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But lest he should his own forget,
Who in the vale were struggling yet,
A sadder vision came,
Announcing all that guilty deed
Of idol rite, that in her need
He for the church might intercede,
And stay Heaven's rising flame.

5.

"The Fathers are in dust, yet live to God :"

So says the Truth; as if the motionless clay
Still held the seeds of life beneath the sod,

Smouldering and struggling till the judgment-day.
And hence we learn with reverence to esteem

Of these frail houses, though the grave confines;
Sophist may urge his cunning tests, and deem

That they are earth;-but they are heavenly shrines.

CORRESPONDENCE.

The Editor begs to remind his readers that he is not responsible for the opinions
of his Correspondents.

CHURCH ESTABLISHMENT.

REV. SIR,-Your correspondent "Mentor" establishes perfectly the expediency of a church establishment; but, in adopting an old position of Paley, he abandons higher and stronger ground which he might occupy, and maintain not the expediency merely, but the Divine authority of religious establishments. Paley's position is, that the church, or a religious establishment, under which name he refers to the church, is not part of, but the means of inculcating Christianity; a position this which appears to me hollow and unsound, and to have been received, without inquiry, from the authority of Paley merely. The soul exercises its faculties by means of the bodily senses; our philosophy cannot trace the partition between soul and body, and it would exceed the acuteness even of Paley's philosophy to exhibit Christianity and its establishment in distinct and separate forms. The persons who constitute the political union in these islands are supposed all to be Christians, to whom St. Paul speaks, (Phil. i. 27,) džús Toυ Evayyeλiov Toũ Xpiotoũ moλitEVEσOE. Though these words be rendered, "Let your conversation be such as becometh the gospel of Christ," the sense of them is not expressed. The apostle's expression is, "constitute yourselves, or live together, in all the duties of society worthily of the gospel of Christ;" let your laws be Christian laws. To the members of a Christian society, or to all Christians who constitute one society, this apostolic sentence is imperative, to form themselves into a Chris

tian order, to regulate themselves according to Christian principles, and to make provision for the spiritual wants and duties which such a society requires. To hear church and state spoken of by modern philosophers as not only utterly distinct, but immiscible the state referred to would be supposed to be that which existed in the times of Woden and Thor, for since Christianity has been received by our Saxon ancestors, the elements of our constitution, the states of the realm, are nobles, clergy, and commons. To efface every trace of Christianity from our institutions is the labour of those who assume, par excellence, the name of reformers, as is described in the 2nd Book of Maccabees, vi. 1 :-ἀναγκάζειν τοὺς Ἰουδαίους μεταβαίνειν ἐκ τῶν πατρῴων νόμων καὶ τοῖς τοῦ Θεοῦ νόμοις μη πολιτεύεσθαι, “ to compel Christians to change from the laws of their fathers, and not be constituted according to the laws of God." If any authority were wanted for the true meaning of the word Tоreveσbai, as used by St. Paul (Phil. i. 27), that authority is afforded in this passage from Maccabees. Christians, therefore, are directed by St. Paul to constitute themselves worthily of the gospel of Christ, that their whole polity be established on Christian principles; or church and state, comprehending the whole clerical and lay population, be mixed together and blended into one constitution, which is the character Christianity has assumed since it was first freely recognised in the world, and which it is now sought to destroy.

I shall not trespass farther at present, but there are other positions of Paley equally dangerous in the hands of those who are enemies of the cause (that of Christianity) which he so eminently advocated; which positions, if you think these observations worthy of the public eye, I shall hereafter comment upon.

I am, &c., PASCAL.

ANTIQUITY OF THE SACRED HISTORY.

SIR,-In the course of writing the letter on Melchisedeck which appeared in the last number, an observation has presented itself to my mind, which is available for the purpose of shewing that the sacred histories of the Hebrews were written at times very shortly subsequent to the events of which they treat. It is a favourite doctrine of the infidel theology (introduced to the Germans long ago by Herman von der Hardt), that those books were compilations (or fictions, if you please) got up by Esdras soon after the captivity. Voltaire, and some of his school, more ingeniously chose the apostacy of Manasseh and Amon for the interval which such a theory requires, Josiah and Hilkiah for the agents in concocting those histories, and the volume found by Hilkiah in the temple as the first copy that ever existed. Indeed, to suppose that the agents in those extraordinary scenes, or their friends and contemporaries, were the authors of the books which narrate them, is to suppose those narratives in a great measure true. The infidel theologians even felt that supernaturalism of the highest degree could not easily be put aside, if St. Irenæus, Bishop of Lyons, wrote

the work which bears his name, and were, consequently, induced to invent the arbitrary supposition of his work being spurious.

We read in Josh. xv. 63, "As for the Jebusites, the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the children of Judah could not drive them out, but the Jebusites dwell with the children of Judah in Jerusalem to this day." But in Judg. i. 8, we read that "the children of Judah had fought against Jerusalem, and had taken it, and smitten it with the edge of the sword, and set the city on fire." That, however, does not imply any subsequent or farther success of the Judites, for in ver. 21 we are distinctly told, that the Jebusites enjoyed still the same joint possession which was described in Josh. xv. The fact is, that Jebusi consisted of two parts, the city, built upon a lower eminence, which the tribe of Judah took by force, and the stronghold of Mount Zion, which was nearly inexpugnable to ancient warfare, and remained in the hands of the Jebusites till the reign of David, (see 2 Sam. v.) The Judites, having got into the town, were unable to reduce the Mount Zion, and were fain to accept a capitulation, similar to that recorded of Tatius and Romulus, by which they and the old inhabitants should occupy the city in common, and if not,

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paribus sub legibus ambo Invictæ gentes,"

at least with equal municipal and local rights.

But in all this matter the tribe of Judah had not been acting for itself. By the allotment which distributed the land of promise among the tribes, "Jebusi, which is Jerusalem," became "the inheritance of the children of Benjamin," (Josh. xviii. 28.) The Judites occupied that place for the Benjamites, and only in order to deliver it up to them; and, meanwhile, they held it, as it is termed in the diplomacy of our modern congresses, en dépôt. That some unnecessary delay took place in the final distribution of the conquered lands may be collected from the words of Joshua, "How long are ye slack to go to possess the land ?" (chap. xviii. 3.) But when the Benjamites were ready to take possession of it, the place was given up to them, and held by them on precisely the same terms as had been arranged with Judah; "and the children of Benjamin did not drive out the Jebusites that inhabited Jerusalem, but the Jebusites dwell with the children of Benjamin in Jerusalem to this day," (Judg. i. 21.) But when the 15th chapter of Joshua was penned, no Benjamites were as yet in Jebusi, but the Jebusites and Judites were occupying it in common. Consequently, that chapter of Joshua was written at no greater distance of time from the events it describes than the time during which the place was provisionally occupied by its captors, and before it was delivered up to its intended owners. And that is an interval of which we cannot define the length, but which, in reason, should be referred to the citegory of months rather than of years. So much as affecting the date of the Book of Joshua.

Now to consider that of Judges. When the first chapter was written, the Judites had given up Jebusi to the tribe in whose lot it lay, and the Benjamites were dwelling there in peace. But when the 20th chapter was written, every soul of the tribe of Benjamin had VOL. VIII.-Oct. 1835.

3 H

perished excepting 600 adult males, who escaped from battle; and all their lands had been desolated, and every city of Benjamin smitten with the sword or burnt with fire. The Benjamites of Jerusalem were more certain of destruction than any others, being placed between two enemies, the Israelites and the Jebusites. As none would intermarry with the survivors, the rape of the women of Jabesh-Gilead and that of the women of Shiloh (which resembles that of the Sabines) did alone preserve the tribe from extinction. To what extent they did ever again become possessors of their exclusive and vacant possessions is uncertain. But it is morally certain that the remnant of this once formidable tribe, now reduced to the "little Benjamin" of the Psalmist, never got back from the warlike Jebusites their stipulated half-possession of Jerusalem. When David made himself master both of the inferior Jerusalem and the fastness of Zion, he was described merely as waging war against a fierce and inveterately hostile people, the Jebusites, without the slightest allusion either to the Benjamites then being, or ever having been, in occupation of them, or having a subsisting claim to the possession of them. From these remarks it follows, to a palpable demonstration, that the massacre and devastations which almost extinguished the existence of Benjamin's tribe, had not yet occurred when the sacred historian asserted that the Jebusites and Benjamites were dwelling together under their original capitulation. In other words, that the 1st chapter of Judges was written before any of the events described in the 19th chapter of the same book had come to pass.

When we find that the portions of the same book were thus composed successively, we have reason to conclude that the sacred records were written up pretty close. At the same time, the words "unto this day" shew, that in both the above instances some period, though a short one, was suffered to elapse between the event and the record of it. That method served to ascertain the permanency and stability of the events mentioned. A capitulation made one day or week, and annulled the next, would hardly be worth recording. An event required to be ripened into some stability, and to shew itself as a valid and bond fide transaction, and not a mere ephemeral purpose, before it earned for itself a place in chronicles intended to be brief.

H.

NOAH'S VINEYARD.

IN a paper on the Rainbow (Br. Mag., vol. iii. p. 432), I advocated the opinion that there was no rain before the flood, and that its sudden appearance at that catastrophe produced a change of climate that was prejudicial to the human constitution; and I ventured the remark that "vegetation also suffering from the change would afford a less kindly aliment for his support; hence flesh for food, and perhaps wine, were now first given as actually necessary to withstand the effects of a vitiated atmosphere." It is the object of this communication to establish that remark concerning the recent use of wine.

In Gen. ix. 20, we meet with the following narrative: "Noah began to be a husbandman, and he planted a vineyard; and he drank of the wine, and was drunken; and he was uncovered within his tent, &c."-But the Hebrew words seem to indicate that Noah was the first husbandman who planted a vineyard, as appears from a comparison of them with a similar idiom in other passages. "Nimrod began to be a mighty one in the earth," or, he was the first usurper in the world, Gen. x. 8. The meaning is, that Nimrod was the first who rose up against the constituted patriarchal form of government, and established a tyranny in his own person. Rosenmüller's words are-Hic cœpit tyrannus esse in terrâ, i.e., hic primus per vim tyrannide potitus est, humanoque generi libertatem eripuit. Eandem sententiam Josephus his verbis exprimit :-τολμηρος και κατα χειρα γενναιος περιστα κατ' ολίγον εις τυραννίδα τα πραγματα. A similar idiom occurs in Gen. iv. 26. "And to Seth, to him also there was born a son, and he called his name Enos; then began men to call themselves by the name of the Lord," marginal reading. The appellation was most probably that which afterwards occurs without explanation"The sons of God." The passage may be thus paraphrased: Believers were first called sons of God in the days of Enos. In like manner, when the Gentiles were admitted into the church of Christ, it is remarked," the disciples were called Christians first in Antioch." Acts xi. 26. See also I Sam. xiv. 35, and the marginal reading: "The same was the first altar that he built unto the Lord." The passage in question is thus translated and commented on by Rosenmüller: Noachus, agricola cùm esset, vineam plantavit...Et cœpit Noachus et plantavit vineam, i.e., plantavit vineam; ex noto Hebraismo, quo duo præterita aut futura adhiberentur, quorum posterius est infinitivi loco. From these examples and remarks, I am brought to the conclusion that the correct translation is as follows: "Now Noah was the first husbandman who planted a vineyard."

I proceed to shew, from a different source, the reason why no one planted a vineyard before Noah.

The vine is a plant which at present comes to perfection only within particular limits of the temperate zone; in tropical climates it grows too rank and wild for any economical purposes.* But from certain geological phenomena, it is inferred that, before the flood, a tropical climate pervaded the whole of our earth; and as there was a new creation both of plants and animals after the deluge (vid. Noachic creation), it is only reasonable to suppose that the vine was among the new species that were adapted to the altered circumstances of climate, and to the new wants of man. From the great length of life before the flood, I am inclined to think that the antediluvians had not discovered the means of inebriation; and though it is said "they were

Vitis vinifera, the common vine. Native of most of the temperate parts of the world. In very cold regions it refuses to grow; and within 25° or even 30° of the equinoctial line, it seldom flourishes so as to produce good fruit. In the northern hemisphere, the proper wine country is from 25° to 51° of latitude. Miller's Gardener's Dictionary, edited by Prof. Martyn.

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