not entirely compatible with, the original religion of his fathers. The learned Spencer (in his treatise De Urim et Thummim) supposes the Teraphim of Micah to have been the exact resemblances of the Urim and Thummim used in the tabernacle of Shiloh: this is doubtful; but it is certain that when Micah set up the graven images, he did not intend to offend Jehovah. This tabernacle and oracle, established by Micah, is forcibly taken away; and was adopted by a whole tribe, as their chief place of worship. So, it is reasonable to suppose, the oracles of the Heathen were set up; they united true Patriarchism, with incipient Idolatry: they gave oracular responses, because these were common to the places of worship appointed by Jehovah; and Priestcraft continued, in a corrupt state, what had originally been the criterion, and peculiar chaFacteristic, of uncontaminated Patriarchism. SECTION VIII-Origin of Pride of Rank. I know that I shall indeed be deemed fanciful if I merely hint at the possible origin of another strange peculiarity in the history of the human race; the origin of pride of rank. The tables of pedigree were carefully preserved among the Jews, that the line in which the Messiah was to descend might be kept distinct; and the genealogy of the Priests be recorded, to prevent the intrusion of improper persons into the sacred office. The tables of pedigree were handed down from the beginning; and either in tradition, or in letters, must have been preserved among the Patriarchs. The first beginnings of idolatry were, an attempt to set aside the acknowledged line of the future Mes siah. Nimrod assumed the title of "the Son;" assuming most probably, as Mr. Faber with much ingenuity has attempt ed to prove, the name and office of their expected Messiah. To effect this, he must have been able to make out some title from his descent, which was from Ham the eldest son of Noah; who according to the usual customs of the Patriarchs would have inherited the birth-right; one of the privileges of which was, to be the progenitor of the branch from which one parent of the Messiah was to descend. The Patriarchs esteemed that line of descent to be the most noble, from which the Messiah was to be born: the excluded tribes would not easily resign their claims; they too therefore would preserve their line of descent, and the ambition of being supposed to have descended from some celebrated ancestor would have become universal. Ishmael for instance, as the first-born of Abraham, is said by the best commentators to have derided Isaac, because he claimed the inheritance, and the birth-right; which were allotted to Isaac. The Arabians still commemorate the immediate descendants of Ishmael, and boast of their lofty descent and there is much traditional evidence on record to show that it is not improbable that they remembered and asserted in those early times the claims of their progenitor. The Edomites undoubtedly opposed Israel on this account: and we know that this family were so tenacious of their pedigree, that it has even been in serted by Moses in the sacred canon; as if to prove to the sur rounding nations at the time when the Pentateuch was written, by the miracles which he wrought, that the line of Esau was rejected and that of Jacob approved. The people of Edom must have known that the ancestors enumerated in their tables, had apostatised from the worship of Jehovah, and could bring no proof that they were entitled to the birth-right except the sole circumstance, that their father had been the elder born of Isaac. In opposition to this claim he relates minutely the sale of his birth-right by Esau; the subsequent blessing of Isaac; the perseverance of Jacob and his family in the true Religion; the uninterrupted pedigree of Jacob; and the evident proofs of a miraculous nature, by which God confirmed the right of the second brother to the forfeited inheritance of the elder. Though it is true, that men wish to be renowned, as partaking in some measure of the honor of their fathers, yet when these tables of pedigree were first formed, little or no temptation of this kind existed. They were compiled for political and religious purposes; and were therefore entirely independent of any of those feelings which are the offspring of a more advanced stage of society. All this however is a theory which may be rejected at pleasure. The fact is certainly curious, that in the very earliest ages men should be so anxious to preserve the respective tables of descent, and identify themselves with the names of their fathers. SECTION IX. The subject of Idolatry illustrated from the Book of Job, and the Poems of Homer. It is most probable that Job was contemporary with Nahor; and that Idolatry, though it had made some progress, could neither have been universal nor formidable, for it was an offence punishable by the civil magistrate, that is, by each patriarchal head of his own tribe. We learn this from observing that among the offences cognizable by the magistrate, the superstitious adoration of the Sun and Moon is enumerated (Ch. 31. va 26-28.): no notice however is taken of other kinds of Idolatry, than this of Tsabaism. And I think we should be warranted, from this omission, in rejecting one great part of Mr. Faber's theory. So far from the book of Job containing a hint of universal defection from the knowledge and worship of Jehovah, it presents us with a most beautiful idea of the admirable opinions and sublime notions of God entertained by the patriarchal families. From the times of Job, we proceed to the age of Abraham. Idolatry had now made a great and melancholy progress; for Abraham travelled from Ur in Chaldea, through the whole of Palestine, to Egypt, and among nearly all the immediately surrounding nations, to recover and establish among them the knowledge of the true God. We are not informed in scripture of the nature of the idolatry thus prevalent; we know only that it still continued to increase till the period of the Exodus. At that time, the worship of images, the cruelty, obscenity, and abominations of every kind were fully established among the surrounding nations; though even then, the knowledge and worship of Jehovah had not been entirely resigned among seve-: ral of the neighbouring tribes: I refer to Jethro the Midianite; to the Kenites; and to the manner in which the God of the Hebrews seems to have been spoken of by many even of those who opposed the Israelites. I have not alluded to the destruc-, tion of Sodom and Gomorrah, for though their crime was probably connected with, or as others suppose, originated in, the rites of Baal Peor, or Chemos, or some other obscene Deity, we have not sufficient documents to prove that this is more than mere supposition. It is singular that neither Mr. Bryant, Mr. Faber, Mr. Maurice, nor many of the early researchers into the remains of antiquity, have made much use of Homer. He seems to me to present a complete picture of the age when the more peculiar customs, and the religious or rather the moral notions of the Patriarchs had not yet become entirely extinguished by the grosser corruptions of Heathenism. He fills up the interval that elapsed from the times of Job, and in some measure the deficiency in the history of that period which elapsed between the origin or general prevalence of the worship of the heavenly host, and that system of infamy and crime, which degraded below the beasts of the field, the inhabitants of Canaan. It must be remembered here, that of the real author of the Iliad and Odyssey' we know little or nothing. Pisistratus put the several books together, in their present order; before his time they were rhapsodised in every city of Ionia and Greece. The narratives contained in them were common to all the people of Asia Minor: they are found to this day among the stories of the Hindoos, whose curious legends' are filled with the wars of the gods, and their assembling on' Mount Ida. The rivers of the Troad are plainly described in the volumes of the Hindoos; and the reason why the author of the Iliad celebrated this siege rather than others, was, that the scene of the Troad so exactly corresponded with the imagined residence of the newly-worshipped gods. This, however, is mere conjecture; nor can it be insisted upon for one moment. The reasons why Homer ought to be valued by the lovers of knowledge, as well as by the admirers of poetry, are of much more importance; particularly as Virgil has copied the manners, and described from tradition the same scenes, the same superstitions, gods, and heroes. The most probable date of Homer, is that assigned him by Herodotus, about 884 years before the Nativity. About that time, the collections of the Iliad and Odyssey were, we may suppose, completed. Whether Homer, or the Homeri, who sang them among the cities of Asia Minor and Greece, composed them as one story, or what is their true history, is not at present to our purpose; I allude only to the internal evidence they bear of their great antiquity, and the assistance they render to our present enquiries. Lycurgus is said to have found the poems of Homer in Crete : they seem to have then formed merely a collection of ballads' with their appropriate titles. In the 5th, 6th, and 7th volumes' of the Asiatic Researches, the story of the Trojan war is given from original Sanscrit authors; its episodes, like those of Homer, are placed in Egypt; and the traditions of Laius,* Labdacus, Edipus, and Jason, are all found among the same ancient compositions. The pages of Homer, it was observed, appear to describe the manners of that interval which elapsed between the origin of image worship, and the establishment of the grosser abominations of Paganism. I refer to such facts as the following. The chiefs in Homer were patriarchal heads of families. Thus Priam was considered as the father, as well as the ruler, of the Trojans. He was the priest, as well as king. Calchas is represented as possessing the gift of prophecy, which was undoubtedly the prerogative of the early priests among the first postdiluvian families. The characters of Homer seem to have Sic fatus (Sol), croceis rorantes ignibus hortos Subligat alipedum : gelidas hinc Lucifer ornat, De Primo Cons. Stilich. 11. 467. This fiction is much in the style of Darwin, between whom and Claudian there exists a considerable resemblance. It occurs in our modern Prometheus: My coursers sought their birth-place in the sun, The fantastic play of images occasioned by the confusion of fire and water in the passage of Claudian above quoted, occurs again in the redoubtable passage, Pros. 11. 314. -Dominis intrantibus ingens Assurgit Phlegethon; flagrantibus hispida rivis 2. ΣΩΚ. "Αρτι δὲ ἥκεις, ἢ πάλαι; ΚΡ. Επιεικῶς πάλαι. ΣΩΚ. Εἶτα πῶς οὐκ εὐθὺς ἐπήγειράς με, ἀλλὰ σιγῇ παρακάθησαι ; ΚΡ. Ο μὰ τὸν Δία, ὦ Σώκρατες· οὐδ ̓ ἂν αὐτὸς ἤθελον ἐν τοσαύτῃ ἀγρυπνία καὶ λύπῃ εἶναι· ἀλλὰ καὶ σοῦ πάλαι θαυμάζω, αἰσθανόμενος ὡς ἡδέως καθεύδεις· καὶ ἐπίτηδές σε οὐκ ἤγειρον, ἵνα ὡς ἥδιστα διάγης· καὶ πολλάκις μὲν δή σε καὶ πρότερον ἐν παντὶ τῷ βίῳ εὐδαιμόνισα τοῦ τρόπου, πολὺ δὲ μάλιστα ἐν τῇ νῦν παρεστώσῃ ξυμφορᾷ, ὡς ῥᾳδίως αὐτὴν καὶ πράως φέρεις. Plat. Crit. 1. Glover evidently had the above passage before his eyes, when he wrote the beautiful description of the last sleep of Leonidas, with which his eleventh book commences, and to which the f 'An interesting essay might be written on modern imitations of ancient poetry. "Prometheus" is not a revival of the lost drama of Eschylus; the catastrophe, as well as the scopus dramatis, is different. It involves the downfall of Jupiter, and the deliverance of the human race from his usurped dominion-in other words, the overthrow of law, custom, and religion, throughout the world; these being considered as the sources of human misery. In the boldness and crowd of his metaphors, the writer resembles Eschylus. The richness and intense beauty of his images is almost beyond example; they seem, as it were, entangled in their own magnificent luxuriance. Of his principles (which he promulgates more openly and undisguisedly than the rest of his confederacy) we judge it best to be silent in this place. |