ; and in addition to this, the remarkable kind and amount of mythological, monumental, traditional evidence, corroborative, if it be proper so to speak, of the Mosaic history in relation to it can we need the clear, indubitable utterances of the earth itself to produce complete conviction in our minds, that what the archaic annalist has recorded concerning the deluge said to have occurred in the days of Noah, is true ? Even if we had no testimony but that of Moses to the fact ; and no evidence that this man was anything more than an uninspired but credible historian, would we act irrationally in believing firmly that such a diluvial event occurred as he relates ? Do we receive as credible no professed history in regard to any matter, unless we have other evidence than that of the testimony of the his- torian in its support ? and, we may add, what is in point, unless we can find inscribed on even the tablet of nature un- questionable evidence of its truth ? Are we not prepared to OF THE NOACHIC DELUGE. 173 say that the man, whoever he be, acts unbecomingly, irra- tionally, who refuses to believe such an event as that of the Noachian deluge, so called, to have actually occurred, unless he finds other evidence to sustain it than that which he has or can obtain ? EVENING THIRTEENTH. YOUNG GENTLEMEN : Something relative to the extent of the Noachian deluge you will not be unsolicitous to hear. Was it universal, or partial ? Better satisfied you probably will or may reason- ably be, to have a brief synopsis of the arguments on both sides of this question laid before you, rather than to have an expression of the opinion of an individual so humble as my- self. Suffer me first to state the chief arguments which may be adduced in favor of the absolute universality of the Noachic cataclysm. First. The Sacred Scriptures seem to teach this. Let a believer in Holy Writ come without prejudice or preposses- sion to the perusal of the Mosaic account of this event, and he will hardly fail of arriving at the conclusion that the Flood of Noah extended over the entire globe. Just open your Bible and read Gen. 7 : 19-23. What limitation, it might with emphasis be asked, can be assigned to that lan- guage in the first of those verses ? "All the high hills that were under the whole heaven, were covered." And the next verse, " Fifteen cubits upward did the waters prevail ; and the mountains were covered," appears to indicate that the waters prevailed so many cubits above all the mountains of the earth. And the universal destruction, declared in the three succeeding verses, of all sentient and animal existence, save alone the ark's tenantry, implies the absolutely universal ON THE EXTENT OP NOAH*S FLOOD. 175 spread of the destroying element. Let it be added, that the covenant spoken of in Genesis 9 : 11, with the language there used, appears plainly to indicate that no other inunda- tion, up to the end of time, should be comparable to the del- uge of Noah. Yet many partial and somewhat destructive inundations have happened since the time of that cataclysm's occurrence, and many more doubtless will. It seems infer- able that so peculiarly great and extensive must have been the Flood of Genesis, as to be wellnigh or quite universal. "While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, etc., shall not cease " as it is of course implied they had done during the prevalence of more than the twelvemonth of this desolating judgment's continuance. Secondly. All who are willing to rely on the testimony of Moses, so interpret his language as to concede that all man- kind, save the " eight souls " in the ark, were reached and submerged by the flood. But according to what we have (may it not be said,) pretty conclusively, on a former occa- sion, shown, the population of the antediluvian world must have been very numerous and wide-spread, so much so, that their universal submergence must have required so ex- tensive a flow of the diluvial waters as to reach wellnigh, if not entirely, " earth's remotest bounds." I know that Dr. Pye Smith, in order to bring the population of the Old World within such numerical limits as not to overstock the extreme- ly circumscribed territory marked out by him as exclusively reached by the Noachic inundation, has computed the number to which mankind attained before that cataclysm, as exceed- ingly small, so small that he will find few, if any, to accord with him in opinion. Any theory which makes the antedilu- vian population much if any less numerous than the present population of the globe, will probably appear to you unworthy to be entertained. That population whom the flood came and took away, might have lived within narrower geograph- ical limits than the present, we are disposed to imagine 176 ON THE EXTENT OF NOAH'S FLOOD. they did so, yet within limits by no means so circumscribed, that the before-named eminent author's little inundation could have reached more than a modicum of the entire number. Thirdly. If the deluge of the Mosaic history were local, limited, instead of universal, there would have seemed little necessity for such a direction as Noah received from God, to build that immense structure, the ark ; little occasion for incurring such an expenditure of time and toil as was en- countered in its construction. That enormous vessel could, we would think, have been easily dispensed with. The " eight souls " could have been directed by the Supreme to repair to some district of country uninhabited by any of the wicked progeny of Adam whom God purposed to destroy ; a region beyond the confines of the territory inhabited by the doomed population, and which the Almighty had in such case determined to inundate ; and all the living creatures which he wished to preserve could have been caused to move to that exempt locality and thus find escape from destruction by the diluvial judgment. Or, if the specimens of the various living creatures which entered the ark could be found exist- ing in the locality to which the eight souls should be directed to repair, or any other locality indeed which the waters of the local inundation should not reach, then the change of location of aught beside the eight souls might have apparent- ly been dispensed with. The inference which may be le- gitimately drawn is, that no escape by such means, or by other than the ark, was feasible ; and so that the deluge of Noah was universal. Or if, to preserve all beside, an ark should, even in case of a partial inundation, be deemed requisite ; or, for the display of God's holiness and justice, if both a deluge and an ark should be regarded as essential, why, if the Flood was but local, could there be need to take into the floating vessel, birds, and, among the feathered tribe, so widely diffused ON THE EXTENT OF NOAH'S FLOOD. 177 ones, as the dove and raven ? " It is," says Kitto, speaking on this point " it is altogether a most remarkable circum- stance, that the only creatures, of those contained in the ark which are named, are those whose existence upon earth would not have been affected by any deluge much less than universal. And if the diluvial waters rose fifteen cubits above all the mountains of the countries which the raven and the dove inhabit, the level must have been high enough to give universality to the deluge." You recollect we referred you, a few evenings since, to the traditions existing among all nations relative to the Noachic Flood. From the universality of those traditions an argument has sometimes been deduced, to support the doctrine of the universality of the historic or Mosaic deluge. The argument is not conclusive. Nothing indeed is proved by it on either side. The existence of such traditions in different nations does not prove that the deluge to which they refer prevailed in all those several nations. The people of those several nations springing all from a common ancestry, and that ancestry those whom the ark had been the instru- ment in saving from the flood, this circumstance is suffi- cient to account for the so wide prevalence of the traditions spoken of. It was natural that every nation indeed should in its tradition make its own land the scene of the calamity to which such tradition had reference, to localize the event, and in their own territory. This at least to a great extent was done. Though such a use as that we have alluded to, may not, yet no less than two other important uses may, be made of those traditions of all people. One of these has been formerly availed of, viz. : to confirm the Mosaic account of the Flood; to show, as the Sacred Scriptures affirm, that there was an inundation by which the whole family of man, Noah and his household excepted, were destroyed. The other use and it is one which speculating infidelity will not like is, to serve as an 178 ON THE EXTENT OF NOAH'S JFLOOD. auxiliary in proving, in further conformity with the Scripture record, that all the existing nations and tribes of men are descended from that one little family which survived the Deluge. Nor is that old argument of any appositeness or validity toward proving the universality of the Flood, which Stack- house, in his Bible History, has stated thus : " We need only turn aside the surface a little, and look into the bowels of the earth, and we shall find arguments enough for our convic- tion," i. e. that the Flood was universal. " For the beds of shells, which are often found on the tops of the highest mountains, and the petrified bones, and teeth of fishes, which are dug up some hundreds of miles from the sea, are the clearest evidences in the world, that the waters have some time or other, overflowed the highest parts of the earth ; nor can it, with any color of reason, be asserted that these subterraneous bodies are only the mimicry or mock produc- tions of nature ; for, that they are real shells the nicest ex- amination, both of the eye and microscope, does evince ; and that they are true bones, may be proved by burning them, which, as it does other bones, turns them first into a coal, and afterwards into calx." We have before offered reasons why the fossil remains, marine and other, found in the rocky strata of six or seven miles in thickness, as well as those found in the detritus nearer the surface, cannot rightly be regarded as vestiges or effects of the Noachian deluge. If this be so, they cannot of course be adduced as evidence of the uni- versality of that deluge. It may here, en passant, be re- marked, that all the strata encrusting the globe, to the depth of from seven to ten miles, unquestionably show the action of water in their formation, and that the vast deposits of marine organic remains in a large portion of those strata everywhere found, and under the circumstances in which they are found existing, show that the ocean not merely once, but several times, occupied the parts of the earth now consti- ON THE EXTENT OP NOAH's FLOOD. 179 luting the continents of our planet. As to the point before us, we need only urge what is fatal to the argument quoted from Stackhouse, the fact that neither the works nor the osseous re- mains of man have been found any deeper than in the upper part of that superficial deposit called alluvium. Had the miles of rocky strata miles in density which we have spoken of, been formed, and the fossil organic remains, to the depth we have mentioned, been deposited, by or at the time of the Flood of the Mosaic history, or even since man's cre- ation, no plausible or possible reason, it seems to us, can be assigned why his bones and the fruits of his labors should not be found intermixed with those of other animals in the rocky strata referred to, as well as in the mass of detritus above the latter, and underlying the superficial alluvium where alone human osseous and mechanical or industrial remains are discoverable. Fourthly. But, in the way of argument for a universal deluge, may not the following be urged ? It has been the opinion of several geologists that back beyond the six geogonic days, our continents have been several times the beds of seas, and have continued so for a long period each time, and that these continents did not rise into dry land by the exceed- ingly slow process of sedimentary deposition, but by means of earthquakes, subterraneous fires, valcanic agency. Now if there were such general submergences of our dry land far back, may there not, reasoning from analogy, have been a general submergence of the dry land at the time of the Mosaic Flood ? Does not even the archaic annalist himself, in Gen. 1 : 9, 10, taken in connection with the second verse, use language of such sort as to imply that there was some- thing equivalent to a universal deluge prevailing on this planet when the work of the six geogonic days commenced ? Does it not seem as though there was no dry land visible, until on the third day God made it to appear ? If there then had been a general submergence of the dry land just prior to the 180 ON THE EXTENT OF NOAH'S FLOOD. creation of Adam, may not a submergence have taken place in the time of his descendant, Noah, bearing such a resem- blance to it as to call for a " gathering together of the waters into one place," as it were, and a thus " making the dry land to appear ? " Lastly, on this side: Could the diluvial waters have extended so far and wide as to drown all the antediluvian inhabitants, and have attained such an elevation as fifteen cubits above the loftiest mountains of the globe, and yet not be borne by the law of gravity over the earth's entire sur- face ? Without supernatural interposition could any portion of it have escaped being inundated? We shall now take a glance at the other side of this ques- tion ; shall proceed to state briefly the main arguments in favor of the local, limited character of Noah's Flood. These arguments will be presented mainly in the form of objections to the tenet that the cataclysm of sacred history was univer- sal. Connected with the statement of the objective arguments, it may be expedient to hint at the manner in which they have been or may be met by those who hold to the flood's universal extent. This is deemed proper, because the literal interpre- tation of the language of Moses appears to call for an un- limited inundation. To clear the way for the presentation of the arguments on the limited side, without, in doing so, appearing unwilling to receive most readily and cordially as true what the inspired pages bear witness to on this subject, we will show how those who espouse the limited side meet the charge of running counter to Holy Writ in the entertainment of their view. Admitting with candor that the language employed by the archaic historian to describe the deluge does seem to denote a literal universality especially that used in the nineteenth verse of the seventh chapter " the waters prevailed exceed- ingly upon the earth ; and all the high hills that were under the whole heaven were covered" they urge in answer, that ON THE EXTENT OF NOAIl's FLOOD. 181 in the sacred writings, " universal terms are often used to signify only a very large amount in number or quantity." (See Dr. Pye Smith's Scripture and Geology, p. 247.) They call on us to note such passages as the following : "And tjhe famine was over all the face of the earth ; and all the coun- tries came to Egypt, to buy corn from Joseph, because that the famine was extreme in all the lands," (Gen. 41 : 56, 57.) Yet it is manifest that only those countries are meant lying around or within practicable distance of Egypt, for so bulky an article as corn or grain, was transported, it is highly proba- ble, on the backs of asses and camels. "All the cattle of Egypt died," (Ex. 9 : G ;) yet the connection shows that this ex- pression is to be taken in a limited sense. " The hail smote every herb of the field, and brake every tree of the field," but, a few days subsequently, the devastation of the locust is described thus : " Jhey did eat every herb of the land, and all the fruit of the trees, which the hail had left," (Ibid 10 : 5, 15.) " All the people brake off the golden ear-rings which were in their ears, and brought them unto Aaron," (Ibid 32 : 3,) meaning, undoubtedly, a large number of persons, but far from literally the whole, or even a majority of the people, as will appear upon an examination of the whole account. " This day will I begin to put the dread of thee, and the fear of thee, upon the nations that are under the whole heaven," (Deut. 2 : 25 ;) yet this declaration seems to respect only the nations of Canaan and those lying upon its frontier. "And all the earth sought to Solomon to hear his wisdom," (1 Kings 10 : 24.) It need not be said that this language is used in a limited sense. Passages are numerous in which the phrase " all the earth " signifies only the land of Palestine. "We would instance, Deut, 34 : 1 ; Isai. 7 : 24 ; 10 : 14 ; Jer. 1 : 18; 4: 20; 8: 16; 12: 12; 40: 4; Zeph. 1: 18; 3: 19; Zech. 14:10. In Acts 2 : 5, it is said that at the time of Pentecost, " there were dwelling at Jerusalem Jews, devout men, out of every nation under heaven." Yet in the enumera- 9 182 ON THE EXTENT OF NOAH'S FLOOD. tion, which follows this passage, of the different places from which those Jews had come, we find only a region extending from Italy to Persia, and from Egypt to the Euxine. It could have been a district of only about similar size which Paul meant, when, addressing the Colossians, (1 : 23,) he speaks of the gospel as that " which was preached to every creature which is under heaven." The phraseology of these passages is so similar to that descriptive of the deluge ; so universal are the terms while we cannot doubt their import to be limited that we are abundantly justified, they think ? in considering the deluge as limited if other parts of the Bible, or the facts of natural history, require such a limita- tion which they believe to be the case. On the ground of such analogy as we have been speaking of in the use of uni- versal terms, eminent biblical expositors, anterior to geology's existence, as a science, as well as since, ha,ve so interpreted the Mosaic account of the deluge, as to understand that inun- dation to have been limited. They so understood it on exe- getical grounds. It appears, too, from some remarks which they have dropped, that they were the better satisfied with their interpretation on the ground that there appeared to them no necessity for a universal deluge, as the same end, they thought, might be accomplished by a partial one. Let us hear what is said by two or three of the interpreters referred to. Said Bishop Stillingfleet (Origines Sacrse, Book 3, chap- ter 4,) " I cannot see any urgent necessity from the Scripture to assert that the flood did spread over all the surface of the earth. That all mankind, those in the ark excepted, were destroyed by it, is most certain, according to the Scriptures. The flood was universal as to mankind ; but from thence fol- lows no necessity at all of asserting the universality of it as to the globe of the earth, unless it be sufficiently proved that the whole earth was peopled before the flood, which I despair of ever seeing proved." " Consentiunt quidem omnes," says DeLuc, " diluvium universale fuisse, quotenus totum orbem, ON THE EXTENT OF NOAH'S FLOOD. 183 habitatum oppressit, universumque humanum genus ex- empla Noachi familia, eo interiit. At alii volunt totum telluris globum aquis tectum fuisse, quod alii negant." That eminent divine, Matthew Poole, in his Synopsis, on Gen. 7 : 19, remarks as follows : "It is not to be supposed that the entire globe of the earth was covered with water. Where was the need of overwhelming those regions in which there were no human beings ? It would be highly unreasonable to suppose that mankind had so increased before the deluge, as to have penetrated to all the corners of the earth. Absurd it would be to affirm that the effects of the punishment in- flicted upon men alone, applied to places in which there were no men. If then we should entertain the belief that not so much as the hundredth part of the globe was overspread with water, still the deluge would be universal, because the extir- pation took effect upon all the part of the world which was inhabited." In another work, his Annotations, published after his death, the same author says, " Peradventure this flood might not be simply universal over the whole earth, but only over the habitable world, where either men or beasts lived ; which was as much as either the meritorious cause of the flood, the sins of men, or the end of it, the destruction of all men and beasts, required." Dr. J. Pye Smith, after refer- ring to scriptural instances in which universal terms were to be understood in a limited sense, says : " From these in- stances of the scriptural idiom in the application of phrase- ology similar to that in the narrative concerning the Flood, I humbly think that those terms do not oblige us to understand a literal universality ; so that we are exonerated from some otherwise insuperable difficulties in Natural History and Ge- ology. If so much of the earth was overflowed as was occu- pied by the human race, both the physical and the moral ends of that awful visitation were answered." The Rev. David King, LL. D., of Glasgow, in his recent work, entitled, " Principles of Geology explained," says : " Our best expos- 184 ON THE EXTENT OF NOAH'S FLOOD. itors of Scripture are now generally of opinion that the flood, though extensive, was local," p. 56. "If we adopt," he adds, (p. 61,) " the principle which the Scripture itself so unequivocally sanctions that general terms may be used with a limited sense the whole account is simple and con- sistent. A deluge of great extent inundated the dry land. In respect to men, whom it was designed to punish for their wickedness, it was universal, excepting only Noah and his family, whom it pleased God to spare alive. Along with them were preserved such animals as were most useful to them, and such as were fitted to fulfil the purposes of Provi- dence after the waters should have retired." The dijficulties'which beset the idea of a literally universal deluge, irrespective of those which geology presents, are indeed somewhat formidable. Some of these allow me now to state. You will find a more full and formidable array of them in the works of Dr. J. P. Smith and President Hitchcock. The first difficulty which we will mention arises from the enormous amount of water which, it has been urged, would be requisite to effect an absolutely universal inundation. It has been said, for instance, that to cover the earth to the tops of the highest mountains, the quantity of water requisite would be eight times greater than that existing on the present surface of the globe. In some of the theories of which we on a former occasion made mention, you may have noticed an attempt to meet this difficulty. If there be or prior to the deluge were underlying the earth's crust, such a massive aqueous abyss as the projectors of those theories speak of; or a large number of minor abysses, communicating with the superficial seas, as others have conjectured, or, I might say, as they have considered Moses as teaching when he speaks of " the fountains of the great deep," then would there be found no inadequate supply of liquid stores probably, when brought up to the earth's surface and their theories, ON THE EXTENT OF NOAH'S FLOOD. 185 you remember, suggest one or another mode of accomplishing that to inundate this entire little planet, and to the degree which the Scriptures seem to indicate. This idea of the ex- istence of one vast abyss, or many inferior abysses, in the earth's bowels, is, in the view of those who entertain it, sug- gested, or at least supported, by Scripture ; not merely by the expression " fountains of the great deep," used by Moses, but by several passages besides, such as the following cited by Stackhouse : " God founded the earth upon the seas, and established it upon the floods " " He stretched out the earth above the waters ; he gathered up the waters as in a bag " so some translate it, " and laid up the depth in storehouses." " When he set a compass upon the face of the depth ; when he strengthened the fountains of the deep." But that these passages teach the existence of a vast subterranean abyss, a large number of miles in depth, encircling the whole interior of the globe ; or a large number of great but minor subterra- neous abysses, is not very generally understood, we think, by biblical expounders. Certain it is, that since the recent re- markable discoveries made concerning central heat, the idea is not, it is believed, among able Christian geologists, com- monly entertained. " The internal parts of the earth " we quote from Dr. Hitchcock's Religion of Geology, p. 21 " are found to possess a very high temperature ; nor can it be doubted that at least oceans of melted matter exist beneath the crust ; and perhaps even all the deep-seated in- terior is in a state of fusion." The idea of an abyss or abysses of water of great depth in themselves, and deeply seated in the earth, is hardly consistent with such a fact, if fact it be. Enough is now known of the structure of this earth to convince us that no subterranean aqueous stores exist in the earth's interior, equal to an emergency such as that of inundating the entire surface of the globe to a depth of five miles above the seas' present level. The expression 186 ON THE EXTENT OP NOAIl's FLOOD. " the great deep," or " fountains of the great deep," is so used elsewhere in the Scriptures, as to show it to denote the general collection of oceanic waters, or the seas, regarded and spoken of as deep places, occupying different portions of the surface of the earth. EVENING FOURTEENTH. YOUNG GENTLEMEN: Having at the close of the last evening's Exercise consid- ered one of the difficulties besetting the idea of a literally universal deluge, let us now proceed to notice others. We will begin with the following : If such a mass of waters were actually brought upon the earth as would be sufficient to overlie all the plains not only, but hills and mountains of the entire globe, and rise to the height above them all of fif- teen cubits, the consequences which would ensue, in the view of Dr. J. Pye Smith, would be, he knows not how awfully disastrous. There would be, he says, " an increase of the equatorial diameter by some eleven or twelve miles. Two new elements would hence accrue to the actions of gravity upon our planet. The absolute weight would be greatly in- creased, and the causes of the mutation of the axis would be varied. I am not competent," he continues, " to the calculation of the changes in the motions of the earth whieh would thus be produced, and which would propagate their effects through the whole solar system ; and indeed to the entire extent of the material creation: but they would certainly be very great.'* To this it might be remarked, that if, to effect the universal Flood, there were no actual increase or addition to the quan- tity of the water, but only a bringing of the previously ex- isting masses from their repositories in oceans, seas, lakes, 188 ON THE EXTENT OF NOAH'S FLOOD. by the expansive power of underlying fires, or by some sub- terranean or other forces, over the surface of the antecedently dry land, no augmentation would there then be of this planet's gravity, and no such disastrous effects would ensue to the en- tire universe, or to the different portions of the solar system, as the just named eminent author apprehended. At least "I am not competent " to conceive that there would any such alarming consequences follow. But this, it might be said, would be only bringing forward one difficulty to prevent another. For to this idea of the sea and land changing places at the time of the deluge, there are objections. Besides some which may be conceived, of a more strictly geological character, there are two quite obvious ones which may be urged: One in reference to the Garden of Eden ; and the other, the olive leaf. First, in relation to the Garden of Eden. The interchange of sea and dry land at the time of the flood, it may be and has been urged, involves the permanent sub- mergence of the ancient paradise ; implies that that once favored spot, " the Garden," now, according to that hypothesis, forms a part of the present ocean's bed ; but Moses, in his description, which he wrote some centuries subsequent to the deluge, evidently did not so understand or represent it. He obviously meant his readers to understand, that Eden's local- ity might, in his day at least, be ascertained without any great difficulty. The author of that singularly entitled work, The Friend of Moses, has devised, or at least stated, a plan to meet it. It is, if we mistake not, by supposing the region to which the Gar- den of Eden belonged, to have been exempted in one respect from the fate of all the other antediluvian territory. He supposes that region to have, after a brief season, emerged from the waters, and have constituted ever since a part of the dry land of our postdiluvian world. (See that work, p. 349.) As to the "olive leaf" of which Moses speaks not olive branch, as Mr. Lyell calls it and the rapid appearance ON THE EXTENT OF NOAH'S FLOOD. 189 indeed of vegetation in general after the deluge these Mr. Fairholme and Dr. Hamilton attempt to account for in con- sistency with the idea of an interchange of sea and dry land at the flood. The former, in answer to the question, " Whence then came the olive leaf?" responds, "Whence, we may ask in return, came the vegetation on which the first created animals fed ? and how was the face of the earth renewed and rearranged in the beautiful order in which we now see it ? Although no mention is made, by the sacred historian, of the exercise of creative power after the deluge, yet we are left to infer the unavoidable necessity of such rearrangement, unless we are prepared to reject both the record of the flood itself, and the clear corroborations of that record which can be drawn from the geological phenomena of the earth." (See Fairholme's Geol. of Scripture, p. 349.) The latter, Dr. Hamilton, does not think it needful to insist on the exercise of creative power in order to the renewal of vegetation on the earth's surface after the deluge, and so the appearance of the olive leaf. " It is quite natural to suppose," says he, " that, as the ancient lands sank beneath the waters, immense quan- tities of fertile soil would be washed away by those waters, and would be held in solution therein ; and also that seeds in great variety and in vast quantities, and fruits of all sorts, would be lifted up, and would remain floating about ; and that as the new lands were rising, great quantities of this soil would be deposited thereon, in the form of mud ; and seeds of all sorts, still capable of germinating, would be lodged in various localities on the emerging lands, many of them mixed with and covered up in the mud so deposited, and which, after a very short time of favorable weather, in that genial climate, would present, in suitable situations, thousands of patches of thriving vegetation ; much as now, every year, is observed in Egypt, on the retiring of the waters of the Nile. Among these patches of verdure, the rapidly shooting scions of seed- ling trees, and vines and shrubs, in countless. variety might 190 ON THE EXTENT OF NOAH'S FLOOD. appear. As to the olive leaf, this writer says, " The leaf of a seedling olive plant, some few days old, would have answered every purpose to indicate the ground left dry by the retiring waters, and the commencing of vegetation." The aqueous treasures of the antediluvian ocean, if trans- ferred to, would be all-sufficient to cover the depressed ante- diluvian dry land entirely, and rise to that altitude, even, above the most elevated parts (fifteen cubits,) which the sacred writer indicates ; and this, without adopting the suppo- sition of Steno, as quoted by Lyell, that the loftiest moun- tains of the antediluvian dry land may not have been very high. Mr. Gleig takes it for granted that the time has gone by when any one pretending to the character of a philosopher or man of science, would dream of objecting to the Mosaic account of the deluge which he thinks most obviously teaches the absolute universality of that catastrophe or judgment on the ground of a difficulty in finding a suffi- ciency of water for the purpose, inasmuch, especially, as philosophers, from obvious phenomena, have inferred that the globe has, anterior to the Noachic flood, been several times covered and for a long season with water. This author throws out the intimation, indeed, that, according to the theory on a former occasion mentioned, " it is not neces- sary to suppose that the waters prevailed over the whole surface of the earth at one and the same time. If the foun- tains of the great deep," says he, " were broken up towards the south pole, and the progress of the waters was northward, it is evident that the southern regions must have been first inundated, and " (supernaturally as he thinks,) " the waters may have been impelled forward, leaving the mountains of the regions behind them dry, as soon as all the living creatures in these mountains were destroyed. This could be done by a change of the centre of gravity, or by many other means easy to Omnipotence ; and if such was the case, much OX THE EXTENT OF NOAIl's FLOOD. 191 of the difficulty respecting the quantity of water necessary to overwhelm the whole earth, is at once removed." (See Gleig's History of the Bible, vol. 1, pages 80 and 85.) This last mode of accounting for the deluge, differs from that advanced by Hooke and advocated by Fairholme, in that it supposes the waters, after sweeping by degrees over the sur- face of the dry land, leaving the earth drained behind as it pro- gresses, to pass again into and settle in their ancient bed ; whereas according to those writers, there was ^permanent inter- change of sea and dry land occurring at the time of the Flood. Those who do not feel prepared to embrace either of these two last named but somewhat resembling theories, im- agine that neither of them can be exactly reconciled with the words of the Mosaic account : not the former, because it con- templates such a violent rushing of the waters over the land an idea not suggested by the Mosaic narrative ; which, likewise, contrary to that theory, seems to convey the idea of a simultaneous covering of all the dry land ; not the latter, because the same land which was inundated, seems, accord- ing to Moses' description, to have again emerged, that there was a retiring or subsiding of the waters into their ancient beds. We leave you, young gentlemen, to examine at your leisure and see, whether the scriptural account and these theories, or either of them, can be made to coalesce. Another objection to the flood's absolute universality is, the difficulty of affording ample room in the ark for pairs of unclean, and septuples of clean animals, of absolutely every kind of each of these denominations to be found on the entire globe. The number of species already described by zoolo- gists has been said to be not less than 150,000 ; and the probable number existing on the globe is conjectured to be not less than half a million. And for the greater number of these must provision have been made, since most of them in- habit either the air or the dry land. A thousand species of mammalia, 6000 species of birds, 2000 species of reptiles, 192 ON THE EXTENT OF NOAH'S FLOOD. and 120,000 species of insects, are already described, says the objector, and must have been provided with space and food. Will any, it is emphatically asked, belieye this possible, in a vessel -of no more capacity than Moses men- tions ? The objection, thus stated, appears formidable truly. Yet those who hold that the deluge was universal, endeavor to maintain the ark's adequate capacity. In the first place, in regard to the ark's dimensions, they say the cubit which Moses mentions was not the ordinary one of eighteen inches, as was demonstrated by Mr. Greaves, who, measuring the pyramids in Egypt, and comparing the accounts which Herodotus, Strabo, and others give of their size, found the length of a cubit to be ^lyVotf inches. Such being the ancient cubit, the ark must have been 547 feet in length; 91 feet 2 inches in breadth; and 54 feet 8 inches in height. In-the above calculation the decimals are omitted, which, if taken into the account, would have considerably increased the capacity. Now, if along with the enormous magnitude of the vessel, it be considered that the term spe- cies is applied oftentimes to varieties of what belong in reality to the same species, thus greatly reducing the recently named numbers of species in the department of animated nature ; and if, %oing still farther, we say with Dr. Adam Clarke, " it is a question whether in this (Mosaic) account, any but the different GENERA of animals necessary to be brought into the ark, should be included ; " then the ob- jection appears to lose very much of its formidableness, to say the least. And if, in addition to all hitherto said, we make the number of clean creatures small as must have been the case if at that period only animals proper for sacrifice were so called, and that the sevens specified in regard to these, may be regarded as meaning not seven pairs, but seven singles (as if three couples for brocd, and the odd seventh for sacrifice,) for the language is '< by $crens"t the ON THE EXTENT OF NOAH'S FLOOD. 193 objection is then so weakened, that many will regard it as of little force ; more especially when, added to all the foregoing, it could be 'and has been plead, that of all the living creatures entering the ark, " the vastly greater proportion were small, and numbers of them could be placed together in the same compartment ; " and that " many animals, also, are torpid during the winter, and would probably lie dormant during the long and wintry storm of the deluge ; while, for all of them, much less than the usual amount of food would suffice, in consequence of their inactivity during the whole period of their confinement in a floating vessel." But if the ark were capacious enough to hold specimens of all kinds of living creatures, yet It is objected that all kinds of them could not have been preserved in the ark, because of a want of power in all kinds to accommodate themselves to any one climate. So true is this, it is urged, that if tropical ani- mals were to be removed to the temperate zones, and especially to the frigid regions, they could not long survive ; and that almost equally fatal would it be for the animals of high latitudes to take up their abode near the equator. Hence specimens of the various kinds coming from the differ- ent climates to which they are adapted, could not, especially for so long a time as the deluge continued, have lived togeth- er in the one floating vessel of Noah.' The fact in the way of reply to this, has been urged, that travelling menageries contain collections of animals of a great variety of kinds not only, but from various and very different climates and widely separated localities. "The white bear from the Arctic ocean, the lion from the burning deserts of Africa, the tiger from the jungles of Bengal, the elephant from Ceylon, the llama from South America, the orang-outang from Borneo, and even the kangaroo from New Holland, with the arma- dillo of Central America, and the bear of the Rocky moun- tains, have been known to exist for many months and even years, side by side, in the same menagerie ; " and that 194 ON THE EXTENT OF NOAIl's FLOOD. % " during the continuance of the deluge the temperature of the atmosphere would probably Jbe a medium between the intense cold of the Arctic, and the fiery heat of the tropics, a temperature in which all animals could exist for a con- siderable length of time." Again: It has been objected to an absolutely universal deluge, that it would cause a mixture of the salt and fresh waters of the globe. But many of the marine fishes and mollusks could live alone in salt water, it is argued ; and the fresh-water ones would be destroyed, it is urged, by being kept even a short time in salt water ; whilst some species, though they can indeed live in brackish water, would still be affected fatally, in all probability, by such circumstances as the increased volume of water, and the scattering and float- ing away of their nutriment. There would of necessity then be a vast if not entire destruction of aquatic animals. There is an attempt to meet this objection, not by denying that there exists a distinction of the kind which the objection contemplates, but by questioning the soundness of the infer- ence in its full extent which is deduced from it. Is it a settled truth that salt-water fishes and mollusks cannot live a while in water somewhat less salt; and that fresh-water fishes cannot subsist for a season in a less fresh element ? But even supposing all the living tenants of fresh water to have perished, might there not have been a provision for replenishing the fresh waters with living stores by means of spawn here and there plentifully and safely deposited ? " May it not even be true," it is asked, " that the germs of animal life lie imbedded at this very moment beneath the stratum forming the bed of the ocean, and that they are so guarded by surrounding mud, and the immense pressure of ocean's waters, from all action of the atmosphere, and from all escape of vital moisture and gas, that vitality still exists there ; so that when, ages hence, the present ocean-bed shall be upheaved, it shall bring with it to the sun and air, ON THE EXTENT OF NOAH'S FLOOD. 195 the seeds of appropriate animal no less than of vegetable life in countless myriads ? And why may it not have been thus with lands upheaved at the deluge ? " A difficulty which geology is thought to present against the absolute universality of the Mosaic Flood is stated by Dr. Pye Smith in his " Scripture and Geology," pp. 126-131. We will give you a mere hint in regard to its character. " In a district more than forty miles in length and twenty in breadth, in the southern part of Central France comprised in the ancient provincial divisions of Auvergne and Langue- doc are the unquestionable cones, craters, and other charac- teristic remains of more than two hundred volcanic hills and mountains. These, in former periods of our planet's history, have projected their tremendous fiery masses, ashes and water, into the air ; and vast streams of melted rocks along the ground." Passing over much that is said " many of these hills, in the form of sugar-loaves, consist of or are coated over with pumice stones and other loose and light substances, which every person knows to be volcanic prod- ucts. It is self-evident that these could not have withstood the action of a flood : they must have been broken down and washed away with the first rush of water. Either then the eruptions which produced them, took place since the del- uge ; or that deluge did not reach to this part of the earth. Against the former side of this alternative the argument from analogy is very strong." An attempt to meet this ar- gument against the flood's universality you may find in "The Friend of Moses," pp. 361-369, which, along with Dr. Pye Smith's statement, we hope you will look at when convenient. Finally : There has been an objection urged not only against the flood's universality, but against the occurrence indeed of any such event as the deluge of Noah at the period assigned by the Mosaic annals, an objection based on the records of some Oriental Nations, as the Egyptians, Chinese, 196 ON THE EXTENT OF NOAH'S FLOOD. etc., assigning them an antiquity far back beyond that of the Noachic cataclysm. We shall not here consider how this objection has been or may be met. As a question of an ethnological character will hereafter, Providence permitting, at some time demand our attention, the validity of those claims put forth by the nations alluded to, to an origin so vastly ancient, will then be examined. We imagine that whether the deluge of Noah was or was not universal, it may then be pretty clearly shown that this matter can with no propriety be urged in proof either against the occurrence of such an event, or against its absolute universality. From what has by us been now advanced, in the form of argument, on each side of the question relating to the extent of the Noachic deluge, you may feel yourselves not exactly prepared to come to a determinate conclusion, whether that inundation was, or was not, absolutely universal. Inasmuch as, whilst the language of Moses, employed in describing the flood appears, when most literally interpreted, to teach its universality, yet, as we have seen, can be, as to its universal terms, so construed as to suffer our faith to cling with unre- laxing tenacity to the verity of the Mosaic account, without deciding, firmly and finally, that it could have been of no less extent ; and inasmuch as you are yet in the May-time of life, and so, in the clemency of a benignant Providence, you may be afforded an unstinted opportunity to examine the subject, in its every feature and relation, more thoroughly, we would not deem it advisable for you at present to pro- nounce dogmatically an opinion on one side or the other. While this is said by us, however, we do hope you feel prepared to declare, that neither the language of the Mosaic description, nor that used directly by the Deity to our patriarch, wherein he says, " neither shall there any more be a flood to destroy the earth ; " as well as what is embraced in the pas- sages preceding and succeeding this declaration, from the 9th to the end of the 17th verse of the 9th chapter of Genesis, ON THE EXTENT OP NOAH*S FLOOD. 197 and chapter 8th, verses 21st and 22d; together with the credible evidence formerly adduced in support of the idea that the antediluvian population had become numerically very great, that neither all combined, nor any of these things, will, in your view, allow you to conclude that the flood of Noah was not so extraordinary, or remarkably peculiar, but that there have been, and in all likelihood hereafter will be, inundations of very similar character, both as to extent and otherwise, or indeed either. It is to be presumed that no great degree of regret will be felt rising in your minds at the perceptible indications of a close being about to be put to our extended remarks on the event which, for so many evenings, has been occupying our attention. Some of your minds, indeed, may not have been entirely barren of wonder, that we should have imagined it needful or expedient to dwell so long on this theme. Had we, young gentlemen, indulged the suspicion that you were affected with the " yellow cover " malady, we should have some time since relinquished the subject, or rather should have never consented to commence it, nor indeed any part of this series of Evening Exercises. There are those in mul- titudes, before whom we would never think of opening our mouth on any of the themes embraced in this "course." Other things in abundance they can find, better suited to their capacities, as well as more congenial to their tastes. It is not worth while to waste time or words in finding fault with their preferences. There must be mental as well as physical nonenities or vacuities in the world. It would not be a world, so to speak, without them. And it would seem a great pity if nothing appropriate could be found to introduce into those spaces of emptiness. If " nature abhors a vacuum," pray, why may we not ? You, young gentlemen, were, we trust, born for a higher destiny than that of merely inhaling the wind, or even the malaria of pestilential marshes. 198 CALL FOR THE DISCUSSION. In the circumstance that the Deluge was so prominent an event in the lifetime of our patriarch, may be descried a plausible reason for making it so prominent a theme in a course of lectures on "Noah and his Times" It is not, however, so much for the purpose of adapting our exercises to the just named title, that we have drawn so heavily on your "bank" of patience, as because of the fact that skepticism is at present audaciously and assiduously occupying itself in attempts to discover and urge startling disparities and irrecon- cilable discrepancies between the recently ascertained facts, or remarkable modern discoveries, of science, and the teachings of our venerated and sacred volume, in regard particularly to Creation and the Deluge. There is also another reason, not altogether isolated from the preceding, for entering so fully into the subject which has been so much before us. There is still not an inconsiderable number of Bible readers who have been so taught to interpret the initial part of Genesis, as to harbor an opinion conflicting with the findings of science ; and who, moreover, have been accustomed to indulge the belief, that all fossil organic remains, whether imbedded in the rocky strata, or overlying them, almost every where to be detected on this planet, were borne and deposited thither by the deluge of Noah, and are themselves indisputable evidences of that event. When such persons hear for the first time, or hear barely, what geologists and naturalists aver from investigation as ascertained principles, or settled facts, principles or facts bearing on these points, one or other of the following things is likely to take place : Either they will have their faith shaken, or hearts tortured with suspi- cion, concerning the credibility of the Mosaic history; their hostility or unfriendly jealousy awakened toward sciences which threaten to uproot or ignore those previously imbibed opinions of which we have just made mention ; or, on the other hand, by conceitedly and pertinaciously adhering to them, and fiercely charging all with being infidels, or favor- CALL FOR THE DISCUSSION. 199 ing their cause, who teach or hold differently, help to confirm the really skeptical in their anti-biblical doubts and prejudices. Solicitous we cannot but be, young gentlemen, that you should be qualified correctly to interpret both Nature and Scripture relative to the interesting and important mat- ters in question ; and be instrumental in leading others to the possession of intelligent and truthful sentiments respecting them. EVENING FIFTEENTH. YOUNG GENTLEMEN: We cannot consent to conclude our remarks in relation to the Noachic cataclysm without dropping a word in regard to what we conceive to be an important element, so to speak, in the agencies giving rise to, or somehow connected with, the phenomena of that stupendous diluvial occurrence. Some even Christian philosophers, appear to have a strong as well as strange disinclination to assign to aught save the operation of natural principles or agencies, whatever, whether as to origin or otherwise, pertains to this event. We are free to say that we cannot enroll ourselves among the number who imagine it to have been brought about solely by natural means : we say, solely, for that there was an entire ab- sence of the operation of natural or secondary causes, even the sacred narrative does not allow us to believe : making mention, as you perceive, of the descending rain and the issuing forth of the waters from oceanic and lesser reposi- tories ; and, in facilitating the subsidence of the diluvial waters, or reappearance of dry land, the blowing of a wind over the liquid surface such a wind as produced a strong and sudden evaporation, or served to hasten their retirement to the reservoirs they had left. Whatever natural agencies or existing instrumentalities the Omnipotent and Infinitely Wise might choose, were of course concerned in the accom- PRETERNATURAL AGENCT. 201 plisliment of what Jehovah had purposed in regard to the corrupt and incorrigible inhabitants of the Old World. Reasons satisfactory to ourselves we find for not excluding or losing sight of preternatural agency in the effecting of the destruction of those millions whom God did not deem fit to live. Desire you from us a statement of these reasons? In the first place, then, the Scriptures represent the Deluge as a strictly punitive event, as possessing the charac- ter of a judicial infliction. So the sacred historian ob- viously understood it ; so he designed his readers to believe. So Noah himself understood it, and manifestly would have his descendants in every generation, and everywhere, believe. But in order that mankind everywhere, and in every age, should thus believe, and be suitably and salu- tarily impressed by it, the Deity Supreme would see to hav- ing it so brought about, that its character should not entirely be wrapped up and hid in the operation of natural agencies, or secondary causes. God's care on this point is discernible in the fact that all theories which have attempted to account for the rise, or to explain the various phenomena of the Deluge of sacred history, which have failed to recognize immediate divine interposition or agency, have failed likewise in satisfying the mind of the generality of those who have examined them. Infidels, or those who have desired to ignore or throw discredit upon the whole Mosaic account these have manifested dissatisfaction with those theories wanting, as those men do, no agency natural or supernatural to effect an event which they profess to believe never occurred ; whilst others, who are not infidels, find both their faith and reason demanding the operation of something addi- tional to and above that of strictly natural causes as are commonly called the principles or powers with which the Deity has invested or endowed nature. Let us remark, in the next place, that if you will look at Gen. 6 : 7, where the Lord is to be found saying to himself, 202 THE FLOOD OP GENESIS PRODUCED " I will destroy man, whom I have created, from the face of the earth," etc. ; and into the 13th verse of the same chapter, where he is to be found saying to Noah, " The end of all flesh is come before me ; for the earth is filled with violence through them ; behold I will destroy them with the earth," you will hardly be able to convince yourselves that the Lord ex- pressed to himself and to Noah, merely the result of what he foresaw certain powers or principles in nature, after the inter- val of a specified number of years, of themselves solely, unin- tensified, undirected, uncontrolled, would effect. And we cannot find it in our heart to blame you, if you fail of ability to convince yourselves of this. Again. To me it appears difficult to ponder and weigh the full import and force of that emphatic " Behold I, EVEN I, do bring a flood of waters upon the earth to destroy all flesh wherein is the breath of life ; " a declaration of God which you may see in Gen. 6: 17, and yet entertain the belief that the whole diluvial event of which we have been treating, was brought about exclusively by natural powers or laws. That "I, even 1, " seems to me to present, very clearly, and emphatically too, a personal and supernatural agent as oper- ating, and not mediately only, but immediately, in bringing over the earth the sweeping diluvial judgment. It is hard for me to believe that that 17th verse contains only a divine prediction that after the lapse of a specified number of years, natural agencies will cause an inundation which will prove generally destructive to the living creatures inhabiting this planet ; and an implied announcement on the part of God, that he did not intend to interfere to prevent the catastrophe, and for the reason that mankind had become so wicked. And again, When I read that language from the lips divine, contained in Gen. 8 : 21, 22, a part of which is, " I will not again curse the ground any more for man's sake, neither will I again smite any more every living thing as I have done;" and when, additionally, in Gen. 9: 11, I find God NOT SOLELY BY NATURAL CAUSES. 203 solemnly as well as formally declaring to our patriarch, " I will establish my covenant with you ; neither shall all flesh be cut off any more by the waters of a flood ; " and examine the whole paragraph in which this is included, my reason will not, no sound principle of exegesis will, allow me to interpret the language as containing barely a prediction that there never will be again such an operation of natural causes as to bring about an inundation so extensive or destruc- tive as that which had just passed away. If any professing to have a reverence for the Bible can, we cannot, either erase from that Book of books or explain away the record of the many miracles which we there find ; the revealed numerous instances, in both Testaments, of direct divine interposition or agency to effect things above or beyond what the powers of nature alone could accomplish. And we are left to infer that if, on numerous other occasions, and for less important ends, the Omnipotent has stepped from his throne and exerted just a little of his Almighti- ness in putting, for the time, an efficiency into natural powers or principles which is known not ordinarily to belong to them ; or, without any instrumentalities at all, doing such or such things which for some end he wished to be accomplished ; then, we cannot see why, for a greatly paramount end, an end so very momentous as that for which the earth was visited by the inundation of which the sacred archaic histo- rian speaks, the Infinite One should not put forth a little of his boundless power to produce such inundation. And that he did so, whether others will or will not, we will and must believe. But, " if it was miraculous, then we must give up the idea of philosophizing about it," says the author of The Religion of Geology, p. 127. If that respected author means by this remark that, if there was something preternatural introduced in bringing about the deluge, we are thereby precluded from making any inquiries in reference to it, we cannot see how 204 THE FLOOD OF GENESIS PRODUCED this necessarily follows. It appears to me that we are not deprived of the liberty of inquiring what and how far natural means or agencies were employed in relation to the event. We may still, it strikes me, lawfully inquire whether any, and, if any, what distinguishable physical traces of that occurrence are discoverable at this day on the globe. We are at liberty to seek for responses, both from the written revelation of God, and the material or physical one, to such additional interrogatories as, How far did the cataclysm ex- tend? What quantity of water was requisite to effect it? Whence came it ? How high did it rise ? What effects, as to kind and degree, followed to animated nature ? to all questions, in short, against which faith, reverence, and reason would not issue their veto. Though it may sound much like a truism, yet we are not without our object in saying it, that there are some things which can by no one be reverently or rightly done. No one can, with due reverence or propriety, treat the Mosaic testi- mony as if it were utterly unworthy of credence as if it did not possess the attributes of history or, as if it ought not to be received as such. Nor, in the light or face of that testi- mony, that history, ought any set of men to act, we will not say so deistically, but atheistically, as to leave unthought of, or suffer to remain wholly out of view, the Great First Cause, or Supreme and Universal Ruler, in their inquiries relative to that great diluvial occurrence to which we have had our thoughts directed ; nor even in appearance attempt to divest that event of the discernible marks of a special divine judg- ment inflicted on an exceedingly corrupt and incorrigibly wicked world. We are constrained here to express our surprise and sorrow that some even Christian divines, through their intense fondness for philosophic investigation or inquiry, have allowed themselves to speak of the deluge of Noah, as if God had had no more, directly, to do with it, than he has with the steady revolutions of the planets in their NOT 8OLELY BY NATURAL CAUSES. 205 orbits, or any other event occurring under the ordinary and sole operation or control, so far as we can discover, of nature's principles or laws. With respect to these men, we must be permitted to say, that we think it due to their character and position not to proceed in their speculations or inquiries rela- tive to the Noachic inundation, so much as if there were no special written divine testimony concerning it. Let not this remark, however, be considered as applying to more than a comparatively few of those occupying that position, who have published the results of their speculations or inquiries on the subject. It is only here and there one that has become so ambitious or fond of playing the philosopher, as wellnigh to forget that there is a Bible conferred by a benevolent God to serve as a lamp to our feet and a light to our path. If, prompted or impelled by such clear scriptural inti- mations as have been referred to, we, to natural causes or agencies, superadd the preternatural, in our inquiries respect- ing the cause or causes connected with the diluvial occurrence described in the Mosaic narrative ; if, not natural powers exclusively were concerned in bringing it about, but, along with, or at their head, the power of the Omnipotent is to be regarded as having been put forth ; then, difficulties such as the cavilling mind finds in the way of the occurrence of just such a deluge, in all its features, as the archaic historian, Moses, describes, are at once given to the winds : for where, where are to be found such difficulties or obstacles as to confront or defy Omnipotence ? If you have not hitherto felt, you may by this time begin to feel a desire to hear where the ark finally stranded or settled. Where was it that the inmates of the floating house, human and sub-human, left it, again to take up their abode on dry land? The Scriptures, we are disposed to think, do not speak so determinately on this point, as that the precise spot can be certainly ascertained. Indeed, had they spoken thus, there would not, among biblical interpreters, have prevailed 10 206 INQUIRY AS TO THE ARK'S RESTING PLACE. the variety of conjecture which we find. The Mosaic history has been considered as containing two brief statements from which to arrive at an opinion, to wit : That in Gen. 8 : 4, where it is said that " the ark " (at a time which it specifies,) " rested upon the mountains of Ararat ; " and that in 11 : 2, where we read concerning the Noachidae, that " as they journeyed from the East, they found a plain in the land of Shinar, and they dwelt there." The phrase " mountains of Ararat," in the former of the two passages cited, has led the major number of expositors to locate the place of exodus in Armenia. The word Ararat occurs in three other places in the Sacred Scriptures, 2 Kings 19 : 37 ; Isa. 37 : 38 ; Jer. 51 : 27 ; in the first two of which it is rendered Armenia. The earliest tradition fixed on one of the chain of mountains which separate Armenia from Mesopotamia, and which, as they also inclose Kurdistan, (the land of the Kurds,) ob- tained the name of Kardu, or Carduchian range, corrupted into Gordiaean and Cordyaean. This opinion prevailed among the Chaldeans, if the testimony of Berosus as quoted by Josephus may be relied upon : " It is said there is still some part of this ship in Armenia, at the mountain of the Cordyseans ; and that people carry off pieces of the bitumen, which they use as amulets." (Antiq. 1 : 3, 6.) From that tradition, doubtless it was, that Mohammed was led to say in his Koran, (11 : 46) "The ark rested on the mountain Al- Judi." That name was probably a corruption of Giordi, i. e. Gordisean (the designation given to the entire range,) but afterwards applied to the special locality where the ark was supposed to have rested. This is on a mountain a little to the east of Jezizah ibn Omar (the ancient Bezabde) on the Tigris. This tradition respecting the locality where the ark rested, may be found adopted by the Chaldee paraphrasts, as well as by the Syriac translators and commentators, and all the Syrian churches. In the three texts where " Ararat" occurs, the Targum of Oakelos has 1TO Kardu; and, INQUIRY AS TO THE ARK'S RESTING PLACE. 207 according to Buxtorf, the term " Kardyan " was in Chaldee synonymous with " Armenian." At Gen. 8 : 4, we are informed that the Arabic of Erpenius has Jibal-el-Karud (the mountain of the Kurds) which is likewise found in the " Book of Adam " of the Zabacans. Another and later tradition, and one which has been more commonly adopted by Christians of the Occident, makes the ark to have rested on a great mountain in the north of Ar- menia. Such influence had this tradition on the popular belief, as in course of time to give to that towering eminence the name of Ararat as if no doubt could be entertained that it was the Ararat of the Scriptures. The native Arme- nians called it Macis, and the Turks Aghur-dagh or Agri- dagh, i. e. " The Heavy or Great Mountain." The Persians call it Kuhi Nuch, Noah's mountain. The Armenian ety- mology of the name of the city of Nachchevan (which lies east of it) is said to be " the first place of descent or lodg- ing ; " being regarded as the place where Noah resided after descending from the mount. This mountain, now going among western nations under the name Ararat, consists of two immense conical elevations, the altitude of the taller being 17,750 feet above the level of the sea, and 14,573 feet above the level of the plain; that of the lower 13,420 feet above the sea, and 10,435 feet above the plain ; thus tower- ing in massive and majestic grandeur from the valley of the Aras, the ancient Araxes. The Rev. Eli Smith says of it, " Not among the mountains of Ararat, certainly, or of Ar- menia generally, nor those of any part of the world where I have been, have I ever seen one whose majesty could plead half so powerfully its claims to the honor of having once been the stepping stone between the Old World and the New. I gave myself up to the feeling, that on its summit were once congregated all the inhabitants of the earth ; and that, while in ,the valley of the Araxes, I was paying a visit to the second cradle of the human race. Nor can I allow my 208 INQUIRY AS TO THE ARK*S RESTING PLACE. opinion to be at all shaken by the Chaldee paraphrasts, the Syrian translators and commentators, and the traditions of the whole family of Syrian churches which translate the passage in question, * mountains of the Kurds' " Sir Robert Ker Porter thus graphically describes this stupendous work of nature : "As the vale opened beneath us, in our descent, my whole attention became absorbed in the view before me. A vast plain peopled with countless villages, the towers and spires of the churches of Eitch-mia-adzen arising from amidst them ; the glittering waters of the Araxes flow- ing through the fresh green of the vale ; and the subordinate range of mountains skirting the base of the awful monument of the antediluvian world, it seemed to stand a stupendous link in the history of man, uniting the two races of men before and after the flood. But it was not until we had arrived upon the flat plain, that I beheld Ararat in all its amplitude of grandeur. From the spot on which I stood, it appeared as if the hugest mountains of the world had been piled upon each other, to form this one sublime immensity of earth, and rock, and snow. The icy peaks of its double heads rose majestically into the clear and cloudless heavens ; the sun blazed bright upon them, and the reflection sent forth dazzling radiance equal to other suns. My eye, not able to rest for any length of time upon the blinding glory of its summits, wandered down the apparently interminable sides, till I could no longer trace their vast lines in the mists of the horizon ; when an irrepressible impulse immediately carrying my eye upwards again, refixed my gaze on the awful glare of Ararat; and this bewildered sensibility of sight being answered by a similar feeling in the mind, for some moments I was lost in a strange suspension of the powers of thought." Of the two separate peaks, called the Little and the Great Ararat, which are separated by a chasm about seven miles in width, Sir Robert thus speaks: "These inaccessible summits have never been trodden by the foot of man since INQUIRY AS TO THE ARS/S RESTING PLACE. 209 the days of Noah, if even then ; for my idea is, that the ark rested in the space between these heads, and not on the top of either. Various attempts have been made in different ages to ascend these tremendous mountain pyramids, but in vain. Their form, snows, and glaciers are insurmountable obstacles ; the distance being so great from the commence- ment of the icy regions to the highest points, cold alone would be the destruction of any person who should have the hardihood to persevere." At the time when Sir R. K. Porter's Travels were pub- lished, and indeed until some twenty-five or thirty years since, the summit of this lofty mountain was considered abso- lutely inaccessible. Attempts had at various times been made to reach its top, but beyond the limit of perpetual snow scarcely any succeeded in planting their feet. In the year 1700, the French traveller Tournefort persevered long, and in the face of many difficulties, but was foiled in the end. Early in the present century the Pasha of Bayazeed under- took the ascent, but with success no better. In 1829, a Dr. Parrot claimed the honor of first reaching the summit of this towering eminence. Taking with him a Mr. Behagel as mineralogist, Messrs. Hehn and Schiemann, medical students of Moscow, and Mr. Foderow, astronomer of St. Petersburg, he undertook and accomplished the remarkable achievement. An account of his ascent, extracted from a work published by Professor Parrot at Berlin, may be founct in the Foreign Quarterly Review for June, 1835. It is quite interesting, but too long to allow me to give it to you here. Twice was he repelled, it is said, by the snowy crest ; but in th third attempt he succeeded, after almost unparalleled effort, in reaching its lofty pinnacle. He found himself on a slightly convex and almost circular platform, two hundred and twenty feet in diameter, which at the extremity declined rather steeply on all sides. This was the silver crest of Ararat, composed of eternal ice, unbroken by a rock or stone. On account of 210 INQUIRY AS TO THE ARK*S RESTING PLACE. the immense distance, nothing could be seen distinctly. The whole valley of the Araxes was covered with a grey mist, through which the towns of Erivan and Sardarabad appeared as small dark spots. To the E. S. E. was the lesser Ararat, whose head, as viewed from this higher point, did not appear like a cone, as it does from the plain, but like the top of a square truncated pyramid, with larger and smaller rocky elevations at the edges and' in the middle. The party spent three quarters of an hour, we are told, on its summit, and then, after planting an oaken cross thereon, descended. In their descent, " it was a splendid sight to behold the dark shadows which the mountains on the west cast upon the plain, and then the profound darkness which covered all the valleys, and which rose gradually higher and higher on the side of Ararat, whose icy summit was still illuminated by the beams of the setting sun." The fact of such an ascent as that which Dr. Parrot pro- fesses to have accomplished is indeed, it is said, doubted by the Armenians, but their incredulity is based upon their su- perstition. They firmly believe that on the top of that mountain is Noah's ark existing at the present day, and that in order to preserve it an approach is to no one allowed. This tradition, which is founded upon some monkish legend, has received the sanction of the church, and become in effect an article of faith which an Armenian would scarcely renounce even were he in person placed on that very summit where he believes it in undecaying perfection to be. It was so early as at the end of one hundred and fifty days,.or five months, after the deluge commenced, that the ark is said, to have " rested on the mountains of Ararat," (Gen. 8 : 4.) Now if by the resting there spoken of, be meant a grounding and permanent resting, it appears to us strange that from being so high as fifteen cubits above that, and even loftier eminences on the globe, the waters should have been at this time only of such height as that a final INQUIRY AS TO THE ARK'S RESTING PLACE. 211 stranding could have taken place, and yet the process of exsiccation or abatement afterward be so slow that the tops of the mountains should not be visible until some two and a half months subsequently, which, by looking at the fifth verse of the eighth chapter and comparing with the verse preceding, you will perceive to have been the fact. But this is not the most formidable objection which may be urged against that interpretation of the fourth verse which makes the resting of the ark there spoken of, to denote a stranding, and that not simply, but such a stranding as to involve a permanent settlement. For then it must have been from that eminence that there was an egression of the Noachic family, together with all the living inferior creatures which had been preserved in it, from the ark, and the finding of their way in safety far down the pre- cipitous, rocky and icy declivity or declivities into the habit- able regions below ; a thing utterly impracticable without miraculous interference or aid, as we are constrained to infer from the fact to which our attention has been called, viz., that its ascent is so difficult and next to utterly impracticable an achievement so all but absolutely transcending human power, that notwithstanding the many strenuous efforts that were at different periods put forth for its achievement, the summit was never actually reached from below until a quarter of a century since, and then only after almost super- human exertion. Hence necessity seems to be laid upon us to adopt a somewhat different interpretation, either of the phrase "mountains of Ararat" or of the word "rested" in Genesis 8 : 4. But it being time* for us to close, the con- sid(?ration of this you may expect to introduce the next Exercise. EVENING SIXTEENTH. YOUNG GENTLEMEN: Toward arriving at a correct conclusion as to the particular locality where the ark finally or permanently rested, no such determinate assistance can, in our view, be derived from the phraseology WT& *nn ^9 al hare Ararat, rendered " upon the mountains of Ararat" as the great majority of commentators appear to have imagined. It may well be inquired, what authority or right have they to interpret it as indicating a particular mountain, now known by the name Ararat, situated in modern Armenia? Does it not seem much more rational and proper to understand that plural phraseology as denoting a mountainous district within a country or province bearing the denomination of Ararat? just as the expressions, the mountains of Israel, the mountains of Samaria, the mountains of Abarim, etc., are understood to denote the mountainous districts of those countries. The sacred historian, then, may be regarded as not intending, by the phraseology referred to, to designate a particular mountain-top as that on which the floating fabric found a lodgment or repose, but to say, in general terms, that this took place in some part of the moun- tain range which distinguished the country of Ararat, and may be believed to have been in or near the modern Armenia. Should it be contended, in favor of that more usual interpre- tation of commentators which has been mentioned, that the INQUIRY AS TO THE ARIv's RESTING PLACE. 213 double peak of Agridah makes the plural phraseology pertinent ; and that the ark, as we have observed Sir R. K. Porter to think, may have rested in the valley between the two peaks, and thus, as it were, on the two mountains ; it may to this be replied, that, since we are told, in verse fifth, that it was not until the first of the tenth month that the tops of the mountains were seen, it is not possible that the ark should have stranded in the valley between the two peaks, and far below their tops, some two and a half months anterior to that period. Next, as to the proper interpretation of the phrase " rested upon" (or the original,) in the same verse, (the fourth,) let us drop a word. Should we feel disposed to entertain favorably the idea thrown out by the Rev. N. Morren, in the Article "Ar- arat" of Dr. Kitto's Cyclopedia, we shall consider the sacred historian as still farther from intending to point out a particu- lar locality, as that on which the ark found a final lodgment. That writer thinks that it may be fairly questioned whether the Hebrew words translated "rested upon" in Genesis 8: 4, should be understood as meaning an actual grounding upon the mountainous region, much less a particular mountain, of Ararat. Obtained a comparative and temporary repose over, expresses, in his view, the import of the original ; or, at least, according to his opinion, the words of the Hebrew are to be considered susceptible of such an interpretation. The lan- guage of Moses, in that fourth verse, then, may be regarded as indicating that the ark, after having been driven and tossed to and fro on the waste of waters, for the previous five months, obtained, for at least a while, a measure of compara- tive repose, and became more stationary over (b2) the mountainous region of Ararat. "That this may be the import of the expression," says Mr. Morren, " will be denied by none who are acquainted with the genius of the Hebrew language, and with the latitude of meaning attachable to the verb rna, which, (as is observed by Taylor in his Concord- 10* 214 INQUIRY AS TO THE ARK'S RESTING PLACE. ance,) includes whatever comes under the idea of ( remaining quietly in a place without being disturbed.' A vessel," he continues, " enjoys more real rest, when becalmed, than when she grounds on the top of a submarine mountain in a troubled sea." If such an interpretation be allowable, and we fully believe it to be, it is easy to perceive that we get rid of several more or less formidable difficulties, at which this writer hints, and then he concludes thus : " Finally, we, on this hypothesis, solve the question, 'If the descendants of Noah settled near the resting-place of the ark, in Armenia, how could they be said to approach the plain of Shinar, or Babylonia, from the east?' (Gen. 11 : 2.) For, as we read the narrative, the precise resting-place of the ark is nowhere mentioned; and though, for a time, stationary 'over' the mountains of Ararat, it may, before the final subsidence of the waters, have been carried considerably to the east of them." As the import of the phrase "from the east" (al- luded to in the words just quoted,) can be more conveniently, as well as appropriately, considered when we come to speak of the spot where, according to the archaic historian, the Noachidse, in whole or in part, soon after the flood settled, which is specified in Genesis 11: 2, we shall defer, until that more fitting occasion, what we have particularly to say respecting it, as well as concerning the inference which some have drawn from that phrase, in regard to the place where the ark finally rested. If the more prominent of the mental and emotional exer- cises of our patriarch and family, whilst inclosed for a year and more in the great vessel, could be given in detail, it would, doubtless, present to us a superlatively interesting and instructive history. So peculiar were their circumstances, shut out so long from the world and its accustomed associa- tions and employments ; floating in merciful imprisonment, for more than a twelvemonth, over the face of the eminently " mighty deep," together with the incidents and situation of EGRESS FROM THE ARK. 215 things which preceded and led to their strange and unprece- dented confinement, it is impossible that these should not have been instrumental in giving birth, in such minds and hearts, to many strikingly novel and interesting thoughts and feelings. A lively and prolific imagination might, peradven- ture, put some of these into form, and throw them attractively and glowingly before our mind's eye ; but a full and reliable history of them no being, save One, could furnish ; and that One has not seen fit to do it ; and to this want, what we have to do in a thousand other cases, we have to do here quietly, acquiescingly submit. "And it came to pass in the six hundred and first year, in the first month, the first day of the month, the waters were dried up from off the earth ; and Noah removed the covering of the ark, and looked, and behold, the face of the ground was dry. And in the second month, on the seven and twentieth day of the month, was the earth dried." And what then en- sued ? Lo, the door, the so long closed and sealed door of the floating house is thrown open ; and Noah receives from God the command, " Go forth " " Go forth of the ark, thou, and thy wife, and thy sons, and thy sons' wives with thee. Bring forth with thee every living thing that is with thee of all flesh." Oh, with what strange and big thoughts and emo- tions do the Noachidas hear the mandate, and commence and consummate their egress. Behold them ! What full-laden and thrice eloquent utterances do their waked and glowing countenances, and swelling, heaving bosoms, pour forth! Yet their lips speak not ; these have for the time lost the power of so doing ! How different a world from what our patriarch had been for six hundred years accustomed to look and tread upon, is the one on which his eyes gaze and his feet fall as he passes from his floating structure. Where is the teeming popula- tion with which he had previously been surrounded ? Where on every hand the busy stir of sentient and animated exis- 21 G LEGEND OF THE SEVEN SLEEPERS. tence ? The very face of nature, how altered ! The green hills, the waving plains, the rich foliage, the cheering ver- dure, the floral beauties and fragrances that were where are they ? Suppose you had laid down in some charming vale where, ere your senses were leadened by sleep, your eye would be feasted with beauties, and your ear with melo- dies, and, upon waking, found yourselves encompassed with one entire scene of unbroken stillness and utter desola- tion, would you not be affected deeply, strangely, by the con- trast ? Were our postdiluvian father and the seven souls with him such different specimens of humanity as not to be wellnigh overcome by the contrast which they on every hand witnessed? They must have felt very much indeed as if. their vessel had landed them on the face of some before untenanted, unvisited world. They could recognize abso- lutely nothing. " The seven sleepers " had occasion to feel little surprise in the comparison ; and to be at incompar- ably less loss as to their whereabouts. As you may not all have become acquainted with the legend to which we have referred, it will not be amiss to lay it before you. In the interval which elapsed between the reign of the Emperor Decius and the death of Theodosius the younger, i. e., between the years 249 and 450 of our era, the union of the Roman empire had been dissolved, and some of its fairest provinces overrun by the barbarians of the north. The seat of government had passed from Rome to Constanti- nople, and the throne from a pagan persecutor to a succes- sion of Christian and orthodox princes. The genius of the empire had been humbled in the dust, and the altars of Diana and Hercules were on the point of being transferred to Catho- lic saints and martyrs. The legend relates that " when Decius was still persecuting the Christians, seven noble youths of Ephesus concealed themselves in a spacious cavern in the side of an adjacent mountain, where they were doomed to perish by the tyrant, who gave orders that the entrance A STRIKING ALLEGORY. 217 should be firmly secured with a pile of huge stones. They immediately fell into a deep slumber, which was miraculously prolonged, without injuring the powers of life, during a period of one hundred and eighty-seven years. At the end of that time the slaves of Adolius, to whom the inheritance of the mountain had descended, removed the stones to supply mate- rials for some rustic edifice : the light of the sun darted into the cavern, and the seven sleepers were permitted to awake. After a slumber, as they thought, of a few hours, they were pressed by the calls of hunger, and resolved that Jamblichus, one of their number, should secretly return to the city to pur- chase bread for the use of his companions. The youth could no longer recognize the once familiar aspect of his native country, and his surprise was increased by the appearance of a large cross triumphantly erected over the principal gate of Ephesus. His singular dress and obsolete language con- founded the baker, to whom he offered an ancient medal of Decius as the current coin of the empire ; and Jamblichus, on the suspicion of a secret treasure, was dragged before the judge. Their mutual inquiries produced thg amazing dis- covery, that two centuries were almost elapsed since Jam- blichus and his friends had escaped from the rage of a pagan tyrant." (Gibbon's Decline and Fall, chap. 23.) As farther illustrating or setting forth the changes which a series of years produce, you will allow me to give you the following passage from an Arabian writer, Mohammed Kaz- wini, who flourished in the seventh century of the Hegira, or at the close of the thirteenth century of our era. It is given as the narrative of Khidhz, an allegorical personage : " I passed one day by a very ancient and wonderfully popu- lous city, and asked one of its inhabitants how long it had been founded. ' It is indeed a mighty city,' replied he ; * we know not how long it has existed, and our ancestors were on this subject as ignorant as ourselves.' Five centuries after- wards, as I passed by the same place, I could not perceive 218 REMARKABLE TRANSITION. the slightest vestige of the city. I demanded of a peasant, who was gathering herbs upon its former site, how long it had been destroyed. * In sooth, a strange question/ replied he. ' The ground here has never been different from what you now behold it.' Was there not of old, said I, a splendid city here ? * Never,' answered he, * so far as we have seen, and never did our fathers speak to us of any such.' On my return there five hundred years afterwards, I found the sea in the same place, and on its shores were a party of fishermen, of whom I inquired how long the land had been covered by the waters. * Is this a question,' said they, ' for a man like you ? this spot has always been what it is now.' I again returned, five hundred years afterwards, and the sea had disappeared ; I inquired of a man who stood alone upon the spot, how long ago this change had taken place, and he gave me the same answer as I had received before. Lastly, on coming back again after an equal lapse of time, I found there a flour- ishing city, more populous and more rich in beautiful build- ings than the city I had seen the first time ; and when I fain would have informed myself concerning its origin, the inhab- itants answered me, ' Its rise is lost in remote antiquity ; we are ignorant how long it has existed, and our fathers were on this subject as ignorant as ourselves.' " Had Kazwini lived in our day, he might have constructed a story which would embrace in it much shorter intervals for the transpiring of astonishing changes, particularly in the hemisphere which we inhabit. Instead of centuries, a score or two of years, in this age of the world, are followed with scarcely less amazing alterations. But as to our patriarch, not even the last mentioned interval was taken to effect the still more wonderful changes which stared on his vision. The interval of a year and a few days has produced, oh, what mutations ! and not in one or a few localities merely. " Old things are passed away ; behold, all things are become new ! " The world which he had been accustomed to gaze upon, with THE GRATEFUL RETURN. 210 its marts, its busy hum, its works of art, its green meadows or verdant lawns, its gardens and fields of strikingly variegated and describeless charms, and its numerous, nameless stores where is it ? What world is this to which the great ship has transported him now spread out before his astonished gaze? Oh, father second father! with what big and strange emotions did thy bosom swell ! Scarcely when thou afterward enteredst that wondrous world of light and glory, matchless and ineffable, where thou, a rapt spirit, now hast thy abode, couldst thou have felt much more strangely ! The Deluge over, thou hadst to begin anew thy course ; and, in- stead of being, as formerly, a Brother, thou hadst to turn Father, of mankind ! God had " remembered Noah ; " had sat upon the flood of great waters, and kindly and carefully preserved him from fear of evil amid their rage and roar ; and, having accom- plished his dreadful yet righteous and just purpose toward the infatuate and infuriate throng who had turned the old world into an antechamber of or rather into a second hell, had made a wind to pass over, and drive away or dry up, the mighty sea ; and now brought his feet to stand on an exsic- cated earth, which had already commenced mantling herself in verdant and floral bloom and beauty. And shall not our now postdiluvian patriarch remember God in return ? Ah we would do this man injustice by saying or thinking of him, that his Infinite Preserver and Benefactor had been at any time absent from his mind or heart, during the memorable year and ten days, of his strange incarceration in the provi- dential prison-ship ! No sooner after his feet have again pressed the dry ground, and he finished superintending the egress of the ark's safely kept tenants, than he enters upon the erection of " an altar" on which, " of every clean beast, and of every clean fowl," to offer " burnt offerings " unto the Lord. (Gen. 8: 20.) Our English word altar comes from one in the Latin (altus) which signifies high, because altars were 220 THE ALTAR AND SACRIFICE. originally made of high raised mounds of earth, (Ex. 20 : 24,) or built on the tops of hills and mountains. Though this altar of Noah is the first of which we find any mention in the Sacred Records, yet, as we read of sacrificial oblations before the flood, even in the earliest times before, there were, undoubtedly, altars found or made, on which to present them unto God. As our patriarch, ere he became a postdiluvian, was not ignorant of this mode of religious worship ; as he, without a peradventure, had himself oft, during the six hun- dred years which he had passed in the antediluvian world, given expression after this manner to his grateful and devo- tional impulses, he had no occasion to wait for the issue, from a divine source, of a special mandate thus to express his gratitude to the " Giver of all good" for the signal mer- cies which he had experienced ; and it was without question doubly pleasing and precious to the Lord, that he went about it, " not of constraint, but willingly." Apart from direct com- mand, he was indeed not without sufficient to move him to this course. Aware of the thrice awful fate of the millions of his antediluvian contemporaries ; of not only the simulta- neousness of his salvation and their destruction ; but of the fact that the same waves which had swept them from the land of the living had been the means of keeping him and his little household in it ; that the " eight souls " had been so mercifully and marvellously distinguished as to be the sole survivors of a heretofore vastly multiplied, and, so recently as it were as yesterday, eminently multitudinous race ; borne on the bosom of so widely sweeping and tremendously deso- lating a judgment, unharmed and undismayed, to a secure and quiet haven, our second father needed nothing super- added, surely, to inspire him with the most melting and moving impulses ; to fill his big soul to overflowing with emotions of gratefulness, which he would naturally, and by a sort of moral necessity, make it his first business suitably to express. As to the precise nature of the sacrifice at this time CHARACTER OF THE OBLATION. 221 offered by our postdiluvian progenitor, it appears to have partaken of the twofold character of eucharistic and expia- tory ; the occasion giving it the one attribute, and the ma- terial the other : for, under the law, not usually of the bloody sort were thank-offerings. It somehow strikes us that herein is our highly esteemed second father to be regarded as offering thanks to the Father of mercies for his signal bene- factions, his thrice memorable favors, in the believing recognition and feeling sense, that all those mercies and blessings for which he expresses himself thankful, have come to him through Uood have reached him through the me- dium or channel of that meritorious and expiatory Sacrifice of which his bloody " burnt-offerings " were a type. Through this same medium, and in this same exercise, he rendered adoration as well as expressed his grateful acknowledgments unto God ; devoted himself and household renewedly to his service; and 'sought protection and blessing further for him and his, amidst the desolations which surrounded them, and, as we may believe, on his posterity, in all its anticipated ramifications, in all coming time. The oblation of our pious ancestor, thus presented, we are assured was accepted of God, and his prayer, we are left to infer, not unavailing. What we find in the two succeeding verses clearly asserts the one and implies the other. " The Lord smelled a sweet savor;" the sacrifice which our worthy patriarch offered was as grateful and acceptable to the Lord as sweet odors are to a man. Not that the smell of burning flesh could in itself be pleasing to God ; but as it prefigured the sacrifice of the atoning Mediator, to be offered in the fulness of time ; and as the oblation, with its attendant exercises, was expressive of Noah's sense of per- sonal unworthiness, of his dependence for all benefactions, past and to come, on a vicarious basis, and his grateful love to the beneficent and merciful " Giver of every good and per feet gift." 222 THE SACRIFICIAL RITE, ITS RISE AND DESIGN. There is, young gentlemen, an implied truth underlying that declaration relative to the acceptableness to the Deity of the oblation presented by our patriarch on " the altar which he had builded : " It is, that the sacrificial proceeding was either an act of obedience to a direct divine command received by him, or else an act in the way of observance of a previously existing divine institution. But the Record affords us no intimation from which we can infer the former. The latter, therefore, is to be concluded to be the truth, namely, that it was done in observ- ance of a divine institution previously existing. The manner, moreover, in which our second father entered upon the business of offering a sacrifice or sacrifices, shows that it was with him no novel performance. And if he had been accustomed to engage in acts of this kind, it may well be believed that he had not been altogether singular in this ; that those pious antediluvians with whom he, during the half dozen centu- ries that he had lived before the flood, at one time and another was acquainted, had been accustomed to do the like. And whence the custom which they followed, it is not diffi- cult to conceive. Many of these early patriarchs had been born so far back toward the sunrise of time as to have en- joyed a personal acquaintance with righteous Abel. Now it is matter of record that this son of our first parents offered animal sacrifices, and that in this act he did what was well- pleasing to God. The smoke of the sacrifice came up as a sweet savor before Jehovah. How so? Did that Infinite Being delight in the smell of burnt flesh and blood simply ? Was it not, must it not have been, because the sacrifice was an important instituted type ; and that the offerer, in the act he performed, engaged with an obedient spirit in the ob- servance of a divine institution, and in the exercise of faith faith relative to the source whence it originated, and in regard to what the sacrifice prefigured ? That there was an exercise of this last mentioned principle by the righteous and accepted offerer, is a matter concerning which we have spe- THE SACRIFICIAL RITE, ITS RISE AND DESIGN. 223 cific Scripture testimony as you may see by turning to Hebrew 11 : 4. Yet, that Abel offered the first animal sacrifice that was ever presented before the Lord, when he performed this recorded act, he who addresses you does not believe for reasons of which he will postpone the mention till the beginning of another lecture. EVENING SEVENTEENTH. YOUNG GENTLEMEN: That Abel's animal oblation, mentioned in Gen. 4 : 4, was not the first of the kind ever offered before the Lord we do not believe, for the following reasons: JFirst. He does not appear to have performed this solemn act from a direct divine command addressed to him immediately before. Had this been the case, it seems probable that there would have been a mention by the historian of the. circumstance. Second. He was a young man, and appeared to be but following an example previously set him. That his father before him had been accustomed to offer animal sacrifices we are almost forced to infer from the fact that " the coats of skins," skins of slain animals which our first parents wore, were not the skins of animals slain for food, since animal food was not allowed to man until subsequent to the deluge. The rational conclusion, and apparently the only rational one which can be drawn, is, that they were the skins of animals slain for sacrifice. It is reasonable to believe, nay, we are impelled to the belief, that as, to our first parents, just after their guilty fall, the Lord gave audible, so he likewise gave visible intimations of his mercy ; that he would inspire hope, and fan it, by something addressed to the eye as well as the ear; and that therefore he, just after their expulsion from the Garden, introduced an institution which was adapted to indi- THE SACRIFICIAL RITE, ITS RISE AND DESIGN. 225 cate not only that should God be approached and worshipped by them, though fallen ; but also how he could be approached and worshipped acceptably, after a manner so acceptable as again to receive, and have their hearts kindled into ecstasy by, his smiles. Here, if there are those who do not, we look for and find the origin, the divine origin, of the sacrificial rite, the great typical institution which answered so mo- mentous and merciful a purpose all the way down from the Fall to the period, four thousand years after, when the Great Sacrifice which it foreshadowed, and was given for the special purpose of foreshadowing, appeared. We may hence see how, as our patriarch's heart, as he and his household stepped forth from the ark, was so full of gratitude that he pantingly hastened to give expression to it to pour out its full tide at the feet of his Infinite Preserver and Benefactor, so his mind was full of the institution which, in tones somewhat above a whisper, told how God could be merciful and yet be just ; how He who infinitely hated sin could be approached and worshipped, ay, and thanked, acceptably, by the sinner. Apart from, or in addition to, what has been already said in regard to the divine origin of the Sacrificial Institution, we would be led to infer it from its character and intent, the former of which being such as that we cannot see how unaided, uninstructed human reason should have originated or hit upon such a rite ; and the latter such as that an idea of the sort could spontaneously, or of its own accord, hardly have had birth in the human mind. The sacrificial rite has in some phase or form been found prevailing among all nations, even among those who have little or no knowledge of its original or true intent, and who are destitute of a knowledge of the true God even. Whence had all the nations of the globe this rite ? whence but from one and the same source, by tradi- tion from the prime Noachic family? affording one of 226 THE SACRIFICIAL RITE, ITS RISE AND DESIGN. many proofs that all the nations and tribes of men are descended from that one great postdiluvian who, upon leaving the ark, hastened to build an altar unto the Lord, and to offer burnt offerings thereon. As we hinted toward the close of the preceding Exercise, there is, in the two verses succeeding the record of the sacrificial act of our patriarch, an implied intimation, and it is so clear as to be unmistakable, that the supplications of our pious progenitor, presented in connection and simulta- neously with his animal oblation, were not unavailing. Examine those verses and you will not fail of saying so. As, what the Lord there " said in his heart " we find him afterward, in substance, saying, in the form of a covenant, to Noah, (see Gen. 9 : 9-17,) we will reserve whatever remarks we are disposed to make relative to this point, to the time when the consideration of that covenant will come in regular course before us. If you will now cast your eye on the commencing verses of the ninth chapter of Genesis, you will have the topics suggested to your mind upon the consideration of which we, in the order there presented, are about to enter. That we may not lose sight of the chronology, it may not be amiss to remark that, according to the Hebrew reckoning, had Adam been still alive, he would have entered upon his one thou- sand six hundred and fifty -seventh year. Our postdiluvian father had now entered upon his six hundred and first year. There is yet therefore more than one third of his Life and Times still to come under review, for he lived, as we shall see, three hundred and fifty years after the Flood, and died, according to the Hebrew or Usherian computation, two years before the birth of Abraham. We have thought it proper and expedient to mention this now, that we may not, through remissness in regard to the reckoning, lose sight of where we are on the sea of time, or how much space we have still to traverse. THE PRECEPT IN GEN. 9 I 1. 227 Lest he who came over the great waters from the Old World, or any of the seven who were companions of his voy- age, should infer from any cause such for instance as, along with the woful apostacy of the first father of the race, the consequent depravity, and proneness to do evil among his posterity, and the baleful effect which had been witnessed, the other side of the Flood, of the great augmentation of their number or from the character of the Lord's recent astonish- ing dealings toward the vast antediluvian population, and the extreme paucity of the number that had been preserved from a watery grave that the Most High, from a feeling of hos- tility toward the apostate human family, or from considera- tions of expediency, would be averse to the great increase again of their numbers, the Supreme Sovereign deemed that there was occasion for a reissue of the command given to our first parents on the day of their creation, to " be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth," (Gen. 9:1, compared with 1 : 28,) as well as for a reassurance of his blessing upon him and his. But, in the way of the great and rapid multiplication of human beings, and the replenishing of the postdiluvian earth with them, some formidable obstacles lay. The survivors of the former world, what a feeble handful ! and the sun of our second father and mother so far past the meridian, that no auxiliary advantages could they rationally expect to yield to their three sons with their wives toward restocking the world with inhabitants ; and serious apprehensions might very naturally be entertained that in their inceptive paucity and weakness they would be illy prepared to cope with the fero- cious portions of the animal kingdom, which there was a likelihood of so multiplying, and speedily, as greatly to im- peril their safety and life. To relieve or preserve the feeble band from all unnerving or tormenting anxiety on that score, the Lord informs or promises Noah and his sons that " the fear and dread of them should be upon every beast of the 228 THE DOMINION OF DREAD. earth, and upon every fowl of the air, upon all that moveth upon the earth, and upon all the fishes of the sea ; into your hand," says he, " are they delivered." A somewhat signal disparity appears between the original grant of dominion over the brute creation and this postdiluvian one. Our first father, ere he ate " the apple," ruled the inferior animals by love and kindness, as their gentleness and docility were palpa- bly their predominant characteristics. Not so in regard to our second father and his progeny. The sacrifice of human innocence long ere Noah saw the light, had been succeeded by a sacrifice of the pleasant primeval sway. Henceforth, among almost all orders of the animal tribes, untractableness, ferocity, and enmity to man were observably prevalent. The Deity does not therefore say to this little postdiluvian band, with so good a man even as Noah at their head, The love of you shall so control all the animal tribes that you shall have naught to fear from them. In other words, the full primitive grant is not restored, as the full primitive innocence is not. But in the room of love, another principle shall operate powerfully and generally for man's security, the principle of fear or terror. Herein is the mercy of God shown to fallen man, for He it is who has so constituted the inferior animals since mankind became fallen. And truly the human family became so altered by the fall, that it is scarcely to be wondered at that even the most fierce and ferocious of the sub-human orders of creatures should stand in awe of and run from them, as thinking their distance preferable to their presence ; and this without a constitution remarkably variant from the primitive. And have you not sometimes had your surprise excited, at one time to witness animals of greatly superior strength to that of man, tamely and quietly sub- mitting not alone to his control, but likewise his tyranny ; at another, not only those of great strength, but also ferocity, fleeing in utmost trepidation from those animals in human shape whom they have the means of so easily and quickly GRANT OF ANIMAL FOOD. destroying ? Here is one of the vastly diversified forms in which God's mercy is exhibited to man, which he should not be so stolid as not to recognize, nor so stubbornly ungrateful as not to feel and express thankfulness for. In what we have alluded to, the majesty of man's presence, and the fact of his original lordship, are by the brute creation strikingly acknowledged. To stimulate and encourage our patriarch, his sons, and their progeny, in the great work which a wide, unsettled, and unsubdued world called upon them to engage in and to prose- cute, the Supreme in his munificent clemency made a grant as to means of sustenance, additional to what had been made to man at the first ; and one tending to mitigate the curse, " in the sweat of thy face shall thou eat bread," to mitigate the severity of hard and continuous toil. We allude to the item of animal food: " Every moving thing that liveth shall be meat for you ; even as the green herb have I given you all things," (Gen. 9 : 3.) What a large, liberal, universal grant is here, in the room of the limited one of which we find mention in Gen. 1 : 29. It has been generally agreed among writers, that mankind before the flood, notwithstanding the lawlessness and flagitiousness at length of their conduct in many or most other respects, confined themselves within the limits of the original grant. Hence it may be inferred that from the fall, when the curse fell upon the face of the ground for man's sake, down through all the antediluvian period, the lives of men must have been very toilsome. In the sweat of their face, literally, and emphatically, they must have eaten their bread. Mention was made in our first lecture of the opinion of Shuckford as to the main reason why Lamech gave his son the name Noah. If animals were at all used for food prior to the flood, it was done by transcending the grant originally made by the Creator. Explicitly allowed until now it indisputably appears not to have been ; even if, from the language employed in Gen. 1 ; 29, it may not be 11 230 TVHY THIS GRANT. inferred that the use of flesh for food from the first was not absolutely forbidden. Should it be inquired why mankind, after the flood, had a larger grant made them, as to articles of diet, than before, it might not be found easy, perhaps, to return a fully satisfac- tory answer: unless So the Lord willed, would fully satistY the inquirer. In addition to the one a moment ago hinted at, namely, that every disheartening obstacle might be taken out of the way of our postdiluvian progenitor in the re-settling of tne world, some, whose minds are prolific of conjectures, have ventured to advance the idea, that, at the time, and as an effect of the deluge, so much of an alteration took place in the vegetable world, as to render its productions less nutritive than they were previously ; as well as such a change, prob- ably, in the constitution of man, as to render a grosser and higher diet essential. These have thought, that it might be safely inferred, from the fact of this enlarged grant, that the earth was less fertile posterior, than it was prior, to the flood ; and that the human constitution was greatly impaired by the alterations which had occurred through the whole economy of nature. " Morbid debility, induced by an often unfriendly state of the atmosphere, with sore and long-continued labor, would necessarily require a higher nutriment than vegetables could supply. That this was the case, appears sufficiently clear from the grant of animal food, which, had it not been indispensably necessary, had not been made." Such is the language of Dr. Adam Clarke. You may weigh the opinion here advanced, and try to ascertain how much it is worth. Others have thought an idea at a greater remove from being a favorite with us than the preceding that God indulged our postdiluvian ancestry in this, because of the hardness of their heart an opinion not very complimentary to Noah and his sons and that, perceiving the eagerness of their appetites towards " carnal food," and designing withal to abbreviate the term of human life, he gave them a free THE SPECIFIED RESTRICTION. 231 license to eat it, knowing a free indulgence in it particularly efficient toward the bringing about of that end. Theodoret has assigned a reason for God's extending the grant to the flesh of animals, which has in it more of plausibility, to wit : " that the omniscient and infinitely adorable Jehovah, fore- knowing that, in future ages, men would idolize his creatures, would aggravate the absurdity, and make it the more ridicu- lous so to do, by their consuming at their tables what they sacrificed at their altars ; since nothing is more absurd than to worship what we eat." In our view, the grant was pal- pably intended, in part, by a kind and pitying God, as a compensation for the difficulty and scantiness with which, in comparison with the luxuriance and abundance of an age of innocence, (not to say of the whole antediluvian period,) the earth yielded her fruit, since the curse because of man's sin. Finally, on this subject, let us say, that God, by granting to mankind carnivorous propensities and privileges, has taken care to impose a check on the otherwise too rapid and great increase of the various animal species. The language of the grant, "Every moving thing that lii'eth" though very general, is still not entirely unrestrictive. It is implied that animals allowed for food were to be killed for this purpose ; that such as died of themselves, or were slain by other beasts, were excluded from the grant. Nor is that so general expression, just quoted, to be so widely inter- preted as to leave us to infer, that every kind of living creature is proper food for man. On the children of Israel you may, by looking over Leviticus, llth ch., and Deuteron- omy 14th, find various restrictions imposed, a portion of which, at least r are observed by all the civilized portions of Noah's descendants. The kind dietetic grant, made to our postdiluvian father, was attended with a specified prohibitory restriction, which must not be passed over in utter silence. This restriction related to the BLOOD of the animal: "Flesh with the life 232 THE EATING OF BLOOD PROHIBITED. (or soul) thereof, the Hood thereof, shall ye not eat," (fourth verse.) Concerning the nature of this prohibition, it may be remarked, first, that the Hebrew doctors understood it to relate to a cutting off any part of a living animal, and eating it while the lifeUood was in it. Of the seven precepts which an old tradition of the Rabbinical Jews says that Noah de- livered to his children, to be enjoined on all their descendants, one, the last named of them, forbade the eating of any part of an animal still living. A fierce and barbarous people is spoken of by Maimonides, who, after cutting pieces of flesh from a living animal, devoured it raw, with blood streaming from it, as a part of their idolatrous worship. That this horrid practice has prevailed, and was recently kept up, among the Abyssinians, we must believe, if we place reliance on the reports of Mr. Bruce and Mr. Salt, confirmed by the statements of a later traveller, Mr. Madden. Mr. Bruce's report runs thus : " Not long after our losing sight of the ruins of this ancient capital of Abyssinia, we overtook three travellers driving a cow before them. They had black goat- skins upon their shoulders, and lances and shields in their hands ; in other respects, they were but thinly clothed ; they appeared to be soldiers. The cow did not seem to be fat- tened for killing, and it occurred to us all, that it had been stolen. This, however, was not our business, nor was such an occurrence at all remarkable in a country so long engaged in war. "We saw that our attendants attached themselves, in a particular manner, to the three soldiers that were driving the cow, and held a short conversation with them. Soon after, we arrived at the hithermost bank of the river, where I thought we were to pitch our tent : the drivers suddenly tripped up the cow, and gave the poor animal a very rude fall upon the ground, which was but the beginning of her sufferings. One of them sat across her neck, holding down her head by the horns, the other twisted the halter about her fore feet, while the third, who had a knife in his hand, to my THE EATING OF BLOOD PROHIBITED. 233 great surprise, in place of taking her by the throat, got astride of her before her hind legs, and gave her a very deep wound in the upper part of the buttock. From the time I had seen them throw the beast on the ground, I had rejoiced, thinking that when three people were killing a cow, they must have agreed to sell part of her to us ; and I was much disappointed upon hearing the Abyssinians say, that we were to pass the river to the other side, and not encamp where I intended. Upon my proposing they should bargain for part of the cow, my men answered, what they had already learned in conver- sation, that they were not then to kill her, that she was not wholly theirs, and they could not sell her. This awakened my curiosity ; I let my people go forward, and stayed myself till I saw, with the utmost astonishment, two pieces, thicker and longer than our ordinary beef-steaks, cut out of the higher part of the buttock of the beast : how it was done I cannot positively say, because, judging the cow was to be killed, from the moment I saw the knife drawn, I was not anxious to view that catastrophe, which was by no means an object of curiosity. Whatever way it was done, it surely was adroitly, and the two pieces were spread upon the outside of one of their shields. One of them still continued holding the head, while the other two were busy in curing the wound. This, too, was done not in an ordinary manner. The skin, which had covered the flesh which was taken away, was left entire, and flapped over the wound, and was fastened to the corre- sponding part by two or more small skewers or pins. Whether they had put any thing under the skin, between that and the wounded flesh, I know not ; but, at the river side where they were, they had prepared a cataplasm of clay, with which they covered the wound ; they then forced the animal to rise, and drove it on before them, to furnish them with a fuller meal when they should meet their companions in the evening." (Travels, vol. 3, p. 142.) On the 299th page of the same volume of Bruce, is the following : " We have an instance 234 WHY THE PROHIBITION. \ in the life of Saul, that shows the propensity of the Israelites to this crime : Saul's army, after a battle, flew, that is, fell voraciously upon the cattle they had taken, and threw them upon the ground to cut off their flesh, and eat them raw ; so that the army was defiled by eating blood, or living animals. (1 Sam. 14: 33.) To prevent this, Saul caused to be rolled to htm a great stone, and ordered those that killed their oxen, to cut their throats upon that stone. This was the only law- ful way of killing animals for food ; the tying of the ox, and throwing it upon the ground, were not permitted as equivalent. The Israelites did, probably, in that case, as the Abyssinians do at this day : they cut a part of his throat, so that blood might be seen on the ground, but nothing mortal to the animal followed from that wound ; but, after laying his head upon a large stone, and cutting his throat, the blood fell from on high, or was poured on the ground like water, and sufficient evi- dence appeared that the creature was dead, before it was attempted to eat it. We have seen that the Abyssinians came from Palestine a very few years after this, and we are not to doubt that they then carried with them this, with many other Jewish customs, which they have continued to this day." Though the horrid practice of which Mr. Bruce speaks, may be regarded as involved in the spirit of the prohibition of the fourth verse, yet it has not been ordinarily considered by expositors as its principal or primary drift. Mr. Selden, in his book De Jure, etc., has quite a learned chapter on this subject (lib. 7, ch. 1,) in which he has given the several opin- ions of the Rabbins about it ; but whether these give much true information concerning it, is, to say the least, very questionable. It appears from the language comprising the prohibition addressed to Noah, that the use of blood in its simple un- mixed state, as an article of diet, was what was more direct- ly meant to be interdicted. Should you inquire the reason WHY THE PROHIBITION. 235 or reasons for this prohibitory injunction, we cannot say that we would be able fully to satisfy you. Some have endeav- ored to find physical or prudential reasons, such as that this article affords " a very crude, almost indigestible," and so, " unwholsome aliment ; " or, that it has " a tendency to beget a cruel, ferocious, and blood-thirsty disposition " in those who use it. These words, " life thereof which is the Hood thereof" appear to hint at some moral consideration or considerations, appear to imply the sacredness of the thing forbidden to be used, because of the relation it stands in to life to life in some sense, natural or symbolical. But our ordinary limits will not allow us to finish what we have to say on the subject, this evening. EVENING EIGHTEENTH. YOUNG GENTLEMEN: Hardly to be contended is it, that the words " life thereof, which is the blood thereof" were, by Him who on this occasion uttered them, designed to put forth a strictly physiological doctrine ; to affirm, as many have believed, that, in the strictest sense, blood is a vital fluid. For notwithstanding that the investigations of the distinguished Dr. John Hunter seemed to tend strongly toward the establishing of it as a truth, physiologists have never yet been able to determine or settle the point, what is life, or in what it consists. As the Bible was not given for a scientific text-book, but speaks of natural things very much according to the ordinary concep- tions of men at the time when its various parts were written we shall not be justly chargeable with heresy, if we should interpret the words which we have cited as designed simply to express the general truth, so familiar to all, that in the animal kingdom the presence and circulation of the blood is essential to life's existence or continuance ; that where the former is not, the latter is not in general to be found. The moral argument, or at least one branch of it, then, is, " Life is sacred ; " blood is essential to life ; therefore eat it not. But inasmuch as when we affirm, life is sacred, we must mean that life which we individually have no right or authority to take away, and so must mean only human life the validity THE EATING OF BLOOD, WHEREFORE FORBIDDEN. 237 of this argument may well be questioned. We are then thrown upon the symbolical import of blood, in order to an arriving at the reason, the great moral reason, why the eating of blood was prohibited to Noah and his progeny. And what that symbolical import was, Noah did not then need to be informed, as the previous building of an altar, and the offering of animal sacrifices thereon, testify in his case. The blood of the Great Sacrifice was prefigured by the blood of the animal sacrifices. Hence, in an eminent sense, the sacred- ness of the latter. And that we are not arguing wildly or at random when we find here the great reason why the eating of blood was inhibited to mankind after the deluge, may appear from such an express subsequent declaration as the following : " Whatsoever man there be of the house of Israel, or of the strangers that sojourn among you, that eateth any manner of blood ; I will even set my face against that soul that eateth blood, and will cut him off from among his people. For the life of the flesh is in the blood ; and I have given it to you upon the altar to make an atonement for your souls ; for it is the blood that maketh an atonement for the soul," (Levit. 17 : 10, 11.) The full force of this language cannot be appre- ciated without bearing in mind that the original word (nephesh) for life, and soul, is the same ; so that in saying that the life of the flesh is in the blood, and that it is the blood that makes atonement for the soul (i. e. the life,) it is virtually said that life goes for life in the great scheme of expiation. We accordingly find it prophetically affirmed of Jesus Christ, in undoubted allusion to this very language, that he should " pour out his soul (nephesh) unto death," (Isa. 53 : 12 ;) that is, should shed his vital blood, give his life. The like inhibition that was enjoined on Noah and family just after their egress from the ark, was incorporated into the ceremonial code of the Jews, and a like reason is assigned in the latter case as in the former. This you have seen in 11* 238 THE EATING OF BLOOD, WHEREFORE FORBIDDEN. the quotation from Lev. 17: 10, 11, 14. But in the case of the Jew?, there was an additional reason for this prohibition being pressed on them, to wit, to help to separate them widely from the Gentiles. Among these latter, the use of blood was common. They drank it often at their sacrifices, and in making covenants or compacts. That blood was thus drank by the heathens, particularly by the Sabians, in their sacri- fices, is fully proved by Spencer, (De Leg. pp. 377-380.) As to the question whether the precept given to our post- diluvian progenitors of abstaining from blood, be at present binding upon Christians, though as to its practical bearing we would suppose nothing would need to be said, yet in regard to its moral, it ought not to be passed over in perfect silence. Not on the ceremonial ground to which we have alluded, as separating the Jews from the Gentiles, but on a ground ex- isting apart from and anterior to any ceremonial law ; for the reason that life is in the blood, understanding the term life in a natural and symbolical sense, or even in the latter solely, it might be urged that blood should, by Christians, as a separate and special article of diet, be abstained from. This might be plead on the ground of the natural sense, for thus the reason applies to mankind under any and every dispensation does not change with changing circumstances or time ; and on the ground of the symbolical sense, for thus it shadows forth the life or soul that has been poured out unto death for us f or our sins and to procure our release or exemption from death eternal. On the other hand, it may be and has been argued, that the use of blood as a type being done away ? the Ante-type having come the blood of the Mediator and Surety having been shed the reason for abstaining from its dietetic use has ceased. " Lex stat dum ratio manet " no longer. And though at the Council of Jerusalem, in order that offence might not be given to the Jews, as well as to remove the Christian converts of their day, coming from the ranks of Gentilism, in feeling and practice, as far as pos- EXACTION FOR BLOOD SHEDDING. 239 sible from the feelings and practices of idolaters around them, regarding this matter, the Apostles of our Lord ad- vised abstinence from it, (Acts 15 : 28, 29,) yet the eating it or not eating it is no part of our religion as neither of these reasons can be urged why we should practise abstinence from it ; that hence we are left at perfect liberty to choose our own course in regard to it. As an item of history it may be stated that, up to the present, the prohibitory precept given to Noah, which we have been considering, is scrupu- lously obeyed by the Oriental Christians, and by the whole Greek church ; who appear to think, so far as their knowledge goes, that as blood was not allowed to be eaten before Christ's advent, because it pointed out the blood that was to be shed for the sin of the world it should not, since Christ's advent and crucifixion, be eaten, because it should ever be considered as representing the blood which has been shed for the remission of sins. "We have seen, young gentlemen, what care the Divine Being took to secure our patriarch's posterity against any ap- prehended impediment to their preservation and great in- crease, from the ferocity and ravages of wild beasts. But an obstable to their security and multiplication might be apprehended from another quarter. Noah and his sons had witnessed frequent and fearful exhibitions of violence and bloodshed in the Old World. They had no reason to sup- pose that the waters of the deluge had so washed away the corruption or sinfulness of man's nature, that no evil of a like type would ever again appear. The Supreme Legislator and Governor proceeds therefore to the utterance of what was adapted to allay tormenting and discouraging apprehensions from this source. To Noah and his sons, as personating the whole family and race of mankind, he declares that he would require the blood of those in return, who should shed the life- blood of others; he would require it of every animal he would require it of every man ; at the hand of every man's brother would he require the life of man. (Gen. 9 : 5.) 240 EXACTION FOR BLOOD SHEDDING. The Ruler Supreme had not indeed, in antecedent times, acted fully on this principle ; had not been thus rigid or strict in his exactions. He had for certain reasons proceeded in his administration more leniently. The first murderer, Cain, he did not visit at once with the full punishment which was due to the perpetrator of such a horrid deed. Others of the antediluvians who, posterior to this, committed a like crime, had been treated with similar leniency as had been shown to Cain. This mild mode of proceeding toward such perpetra- tors of deeds of violence and blood in the Old World the Supreme Ruler perhaps had adopted to convince men of the exceeding wickedness of the human heart when left to act out what was in it ; and to show to all future ages that He was disposed to act with as much mildness in the administra- tion of his government over the world as possible ; and that in adopting the course which he did from immediately sub- sequent to the Flood downward in introducing the stern law, and seeing to have it adhered to or acted on, which he announced to Noah, he was not acting the part of a cruel tyrant; was not proceeding with undue or uncalled for severity ; was just doing what mercy as well as justice de- manded ; what human M r elfare absolutely and palpably required. In that language, " Surely your blood of your lives will I require : at the hand of every beast will I require it ; and at the hand of every man, at the hand of every man's brother will I require the life of man," the Divine Sovereign assures Noah that He (who was Lord over all) from that time forth, or during the lack of those institutions which might otherwise prove a security, would take it directly upon Himself to see to the maintenance of the interests of justice among his crea- tures ; would, in his righteous providence, exact from man and beast the human blood which should by either be shed ; and would thus prevent that violence and awful havoc of life which are to be reckoned among the prominent means of THE STATUTORY DEATH PENALTY. 241 ruining the Old World, and which, unless prevented, our patriarch and his progeny might justly fear would go far toward destroying the New. But Jehovah does not stop with the general assurance to our postdiluvian ancestor as to what He in his providence will see, in this respect, to having done. He issues the fol- lowing command so we call it ; and seems to say, It shall be incorporated into the body of human law, and stand forever as a binding statute : " WHOSO SHEDDETH MAN'S BLOOD, BY MAN SHALL HIS BLOOD BE SHED." (Gen. 9 : 6.) We are altogether of the opinion of those who consider this notable declaration as pointing to the then coming ex- istence of human government and law ; and as announcing and establishing its sanctions under all the awfulness and permanence of the divine authority. Here, in our view, is a solemn ordinance of Heaven, that death by the hand of the magistrate shall follow the commission of the crime of murder. There is, in that case, involved here, the divine institution and sanction of the Civil Magistracy. The fifth and sixth verses of the ninth chapter of Genesis set forth the following argument of God with our postdiluvian progenitor and his progeny : " Indulge not fear. Divine Almightiness and Avenging Justice these shall afford you protection. Am not I a universal Lawgiver and Ruler ? In mine own overruling providence the fear of death shall be made to operate for the insurance of life. Let it be known that ever, henceforth, he who taketh away murderously the life of another shall forfeit his own life. Not that it shall be taken away by the hand of private revenge or violence. Know that in the very foundation of human government I in my providence have determined that there shall be laid, as its corner-stone, this ordinance : Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed. Henceforward I ordain death by the hand of the magistrate to follow the perpetration of the crime of murder." (See Cheever's Punishment by 242 THE STATUTORY DEATH PENALTY. Death, p. 135.) "Two things," says Michaelis, in his Com mentatio Prior de Pcena Homicidii "Two things we're contained in this law given to Noah, namely, the power to proceed by capital punishment against the homicide, and the imperative obligation to use that power. God had declared that he would make inquisition for blood, and he adds that he would do it by the instrumentality of men, committing to them the right of death against the murderer. It was thus that the divine and most benignant Legislator bound togeth- er and strengthened the society of the first postdiluvian com- monwealth." It is said in this quotation, that the power or right of death was committed to men. As it was committed for security, it was of course not committed into the hands of individuals at random. We are bound to regard the lan- guage, " by man shall his blood be shed," as referring to the formal exercise of justice in the civil government. That learned Huguenot, Andrew Rivet, observes of it, "The passage is a rule, by God himself promulgated, according to which the voluntary wicked homicide, the man who ma- liciously sheds human blood, shall himself be deprived of life by man, that is, by the legitimately constituted magistracy." Munster, as quoted in Poole's Synopsis, says, " The magis- tracy is here constituted by God, and a sword put into its hands. God, who had hitherto taken the judgment into his own hands exclusively, after the deluge makes man a par- taker of his authority, and gives to him the power of life and death." Vatablus remarks, " Hoc versu homicidis mors denunciatur quomodocunque moriantur sive jussu magis- tratus, sive a quocunque aliunde a Deo misso carnifice : " " In this verse death is denounced against murderers, whether by command of the magistrate, or by any other executioner commissioned from God." ( Critici Sacri, Tom. 1, p. 158.) Likewise Calvin : " Sic autem Deus vindictam minatur ac denunciat homicidis, ut armet etium gladio magistratus ad coedes ulciscendas, ne impune fundatur sanguis hominum : " " God thus threatens and denounces the punishment of the THE STATUTORY DEATH PENALTY. 243 murderer, in order that the magistracy may be armed with a sword for the avenging of murder, lest the blood of man should be shed with impunity." ( Opera, Tom. 1, p. 53.) The Chaldee paraphrastic interpretation of the passage is : " Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man, that is, by witnesses, with the sentence of the judges, shall his blood be shed." The opposers of Capital Punishment have been very desirous to annihilate or evade the force of this divine statute, delivered primarily to our postdiluvian father. We do not wonder at their anxiety to demolish this citadel, for until this be accomplished the prospect of general or final victory is not flattering. And what methods have been adopted by them to effect this ? One is to substitute the word whatsoever for whoso or whosoever. Whatsoever sheddeth man's blood, by man shall its blood be shed. The literal rendering of the original is, " Shedding man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed." To show, however, that our common English version is the natural translation of the Hebrew construction, it is only necessary to present the fact that if our English sentence, " Whoso sheddeth" &c., were given forth to be translated into the Hebrew, the same con- struction would be used as is used in the original text. In the Septuagint, the pronoun is distinguished as in our ver- sion. Michaelis did indeed choose the word " whatsoever " in order to include beast as well as man, thinking it better to accord with the preceding context ; not at all with the view of excluding man, as his paraphrase proves. It runs thus : " Whatsoever creature sheddeth human blood, be it man or beast, by man shall its blood in like manner be shed." The advocate of the abolition of the death penalty can obtain no help from this quarter, inasmuch as if it were rendered ichatsoever, it would comprise man as well as beast. But the argument attempted to be drawn from this source is ex- tremely absurd, as it makes God, at the opening of the new world, and in relation to the crime of murder, to legislate for 244 THE STATUTORY DEATH PENALTY. brutes, and not for men : If a beast kill a man, its life shall be taken away ; but if a man murder his fellow-man, this statute has naught in it applicable to his case his blood must stay where it is. Admirable logic! If a man then wish the life of his fellow taken, and for this purpose should let forth his mastiff upon and thus dispatch him, the poor mastiff must lose his life, but his master escape. Verily this is a hard case for the poor animal, and an easy one for the owner, who is the cause of the death of the person killed and of the dog which was only the instrument of the master in the perpetration of the murderous deed. For the court to condemn and sentence the man to death, say these humane expositors of God's law, would be but adding murder to murder; "if the court please," let the mastiff be hung, but pity and protect the master. Let the court remember it is only whatsoever, and that " whatsoever " relates only to the quadruped ! If you belonged to the court or jury, would you not be perfectly silenced or annihilated by so irrefragable or ponderous an argument ? And suppose Noah had under- stood the statute to be, " whatsoever sheddeth man's blood, by man shall that beast's blood be shed," would he have felt himself and posterity to be by such statute protected from violence, secured from hazardous assault, from every quarter from which harm could be reasonably apprehended to come to him or them ? Another mode in which the opponents of capital punish- ment attempt to ignore or evade the force of this statute, is by maintaining the language, " Whoso sheddeth," &c., to be of the character, not of a law or command, but of a prediction : intimating that the murderer will usually die some violent death. Now, as to this, it may be remarked, First, That such an interpretation, even if admitted to be correct, would not vastly help their case ; for such a consequence would then follow the commission of murder only as the result of the ordering of Divine Providence, and the course of Providence THE STATUTORY DEATH PENALTY. 245 is but another name for the expression of the will of God. Again : If the Omniscient and Omnipotent Ruler over all has here predicted that capital punishment shall prevail, opponents may as well give up their opposition to it, since opposition, however strenuous, will in such case prove un- availing. Let them not imagine that they can prevent the fulfilment of a divine prediction. Is it not even presumptu- ously irreligious to make such an attempt ? But once more : We might with as much reason, and indeed for the same rea- son, interpret the various parts of the Decalogue as mere predictions, for the same form of language is there used. As the Hebrew imperative has no third person, the future in such instance supplies the form of the imperative is always used indeed in its stead. It is likewise sometimes argued by opponents of the death penalty, that the statute given to our postdiluvian ancestor is simply a permission not an injunction. But it seems to follow, according to this construction, that God gives to any and every man the permission to kill the murderer. This will not do. It is not consentaneous with what the Sacred "Word teaches in relation to private revenge : " Avenge not yourselves," &c. And yet this constructive argument compels our opponents to the assumption that God here authorizes any and every individual to take into his own hands the avenging of the crime of murder by the death of the mur- derer. This inconsistency is to be in no way avoided but by the interpretation of the statute as belonging not to private individuals, but to the 'magistracy. But if it be permissive to governments, then, on the concession of those objective reasoners, we have a complete divine sanction for this death penalty, if any government deem it expedient. Wrong then it cannot be for human governments to inflict it on the shed- ders of human blood. The opponents of capital punishment resort to another shift. Admitting it to be a command or statute, say they, still 246 THE STATUTORY DEATH PENALTY. it is one of those old institutions that were not designed to be perpetual ; one of those ancient legal directions given to a particular people and which were intended to exist or be of force only for a particular time enactments that are done away by the introduction of the gospel dispensation. Replied to this it may and should be, that if it were a peculiarly Jewish institution or ordinance if it were of the character of the precepts of the ceremonial law merely, this might with more semblance of plausibility be plead. But how can such ground be taken with propriety? Look at the persons to whom, and the time and circumstances in which, this precept was delivered. It had its origin some centuries ere the Jews, as such, had an existence. It was given to the then whole human race ; for the " eight souls " were all of human kind at that period in being. It was addressed to our post- diluvian progenitors as the progenitors of all mankind who should thereafter set foot on the earth ; was designed (how can it be doubted ?) as a law for their descendants of every generation and locality, as well as for themselves and their proximate progeny. Having been given long anterior to the peculiarly Mosaic or Jewish institutions, it is not de- pendent on them, " derives from them no part of its authority, permanence, or sacredness, but would be just as perfect, clear, and authoritative, if they were all swept from existence. It is an ordinance as extensive and comprehensive as is the promise that while the earth continued, heat and cold, day and night, summer and winter, seed-time and harvest, should not fail. It is an ordinance just as universal for all mankind, as the permission to eat animal food ; no more to be restricted to a particular people, or considered as connected with the after application of the Levitical law, than the declaration that the dread of man should be upon the beasts of the forest is to be considered as a promise made only to the Hebrews ; no more than the declaration that the blood of man shall be required of every beast is to be considered as applying only THE STATUTORY DEATH PENALTY". 247 to particular races of animals, or to animals occupying a particular portion of the earth, the land of Canaan for example. The ordinance is just as universal and compre- hensive, as were to be the posterity of Noah ; it was given to him for all his sons, and all their races. It is neither Jewish, nor Gentile, nor Christian ; neither belonging to one dispensation nor another ; but it is an ordinance of humanity and of civil society, the world over." (Oheever.) Should you hear men pleading against this law, that it was adapted to the necessities of a barbarous age or people, but that a necessity for it does not exist in our day, and among a civilized and cultivated people, you would be disposed to say in reply, Were they to whom this statute was primarily given barbarians ? "Was it not, on the contrary, given forth while there was a greater proportion of both wisdom and goodness in the world than there has ever been since ? Those whom the Almighty had so carefully preserved from the flood's destroying sweep, were not a band of barbarians, as we have had occasion to know. And when there was a reenactment or repromulgation, centuries afterward, it was not the least wise, least refined, and least religious people which this globe had on its surface, among whom this took place. EVENING NINETEENTH. YOUNG GENTLEMEN : That Divine Legislator who primarily enacted the law, "Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed," alone has the right primarily to revoke or abrogate it. And has he done so ? Has he found any civil community, in any age, so humane, cultivated, and refined, as not to need the punitive, restraining, preventive influence of this statute, and so has repealed it rendered it null and void, as to them ? If so, let the age, or the community, be pointed out. When, where, has the Supreme Legislator and Ruler revoked this statute ? Hark ! From a certain quarter, not within this room, young gentlemen, do we mean from any of you we could not expect to hear it, from opponents of Capital Punishment a voice comes, saying, God by his Son repeal- ed it. The clement, kind-hearted Saviour enjoined on men the fostering entertainment, and ready, cordial exercise of benignity and love; interdicted the indulgence of a bitter and vindictive spirit a spirit of revengeful or malicious retaliation. "Ye have heard," says that Saviour, "that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth : But I say unto you, that ye resist not evil ; but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also." "Ye have heard," says he again, "that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbor, and hate thine enemy : THE STATUTORY DEATH PENALTY. 249 But I say unto you, Love your enemies," &c. And his apostles, catching his spirit, and instructed by his words and example, said, " Recompense to no man evil for evil ; Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself; and love worketh no ill to his neighbor." We trust you love these instructions, and the spirit which both they breathe and enjoin. They forbid the indulgence of a malignant spirit or temper ; they inhibit pri- vate retaliation and revenge ; they enjoin mutual love. Such precepts, and prohibitions, and instructions, Christ and his apostles saw that even the better portion of mankind for such were the Jews, until Christianity began to have a prevalence needed. If the interpretations referred to should be so interpreted, as to be understood to amount to a virtual abrogation of the Noachic statute ; as forbidding, in other words, capital punishment ; then, their prohibitory intention and injunction do not stop there, but they inhibit every kind and degree of punishment for any and every crime. They abrogate or annihilate the whole penal code of every people. Such an interpretation would lead to the nullification of all law, for what are laws without penal sanctions? They cease to be aught above or beyond counsels. Nay, more : All government is annihilated ; universal anarchy reigns. Violence and bloodshed, as well as other species of evil, surpassing, if possible, what was to be witnessed in antediluvian times, would prevail, until no phase or vestige of order not only, but of human existence [. even, would remain. We have searched the New Testament, and can find no- where any revocation or repeal of the statute God gave to our postdiluvian ancestry. None of Christ's precepts or teachings appear to us to look that way. " I came not," said he, " to destroy the law." We find him repealing no law ; not even the ritual law, which its very nature evinces the Divine Lawgiver to have intended to endure only for a time. Lex stat, dum ratio manet ; the law typical had accom- 250 THE STATUTORY DEATH PENALTY. plished its end when the great Ante-type appeared, when the Great Sacrifice was offered ; and then expired, not by formal abrogation, but by its own limitation. As to any great moral or civil rule of God's enactment, our Saviour interfered not with it. One of the two thieves who were crucified with Christ, though so instructed as to understand somewhat con- cerning Christ's kingdom, and the way of becoming a subject of it* did not know of any repeal by Christ of the law relating to murder ; and they, doubtless, in their robberies, had more than once committed the crime. His language to the other was : "And we indeed justly ; for we receive but the due re- ward of our deeds" The Saviour, who heard this, did not contradict him ; did not say, I have repealed that severe law given to Noah, as contrary to the genius or spirit of the dis- pensation I am introducing. So far from anything of this kind falling from his lips, he tacitly admits the correctness of what the malefactor had uttered, and so the justice of the doom of the two malefactors. Paul, who at the time may be reasonably supposed to have a more thorough understanding than the penitent thief had of Christ's teachings, and of the spirit and character of the new dispensation, said, when standing before Festus under an accusation from the Jews, "If I be an offender, or have committed anything worthy of death, I refuse not to die," (Acts 25: 11.) The inference which we are compelled to draw from this, is too plain and obvious to need statement. It ought to make^the opposer of Capital Punishment, on the ground just alluded to, squirm not a little. Hear Paul again, when he is writing a grave epistle, and his mind and hand are guided by the spirit of in- spiration. Turn to Romans 13: 1-4. Inspect it; it need not be recited ; but we do choose to recite what is, in our view, so correctly and well expressed by Dr. G. B. Cheever upon it. "In this passage," says he, "several things are brought into view. First, The divine appointment of human government. Second, A distinct and explicit recognition of THE STATUTORY DEATH PENALTY. 251 the penalty of death for crime as then in existence, and of the righteousness of this custom. Third, A recognition of it not as the result of any compact in society, by which individual rights are committed to the government, but as coming di- rectly from the appointment and authority of God. Fourth, A recognition of penal inflictions as a matter of pure retribu- tive justice, and not of mere expediency." What important as well as clearly legitimate deductions are these. Here then, under the Christian dispensation, is to be found an inspired apostle of our Lord sanctioning capital punishment, and referring it to the ordinance of God ; it is the use of the sword in the punishment of crime by magistrates as the ministers of God. Can there be any other plausible or pos- sible view taken of this passage? An 'illustrious place, it is called by an illustrious commentator, to prove the divine au- thority of capital punishment ; and he adds : " Contendant igitur cum Deo, qui sanguinem nocentium hominum effundi nefas esse putant." "They contend, therefore, with God, who deem it to be wrong to shed the blood of guilty men." ( Calvini in Pauli JEpistolas Commentarii, vol. 1, p. 174.) Compare what is said by Paul in the three concluding verses of Romans 12th chapter, with the four initial verses of the 13th chapter, to which we have just been referring you ; note their juxtaposition and relation, and then tell me, can it, in the face of this examination and comparison, be with any plausibility plead that the duty of private forgiveness inter- feres at all with the course of public justice in the infliction of capital punishment for the crime of intentional murder ? The conclusion appears to me irresistible, unless logic has run stark mad, that the postdiluvian death penalty and the mild spirit of the Christian dispensation, instead of being incompatible, are entirely consistent. Let those who imagine that Jesus Christ accounted the penalty of death for intentional homicide too severe to har- monize with or have a continued existence under the mild 252 THE STATUTORY DEATH PENALTY. and benign dispensation which he came to usher in, just cast their eye if they will condescend to do such a thing on Mat. 26 : 52, where our Saviour says to Peter, " Put up again thy sword in its place ; for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword." Whilst in the first part of this verse there is an inhibition of private avenging of injury, we mistake much if in the latter part there is not both an im- plied supposition of the existence of the death penalty, and a sanction of it. There is, in our view, a manifest reference here to the old and well-known Noachic ordinance, which had come to be not only a fundamental law, but a fundamental proverb of society. Let them look also it is hoped they will excuse us for imposing such a task upon them at Rev. 13 : 10, middle clause, where there is a declaration of the same nature with the preceding. In this last assertion, as in the former, there is an obvious appeal to the authority of a known divine sanction, and to a proverbial sanction which has grown out of the divine. There is nothing which looks like or toward an annihilation of the Noachic statute with its penalty ; but, on the contrary, a prima facie repro- mulgation of it by the great New Testament teacher. At the time the Divine Being gave the ordinance to our postdiluvian ancestry, he gave also the reason for it : " For in the image of God made he man." The image here spoken of is understood by many to indicate the authority with which human magistracy is invested for the punishment of crime. The magistrate resembles as well as represents the infinite Judge and Ruler in this respect. It is however more com- monly understood to indicate that resemblance to himself with which the Creator invested the human creature at the first, and which, since the fall, if in a moral yet not in every other respect, as reason, conscience, and immortality for instance, is not obliterated. Interpreted either way, the reason assigned remains and ever will ; is not limited to any country, any age or generation/ According then to that maxim which has THE STATUTORY DEATH PENALTY. 253 been before quoted, viz. : " Lex stat, dum ratio manet," the law stands, while the reason continues, this same statute is, and always will be, everywhere binding. The further prosecution of this subject would be deemed by us superfluous, were it not that the law forbidding murder upon pain of death, is so much and by so many maligned in our day ; and were not so wide as well as strenuous efforts put forth to procure its erasure from our statute-books. Such erasure has indeed in some instances already been effected. If the experiment be not followed by such results as sooner or later to induce and impel its restoration, we confess we shall be not a little disappointed. We despair of seeing man become a more wise or even a more clement legislator than God ; and any legislative body that either aboilshes or at- tempts to abolish this penal statute, in our view transcends its proper sphere ; legislates against the divine legislation. It will be to us a mournful thing, to witness any increased or extended legislation of this character. A restoration of the divine penal statute, in cases where it has already been erased or abrogated, would present to us a sight much more pleasing. There are those who, should they hear or read what we have already advanced, would no doubt charge our advocacy of the death penalty to a malign spirit ; or else ourselves as having been guilty of remissness in not coming into the world in some former and less enlightened age. That this is an age of " progress," a man would indeed have poor sight not to be able to see. The character of much of the progress delights us exceedingly; whilst some of it, such is our blindness, strikes our feeble and obscure vision as being in the wrong direction. There is, in such an improved and advancing period as the present, some little danger of becoming " wise above what is written." We are willing to move no faster or farther than is practicable and yet keep within the limits of the " record." 254 THE STATUTORY DEATH PENALTY. That not yet indeed formidable but increasing band, " the non-resistants," strenuously resist this ordinance of God ; level their heaviest artillery against it, with a view to its summary and universal dispatch. The occupants of the frozen, arctic regions of skepticism, and of the frigid Districts adjacent, are warm in their 'opposition to what they choose to denominate the murderous statute. False philanthropy and sickly sen- timentalism overflow with sympathy for those whose hearts are steeped and hands dyed in blood ; are actually irrigating with their tears the fields, already saturated with human gore, which are occupied by homicides ; but have little or no sym- pathy for those whose glowing sympathies have, along with their lifeblood, been let out by the cold and cruel murderer's blade ; yes, and have few or no tears for those whose faces are suffused with tears, and hearts wrung with grief, over murdered friends and kindred. Ah, if all they who evince such deep anxiety for the protection of the life of assassins and murderers, would cherish more anxiety and expend more effort to throw the shield of philanthropic protection over endangered society, and advocate and uphold the statute, in all its force and sternness, which, when it is universally advo- cated or sustained, exerts so potent an influence in preserv- ing untold numbers from becoming murderers, they would in our opinion, take a much more palpable and ready way of showing themselves genuine philanthropists. If life be so valuable that, according to the view of some there should in the murderer's case be no statutory penalty to threaten its extinction ; it is, in the view of others, of so much higher value, that the most effective means possible should be up- held and befriended, should be caused to exist and operate, for the protection of the masses of every community from the assaults of the murderous weapon. God has exhibited his high estimate of human life in that Noachic statute which we are so unwilling to see by human legislation annihilated ; and naught is known by us so eloquent and efficient to THE STATUTORY DEATH PENALTY. 255 create and keep up in the entire mind and heart of any com- munity a deep and perpetually as well as powerfully influen- tial impression of life's inestimable value, as this divine statutory enactment. Abolish this ordinance and you abolish what God in the issuing of it has said, and men in every judicious and practicable mode should say, is, than any and every mere human device, a more effectual and general pre- servative of human life from the promptings and pantings of greedy cupidity, and of infuriate malevolence and violence, for its effusion. That French writer showed himself not stolid, who, on being asked to lend his aid to the abolition of the death penalty, replied, " With all my heart ; only let the messieurs, the assassins, begin the reform by abstaining from murder." Such is the enormity of the crime of murder, as to leave at an unapproachable distance all other crimes perpetrated by mortals against their fellows ; and the Supreme Legisla- tor, in his wisdom and love, has fixed upon an appropriate retribution. It is fitting that a crime of such surpassing magnitude, should be so distinguished in the rules and pro- ceedings of human jurisprudence as to be visited with the extremest penal infliction known this side of the great white Throne. The penalty should be in kind and degree so ter- rific, should so puissantly address itself to the principle of fear in man, as to surmount, stifle, subdue, every motive or impulse to the perpetration of a deed of such superlative atrocity. Its voice should be so loud and strong as to drown the voice of every passion, urging to the com- mission of the deed of blood. What numbers, by the warnings and appeals of an existing death penalty, are an- nually restrained and preserved from becoming homicides, God only knows ; far more, doubtless, than .has ever entered the conceptions of the multitude. And what numbers, on the other hand, are by this means annually preserved from violent death, how many hearts are thus yearly kept from 256 THE STATUTORY DEATH PENALTY. being penetrated by the leaden missile or the sharp-pointed steel, is probably not only unconceived, but wellnigh incon- ceivable. The prince of darkness could have never been justly denominated " a liar," much less "the father of lies," had naught ever proceeded from his burning lips more untrue than that saying of his, recorded in the book of Job : "All that a man hath will he give for his life." So con- stituted is man as a creature, and such moreover is he as a guilty creature, that more than every other evil which is felt or feared this side of eternity's domains, he fears death. This sentiment, we are aware, does not meet with universal assent, at least verbal ; but the number, comparatively, is as yet not great, who are willing to subject their reputation for intellectual and moral sanity to suspicion, by the promulga- tion of an opposite tenet. Some, who, like their great prototype, we would say were we not so reluctant to speak reproachfully of any antecedent, let us in preference say are inclined to cite Scripture when, and only when, it is conceived to suit a favorite purpose, may be heard quoting that heavenly precept, (Ex. 20: 13,) "Thou shalt not kill;" protrude it as an argument against the taking away of human life on any account, after any manner ; strangely forgetting, or appearing to forget, both that it stands in the very neigh- borhood of precepts which on some accounts, and after certain methods, order it (see Ex. 21 : 12, 15, 16, 17, 22) ; and that this great moral precept was designed to pro- hibit and prevent the murderous occupation of killing from being followed. It surely does not need any great sagacity to discover that it is the crime of murder, and " whatsoever tendeth thereunto," against which that interdict is aimed : not to prohibit the divinely constituted magistracy from exe- cuting the duties of their office ; nor to interfere in the least with their legitimate and appropriate functions. " The com- mand, Thou shalt not kill," observes Grotius, "does not THE STATUTORY DEATH PENALTY. 257 disprove the right and duty of capital punishment inflicted on criminals." It might be added, Neither does it disprove the lawfulness of all defensive war ; nor in every case, or under all circumstances, the right of self-defence. In the statute to which our attention is directed, is the penalty really too severe ? In other words, does it transcend the bounds of justice ? The source whence it came affords sufficient proof that it does not ; for though the act of God in affixing such a penalty to the crime contemplated, does not of itself make it just ; yet such is the rectitude of his nature, that we may be sure he would never affix to a law a penalty which can with propriety be declared unjust. Being omniscient, he understands perfectly what of evil or suffer- ing every crime deserves ; and being infinitely righteous, he will in no case by statute visit it beyond its intrinsic demerit. Who then has any cause to complain of this penal statute of the Divine Lawgiver? Who any justifiable reason to malign it, whether it be found in the divine or in a human statute-book ? Who behaves well when he speaks of it as barbarous, tyrannical, cruel ; when he charges it with being malevolent, revengeful, vindictive, inhuman ; as being a dis- grace and reproach to any nation which has and is inclined to keep it in her criminal statute-book ; who calls it a stain, a great blood-blot on its pages ? But in order to prove the justice of the punishment of death, we are not necessitated to fall back on the perfections of the Divine Lawgiver ; as if no evidence could elsewhere be obtained for its support. A voice appears to come from the depths of the soul of universal humanity, declaring the justice of the punishment of death for the crime of homicide. Cain, after the murder of his brother, felt so conscious of deserving death, and was so possessed of the idea that what was his sentiment on this point, was or would be the senti- ment of all others of his kind, that he could look upon them in no other light than as righteous and assiduous avengers of 258 THE STATUTORY DEATH PENALTY. his atrocious deed. The "barbarous people," as the Ro- mans considered them, among whom, after his shipwreck, Paul fell, evinced the possession of what we call the natural sentiment in the human bosom that murder merits death in what fell from their lips: "No doubt," said they one to another, when they saw the venomous reptile come forth from the fire which that apostle had kindled, and fasten on his hand : " No doubt this man is a murderer , whom, though he hath escaped the sea, yet vengeance suffereth not to live." It would not do to call it malice or revenge on the part of this people toward the apostle, impelling them thus to speak to each other. What occasion had they for malice or re- venge toward Paul ? No ; they manifestly expressed but the natural sentiment possessing their minds. Ancient poets are found speaking of this sentiment, as one that is natural to the human bosom. That it is a deep and indestructible instinct of the human heart, might be shown by an appeal to the pages of all history both sacred and profane ; the evi- dence is exhibited, with few and trifling exceptions, in the legislation and practice of all nations, ancient and modern, barbarous and civilized, Pagan and Jewish, classical and Christian; a universal instinct, which, whilst it began to utter itself in the conscience-stricken exclamations of the terrified Cain, has reverberated in the soul of every mur- derer, from that day to this; has been confirmed by the consenting voice of not only the historians and poets, but philosophers and sages of all time ; and, as we believe, finds a response more or less distinct in every unso- phisticated human heart. All mankind, it is true, may have erred. But it surely becomes the individual mind to be modest, when it calls in question the voice of the race. EVENING TWENTIETH. YOUNG GENTLEMEN: Is not a feeling originated in the breast of every one, when he hears of a deliberate or intentional murder, that the perpetrator of the deed ought not to live ? What is it but an instinct of man's being, a sentiment of which mankind can hardly divest themselves, which, when some judicial tribunal betrays signs of a disposition to let a known deliberate homi- cide escape, gives such manifestations of a determination, among the mass of citizens all around, that so it shall not be, as to stimulate or nerve the before shrinking tribunal to "judge righteous judgment;" to do what, not malice or re- venge, but simple, sober justice requires ? There is what, in the phraseology of the day, is denominated " Lynch law " a desperate remedy indeed for evils may the Ruler Su- preme vouchsafe his needed restraining, controlling influence to preserve the supremacy of legal enactment : what, far be it from us to say always^ but sometimes, is that unhand- some as well as unhandsomely denominated thing, but an underlying innate sentiment of justice, prompting to the doing of what, peradventure, the chosen or appointed magis- tracy, from some unjustifiable cause, leave, or evince a pro- pensity to leave, undone ? God has not, indeed, as we have seen, left it to this natural 260 THE STATUTORY DEATH PENALTY. sense of retributive justice in man's bosom, nor to the judg- ment or discretion of " the powers that be," though these be of his ordination, to determine on and inflict such punishment for wilful homicide, lest pity for the wretched felon, or sym- pathy toward sorrowing, to be disgraced, and appealing rela- tives, or something else, should overcome their better judgment, and cause them to leave the claims of justice unsatisfied. His command to our great postdiluvian progen- itor, which has been shown to be universally and perpetually binding, renders it the absolute duty of civil governments to have a law of this kind in their peijal code ; of judicial tri- bunals to determine the cases of violation ; and of executive officers to carry it into execution. The Infinite Ruler is to be regarded as the punisher of the crime of murder with death through the constituted civil authorities which are his ministries ; inflicts this punishment on the murderer as that which his crime deserves, and because he deserves it. Not that this is all that is due the crime of murder. This as well as every other sin merits more than any temporal infliction of ill. But the Most High takes the after reckoning directly into his own hands ; and, where there has been no flying to the vicarious atonement which the gospel reveals, lets not justice sleep beyond the melancholy yet righteous termination of the murderer's mortal life. In our reasonings about the proper penalty for murder, apart from the direct consideration of the divine statute on the subject, we should see to it that the idea of justice or righteous retribution be not lost sight of. It underlies all the reasons which mere human ratiocination, keeping within its legitimate province, can find for the infliction of punish^- ment No consideration of utility or expediency should be allowed to override or ignore this since it is not allowable for society, any more than for individuals, to " do evil that good may come." If we can do justly, and important bene- ficial ends can be at the same time arrived at or secured, THE STATUTORY DEATH PENALTY. 261 society or government then indeed has additional weighty inducements for a given penal infliction. In inquiries in regard to the ends of punishment, some writers, as Dymond for example, (see Essays on the Princi- ples of Morality, Essay Third, chapters 11 and 12,) have declared reformation, the reformation of the criminal, to be the primary and paramount end; and so, as the death of the murderer would put him beyond the reach of reformation, argue that capital punishment is improper should not be inflicted. The correctness of this tenet, and so of the con- clusion built upon it, we think may well be questioned, and for the following reasons : First, Suffering caused for such an end, like the afflictions of the righteous, possess the char- acter of merciful discipline rather than punishment. Secondly, If reformation were the prime end of punishment, a large proportion of criminals, particularly of the higher grades, should go unpunished, since repentance and reformation, as to its spirit, have in their case so soon followed the commission of the crime as to precede the practicable season for trial and sentence. The prime and paramount reason for punishment would cease to exist ere it could ordinarily be inflicted. And what the baleful consequences would be of letting so many criminals pass without punishment it would be vain for us to attempt to describe, since they would far surpass the power of description. But, thirdly, The restraining or de- terring of a person from becoming a criminal, rather than the reforming of him after he has become one, is entitled to the precedence : just as the prevention of disease is ever prefera- ble to its cure. Much more is the preventing of a person, through an appeal to his fear of death or love of life, from becoming a murderer, entitled to priority over his reformation after his becoming one, from the fact that in the former case, there is by the same means the preventing of the life of some other person or persons from being sacrificed. A law which, by so just but thrice fearful a penalty as death, prevents 12* 2C2 THE STATUTORY DEATH PENALTY. large numbers in a commonwealth from becoming murderers, prevents, at the same time, the sacrifice of the lives of far greater numbers of its citizens, and produces, moreover? general quiet from fear of so great an evil throughout the length and breadth of the commonwealth, an advantage itself too great for practicable appreciation. What is the benefit of a reformation of those who, for want of a penal statute of this kind, become murderers in a given common- wealth, compared with this aggregate ? As to reformation, that kind of it, that deep, thorough reformation of the felon which is succeeded in his case with life everlasting, is incom- parably the more valuable to himself. Now what sort of penalty is the more likely to be instrumental in effecting this ? The oppugners of capital punishment are sometimes heard arguing against such punishment on the ground of its send- ing an immortal soul unprepared to its last account; and imprisonment for life is warmly urged, for this reason, as a substitute. Now unless the execution of the death penalty follow so speedily the trial and conviction as no judicial tribunal in any and particularly in a Christian country should direct or allow we think we have good reason for believing that the sentence of death is, as a means, better adapted than imprisonment for life to secure so unspeakably momentous and benign an end ; that by taking away the former sanction from the majesty of law, our criminal juris- prudence would be deprived of its highest penal instrumentality for bringing the soul, first, into the dust of true penitence, and next, to the bosom of the pitying and potent Saviour of sinners, even " the chief." What, under God, it may with superlative emphasis be asked, so likely to set a hard- ened, blood-stained sinner to think about the deep hue of not only the one but all his sins, the instant and pressing need of pardon, and to put him to crying earnestly for mercy from the high and heavenly Source mercy that can roll away his guilt, and lift him up and station him on the THE STATUTORY DEATH PENALTY. 263 glory-crowned summit of the paradisiac mount as the certainty indubitable that death is eminently near, even at the door ; as the knowledge that on such a month, week, day, near by, his day of grace will terminate, and he be ushered, disembodied, into the presence of his Divine Judge ? If that will not, oh, what else will, move and melt his soul, and bring him to the feet of sovereign, saving Love ? On the other hand, imprisonment for life has a tendency to encourage delay; the time for mercy seeking appears to stretch out to a vast length, an almost interminable dura- tion, as it were, before him; many things may occur; a pardon after a while, even, is possible; a studiously good behavior may secure a mitigation of the sentence, may bring him soon out of his prison-house and place him again in the blaze and bustle of the world ; ample time and opportunity will in all likelihood be allowed, years hence, to rush to the free and full fountain of life. " Some men are at fault with capital punishment," says Grotius, "because with life all opportunity of repentance is cut off. But they well know that good magistrates have the greatest vigilance in this mat- ter, and that no criminal may be hurried to execution without ample time to acknowledge and heartily detest his sins. But if men say that a still longer period of life might produce a still deeper repentance, it may be answered, that the experi- ment has often proved otherwise : there have been those to whom that pithy and solemn sarcasm of Seneca might have been addressed, We have one good thing more to offer you, and that is death" In E. G. Wakefield's Facts relating to the Pun- ishment of Death, he says that " the Rev. Mr. Cotton, the Ordinary of Newgate, who has been chaplain of the jail for more than a dozen years, has often acknowledged to him, that he does not remember an instance of what he considered sincere conversion to religious sentiments, except in prisoners who were executed. A very great show of religious fervor is often made by prisoners even from the moment of their 264 THE STATUTORY DEATH PENALTY. entrance in Newgate, still more after they enter the cells. But in such cases, when the punishment is finally settled at something less than death, the prisoner invariably behaves as if all his religion had been hypocrisy." As to the reforming influence of imprisonment for life, so far as citizenship is concerned, it puzzles us extremely to perceive how this is to be ascertained or even effected, seeing that he who is incarcerated for life is prevented thereby from ever becoming a citizen. A word was spoken, a while since, on the influence which the death penalty has in deterring men from the commission of murder, and the associated and consequent effect of afford- ing protection to society from its direful ravages. Some will have it that imprisonment for life, especially solitary im- prisonment, will better answer these ends ; and plead that, of the two penalties, the latter is the more terrible. In con- firmation, some will say that they themselves would account perpetual solitary incarceration the greater and more dread- ful punishment. But if the alternative were actually pre- sented ; if, arraigned and convicted, it were left to them by the court to choose between the two we are ready to de- clare, without any hesitation or peradventure, what their choice would be. They would, one and all, be seen march- ing into the prison and the solitary cell, rather than to the gallows ; ay, and feel considerably inclined to thank " their stars," if not the court nor Providence, that they had found such snug quarters. Naught this side of the Judgment is so dreadful to universal manhood as death ; nothing this side of the cold, chilling river which bounds the territory of Time is so sweet to the human kind as life. A celebrated German romance writer, when summoned unexpectedly to that river's brink, exclaimed as loudly as his remaining strength would suffer him, " Only life ! this sweet life ! life at any price, life even with suffering, only life, life, life ! " To the strong, deep, instinctive dread of death which the THE STATUTORY DEATH PENALTY. 265 Creator lias implanted in the constitution of every sentient, and, we may say, of every living creature, there are, in the case of the sufferer of capital punishment, to be added the disgrace attendant on his mode of death, and the intensely terrific and awful retributions of eternity, of which his guilty conscience gives indescribably awful forebodings. All these meeting together in the case of the felonious homicide dying by the hand of the executioner, what is there in the thought of any punishment beside, coming anywhere near being so great and mighty a preventive of the crime of murder, and protective of society from its thrice fearful and melancholy assaults ? As corroborative of this position, and refutatory of the position of those who contend that imprisonment for life is a greater punishment, and a more potent or influential means of deterring or restraining men from the perpetration of murder, and of affording security to society from its dreadful havoc, we might refer you to the experience of several gov- ernments, who, after a trial of a few years, were induced to abandon their experiment. The principal cases which our memory enables us to suggest are those of the Empress Catherine of Russia, and the Grand Duke, Leopold, of Tuscany. In the Conversations Lexicon, a work of un- doubted authority, it is declared : " That even in those countries where the governments, from a mistaken feeling of humanity, abolished capital punishments, they were com- pelled again to introduce them ; because, according to the prevailing views of men, death is regarded as the greatest evil, to avoid which, men will willingly submit to the most laborious life, so long as there is any hope of escaping from it ; and because, moreover, the punishment of death is the most terrible of all penalties." As the Noachic statute and penalty have reference exclu- sively to the crime of murder, in the full and proper sense of that term, so have we, in our present advocacy. It would be treating us unjustly not to bear in mind that it is for murder, 266 THE STATUTORY DEATH PENALTY. not anything short of it for intentional murder, not accident- al homicide, nor for homicide in palpable self-defence for murder clearly proved, and this before a proper tribunal, not a case uncertain, or insufficiently established by evidence, nor a case clearly made out before a self-constituted body that we plead for the infliction, by the properly appointed instrument- ality, of the punishment of death. As for any penalty short of this for the extreme crime just designated, whether it be imprisonment for life, or something else, it is, however kindly intended, but a poor substitute, in our view, for the divinely selected, authorized, and enjoined penalty. Let imprison- ment for life, which seems to be the favorite with the ma- jority of the opponents of the death penalty ; let it be the substituted penalty for murder; and let it be without fail ever inflicted in full, and still it is so. God's wisdom and God's benevolence of both of which there is a signal dis- play in the Noachic ordinance have been, are, and ever will be, superior to man's. Whilst we would not present the lenity, laxity, or abuse, as an argument yet we may be permitted, en passant, to ask, What more, scarcely, is the punishment of imprisonment for life, as most commonly executed, than a name ? We quote from good authority, from a citizen of deservedly high repute in that commonwealth, when we state as a fact the following : " In the State of New York, the average length of time spent in prison by those criminals who have been sentenced to imprisonment for life, has been six years ! " Let an additional consideration be urged. Suppose the adversaries of the death penalty for murder, in any country say in the United States to have their will. In every state of that Republic this penalty is abolished ; and the penal- ty of imprisonment for a term of years, or, we will say, for life, is put in its room. The crime of murder, and several other crimes, theft and robbery to a certain amount, for example, then stand penally on the same footing. A like motive or THE STATUTORY DEATII PENALTY. 207 inducement is presented to all the inhabitants of the land to abstain from any one of these crimes as from the other. It is said to them, If you murder another, or steal another's goods to a certain amount, or rob a person of such a sum of money, you shall, if detected, if the crime be proved against you, be thrown into prison, and be confined there during your mortal life. Look then at the estimate, relatively, that is set on the life of a human being. It is worth such an amount of goods, or such a sum of money : This proclaimed to the people of the land proclaimed by its statutes. From north to south, east to west, the proclamation is made, that the life of a man, woman, or child, is worth so much money, or such a quantity of goods. And so is there a like estimate made as to crime. The crime of murder, and the crimes of theft and robbery to a certain amount of goods or money, are alike as to magnitude or guilt. This also is pro- claimed, through the medium of statute, throughout the length and breadth of the country. What we are disposed to press this question what will be the effect, morally and practically, in that land ? Tell us, ye kind, philanthropic souls, who love human life so vastly, that ye would as soon have your neighbor lose such an amount of goods, or in money, as to lose his mortal life, let us have a sober, candid response to the interrogatory just stated. No wonder ye scratch your heads, and look somewhat embarrassed or puzzled. Let us cast our eye at another aspect of the case. Things stand according to the foregoing supposition. The law, punishing murder with death, is repealed. Another, affixing the penalty of incarceration for life, is the substitute. The crime of theft and robbery, to a certain amount, there are laws forbidding under a like penalty. Let a man be detect- ed and convicted of either of these crimes, and his home is a prison until "the golden bowl be broken." Here are a hundred or a thousand men, in different parts of the broad land, 268 THE STATUTORY DEATH PENALTY. who are committing a theft ; are stealing an amount of goods for which, if the crime be proved against them, they must suffer the penalty just stated. Just as they have perpetrated the furtive deed, their eye meets the eye of some one, each, that has witnessed their act of stealth. This witness will, if he have the opportunity, expose him, and be the means of his arrest and conviction. Each of the hundred or thousand thieves, knowing this, will say to himself, " Let me kill this witness and I shall avoid detection. If I, in killing him, should even be discovered and convicted of the crime of taking away his life, I shall fare no worse than if I let the witness escape. Whereas, if he be killed, there may be no one to witness against me for this latter offence, I see none," and he takes away his life. A hundred or a thousand lives, according to the supposition, are at once thus sacrificed, and ten thousand hearts are wrung with anguish. On the night succeeding the transaction just depicted, a hundred or a thousand robbers, in different sections of the wide country, find each his victim ; have wrested from him such a sum as, if convicted, will subject him to perpetual imprisonment. His victim, if suffered to escape with life, will be a witness against him. These robbers say, each, as did the thieves, " Let me kill him and I may avoid detection. At the worst, I can fare no worse. I may, probably will, escape altogether, if I let out his heart's blood." The dagger at once finds its way to the seat of life. Again a hundred or a thousand souls are hurried away from their mortal tenement, and everywhere through the land are to be witnessed mourning, lamentation, and woe. O, how short-sighted and mistaken a philan- throphy, how stolid and cruel a benevolence, is that of the men who would erase from every penal code the law which exacts the death of the detected and convicted murderer! The heads of these men are amazingly at fault, whether or not their hearts be. It is our heart's desire and prayer to God, that they may never succeed in expunging from the THE STATUTORY DEATH PENALTY. 269 statute-books of earth that statute of heaven, which has such a heart of benevolence and face of smiling love ; to push away such an aegis of protection to the lifeblood of untold numbers ; to batter down such a wall of defence, or destroy so mighty and invaluable a safeguard to society. Bear with us on this theme a moment longer, whilst we mention and essay to dispatch one other and a somewhat choice argument of the adversaries of "legalized murder." If this one of their strongholds cannot be demolished without the consumption of much time, be assured that to relieve your patience, already taxed considerably beyond what we had anticipated, it will be left for the pickaxes and battering rams of others to effect a demolition. And what is this stronghold? Why, the following: "That society comes wholly from voluntary compact; that inasmuch as govern- ment, thus originating, derives its rights from the delegated rights of individuals, and individuals cannot delegate what they themselves possess not; and inasmuch as no man has a right to take away his own life therefore, no man can impart this right to others : consequently no government can have the right, in any circumstances, to take away life." Now, what we may reasonably exact from those whose is this reasoning, is, to establish their premise ; to prove that society is the creature of social or voluntary compact. Let them show this to be true, ere they attempt to prove or disprove anything from it. We opine that they may find it as difficult to show when men met together for this end, as those holding to the human invention of oral language find it to show when that convention met to talk about inventing words and forming a language. When was such convention held? Let them produce the records of the meeting. Let them point us to the history of its proceedings. Surely so important a meeting would not be suffered to pass utterly unrecorded. The pen of history does it make no mention of so momentous a transaction? Where are the records? 270 THE STATUTORY DEATH PENALTY. Where the historic account? Until they produce some reliable testimony on this point, we may not feel ourselves in possession of enough light to keep us from regarding their premise as but a figment of the imagination. The brief residue of the argument, relating to the penalty which we are considering, will be offered when we meet again. EVENING TWENTY-FIRST. YOUNG GENTLEMEN: Civil Society is an ordinance of God ; it must be established, therefore, upon the principles which God has established. We have, on a former occasion, spoken of the Noachic or- dinance as containing the sanction and divine authority of a civil magistracy ; that to <l man " in this capacity is com- mitted, by the Supreme Legislator and Governor, the solemn power, authority, and duty, of recompensing the murderer; and what recompense is due, and to be visited on the blood- stained felon, has not been left to the judgment or discretion of the magistracy to determine. He from whom the latter derived their authority has said, Thus shall it be done : "Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by the constituted powers (human) shall his blood be shed." The power of the sword, the power of life and death, as the highest and most awful sanction of the human government, is, then, conferred by that ordinance directly from God upon the civil magistracy. This highest function of government is to be regarded as a person- ification, exponent, or representative of all its just functions. But, meeting those oppugners of capital punishment whose reasoning is such as was toward the close of the last Exercise stated, in a manner on their assumed ground, it may be 272 THE STATUTORY DEATH PENALTY. replied to them : Man has by nature, as we speak, the right of self-defence ; and if a man's family be violently set upon, with palpable intent to kill, or to the manifest endangering of life, he has a right to defend them, though at the risk of the life of him who has made the inchoate murderous assault. Now this right of self-defence, possessed by every man in a state of nature you observe we are using language of a type to suit that of our opposing reasoners he gives up, to a certain degree, in the compact of society. It becomes in part to the extent of the surrendry the business of the government to protect and defend individuals ; and the privi- lege so delegated gives to the government the right to take away life. A government must have the power of life and death lodged with it for the purposes of human society. Wherever civil society exists, it is one of its inherent rights, and wherever civil government has any existence, it is one of its paramount duties, to administer justice so far as the conservation of the general well-being may require ; so far at least as to defend and protect the lives of its citizens ; of course to inflict the (what we have shown to be) just penalty of death upon the man-slayer upon him who has already taken away the life of another whenever that penalty is necessary, in the common and practical sense of the word, for the protection of the lives of others ; for the safety and de- fence of the community in general. No less considerable a document than the Declaration of American Independ- ence declares the design of government to be, to protect the governed in the enjoyment of their inalienable rights, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. If our opponents con- tend that government has no right to take away an " inalien- able right" on any ground, even for the protection of society, they must then abandon the idea, must surrender it to their own argument, that government has the right to punish a criminal, a murderer even, with imprisonment for life, be- cause liberty is an inalienable right, of which he is deprived, THE FLOOD OF NOAH NOT TO REAPPEAR. 273 and ever, beyond recall or recovery, by such imprisonment. Their argument or inference from delegated rights will oper- ate against the right of government to punish a man with im- prisonment for life, as well as with the loss of life. The argument runs thus : No man has a right to imprison him- self for life, in a solitary cell, an outcast or recluse from society, a contemner of its relative duties. But if he have not this right in himself, he cannot delegate or resign it to others ; therefore no human government has a right to im- prison any man for life. The argument would therefore prove too much for those who advocate the punishment of imprisonment for life as a substitute for the punishment of death to the murderer. Let us say, in conclusion on this topic, we feel that we cannot express too high a regard for the universally and per- petually binding statute which the Lawgiver Supreme gave to our patriarch for his posterity. And without any undue or boastful professions of benevolence toward our species, we must say that, as we feel exceedingly unwilling that any greater number than now do should become murderers, and likewise any more than now do should become victims of the murderer's bullet or blade, the desire intense must be indulged by us, that men, in their fatuity or madness, may never suc- ceed in efforts for effecting the abrogation, in any land, of so benignly preventive and protective a statute. But, after all the words of encouragement which have been yet addressed by the Lord to the postdiluvian family, intended for themselves and their proximate and remote progeny, they were still liable to be troubled with fearful apprehensions from another source. The gathering clouds of the heavens, or the storm which with winged speed should come sweeping across the horizon, might present an impediment to their multiplication and their prosperity; might induce a catas- trophe of like terrific and melancholy character and conse- quences with that from which the earth had just emerged, and 274 THE FLOOD OF NOAH NOT TO REAPPEAR. from which the Noachidge in their life-boat had, of all the multitudinous family of man, alone been preserved. We are told by Josephus that Noah, in a persuasion that Jehovah had doomed mankind to destruction, lay under a mortal dread for fear of a repetition of the diluvial judgment, and that it would end in an annual inundation ; so that he presented himself before the Lord with sacrifices and prayers, humbly beseeching him " that nature might there- after proceed in its former orderly course; and that he would not bring on so great a judgment any more, by which the whole race of creatures might be in danger of destruc- tion ; but that having now punished the wicked, he would of his clemency spare the remainder, and such as he had hither- to judged fit to be delivered from so severe a calamity ; for that otherwise these last must be more miserable than the first, and that they must be condemned to a worse condition than the others, unless they be suffered to escape entirely ; that is, if they be reserved for another deluge, while they must be afflicted with the terror and the sight of the first deluge, and must^also be destroyed by a second." (Lib. 1, ch. 3.) It is, however, not to be supposed probable that our patriarch was tormented with a dread of a future annual return of such a judgment, inasmuch as he knew that the great and criminal causes of the deluge were such as could not happen annually. Besides, having found favor in the eyes of the Deity, and been so distinguishingly and mirac- ulously preserved from such an everywhere reaching judg- ment, he. can hardly be supposed to have so soon lost all confidence in his great and merciful Preserver, and to be so under the dominion of abject and servile fear. We may therefore conclude his sacrificial oblation and prayer to have in them more of the eucharistic than of the deprecatory. It is not improbable that he, on this occasion as well as various others, indeed, did beseech the Most High and Most Mighty that he would save his posterity from running into those THE COVENANT AGAINST IT. 275 excesses of wickedness, that " superfluity of naughtiness," into which the inhabitants of the antediluvian age had so audaciously and madly run ; and the belief, also, may very rationally be entertained that it was not so much for Noah's sake as for that of his sons and their posterity, that God did what we are about to speak of. The devastating Flood, with its thrice calamitous effects, was still full before the mind's eye of that family which in their big life-boat had navigated the world of waters ; and the clustering and swelling emotions which had been excited, had yet scarcely found time for inceptive subsidence. How know we, they might say, after the encouraging averments which had yet reached their ear how know we but that some time ere by nature's slow process of decay our bodies become lifeless, or, if not so soon, at least during the time of some generation of our descendants not very far in the future, there may sweep over the globe a calamity similar to that with which it has just been visited? How know we but the fruit of our body, or the fruits of our toil, may some day lie beneath the waves of another mighty and desolating inundation ? In kind and condescending replication God says, " After this manner ye shall know it for the purpose which I have had in my heart shall be put into words, and something more attractive and expressive than words: I will never again smite the earth with so great, so wide, and awful a judgment though the native human heart has not by the flood of waters been so washed from its filthiness as that the latter will not show itself, and early, by the streams which will flow from it. While the earth remaineth, seed-time and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease. I promise, yea, I solemnly covenant, that all flesh shall never again be destroyed by a deluge. Nor shall you or your progeny be suffered to forget this my veritable promise, my solemn covenant. That arch which was seen 276 THE BOW OF PROMISE. attending the calm rains before, but, amid the descending tor- rents which helped to swell the waters of the deluge, was not seen, that gorgeous arch shall hereafter appear in such frequency, and in such phenomenal connection, as, whilst it shall excite your unfailing admiration by its beauty, shall serve to allay your fears by its betokening significancy. By its appearance, spanning from time to time the heavens and at well selected seasons, you shall be reminded of this my covenant. This bow of promise, skirting the forefront of darkness, shall tell of preservation, not of destruction ; of smiling peace, not of frowning wrath. At the occurrence of that phenomenon, looking upward, above your head shall ap- pear the calm cerulean vault, tending to make or preserve as calm the spirit ; and off, fronting the retiring cloud in the dis- tance, shall be spread the bow that God has bent ; at sight of which you will have a renewed, a vivid recollection of Jehovah's sure and gracious covenant." We say gracious, for Noah's neither proximate nor remote posterity, in their dif- ferent and successive generations, would know but that, in this particular, what has been shall again be, except for this. The assured tranquillity which this covenant has been and will be instrumental of producing and preserving among men is great and invaluable. But the benefits of it were not to be confined to man. Cast your eye over the record, and you will see that, as in the nature of them, so in the divine inten- tion, they were to extend to all the animal creation, unable, as they would be, to understand the token. So comprehen- sive, young gentlemen, is the beneficence of Heaven. The phrase " with you " (10th verse) having respect to the inferior races of living things, is so repeated as to give it emphasis, and not only points to the intimate relation constituted by the Creator between man and man, but to teach, by so high example as the divine, mindfulness, kindness, the opposite of carelessness and cruelty, toward the lower orders of crea- tures. THE BOW OF PROMISE. 277 It is, we believe, a somewhat common opinion that that specified token of the covenant, the rainbow, was a thing unknown prior to this period; and we must acknowledge that that language, in our version " I do set my bow in the cloud," &c., (Gen. 9 : 13, 14) is, in the minds of ordinary readers, well adapted to originate and nourish such an im- pression. Nor is this impression wholly confined to common readers. Among the learned there have not been wanting some who not only hold to, but advocate it. " Though it had rained," say they, " before the deluge, yet the superintending Providence which caused the rainbow to appear as a pledge of the assurance that he gave, (that the world should never more be destroyed by water,) might have prevented the con- currence of such circumstances in the time of rain as were essentially necessary for the formation of a bow. It might have rained when the sun was set, or when he was more than fifty-four degrees high, when no bow could be seen, and the rain might continue between the spectator and .the sun until the clouds were expended, or in any other direction but that of an opposition to the sun." (See Ewing's Lectures on Nat. Philosophy.) Such is their philosophical reasoning; next, as to their moral. Allowing the first appearance of the celestial arch not to have been anterior to this, the effect would be far more vivid and striking, apparently, upon the mind of Noah and his sons, than had the splendid spectacle been to them already familiar. Admitting the causes pro- ducing it to have existed from the creation, it does not necessarily follow that the phenomenon itself had been actually witnessed until subsequent to the deluge. The occurrence antecedently might have been prevented by the Divine Ruler, from a foresight of the moral uses to which he designed to have it applied after the flood. A dissipation or suppression of all rising fears of a diluvial occurrence in future, similar to the one just past an assurance of security against it this being the grand end of the sign fixed on 13 278 THE BOW OF PROMISE. a novel may be rationally supposed more efficacious than a familiar phenomenon toward this benign end. Thus it might be very plausibly reasoned ; whilst the setting of the bow in the cloud, as is the phraseology of the record, to serve as a token, seems to forbid the rational entertainment of the idea, that it was a spectacle to the sight of which our post- diluvian patriarch and family had been accustomed. But then, on the other hand, it may be plead, First, That the rainbow being the natural effect of the refraction and reflection of the sun's rays f a *M 1 g on water, and as rains were probably not less freque n vi c*than posterior to the deluge, it would require quit stretch of the reasoning faculty to bring it to the cone ^lOn that the rainbow had not been a familiar phenomenon in the first age of the world as well as since. Secondly, That the argument is by no means con- clusive in support of the forementioned idea, which is sought to be drawn from the word "set" in our version, since the original word ^nro nathatti, translated set, in numerous instances in the Scriptures imports appointing or consti- tuting, as might be easily shown. The reading of the verse would then be, " I do appoint my bow in the cloud to be a token of the covenant between me and the earth." Thirdly, The argument employed by God with the eight souls and coming progeny, to allay or prevent rising fears, runs substantially on this wise : You have been familiar, in times past, with that phenomenon, in certain junctures, the rainbow as you have been with the rising and setting of the sun. From your past observation or experience you are led to infer that that phenomenon will, from time to time, in similar junctures, appear in perpetuity up to the world's end, 3ust as you infer from your past observation of the sun's rising and setting, that this process will be perpetual. Now as perpetual or unfailing as you believe will be the rainbow's appearance, sopshall it be with this my promise or covenant. It shall not fail. You can surely repose as firm reliance on THE OCCUPATION ENTERED UPON. 279 my word, as you do respecting the perpetuity of the course of nature. Have you ever known it fail ? You believe it never will. You shall be reminded of the unfailing character of this my covenant in all future appearances of my bow in the cloud. I appoint that bow as a token for all time to come. Seeing it, you shall be reminded of my standing, perpetual covenant. You will be assured from it, that no such wide-sweeping, devastating judgment shall again visit the earth. It was a beautiful token which the Most High fixed- on or appointed, you will all acknowledge ; and one which, not occurring so frequently like the rising or the setting of the sun as through great familiarity with the sight, to fail to answer that benign end, so, on the other hand, being of not too infrequent occurrence for it, appears remarkably well adapted to answer the intended beneficent purpose. After the transpiring of the interesting matters to which our attention has been last directed, and by which Noah and his sons could not but be greatly encouraged, the next mention which the Mosaic narrative affords concerning our esteemed postdiluvian father, relates to his resumption of an occupation which he may be supposed to have mainly prose- cuted in earlier life, to wit, that of husbandry. Descending with his family from the mountain range where the ark finally rested, (if any such elevation is to be indeed considered as its stranding-place,) into the lower hill country, or the plain, we cannot say how far distant not improbably contiguous and taking the more useful animals with them, whether for service or for sustenance, he, assisted by his sons, com- menced tilling the ground ; and at length, among other things that they did, planted a vineyard: a thing with which these postdiluvians were probably not unacquainted the other side of the waters. For, in antediluvian times, animal food not being an allowed esculent, it may reasonably be supposed that along with other articles yielding nutriment, the vine 280 THE PLANTING OF THE VINEYARD. would be cultivated for the sake of its nutritious fruit ; and this rather than for the expressed juice as a beverage. How long subsequent to his egress from the ark Noah " planted his vineyard," and how long after his vines began to yield their luscious treasures, the occurrence of which we are about to speak transpired, we cannot certainly say. But, as the three sons of our patriarch had none of them any children until after they left the vessel, and as one of the sons of Ham, we mean Canaan, was probably not only born, but quite a lad at the time that Ham behaved in the unbecoming manner we shall hear of a boy old enough to participate, after some manner, in the father's crime, and so in the conse- quent malediction, it may hence be concluded that an interval had elapsed of at least some eighteen or twenty years. In the record (Gen. 10 : 6,) Canaan being placed the last of Ham's four sons, seems to indicate that he was the youngest ; if so, the intervening period would be consider- ably longer. Bedford extends the interval to over one hundred years (Chronology, pp. 178, 180) ; but this appears to us an unreasonable extreme. The writer of the article Noah, in Kitto's Cyclopedia, says, " The narrative makes it evident that the occurrence, the invention of wine-making, must have been some years after the cessation of the flood ; for not Ham himself, but Canaan his son, is the first and em- phatic object of the prophetic curse. We cannot with reason assume less than sixteen or eighteen years." In another article from the same pen, it is said, " The undutiful conduct of Ham and his fourth son cannot well be assigned to a point of time earlier than twenty or thirty years after the Flood." (Dispersion of Nations.) The premise on which this con- clusion is based may not perhaps strike every one as the most certain. It being a prophetic malediction which fell on Ham, extending to his posterity in every line and not barely that of Canaan, the reason why the last named son specially THE ALLEGED SIN OF THE PATRIARCH. 281 and alone was mentioned may have been, because that in the historian's subsequent narrative the fate of Canaan's family or descendants, consentaneous with the prophetic malediction, would become, in a manner necessarily, a matter of particular detail ; and not because of any participation by Canaan in the crime of his father. Living, as Moses did, when the Israelites, who descended from Shem, were about to take pos- session of the land of Canaan, it was of peculiar importance that they should be informed that the people whose country the Lord their God had given them to possess, were under a curse from the days of their peculiar prime ancestor. This being so, it might be considered unnecessary to suppose Canaan to have been at the time even born. Consequently the occurrence which we are about to relate, and drop a few words of comment upon, might have transpired sooner after the egression of the Noachic family from their confinement, than the period we a moment since stated. Yet we, on the whole, prefer the former view, it seeming to us to have more of the air of probability. The incident, or rather series of incidents, related in Gen. 9 : 20-24, are there exhibited in so plain terms as that no comment can perhaps lead to a better understanding of their character than is to be obtained from the bare record itself, except possibly in regard to one particular. There has been some difference of opinion concerning the precise import of the words, " He drank of the wine and was drunken." If by the wine spoken of is meant the unfermented juice of the grape, then the word " drunken " would no more indicate inebriant excess, than, in the account relative to the miracle performed by our Saviour at Cana in Galilee, the words, " when men have well drunk," denote, when men have become well intoxicated. Noah's act would then be rather one of surfeit than of ebriety ; of surfeit disposing, like excessive eating, to sleep. If the wine of which this patriarch par- took was fermented, and so possessed inebriating qualities, it 282 THE ALLEGED SIN OF THE PATRIARCH. may still be inquired whether the word drunken denotes being affected to intoxication, or merely to somewhat beyond innocent satiety. Or, again : if by this language Noah is to be understood to have been actually overcome by the wine's stimulating properties, the question may arise, whether he was, at the time he partook, so unacquainted with this sort of liquor, or of the strength of that in particular of which he drank, as to reduce his act to one of ignorance or inad- vertence. Viewing the deed of this man in its worst light, he fell into sin, a grievous sin. We then have an account of the melancholy fall into sin of a man who had been, in the eyes of the Omniscient Deity himself, for a long time very eminent for piety; and there comes from the mournful occurrence a note of warning, " Let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall." It is our wish to do no injustice to our patriarch, on the one hand, by -bringing a heavy charge positively against him, since except the bare language which we have quoted, there is no other, not a word, from which we can possibly gather that he had been guilty of a culpable slip here. On the other hand we would not be willing to offer a word apologetic of an act of sin, whether it be a sin of the greatest saint or of the smallest. If Noah on this occasion was indeed intoxicated, he would, were he here, thank no one for turning apologist for him. As a man of God he would attempt no apology for himself. Instead of trying to extenuate his offence, he, in brokenness of spirit, and humbled in the dust, would rather cry, " God be merciful to me a sinner." If our second father did fall by an act of intemperance, it is the only act of the kind which we have any ground for imagining he ever fell into. And supposing our postdiluvian progenitor's act to have been in criminality all that the severest interpretation of the Mosaic narration can make it, is not then our confidence in the strict and un- swerving veracity of the narrator enhanced, as well as our idea of the eminent excellence in general of our worthy THE ALLEGED SIN OF THE PATRIARCH. 283 patriarch's character, when we see that narrator not refrain- ing from the unapologetic mention of a fault in an individual whom he is describing, when he finds one, and when there is but one faulty deed to be discovered, of which to make mention ? EVENING TWENTY-SECOND. YOUNG GENTLEMEN: If you will look at the twenty-second and twenty-third verses of the ninth chapter of Genesis, you will, in the differ- ence of conduct of the three sons of Noah, in the case there stated, witness the exemplification of a truth in support of which we have been afforded many^more recent examples ; and that is, what a striking difference there may be in the character and conduct of members of the same household, children of the same parents ; brought up or nurtured under like circumstances ; enjoying similar intellectual, social, and moral advantages. With wonder it may be asked, How comes it ? Why is it so ? If we are not Hamites in our character, let us listen with proper feeling to the interrogato- ries, " Who maketh thee to differ ? and what hast thou that thou didst not receive ? " The worst characters and the best sometimes issue from the same domicile, are nourished at the same breast. Ham had been highly favored ; had been pre- served as a favorite in the ark from the overflowing Flood ; and for this preservation he was peculiarly, eminently in- debted, under God, to his father. And what requital does he make ? They who are under obligations to be the most, are sometimes the least grateful. The want of filial grati- tude and filial reverence what a deficiency ! Even the failings of a father, instead of being proclaimed as from the CARPINGS OP SKEPTICISM. 285 house-top, should not be even so much as whispered in secret ; instead of being wantonly exposed, or made the sub- ject of jeer or merriment, should be studiously concealed from the gaze of all, and give rise to compassionate and tearful concern. How many are saved by the mercy of Heaven from sin ; how many, as in the case of Ham, to sin ! So it turns out, though not in the latter case so intended. How utter a failure prove all attempts to find language ade- quate to express our souFs abhorrence of the conduct of this son ; and, on the other hand, our admiring appreciation of the superlatively delicate and reverential feelings and deport- ment, toward their exposed sire, of Shem and Japheth ! And what incident does the narrative next present to our inspection? Will you have the goodness, young gentlemen, to examine thoroughly the paragraph embraced in verses twenty-five to twenty-seven. How are those words to be regarded, as to character and purport ? Men of anti-biblical prejudices, if their minds are at all active, may probably find something here, taken in connection with the contents of the paragraph immediately preceding, to carp at : " Ah, this saint, Noah, wakes from his cups, quite crusty. No sooner do the fumes of his excess a little evaporate, than, ascertain- ing what a plight he has been in what a shameful exposure of his person has accompanied his drunken stupor ; the amusement which it has afforded to one of his sons, and the tender thoughtfulness and delicate concern and conduct of his two others ; their solicitude to preserve his name from reproach, and spare his sensibilities he begins, as one perfectly beside himself, to hurl forth his curses against poor Ham, not sparing even Ham's innocent son, Canaan, from his maledictive ebullitions ; whilst, as if to carry his spleen still father against this his amused son, he, on the opposite hand, flatters and pours out copious benedictions on those who had pitied his weakness, and tried to throw a mantle over his name as well as his nudity." Do not imagine that 13* 286 THE PATRIARCH'S PREDICTIONS. we have done antibiblists injustice by putting into their mouths this language. Such is the spirit of which they oft evince the possession, as to convince us that if your ears heard \vhat they would have to say about such a matter, you would think that our picture is by no means overdrawn. Well, you may say, what have you to offer in reply to the carpings, if such they be, of these men ? Offer ? why, they, in my view, as in everything else with which the Bible has to do, greatly misrepresent the case. In the first place as to the character of what on this occasion was uttered by our postdiluvian ancestor, events have clearly shown it to be of the nature of a prediction, as to all whose names are speci- fied, or rather the descendants of them respectively whom they represent. Yes, it was naught other than a prediction and a remarkable one it was true in every iota, as the progress of time, and the occurrences accompanying its pro- gress, have demonstrated beyond all rational doubt. Young as you are in years, you are not to be presumed such perfect strangers to history as not to be assured of this. "What, for instance, does history testify concerning the character and consequent fate of large portions of Canaan's descendants ? What, moreover, respecting various other lines of Plain's posterity ? Read the words, " A servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren ! " This, though said directly in re- gard to Canaan's posterity, yet is to be considered inclu- sive of Ham's descendants in the other branches, Canaan, as being prominent, representing the whole, as Ephraim, for the same cause, is, in the sacred records, not unfrequently found used to indicate the ten tribes. Now compare this strong language " a servant of servants," with what is known to have been largely the fate of the African population, de- scendants of Ham. The phrase just named is a Hebraic idiom, conveying a superlative idea : a servant reduced to the lowest degree of servitude or degradation. It is specifi- THE PATRIARCH'S PREDICTIONS. 287 cally predicted, you observe, that Canaan shall be a servant to both Shem and Japheth, i. e. that Ham's progeny shall occupy a position of inferiority and subserviency to Shem's and Japheth's descendants. How signally fulfilled ! You find it foretold that the Lord would be specially the ts God of Shem," (26th verse.) This is the first instance in Holy Writ of the Infinite One being called the God of any special person or persons : a testimony to Shem's exemplary piety, (not forgetting its application to his posterity,) and God's condescending goodness. You will discern a verification of what is here foretold, by recognizing the fact that Shem was the ancestor of the Messiah, and the progenitor of the Jews. The " enlargement of Japheth" is predicted. Behold it veri- fied : the whole of Europe ; a considerable part of Asia ; and an eminently large proportion of America, have been peopled and are occupied by Japheth's offspring. It is like- wise foretold of Japheth, that he should " dwell in the tents of Shem:" that is, that Japheth's descendants should be- come participators in the choice spiritual privileges, or moral and religious advantages, vouchsafed to the Shemites, in par- ticular allusion to those of the Hebrews ; and, as it may be understood, dwell at length, and for a considerable season, in the tents of the Shemites, to the exclusion of the latter : veri- fied or fulfilled in the rejection of the Jews, and the adoption of the Japhetic Gentiles in their room. In regard to the insinuation of Noah's cursing Canaan though innocent, it may be observed, first, that the Jewish doctors have been generally of the opinion that Canaan was not only a partner with his father in the offence, but a leader in it. In the next place, interpreting the language of our patriarch in reference to Ham or Canaan, as well as in rela- tion to Shem and Japheth i. e. the descendants of each, as predictive, what then becomes of the charge implying injus- tice ? Prediction is surely not to be identified or confounded witli causation. The foretelling of an event does not cause 288 AT WHAT TIME UTTERED. it. This is so with regard to predictions relating both to good and ill, and equally so with the one as with the other. Noah had no direct or special agency in bringing evil on Ham's offspring, nor good on the offspring of Shem and Japheth ; nor did Noah entertain any idea, when he gave utterance to the language under consideration, that he was himself, at the time, fixing or affecting the destiny of any portion of his either proximate or remote descendants. He was neither so quixotic nor idiotic as to imagine his words to be, in their nature or their influence, causative ; as to harbor the notion, or have the shadow of it float across his brain, that he was pouring out blessings or curses that should take effect as coming from his lips. Nor are we to contemplate him here as even giving expression to personal desires or private wishes in relation to the progeny, near or remote, of any of his sons. Lastly, on this topic : Nor if the insinu- ation merit the shadow of a notice was Noah, by either the good or bad influence of the wine he drank, aided in prophesying after the manner he did : For though the nar- rative of what he uttered, and the narrative of what he ante- cedently did, are put by the historian in remarkable juxta- position, yet this may have been the result, solely, of desire with the narrator to consult brevity, and not at all from proximity as to time in the occurrence of the two : instances of similar nature occurring elsewhere in sacred history from such a cause. We are of the opinion, and are not alone in it, that a considerable season intervened between our patri- arch's two acts of wine-drinking and prophesying. But, if the drinking of the wine and the prophesying did occur the one very shortly after the other what then ? Why, we think in that case there is good ground for inferring that Noah's act of wine-drinking was not of that culpable nature was not followed with such an effect as that the one thing could not with propriety or consistency follow speedily the other. We shall then believe the following view, from NAMES OF THE THREE SONS PROPHETIC. 289 the pen of Dr. J. Pye Smith, to be about the correct one : " The vine had existed before the flood, and Noah could not be unacquainted with it ; but not till now had grapes been grown of such size, sweetness, and abundance of juice, as to strike out the thought of expressing that juice, and reserving it in a vessel for future use. Noah, we think it probable, knew not that in a few days it would ferment and acquire new and surprising properties. Innocently and without suspicion he drunk of the alluring beverage, as if it had been water from the spring. The consequence is recorded in the characteristic simplicity of style which affirms neither censure nor apology. We regard that consequence as not a sinful intoxication, both from what was probably the occa- sional cause, and from the immediate agency of the Spirit of God in communicating prophecy. The latter indeed is not an impregnable ground ; for bad men might receive gifts of inspiration, as Balaam and Judas ; but Noah was eminently a righteous and perfect man, and it is inconceivable that a miraculous influence of God should be granted in immediate contiguity with a sinful action." (See Kitto's Cyc., Art. Noah.) Whilst speaking about so remarkable a manifestation of a prophetic spirit, on the part of our patriarch, in regard to the coming condition or destiny of his three sons or their progeny severally, we should not omit to remark, that even the names borne by these sons seemed themselves prophetic ; Shem sig- nifying name, as if pointing to some marked distinction over his brethren ; Ham denoting heat, as if indicating the cli- matic locality to be occupied by his posterity ; and the im- port of Japheth being enlargement, as if betokening the increase, spread, and prosperity of his offspring. By this explanation you are at once reminded of the striking coinci- dence between the purport of these names severally, and that of the prophecy, relatively, on which we have been commenting. 290 ADVANTAGES FROM THE PAST. Mention was, a short time since, made of the resumption by Noah of the art of husbandry knowledge and experi- ence in regard to which the great builder and navigator had acquired the other side of the waste of waters. This knowl- edge and experience, attained in earlier life, and which were among the few useful relics which the flood had not destroyed, would be eminently in requisition in the new era : a world of desolation being spread out before the Noachidce, and much of the means of subsistence having necessarily to be extorted from the soil by cultivation. And that attempts to cultivate the now new surface of the earth would not be altogether fruitless, the inchoate verdure, on every hand exhibiting it- self, would be suited to afford encouraging and stimulating intimations. Advantages, moreover, great and invaluable for the prosecution of agriculture, that noble and indispensable calling, might and doubtless were derived, by his near and more distant offspring, from the instructions, oral and practi- cal, of this once antediluvian and now postdiluvian husband- man. Nor, so far as relates to industrial and necessary pursuits, was it in agriculture, solely, that the cisdiluvian inherited or derived essential benefits from the transdiluvian world. A knowledge of the main or more useful mechanic arts found, in the duomundane family, a medium of descent from a former age to the ages succeeding the great catastrophe. An acquaintance with architecture, among others, thus found a channel of transmission to the various lines and genera- tions of the postdiluvian population. You can at least faint- ly imagine how important to the convenience and comfort of the earth's new denizens, must have been the inheritance of a knowledge of this art, all the previous works of man, edifices to occupy with the rest, having one and all, by the great besom, been swept from the globe. Even the experi- ence and practical facility, architecturally, which Noah and his sons had acquired or increased in the erection of the ark "THE SEVEN PRECEPTS." 291 itself, would thus be made to tell advantageously on the con- veniences and comforts of the New World. On the whole, then, it was comparatively under quite favorable auspices that the postdiluvian population commenced and pursued their career. The elements of temporal weal or worldly prosperity were not wanting ; had floated down to them in the strange flat-bottomed but capacious boat which came from " the world beyond the flood." But this, young gentlemen, is not all. Advantages other than those connected with secular science and art came over the waters which rolled between the Old and the New World. Great moral truths and lessons, for the regulation of the heart and life, came to the cisdiluvian generations from a world which had been, but now was not: truths and, lessons for creatures standing in important relations to God ; creatures accountable and immortal. What kind and measure of influence these great truths and lessons had on those por- tions of the biseval patriarch's posterity which came into existence during his subsequent lifetime, we may be afforded some little glimpse of in the further survey of " his Times." Some developments, ere we are done, will, in all proba- bility, heave upon our mental vision. It will not be accounted amiss for us just to make mention of an old tradition of the Rabbinical Hebrews, on which too they lay great stress, that at this juncture our worthy patriarch delivered to his children seven precepts, to be enjoined on all their descendants. These inhibit, first, Idol- atry; second, Irreverence to the Deity; third, Homicide; fourth, Unchastity ; fifth, Fraud and Plundering ; the sixth enjoins Government and Obedience ; and the seventh inter- dicts the eating of any part of an animal still living. These precepts have, by Mr. Selden, been largely illustrated, and are regarded by this writer as a concise tablet of the Law of Nature. (See his De Jure Nat. et Gent, juxta Disciplin. 292 APPROACH TO A NEW ERA. Ebrseorum.) Though no positive evidence is possessed by us of their having been formally enjoined upon our respected postdiluvian father, perhaps there can be found no decisive reason for rejecting such a hypothesis. We have now arrived at a point in the Mosaic annals where a hasty or careless reader might be betrayed into the idea that Noah here ended his days, - the ninth chapter of Genesis closing with the announcement of his death. In this matter the sacred historian was evidently more controlled by some other consideration than that relating to chronological order ; since, according to the Hebrew Chronology, which for obvious reasons we are following in these Exercises, the place, chronologically, for this record, would be toward the end of the eleventh chapter, immediately preceding the record of the birth of Abraham. There is a similar disregard of chrono- logical order in this historian's recitals we speak not of it complainingly God forbid that we should in other in- stances. In reference to Abraham himself this is so ; who lived until his grandson, Jacob, was a lad of fifteen, and yet there is mention made of his decease some time antecedent to the record of the birth of the latter. Just as there are persons who can stand on the margin of a broad and majestic river without having any inquisitive desire excited to learn where its waters rise and whither they empty themselves : or enter a city and leave it without any interest being kindled in their minds, respecting its origin or its prospects ; or can look up into the blue and begemmed heavens, or abroad upon the wide domains of nature, with scarcely more of the spirit of inquiry, or feeling of interest, than creatures sub-human manifest, so may there be found readers of the sacred annals, who will glance over the tenth and eleventh chapters of Genesis, without experi- encing any lively interest, and certainly without an intellect roused to intense inquisitiveness. And yet here are the historic elements of truly great and wondrous facts. Here INCREASE OP NUMBERS. 293 are the records of the inceptions of what have swollen into many and mighty things, of the rise of no less than all the various languages and nations of the earth. Brief and frag- mentary as are the limits comprised in the two chapters just named, inquiries regarding them will not, we are persuaded? be prosecuted with indifference by such minds as are ad- dressed in these lectures. Yet, lest you should feel disap- pointment, it may not be amiss to have you apprised that our path will not be one exempt from obstructions or obscurities ; that scarcely any part of it, as we travel onward, will we find irradiated and gilded by blazing, brilliant sunlight; whilst here and there, in instances not infrequent, shall we be necessitated to feel our way, where our eyes will afford little assistance, and where we shall be exceedingly perplexed with hesitancy just what course to take. None, we are sure, but a dogmatist of the most gigantic and rigid type, of what we might call the " first water," will be able to traverse these forests and both feel and maintain that he is always right. It will indeed be our aim here and there to present more than one view which has been or may be taken concern- ing one Bnd another point inviting inquiry or soliciting notice. You must not, in the prosecution of our further inquiries, be surprised to find little direct mention made of our patriarch not because, however, we shall have travelled beyond " his Times," that is, if the Hebrew computation be correct which we are not disposed here either to affirm or deny, yet proceeding on the assumption at present of its cor- rectness ; but because, treading in the footprints of the archaic annalist, we are led to the contemplation of objects and events with which his contemporary progeny had, apparently, to say the least, much more to do than himself. Not unobservant of the injunction or counsel to "be fruit- ful and multiply " and thus haste to " replenish " the depopu- lated earth, the three sons of Noah had scarcely sooner left the ark, than they began to have children born to them. Of 294 INCREASE OF NUMBERS. this the record gives specific intimation where it makes mention (chapter 11 : 10) of the birth of Shem's son Ar- phaxad occurring " two years after the Flood." As you, in anticipation of each Evening's Exercise, probably peruse beforehand such portions of the Mosaic records as are likely to come next under examination, it will hardly be requisite to request you to refresh your memory with the contents of the tenth chapter of the first book of the Pentateuch. Yet as you have the sacred volume spread open before you, it will not be useless to cast your eye over the names of those descendants of Noah's three sons, there given, who were born within a century after the deluge, and to mark them not only as names standing at the heads of lines, but as furnishing a clue by which to arrive at some at least vague conjecture what number of descendants Noah could count up at that century's close. It is simply in the light of a genealogical list that we ask you now to look at it. On some future occa- sion we shall recall your attention to and request you to con- template and inspect it as an interesting and exceedingly im- portant ethnological document. It was no part of the business of the first postdiluvian century actually to form or organ- ize nations, but rather to take the prerequisite steps toward it to produce and shape the suitable materials out of which those larger associational institutions might afterward be formed. Nations, as such, of necessity had no existence until after the first one hundred years had taken their station with the years beyond the flood. But as will on inspection be discovered it being in a dispersed and incipiently national capacity that a considerable portion of the tenth chapter sets forth the peoples of whom it speaks, we are led, first in order of time, to examine those records, in the eleventh chapter, giving intimations of events which obviously, from their very nature, must have preceded more or less regular and wide- spread national organizations. EVENING TWENTY-THIRD. YOUNG GENTLEMEN : Just how numerous, at the close of the first century after the flood, the postdiluvians had become, the brief genealogical roll contained in the tenth chapter of Genesis does not afford us the requisite data for determining. We can, in general terms, safely affirm that our patriarch's descendants must by this time have swollen to very considerable numbers. Prompted not only by near relationship and social disposition, but by regard to safety and protection from the rage and voracity of wild beasts, they would continue to reside in as immediate propinquity as the facilities essential for securing a subsistence would allow. Yet they may not have continued to the utmost degree stationary. A little of a migratory course might, after a while, have been adopted by them, so far as agricultural operations, to which we have seen them early to have turned their attention, would at all admit. Particularly is it supposable that they would gradu- ally extend their settlements from less to more fertile and salubrious localities ; and their progressively augmenting numbers would likewise necessarily lead to the enlargement, year by year, of the area which they would occupy. An acquaintance with what pertained to life's greater con- veniences and comforts would, as their observation and experience extended, acquire progressive enlargement. They 296 THE LAND OF SHINAR ENTERED. would be thus stimulated to push their investigations and discoveries still farther; to penetrate hitherto unoccupied regions ; until at length having ascertained that within an attainable distance lay a broad, promisingly fertile and well- watered domain, unbroken by lofty and rocky eminences, or wide and malarious morasses more or less of them, we shall not at present attempt to say how many, began to be moved by an irrepressible anxiety to enter upon its oc- cupation ; whilst a few at least, perhaps, actuated by impulses less justifiable, incentives less commendable, might set them- selves to excogitate and mature the plans for effecting an eligible and speedy removal to, and proprietary occupancy of, the vast and extraordinarily inviting territory. Every arrangement made, they enter this land, denominated TpB Shinar, the same in general which bore afterward the name of Babylonia so called from the name of its chief city, Babylon, the origin of which will soon be seen. This country likewise bore subsequently the name of Chaldea. Its boundaries, indeed, were for some time not very determinate. In a restricted sense, Shinar was that province of Asia, bordered on the north by a portion of Mesopotamia ; on the east by the Tigris ; on the south by the Persian gulf; and on the west or southwest by the Arabian desert. In a larger or more general sense, it designated that vast plain watered by the Euphrates and the Tigris. The particular locality selected and primarily settled on by the immigrants, seems to have been that embracing what subsequently became the site and vicinity of the city of Babylon. This district you find them approaching and entering "from the east." (Ch. 11:2.) This phraseology we wish you par- ticularly to note. Had the lofty peak of Agridagh in Armenia been the spot where the ark stranded or finally settled had it been near the foot of that proudly towering eminence where, according to a very common idea, the Noachian family THE PHRASE "FROM THE EAST" CONSIDERED. 297 first located themselves after their egress from the floating vessel, and from which the land of Shinar is to be considered as having been approached, the language of the historian should have then run : " As they journeyed from the north " such being the direction from Shinar, or Babylonia, of the locality just mentioned. To obviate this difficulty, some indeed have essayed to give to the original (Dllpfa mikkedem) the rendering of "to the east" "ad orientem, vel orientem versus," (see Drusus in loco, and Fuller ; Miscel. Sac. Liber 1, ch. 4,) or eastward, as in Genesis 13: 11. We cannot adopt this rendering ; our version, obviously, according to our view, presenting the correct translation of the original. You remember the argument we, a few evenings since, (see Even- ings Fifteenth and Sixteenth,) presented in opposition to the idea, that the Agridagh was the locality where the ark of Noah finally rested, and whence the eight souls proceeded to re-settle the earth. We would now, in addition, urge this : That not from the north and Mount Agridagh lay far northward but " from the east" Shinar was approached. As the vicinity of Agridagh may be supposed, moreover, on account of its climate, to afford a very unsuitable spot for the planting of a vineyard, and as our patriarch, as we have seen, soon turned his attention in part that way, it may from this circumstance be inferred that it was some lower latitude where the floating house finally rested, and the prime postdiluvian family first selected their temporary abode. From all the considerations which have been presented, it would not at all surprise us to learn that you have come to the conclusion that though the ark found, for a while, a measure of repose over the not mountain no such definite language as that " mountains of Ararat," or Armenia, yet it afterward floated to a more southern latitude ; settling finally either on some part of the mountain range running between Assyria and Media, Susiana and Persia, or else on one or the other side ? probably the eastern, of said range. If you will look into 98 ADDITIONAL AS TO THE ARK'S RESTING PLACE. Malte-Brun's Geography, vol. 2, pages 99 and 108, you will find the following remarks : " The Gordian mountains of Xenophon, called Corduene in the map of d'Anville, fill the whole of Koordistan; one branch prolonged to the south is the Zagrus (Zagros, Gr.) of the ancients, which separates the Ottoman empire from Persia. According to the Koords, Dgiondi is the mountain on which Noah's ark rested. This is within the Pashalic of Diarbekir, and not far from Djezi- ra, the capital of a principality, the inhabitants of which are called Bottani." We certainly could not advise you to be in haste about coming to any positive and unalterable de- cision on the subject. Sir Walter Raleigh, bearing in mind what the Scripture says relative to the migration of the Shinar settlers from the east, placed the mountain where he supposed the ark to strand, much farther eastward than the range just named, " near Scythia and Sogdiana and almost as far as the East Indies " on the great Caucasian range, somewhere between twenty and thirty degrees eastward from Babylonia. Mr. Shuck- ford's idea appears similar to this last. Taking the phrase " mountains of Ararat " to indicate that extended mountain range running from Armenia past the southern end of the Cas- pian far eastward, or bearing somewhat to the south of east, he advances the conjecture that the ark rested finally at some spot in that range between India and ancient Scythia (mod- ern Tartary). And it must be confessed, his reasoning has in it some plausibility. We may have occasion, after a short time, to speak of a little of it. Meanwhile, should you find it convenient, look into his Connections, vol. 1, pp. 99-104. We will just say here, that this conjecture of Mr. Shuckford ap- pears pretty strongly objectionable on the ground that the dis- tance thence to Shinar, being not less than from 1200 to 1500 miles, seems unreasonably great for the Shinar settlers, in face of the difficulties and dangers at that early period neces- sarily to be surmounted, to undertake, even by slow marches, THE VIEW OF ADELUNG. 299 or after repeated intervals especially, as they would have no incentive to such an enterprise from any impracticability of finding an extensive, reasonably fertile, and salubrious district nearer. Bedford thinks he discovers, about nine degrees east from Shinar, a mountain-bed on which the ark sunk to repose. (See his Scripture Chronology, page 187.) The exact spot it is manifestly vain to attempt to ascertain. The chief reason why some lofty mountain summit, and par- ticularly the eminently towering peak of the Agridagh, has been, by so many interpreters, imagined to be the place of the ark's final settlement, has, doubtless, been the fancied necessity imposed on them of understanding Gen. 8 : 4, as designating such place of ultimate stranding. But if Mr. Morren's view, to which we, several evenings since, (Even- ing Sixteenth,) adverted, be correct, it is not necessary to seek for any preeminently lofty mountain altitude, nor indeed any mountain range at 'all, for the ark's final resting-place, a plain serving at least as well, since Moses, according to that interpretation, makes no statement concerning this point ; and on some accounts, certainly, a plain, for egress, and making arrangements for settlement, even though temporary, would be considerably more convenient. We cannot resist the temptation to give you the view of Adelung, respecting the locality which he conceives to have been occupied by man in the dawn of his being; and, if he can be said to have recognized a deluge, the part of the globe which more or less of the Noachidae left when they "journeyed from the east " to Shinar. It was that lovely land separated by mountains from India, Persia (in its larger sense), and Thibet the enchanting valley of Cashmere. Owing to its elevation, the heat of the South is said to be tempered into a perpetual spring, and Nature here puts forth her every power to bring all her works, plants, animals, and man, to the highest state of perfection. At his first creation, man ere by time and experience there had been a ripening of 300 DATE OF THE MIGRATION TO SHINAR. his faculties required an abode where nature's free bounty would supply all his wants ; in fine, he needed, with reference even to his mere physical necessities, a Paradise ! To this appellation, thought Adelung, no country in Asia can assert a better claim than the charming land of Cashmere. Even the men of this country he represents as distinguished, among Asiatics, by superior natural endowments, mental and physi- cal. They have none of the Tartar physiognomy, but exhibit the features of the European race ; while, in genius and intel- ligence, they surpass most other Oriental nations. Adelung's description of this enchanting country calls to mind, in many of its features, the Happy Valley in Rasselas. Among the arguments adduced in support of Adelung's fanciful idea, as plausible a one as any appears to us to be, that Cashmere lies in a direct line, as may be seen by the map, to the east of Shinar or Mesopotamia. The whole in- tervening territory is occupied by the Central Asiatic table land of Persia or Iran, which, in general, is said to form one continual descent from its highest elevation on the borders of Cashmere to its termination near the plain of Shinar. As to Ar-ar-at, Eitter is of the opinion that it may reasonably be inferred to be nothing else than a term commonly applied in the East to " a country of lofty mountains," an expression highly appropriate to the Persian table land, both at its centre, and at its junction with the Semitic regions near the banks of the Tigris and Euphrates. With this idea Sir Win. Jones at least so far accorded as to be confident in the opinion that after the deluge the place of settlement of mankind was Iran, which was the proper and native name of Persia and some connected regions. His own words are, " The human family after the flood established themselves in the northern parts of Iran." (See his Works, vol. 3, pp. 191-196.) How soon, after the flood, did the migration to Shinar take place ? is a question to which it may very reason- ably be supposed you would desire to have an answer. A WHAT THE NAME " PELEG " INDICATES. 301 main datum for the [determination of this point has been considered to be afforded by the archaic historian in ch. 10 : 25, i. e., in the name Peleg, which signifies division, and the reason assigned for the affixing of that appellation, to wit, " for in his days was the earth divided ; " in allusion, as has been very commonly thought, to the Dispersion. It has indeed been questioned by some respectable philologists whether the name Peleg was given at all in reference to such a separation of mankind as the dispersion. They have been rather inclined to think that the event which singularly marked Peleg's life was an occurrence in physical geography an earthquake which produced a vast chasm, separating two considerable parts of the earth, in or near the district inhabited by man. The possibility of some geological con- vulsion at or about that time, and somewhere near where mankind then were, can indeed be neither affirmed nor de- nied no history or geography, sacred or secular, having any thing to say about it. The first named idea we are disposed the rather to embrace, it appearing to us the more plausible, as it certainly is the more common. The implication seems to be that of a division or dispersion of nations, like that of streams of water from one source, and that as this occurred in the days of Peleg, he received his name from this event. It is worthy of notice that the original term, or the root from which it comes, is elsewhere, as e. g., Psalm 55 : 9, applied to denote not a physical but a moral division, and in the place just referred to, one singularly analogous to that which we take to have given occasion to Phaleg's name. Josephus says, " He was called Phaleg, because he was born at the dispersion of the nations to their several countries ; for Phaleg among the Hebrews signifies division" Now, upon examination, it will be ascertained that this man Phaleg or Peleg was born the one hundred and first year after the flood. If this was the name given him at his birth because that was the exact era of the Dispersion, and if 14 302 WHAT THE NAME "PELEG" INDICATES. we allow some ten or twenty years to intervene between the first arrival of the migrators in Shinar and this event an interval apparently requisite for taking the inchoative steps, making the indispensable preparatory arrangements, and the actual commencement and prosecution of the work event- uating in a division or dispersion of the people, it will then have been eighty or ninety years after the deluge that the immigrants arrived at that spot on the Euphrates where they concluded to establish themselves. As, however, Peleg lived, in all, two hundred and thirty-nine years, and as in the pas- sage referred to it is only said, in general terms, that " in his days was the earth divided," several writers of note have preferred a later period in Peleg's life than that of his birth, as the exact epoch of the dispersion, some his midlife, i. e. one hundred and twenty years subsequent to his birth ; which, added to the one hundred years preceding his birth, would bring the period of the dispersion to two hundred and twenty years posterior to the flood, and so the date of the arrival of the Shinar immigrants at their new home about two hundred or two hundred and ten years after the egression of our patri- arch and his family from the ark. In such case the name Peleg must have been assigned to him who bore it either prophetically, or else was not the appellation originally given him, but was appropriated years afterwards, and on account of the occurrence of the event which it designated. The Comprehensive Commentary, in notes on Gen. 11 : 1,2, says, "Many learned men are of opinion that the events here recorded occurred about the time of Peleg's birth, or one hundred and one years after the deluge ; but their arguments are by no means conclusive ; and the idea impressed on the mind in reading the chapter, of the numbers to which the family of Noah was already increased, favors the opinion that a longer number of years had elapsed. Probably the division of the earth before mentioned was a distinct trans- action from the dispersion which took place on this occasion. QUERY AS TO THE IMMIGRANTS. 303 Some regular division of the earth seems to have taken place at the time Peleg was born, probably by divine appointment, under the direction of Noah and his sons." Another question concerning which you will doubtless wish to hear something remarked, and which we could not indeed justi- fiably pass by in silence, is this : Did all or only a part of man- kind, then existing, constitute the company who journeyed from the east and became settlers in Shinar ? Let the man step forward, if such a one there be, who can decisively respond to this interrogation. In regard to it there may be considered room for, as there certainly has been, a discrepance of opinion. In the first place, Mr. Shuckford is quite confident in his belief that only a part of Noah's descendants travelled to Shinar from his far easterly mountain-bed where he has the ark sink to rest. This author makes Noah and a portion of his progeny, from thence pass over, first, into the adjacent part of Tartary, and thence, soon after, into the district lying in the northwestern part of China. For this his twofold opinion, his stronger or more prominent reasons are the fol- lowing : first, there is no mention in particular made of Noah in all the proceedings connected with the Shinar settlement and dispersion, a circumstance utterly unaccountable, in his view, had this patriarch been of the number. Second, the character of much of the proceedings of the Shinarites was such as to indicate his absence, instead of presence. Third, China, historically viewed, must have been at least as early settled as Chaldea. Fourth, a Chaldean tradition about the Deluge, (formerly referred to) makes Xisuthrus, (so they called Noah), after coming with his wife, daughter, and pilot, forth from the ark, and offering sacrifice, to disap- pear and never to be seen again ; whilst Xisuthrus's sons, according to the same tradition, journeyed towards Baby- lonia, and built Babylon and several other cities. Fifth, the language and learning, as well as history of the Chinese, all favor this opinion. There are reasons which Mr. Shuck- 304 WHETHER ALL OR ONLY A PART ford specifies for believing that the Chinese Fohi (Fohee) and Noah were one and the same person. (See Shuckford's Connexions, vol. 1, book 2, p. 99, &c.) That some of these reasons, as expanded by this writer, are very plausible, can- not with reason be disputed. There are other authors of prominence who, whilst they do not accord in opinion with Shuckford respecting the extreme orient landing of the ark, and so concerning the locality of the prime settlement of the Noachic family after leaving it, yet so far agree with him as to imagine that those whom the sacred historian speaks of in chapter 11: 2, as migrating to Shinar, were only a part of the existing human race. Preferring the Septuagint, or some similar, to the Hebrew chronology, or selecting a later period than that of the birth of Peleg as indicating the epoch, and thus making room for it, they held forth that the Babelic dispersion occurred at a considerably later period than the beginning of the second century after the Deluge, and that, under the direction of Noah or of Noah's God, there had occurred a previous division or dispersion of our second father's descend- ants ; and that those who at length migrated to Shinar were not under the guidance of the best of leaders, or under the influence of the best of impulses, and were mostly indeed Hamites. A little of Mr. Bryant's view, as given in his Ancient Mythology, (vol. 6, p. 260,) is. the following: " When mankind had become very numerous, it pleased God to allot to the various families different regions to which they were to retire : and they accordingly, in the days of Peleg, did remove and betake themselves to their different depart- ments. But the sons of Cush would not obey. They went off under the conduct of the arch-rebel Nimrod, and seem to have been for a long time in a roving state ; but at last they arrived at the plains of Shinar. These they found occupied by Ashur (Gen. 10: 11) and his sons; for they had been placed there by divine appointment. But they ejected him OF THE NOACHID.E ENTERED SHINAR. 305 and seized upon his dominions." With this view of Bryant, Dr. J. P. Smith substantially agrees. The view of Mr. Gleig may be seen in detail in his History of the Bible, vol. 1, chap. 5. It would seem necessarily to follow from all interpretations of the record of this type, that what Moses relates as occurring at Babel, of which we are soon to speak, had little to do with the actual origination of the various languages and nations of the earth. From the tenor of their reasoning it is manifestly the impression of most if not all of the authors to whom we are now alluding, that such were the motives by which the Shinaric Babel-builders were actuated, as to be necessarily preclusive of the idea that either Noah or any of that portion of his progeny of similar moral or spiritual type with him, could have mingled with such a band, or been, after the most distant manner even, participants in their deeds. And this last-named impression, perhaps,' may have constituted the prime motive power in the devising of the theory at which we have been hinting. Now, as it may be said both of Mr. Shuckford's view and of the somewhat variant one of Mr. Bryant, that they do not appear to harinonize with the most literal or direct interpreta- tion of the Mosaic account, the view naturally suggested by the language of Moses to the mind of the plain, unsophisti- cated reader seems to us preferable, if the difficulties ap- parently standing in the way of its adoption can, at the same time, and after a manner coincident with reason, be met and overcome. We submit, then, whether such reader, upon casting his eye over the first and second verses of the eleventh chapter of Genesis, would fail to receive the impression that the totality of then existent mankind are comprised in the migrating company that, journeying from the east, entered the plain of Shinar. May there not be a rational entertainment of the belief that during the entire lapse of a century, or of two or even three centuries, from the deluge falling, as either extreme of this vaguely indicated period would, " in the 306 THE UNITY OF THE SHINARIC BAND days of Peleg," the whole of postdiluvian humankind would be under the influence of strong and controlling im- pulses, to keep together ? Near relationship, warm mutual affection, regard to safety amidst threatening dangers, on the one hand, and on the other, the previously ascertained peculiar eligibility of the broad, beautiful, fruitful Shinaric plain, lying between and on either side of the rivers Tigris and Euphrates, and extending some distance both above and below their junction these all, together with the mutual assistances which could in various ways be rendered, and which could not, up to this time, be well dispensed with, would, we may believe, serve to bring them, in unbroken ranks, into this exceedingly inviting territory, a territory, every thing considered, which would much surpass any of prior occupancy or discovery. The Sovereign Supreme had indeed a great and wise purpose to accomplish. He would not have the different and distant portions of the globe remain unpeopled or unimproved. He knew that it would tend to the more rapid increase of the posterity of our patriarch, after a certain season, to have the bands loosed which kept them together. Population is known to increase far more rapidly in new countries, where the resources of the land are without limit, than in old ones, where men keep together in masses, whose numbers press closely on the means of subsistence. Intellectually, morally, religiously, important benefits would, when the proper season should come, accrue to men by being thrown into distinct bands, into separate and more or less isolated communities. The population of the Old World had suffered immense detriment by living as com- pactly, as much huddled together, as they did. Were man- kind not depraved were their moral state altogether what it ought to be then, to the extent that the means of subsist- ence, convenience, and general comfort would allow, they might cluster together. Heaven is not and never will be rendered uncomfortable, how densely populated soever any NOT LONG TO REMAIN UNBROKEN. 307 portions of its dominions are, or all of them may at length become. The greater and more dense such a population as the heavenly, the better. But Adam's posterity, Noah's posterity both the first and second father's children, here, are a good deal different from our Divine Father's children, human and angelic, on the celestial plains. The inhabitants of this planet are " very far gone from original righteous- ness " so far gone, that the mutual influence of example, and of unobstructed and intimate general intercourse, would on the whole be far from salutary far from promotive of individual and social welfare and happiness. Better, consid- ering what they are, vastly better, to have many and great obstructions thrown in the way of intimate and general asso- ciation and intercourse ; better to have them divided off into a multiplicity of tribes, and peoples, and nations, by such varieties of language as to prevent different portions from transmitting their thoughts to all other minds, or their feel- ings to all other hearts ; and by such impediments to inter- course as are interposed by what are termed natural barriers* by rivers, hills, seas, mountains. The humankind, at the time they entered the plains of Shinar, were on the eve of the period that divine wisdom and benevolence had fixed on for throwing them apart into different bands ; for commencing a process which would eventuate in locating them in numerous, diversified, and wide spread portions of earth's broad surface north, south, east, west ; in this continent and in that ; until all habitable parts of the globe should be marked by human footprints. EVENING TWENTY-FOURTH. YOUNG GENTLEMEN: How interesting a fact is that which is made known to us in the initial verse of the eleventh chapter of Genesis a fact of which we should have remained in profound ignorance but for divine communication. At the time of the immigra- tion to the plains of Shinar, and ever, antecedently, from the hour that human lips first uttered a syllable, downward, only one language prevailed among mankind. " The whole earth was of one language (lip) and of one speech," one kind of words. By "the whole earth," is obviously meant, in this verse, the inhabitants of the whole earth a Hebraic idiom of very frequent occurrence. If you inquire, What was this language ? you must allow us to inquire in return, What answer shall we give ? As the question, how- ever, is one which cannot with reason be entirely waived, we will, in the first place, venture the remark, that it was doubtless, in our view, the language which Noah and his sons spake when they came from, whilst in, and before they entered, the ark ; the language which Noah's father, Lamech, and grandfather, Methuselah, spake. And as these lived, the former fifty-six, and the latter two hundred and forty- three years on the earth anterior to the death of Adam, it was the language which our first father spake. Such were INQUIRY AS TO THE PRIMITIVE LANGUAGE. 309 the circumstances that, though the interval was a protracted one, no direct divine interference was requisite to preserve the unity. There was little room for any great change of language, when mankind lived so long as they are reported to have done before the flood, when two links (Adam, Methuselah) constituted, so to speak, the whole chain from the Creation to the Deluge. This longevity was a potent and effectual conservative of the great vehiele of thought in its primal form, as you must all perceive. If some new terms were, from time to time, introduced ; if the vehicle, after a while, became even considerably more capacious than it primarily was, the great comparative compactness of the population, (at which we, on a former occasion, hinted,) pre- vailing during a part of that morning of the world, would afford the means of easy and rapid transmission to all the portions of the body. There were no great inducements tending to the origination of considerable alterations in lan- guage ; but strong motives operating to the contrary. But, toward the affording of an answer to the question, What was the primitive, and, up to the period which Genesis 11: 1 contemplates, the universal language of mankind? you may think we have still not approached very near. It would, young gentlemen, require a considerable measure of courage, or of confidence, to essay an approach much nearer. No question in philology has, perhaps, been more largely or warmly discussed than has this. "The Hebrew, Syriac, Arabic, Chaldee, Phoenician, Egyptian, Ethiopic, Sanscrit, and Chinese," remarks Dr. Hales, " have each had their re- spective advocates for the palm of priority and precedence." He might have added to the list several others. " Of these various claimants," continues Dr. Hales, " the language spoken by the inhabitants of the first districts occupied by Noah's family, after the flood, seems to have the fairest pretensions to originality, or rather of affinity to the primitive language, 14* 310 INQUIRY AS TO THE PRIMITIVE LANGUAGE. supposing all to be altered, more or less, by lapse of time and change of place ; Mortalia facta peribunt, Nedum sermonum stet honos et gratia yivax. HOR. And accordingly ' the tongues of the Japhethites ' are men- tioned, Gen. 10 : 5 ; 'the tongues of the Hamites/ verse 20 ; and ' the tongues of the Shemites,' verse 31 ; which, perhaps, are placed last, as varying least from the primitive language, because they lay nearest to the original settlement after the deluge." Of all the families of languages, the Shemitic used to be the more favored claimant ; and though there was rivalry among the members of this latter family, the Hebrew collected by far the more numerous suffrages in its favor. "From the antiquities of Josephus and the Targums, or Chaldee paraphrases of Onkelos and of Jerusalem," says Dr. Wiseman, "down to Anton, in 1800, Christians and Jews considered its pretensions as almost definitively decided ; and names of the highest rank in literature, Lipsius, Scaliger, Bochart, and Vossius, have trusted the truth of many of their theories to the certainty of this opinion." In favor of the position, that the Hebrew was the primitive and only prevalent language from the Creation till the time of the Confusion of Tongues, we will hint at two of the more prominent and plausible arguments which have fallen under our notice. The first of them is in substance this : The names of persons and of places mentioned in the early history of the world are pure Hebrew. Thus Adam, Eve, Cain, Abel, Seth, Mehujael, Methusael, Methuselah, Noah, Shem, &c. ; and of Eden, Nod, Enoch, (the city,) &c., are all words of purely Hebraic form, structure, and signification. These are found in the earliest history that from the pen of Moses ; nor is there the least evidence or appearance of their being interpretations or translations, by the historian, of primitive or earlier terms, as has by some been suggested. INQUIRY AS TO THE PRIMITIVE LANGUAGE. oil Had they been translations, the fact, it is thought, would have somehow been indicated. The sacred penman gives not the faintest or most distant hint of giving a translation of preexistent terms ; nor does he, in the whole course of his history, when speaking of the names of persons, utter a single word from which we can infer the existence of an earlier language. Nay, more: all the proper names in the ante- diluvian history are personally and historically descriptive, and the verb or appellative which forms the name really and always gives the sound and meaning wanted ; which could not be, if the compositions which we have were a translation from a prior document in a different language. Thus : "Ishah, because she was taken from Ish" (Gen. 2 : 23) ; "Adam called the name of his Ishah, Havah, because she was the mother of all Hai" (3 : 20) ; " Cain, because Canithi, a man from Jehovah," (4:1). " She called his name Shetk, for God shath for me another seed," (verse 20.) Think of each name, too, as having in it prophetic or historic signifi- cancy as embracing in itself the reason why that person or place was given that name and not another. The other argument urged in support of the before-mentioned position is, in a word, this : If any of the three branches of Noah's offspring were not involved in the crime of the Babel-builders, they would not be directly involved in the judgment which fell upon those builders, in other words, they would almost certainly retain the language previously spoken by them, that is, the primeval language. But we shall hereafter see a good reason for inferring that the Shemites were not involved in the crime; consequently, that they continued afterward to speak the same tongue as before; but it is known that a peculiarly prominent branch of them did afterward speak the Hebrew that this was eminently, exclusively, their language. Many distinguished philologists however there are, and the number appears to have been of late considerably on the 312 INQUIRY AS TO THE PRIMITIVE LANGUAGE. increase, who think they find such formidable objections against this position, as to render it inadmissible ; who feel disposed without hesitancy to declare that, whether con- sidered historically, or with reference to its internal structure, the Hebrew cannot lay just claim to be the primitive tongue. We will merely remark, as to some of the objections which we have seen specifically urged against this position, that they do not appear to us of any allowable weight, being based upon the assumption that the prime language of man- kind was of human invention an assumption the validity of which we can by no means admit. The claims of the Chinese to be the primitive tongue have been warmly advocated by Webb, and several other writers. The leading considerations that are urged appear to be, its confessedly great antiquity, and its simple monosyllabic character. Of it, (in his Connexions, vol. 1, p. 122) Mr. Shuckford says, that "it seems to have some marks of being the first original language of mankind. Its words are few, and all its words are confessedly monosyllables. If Noah, the great father and restorer of mankind, upon coming out of the ark, settled here, it is very probable that he left here the universal language of the world. One thing, at least," he continues, "appears pretty clear, that whatever was the original of the Chinese tongue, it seems to be the first that ever was in those parts. All changes and alterations of language are commonly for the better, but the Chinese language is so like a first and uncultivated essay, that it is hard to conceive any other tongue to have been prior to it ; and whether this be the first language or not, the circum- stances of this language consisting of monosyllables, is a very considerable argument that the first language was in this respect like it ; for though it is natural to think that man- kind might begin to form single sounds first, and afterwards come to enlarge their speech by doubling and redoubling them ; yet it can in no wise be conceived that if men had at CONCERNING THE ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE. 313 first known the plenty of expression arising from words of more syllables than one, any person or people would have been so stupid as to have reduced their languages to words of but one." In support of the Sanskrit as the primeval tongue, some of the chief arguments set forth by its advocates are, its great though unknown antiqueness; its radical materials being monosyllabic ; and its regularity, richness and finish. Be- sides the several other tongues named as claimants in the quotation made from Dr. Hales, who would have dreamed that the world could have ever seen such visionaries, yet such there have been, as have zealously advocated the Cel- tic, the Biscayan, and even the Low Dutch, as the language of our first and second father ! Whilst, however, there have been warm and elaborate endeavors made, and by large numbers, to maintain some particular known language to have been the primeval, there have been, on the other hand, some of the greatest names in in the study and comparison of languages, who believe and argue that " the primeval language has not been anywhere preserved, but that fragments of it must, from the common origin of all, everywhere exist ; that these fragments will indicate the original derivation and kindredship of all ; and that some direct causation of no common agency has op- erated to begin, and has so permanently affected mankind as to establish, a striking and universally experienced diversity." These last are the words of a later writer than Grotius, who himself said, " Nullibi puram exstare, sed reliquias ejus esse in linguis omnibus." Whatever the prime language of the human kind was, one thing we think may with positiveness be declared concerning it : that it originated not on earth, but in heaven ; was the invention of God, not of man. It was a gift communicated to our species by the Supreme Donor, and early so early as the day on which creatures of this order began to be. So 314 CONCERNING THE ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE. the Bible teaches ; so human reason, unperverted, teaches. As man was not a monad, nor barely so much higher a creature as a monkey, primarily ; as his distinguishing traits as an intellectual and moral being are not the exclusive re- sult of spontaneous and prolonged development ; as he came from the hands of a Wise and Omnific Creator, and in the form and with the powers of a man not of an inferior animal of man, too, physically and mentally mature, not with the mind and body of an infant ; as he was designed to occupy a peculiarly important position, and act an important part, as an intellectual, social, and moral being, on this planet, his Creator would afford him the indispensable means and facilities, at the outset, for answering the great, mo- mentous purposes of his existence ; and one of the promi- nent among these would be Language, the main, almost exclusive vehicle for conveying the products of one mind and heart to the mind and heart of another ; for prosecuting an interchange of those higher and more valuable commodities especially the mental and the moral. All theories whose object or burden is, to find the origin of language anywhere short of the Divine Munificence, involve impracticabilities most gigantic, and absurdities most gross. If any linguistic vehicle, copious enough to be w r orthy of the name of language, were not necessarily, for the most part, arbitrary, having in it little of what grammarians term onomatopoeia, the ab- surdity would not appear so great or monstrous of assigning it a human paternity. A language, made up mostly of sounds between which and the meaning there is no natural connec- tion, if it were from man, would be, we may suppose, from him in an associated capacity ; would be the result of consul- tation and mutually expressed consent and arrangement. Then, what mind of the least remove from perfect stolidity or obtuseness can fail to perceive the absurdity involved : a conversational convention or conventions held a lingual consultation had to invent or settle upon a vehicle of conver- ABUSE OF LINGUISTIC UNITY. 315 sation or medium of intercourse! Verily the projectors of such a theory can hardly fail of securing notoriety of im- mortalizing themselves ; but we are not so enormously en- vious as to grudge them the kind of notoriety which they have been or shall be so successful as to secure. Greatly prefer remaining would we in our sombrous obscurity. This is not indeed a solitary instance it is one of the multitudi- nous instances in which the human heart's reluctance manifests itself to give unto the Lord the tribute of honor and of gratitude which is his due. This one language, whatever one it was, flowing, as we have thus briefly argued, directly from the choice and full fountain of Heavenly Munificence, had, along with other divine gifts, been greatly misused or perverted by the ante- diluvians ; and the time was now hurrying on apace, when there would be afforded by postdiluvians, too, a specimen of abuse. Among the Noachidae, thus far, the linguistic unity had served a good purpose ; and had it thereafter been made to serve no other, the linguistic diversities which have since, and to an extent great and in some respects very incommo- dious, prevailed, would probably, for the most part, have remained unknown. From some of the divine regulations, restraints, and provisions, already hinted at, you cannot but have caught a glimpse of God's anxious desire that the post- diluvian race should not run into the impious and horrid excesses of antediluvian times. He did not wish to bring another sweeping and universally devastating deluge of waters over the earth ; he had determined he would not had even declared he would not on this point the Deity had com- mitted himself. But whilst God had determined and declared this, he had not done it unwittingly or incautiously. Pie had coetaneously determined, as occasions or urgent necessities should present themselves, to erect the barriers, or give rise to the obstacles, one after another, which should prevent such superfluities of naughtiness, such awful excesses of wicked- 316 DIVINE DETERMINATION AGAINST THE RETURN ness, from again having an existence among human kind. The social principle in man is of God's implanting ; and whilst its exercises are kept within legitimate bounds, such bounds as not to contravene God's purposes, or thwart his kind designs toward the race, it may have its free indulgence and its thrilling play ; but when it is suffered greatly to transcend those bounds, the consequence will be not only offence to God, but injury to man ; which latter indeed is a thing not well pleasing to Infinite Benevolence. If the Ruler Supreme, then, throw obstacles in the way of such excessive and criminal exercise, in the case of those who are guilty in the matter; if he throw inconveniences and discomforts into their lot ; if he resort to efficient means for putting them apart ; drive them, not as individuals indeed, but in families, tribes, bands, into different and distant local- ities, they will have no good reason for surprise or complaint. Restraints to sin, obstructions to its increasing and awfully abounding prevalence, how rough soever the garb which they may wear, are less judgments than mercies ; have an angel's heart, though they appear to show the lion's paw or the croc- odile's covering. Such mischiefs as rose out of the prevalence of one lan- guage in the Old World, the Most High was resolutely deter- mined should not prevail in the New. When He therefore should witness the inceptions of mischiefs among the postcli- luvians from this source, and, with such a mind as He had, knew to what, if unchecked, they would grow ; when, in the world this side the flood, he should observe the social prin- ciple inchoately abused, and foresee the danger of its run- ning into abuses far greater abuses too that would be likely to become widespread and permanent, unless some counter- acting force or preventive influence should be thrown in he might be looked for to interpose ; after some manner to stay the commencing or stop the threatening tide. An occasion, as we believe has been already hinted, is now about to arise, OF ANTEDILUVIAN WICKEDNESS. 317 demanding God's interposition to prevent a great and alarm- ing increase of wickedness ; to break into fragments a social body that threatened to assimilate itself, in moral character- istics, to that awfully corrupt body of the Old World whom the Almighty, in just judgment toward them, but in mercy toward the then future generations, destroyed. For a brief season after their arrival on the plains of Shinar the immigrants would reside in tents ; but being well pleased with what they saw of the country in general, and induced particularly by the measure of fertility which their inceptive agricultural operations showed it to possess, they soon commenced the erection of more permanent as well as more commodious and costly habitations ; and as a large proportion of these, we may suppose, were, for safety as well as sociality, located contiguous to each other, there would, in the course of a very few years, appear a cluster amount- ing to a scattered village of not inconsiderable dimensions which seems to have at length excited the ambition of more or less to see the settlement so enlarged, and structures erected of such size as well as numbers, as to constitute a respectable city. There being no stone quarries to be found in all that region, and the settlers wishing the edifices which they reared to be of substantial materials, and discovering the means in abundance for it they made bricks, and, with bitumen for cement, they progressed, not indeed with re- markable rapidity, but as fast as their other necessary avoca- tions, as well as their gradually increasing numbers, would allow, in this work. Thus far there may have been no marked criminality in the motives of the greater portion at least, probably of nearly the whole company, of the Shi- narites. There were a few enterprising and ambitious spirits, doubtless, who from near the commencement of the time in which they entered upon the erection of permanent habita- tions, began to indulge more of an aspiring disposition than they had ever before felt ; and every thing about them seemed 318 AMBITIOUS ASPIRATIONS AT SIIINAE. adapted to foster such a spirit. One active, bold, energetic, and comparatively young man in particular, who had already signalized himself somewhat, in such ways as were practica- ble more especially in hunting and had been for a while the leader of a band in this had begun to meditate greater things, and put himself forward as leader ; in which thing the majority probably at first rather unwittingly or silently acquiesced ; and afterwards, as his claims became more and more prominent and plausible, the major portion, setting aside or too much overlooking patriarchal authority, might be in- duced to lift their voice for him. Noah and his three sons had hitherto been the counsellors and principal leaders of the junior band ; and, on account of their seniority and greater wisdom and experience, should have been still, and ever, until they should be actually disabled by age and con- sequent mental or bodily infirmity. Noah, in particular, should have continued not only their magnate, but their fa- vorite ruler, we would think, while life should last, or until dotage should absolutely compel his retirement from the ac- tivities of busy, or his abandonment of the cares and per- plexities of regal life. He was indeed now an old man, beginning to bend under the weight of years, and perhaps little able to bear, longer, aught of what was intrinsically onerous. That this patriarch was not among the Shinar immigrants we are unable to discover any such reasons as to constrain us to believe. It has been conjectured by some, and with much strenuousness maintained, that he could not have been of the company who came hither, because no particular mention is made of him at any time after the plains of Shinar are entered. But, his name had not been mentioned by the historian during the period of at least sixty or seventy years before never subsequent to the time in which he uttered the prophecies on which we briefly commented if we except the brief record which chronologically belongs to a period considerably posterior to THE TOWER OF BABEL WHY ERECTED. 319 that which we have yet reached. If there is no mention directly made of him for some three hundred years anterior to his death, then the silence of the historian cannot reason- ably be produced as evidence that he was not one of the company who came to Shinar. If there is no mention of him for so long a period, there is then, of course, no record of his being, during that period, elsewhere. As to the silence of the historian about our patriarch for so long a season, we hardly need be surprised at it, if we will but consider two things : First, That Noah had already been far more the subject of notice, on the part of the sacred writer, than any man who had preceded him, as great and noted as some of them must in their day have been. Secondly, The archaic annalist is studying brevity, that he may the sooner arrive at that portion of our postdiluvian father's descendants, of which " the father of the faithful," that is, Abraham, stands at the head. Next came the proposition to erect a tower perhaps not a loudly or openly proclaimed proposition at the first, particu- larly as to the chief object the projector had in view in its erection but a whispered suggestion, coming primarily from some rather young but ambitious spirit, and thrown cautiously into the ear of first a few, " to feel of them," as the phrase is ; and receiving encouragement, it is spread more widely, and by degrees more openly, until the prospect appears fair for its being entertained favorably by the majority, who had more of youth on their side than wisdom, more energy than caution, more ambition or pride than piety. There have been various conjectures concerning the object or objects had in view by the projectors in the erection of this tower. Josephus and some others have supposed that it was a measure of safety against some future devastating flood. There is, in this, no great compliment paid to the faith of the Babel-builders, or else not to their faculty of memory. They had surely been taught by their pious ancestor what God had 320 THE TOWER OF BABEL WHY ERECTED. promised and covenanted in relation to this matter. If they did not believe, they have indeed had a multiplicity of imita- tors since their day. Never, from their time downward, has it been fashionable with the far major portion of mankind to believe God, or to live and act by faith in the declarations of Infinite Truth. But if these Babel-builders were without faith, must we believe them to have been also without sense or reason ? so utterly bereft or destitute of it as to flatter themselves with the fond conceit that any considerable num- ber of future generations could find a means of safety in any such tower as to magnitude which they could build ? or to select such a locality as a valley or plain, instead of a lofty mountain, to serve for protection against the towering waves of another Noachian Flood ? EVENING TWENTY-FIFTH. YOUNG GENTLEMEN: It has by some been conjectured that the Babelic Tower was designed as a temple of idolatry ; but of this there can be produced no sufficient evidence ; nor does it seem to us prob- able that the sin of idolatry began to prevail at so early a season after the deluge. Nor can we entertain the notion that it was intended as a mere ' monument of architectural effort and skill, like the pyramids of Egypt ; though it is not impossible but that in prosecuting the enterprise there was felt some ambitious desire to transmit to succeeding genera- tions, a name illustrious for grand design and bold undertak- ing. Of the paramount objects of the projector or projectors, one, and that which for a while at first might have been almost exclusively promulgated, not improbably was, to serve as a landmark in that sea of land, the vast and unbroken plains of Babylonia and the territory adjacent. They who, from time to time, and for one and another purpose, should traverse those plains, the compass of which was then unknown, would really feel to be essential something of this kind to serve as a landmark ; without which they might frequently be unable to find their way back to the seat of population ; and thus, involuntarily, considerable numbers might be scat- tered abroad, and lost as to the main settlement. There was no doubt a higher object, however, in the mind of at least the 322 THE BABELIC ^TOWER, ITS DESIGN. master spirit ; which was, to build up a vast central metropo- lis of a gradually extending and prospectively mighty empire a sort of universal monarchy. By the arrogant and aspir- ing leader in the notable emprise there was manifestly cherished a controlling desire that there should be no scatter- ing of the people into isolated and independent communities ; no dispersions of different portions of the Shinaric inhabitants into many, and far distant, and widely separated localities, which should lead to the establishment of a multiplicity of governments, with as many rulers at their heads respectively. Whilst it was, as a matter of course, expected that the popu- lation would, even rapidly, increase, such was the number already as to impel to this expectation it was the ambitious wish of the leader, and soon, probably, far beyond the wish of him alone, that that increase, calling for as rapidly increasing extent of territory to be occupied, should extend continuously in a widening circle, having for a common centre the city whose foundations were already laid, with its projected lofty tower now to be built, to serve to add ornament and magnifi- cence to the metropolis ; and, in anticipation of a rising necessity, now and then, for the employment of martial force to quell the insurrection, or by compulsion bring back stray- ing bands or migrating hordes, to answer, on the one hand, if need be, as a place of resort for defence or security, and, on the other, as a place of deposit and custody for arms. The site of the city and tower which at a subsequent period received the name of Babel, was on the west bank of the Euphrates, some three hundred miles above its mouth, and about twice that distance east of Jerusalem, the same site in part, we may believe, which was occupied afterwards by the great and renowned city of Babylon. The city of the Babel-builders, indeed, was probably the nucleus of the last named ; not having been destroyed, nor even the begun tower itself annihilated, as some have erroneously imagined, at the time of the Confusion. SIZE AND FORM OF THE TOWER. 323 Different suppositions have been made respecting the size and form of the projected and begun tower of the aspirant Shinaric builders. That it was intended to be a lofty structure, for one of that age, and for the number of hands that could or would be employed upon it, appears from chapter 11:4. It is spoken of by Josephus as also of " great thickness." Whether its shaft was round, square, hexagonal, or octagonal, we can- not speak determinately. You have probably seen it deline- ated as being in shape round, with a spiral pathway leading to the top (Stackhouse, vol. 1, p. 172) ; but it appears more credible that it was square or quadrangular ; and that struc- tures remaining in various parts of the world are transcripts or imitations of it. Strabo calls it " a square pyramid ; " and " a quadrangular pyramid " it is affirmed to have been by Coleman. In regard to the precise character of the proceeding the kind and measure of the impiety or culpability involved in the tower's erection what shall be said ? That the instigator and leader in the affair, and those under his direction or in- fluence, contravened any direct and known command of Heaven, there are writers who say that there is no scriptural authority for believing. As much as you have examined the writings of Moses, have you ever discovered any promulgated precept, relative to the matter, that was violated by them, unless it be that general injunction given to the Noachic family just after their leaving of the ark, to " multiply and replenish the earth ? " But had they known or remembered this general direction, must it necessarily have been apparent to them that in the act of rearing the tower there would be any contravention of it ? It is asserted by Josephus, but on what authority may not be to you very discernible, unless it be the precept just adverted to, that " God also commanded them to send colonies abroad for the thqrough peopling of the earth, and that they might not raise seditions among them- selves, but might cultivate a great part of the earth, and 324 CHARACTER OF THE ACT OF THE BABEL BUILDERS. enjoy its fruits after a plentiful manner. But they were so ill-instructed that they did not obey God ; for which reason they fell into calamities, and were made sensible by experi- ence of what sin they had been guilty. For when they flourished with a numerous youth, God admonished them again to send out colonies ; but they, imagining that the pros- perity they enjoyed was not derived from the favor of God, but supposing that their own power was the proper cause of the plentiful condition they were in, did not obey him. Nay, they added to this their disobedience to the divine will, the sus- picion that they were therefore ordered to send out separate colonies, that being divided asunder they might the more easily be oppressed." (Ant. p. 29.) Now whether this be an exactly veritable statement of the case, or not, we have seen it in substance reaffirmed by several writers ; and both Josephus and they ought to know what they have so positively averred to be so. We suspect predications of this nature to have been made by these authors rather on the ground of inference, than of any direct divine precept that they could find. In this latter respect they were probably no more successful than you have been unless they resorted to tradition rather than the historic averments of Moses. Yet suppose the Babel-builders, with their chieftain, were not aware of transgressing any direct divine injunction ; nay, more : suppose there never had been issued by the Lord any command from which they could infer that the creation of such a structure, and for such a purpose, would contravene the will of Heaven, it still remains a fact, that they were running counter, in their schemes and wishes, to God's intentions. The Ruler Supreme had in his mind quite a different purpose or plan from theirs. He saw what their motives and designs were. He wanted no universal monarchy to be founded on this his footstool no metropolis of the whole earth, either on the banks of the Euphrates or elsewhere. He desired that when the time should come INFERENCE RELATIVE TO THE PATRIARCH. 325 and it was now just at hand the different quarters of the earth should be colonized ; the human kind should be sprin- kled, so to speak, over different parts north, south, east, west, of J;he globe's surface ; thrown, as we intimated a while ago, into many peoples, and tribes, and nations. And his purpose must stand his plans be carried out his, not theirs. Their ambition and policy on the one hand, and His wisdom and benevolence on the other, in regard to the sta- tioning of Noah's fast-increasing descendants, and to what pertained otherwise to their lot, were so far from coalescing, that both could not be met and satisfied. The former, therefore, must be foiled. And God adopts his own wise and mild mode of doing it. He does not hurl down his thunderbolts and destroy them ; he does not cause the tower they were rearing, to totter and fall and bury them in its ruins. He inflicts upon them no physical suffering. He only throws in a bar to concerted action ; their main medium of intimacy this is interfered with ; their channel of inter- course was blocked up ; the bands which had united them, bound them closely together, were broken ; they are obliged to stop in their work cannot proceed. Oh, how are the wise taken in their own craftiness ; and the counsel of the froward, how is it carried headlong. The Lord disappointeth the devices of the crafty, so that their hands cannot perform their enterprise. (Job 5 : 12, 13.) That the projectors and builders of the tower were not under the controi of commend- able or justifiable impulses, is very evident, since they had not regard to the divine glory or will in the matter. Pride, a towering ambition, a spirit of self-aggrandizement, actuated them in what they did. But where is our patriarchal sage whilst the plot is matur- ing, and, afterward, whilst the tower is rising toward the sky ? Where is that aged man of God, who, in years gone by, when the whole world had contemned and forsaken the Lord, and run into flagitious excesses, into the extremes of 15 326 INFERENCE RELATIVE TO THE PATRIARCH. wickedness, still unflinchingly clung to the Almighty, and was so unswervingly regardful of his Heavenly Sovereign's will and pleasure ? Has he been privy to the scheme of the Ba- bel-builders, and, though too aged and infirm to bring physi- cal aid to the enterprise, has he lent it his countenance, and encouraged and urged others to summon their physical ener- gies to the work of pushing the offensive structure toward the heavens ? Not so. Aware what manner of spirit this old saint was of what a tender and superlative concern had been for centuries cherished by him for the divine glory, and how opposed to human when set in antagonism with and pro- cured at the expense of the divine, those occupying the van in the Babelic translation would be so far from expecting to obtain his sanction to a project like theirs, if its features in frank and undisguised fairness were all laid before him, took great pains, no doubt, to shroud in impenetrable concealment their main designs; endeavored, by subterfuges, misrepre- sentations, ingenious devices, dishonest artifices, to keep him as ignorant as possible of the leading motives impelling them to the enterprise. This they would be strongly induced to do from fear of antagonistic influence from one so venerable, and whose will had formerly, for so long a season, been law to his offspring. If, after any manner, from any source, this patriarchal chief did receive hints or gather suspicions rela- tive to their principal object in this undertaking, and if he had received at any time such intimations from on high as to bring him to some understanding of God's designs or inten- tions in regard to the settlement of his descendants, and the formation of a large number of tribes and nations in different parts of the wide world a thing which we think there is pretty good reason for believing did occur at the period and in connection with the prophecies which he, at a prior season, had uttered respecting the prospective situation or destiny of his three sons and their progeny respectively he then did not fail to discountenance the ambitious and reprehensible WHO WERE THE BUILDERS. 327 proceeding, and, to the extent of his then existing ability, labor to dissuade all over whom he could hope to have influ- ence, from lending aid, in any measure or manner, to the work. If such intimations as we have just hinted at had been received by Noah, he had probably promulgated the fact, either years previously, or, it may be, just before the forma- tion of the project relating to the city and tower. He might, just antecedently to this latter, have said to his posterity, now on the plains of Shinar : " It is not in accordance with the will of Heaven, and so will not be expedient or proper for you all to entertain the idea of settling here permanently, and so, of making arrangements accordingly. Not only will your num- bers soon become too great for you to be able comfortably to reside or even obtain the means essential to subsistence in even so broad a territory as this appears to be ; but I have received intimations from that Father who originated our being, and who from his celestial pavilion is now looking down upon us, that his desires and designs are that by you and your descendants the different portions of the wide world shall be colonized." And we may suppose our patriarch to follow this general announcement with considerable par- ticularity and fulness of detail. And it may have been this announcement that gave rise indeed to the first thought, and then to the ripening, of the scheme we are considering. The master spirit revolves the matter in his mind, and says to himself, " This is not agreeable to me. Let me summon a council, consisting of a few, in whom I can confide, and who are accustomed to listen to me." The issue is, a resolution that no such occurrence as a sundering of the bands and a separation of the Shinaric residents must take place ; and then the means of prevention are considered and determined on : " Go to," say they ; " let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven, and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth." Here then is rebellion, direct and stout rebellion, and 328 WHO DISSENTED FROM THE ENTERPRISE. not merely against Noah, but God. And what gives particu- lar plausibility to this view of the affair is, that the leader in the undertaking was called by a name which signifies " son of rebellion," and which is thought to have been assigned him either prophetically, or, more probably, after and on ac- count of his prominent agency in this transaction. This man, with several coadjutors much resembling himself and under his influence, appears to have been successful in inducing a large proportion of the people all the Karaites, nearly or quite the whole number of the Japhethites, and of the Shem- ites some, we cannot say just how many, to unite with them in rearing the projected structure. Among the means used to weaken and destroy the influence of the patriarch's counsels, remonstrances, and entreaties, with those of them who were at first somewhat reluctant about enlisting in the project, one probably was, to represent the old man as in his dotage and behind the times. There were those, however, who, having listened to and profited eminently by this aged saint's instruc- tions and counsels before, would not turn a deaf ear to him now. These were the pious among the Shemites. We some time since caught a glimpse of the contrast in character between Shem and Ham. These contrasts reap- pear are distinguishably stamped on their offspring. If the Shemites, for want of numerical strength, cannot control or stay the proceedings in reference to the tower, they can at least refrain from taking any part in its erection. They can continue at their lawful and useful avocations ; and, if not all, a considerable proportion of them all the pious, and probably some others did so. As to the progeny of Japheth they, like their paternal ancestor of that name, were full of energy ; had a soul fired with ambition and love of enterprise ; the elements of greatness pervading their whole being ; panting to give birth and enlargement both to the useful and ornamental of life ; ready not only to think, but to act having not alone heads to plan, but hands to THE DIVINE INTERFERENCE. 329 execute; inclined in a measure, but not equally with the Shemites, to inquire about the moralities of projects and pro- ceedings ; somewhat, but not excessively, scrupulous less inquisitive, as to the right and the wrong, than the expedient and inexpedient ; differing both from the Shemite and Hamite lines in several important particulars besides what course do these Japhethites take in relation to the tower? We have already, in a general way, answered that question. That they would in a body go with the Shemites, could, with such traits as we have specified, be hardly expected ; nor, with the measure of scrupulosity which they had, that they would, unanimously and with full consent, unite with the prime projectors and their kin, the Hamites. The far major num- ber, however, nearly the whole, say, Let the tower go up ; and they prove not inefficient auxiliaries. Indeed the tower would have never reached a moiety of the size and height it did, but for them. " The Lord " the same yesterday, to-day, and forever not indifferent to earthly transactions then, any more than now " came down to see the city and the tower which the children of men were building," (fifth verse). Mark the phrase, "the children of men" It may be used here, as some have thought, in contradistinction from " the children of God" indicating that none of the pious embarked in the transaction a thing, it is to be believed, strictly true; or it may have been intended to express, in a general way, the fact that the people, i. e., the major portion, were more or less concerned in the enterprise. Unquestionably was this so, for the project would never have gone forward as it did, had not the majority of the Shinarites been in its favor. The Omniscient inspected the whole character of the pro- ceeding; traced out all the vast results which would, both sooner and later, here and there, flow out of it, should the scheme be consummated. " Go to " He is resolved what to do. The narration, as Dr. Smith remarks, " is given -in the 330 THE CONFUSION OP TONGUES : extreme style of anthropopathic and anthropomorphic de- scription." " Go to, let us go down and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech. And," it is added, "they left off to build the city," including, doubtless, the tower. And, in the way of explanation, is this remark subjoined by the narrator, "Therefore is the name of it called Babel, (Confusion,) because the Lord did there con- found the language of all the earth." Note, en passant, the concluding clause of that verse, (ninth.) which some seem anxious to limit in import to "all the land" as meaning merely Shinar because they do not wish to be precluded the entertainment of a favorite idea, namely, that there were other descendants of Noah existing at the time elsewhere, and in a variety of localities ; and, moreover, speaking, probably, ere then, several, they do not tell us how many, languages or dialects. The confusion of tongues which took place at Balel what shall we, young gentlemen, say upon this topic ? If there be a man possessing the exact diagnosis of the case, we wish he might occupy our chair while this point is under consideration. It was rather a waggish remark of a piquant writer, that man being an instrument of a thousand strings, there might be expected all sorts of tunes from him. Certain it is, that on this, as on innumerable other subjects, there is considerable diversity of sentiment or conjecture. As to some of its features, we are indeed prepared to speak positively ; as to others, we can only speak conjecturally, or lay before you the conjectures of others. In the first place, we may say, what is in antagonism to the speculations of some, that there was miraculous intervention. God interposed, and directly, in the case. An effect or effects were produced traceable im- mediately to Him. And so the historian palpably represents it. In the next place, the principal effect pertained to lan- guage. This we say, in opposition to the opinion of some, the learned Vitringa for one, that the operation was not upon INQUIRY AS TO ITS CHARACTER. 331 the words or modes of speech at all, but upon the tempers, views, and counsels, of those engaged in the Babel-building enterprise. The author just named, thinks that the language of the record may be understood as importing such a discord- ance of opinion, such a dissimilarity or want of unity in counsel and purpose produced, as effectually to prevent a further prosecution of the work, and such a sundering of the bonds of amity as to lead to a separation socially; that there was a bar interposed to further concord a splitting of the multitude into various antagonistic or contending fac- tions, which could no longer cooperate, but were necessitated to separate and disperse in different directions leading to the fulfilment of the divine purpose, and the frustration of theirs. In support of this interpretation, Vitringa appeals to the usage of the sacred writers in several passages, where this sense of the terms appears to be involved. If there were no other objection to be urged against the interpretation just stated, this, we think, may be : that it fails tcr meet the reason assigned in the seventh verse for con- founding the language of the builders, to wit, " that they may not understand one another's speech." That interpretation likewise appears objectionable on the ground of its leaving out of view the great ulterior end of the divine interposition, viz., the creating of a bar to intercourse which would not simply cause a cessation of the work a matter in itself of comparatively small, perhaps I may say, of no moment ; nor of one leading to a separation or dispersion, for the time being, or temporarily, alone but a bar effective of per- manent results, of the kind just intimated; not barely a putting, but a keeping, of the different portions of them permanently apart ; a settling of them, in an organized ca- pacity, in, different localities on the earth's surface; the bringing into existence of obstacles to their future coalition or universal union under one government. This would be 332 THE CONFUSION OF TONGUES. effectually done, and, as we understand the record, was accomplished, by a touching of the medium of intercourse by bringing about a change, adequate to the producing of the desired result, in language. EVENING TWENTY-SIXTH. YOUNG GENTLEMEN: Mr. Bryant attempts to adduce reasons for believing that the confusion of speech was a failure of the physical organs, (miraculously inflicted indeed,) producing unintelligible pro- nunciation of one and the same language; that this effect was temporary, ceasing upon a disruption of the confederacy ; and that it extended no farther than to the house of Gush and his adherents. From what has been already hinted by us you may infer that we do not accord with him in belief as to two of the points, at least, here presented. This author's opinion of the very limited extent of the effect which he holds to have been produced, has its foundation in the notion that only the Cushites, and a comparatively small number besides, were, either actively, or after any manner, engaged in the Babelic project. This last he has not proved ; nor does it appear to us to accord with the tenor of the Mosaic history on the subject. Not a particle more satisfactory to us is the idea that the lingual effect of which he speaks was only tem- porary, inasmuch as there is in it an ignoring or losing sight of the ulterior and paramount end of divine interference in the matter which end was indicated by us in the closing part of the preceding Exercise. '* , -! As to opinions entertained respecting the particular lin- guistic effect or effects produced at Babel, they may be 15* 331 THE CONFUSION OF TONGUES. reduced to three. The first that we will name is, That there was preternatural origin then and there given to a consider- able number of new languages having little or no affinity to each other; and that these languages may reasonably be conceived as numerous as the families or tribes who separated from each other. The second is, That, exclusive of the prime language still probably retained among those who took no part in, but, on the contrary, were hostile to, the Babelic transaction, there were two or more new languages miracu- lously originated diverging into varieties of dialect so variant as to be, for the most part, mutually unintelligible ; and that these corresponded numerically with the affiliated companies between whom there was a severance, and differ- ence of local or territorial allotment. The third opinion is, That it consisted of alterations in the pronunciation, by permutation of the labial letters, for instance, with the palatal. This last hypothesis, that is, of a diversified change in the pronunciation, leading to variety and persistency of result, has been thought to derive support in part from the word J15E3 saphah, which, though in the first, sixth, and seventh verses, translated language, literally means lip; in the utterance of words in any language, the lip being one of the principal organs. And the Jewish writer Philo, in speaking of the event at Babel, says, " He (Moses) calls it ' confusion,'' whereas if he had designed to indicate the rise of different languages, he would have more aptly called it ' division ; ' for those things which are divided into parts, are not so much confounded as distinguished." The meaning of the verb to oalal, occurring in the Mosaic account twice, is imagined to lend support to this opinion. Its signification is to mingle things together, it is said, so as to produce com- pounds or heterogeneous masses. A lip may be said to be confounded, when a mode of utterance, previously distinct^ clear, and intelligible, becomes by any means impeded, thick, stammering, or, in a word, confused. A confusion rising out HISTORIC NOTICES AND TRADITIONS. 335 of a novel and great variety of pronunciation, it has been suggested, would in its consequences be, for the time being, much the same as if it were a multiplication of new languages ; and the dialectic discrepancies, thus originating, would become gradually more and more marked, as men became more widely separated, in families and tribes, from each other ; and by the influence of climate, laws, customs, religion, and various other causes, till they finally issued in substantially different languages. An ethnological inquiry, young gentlemen, will after a while claim from us some notice, and we may then probably ascertain whether the study of Comparative Philology, so diligently prosecuted in certain quarters of late years, has not led to some results tending toward a decision of this interest- ing but difficult question. It will not disappoint or surprise us if from that source gleams of light shall be gathered afford- ing some aid, if not in arriving at a determinate conclusion, at least at some plausible conjectures as to which of the three opinions that have been specified has in it most of the semblance of truth. As to the alleged events in general at Babel, although, when we have the testimony of an inspired historian respect- ing them, our minds should require naught corroborative from any other source in order to produce full belief, yet when his- toric notices or traditions are elsewhere to be found bearing on the same points, it may not be amiss to allude to at least some of them. Josephus says, " The Sybil " a fictitious appellation of some unknown author, probably about the second century before Christ " The Sybil also makes men- tion of this Tower and of the Confusion of the Language, when she says thus : When all men were of one language, some of them built a high tower, as if they would thereby ascend up to heaven, but the gods sent storms of wind and overthrew the tower, and gave every one his peculiar language ; and for this reason it was that the city was called 336 NOTICES OF THE EVENTS AT BABEL. Babylon." (Ant., b. 1, chap. 4, sec. 3.) Alexander Polyhis- tor, who flourished about one hundred years before Christ, has the following passage : " Eupolemus, in his book concern- ing the Jews of Assyria, says that the city of Babylon was first built by those who had been preserved from the deluge ; that they were giants," i. e., in the Greek sense, not so much men of enormous stature, as their mythological heroes, of great prowess "that they also erected the tower of which history gives account ; but that it was overthrown by the mighty power from God, and consequently the giants were scattered abroad over the whole earth." Abydenus, who is said to have flourished in the fourth century B. C., makes the following statement, as quoted by Eusebius, from whom the preceding likewise is derived : " There are some who say that the first men sprung out of the earth ; that they boasted of their strength and size ; that they contemptuously maintained themselves to be superior to the gods ; that they erected a lofty tower where now is Babylon ; then, when it had been carried on almost up to heaven, the very winds came to assist the gods, and overthrew the vast structure upon its builders. Its ruins were called Babylon. The men, who before had possessed one tongue, were brought by the gods to a many-sounding voice ; and afterwards war arose between Cronus (Saturn) and Titan. Moreover, the place in which they built the tower is now called Babylon, on ac- count of the confusing of the prior clearness with respect to speech ; for the Hebrews call confusion Babel." Plato also reports a tradition that, in the golden age, men and animals made use of one common language, but too ambitiously aspiring to immortality, were, as a punishment, confounded in their speech by Jupiter. You have marked the fact that these Gentile notices repre- sent the work of the Babel-builders to have been interrupted after a manner of which the sacred historian makes no men- tion, viz.: by a tremendous tempest. This super-addition THE CHIEFTAIN NIMROD. 337 gives so different a phase to the divine conduct in the case, that it ought not to obtain credence. It is evident from the record of the inspired Moses, that the Almighty chose a more mild and permanently effective method for accomplishing his main design, namely, the dispersion into different parts of the earth of the inhabitants of Shinar. The sacred writer merely tells us that " they left off to build the city," as a consequence of confusion in their language being unable longer to understand one another or act in concert. It is the opinion of some writers that this tower of the Babel-builders was so massive a structure as either to consti- tute the nucleus of the vast pile which Herodotus so particu- larly describes as reared by the second founder of Babylon, i. e. Nebuchadnezzar, or else as affording a portion of the materials of which that vast and wonderful structure was composed. As to the identification of either the first or second tower with any now existing ruin, it is perhaps im- practicable. As entitled to this distinction, no less than three masses of ruin in the region of Babylon have indeed been by different writers claimed, to wit, Nimrod's tower at Akkerk- hoof ; the Mujahlibah, about 950 yards east from the bank of the Euphrates, and five miles above the modern town of Hillah ; and the Birs Nimroud, to the west of that river and about six mites to the south-east of Hillah. We have spoken of a chieftain who instigated and led on the enterprise of building the city and tower which have been claiming our notice. This was Nimrod, a son of Gush, and grandson of Ham a man of great energy and prowess, who had distinguished himself beforehand as a hunter of wild beasts a business not simply recreative but useful, situated as were the nascent population of those early times. Suc- cessful as an individual at first, he soon gathered around him a body of athletic young men whom he led and directed in his hunting exercises and excursions ; over whom he obtained such an ascendency and influence that they became prepared 338 THE CHIEFTAIN NIMROD. to second him in any project he might undertake, or favor any suggestion which might proceed from him. Patriarchal authority and influence, before dominant, was thus gradually undermined or interfered with, until at length, as to the majority, the sinews of that antecedently venerated and ascendant power so lost their tension and vigor that the government of this order could no longer maintain its ground was, in regard to that Babelic confederacy or community, subverted not a vestige remaining. Though, as we have seen, Noah retained an influence over the better, and, we presume, larger portion of the Shemites, and some, not im- probably of the Japhethites, yet he was, after this manner and by this means, shorn of his main strength ; and being ad- vanced in years, he was unfitted to make any strenuous efforts to regain his former ascendant and authoritative position over those who, so rebelliously and nefariously as respected him, had put themselves under the chieftaincy of a bold and energetic junior, whose measures and movements were more of the type suited to their tastes and preferences. In setting forth Nimrod as the prime subverter of the patriarchal gov- ernment, after the deluge, and as the leader of the enterprise pertaining to Babel, we proceed upon the authority not of Josephus alone, but of the far larger number of authors of distinction nearly all of this kind who have specially in- vestigated and expressed their views on the subject. He is indeed the first individual who is recorded to have aspired to dominion over his fellow-men ; and it being expressly said of him that "the beginning of his kingdom was Babel," (Gene- sis 10 : 10,) what can be more natural than the conclusion that he was the leader in the Babelic transaction, and that the project was in great measure a scheme of his for acquir- ing and retaining the mastery of the world ? And was it not eminently worthy of the divine wisdom and benevolence, benevolence in regard to the race, to counteract his scheme ? a scheme which had in it so many and great elements of evil ; THE CHIEFTAIN NIMROD. 339 and which, had it been carried out or consummated, would, without a peradventure, have proved so vastly prolific of ill. You may have somewhere met with the intimation, as he who addresses you has, that at the time of the Babel-building proceedings, if the birth of Peleg be regarded as represent- ing the date of them, this man, Nimrod, could not have reached sufficient years to have acted the part of an instiga- tor and leader in them. Now while we do not feel disposed to express any partiality for that so early date which, as indicative of the precise epoch of those proceedings, may, we think, be justly deemed quite problematical, yet it appears to us that if this latter could be proved exactly correct, it would not thence necessarily follow that Nlmrod was not and could not have been the prime mover and master spirit in those transactions. Let us see. You remember that Peleg's birth occurred the one hundred and first year after the flood.* * A Genealogical Table of Postdiluvian Patriarchs, to the time of Abra- ham. (See Gen. 11 : 10-26.) Born in the year of the world. Age when named son born. Lived afterward years. o 0) ' ' o> rS *! 1558 100 . 500 600 2158 1658 35 403 438 2096 Salah, 1693 30 403 433 2126 1723 34 430 464 2187 1757 30 209 239 1996 1787 32 207 239 2026 1819 30 200 230 2049 Nahor , 1849 29 119 148 1997 1878 5 70* 205 2083 2008 I loO 175 2183 * The number 70 indicates the age of Terah when Haran was born ; and the number 130 the age of the father at the birth of Abraham. The reader may see this explained near the middle of Evening Thirty-first. 340 THE CHIEFTAIN NIMROD. In the Genealogical Table which has been just handed you, will you have the goodness, young gentlemen, particularly to note the two following things : First, The length of life of the postdiluvians in the Shemitic line there named. You will observe that on an average they did not attain to more than about one third of the age of the antediluvians. Secondly, Mark at what time of life they severally became parents from Arphaxad down to Nahor, the father of Terah ; that it was from thirty to thirty-Jive years of age that is, they became parents earlier than the antediluvians, proportionally to the earlier occurrence of their decease. Now as Arphaxad, the elder son of Shem, was born two years after the flood (chapter 11 : 10,) so may have Gush, the elder son of Ham, (chapter 10 : 6,) been born as early as two years subsequent to that event. And as you have marked those Shemites to have become fathers at the age of from thirty to thirty-five, so may we believe Gush, Ham's son, to have commenced sustaining the paternal relation in equally early life, i. e. at the age of thirty or thirty-five say the longer of these two periods. You perceive that, according to this, Nimrod, had he been the oldest son of Gush, would have come into the world thirty-seven years after the flood. But instead of supposing Nimrod to have been the eldest son of his father, reckon him the sixth the names of five other sons being previously mentioned (chap- ter 10 : 7, 8 ;) and admit an interval of two years to have occurred between the births of each two of the several sons then, Nimrod's birth would have taken place forty-seven years posterior to the deluge, and fifty-three or fifty -four years the latter properly anterior to the birth of Peleg. That is, at the time of the building of the tower, or of the division consequent on the confusion, Nimrod was fifty-four years old at just about such a time of life in which he might be naturally expected to be most forward to launch into an enterprise of the kind, in its various characteristics) with that of Babel. THE CHIEFTAIN NIMROD. 341 The name Nimrod is from a verb (Tito marad) whicli sig- nifies to rebel, and is quite descriptive of the character of him who bore it a man who spent his life in opposition to the Divine Will. As a chieftain or ruler he appears to have been ever actuated by desires and motives, ambitious and self- ish ; and so far as he became, after any manner, acquainted with the purposes, plans, will, of the Kuler Supreme, he seems, in regard to these, to have invariably put himself in a posture of resolute and daring antagonism. This we have seen notoriously exemplified in the affair recently contem- plated. It is probable that the name Nimrod was not given this " son of rebellion " by his parents, but by after ages as ex- pressive of his character. As an opposer of patriarchal authority and a subverter of the patriarchal government, he merited the descriptive and expressive appellation by which he has been ever known and designated since it was first applied to him. " He began to be a mighty one in the earth," says the sacred historian (ch. 10 : 8.) That he became a great subjugator and oppressor of his fellow-men, has been an opinion handed down from generation to generation con- cerning him. That the inhuman practice of war, at least in the ages succeeding the flood, originated with this bold and aspiring usurper, is in the highest degree probable : " Proud Nimrod first the bloody chase began, A mighty hunter and his prey was man." Ancient testimonies do not even confine themselves to repre- sentations of him as the first of tyrannical oppressors of his species, but hold him forth as the prominent instigator of a widespread apostacy from the faith, and defection from the worship of his patriarchal ancestry. Josephus says of him that " he was a bold man, and of great strength of hand ; and that he gradually changed the government into tyranny, seeing no other way of turning men from the fear of God but to bring them to a constant dependence on his own 342 CONCERNING DATE OF EVENTS, power." The Targum of Onkelos informs us that " he began to be a mighty man in sin, a murderer of innocent men, and a rebel before the Lord." In the Jerusalem Targum it is said, " he was a hunter of the children of men in their lano-uajres, O O s and he said unto them, Depart from the religion of Shem, and cleave unto the institutes of Nimrod." "When we come to speak of the dispersion, and somewhat in regard to what followed it, we may have occasion to drop a few words addi- tional concerning this man. To the not uncommon opinion that the birth of Peleg, or the one hundred and first year after the flood, is to be viewed as the proper era of the confusion of tongues, and the com- mencement of the division and resulting dispersion of man- kind, objections may be and have been urged ; and some of them are certainly not without weight. We will specify only two or three. The first objection that we will state is not, we think, the most formidable. It is in substance this : That the descendants of our postdiluvian father could not, so early as the beginning of the second century succeeding the deluge, have attained to such numbers as that all, much less a part, of them would have been sufficient to commence and prosecute so magnificent an undertaking as that of building such a city and tower as those of Babel. This objection does not appear to us insusceptible of an answer. It strikes us that something like the following might be plausibly set forth in reply: May not an erroneous notion be conceived, first, in reference to the magnitude of the Babelic city and tower? It is evident that the term city is often employed in sacred history to denote a population, or cluster of edifices, of no great mag- nitude. And as to the tower, it certainly is possible that it may have been no such structure, either as to massiveness or altitude, as has been very commonly conceived. Quite a mistake may be, and frequently is, committed by attaching modern ideas to ancient terms. In the next place, an error may be fallen into concerning the numbers to which Noah's AMOUNT OF POPULATION, ETC. 343 descendants had attained at the end of the first century after the flood, by losing sight of two things : First ; the length of the period with parental couples, in which, in that age of the world, the process of procreation would ordinarily continue which was not merely some twenty to twenty-five years, as now ; but, on an average, (from the time of the deluge to that of Peleg,) ranging from one hundred to one hundred and fifty years. Secondly ; an error may likewise arise in the mind of the reader of the genealogical list of Genesis, tenth 'chapter, from imagining that that list is comprehensive of all Noah's posterity so far downward from the flood as it professes to extend ; whereas it is very far from being so, as any one may perceive barely by noting, that in all that roll there is not to be discovered the name of an individual female. This, how- ever, is only a part of the omission. Read, for instance, from the second to the fourth verse, inclusive, and you will find that, while the names of seven sons of Japheth are given, there is ho record of the names of Japheth's sons' sons, ex- cept barely in the case of the two sons, Gomer and Javan. Again ; look at the names of the sons of Gush, in the seventh and eighth verses. These are six in number ; yet you find the names of only two grandsons. In the twenty-second verse, the names of five sons of Shem are mentioned ; but no mention is made of children of any of these sons, save in the case of two. And that Noah's three sons, taken together, had no more children no more sons even than the six- teen that are noticed by the historian, who, with the fact before the mind a moment ago adverted to, will imagine ? It is recommended to you, in this connection, to inspect the first verse of the ninth chapter. Doing this, and weighing at the same time the hints just thrown out, we would not be sur- prised if you should come to the conclusion that, so early as at the beginning of the second century after the deluge, the posterity of our patriarch could not have been numerically small and when you recollect, moreover, that none had so 344 CONCERNING DATE OF EVENTS, soon sunk to the tomb from tottering old age ; that, below Noah and his wife, there were, at the period of Peleg's birth, some four or five generations together on the earth. So far as relates to numbers, then, there may have existed, at the period just named, no deficiency for the execution of the Babelic project. A large proportion of these, however, be it observed, were young at the time of Peleg's birth too young to be efficient auxiliaries, and, as to many of them, auxiliaries at all, in the building of the city and tower. And here, in the juvenility, as well as childhood and infancy, of so great a proportion of the Shinarites, at the end of a century from the flood's cessation, may be found both a plausible and forcible objection against fixing the era of the confusion and dispersion so early as the birth of Peleg. Such a consideration may itself prove so heavy a weight in the scale as, with many if not all of you, to cause a preponderance in favor of a con- siderably later point of time " in the days " of this son of Heber than the earlier dawn of his being, for the confusion of tongues ; for the consequent division of mankind into many distinct bands ; and their divergence into different and, in numerous cases, widely distant localities on our globe. Only see to it, that in your anxiety and care to avoid Scylla, you do not run upon Charybdis : in other words, that, adhering to the common chronology, you do not fix on so late a period in Peleg's two hundred and thirty-nine years, as to encroach upon the season requisite for such a settling of different portions of the world as is known to have occurred prior to the time of Abraham's departure from Ur of the Chaldees. There may be a supposition entertained of this sort : that, about the time of Peleg's birth, there was a divinely appointed division of the earth among Noah's offspring; that God then gave direction to our patriarch and his three sons, after some method, in regard to it ; but that the several families, AMOUNT OF POPULATION, ETC. 345 or closely affiliated branches, to which the various regions had, by divine appointment, been assigned, did not at once, nor until years afterward, separate, to take possession of them ; that either because the time which the Supreme Dis- poser appointed was not the then present, but lay at a certain distance in the future, or else because of a strong, irrepressible desire of the people to remain together, they did not separate ; and that, say a century subsequently, upon Noah, seconded by one or more of his sons, urging a compliance with the divine appointment, a bold and apparently ingenious project was devised by Nimrod with a few coadjutors, and favored by the people the project which has been repeatedly specified to prevent the fulfilment of the indicated will of the Deity, the Infinite King interposed in the way to which our attention has been directed. This would make the epoch of the actual division and dispersion, about two centuries posterior to the deluge, a season of adequate length, surely, not alone for a great multiplication of our postdiluvian father's posterity, but the arriving of a large proportion of them at maturity. EVENING TWENTY-SEVENTH. YOUNG GENTLEMEN: Having on a former occasion alluded to a divine decree or appointment relative to the earth's distribution amongst the progeny of our patriarch, it is proper to add, that a prevail- ing tradition of such a decree existed, and is moreover thought to be intimated both in the Old and New Testament. Moses, it has been believed, refers to it, in Deuteronomy 32 : 7-9, as handed down to the children of Israel " from the days of old, and the years of many generations ; as they might learn from their fathers and elders ; " and further, as conveying to that portion of the Shemites of which Jacob was the more immediate head that is, the twelve tribes of Israel a grant of the territory afterward known as the land of Pales- tine, to be their lot. And, by the way, this may be regarded as furnishing one of the proofs of the justice of the expulsion of the Canaanites, in a subsequent age, from that land, as usurpers an expulsion effected through the instrumentality of the Israelites, its rightful proprietors, under Moses, Joshua, and their successors. Mention of the divine decree relating to this grant we find made to Abraham in Gen. 15 : 13-21 ; and there was a recapitulation to Isaac and Jacob. This decree had been made known to the Ilamites before the Con- fusion at Babel occurred ; and with it that portion of them must have been acquainted who entered and were prime REFERENCES TO DECREE OF DISTRIBUTION. 347 settlers in that land. And may not the knowledge of the divine allotment of this territory to people of the Shemite line, satisfactorily account for the extreme agitation and panic with which the devoted nations of Canaan were struck at the miraculous passage by the Israelites through the Red Sea, and approach to their confines, so finely described by the historian in Exodus 15: 14-16? It is thought that in Acts 17 : 26, there is reference by St. Paul, to the same decree as a well known tradition in the heathen world, when, addressing the Athenians, he speaks of mankind as all of " one blood," race, or stock, " the sons of Adam," and of Noah in succession ; and of the seasons and boundaries of their respective settlements as previously regu- lated by the clivine appointment. And this was conformable to their own geographical allegory, that Chronus, the god of time, divided the universe among his three sons, allotting the upper regions of the north to Japheth ; the maritime or mid- dle regions to Shem; and the lower regions of the south to Ham. In his History of the Dynasties, Abulfaragi furnishes a tra- dition that our postdiluvian father distributed the habitable earth, from north to south, between his sons, and gave to Ham the region of the blacks ; to Shem the region of the ta,wny,fuscorum; and to Japheth the region of the ruddy, rubrorum. According to this assignment, all that region em- bracing what afterwards went under the name of Assyria, Babylonia, Syria, Palestine, &c., fell to the Shemitic branch of Noah's posterity. Whosoever then, besides Shemites, should, under any chieftain, attempt to establish themselves in any portion of this region, would be guilty of rebellion against a divine decree or appointment, as well as of usurpation of what belonged of right to others. Of those writers who imagine that the migrating company, indicated in the initial part of the eleventh chapter of Genesis, as entering the plains of Shinar, and at so late a day, too, as the 348 THE IDEA OF A PREVIOUS DIVISION. chronology of the Septuagint or of Dr. Hales will allow, con- sisted in large part of Cushites, more or less believe that in accordance with a promulgated decree of God and under the direction of Noah, a previous division of the nascent popula- tion had taken place whilst they were still somewhere in the region of the primary settlement of the Noachidse after the deluge, and probably at a period marked by the birth of Peleg ; and that the Arphaxadites, (of the line of Shem,) had then gone and taken possession of their allotted portion in the plain of the Euphrates ; that the Cushites, under the chieftain Nimrod, refusing to go and occupy the territory assigned them, after roving hither and thither for some time, and col- lecting some of the baser sort from other families, introduced themselves into the plains of Shinar ; made war with and sub- dued or drove out the Arphaxadites from their rightful pos- session ; established themselves in their lot ; and devised and partially executed a project for preventing any future disper- sion of their numbers. This would make the conduct of Nimrod, indeed, and the Babelic confederates under him, doubly rebellious and flagrant, and afford a powerful reason, truly, for divine interference to overturn their scheme and scatter them. Yet such an interpretation of the Mosaic record has appeared too remote from literality to secure the suffrages of the majority of distinguished savans who have directed their investigations to this part of sacred history;- with whom it has been a settled opinion that the Shinaric plains presented the great centre whence proceeded the dis- tribution of the human race over the face of the globe. As to particular and reliable information in regard to the dispersion of mankind from that great centre, we would have you expect little from us. Were there no other preventive, time itself would allow but a glance at the broad and difficult theme. If by throwing out a few hints, however, we succeed in exciting in you a desire for further inquiry, the little that THE DISPERSION CONSIDERED. 349 we have to say will not be laid before you in vain. Please to turn now to Genesis 10th chapter. The separation which of necessity commenced among the Shinaric population, as a consequence of the confusion of tongues, we must not suppose was confusedly entered upon. The general tenor of the chapter, and what is remarked in the 5th, 20th, and 31st verses in particular, forbid the just entertainment of such an idea. The confusion affected inter- course and concert between families and tribes, rather than between individuals of the same tribe and family. We have good reason for believing that members of the same small affiliated company found no obstacle of a linguistic nature in the way of free mutual intercourse. By different families or groups the members of which severally were related by con- sanguinity and affinity, arrangements were deliberately made to go forth and occupy new homes, settle new and different regions. The three greater branches of Noah's posterity were not suffered to be to a large extent forgetful of the great general divisions of the earth's surface which through their common progenitor had been divinely appointed them re- spectively ; and, with some exceptions which are not to be lost sight of, were caused to yield compliance with the divine allotment made to direct their course, when they moved, accordingly. It would be a mistake to suppose that the do- mestic or social groups of the various lines or branches reached always their place of ultimate destination speedily. In numerous cases, we may suppose that it was after a long interval that this was effected. The Ruler over all was not severe in his exactions in this respect. Indeed he had wisely and kindly appointed the " times" as well as the " bounds of their habitation ; " had predetermined the when as well as the where, respectively, of their future and final settlement. Their numbers, their progressive increase, what pertained to their means of sustenance, their convenience, &c., would all 16 350 GEOGRAPHICAL SETTLEMENT OF TRIBES. be taken into the account by Infinite "Wisdom and Benevo- lence, in his sovereign plans and allotments relative to them. In your inspection of the genealogical table of this tenth chapter, bear in mind, as your eye runs over the names there given, that they are not to be regarded merely in an individ- ual capacity ; but, for the most part, as the names of the families, tribes, or nations descended from them ; just as Judah and Israel, though names of single persons, were also the names of whole nations ; or just as the names of the twelve sons of Jacob were likewise the names of the twelve tribes of Israel. Many of the names in this roll, indeed, are not of the singular but the plural number. All those ending in im are so, it being the plural form of the Hebrew noun. (See verses 13 and 14.) Those ending in ite, you hardly need be told, are descriptive of tribes, not of individuals. (See verses 16-18.) Indeed scarcely a single name, there mentioned, is to be understood solely in an individual ca- pacity. This- genealogical chart then possesses ethnographic features, and is a document, in this respect, of no inconsider- able value. There is not indeed, at this distance of time, furnished by it all the definite information which it doubtless afforded to those who lived nearer the days of Moses. In the course of ages various circumstances would operate to produce changes in the names of tribes and peoples such changes thaft it might at length become difficult if not altogether impossible, where a record of the changes has not been kept, (and what is more common than neglect here ?) to trace the same people through all the periods of their ex- istence. To locate correctly, by this means, all the tribes and peoples whose primary names are here given, is a thing therefore not to be expected. The labors and researches of such men as Bochart, LeClerc, Wells, Michaelis, Sir Wm. Jones, Hales, Faber, Gesenius, Baumgarten, &c., on the subject, though unattended, in a large number of instances, with satisfactory results, are nevertheless not to be lightly A. DESCENDANTS OF JAPHETII. 351 estimated. Of these we shall in a measure avail ourselves in laying before you the little upon the topic which we have on the whole thought it best to present to your consideration. Inquiries, patient, untiring, now in the course of prosecution, into the physical resemblances, varieties and discrepancies of the different portions of mankind ; together with a careful and thorough examination and comparison of the various languages and dialects of the earth the study of compara- tive philology or linguistics (Fr. linguistique,) at present prosecuted, particularly by the German mind, with admirable zeal and diligence these, ere your youthful tabernacles shall become untenanted, will probably afford you much addi- tional information, assisted by which you will doubtless be able materially to modify and add gradually increasing cor- rectness as well as extent to what, with great diffidence and hesitancy, we are about to submit to your notice. The authorities consulted by us are by no means agreed as to the geographical position of many of the tribes. We shall con- sider them in the order in which they are presented by the sacred historian. A. DESCENDANTS OP JAPHETH. (Gen. 10 : 2-5.) I. GOMER. The Cimmerians on the north coast of the Euxine. Thence they spread west over parts of Europe : the Celtic and Iberian tribes, "Welsh, Gaelic, Irish, Breton ; Gauls, Galatians, the Kymzy . Sons of Gomer : (a). Ashkenaz. Axeni, inhabitants of the southeastern coast of the Black Sea, where we find a country Askania, and a river Askanius, and a part of Armenia ; the Basques in the north of Spain ; Saxony, or perhaps all of Ger- many. (b). Riphath. Rhibii, east of the Euxine ; Tobata, and other parts of Paphlagonia; Croatia; the Riphsean moun- tains. (c). Togarmah. A province of Armenia. The Arme- 352 A. DESCENDANTS OF JAPHETH. mans are said to call themselves " The house of Thorgom." The prophet Ezekiel uses the same expression (Ezek. 38 : 6; 27: 14). II. MAGOG. In Ezekiel this appears to be employed as the name of a country, and Gog that of its chieftain. The Mongoles, Moguls ; the great Tartar nation. III. MADAI. The Medes ; people of Iran, to whom the Sanscrit language belonged ; primeval inhabitants of Hin- doostan. IV. JAVAN. The lonians or Greeks. Sons of Javan : (a). JElisha. Greeks especially of the Peloponesus, Hel- las ; Elis, in which is Alisium. (b). Tarshish. The east coast of Spain, where the Phoe- nicians afterward planted their colony. Opinions have been divided concerning it. (c). Kittim. Inhabitants of the isles and northern coasts of the Mediterranean, particularly the Macedonians and the Romans, and those farther to the west. (d). Dodanim. The [Dodonaei in Epirus, perhaps in- cluding the lonians. Dodona, a colony from which probably settled at the mouths of the Rhone, Rhodanus. In 1 Chron. 1 : 7, we read Rhodanim (a permutation of D and R, not unexampled) ; from which it has been imagined that the inhabitants of Rhodes might perhaps be indicated. To the Javanian (Ionian) branch is attributed the peopling of " the isles of the nations," (verse 5th.) The Hebrew word E^K isles, was used to denote not only such countries as are surrounded on all sides by the sea, but those also which were so situated in relation to the Jews, that people could not or did not go to or come from them except by water. Thus the expression meant all countries, generally, beyond sea ; and the inhabitants of such countries were to the Jews " islanders," though occupying continental regions. The term applies, therefore, for the most part, to the countries west of Palestine, the usual communication with which was by the Mediterra- B. DESCENDANTS OP HAM. 353 nean. In a general sense the expression may be understood to apply to Europe as far as known, and to Asia Minor. B. DESCENDANTS OF HAM. (Gen. 10 : 6-20.) I. GUSH. Southwestern Arabia, the modern province of Jemen; in a more extended sense, Ethiopia, including Southern Arabia, and Ethiopia in Africa south of Fgypt. Sons of Gush : (a). Seba. This tribe or class is .probably referred to Suba, a native name of Meroe upon the Nile, in the farthest south of Egypt, or the beginning of Ethiopia. (b). Havilah. Vestiges of this word are found in various names of places in Western Arabia, and the adjacent parts of Africa. It is quite distinct from the Havilah of Gen. 2: 11. (c). Saitoh. Supposed to be situated in Arabia, on the Red Sea, probably in Gush or Arabian Ethiopia. (d). JKaamah 9 JRhegma. On the Arabian coast of the Persian Gulf. Two sons of this Raamah are mentioned, to wit, Sheba and Dedan. Places of these names we find in the subsequent Scriptures distinguished for trade and opulence. They both lie in the western part of Arabia. It was the queen of this Sheba who came to learn of the wisdom of Solomon. Dedan is not improbably considered as the origin of Aden, that very ancient seaport and island at the mouth of the Arabian Gulf or Red Sea, which has recently risen into new importance. (e). Sabtecha. The inhabitants of the west coast of the Red Sea, in African Ethiopia. (f). Nimrod, an individual. Besides Babel, his metrop- olis, he built three cities or towns in the great plain of Shi- nar, viz. Erech, Accad, and Calneh. These have by some been conjectured to have been Aracca or Arecha on the Ti- gris (some think Edessa) ; Sacada, near the confluence of 354 B. DESCENDANTS OF HAM. the Lycus and the Tigris ; and Chalonitis, afterwards called Ctesiphon. Upon these conjectures lies much obscurity. If Nimrod did not continue at Babel immediately subsequent to the Confusion, he is thought soon, with adherents, to have returned to it, and made it the capital of his kingdom, (10th verse.) As to the import of the llth verse there is a difference of opinion. Some attempt to maintain that Asshur, the son of Shem, is here meant to be spoken of, and that it is declared that he went forth out of the land of Shinar, and built Nin- eveh, Rehoboth, &c. Others think that in that verse it is meant to be affirmed that " Out of that land he (Nimrod) went forth to Assyria," i. e. to invade it. This is indeed the marginal reading in our English Bible ; and it is supported not only by such ancient authorities as the Targums of On- kelos and Jerusalem, and by Theophilus and Jerome ; but by such moderns as Bochart,- Hyde, Marsham, Wells, Le Chais, Faber, Hales, Morren, Clarke, Scott, &c. This latter inter- pretation is supported by such reasons as the following : 1st- That it perfectly accords with Nimrod's character to repre- sent him as hunting from land to land for the purpose of ex- tending his dominion. 2d. There would be an irrelevancy in introducing Asshur, the son of Shem, in the midst of the genealogy of Ham. 3d. The land of Asshur is distinguished from " the land of Nimrod " in the prophecy of Micah, 5 : 6. 4th. The original word asn exivit, " went forth," frequent- ly denotes hostile invasion. Besides ; the noun Asshur is often put for the land of Assyria, (Gen. 2:14; Num. 24 : 24, &c.) It is, on the other hand, true that the textual ren- dering of the llth verse is countenanced by most of the ancient translators, and by Josephus. II. MIZRAIM. Literally the two Egypts, the Upper and the Lower : each was denominated Misr, a word even now vernacular in that country. Of his descendants seven are 6. DESCENDANTS OF HAM. 355 specified under plural names, some of which are well ascer- tained. (a). Ludim. Ludites, celebrated as soldiers and archers, (Isa. 66:19; Jer. 46 : 9 ; Ezek. 27 : 10 ; 30 : 5,) and in those passages connected with other peoples known to be African. The Ludim, probably, lay toward Ethiopia. They must not be confounded with the Lydians of Asia Minor. (b). Anamim. Uncertain ; by Bochart supposed to have been wandering tribes about the temple of Jupiter Ammon, where was an ancient people called Nasamones. (c). Lehabim. Perhaps inhabitants of a coast district immediately west of Egypt. Probably the Lubim, (2 Chron. 12:3; Nahum 3 : 9.) (d). Pathrusim. The people of the Thebaid, (Pathros,) in Upper Egypt. (e). " Casluhim,) out of whom came Philistim." A people on the northeast coast of Egypt, of whom the Philis- tines were a colony, probably combined with some of the Caphtorim. (f). Caphtorim. Believed to have inhabited the island Cyprus. III. PHUT. In two or three passages besides, does this word occur always in connection with Africa. Phutes, an African river, is mentioned by Josephus and by Pliny. Hitter, the great modern archaeologist geographer, says that hordes of peoples have been poured out of Futa, in the interior of Africa. IV. CANAAN. His descendants came out of Arabia, planted colonies in Palestine, and gradually possessed them- selves of the whole country. His children or posterity : (a). Sidon, his firstborn, founded the city of that name, (b). JSeth, the ancestor of the Hittites. The remaining nine, mentioned in verses 16-18, are laid down in the singu 35G C. DESCENDANTS OF SHEM. lar of the patronymic, or patrial adjective. All are assigned to Palestine, and the boundaries of the country are precisely given. C. DESCENDANTS OF SHEM. (Gen. 10: 21-31.) Children of Shem: I. ELAM. The ancestor of the Elamites or Elymaeans, who possessed Elymais, a region between Susiana and Media, now termed Khusistan. The Japhetian Persians subsequent- ly entered that region, and gained the ascendancy, and after- ward they were comprehended under the name of Elam. II. ASSHUR. The ancestor of the Assyrians. III. ARPHAXAD. Though named after, he was born before either of the two preceding. The word is a compound, and is supposed to denote Neighboring to the Chasdim, i. e., Chaldeans. The name appears in Arrapachitis, a province in northern Assyria, the primitive seat of the Chasdim, and near to which, or in it, Abraham was born. Salah is the only son of Arphaxad whose name is given ; and the only son of Salah mentioned in the genealogical list is Eber. The important circumstance attaching itself to this man's name, is that of being the origin of the name Ebrew> or, as it is commonly written, Hebrew, the ancient and uni- versal name of the nation or people descending from him through Abraham. Of Eber, the annalist gives us the names of two sons : (a). Peleg. The only important circumstance connected with his name, of which mention is made, has been noticed. (b). Joktan. The ancestor of the numerous tribes of Arabs in Yemen, Arabia Felix or Happy which last is so called on account of its spices and other rich products, and to distinguish it from the Rocky and the Desert. Of Joktan 's C, DESCENDANTS OP SHEM. 357 immediate descendants, Moses has given us the names of thirteen. These are to be regarded as the founders of the tribes alluded to, and as affording them their distinctive ap- pellations. These thirteen tribes seem to have formed the confederacy of the independent and unconquerable Arabs, whose peninsular, desert, and mountainous country served as a defence from invasion. In subsequent times, Abraham's son IshmaeFs descendants were united with them. In the thirtieth verse, the phrase, " from Mesha, as thou goest unto Sephar," is intended to indicate their boundaries. The former is probably the country Maishon or Mesene, at the northwest head of the Persian Gulf; and the latter, on the southwest coast of Arabia, where is found a mount Sabber, answering, it is thought, to the mount which Moses names. IV. LUD. From this fourth named son of Shem the Lydians in Asia Minor derived their name. V. ARAM. From him the inhabitants of Syria, Chalonitis, and a considerable part of Mesopotamia derived their origin. The Hebrews gave the name Aram to the tract of country lying between Phenicia on the west, Palestine on the south, Arabia Deserta and the river Tigris on the east, and the mountain range of Taurus on the north. The Aram Naharaim of Scripture embraces at least the northern por- tion, and some think the whole, of Mesopotamia. This latter is a less common name in the sacred writings than Padan- aram, i. e., plain of Aram, to denote the territory lying between the Tigris and Euphrates. Children or posterity of Aram : (a). Uz. In the northern part of, Arabia, bordering upon Chaldea : the land of Job. (b). Hul. The large flat district in the north of Pales- tine, through which lies the initial course of the Jordan, even now called the land of Huleh, and in which is the lake Huleh, anciently Merom. 16* 358 C. DESCENDANTS OF SHEM. (c). Gether. East of Armenia ; x Carthara was a city on the Tigris. (d). Mash. This indicates a mountain region, it is believed, branching eastward from the great ridge of the Taurus ; the Masian mountains of the Greeks and Romans. Here is concluded what we have to say upon this intricate and difficult subject. EVENING TWENTY-EIGHTH. YOUNG GENTLEMEN: In our last, we were called to speak of tribes and peoples who, consequent upon the disruption of the confederacy at Babel, went forth in various directions from the Shinaric plains to fulfil the divine purpose in regard to the colonizing of different portions of the world. That these migrating bands were all descendants of Noah, who that receives the writings of Moses as entitled to confidence will question ? But, did absolutely all mankind descend from our patriarch ? Certain expressions here and there employed by us in pre- ceding lectures, when speaking of this man, were such that the inference might be drawn, that so we believed. It is in- deed our opinion that every creature possessed of the attri- butes of humanity, now on the earth, is consanguineously related to Noah can claim him as a progenitor ; and that ever since the Flood there have been but four persons on the globe whose descent was not from him. These four were Noah's wife and the wife of each of his three sons. Upon their death, and ever since, the globe has been occupied ex- clusively by his progeny. So believe not all. Even recently, and from a distinguished naturalistic source, has there been not a prime announcement indeed, but a confident repromulgation of a doctrine with which this is not in harmony. We shall continue holding to 360 DESCENT OF ALL MANKIND FROM NOAH ; our tenet, however, until we discover such reasons for its repudiation as appear to us irresistible. We derived it pri- marily from certain declarations of the archaic historian. Apart from what is embraced in that portion of bis annals relating to times prior to the Flood, we understand Moses as teaching that absolutely all the antediluvians who were living at the very commencement of the Deluge, perished in the waters, save the eight persons that entered the ark. What else can he be reasonably understood as asserting in Genesis 7 : 21-23 ? Those minatory declarations, too, contained in Genesis 6 : 7, 13, and 17, if fulfilled what else can they be believed to teach? And, then, how shall we interpret 9 : 19, but as presenting the idea that the postdiluvian world was peopled exclusively by Noah's three sons ? And what inter- pretation shall we give to the words, " to keep seed alive upon the face of all the earth," Genesis 7 : 3, but as assigning a reason for the aggregate command given to our magnate in the preceding part of that chapter ? And if we have mis- taken Moses as to these testimonies, then so the apostle Peter appears likewise to have done. For, speaking of the ark of Noah (1 Peter 3 : 20,) he says, " wherein few, that is, eight souls were saved by water." Does he not seem to think that of the absolute totality of mankind, only the eight persons who were in the ark were preserved from drowning ? And so, very generally, have those readers who had a rever- ence for the Sacred Scriptures, believed even those of them who did not believe in the complete universality of the deluge yes, Dr. Pye Smith, even, who imagined the flood of Noah to have been confined to a comparatively small part of the globe. As for ourselves, we shall consider it sufficiently early to reject the testimony of Moses in regard to the occurrence of such an event as what is called the Noachian Deluge ; or to understand its effects upon mankind to have been less exten- sive than the language of that writer which lias been referred OR THE UNITY OF THE HUMAN RACES. 361 to seems to indicate ; or else to believe what may be justly regarded as a rare and not very demonstrable dogma that since the Noachic cataclysm, the Almighty has created some new pairs or races of human creatures and located them on different parts of the earth's surface. In addition to the Mosaic testimony just ad verted to in sup- port of the tenet to which we hold, we would remind you of the evidence in its favor which is yielded by the traditions of different nations respecting the Noachic deluge, of which we made mention on the Eighth and Ninth Evenings. This last evidence itself is such as cannot very easily be set aside. What, you may ask, is urged in support of that antago- nistic position that all mankind cannot have proceeded from a common centre, or from one paternal or ancestral source ? We cannot go into detail. A general declaration of a justly celebrated naturalist of our day is : " Men were primitively located in the various parts of the world they inhabit ; and they arose everywhere in those harmonic proportions with other living beings, which would at once secure their preserva- tion, and contribute to their welfare." This is followed with the remark that, " To suppose all men originated from Adam and Eve is to assume that the order of creation has been changed in the course of historic time, and to give to the Mosaic record a meaning that it was never intended to have." For this and similar declarations, see Christian Examiner, of July, 1850, pp. 137-139. We must be permitted, with all due deference, humbly to say in general to this : Whatever may be regarded or shown to be true of the several portions of the inferior animals, man is eminently a cosmopolite. He is so through the physical susceptibilities and the reason with which his Creator has endowed him. Everywhere a domestic animal he leaves his footprints on the snows of the polar regions ; he basks on the burning plains of the torrid zone ; as well as regales himself and flourishes in temperate climes. He rears 362 DESCENT OP ALL MANKIND FROM NOAH: his cottage on earth's loftier elevations, as well as secures a home in her deeper vales. His constitution may become adapted to the localities or proximities of malarious fens ; and he may be seen reposing on the oases of the thrice siccid, sandy desert. His geographical range is no less than the broad earth ; he can live and move literally everywhere on the surface of this planet. The human animal is remarked by Dr. Paley to be the only one which is naked, and the only one which can clothe itself. This is one of the properties which renders him an animal of all climates and of all sea- sons. He can adapt the lightness of his covering to the temperature of his abode. Had he been born with a fleece upon his back, although he might have been comforted by its warmth in high latitudes, it would have oppressed him by its weight and heat as the species spread toward the equator. He is withal so wellnigh omnivorous a creature that he need be compelled nowhere to endure starvation through a want of means essential to his sustenance. If science may ascer- tain and talk of distinct " zoological provinces," let not the phraseology be considered appropriate to the human kind. There is no essential connection between any one .portion of the globe and the portion of humanity specially occupying it. Look at the aboriginal American actually occupying all latitudes. The undivided, entire earth is the one proper province of man. The argument on which antagonists principally rely in their onset against the doctrine of the unity of the human races as to original paternity, is the number and marked char- acter of the existing varieties. These are alleged to be so broad, as well as permanent and ancient, as to impel to the conclusion that one man, as Noah, could not have been the genital ancestor of all. These varieties naturalists have made attempts to classify. We have not much faith, we ac- knowledge, in those lines of demarcation which they have essayed to assign, since they are far from agreeing among THE CAUCASIAN VARIETY. 3G3 themselves ; and since, as Dr. Bachraan (in his Doctrine of the Unity, p. 170) observes, there would be more varieties that c^uld not conveniently be forced into either race than in the individuals that compose the races themselves. The more generally adopted classification, perhaps, is that of Blumenbach. This distinguished naturalist distributes the genus "homo" into the Caucasian, Mongolian, Ethiopian, American, and Malay varieties. The Caucasian he regards as the primitive stock. It deviates into two extremes, name- ly, the Mongolian on one side, and the Ethiopian on the other. The two other varieties hold the middle places be- tween the Caucasian and the two extremes ; that is, the American (aboriginal) comes in between the Caucasian and Mongolian ; and the Malay between the Caucasian and Ethiopian. The marks and descriptions serving to define these five varieties of Blumenbach, are given in Dr. Lawrence's Lec- tures on Man, pp. 376-390. "We cannot refrain from laying before you the following abstract : I. CAUCASIAN VARIETY. Characters. A white skin, either with a fair rosy tint, or inclining to brown ; red cheeks ; hair black, or of the various lighter colors. Irides dark in those with brown skin, light in the fair or rosy complexioned. Large cranium with small face ; the upper and anterior re- gions of the former particularly developed ; and the latter falling perpendicularly under them. Face oval and straight, with features distinct from each other ; expanded forehead, narrow and rather aquiline nose, and small mouth ; front teeth of both jaws perpendicular ; lips, particularly the lower, gently turned out ; chin full and rounded. Moral feelings and intellectual powers most energetic, and susceptible of the highest development and culture. The name of this variety is derived from Mount Caucasus, because in its neighborhood, and particularly towards the south, a very beautiful race of men, the Georgians, are met 364 THE MONGOLIAN VARIETY. with ; and because the more common opinion has been, that the original abode of postdiluvian man was near that quarter. In this variety are included all the ancient and modern Europeans except the Laplanders and the rest of the Finnish race ; the descendants of Europeans, of course, in the United States and other parts of the Western Continent ; the former and present inhabitants of Western Asia, as far as the river Ob, the Caspian Sea, and the Ganges ; that is, the Assyrians, Medes, and Chaldaeans; the Sarmatians, Scythians, and Parthians ; the Philistines, Phoenicians, Jews, and the inhab- itants of Syria generally ; the Tartars, properly so called ; the several tribes actually occupying the chain of Caucasus ; the Georgians (as we said), Circassians, Mingrelians, Arme- nians ; the Turks, Persians, Arabians, Afghans, and Hindoos of high caste ; the northern Africans, including not only those north of the Great Desert, but even some tribes placed in more southern regions; the Egyptians, Abyssinians, and Guanches. II. MONGOLIAN VARIETY. This is characterized by olive color, which in many cases is ve'ry light, and black eyes ; black, straight, strong and thin hair ; little or no beard ; head of a square form, with small and low forehead ; broad and flattened face, with the features running together ; the glabella flat and very broad ; nose small and flat ; rounded cheeks projecting externally ; narrow and linear aperture of the eye- lids ; eyes placed very obliquely ; slight projection of the chin ; large ears ; thick lips. The stature, particularly in the countries near the North Pole, is inferior to that of Europeans. In it are included the numerous more or less rude, and in great part nomadic tribes, which occupy central and northern Asia ; as the Mongols, Calmucks, and Burats, the Montchoos or Mandshurs, Daourians, Tungooses, and Coreans ; the Samoiedes, Yukagirs, Coriacks, Tschutski, and Kamtscha- dales ; the Chinese and Japanese ; the inhabitants of Thibet ETHIOPIAN, AMERICAN, AND MALAY. 365 and Bootan, those of Tongquin, Cochin China, Ava, Pegu, Cambodia, Laos and Siam ; the Finnish races of northern Europe, as the Laplanders ; and the tribes of Esquimaux ex- tending over the northern parts of America, from Bhering's Strait to the extremity of Greenland. III. ETHIOPIAN VARIETY. The skin anil eyes black ; the hair black and woolly ; the skull compressed laterally and elongated towards the front ; the forehead low, narrow, and slanting ; the cheek bones prominent ; the jaws narrow and projecting; the upper front teeth oblique; the chin receding. The eyes are prominent ; the nose broad, thick, flat, and con- fused with the extended jaw ; the lips, and particularly the upper one, thick. In many instances the knees turn in. All the natives of Africa, not included in the first variety, belong to this. IV. AMERICAN VARIETY. Characterized by a dark skin, of a more or less red tint ; black, straight, and strong hair, small beard, which is generally eradicated, and a countenance and skull very similar to those of the Mongolian tribes. The forehead is low, the eyes deep, the face broad, particularly across the cheeks, which are prominent and rounded. Yet the face is not so flattened as in the Mongols ; the nose and other features being more distinct and projecting. The mouth is large, and the lips rather thick. The forehead and vertex are in some cases deformed by art. This variety includes all the Americans (aboriginal) with the exception of the Esquimaux. V. MALAY VARIETY. Brown color, from a light tawny tint, not deeper than that of the Spaniards and Portuguese, to a deep brown approaching to black. Hair black, more or less curled, and abundant. Head rather narrow ; bones of the face large and prominent ; nose full and broad towards the apex ; mouth large. To this division belong the inhabitants of the peninsula of Malacca, of Sumatra, Java, Borneo, Celebes, and the adja- 36G DESCENT OP ALL MANKIND FROM NOAH ; cent Asiatic islands ; of the Molucca, Ladrone, Philippine, Marian, and Caroline groups ; of New Holland, Van Die- man's Land, New Guinea, New Zealand, and the numberless islands scattered through the whole of the South Sea. It is called Malay, because most of the tribes speak the Malay language ; which may be traced, in the various ramifications of this race, from Madagascar to Easter Island. Such, young gentlemen, are the varieties as to configura- tion, complexion, etc., of mankind. They are striking. Could all they among whom so many, and, as to the extremes especially, so great varieties exist, have proceeded from one stock ? Is it credible ? We will introduce whatever will be offered by us in reply, with the declaration, if not of a great naturalist, at least of a great man, and one who was not accustomed to speak at random. Addressing a body of sages at Athens, there fell from his lips this sentence : " God hath made of one Mood all nations of men, to dwell on all the face of the earth." Acts 17 : 26. The statement is not so obscure as to need explanation or comment. "We have been accustomed to listen with respect and confidence to the declarations of this man in regard to other matters, and we can discover no good reason why we should not also as to this. At the outset of what we ourselves have to say in answer to the interrogatory just stated, the following remark will be found true : There is a wide distinction between man, in all his varieties, and all other animals. Betwixt them there lies a boundary so broad that no Lamarck, with all the ingenuity he may think himself to possess, can get his monads, or even any larger and more active kind of animal, over it. The boundary may be safely declared to be utterly impassable. There is an immense remove of human from all other creatures beneath the sun. Let it be observed, in the next place, that great and surprising as we have seen the varieties among the human kind to be there are, on the other hand, remarkable OR THE UNITY OF THE HUMAN RACES. 367 resemblances between all the several portions of them notable uniformity amidst the variety. Having specified the varieties, it would not be right to suffer the resemblances to pass without some notice. With particular reference to this point, then, let us take a glance at man's osseous structure. Besides the teeth, there are two hundred and eight bones in the human frame. In every " race " or variety, however widely separated, there are to be found the same number of bones.* There is a peculiarity in the breast bone : that is, in infancy it has eight pieces ; in youth three ; in old age but one. This is true alike in regard to all the " races." The cranium is composed of eight bones ; each ear has four small bones ; the face fourteen. No differ- ence is to be discovered, in these particulars, among the different portions of mankind. The trunk has fifty-four bones ; the spinal column is composed of twenty-four ver- tebrae or pieces of bone. The resemblance here is perfect amongst men everywhere. The phalanges of the fingers have three ranges of bones ; the thumb but two. The bones of the foot, tarsal and metatarsal, are in the human creature peculiar he differs in this respect from every other creature on the globe. As to dentition there is a peculiarity among the human kind. There is a set of temporary teeth, twenty in number, possessed in infancy or childhood. Between the years of six and fourteen, these drop out and are replaced by thirty-two permanent teeth. In these several respects, what is true of any one part of mankind is true of all. Let us next glance at man's physiological organism. The number and arrangement of the muscles are similar in all human bodies. In the digestive, circulatory, secretory, and respiratory organs, no difference has been detected amongst * If differences have been detected in the number of vertebrse in indi- viduals occasionally a rib more or less than the usual number these differences were found principally to exist in different individuals of the white race. 368 DESCENT OP ALL MANKIND FROM NOAH; the diversities of men. The temperature of the body, more- over, is the same in all ; or at least there is no more difference here, between the five varieties of mankind, than is discernible among individuals of the same variety. Again : There is that beautiful mechanism, the larynx peculiar to the human creature, and affording him the priceless power of speech and of song. This complicated and mysterious structure will, upon examination, be discovered to be, amongst all the physical phases of humanity, identical. Everywhere, man has the power of affording to the products of his mind a verbal vehicle, and of pouring forth from his lips melodious strains. Numerous physical similarities might be added to those already mentioned of which, however, we will only specify these three : The human creature, wherever found, is bimanous ; of smooth skin ; and of erect posture. The different species of sub-human mammalia exhibit pecu- liarities in the period of gestation ; in the number of their young ; in the time of arriving at maturity ; and in the term of life. If mankind were composed of a variety of species, instead of varieties of one and the same species, we might expect among them to find an absence of uniformity or resem- blance here. But in all the races or varieties of men, there is a general uniformity in these several respects. All the human races, the lowest among them not excepted, evince the possession of the power of reasoning and of com- bination, and after methods strikingly distinguishing them from all the other tribes of living things. As in other ways, witness its manifestation in regard to the uses of fire; in reference to a resort to artificial apparel ; and in the construc- tion of advancingly commodious or comfortable habitations. As to instincts ; as to the wondrous capability of recognizing moral distinctions ; and as to the upspringing and elative hope of immortality, may be observed a notable likeness in universal manhood, as well as a broad distinction in its every phase between it and all the inferior forms of life. We will OR THE UNITY OF THE HUMAN RACES. 369 name but this additional feature of resemblance to be marked amongst all the families of man. It is the capacity of in- definite improvement as to their mental and moral powers. Now such being the resemblances found among universal mankind, we may ask with emphasis, what good reason have any on any principles of science, what grounds to deny their common origin ? We proceed to another argument. No word in our lan- guage, perhaps, is more loosely used than species; and in the scientific world various have been the definitions given to it definitions, in many cases, framed apparently to suit favorite theories. What, in zoology, is a species ? One of the first ethnologists of the day, Dr. Latham, in his Natural History of the Varieties of Man, tells us that u a species is a class of individuals, each of which is hypothetically considered to ' be the descendant of the same protoplast, or of the same pair of protoplasts." We can perceive no valid objection to this statement. A species of living things, then, is such a tribe, or portion of them, as have descended from the same original stock or parentage. Now nature (as we say), does nothing in vain. The specific distinctions to which she has given rise in animated existence, have their uses. They serve for the safety, convenience, and comfort of sub-human tribes ; and, in reference to those inferior forms of organic life, they answer not dissimilar ends to man. They are fixed; and how im- mensely important it is, that they should be so. We speak of strictly specific distinctions. If they could, through coition, be extensively interfered with if by intermixtures indefinite- ly they might be confounded all the lines of demarcation which were primarily drawn, if these could be effaced we will not essay to conjecture the evils or mischiefs which would ensue; how numerous, diversified, and great monstrosities, even, might be the consequence. Nature such is the com- mon, though not unobjectionable, mode of expression we use it because it is common, meaning properly by it the God of 370 DESCENT OF ALL MANKIND FROM NOAH ; nature Nature has, therefore, seen to it, that this shall not happen. She has taken care to raise an effectual, impassable barrier to such an occurrence. This is twofold. First, she has produced between the different species a strong, invincible repugnance to union. Secondly and this is what we wish specially to be noted she has imparted to each species an organization so peculiar to itself, as to render it impracticable for creatures of any two species to originate a new one. By some of the species, most nearly approximating each other organically, individual hybrids may, by forced copulation, be engendered ; but hybrids are infertile ; there is not the capa- city among them of a permanent reproduction of their kind. This doctrine of the general sterility of hybrids this inca- pability among them to perpetuate their kind, or form new species, there have indeed been efforts put forth, and by some quite respectable naturalists, to overthrow ; but we cannot say of them, that they have been as successful as they have been strenuous and earnest. Indeed we think, by the justly cele- brated Dr. Bachman, in particular, in his Unity of the Human Race, the doctrine just named has been shown to be insuscep- tible of overthrow. This author's treatise we hope you may soqn consult, with the view of satisfying your minds on this point. Now for an application of the doctrine to the interesting and important question before us. Reasoning from analogy we are constrained to infer that if among mankind there existed strictly specific diversities if in regard to tribes, or portions, or if you please, races, of them a plurality of an- cestral origin were predicable, then so far as copulative asso- ciation with each other should result in the production of offspring, the latter would be infertile ; the incapability of permanent reproduction would be found existing. Now what is the fact ? Who needs to be informed of the universal and permanent fertility of the different races mutually associating ? The Caucasian, Mongolian, African, Malay, and aboriginal OR THE UNITY OF THE HUMAN RACES. 371 American, associationallj afford us" ample evidence of such being the fact. On the confines of Asia, Africa, and Europe, many new intermediate races have been thus produced all fertile in their generations, and in their various copulative interminglings. " Within the last two hundred years, a new race has sprung up in Mexico and South America, between one branch of the Caucasian and the native Indian, together with no small admixture of African blood. In the United States, whose first permanent settlement commenced in Vir- ginia, in 1607, the two extremes of African and Caucasian have met and produced an intermediate race." (Jlachman.) Malte-Brun, speaking of the Portuguese in Africa, says : " The Rio South branch is inhabited by the Maloes, a negro race, so completely mingled with the descendants of the original Portuguese as not to be distinguished from them." There is a large and growing tribe in South Africa, called the Griqua, on Orange river, who are a mixture of the origi- nal Dutch settlers and the Hottentots. To this we have the testimony of respectable writers. Ample proof is not want- ing that no organic bar to productive sexual intercourse ex- ists between the several varieties. We hesitate not indeed to affirm it as a truth that no fact is more fully or satisfac- torily established than that all " the races " of human kind produce in perpetuity an intermediate and fertile progeny. The inference is, that they all belong to one species have their descent from the same original stock. EVENING TWENTY-NINTH. YOUNG GENTLEMEN: Opponents of the doctrine that universal mankind have the same original paternity, or are of the same species, insist that it cannot so be, on account of the diversities as to con- figuration and complexion known to exist among the human "races." But is diversity in these respects evidential of specific difference ? Is all variety to be regarded as specific ? Look at the lower animals. Does one and the same species amongst them exhibit no varieties ? Were it so, a strong argument might thence be analogically derived, that man- kind, if all of a common species or origin, should manifest identity of feature and color throughout the whole range of them. Then, diversities showing themselves, so far, numeri- cally, as they made their appearance, would be the number of the species or original stocks whence they proceeded. But who so wild as to contend for such a thing ? On examining the lower tribes we find in the same species, or in those known to have descended from the same original stock, a tendency to assume diversities both as to feature and color. The bare fact then that diversities in these respects exist among the families of man does not of itself show an ab- sence of identity in origin. God has ordained the existence of such varieties in the same species varieties confined indeed within certain limits such limits as not to confound DESCENT OF ALL MANKIND FROM NOAH. 373 or interfere with specific distinctions. He has manifested not only wisdom, but benevolence in so doing. Suppose, e. g., any one species were of entire uniformity as to figure and color, what would be the consequence, not merely or so much to that species, but to human ownership ? Property in do- mestic animals, as is easy to perceive, could hardly exist, were this the case. Who could tell which animal of a given species was his, and which another man's, were this so ? And in regard to mankind, or any one race of them, if they were all identical in conformation and complexion, we can easily imagine that some perplexing and troublesome inconveniences, and amusing or melancholy mistakes, would ensue. The domestic relation could hardly subsist indeed under such circumstances. Husbands would be unable to recognize their wives, and vice versa. Children would be without the best means, to say the least, of knowing their parents ; and parents of determining who were their children. The honest man might be confounded with and punished in the room of the rogue, and the latter be taken for and treated as an honest man. The great social wheels would have to stop, and con- fusion indescribable and interminable would be the result not as at Babel, from variety, but from similarity or identity. Another and what may be deemed a higher end of this diversity in each existing species, or of the law in conformity with which such variety arises, is the following: As the whole earth was not uniform as to climate, etc., there was a necessity, in order to the securing of important ends, that an adaptability should be introduced into the physical constitu- tion, by which creatures of the same species should be able not only to exist, but more or less flourish, in different tem- peratures, or'otherwise diversified circumstances and localities. But the advocates of the doctrine of plurality urge that the varieties in the five classes of mankind, particularly some of them, are "exceeding broad" too broad to allow a rational entertainment of the idea that all belong to one species, or 17 374 DESCENT OF ALL MANKIND FROM NOAH; originated in a common ancestry. The objectors to our doctrine on this ground may be invited to turn tlieir eye to the sub-human departments of organic and animated existence ; especially to those kinds that have been subjected to domesti- cation. The question may be pressed upon them, Are there not wide varieties among creatures of one and the same species to be found there? varieties anatomical, physio- logical, and in color, equally wide with those discoverable among the human races ? We would ask them to look at the several species of domesticated animals : At the horse (Equus caballus.) "Under all its varieties," as Dr. Bachman observes, (p. 124,) "it is undoubtedly of one species, since it is the only true horse, either in a wild or domesticated state." By all naturalists of high authority it is admitted and has been maintained that it has descended from the same stock. Let them cast their eye at the massive London dray horse, or Pennsylvania Conestoga, down through the varieties, the Arabian horse, the French coach horse, Canada horse, the marsh tackey of Carolina, to the pony of the Shetland islands. Will the advocate of a plurality of species in men on account of variety observable among them, turn from this survey of the equine species and continue to insist that the races of men cannot be of the same species, or have their descent from a common ancestral stock ? Let them be invited to inspect the varieties of the cow, the sheep, the dog, swine, and domestic fowl. Will they not find as broad varieties among these, severally, as among mankind ? Yet we might reasonably expect greater varieties to prevail amongst men than amongst the members of any sub-human species, in part arising from or connected with the truly cosmical adapta- bilities of which the human creature evinces the possession. But it may be urged by oppugners of the doctrine of unity, that if the prominent physical varieties among men are not specific and primary, but owing to subsequent accidental causes or influences, we should be compelled to look for no OR THE UNITY OF THE HUMAN RACES. 375 fixedness or permanence of color, etc., under opposite acci- dental causes or influences. On the supposition, for instance, that climate be one of those influences, the same man would change in color if for any considerable period removed frorn one climate to another; and as long or often as climatic changes occurred, and to the degree in which they occurred, so long or often, and to such degree, would complexional and other alterations ensue. We will preface the few words which we shall offer in reply, with remarking that complexion or color, though so obvious as to be commonly regarded as one of the most important dis- tinctions in the races, is in reality not so. The seat of the diversified tints is barely the rete mucosum, a delicate stra- tum interposed between the epidermis and cutis vera or true skin. A distinction so superficial does not appear to furnish a solid foundation on which to build a hypothesis so weighty as a plurality of species ; or to present a vastly formidable objection to the doctrine of unity of descent of the various families of man. That climate, situation, food, mode of life, etc., exert an influence upon the susceptible human constitu- tion, few if any will deny, how much soever they may differ as to the degree or duration of the influence. There is an indis- putable tendency in the human creature, and we may add, in sub-human, too, to put on certain changes of color, hair, form, etc., when removed from one climate and locality to another, or when subjected to any great change in manner or habits of life. "Whether," says a respectable writer, "the external condition of these changes be the chemical solar rays ; the altitude or depression of the general level ; the difference of geological formations ; the varying agencies of magnetism and electricity ; atmospheric peculiarities ; mias- matic exhalations from vegetable or mineral matter ; differ- ence of soils ; proximity to the ocean ; variety of food, habits of life and exposure all of which perhaps at times come in play or other causes yet more occult ; there can be no 376 DESCENT OF ALL MANKIND FROM NOAH; question about the fact that such causes are at work. The general fact is, that when the other physical conditions are the same, tribes living nearest the equator, and level of the sea, are marked with the darkest skin and the crispest hair. Thus, we make a gradual ascent from the jetty negro of the line to the olive colored Arab, the brown Moor, the swarthy Italian, the dusky Spaniard, the dark-skinned Frenchman, the ruddy Englishman, and the pallid Scandinavian." (Moore.) In regard to the duration or permanence of varieties, this appears to be a general fact, that, when once formed, they never return to their original type, if left to themselves. They may be changed into new varieties, by being subjected to new circumstances ; but, if left alone, they will perpetuate their own characteristics, and not those from which they have departed. The motto of nature is, nulla vestigia re- trorsum. Hence the negro does not become white or ruddy by leaving a burning equatorial region and becoming an in- habitant of a temperate locality. By the advocates of plurality of primeval parentage, it is additionally urged, that the prominent diversities found among men are ancient so ancient as to be incompatible with the doctrine that universal mankind proceeded from a single original stock. With the view of fully establishing this point, the mummies of Egypt have been hunted up, and the grave- yards of gray antiquity ransacked. That prominent varieties early had an existence we are not disposed to deny. The flexile tendencies to variation, the adaptive susceptibilities imparted to man's physical constitu- tion at the beginning, would, under appropriate circumstances or influences, to some extent work out results of this nature even in antediluvian times. This law had made its imprints on the little Noachic band that had come over the waters from the Old to the New World. Under its operation even Noah's three sons were not precisely alike. Much less were their wives, who came from different families and probably differ- OR THE UNITY OF THE HUMAN RACES. 377 ent localities of the Old World. Their immediate offspring would be more variant from one another than were they. And as one generation succeeded another, the diversities would by the same cause increase. If, as some suppose, the deluge for a time left influences tending to facilitate the oper- ation of existing constitutional adaptabilities, and if, as has been also imagined, these last were in the earlier ages greater than since, there then would, very soon after the Flood, appear very considerable varieties among our patriarch's descendants. But in accounting for the antiquity of leading varieties in the human kind, it is our deliberate opinion that at some early period subsequent to the Deluge, there was a preternatural intensifying of prime physical susceptibilities ; that this may have occurred at the era of God's giving directions to Noah respecting the partition of the earth among his descendants ; or, as we are rather inclined to think, synchronally with the miraculous Confusion of Tongues at Babel. We have on a former occasion expressed our belief of the great final cause of that Confusion. For the same grand reason it seems to us that the Supreme Ruler would superadd the effect just men- tioned. Devising for wise and benevolent purposes the speedy spread of mankind abroad, and not only their proxi- mate or temporary but persistent separation, he would, the more effectually and completely to secure what he wished, cause early to exist among the postdiluvians, considerable physical as well as linguistic diversities. This intensifying of original constitutional tendencies to variation he would cause to continue just so long as would be seen by him requi- site to secure the desired broad and abiding physical differ- ences. As to intermediate varieties, they are produced, among other means, by copulative interminglings of the wider ; and they are on the constant increase. In our last preceding lecture we referred to an eminent naturalist of our day, as the repromulgator of the doctrine of 378 DESCENT OF ALL MANKIND FROM NOAH; a plurality of origin of mankind. He, contrary to all others, if we mistake not, holding to the plurality doctrine, acknow- ledges the genus "homo" to consist of a single species, but uses the term species in such a sense as not to be incompatible with the doctrine of diversity of origin. Having first labored to establish the position that there are certain "zoological provinces," the fauna as well as flora of which severally were created in the province itself, and not introduced into it by migration or transfer from a common centre, he proceeds to maintain that " each province has its own race of men, which could not have come from a single pair, but must have been created each in the province where it is found." The proto- plasts or primary human occupants of the different provinces, too, were not created simultaneously, but at different seasons. The Adam and Eve of Genesis, according to him, were far from the only pair brought into being when they were ; and they were by no means of the first race of the human kind that were created. To this we venture the following very brief remarks in reply: First, The fact that the human creature is possessed of cosmical and not merely provincial adaptabilities is itself pretty strong proof, that the races of mankind were not created and primarily located at different centres. Secondly, Violence is done to the Mosaic history by attempts to recon- cile it with the hypothesis that "Adam and Eve were not the only nor the first human pair created." If Adam and Eve were formed on the sixth geogonic day, there could have been no pre-Adamites ; and if biblical interpreters, and no less than an-inspired apostle among the number, (1 Cor. 15: 45, 47,) understand correctly the teachings of the archaic record, then Adam was- "the first man," and, consequently, there were no other men created simultaneously with him, much less before him. Thirdly r , A creative act being a miracle, it is unphilosophical to resort to so many miracles for the produc- tion of a species, when a far less number may be reasonably OR THE UNITY OP THE HUMAN RACES. 379 believed quite sufficient to answer the purpose. Fourthly, The prevalent conclusions of the highest geological authori- ties go to confirm the Mosaic account as to the recent date of primeval man. These testify that there were no pre- Adamites. Fifthly, All history, as well as tradition, points to one part of the earth, and that Central Asia, as the cradle of the human race. Sixthly, It is declared by Dr. Pickering, that it appears, " on zoological grounds, that the human family is foreign to the American Continent." An important branch of ethnology remains yet unconsulted in regard to the interesting and momentous inquiry before us. It might be justly considered as a great and, indeed, culpable omission, did we altogether fail to question her in reference to the extent of the paternity of our patriarch. We allude to Comparative Philology, or what the French term Linguis- tique. We regret that we have time to listen to the testimony of this witness but for a few moments. Thankful we will feel, however, for the opportunity to catch from her lips even a few w r ords on this point. It is not yet three-fourths of a century little, if any, more than a half since she assumed such form and dimensions as to entitle her to the appellation of science. Bursting forth then from the dark and narrow cell and heavy enslaving shackles by which she had long been cramped, as well as confined, she exhibited, for a while, the wild and antic waywardness of chafed and inexperienced childhood. The last century may, perhaps, truly be said to have closed with such a state of linguistique as either to favor the now confessedly insupportable hypothesis, that the Babelic Confusion consisted or resulted in the origination of quite a number of languages, bearing, for the most part, no affinities to each other ; or else to corroborate such a theory as that of Professor Agassiz, that mankind had originated in different "provinces," between the different portions or various clusters of whom there existed, at least primarily, no more linguistic than sanguineous relationship. Those linguists who continued 380 DESCENT OF ALL MANKIND FROM NOAH ; to recognize any family connection, did so on the ground of what they regarded Mosaic authority, and then seemed to know no other family than Shemitic, which they made emi- nently broad so broad as to embrace the whole range of language. The present century opened with the dawn of more intel- ligent views in regard, first, to what constitutes the truly Shemitic, or, as Dr. Prichard prefers terming it, Syro-Ardbian family which, by the way, comprises the Hebrew, Aramaic (Chaldee and Syriac,) and the Arabic, inclusive of the Ethiopic and extreme northern African. Having proceeded thus far, marking the relations and defining the bounds of the different portions of this family philology did not nor could stop there. She, synchronously, began making a new and remarkable discovery ; commenced tracing a connection of a nature before not dreamed of. One member after another she succeeded in detecting of that numerically large and geographically extensive family now known under the name of Indo-European. In the valuable Ethnographic Map usu- ally placed at the front of Dr. Wiseman's Lectures on the Connection between Science and Revealed Religion, you may behold at a glance the boundaries (among others) of this wide family, beginning at the southeastern extremity of hither India ; running through a large part of middle and western peninsular Asia, embracing the territories of the Hindoos, Afghans, Persians, Ancient Medes, Khurds, Ossetes of Caucasus, Armenians, etc., and, with the exception of a few narrow and curiously isolated spots, the whole of Europe. The names of the principal modern languages prevailing within these vast territorial limits, are indicated in large measure by the names of the countries in which they are found, together with those ancient languages, the Sanskrit of the farther East, and the Greek and Latin of the West. Through the untiring efforts of able European philologists, there have been proved most undoubted affinities existing OR THE UNITY OF THE HUMAN RACES. . 381 between these several languages real and manifest affinities* not alone verbal or radical, but also in grammatical structure. " If we compare," says Dr. Prichard, " the grammatical forms and vocabularies of the Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, Zend, Ger- man, Lithuanian, Slavic, and Celtic languages, we discover besides analogies in the laws of construction or in the mechanism of speech, which is of all marks of affinity the most important a palpable resemblance in many of those words which represent the ideas of a people in the most sim- ple state of existence. Such are terms expressive of family relations, father, mother, brother, sister, son, daughter ; names for the most striking objects of the material universe ; terms distinguishing the different parts of the body, as head, feet, eyes, ears ; names of numbers up to five, ten, or twenty ; verbs descriptive of the most common sensations and bodily acts, such as eating, drinking, sleeping, seeing, hearing," etc. (Researches into the Physical History of Mankind, vol. 3, p. 9.) It might be briefly added, that resemblances between the numerous members of this family are to be traced in the personal, demonstrative, and interrogative pronouns ; in ver- bal roots and words of primary necessity ; in the case signs of nouns, and in the case system generally ; a prevalent resem- blance in what is usually called the conventional gender of nouns ; in the formation of the comparative and superlative degrees of adjectives ; in the internal inflection of verbs, etc. Of all the numerous members of the great Indo-European family, none is more noteworthy than the Sanskrit whose history has so much of the air of romance ; whose origin, contrary to the strange and untenable conjecture of Dugald Stewart, lies back in remote antiquity ; and whose position, in regard to the other members, is peculiarly prominent, if not actually paternal; a language remarkable, moreover, for its energy, regularity, and richness the name itself, according to Bopp, signifying " adorned, completed, perfect ; " as well as associationally, in an eminent degree, interesting, 17* 382 DESCENT OF ALL MANKIND FTIOM NOAIT ; from the many striking similarities between it and the other members of the immense family. Of Sanskrit roots, there are said to be not less than five hundred to be found in the European languages. In the light barely of the facts thus summarily brought to view, how can the mind fail to infer the unity of the vast Indo-European race, so called, and their origin from one locality and one family? In regard to the two important families already named, to wit, the Shemitic and Indo-European, we would have you apprised of the fact that, instead of sustaining the attitude of complete isolation, as respects one another, they, contrary to what has been believed by some, may be shown to be linked together, both " by points of actual contact, and by the inter- position of the Coptic, in a mysterious affinity, grounded on the essential structure, and most necessary forms, of the three." Those who may entertain any doubt upon this point, may be referred to the evidence presented in Dr. Wiseman's second lecture, (on the Connection &c.,) drawn from Lip- sius's Palaeography. Now, were we to say naught, did we indeed know naught, definitely, about any other portions of the human race, we might not illogically draw a broad conclusion from what has been already advanced. If so large a part of mankind as these two families, the Shemitic and Indo-European comprise, are so linked together as to indicate prime local and parental identity ; or, to go no farther, if so truly vast a portion of human creatures, even, as the Indo-European fam- ily contain, possess such unity ; speak, as it were, one lan- guage have proceeded from one locality, had one origin we could hardly be accused of doing violence to logic, or of leaping beyond all legitimate bounds, by concluding that the other portions of the genus "homo" sprang from the same locality and genital source. Yet, there are some ascertained indications, a passing notice of which, notwithstanding all Oil THE UNITY OF THE HUMAN RACES. 383 our solicitude for brevity, it will not be expedient wholly to withhold. As to the languages of the Mongolian race, although they apparently differ much from the Indo-European, yet, from some instances of "resemblance already discovered, it seems not improbable that, as facilities for investigation increase, many important analogies may be ascertained. It is clear, as the respected Professor Gibbs, of Yale, has remarked, that " the religious life of the race has been formed by Buddhism from India; and that their religious language is a mere dialect of the Sanskrit." Who then can think himself acting reasonably by giving them a separate origin ? especially, as the line of demarcation, as Dr. Prichard has shown, is difficult to be made the Turks, for example, having claims both ways. In reference to the Malay or Polynesian race, we would simply remark, that we have good authority for averring that there is a radical resemblance between their languages ; and that a distinct origin for that race, either on historical or philological grounds, is not known to have any respectable advocate. In regard to the African dialects, the means have hitherto been but stintedly enjoyed for determining their character. An article from the pen of Rev. J. L. Wilson, published in the Biblica Sacra, (November, 1847,) shows that they begin already to arrange themselves in groups ; and that, in par- ticular, " crossing the Mountains of the Moon, we find one great family of languages extending itself over the whole of the southern division of the continent," As to the Aboriginal American race, it has been observed that a general similarity of structure has been found in their languages ; that these begin to arrange themselves in groups ; and that no sufficient reason exists for holding to their separate origin. What then, young gentlemen, is the conclusion to which by 384 DESCENT OF ALL MANKIND FROM NOAH. this linguistic inquiry we are led, but the following? So far as Comparative Philology has yet possessed herself of the ability to bear intelligent and correct testimony, she witnesses in favor of one local and ancestral source for the human kind ; and, as to her yet future advances, she promises to bear gradually clearer and fuller evidence in the same direction. Facilities for intercommunication are now so multiplying and extending, that the time is, perhaps, not far distant when the sciences which specially have to do with the main ques- tion before us, will find no obstacle in the way, or opportunity wanting, to the most unbounded investigation, or extensive research. Those who shall then be living on the earth, as some of you may be, will, we venture to predict, be afforded the privilege of seeing such an abundance of clear and strong evidence in support of the doctrine for which we are con- tending, as to allow the existence of no doubt about its truth. We do not, indeed, imagine that philological investigation, when most extended as well as thorough, will be able to trace such perfect analogies or affinities between all languages, as to ignore or disprove the Mosaic testimony in regard to the linguistic event at Babel ; but these two things she may effectually succeed in doing: She may cast no little light upon the character of that event ; and she may show conclu- sively that mankind, in all her multitudes and varieties, are the descendants of those who were gathered on the Shinaric plains. And this being done, there will, from that point, be no difficulty in tracing the entire human kind up to our patriarch as their common father. EVENING THIRTIETH. YOUNG GENTLEMEN: Were we reasoning with professed anti-biblists on the topic which has the last two evenings engaged our notice, we would not, of course, think of resorting to the Bible for argu- ment ask not at all what witness it bears on the question. But as at least some of the advocates of plurality profess a reverence for the Sacred Scriptures ; essay to convince the friends of Revelation that their theory conflicts not with her testimonies nay, farther, derives a measure of support from that source it is lawful and proper for us to meet them here, and to attempt to show that their labor in that direction is uselessly expended ; that their pluralistic hypothesis is neither supported by nor reconcilable with the teachings of the Word of God. On this ground it was that early in the argument there was, on two or three occasions, reference made by us to it more particularly to its historic testimony in relation to the subject. But we feel the more inimical to their theory on account of what we deem the bale- ful effect, in the case of those who embrace it, on doctrinal belief. Indeed we see not how such theory can be clung to without having one's religious creed rendered (if not before- hand so) exceedingly inconsistent with the didactic utterances of Holy Writ. To our heart no order of truths is so dear as those denominated evangelical ; and their hold on human belief 386 DEMAND ON ADVOCATES OP PLURALITY. we cannot see in any manner or measure impaired but with deep pain. Before those advocates of plurality who profess to have a reverence for the Bible can with propriety expect the friends of evangelical religion to entertain favorably their theory, it may, we think, be reasonably demanded of them that they take some pains to show that the two are not in conflict, that at least as to some of the prominent features they coalesce. They may be kindly asked to show how in order to the enjoyment of a happy immortality, for instance, not some men merely not some of the races or varieties of human creatures barely not the inhabitants solely of one or a few of the "zoological provinces" but absolutely all men, everywhere, need to hear and believe the gospel ; why a great moral ^revolution is universally indispensable; why all men, everywhere not simply some one race or variety of mankind are required to repent, deny themselves, receive and follow Chirst why they must so do or else be eternally wretched. Those pluralists may be asked to satisfy so small a demand as that of showing how all the races or varieties of mankind, the entire human occupants of all the zoological provinces, without an exception, are sinful and mortal. Those who hold to the unity of origin of all human beings who believe that entire mankind descended from one human pair stand ready to satisfy, and very quickly too, every demand of this sort. Those who ask them such questions they will refer to a few verses, mostly in the fifth chapter of Paul's Epistle to the Romans, as explanatory of the whole matter. But, should it be granted that all the existing inhabitants of the globe have proceeded from the same original stock are the descendants of a common father yet it may be objected that our postdiluvian patriarch, so called, cannot rightly be regarded, even in a secondary sense, as that com- mon father that he is entitled to no such distinction as that ATICTI^EOLOGICAL OBJECTION. 387 of universal paternity. The objection to which we refer is of an archaeological or historical character, and runs thus : There are nations presenting evidence of higher antiquity than the days of Noah such, for instance, as the Chaldeans, Chinese, Hindoos, and especially the Egyptians. That claims of this kind have been set up, cannot be de- nied ; but we are not quite prepared to say that the justness of them is undeniable. Apart from the hints furnished by the Mosaic records, be it observed, there is extant no reliable history of the rise of the nations of remotest antiquity. A few scattered fragments of so-called annals, only, have sur- vived the wreck of ages, and these are " rudis indigestaque molis," a rude and indigested mass, floating on the gulf of time, incongruous in themselves, and unconnected with each other ; oppressed and smothered almost beneath successive accumulations of mythologic fiction, philosophizing allegory, and recondite mysticism. As to the Chaldeans we hardly need say more than this that though Alexander (called the Great) is reported to have discovered in Babylon observations for one thousand nine hundred and three years previous to his arrival thither, the very commencement of their chronology has been proved to go no farther back than the era of king Nabonassar, or seven hundred and forty-seven years before Christ. Among the fragments from Berosus's history preserved by Josephus, Eusebius, and others, is to be found a tra- dition of their original, which is remarkable for being so closely analogous to the details of sacred history, as to leave no doubt upon the mind concerning the source whence it came. After an elaborate description of Babylonia, and a strange story of a certain creature which in the first year of the world came out of the Red Sea, conversed fa- miliarly with men, and taught them the knowledge of letters and several useful arts, Berosus proceeds to give a short account of the kings, the names of whom were Alorus, Alas- 388 ARCHAEOLOGICAL OBJECTION AGAINST parus, Amilon, Ammenon, Megalarus, Daomus, Eudoreschus, Amempsinus, Oliartes, and Xisuthrus. The first of these corresponds with the Adam of Genesis ; as the last, from what is said of him, manifestly does with Noah. For of this Xisuthrus it is related that he was forewarned of a flood ; commanded to build a ship, &c., according to the tradition among the Chaldeans to which we referred when treating on the subject of traditions of the deluge. The ten kings whose names have just been given, maybe understood as correspond- ing with or answering to the heads of the ten generations preceding the deluge in the line of Seth. Here then is to be seen something rather corroborative of, than hostile to, the Mosaic history. Syncellus indeed notices (p. 30) a period of four hundred and thirty-two thousand years, as including the reigns of their first kings. But this is evidently the amount of one thousand two hundred years multiplied by three hun- dred and sixty days the Chaldeans, in after ages, to enhance their antiquity, magnifying days into years. (See Hales's Analysis of Chronology, vol. 1, p. 143, and vol. 3, p. 9.) The Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge, under the head of Empire of Babylon, after remarking of it, that it may be considered as the first great monarchy of which any records are to be found in history, says, " It appears to have been founded a short time after the flood ; and according to the astronomical tables sent by Alexander to Aristotle about two thousand two hundred and thirty-four years B. C. Of this first Babylonian kingdom there is very little to be known except what is related in the Sacred Scriptures ; 'that about two thousand years B. C. it consisted, under Nimrod, of four cities, Babel, Erech, Accad, and Calneh," etc* As to the Chinese nation, there has been claimed by and for her great antiquity. But that their empire as such ex- isted before the Flood, and before the era which we assign for the Creation of the World, is as extravagant and unfounded as the mythological stories of some other nations. We have UNIVERSAL DESCENT FROM NOAH CONSIDERED. 389 in our hand the first of two volumes from the pen of the Rev. Charles Gutzlaff, whose name is familiar to you all, en- titled, " A Sketch of Chinese History, Ancient and Modern/' from which, as reliable authority, we will give you a few sen- tences. " Not only," says this writer, " is the fabulous part of the Chinese history very uncertain, but even the first two dy- nasties, Hea and Shang, labor under great difficulties, which have never been entirely removed. We must in fact date the authentic history of China from Confucius, five hundred and fifty years B. C., and consider the duration of the pre- ceding period as uncertain. Chinese ancient astronomy has been celebrated by many ; but if we suppose their calcula- tions to have been correct, the ancient Chinese, who lived according to their historians four thousand years ago, greatly surpassed their posterity of the present day, who, after so much instruction from foreigners, still betray a childish ignor- ance on many essential points of this difficult science. Con- fucius evidently labors to refer the origin of his doctrines (which either originated with himself or were transmitted to him by tradition) to the remotest antiquity, for the purpose of inspiring his countrymen with veneration for them. In order to effect this, he had to create for his nation an authen- tic history out of the materials furnished by tradition. As there were no regular annals, or any celebrated histori- ographer who flourished before his era, he was not able, not- withstanding the most laborious researches, to avoid error. The destruction of the greater part of Chinese books by Che-hwang-te, the first universal monarch of China," (whose reign commenced two hundred and forty-six years B. C.,) " doubtless contributed likewise to render the chronology more erroneous," (page 55). You have heard what the author has said concerning the first two, i. e. the Hea and Shang dynasties. Yet those commenced only in the two thousand two hundred and seventh year B. C., and extended down to the one thousand one hundred and twenty-third year B. C. (See 390 ARCHAEOLOGICAL OBJECTION AGAINST pages 5S-GO.) In other words, the earliest dynasty, even according to this very doubtful record of Confucius, did not, according to the shortest, i. e. the Hebrew chronology, com- mence until one hundred and forty-one years subsequent to the Deluge, and according to the Septuagint not until one thousand and thirty-nine years posterior to that event. In the extract from Mr. Gutzlaff, allusion is made to the destruc- tion of books by the Emperor Hoangti (Che-hwang-te.) Like Nabonassar, the king of Babylon in an earlier reign, this sove- reign was so ambitious of being reputed by posterity the found- er of the empire, that he ordered all the books, medals, coin?!, and monuments of antiquity which could be laid hold of to be destroyed, that there might remain no earlier record, date, or authority relative to religion, science, and politics, than those of his reign. Hence, says Dr. Hales, (Chronology, vol. 1, p. 296,) " their most authentic history, composed from the relics of their ancient books by Sse-ma-trien, about a century be- fore Christ, marked neither the dates nor the duration of reigns or dynasties, until B. C. 878." The celebrated Klaproth, who came from the study of their authors with no prejudices inducing to an undue depreciation of the glories of the so-called Celestials, instead of allowing them the ex- tremely venerable antiquity claimed for them by some of their historians, does not hesitate to deny the existence of historic certainty in their empire, earlier than seven hundred and eighty-two years before Christ. Should we allow that land then to have been penetrated and incipiently colonized quite early after the Flood according to the common chronol- ogy, it strikes us that we cannot be reasonably charged with doing injustice to any high claim presented. As to the Hindoo nation, great efforts have been made to establish her claims to such an excessive antiquity as to con- flict with the Mosaic history in regard to the peopling of the postdiluvian world. One of the ways in which this has been essayed to be done, has been by a reference to her astronomy. UNIVERSAL DESCENT FROM NOAH CONSIDERED. 391 The " unfortunate Bailly," as Dr. Wiseman calls him, has very specially labored to show it from this source. But Mr. Bentley, in particular, has effectually proved his attempt to be eminently a failure. The Varishta Siddhanta and the Sarya Siddhanta, which the Hindoos used to date at some millions of years back, have, by the computations of this lat- ter author, been brought down to the tenth or eleventh cen- tury of the Christian era. Even La Place, a friend of Bailly, speaking of the Indian (Hindoo) astronomical tables, say?, they " suppose a very advanced state of astronomy ; but there is every reason to believe that they can claim no very high antiquity." To these testimonies may be added that of Dr. Maskelyne, of Heeren, Cuvier, and Klaproth, who thus writes : " Les tables astronomiques des Hindous, auxquelles on avait attribue une antiquite prodigieuse, ontete construites dans le septieme siecle de 1'ere vulgaire, et ont etc posteri- eurement reportees par des calculs a une epoque anterieure." (Memoires relatifs a 1'Asie.) If we pass from the astronomy to the history of the Hin- doo nation, we shall not, upon thorough research, find any such evidence of high antiquity as to excite alarm lest our postdiluvian progenitor should lose his paternity as to that people. There will, in our investigations, be discovered more proofs of the ambition of that nation to be thought very ancient, than of their actually being so. But of direct personal in- vestigation we are spared the trouble since such men as Sir Wm. Jones, Wilfort, Heeren, and Col. Tod, have gone over this ground, and given us the results of their examina- tion. The conclusion to which these men have come is, that when divested of fable, the history of this people may be dated back some two thousand years before the Christian era. The last named gentleman (Col. Tod,) assuming, al- most without limitation, the chronological tables of the coun- try, does indeed extend a little the period. He has ventured to place the establishment in India proper of the two grand 392 ARCHAEOLOGICAL OBJECTION AGAINST races distinctively called those of Soorya and Chandra at about two thousand two hundred and fifty-six years before Christ. If you would like to see a somewhat detailed account of the investigations to which we have been alluding, look into Wiseman's Lectures, on the Connection between Science and Revealed Religion, vol. 2, Lecture 7. An additional thing, on the authority of Col. Tod, you will find there stated, going to confirm the credibility of the Mosaic history in regard to the earth's colonization which is, that the Hindoos them- selves establish the birthplace of their nation towards the west ; and, still farther, that there are such curious coincidences between the origin assigned to their respective nations by the Monguls, Chinese, and Hindoos, whilst distinguished by dif- ferent languages, as to establish the fact of a common origin. As to Egypt, though human feet early pressed her soil, yet we believe her to present no human footprints bearing testi- mony to an earlier colonization than the Mosaic annals will allow. From her monuments and her history, both, efforts have been indeed made to extort testimony adverse to certain historic statements of Moses, (as to time rather than as to fact, however,) and it is surely well to examine the true character of that testimony. As friends of revelation we have no fears as to the result. We indeed much mistake, if where infidelity has wishfully and zealously sought to find evidence hostile to, there may not be found proof confirmatory of the verity of the records of the sacred historian ; especially if we do not discard or repudiate the Septuagint chronology. Worthy interpreters have been found of Egypt's dark sayings. Her monuments have been interrogated interrogated by men to whom they were not unwilling to listen. To the lips of her hieroglyphics, even, Young, the Champollions, Wilkinson, Rosellini, etc., have put their ear, and come away with re- plies not of a character to cheer the heart of skepticism. You will fully understand our allusion by the persual of the Eighth Lecture of the work of Dr. Wiseman, but a moment UNIVERSAL DESCENT FROM NOAH CONSIDERED. 393 or two since referred to ;*lhd the first three chapters of the work of Dr. Hawks, entitled, The Monuments of Egypt ; or, Egypt a Witness for the Bible. Among other things let me request you to note the result of inquiries and discussions respecting the Zodiacs of Dendera and Esneh. How absurd has been shown the antiquity which had, even by Burkhardt, Dupuis, etc., been ascribed or allowed to them. And if we turn from her monuments and prosecute our re- searches in ancient history, in order to ascertain their rise, the period of the prime settlement of the land of the Phara- ohs, we shall find ourselves enveloped in mist impenetrable. Than in relation to it there is no portion of the remoter annals of the human race more obscure from the want of authentic records, or more perplexed by groundless conjecture and bold speculation. The ancient annalists whom the anxious inquirer interrogates, require of him to carry back his imagi- nation to an era many thousand years prior to the existence of all written deeds ; and then gravely introduce him to gods and demigods who had once condescended to dwell on the banks of the Nile, and to govern the fancied inhabitants of that fertile region. In regard to that land it may indeed be affirmed, that the limits between mythology and the simple annals of a mortal race are not yet fully established. Yet, to a certain extent, at least, the history of ancient Egypt can be placed on credible grounds. The reign of Menes is to be considered as marking the limits of legitimate inquiry in this field. By different investigators different dates have been fixed on for the commencement of his reign. According to Dr. Hales, (Analysis of Ancient Chronology, vol. 4, p. 418,) it commenced B. C. 2412 years ; according to Dr. Prichard, 2214 B. C. The principal authority on which this reign has been determined, is Josephus, who had better means of becoming acquainted with the works of Manetho, than were enjoyed by Eusebius, Syncellus, or others. This writer (see his Antiq., Lib. 8, ch. G) assures 394 ARCHAEOLOGICAL OBJECTION AGAINST us, that Menes lived many years Before Abraham, and that he ruled more than one thousand three hundred years before Solomon. Here are such data furnished as helped Drs. Hales and Prichard to arrive at their conclusions. If you bear in mind that Dr. Hales's Chronology is the extended one which substantially corresponds with the Septuagint Chro- nology, there will be found, in the date at which he fixes the commencement of the reign of Menes, nothing to conflict with the Mosaic history relative to the period of the Flood, the Dispersion, etc. Dr. Hales makes the first Egyptian Dynasty, beginning with Menes, 2412 B. C., to last two hundred and fifty-three years, i. e., to 2159 B. C. ; the second Dynas- ty, under the Hyk-shos, or shepherd kings a foreign race from the last named period, two hundred and sixty years, i. e., to 1899 B. C. But be it remembered that the same Dr. Hales fixes the epoch of the Deluge at 3155 B. C. - presenting an interval of seven hundred and forty-three years between the Flood and the rise of the first Egyptian Dynasty. Menes, called by Syncellus Mestraim, is regarded by Shuckford as the Mizraim of Moses. But shall we say naught of those dynasties which preceded Menes ; thirty dynasties, consisting of one hundred and thirteen genera- tions, and which took up the space of thirty-six thousand five hundred and twenty-five years ; or of the after-reign of eight demigods, during the space of two hundred and seven- teen additional years ; or of the Cycli Cynici, i. e., according to Manetho, a race of heroes, in number fifteen, whose reigns occupied the space of four hundred and forty-three still addi- tional years ? What shall we say, unless this, that they who believe it en masse to be anything above fiction or fable, have a larger development of the organ of credulity than we have any pretensions to ? That Egypt had been peopled before the Flood, we have no doubt ; and if we imagine, with Afri- canus, that all of what professed to be historic, in regard to UNIVERSAL DESCENT FROM NOAH CONSIDERED. 395 times preceding Menes, may have been built upon some traditional fragments or broken reports relative to Egypt in the antediluvian age, it is to be presumed that few will put themselves to the trouble of quarrelling or finding fault with us for it. "We shall not tell all that we might conjecture upon this point choosing to keep more silent in reference to it than Mr. Shuckford has done. From Menes or Misr downward, if, instead of imagining with Manetho, the whole number of kings to have succeeded one another in a direct line, we agree with Sir John Marsham in making a certain number of them contemporaries of each other, we shall find all clear. Moses may then be regarded as no great errorist even in chronology. As soon as you shall have opportunity, it is hoped you will consult the work of Mr. R. S. Poole, entitled Horce Egyptiacce. This Mr. Poole was brought up on the banks of the Nile ; is a gentle- man of talents and learning, of skilful and laborious research ; and has spent many years in the study of the monuments. This author has adduced proofs, from the monuments themselves, that several of the dynasties were really contemporaneous just as Sir John Marsham, and not only he, indeed, but most of the learned for ages have supposed would prove to be the case. Mr. Poole discovered on the monuments a variety of astronomical signs and records, the interpretation of which, it appears, he has ascertained ; and his calculations based on those astronomical records confirm the conclusions he deduces from other sources, all going to show that the whole of Egyptian Chronology, when properly understood and reduced to order, is entirely consistent with the chronology of the Bible. As to the train of evidence adduced by Mr. Poole, so complete and convincing does it appear, that Sir J. G. Wilkinson, one of the most learned of living men in all that relates to Egyptian archaeology, has published his entire concurrence in the views of this writer on Egyptian chro- nology, and his convictions of the satisfactory character of the 396 ARCHAEOLOGICAL OBJECTION AGAINST evidence which that gentleman has drawn from the monu- ments. At the same time, we will not be surprised if the accuracy of these results shall be called in question by those who are strongly committed in the support of the high antiquity advocated by Lipsius and Bunsen. We feel unwilling to dismiss the archaeological question without first dropping two general considerations ; only one of which however will we tax you with the statement of, this evening reserving the other with which to commence the next and closing Exercise. The first, then, is this : As we do not find Moses con- cerned about giving us even a connected history, much less a formal chronology of the times intervening between the crea- tion and the birth of Abraham ; and as the dates presented in his genealogical lists could so easily undergo alterations, either through the carelessness or haste of transcribers, or (from some motive) through design, we need not consider the matters of fact or of doctrine of the book of Genesis over- thrown, even if the commonly received Hebrew chronology of that book, or that of the Greek translation, the Septuagint, could be proved erroneous. Not only might the doctrines which Moses there teaches still be true ; but the facts which he states may have occurred this, though the precise time of their occurrence should not be found accurately stated. We like that remark of Dr. Hawks in his " Monuments of Egypt," p. 30, " It does not affect the respect due to the book as an inspired volume of fact or doctrine, to consider its general chronology an open question. That it has been so considered and treated by some of the most pious and learned men is a fact well known to the Biblical student. When time is not of the essence of a fact recorded, it is unimportant. There are few even of modern histories that harmonize in dates ; yet no one doubts the facts they state. In this case, as in the kindred one of geological science, it would seem that the simple purpose for which the book was written has been UNIVERSAL DESCENT FROM NOAH CONSIDERED. 397 overlooked. The Bible was never intended to be a system of chronology nor a treatise on geology." Whilst we unhesitatingly subscribe to the sentiments ad- vanced in this quotation, let it not be understood after what we have said we cannot be understood as making any con- cessions to anti-biblists in regard to the main matter under consideration. It is a vain pretence that such and such nations had their rise many thousands of years ago. Even the little that we last evening said, or rather alluded to, is enough to show this. That there will yet appear a full and most unquestionable refutation or exposure of the pretensions of certain nations to an antiquity irreconcilable with the chronology of Genesis, we most confidently anticipate, nor do we believe the day far distant. After what we have hinted, will you not indeed believe that it has already dawned ? In the " land of Ham " in particular, much has already been and more is no doubt on the eve of being discovered, not only coincident with but corroborative or illustrative of various items of Biblical history. Those who are greedy of cumula- tive or confirmatory testimony in regard to the statements of the writer of the Pentateuch, are not likely to be left without much more of an archaeological character than they in any wise can reasonably demand. As it was with the Jews regarding Jesus' Messiahship, so is it in our day relative to the Mosaic history. There is a calling out for more evi- dence. Never satisfied with the mass which they are already afforded, like the daughters of the horseleech theirc ontinual cry is Give, give. It is probable that with one tenth part of the evidence they would be content, in relation to any points not belonging to or connected with Sacred History. Only in regard to BiUical matters is it that they exhibit so pro- digious a maw. 18 EVENING THIRTY-FIRST. YOUNG GENTLEMEN: The archaeological consideration, second in order, with which we proposed to introduce this Exercise, is the following : Those several nations who pretend to so vastly remote anti- quity of origin as to make not barely the Noah but even the Adam of Genesis a comparatively very modern gentleman, need not travel far, no, not a step, either forward, backward, or laterally, to find a flat denial of their ridiculous preten- sions. They may find it beneath their feet. The detritus and rocky strata of the parts of the globe where they dwell, furnish a substantial refutation of all pretensions of the kind. These say, No remains of such pretended far back ancestry lie in our bosom. And if the pretenders are not satisfied with such a declaration from the lips of the witness, let them penetrate her bowels and see whether they can get any more favorable response there. In Cuvier's Theory of the Earth, the date of origin of the human species is discussed both on geological and historical grounds, embracing a large mass of learning ; and the date usually assigned to the origin of mankind adopted. The same views have been expressed by Sir Charles Lyell ; views which he espouses, not merely as the result of his own re- searches and reasonings, but of the prevalent conclusions of the highest geological authorities. " I need not dwell," ob- THE ARCHAEOLOGICAL OBJECTION CONSIDERED. 399 serves Mr. Lyell, " on the proofs of the low antiquity of our species, for it is not controverted by any experienced geologist ; indeed, the real difficulty consists in tracing back the signs of man's existence on the earth to that comparatively modern period when species, now his contemporaries, began to pre- dominate. If there be a difference of opinion respecting the occurrence, in certain deposits, of the remains of man and his works, it is always in reference to strata confessedly of the most modern order ; and it is never pretended that our race coexisted with assemblages of animals and plants of which all or even a great part of the species are extinct." You may see an analogous argument of Berkley for the re- cent origin of man, quoted with approbation by Mr. Lyell in his Principles of Geology, vol. 3, p. 203. The character of the testimony borne by geological facts in relation to man and his works before the Flood, is such as strongly to favor the idea that all the present nations and races of men are descended from our patriarch. In regard to the nature of the facts, we, to avoid repetition, refer you to those having a bearing on the subject, presented on the Eleventh and Twelfth Evenings. But so pertinacious and perverse is skepticism, as further- more to attempt to urge an objection to the universal pater- nity of our patriarch, drawn from the Mosaic history itself. It is of this nature : According to what Moses has narrated, Abraham, when he first entered Canaan, and, soon afterward, Egypt, found there already great and populous nations ; and it is not unreasonable to infer that equally populous and flourishing nations existed at the time in various other parts of the world. Yet how could this be if these all descended from Noah ? Could the posterity of this one man have pos- sibly so increased and extended itself, so soon after the flood ? as to answer to this state of things ? This brings up the question of Scripture Chronology concerning which we can say but little and yet carry out our 400 SCRIPTURE CHRONOLOGY. purpose of closing our course of lectures this evening. Others besides skeptics, even many learned interpreters of the Sacred Word, have been moved, partly by this just stated consideration, to prefer a more extended to the common chronology. The chronology adopted by the English translators of the Sacred Scriptures, and placed in the margin of our Bibles, is that of the Masoretic or common Hebrew text. According to it, the period which elapsed between the Deluge and the call of Abraham was four hundred and twenty-seven years; and between the Deluge and the birth of Christ two thousand [three hundred and forty- eight years. The extended scheme to which we alluded, is the Septuagint chronology that is, the chronology of an ancient Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures. Accord- ing to this latter, the interval between the Deluge and the call of Abraham was one thousand two hundred and five years ; and between the Flood and the birth of our Lord three thousand one hundred and fifty-four years. You see how long and confessedly adequate a period the Septuagint chronology presents for the increase, extensive spread, and national organization of Noah's posterity before Abraham left Mesopotamia for Canaan. If this latter chronological system can be shown to be correct, the skeptical objection is at once divested of all semblance of validity. Hence, at least in part, many sincere friends of Holy Writ have been very solicitous for its maintenance, and not a few able Biblical scholars have volunteered their services in its advocacy. Of the arguments advanced by these in its favor, many are not a little plausible ; some very forcible. Among others it is, for example, urged, that the shortened scheme adopted by Archbishop Usher from the Masorite Jews, is recent in its origin, when compared with the more comprehensive chro- nology of the Septuagint ; that this last was used before the advent of our Lord ; was followed by the fathers of the church ; SCRIPTURE CHRONOLOGY. 401 and appears not to have been called in question till, in the eighth century, a disposition to exchange it for the Rabbini- cal method of reckoning was first manifested by the venerable Bede.* It may be farther urged that the contracted scheme * The two following Tables give the Patriarchal Genealogies from Adam to Abraham, according to the Septuagint Chronology. TABLE I. From Adam to the Deluge. IS |s Is - Is s fi *l >H 0> .S 2 **"" Jl^.S ^rf 'S ^ is "S'S l5 s 2? M > W n s 1 230 700 930 930 Seth, 230 205 707 912 1142 435 190 715 905 1340 625 170 740 910 1535 795 165 730 895 1690 960 162 800 962 1922 Enoch, 1122 165 200 365 1487 1287 187 782 969 2256 1474 188 565 753 2227 Noah, 1662 600 950 2612 Deluge, 2262 TABLE II. From the Deluge to Birth of Abraham. Shem, 2 600 2264 135 303 438 2702 Cainan 2d, 2399 130 330 460 2859 Salah, 2529 130 303 433 2962 2659 134 270 404 3063 Peles . 2793 130 109 239 3032 2923 132 239 3162 3055 130 100 230 3285 3185 79 69 148 3333 Terah, 3264 f 70 205 3469 ( 3334 I 130 $3394 According to this chronology, the interval between the Deluge and the birth of Haran, Terah's eldest son, is seen to be one thousand and seventy-two years; and between the Deluge and the birth of Terah's younger son, Abraham, one thousand one hundred and thirty-two years. N. B. Let the reader compare the; above tables with the two tables in the Hebrew or common chronology, to be found, one on page 21, and the other on page 339 of this volume. 402 SCRIPTURE CHRONOLOGY. of the Hebrew or Masoretic text is rejected by many of the greatest names in this branch of Biblical literature, as being, according to their view, inconsistent both with the records of other nations, and with the history of the ancient Hebrews themselves. A detailed statement of grounds for admitting the authority of the Septuagint in preference to that of the Usherian or common Hebrew, may be found in a preliminary dissertation prefixed to the first volume of Dr. M. Russell's Connection of Sacred and Profane History, which we hope you will soon read. This author contends that the chro- nology of the Hebrew Scriptures and that of the Greek version were originally the same ; and that the accuracy of the latter was not called in question by the Jews for nearly four hundred years that is, until the rapid progress of Christianity awakened the enmity of certain unprincipled in- dividuals of that nation, who were induced to alter the dates of their ancient chronicles, in order to weaken the arguments derived from them in support of the new religion. With the Septuagint letj it be noted that not only Josephus, but also Hales and Jackson, substantially agree in reckoning. It has been thought that for a while past that system has been considerably multiplying suffrages in its favor. In support of the commonly received chronology, on the other hand, the following considerations may be urged: The fact of the Usherian or shorter reckoning being embodied in the Hebrew text is itself not a feeble argument against the longer computation ; and there appears also to be internal probability against it. It is assumed that the framers of the present Hebrew text set out with the deliberate intention of curtailing the true chronology. Yet such a charge is more easily made than substantiated. A procedure of this nature would operate against the ordinarily entertained Jewish opinion relative to the time of the Messiah's advent. It is quite certain that they have not tampered with the sacred text in those places where the temptation to it was greatest ; SCRIPTURE CHRONOLOGY. 403 and they ought not, therefore, to be accused of this sacrilege in instances of inferior moment, except upon very strong and clear proof. May it not be urged against such, a charge, that the Jews of the Rabbinical schools, those of Palestine, were guarded against all temptation of tampering with the sacred text, by the strict and even superstitious reverence with which they regarded the letter of the divine word ? But the Alexandrine Jews, living under the influence of Grecian literature, and in a syncretizing age, began very early to relax this rigorous restraint of the written letter. Of this tendency so alien from the character of the Rabbinical or Palestinian Judaism the Septuagint version exhibits mani- fest traces. They had also a special motive for lengthening the Hebrew textual chronology. The Egyptians, among whom they had their residence, would be disposed to sneer at a nation whose origin was so recent as their sacred records made the Hebrew. Hence they would have an intelligent inducement tending to the lengthening of the genealogies. Clinton, in his Fasti Hellenici, p. 297, says, "The Chaldasans and Egyptians, (whose histories were about that time" i. e., about the time the Septuagint translation was made " pub- lished by Berosus and Manetho,) laid claim to a remote antiquity. Hence the translators of the Pentateuch into Greek might be led to augment the amount of the genera- tions by the centenary additions, and by the interpolation of the second Oainan, in order to carry back the epochs of the creation and of the flood to a period more conformable with the high pretensions of the Egyptians and Chaldseans." And the manner in which the thing is done, witnesses to such a procedure. Deliberation is manifest. The very regularity of the scheme is sufficient to bring it under strong suspicion of contrivance. Allusion is particularly had to the centenary additions and deductions. On this latter side of the chrono- logical question you may find something noteworthy in 404 THE COMMON CHRONOLOGT MAY BE RETAINED. Clinton's Fasti Hellenici, pp. 283-297 ; and specially so in Brown's Ordo Scedorum, pp. 318-354. After weighing the arguments in behalf both of the longer and shorter Chronologies, we feel inclined to adhere to the latter, that is, the Usherian or Hebrew, if, so soon after the Flood as four hundred and twenty-seven years, (the era, according to it, of the call of Abraham,) we can rationally account for such multiplication, spread, and settlement of Noah's posterity, as authentic history, relative to those times, leads us to believe then prevailed. Allow us then to submit (in briefest form) the three fol- lowing considerations, and to ask whether these, if duly revolved in the mind, may not be deemed enough to satisfy any reasonable inquirer in relation to this matter. First After referring you to what was said on the Twenty-sixth Evening, concerning the number to which the offspring of our postdiluvian progenitor must have amounted at the close of the first century after the deluge we would remark, that, in the interval between the flood and the call of Abraham, so long with parental pairs did the process of procreation con- tinue from one hundred to one hundred and fifty years and from protracted life so many generations would become, so to speak, contemporaneous, that Noah's descendants, at the close of that interval, must have attained to great numerical magnitude far greater than persons, if they lose sight of these two circumstances, would at all imagine. Second Let readers be on their guard against being deceived by terms. What, pray, for the most part, were cities, kingdoms, nations, then ? Should they be conceived of after a modern fashion the same ideas precisely be attached would not great error be the consequence ? Consider that each small tribe or group had a head or chief to whom was applied the title of king : thus, king of Sodom, king of Gomorrah, king of Admah, king of Zeboiim, Gen. 14: 2. Look at Josh. 12: 9-24, and you will see that, in the small land of Canaan, A FREQUENT ERROR IN TABLES. 405 there were, so late as in the "days of Joshua, no less than thirty-one kings and so many kingdoms. Look at the size and military force [of the early kingdoms, in the light of Gen. 14. Canaan, from its fertility and situation, may be believed to have been as well, if not better, stored with inhabitants than any of the neighboring provinces, when Abraham and Lot first came into it ; yet, though they were possessed of considerable flocks and herds, which soon became so large as to render it impracticable for them to dwell together, yet, when separated, they experienced no difficulty about finding a plenty of vacant room both for their families and their living substance. Third We are liable to harbor misconception respecting the amount of event and change occurring in a given period, say from one to four or five centuries. It is much greater than is ordinarily con-^ ceived. Just think, for example, that in the United States of America, the first permanent settlement took place in A. D. 1609 not quite two hundred and fifty years ago. This idea is finely illustrated in that passage from Kazwini, cited by us on the Sixteenth Evening. We have said the call of Abraham was four hundred and twenty-seven years after the flood. It is needful to note this, inasmuch as many of the printed tables of genealogies would make the date sixty years less which is an error. Abraham was seventy-five years old when, in compliance with the divine call, he left Mesopotamia for Canaan, (Gen. 12: 4.) By subtracting this seventy-five from four hundred and twenty-seven, you fix the birth of Abraham at three hundred and fifty-two, post diluvium ; but the tables alluded to fix it at two hundred and ninety-two a mistake arising out of the erroneous assumption that Abraham, because first named, was the eldest son of Terah, and born when the father was seventy years old, (Gen. 11 : 26.) But as Terah died at the age of two hundred and five, (Gen. 11 : 32,) and was deceased when Abraham departed for Canaan, (compare 11: 406 ANTEDILUVIAN LONGEVITY. 32, and 12: 4,) by subtracting seventy-five from two hundred and five, you have one hundred and thirty as the age of Terah when his son Abraham was born, i. e., sixty years below the seventy which those tables assign as the period of Abraham's birth. You thus see the correctness of our asser- tion concerning the true era of the call of Abraham. According to the Hebrew computation, Abraham, then, was born Anno Mundi 1656+352=2008 ; and being born three hundred and fifty-two years subsequent to the deluge, Noah's departure out of the world (occurring three hundred and fifty years posterior to the Flood, Gen. 9 : 28) took place but two years prior to Abraham's entrance into it ; and when our patriarch was nine hundred and fifty years old. (Gen. 9 : 29.) What an age ! and for a postdiluvian too ! you may ex- claim. Six hundred of those years, however, were passed as an antediluvian ; for there is this peculiarity about Noah and the seven other souls that were ferried over the waters that they lived in two worlds, and served as a link between the two. Yes ; nearly two-thirds of Noah's nine hundred and fifty years he spent as an antediluvian, and brought his longiaeval constitution indeed from beyond the Flood. No one beside who has died since the deluge, at- tained to near so great age as he. Antediluvian longevity has, in every postdiluvian age, been a source of wonder ; and it has fallen to our lot to hear some curious conjectures respecting it. So strange has the Mosaic account, pertaining to that matter, appeared to num- bers, that they have been induced to imagine those antedilu- vian years could not have been of equal length with ours that they must have been not solar but lunar years, i. e. months. This conjecture however is untenable, as may be perceived by the extreme absurdity of its making antediluvi- an parentage to commence in perfect childhood at from the age of sixty-five to one hundred and eighty-seven months, POSTDILUVIAN REDUCTION OF TERM OP LIFE. 407 as may be seen by casting the eye over the fifth chapter of Genesis. Others, discerning the untenableness of that idea, have imagined the comparatively few instances of longevity of which the record makes mention, to constitute nearly or quite all the cases of the kind that occurred in early times that the population generally attained no such great age. To this there are two objections : First The idea has nothing in the record to sustain it. The small number of generations of Cain's posterity before the Noachic deluge, as indicated in the fourth chapter of Genesis, appears to warrant the inference that they attained to similar longevity with those of the Sethite line spoken of in the fifth chapter. Second The supposi- tion involves a palpably miraculous distinction wrought in favor of the few longiseval over the many breviseval antedilu- vians, for which no adequate or appropriate final cause is either suggested by Scripture ^or to be detected by reason. After the Deluge there was a considerably rapid progres- sive reduction of the term of human life, as the sacred history assures us. This progress may be divided into stages or periods. Thus, the first reduction began with Shem, who lived six hundred years; the second with Arphaxad, who lived four hundred and thirty-eight years ; the third reduction with Peleg, who lived two hundred and thirty-nine years. Thence there appeared a more gradual decline, until our long existing standard of threescore years and ten was reached. Should it be inquired whether any, and if any what, as- signable physical causes existed in antediluvian times, tend- ing to the so extraordinary prolongation of human life, it might be replied that conjecture has assigned the operation of the two following : First A more temperate dietetic regi- men, consisting largely in the absence of animal food and of intoxicating beverages. Second In an evenness of tem- perature peculiar to the antediluvian age arising, as Dr. Burnet thought, from the axis of the earth being, until the 408 HOW TO BE ACCOUNTED FOR. time of the flood, perpendicular to the plane of the ecliptic a theory which the learned now generally regard as unsus- tainable. For the gradual reduction of the standard of life after the grand cataclysm, three reasons of a physical nature have been set forth 1st. The introduction of animal food and stimulating beverages. 2d. The change, in reference to the plane of the ecliptic, of the earth's axis to an oblique position. 3d. Malarious influences left by the deluge upon its retiring. It is our belief that the prolongation or reduction of the term of life cannot be satisfactorily accounted for by a refer- ence to the operation, exclusively, of natural principles or secondary causes. We think it necessary to have recourse, additionally, to supernatural influence and that influence of a character relaxing or intensifying, according to the stand- point proper to be selected from which to survey the matter. If from the standpoint of the present or some abridged stand- ard of human life then supernatural influence is to be viewed as relaxing the law of mortality, as to tensive action in the early ages of this world's history ; if from the stand- point of the longiaeval term, intensifying that law as to its operation : This order of proceeding belonging to the depart- ment of God's particular providence relative to man. The final cause of the antediluvian longevity is to be re- garded as at least two-fold : the rapid multiplication of man- kind, and colonizing of the earth; and the invention and advancement of the useful arts. The final cause or causes of the postdiluvian reduction, in the different degrees, may be viewed as, in part, the preventing of the human species from becoming numerically so great as to operate injuriously to human character and welfare, and unfavorably to the divine service and glory. Somewhere have we seen we remember not where the substance of the following paragraph : After the creation, when the world was to be peopled by one man and one woman, LIFE OP THE PATRIARCH, HOW EVENTFUL. 409 the age of the greater part of those on record was nine hun- dred years and upwards. But after the flood, when there were three couples to repeople the earth, none of the patriarchs except Shem reached the age of five hundred years ; and only the first three of this line, viz., Arphaxad, Salah, and Eber, came near that age, which was in the first century after the flood. In the second century, we do not find that any attained the age of two hundred and forty ; and in the third century, none except Terah arrived at two hundred ; by which time the world was so well peopled, that they had built cities, and were found in distinct nations under their respec- tive kings. If the fixed standard of human life were that of Methuse- lah's age, or even that of Abraham's, the world would soon be overstocked. On the other hand, if the age of man were limited N to that of divers other animals to ten, twenty, or thirty years only the decay of mankind would then be too fast. But on the present scale the balance is nearly even, and life and death keep an equal pace. In thus maintaining, throughout all ages and places, these proportions of mankind, and of all other creatures, God declares himself to be indeed the ruler of the world. By abbreviating the term of human life since the great in- undation, the Supreme Being has shown his determination not to suffer antediluvian wickedness, in its enormous fla- grancies, again to prevail, nor antediluvian scenes to reap- pear. Those evils which flowed out of or were aggravated by so great protraction of life, the Divine Monarch would not have to exist in postdiluvian times. How eventful a life, not so much as to the number but magnitude of the scenes or occurrences which, in the provi- dence of God, it was the lot of our postdiluvian ancestor to pass through events, a portion of them at least, partaking of the character of the prominent or leading ones of time events, too, in which he would never have borne so illustrious 19 410 WHAT THE MAGNITUDE OF THE EVENTS. or important a part, had it not been that early after his natural, he had been born by a new and heavenly birth. As regards, for example, his position relatively to the inhabitants of the Old "World, he would never, by the Ruler over all, have been selected to act the part he did to open his lips as a preacher of righteousness to essay to stem the torrent of iniquity, or change the current of affairs had it not been for that peculiarity of the age his piety. How superlative a regard was his for the glory of the Infinite One, and for the well-being (not only nor so much in the lower as in the higher sense) of his fellow-men. How intense was his desire for a change in those knit to him by a common humanity and de- scent, so iniquity should not be their ruin. It is a saying of its denizens, that " Naples is a piece of heaven fallen down to earth." Oh, how much did our worthy patriarch long for something of heaven to come down to earth, to preserve the latter from sinking down to hell ; but the Old World would not have it, no, not so good a specimen even as Naples, which you will all say is none of the best ; and so the flood came and bore her to her own place. Ah, what a groan was that in heaven, when the first big, voluminous, synchronal wail of its new tenants ascended from the awful, bottomless abyss ! We have said that Noah would have never borne the trans- cendently distinguished, as well as praiseworthy part he did in time's earlier events, but for his piety, his eminent piety. This is specially true of that paramount event of his day, the deluge. But for this peculiarity, he, with the multitudinous throng, would have sunk as lead beneath the mighty waves, instead of being the chosen instrument of ferrying his little family, with the sub-human creatures, over the waters, to stock an untenanted world. How grateful should we feel that so great, wise, and good a man was chosen to commence the colonizing of the depopu- lated earth, and lay the foundation of her institutions. How long since, but for the benign effects, upon the postdiluvian THE PATRIARCH'S INFLUENCE 411 generations, of his exertions as well as example of the shaping, moulding influence of his instructions, counsels, kind ministries, and, withal, many and fervent prayers might this earth in toto have become as Sodom ; have experienced the fiery fate of Gomorrah. Our saint and sage was incom- parably more useful in the New World than he had ever suc- ceeded in being in the Old. "What gave him a special ad- vantage for usefulness among the postdiluvians was, that he stood at their head was the parent of them all ; had the opportunity of superintending and directing the course of the twig in its up-risings, and the fountain in its out-flowings. He indeed fell far short of accomplishing for his offspring all that his benevolent soul desired. Ere he left the world he was compelled to witness upspringing evils which ago- nized his spirit yes, even of so great and aggravated an evil, perhaps, as that of a turning of the hearts of some from the true God to idols. It appears at least that ere Abraham left the land of his nativity, the sin of idolatry was not wholly unknown in it. (See Josh. 24 : 2, 14.) Be this as it may, our postdiluvian father accomplished for his de- scendants, instrumen tally, an inexpressible amount of good. Yes, much as there is in the world to be deplored far as large portions of humanity are from what it is highly desira- ble they should be still, how much worse both as to char- acter and^condition would the family of man in its entireness have been, but for the early benign ministries of our great and good progenitor. Eminently may it be declared of him, that " though dead he yet speaketh ; " though long, long since, out of the world, he left and sent down to succeeding generations, influences salutary and precious that are yet in it ; aye, and are this day and hour widely, as well as strikingly, visible. Would that all the intermediate progenitors of the present population of the globe, and the existing population itself, had been so willing to be profited by, as to be more like him. Were the possession of grace dependent upon generation, 412 HOW BENIGN AND LASTING. instead of regeneration, its prevalence and blessed effects would be vastly more extensive than we now find them. Noah's spirit has been long mingling with the glorified and happy of the spirit world beholding sights which angel spirits witness ; engaged in their elevated and rap- turous exercises with a measure of peculiarity indeed as regards, particularly, the latter ; singing some strains "which angel voices can hardly reach ; harping some notes which angel harps cannot touch. Oh, what heights of glory does the patriarch spirit already occupy! his intellect how expanded and how stored! his heart how crowded and swollen with big and blissful emotions ! but, be it observed, the intellect and heart of that spirit have not yet attained to all the capacity or amount of choice stores of which they are susceptible. And, when will they ? Echo answers, When will they ? Shall our spirits immortal, young gentlemen, ever ascend and approach near enough to this patriarch-spirit, not only to behold but have converse with him, our honored ancestor ? Shall we have addressed to us any of the utterances of his lips ; receive great thoughts from his into our minds ; and have any of the more choice emotions of his swelling bosom reappearing in ours? One thing we do know that if heaven's golden gates ever turn on their hinges for our admittance, our eyes shall gaze on a greater than Noah, and one that has done more for Noah's posterity, than that excel- lent and benevolent patriarch ever did for them, or ever had it in his power to do : One, also, wearing the whole likeness of humanity, corporeal as well as spiritual. For though Noah's spirit is, his body is not in heaven. It is here yes, here. Oh, that living men might treat it better, than upon it with infidel, contemptuous foot to trample. Yes, the whole of the second father of mankind ( is not absent from our terrestrial abode. Though, some thousands of years since, all belonging to our patriarch, that was just ready for it, HIS MEMORIAL WITH TJS. 413 passed from the shores of time to a territory that by time's foot is never trodden ; yet he left behind him a memorial a physical, visible memorial. He left behind him that body which, for so prolonged a season, housed his spirit ; those lips which had uttered the words of instruction, tones' of admoni- tion, notes of warning, which fell upon the ears of the ungodly of the world beyond the flood's rolling waves ; those hands which were employed in the construction of the floating house that transported the prime tenants of the new from a former world. Yes, young friends, we may with our own eyes have seen some portion of the outer garment which Noah's spirit wore. And, oh, does not the very dust appear to us the more attractive and dear, when we think that some of it, falling upon our eye-sight, helped to constitute the mantle, the fleshy robe, worn by so great and holy men as our Patriarch, and Abraham, and Moses, and David, and the prophets, yea, and by the apostles of our Lord, and hundreds and thousands, and millions too, all of Noah's progeny, of whom the world was not worthy? Yes, the very dust of earth is endeared, when we think of this ; and especially when, in addition, we think that this very dust may again help to enrobe those saints in glory ; this very dust become instinct with life, become immortal ; stand in organized, em- bodied form before the throne of the Infinite Majesty ; and appear beautiful beyond all that mortal vision has ever beheld ; and continue so, aye, pass on from the beautiful to the more beautiful, from glory to glory, unintermittedly, without end ! We bless thee this hour, O Infinite, for the information thou hast given, that the mortal shall become immortal so that our pious ancestry, in the habiliments which once they wore, shall be seen by us those whom we knew on this earthly ball again seen by us, but habiliments renewed, indeed, and appearing superior far to what they were when they constituted the apparel of the saints wearing them, ere they were put off. IVERSITY -./c, DATE . TO TVITE RETURN CIRCULATION DEPARTMENT 202 Main Library LOAN PERIOD 1 HOME USE 2 3 4 5 6 ALL BOOKS MAY BE RECALLED AFTER 7 DAYS 1 -month loans may be renewed by calling 642-3405 6-month loans may be recharged by bringing books to Circulation Desk Renewals and recharges may be made 4 days prior to due date DUE AS STAMPED BELOW .DEC 2Q19tti RECEIVED NOV Z 8 1999 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY FORM NO. DD6, 60m, 12/80 BERKELEY, CA 94720 YB 70425 83 6 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY *,<'<:. ' r . m im.