A BIBLICAL AND THEOLOGICAL
DICTIONARY:

[An intimate acquaintance with the Holy Scriptures is a secure haven, and an impregnable bulwark, and an immovable tower, and imperishable glory, and impenetrable armour, and unfading joy, and perpetual delight, and whatever other excellence can be uttered.]

GABBATHA, a place in Pilate’s palace, from whence he pronounced sentence of death upon Jesus Christ, John xix, 13. This was probably an eminence, or terrace, paved with marble, for the Hebrew means elevated.

GABRIEL, one of the principal angels of heaven. He was sent to the Prophet Daniel, to explain to him the visions of the ram and goat, and the mystery of the seventy weeks, which had been revealed to him, Dan. viii, 15; ix, 21; xi, 1, &c. The same angel was sent to Zechariah, to declare to him the future birth of John the Baptist, Luke i, 11, &c. Six months after this he appeared to a virgin, whose name was Mary, of the city of Nazareth, as related Luke i, 26, &c.

GAD was the name of the son of Jacob and Zilpah, Leah’s servant, Gen. xxx, 9–11. Leah, Jacob’s wife, gave him also Zilpah, that by her she might have children. Zilpah brought a son, whom Leah called Gad, saying, “A troop cometh.” Gad had seven sons, Ziphion, Haggi, Shuni, Ezbon, Eri, Arodi, and Areli, Genesis xlvi, 16. Jacob, blessing Gad, said, “A troop shall overcome him, but he shall overcome at the last,” Gen. xlix, 19; and Moses, in his last song, mentions Gad as “a lion which teareth the arm with the crown of the head,” &c, Deut. xxxiii, 20, 21. The tribe of Gad came out of Egypt in number forty-five thousand six hundred and fifty. After the defeat of the kings Og and Sihon, Gad and Reuben desired to have their lot in the conquered country, and alleged their great number of cattle. Moses granted their request, on condition that they would accompany their brethren, and assist in the conquest of the land beyond Jordan. Gad had his inheritance between Reuben south, and Manasseh north, with the mountains of Gilead east, and Jordan west.

2. Gad, a prophet, David’s friend, who followed him when persecuted by Saul. The Scripture calls him a prophet and David’s seer, 2 Sam. xxiv, 11. The first time we find him with this prince is when he fled into the land of Moab, 1 Sam. xxii, 5, to secure his father and mother in the first year of Saul’s persecution. The Prophet Gad warned him to return into the land of Judah. After David had determined to number his people, the Lord sent to him the Prophet Gad, to offer him his choice of three scourges: seven years’ famine, or three months’ flight before his enemies, or three days’ pestilence. Gad also directed David to erect an altar to the Lord, in the threshing floor of Ornan or Araunah, the Jebusite, 2 Sam. xxiv, 13–19; and he wrote a history of David’s life, cited in 1 Chron. xxix, 29.

GADARA, a city which gave name to the country of the Gadarenes; situated on a steep rocky hill on the river Hieromax, or Yermuck, about five miles from its junction with the Jordan. It was a place of considerable note in the time of Josephus, and the metropolis of Peræa, or the country beyond Jordan. It was also celebrated for its hot baths. The vicinity was likewise called the country of the Gergesenes, from Gerasa, or Gergesa, another considerable city in the same neighbourhood. Thus the miracle of our Lord performed here is represented by St. Mark to have been done in the country of the Gadarenes, Mark v, 1; and by St. Matthew, in that of the Gergesenes, Matt. viii, 28.

GALATIA, a province of the Lesser Asia, bounded on the west by Phrygia, on the east by the river Haylys, on the north by Paphlagonia, and on the south by Lycaonia. The Galatians are said to have been descended from those Gauls, who, finding their own country too strait for them, left it, after the death of Alexander the Great, in quest of new settlements. Quitting their own country, they migrated eastward along the Danube till they came where the Saave joins that river; then dividing themselves into three bodies, under the conduct of different leaders, one of these bodies entered Pannonia; another marched into Thrace; a third into Illyricum and Macedonia. The party which proceeded into Thrace, crossed the Bosphorus into the Lesser Asia, and hiring themselves to Nicomedes, king of 392Bithynia, assisted him to subdue his brother Zipetes, with whom he was then at war; and as a reward of their services they received from him a country in the middle of Asia Minor, which from them was afterward called Gallo-Græcia, and, by contraction, Galatia. As their inland situation in a great measure cut them off from all intercourse with more civilized nations, the Galatians long remained a rude and illiterate people. And as a proof of this, it is mentioned by Jerom, that when the Apostle Paul preached the Gospel among them, and for many ages afterward, they continued to speak the language of the country from whence they came out.

2. Paul and Barnabas carried the light of the Gospel into the regions of Galatia at a very early period; and it appears from the epistle which the former subsequently wrote to the churches in that country, that they had at first received it with great joy, Gal. iv, 15. But some Judaizing teachers getting access among them soon after the Apostle’s departure, their minds became corrupted from the simplicity that was in Christ Jesus; and, though mostly Gentiles, they were beginning to mingle circumcision, and other Jewish observances, with their faith in Christ, in order to render it more available to their salvation. This occasioned Paul’s writing his epistle to those churches; and his object throughout nearly the whole of it is to counteract the pernicious influence of the doctrine of those false teachers particularly as it respected the article of justification, or a sinner’s acceptance with God. And in no part of the Apostle’s writings is that important doctrine handled in a more full and explicit manner; nor does he any where display, such a firm, determined, and inflexible opposition to all who would corrupt the truth from its simplicity. He begins by expressing his astonishment that they were so soon turned aside “unto another gospel,” but instantly checking himself, he recals the word and declares, “it is not another gospel,” but a perversion of the Gospel of Christ. “And though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed.” There are in his epistle several other things equally pointed and severe, particularly his expostulation on the folly and absurdity of their conduct in subjecting themselves to the Jewish yoke of bondage, Gal. iii, 1. “The erroneous doctrines of the Judaizing teachers,” says Dr. Macknight, “and the calumnies they spread for the purpose of discrediting St. Paul’s apostleship, no doubt occasioned great uneasiness of mind to him and to the faithful in that age, and did much hurt, at least for a while, among the Galatians. But in the issue these evils have proved of no small service to the church in general; for by obliging the Apostle to produce the evidences of his apostleship, and to relate the history of his life, especially after his conversion, we have obtained the fullest assurance of his being a real Apostle, called to the office by Jesus Christ himself; consequently we are assured that our faith in the doctrines of the Gospel, as taught by him, (and it is he who hath taught the peculiar doctrines of the Gospel most fully,) is not built on the credit of a man, but on the authority of the Spirit of God, by whom St. Paul was inspired in the whole of the doctrine which he has delivered to the world.”

GALBANUM, , Exod. xxx, 34. Michaëlis makes the word a compound of , milk or gum, (for the Syriac uses the noun in both senses,) and ], white, as being the white milk or gum of a plant. It is the thickened sap of an umbelliferous plant, called metopion, which grows on Mount Amanus, in Syria, and is frequently found in Persia, and in some parts of Africa. It was an ingredient in the holy incense of the Jews.

GALILEANS. In the twelfth year of Christ, about the time that Archelaus was sent away from his government, a secession was made from the sect of the Pharisees, and a new sect arose, called the Galileans. Not long after this time, Judea, which was a Roman province, was added, for civil purposes, to Syria, over which Quirinus was governor. It happened, when the tax was levied by Quirinus, that one Judas, of Galilee, otherwise called Gaulonites, in company with Zaduk, a Sadducee, publicly taught, that such taxation was repugnant to the law of Moses, according to which the Jews, they maintained, had no king but God. The tumults which this man excited were suppressed, Acts v, 37; but his disciples, who were called Galileans, continued to propagate this doctrine, and, farthermore, required of all proselytes that they should be circumcised. It was in reference to this sect that the captious question was proposed in Matt. xxii, 17, &c; namely, whether it was lawful to give tribute to Cæsar. The Galileans, whom Pilate slew in the temple, Luke xiii, 1, 2, appear to have been of this sect. By degrees, the Galileans swallowed up almost all the other sects; and it is highly probable that the zealots, particularly mentioned at the siege of Jerusalem, were of this faction.

GALILEE was one of the most extensive provinces into which the Holy Land was divided. It exceeded Judea in extent, but probably varied in its limits at different times. This province is divided by the rabbins into, 1. The Upper; 2. The Nether; and, 3. The Valley. Josephus divides it into only Upper and Lower; and he says that the limits of Galilee were, on the south, Samaria and Scythopolis, unto the flood of Jordan. Galilee contained four tribes, Issachar, Zebulun, Naphtali, and Asher; a part, also, of Dan, and part of Peræa, that is, beyond the river. Upper Galilee abounded in mountains. Lower Galilee, which contained the tribes of Zebulun and Asher, was sometimes called the Great Field, “the champaign,” Deut. xi, 30. The Valley was adjacent to the sea of Tiberias. Josephus describes Galilee as very populous, and containing two hundred and four cities and towns. It was also very rich, and paid two hundred talents in tribute. The natives were brave and good soldiers; but they were seditious, and prone to insolence and 393rebellion. In the books of Ezra and Nehemiah, the inhabitants of Galilee and Peræa are scarcely mentioned, whether they were Jews returned from Babylon, or a mixture of different nations. The language of these regions differed considerably from that of Judea; as did various customs, in which each followed its own mode. Our Lord so frequently visited Galilee, that he was called a Galilean, Matt. xxvi, 69. The population of Galilee being very great, he had many opportunities of doing good in this country; and, being there out of the power of the priests at Jerusalem, he seems to have preferred it as his abode. Nazareth and Capernaum were in this division. From such a mixture of people, many provincialisms might be expected. Hence, we find Peter detected by his language, probably by his phraseology, as well as his pronunciation, Mark xiv, 70. Upper Galilee had Mount Lebanon and the countries of Tyre and Sidon on the north; the Mediterranean Sea on the west; Abilene, Ituræa, and the country of the Decapolis, on the east; and Lower Galilee on the south. Its principal city was Cæsarea Philippi. This part of Galilee, being less inhabited by Jews, was thence called Galilee of the Nations, or of the Gentiles. Lower Galilee had the upper division of the same country to the north; the Mediterranean on the west; the sea of Galilee. or lake of Gennesareth, on the east; and Samaria on the south. Its principal cities were Tiberias, Chorazin, Bethsaida, Nazareth, Cana, Capernaum, Nain, Cæsarea of Palestine, and Ptolemais. This district was of all others most honoured with the presence of our Saviour. Here he was conceived; here he was brought back by his mother and reputed father, after their return from Egypt; here he lived with them till he was thirty years of age; and, although after his entrance on his public ministry he frequently visited the other provinces, it was here that he chiefly resided. Here, also, he made his first appearance after his resurrection to his Apostles, who were themselves natives of the same country, and were thence called men of Galilee.

Galilee, Sea of. This inland sea, or more properly lake, which derives its several names, the lake of Tiberias, the sea of Galilee, and the lake of Gennesareth, from the territory which forms its western and south-western border, is computed to be between seventeen and eighteen miles in length, and from five to six in breadth. The mountains on the east come close to its shore, and the country on that side has not a very agreeable aspect: on the west, it has the plain of Tiberias, the high ground of the plain of Hutin, or Hottein, the plain of Gennesareth, and the foot of those hills by which you ascend to the high mountain of Saphet. To the north and south it has a plain country, or valley. There is a current throughout the whole breadth of the lake, even to the shore; and the passage of the Jordan through it is discernible by the smoothness of the surface in that part. Various travellers have given different accounts of its general aspect. According to Captain Mangles, the land about it has no striking features, and the scenery is altogether devoid of character. “It appeared,” he says, “to particular disadvantage to us, after those beautiful lakes we had seen in Switzerland; but it becomes a very interesting object when you consider the frequent allusions to it in the Gospel narrative.” Dr. Clarke, on the contrary, speaks of the uncommon grandeur of this memorable scenery. “The lake of Gennesareth,” he says, “is surrounded by objects well calculated to heighten the solemn impressions made by such recollections, and affords one of the most striking prospects in the Holy Land. Speaking of it comparatively, it may be described as longer and finer than any of our Cumberland and Westmoreland lakes, although perhaps inferior to Loch Lomond. It does not possess the vastness of the lake of Geneva, although it much resembles it in certain points of view. In picturesque beauty, it comes nearest to the lake of Locarno, in Italy, although it is destitute of any thing similar to the islands by which that majestic piece of water is adorned. It is inferior in magnitude, and in the height of its surrounding mountains, to the Lake Asphaltites.” Mr. Buckingham may perhaps be considered as having given the most accurate account, and one which reconciles, in some degree, the differing statements above cited, when, speaking of the lake as seen from Tel Hoom, he says, that its appearance is grand, but that the barren aspect of the mountains on each side, and the total absence of wood, give a cast of dulness to the picture: this is increased to melancholy by the dead calm of its waters, and the silence which reigns throughout its whole extent, where not a boat or vessel of any kind is to be found. The situation of the lake, lying, as it were, in a deep basin between the hills which enclose it on all sides, excepting only the narrow entrance and outlets of the Jordan at either end, protects its waters from long-continued tempests: its surface is in general as smooth as that of the Dead Sea. But the same local features render it occasionally subject to whirlwinds, squalls, and sudden gusts from the mountains, of short duration; especially when the strong current formed by the Jordan is opposed by a wind of this description from the south-east, sweeping from the mountains with the force of a hurricane, it may easily be conceived that a boisterous sea must be instantly raised, which the small vessels of the country would be unable to resist. A storm of this description is plainly denoted by the language of the evangelist, in recounting one of our Lord’s miracles: “There came down a storm of wind on the lake, and they were filled with water, and were in jeopardy. Then he arose, and rebuked the wind and the raging of the water; and they ceased, and there was a calm,” Luke viii, 23, 24. There were fleets of some force on this lake during the wars of the Jews with the Romans, and very bloody battles were fought between them. Josephus gives a particular account of a naval engagement between the Romans under Vespasian, and the Jews who had revolted during the administration of Agrippa. Titus and Trajan 394were both present, and Vespasian himself was on board the Roman fleet. The rebel force consisted of an immense multitude, who, as fugitives after the capture of Tarichæa by Titus, had sought refuge on the water. The vessels in which the Romans defeated them were built for the occasion, and yet were larger than the Jewish ships. The victory was followed by so terrible a slaughter of the Jews, that nothing was to be seen, either on the lake or its shores, but the blood and mangled corses of the slain; and the air was infected by the number of dead bodies. Six thousand five hundred persons are stated to have perished in this naval engagement, and in the battle of Tarichæa, beside twelve hundred who were afterward massacred in cold blood, by order of Vespasian, in the amphitheatreamphitheatre at Tiberias, and a vast number who were given to Agrippa as slaves.

GALL, , something excessively bitter, and supposed to be poisonous, Deut. xxix, 18; xxxii, 32; Psalm lxix, 21; Jer. viii, 14; ix, 15; xxiii, 15; Lam. iii, 19; Hosea x, 4; Amos vi, 12. It is evident, from the first-mentioned place, that some herb or plant is meant of a malignant or nauseous kind. It is joined with wormwood, and, in the margin of our Bibles, explained to be “a very poisonful herb.” In Psalm lxix, 21, which is justly considered as a prophecy of our Saviour’s sufferings, it is said, “They gave me to eat”;eat”; which the LXX have rendered , gall. And, accordingly, it is recorded in the history, “They gave him vinegar to drink, mingled with gall,” µet , Matt. xxvii, 34. But, in the parallel passage, it is said to be, sµsµ , “wine mingled with myrrh,” Mark xv, 23, a very bitter ingredient. From whence it is probable that , and perhaps , may be used as a general name for whatever is exceedingly bitter; and, consequently, where the sense requires it, may be put specially for any bitter herb or plant, the infusion of which may be called .

GALLIO was the name of the brother of Seneca, the philosopher. He was at first named Marcus Annæus Novatus; but, being adopted by Lucius Junius Gallio, he took the name of his adoptive father. The Emperor Claudius made him proconsul of Achaia. He was of a mild and agreeable temper. To him his brother Seneca dedicated his books, “Of Anger.” He shared in the fortunes of his brothers, as well when out of favour as in their prosperity at court. At length, Nero put him, as well as them, to death. The Jews were enraged at St. Paul for converting many Gentiles, and dragged him to the tribunal of Gallio, who, as proconsul, generally resided at Corinth, Acts xviii, 12, 13. They accused him of teaching “men to worship God contrary to the law.” St. Paul being about to speak, Gallio told the Jews, that if the matter in question were a breach of justice, or an action of a criminal nature, he should think himself obliged to hear them; but, as the dispute was only concerning their law, he would not determine such differences, nor judge them. Sosthenes, the chief ruler of the synagogue, was beaten by the Greeks before Gallio’s seat of justice; but this governor did not concern himself about it. His abstaining from interfering in a religious controversy did credit to his prudence; nevertheless, his name has oddly passed into a reproachful proverb; and a man regardless of all piety is called “a Gallio,” and is said “Gallio-like to care for none of these things.” Little did this Roman anticipate that his name would be so immortalized.

GAMALIEL, a celebrated rabbi, and doctor of the Jewish law, under whose tuition the great Apostle of the Gentiles was brought up, Acts xxii, 3. Barnabas and Stephen are also supposed to have been among the number of his pupils. Soon after the day of pentecost, when the Jewish sanhedrim began to be alarmed at the progress the Gospel was making in Jerusalem, and consequently wished to put to death the Apostles, in the hope of checking its farther progress, they were apprehended and brought before the national council, of which Gamaliel seems to have been a leading member. It is very probable that many zealots among them would have despatched the affair in a very summary manner, but their impetuosity was checked by the cool and prudent advice of Gamaliel; for, having requested the Apostles to withdraw for a while, he represented to the sanhedrim that, if the Apostles were no better than impostors, their fallacy would quickly be discovered; but on the other hand, if what they were engaged in was from God, it was vain for them to attempt to frustrate it, since it was the height of folly to contend with the Almighty. The assembly saw the wisdom of his counsel, and very prudently changed the sentence, upon which they were originally bent against the Apostles’ lives, into that of corporal punishment.

2. It may here also be remarked, that the sanhedrim could not themselves believe that tale which they had diligently circulated among the people, that the disciples had stolen away the body of Jesus, and then pretended that he had arisen from the dead. If the Jewish council had thought this, it would have been very absurd in Gamaliel to exhort them to wait to see whether “the counsel and work” was of God, that is, whether the Apostles related a fact when they preached the resurrection, and grounded the divine authority of their religion upon that fact. Gamaliel’s advice was wholly based upon the admission, that an extraordinary, and to them an inexplicable, event had happened.

GAMES. Games and combats were instituted by the ancients in honour of their gods; and were celebrated with that view by the most polished and enlightened nations of antiquity. The most renowned heroes, legislators, and statesmen, did not think it unbecoming their character and dignity, to mingle with the combatants, or contend in the race; they even reckoned it glorious to share in the exercises, and meritorious to carry away the prize. The victors were crowned with a wreath of laurel in presence of their country; they were celebrated 395in the rapturous effusions of their poets; they were admired, and almost adored, by the innumerable multitudes which flocked to the games, from every part of Greece, and many of the adjacent countries. They returned to their own homes in a triumphal chariot, and made their entrance into their native city, not through the gates which admitted the vulgar throng, but through a breach in the walls, which were broken down to give them admission; and at the same time to express the persuasion of their fellow citizens, that walls are of small use to a city defended by men of such tried courage and ability. Hence the surprising ardour which animated all the states of Greece to imitate the ancient heroes, and encircle their brows with wreaths, which rendered them still more the objects of admiration or envy to succeeding times, than the victories they had gained, or the laws they had enacted.

2. But the institutors of those games and combats had higher and nobler objects in view than veneration for the mighty dead, or the gratification of ambition or vanity; it was their design to prepare the youth for the profession of arms; to confirm their health; to improve their strength, their vigour, and activity; to inure them to fatigue; and to render them intrepid in close fight, where, in the infancy of the art of war, muscular force commonly decided the victory. This statement accounts for the striking allusions which the Apostle Paul makes in his epistles to these celebrated exercises. Such references were calculated to touch the heart of a Greek, and of every one familiarly acquainted with them, in the liveliest manner, as well as to place before the eye of his mind the most glowing and correct images of spiritual and divine things. No passages in the nervous and eloquent epistles from the pen of St. Paul, have been more admired by the critics and expositors of all times, than those into which some allusion to these agonistic exercises is introduced; and, perhaps, none are calculated to leave a deeper impression on the Christian’s mind, or excite a stronger and more salutary influence on his actions. Certain persons were appointed to take care that all things were done according to custom, to decide controversies that happened among the antagonists, and to adjudge the prize to the victor. Some eminent writers are of opinion that Christ is called the “Author and Finisher of faith,” in allusion to these judges. Those who were designed for the profession of athletæ, or combatants, frequented from their earliest years the academies maintained for that purpose at the public expense. In these places they were exercised under the direction of different masters, who employed the most effectual methods to inure their bodies for the fatigues of the public games, and to form them for the combats. The regimen to which they submitted was very hard and severe. At first, they had no other nourishment than dried figs, nuts, soft cheese, and a gross heavy sort of bread called µa; they were absolutely forbidden the use of wine, and enjoined continence. When they proposed to contend in the Olympian games, they were obliged to repair to the public gymnasium at Elis, ten months before the solemnity, where they prepared themselves by continual exercises. No man that had omitted to present himself at the appointed time, was allowed to be a candidate for the prizes; nor were the accustomed rewards of victory given to such persons, if by any means they insinuated themselves, and overcame their antagonists; nor would any apology, though seemingly ever so reasonable, serve to excuse their absence. No person that was himself a notorious criminal, or nearly related to one, was permitted to contend. Farther, to prevent underhand dealings, if any person was convicted of bribing his adversary, a severe fine was laid upon him; nor was this alone thought a sufficient guard against unfair contracts, and unjust practices, but the contenders were obliged to swear they had spent ten whole months in preparatory exercises; and, beside all this, they, their fathers, and their brethren, took a solemn oath, that they would not, by any sinister or unlawful means, endeavour to stop the fair and just proceedings of the games.

3. The spiritual contest, in which all true Christians aim at obtaining a heavenly crown, has its rules also, devised and enacted by infinite wisdom and goodness, which require implicit and exact submission, which yield neither to times nor circumstances, but maintain their supreme authority, from age to age, uninterrupted and unimpaired. The combatant who violates these rules forfeits the prize, and is driven from the field with indelible disgrace, and consigned to everlasting wo. Hence the great Apostle of the Gentiles exhorts his son Timothy strictly to observe the precepts of the Gospel, without which, he can no more hope to obtain the approbation of God, and the possession of the heavenly crown, than a combatant in the public games of Greece, who disregarded the established rules, could hope to receive from the hands of his judge the promised reward: “And if a man also strive for masteries, yet is he not crowned except he strive lawfully,” 2 Tim. ii, 5, or according to the established laws of the games. Like the Grecian combatants, the Christian must “abstain from fleshly lusts,” and “walk in all the statutes and commandments of the Lord, blameless.” Such was St. Paul; and in this manner he endeavoured to act: “But I keep under my body, and bring it into subjection: lest that by any means, when I have preached to others, I myself should be a cast-away,” 1 Cor. ix, 27. The latter part of this verse Doddridge renders, “lest after having served as a herald I should be disapproved;” and says in a note, “I thought it of importance to retain the primitive sense of these gymnastic expressions.” It is well known to those who are at all acquainted with the original, that the word used means to discharge the office of a herald, whose business it was to proclaim the conditions of the games, and display the prizes, to awaken the emulation and resolution of those who were to contend in 396them. But the Apostle intimates, that there was this peculiar circumstance attending the Christian contest, that the person who proclaimed its laws and rewards to others, was also to engage in it himself; and that there would be a peculiar infamy and misery in his miscarrying. dµ, which we render cast-away, signifies one who is disapproved by the judge of the games, as not having fairly deserved the prize: he therefore loses it; even the prize of eternal life. The rule which the Apostle applies to himself he extends in another passage to all the members of the Christian church: “Those who strive for the mastery are temperate in all things; now they do it to obtain a corruptible crown, but we an incorruptible.” Tertullian uses the same thought to encourage the martyrs. He urges constancy upon them, from what the hopes of victory made the athletæ endure; and repeats the severe and painful exercises they were obliged to undergo, the continual anguish and constraint in which they passed the best years of their lives, and the voluntary privation which they imposed on themselves, of all that was most grateful to their appetites and passions.

4. The athletæ took care to disencumber their bodies of every article of clothing which could in any manner hinder or incommode them. In the race, they were anxious to carry as little weight as possible, and uniformly stripped themselves of all such clothes as, by their weight, length, or otherwise, might entangle or retard them in the course. The Christian also must “lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset” him, Heb. xii, 1. In the exercise of faith and self-denial, he must “cast off the works of darkness,” lay aside all malice and guile, hypocrisies, and envyings, and evil speakings, inordinate affections, and worldly cares, and whatever else might obstruct his holy profession, damp his spirits, and hinder his progress in the paths of righteousness.

5. The foot race seems to have been placed in the first rank of public games, and cultivated with a care and industry proportioned to the estimation in which it was held. The Olympic games generally opened with races, and were celebrated at first with no other exercise. The lists or course where the athletæ exercised themselves in running, was at first but one stadium in length, or about six hundred feet; and from this measure it took its name, and was called the stadium, whatever might be its extent. This, in the language of St. Paul, speaking of the Christian’s course, was “the race which was set before them,” determined by public authority, and carefully measured. On each side of the stadium and its extremity, ran an ascent or kind of terrace, covered with seats and benches, upon which the spectators were seated, an innumerable multitude collected from all parts of Greece, to which the Apostle thus alludes in his figurative description of the Christian life: “Seeing we are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight,” Heb. xii, 1.

The most remarkable parts of the stadium were its entrance, middle, and extremity. The entrance was marked at first only by a line drawn on the sand, from side to side of the stadium. To prevent any unfair advantage being taken by the more vigilant or alert candidates, a cord was at length stretched in front of the horses or men that were to run; and sometimes the space was railed in with wood. The opening of this barrier, was the signal for the racers to start. The middle of the stadium was remarkable, only by the circumstance of having the prizes allotted to the victors set up there. From this custom, Crysostom draws a fine comparison: “As the judges in the races and other games, expose in the midst of the stadium, to the view of the champions, the crowns which they were to receive; in like manner, the Lord, by the mouth of his prophets, has placed the prizes in the midst of the course, which he designs for those who have the courage to contend for them.” At the extremity of the stadium was a goal, where the foot races ended; but in those of chariots and horses, they were to run several times round it without stopping, and afterward conclude the race by regaining the other extremity of the lists from whence they started. It is therefore to the foot race the Apostle alludes, when he speaks of the race set before the Christian, which was a straight course, to be run only once, and not, as in the other, several times without stopping.

6. According to some writers, it was at the goal, and not in the middle of the course, that the prizes were exhibited; and they were placed in a very conspicuous situation, that the competitors might be animated by having them always in their sight. This accords with the view which the Apostle gives of the Christian life: “Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended; but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things, which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus,” Phil. iii, 13, 14. L’Enfant thinks, the Apostle here alludes to those who stood at the elevated place at the end of the course, calling the racers by their names, and encouraging them by holding out the crown, to exert themselves with vigour. Within the measured and determinate limits of the stadium, the athletæ were bound to contend for the prize, which they forfeited without hope of recovery, if they deviated ever so little from the appointed course.

7. The honours and rewards granted to the victors were of several kinds. They were animated in their course by the rapturous applauses of the countless multitudes that lined the stadium, and waited the issue of the contest with eager anxiety; and their success was instantly followed by reiterated and long continued plaudits; but these were only a prelude to the appointed rewards, which, though of little value in themselves, were accounted the highest honour to which a mortal could aspire. These consisted of different wreaths of wild olive, pine, parsley, or laurel, according to the different places where the games were celebrated. 397After the judges had passed sentence, a public herald proclaimed the name of the victor; one of the judges put the crown upon his head, and a branch of palm into his right hand, which he carried as a token of victorious courage and perseverance. As he might be victor more than once in the same games, and sometimes on the same day, he might also receive several crowns and palms. When the victor had received his reward, a herald, preceded by a trumpet, conducted him through the stadium, and proclaimed aloud his name and country; while the delighted multitudes, at the sight of him, redoubled their acclamations and applauses.

8. The crown in the Olympic games was of wild olive; in the Pythian, of laurel; in the Isthmian or Corinthian, of pine tree; and in the Nemæan, of smallage or parsley. Now, most of these were evergreens; yet they would soon grow dry, and crumble into dust. Elsner produces many passages in which the contenders in these exercises are rallied by the Grecian wits, on account of the extraordinary pains they took for such trifling rewards; and Plato has a celebrated passage, which greatly resembles that of the Apostle, but by no means equals it in force and beauty: “Now they do it to obtain a corruptible crown, but we an incorruptible.” The Christian is thus called to fight the good fight of faith, and to lay hold of eternal life; and to this he is more powerfully stimulated by considering that the ancient athletæ took all their care and pains only for the sake of obtaining a garland of flowers, or a wreath of laurel, which quickly fades and perishes, possessed little intrinsic value, and only served to nourish their pride and vanity, without imparting any solid advantage to themselves or others; but that which is placed in the view of the spiritual combatants, to animate their exertions, and reward their labours, is no less than a crown of glory which never decays; “an inheritance incorruptible, undefiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for them,” 1 Pet. i, 4; v, 4. But the victory sometimes remained doubtful, in consequence of which a number of competitors appeared before the judges, and claimed the prize. The candidates who were rejected on such occasions by the judge of the games, as not having fairly merited the prize, were called by the Greeks dµ, or disapproved, which we render cast away, in a passage already quoted from St. Paul’s First Epistle to the Corinthians: “But I keep under my body, and bring it into subjection, lest that by any means, when I have preached to others, I myself should be, dµ, cast away,” rejected by the Judge of all the earth, and disappointed of my expected crown. What has been observed concerning the spirit and ardour with which the competitors engaged in the race, and concerning the prize they had in view to reward their arduous contention, will illustrate the following sublime passage of the same sacred writer in his Epistle to the Philippians: “Not as though I had already attained, either were already perfect; but I follow after, if that I may apprehend that for which also I am apprehended of Christ Jesus. Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark, for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus,” Phil. iii, 12–14. The affecting passage, also, of the same Apostle, in the Second Epistle of Timothy, written a little before his martyrdom, is beautifully allusive to the above-mentioned race, to the crown that awaited the victory, and to the Hellanodics or judges who bestowed it: “I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith. Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, shall give me at that day: and not to me only, but to all them also that love his appearing,” 2 Tim. iv, 8.

GARDENS. In the language of the Hebrews, every place where plants and trees were cultivated with greater care than in the open field, was called a garden. The idea of such an enclosure was certainly borrowed from the garden of Eden, which the bountiful Creator planted for the reception of our first parents. Beside, the gardens of primitive nations were commonly, if not in every instance, devoted to religious purposes. In these shady retreats were celebrated, for a long succession of ages, the rites of Pagan superstition. Thus Jehovah calls the apostate Jews, “a people that provoketh me continually to anger to my face, that sacrificeth in gardens,” Isa. lxv, 3. And in a preceding chapter, the prophet threatens them in the name of the Lord: “They shall be ashamed of the oaks which ye have desired, and ye shall be confounded for the gardens which ye have chosen.” The oriental gardens were either open plantations, or enclosures defended by walls or hedges. Some fences in the Holy Land, in later times, are not less beautiful than our living fences of white thorn; and perfectly answer the description of ancient Jewish prophets, who inform us that the hedges in their times consisted of thorns, and that the spikes of these thorny plants were exceedingly sharp. Doubdan found a very fruitful vineyard, full of olives, fig trees, and vines, about eight miles south-west from Bethlehem, enclosed with a hedge; and that part of it adjoining to the road, strongly formed of thorns and rose bushes, intermingled with pomegranate trees of surpassing beauty and fragrance. A hedge composed of rose bushes and wild pomegranate shrubs, then in full flower, mingled with other thorny plants, adorned in the varied livery of spring, must have made at once a strong and beautiful fence. The wild pomegranate tree, the species probably used in fencing, is much more prickly than the other variety; and when mingled with other thorny bushes, of which they have several kinds in Palestine, some of whose prickles are very long and sharp, must form a hedge very difficult to penetrate. These facts illustrate the beauty and force of several passages in the sacred volume: thus, in the Proverbs of Solomon, “The way of the slothful man is as a hedge of 398thorns,” Prov. xv, 19; it is obstructed with difficulties, which the sloth and indolence of his temper represent as galling or insuperable; but which a moderate share of resolution and perseverance would easily remove or surmount. In the prophecies of Hosea, God threatens his treacherous and idolatrous people with many painful embarrassments and perplexities, which would as effectually retard or obstruct their progress in the paths of wickedness, as a hedge of thorny plants stretching across the traveller’s way, the prosecution of his journey: “Therefore, behold, I will hedge up thy way with thorns, and make a wall, that she shall not find her paths,” Hosea ii, 6. In the days of Micah, the magistrates of Judah had become exceedingly corrupt: “The best of them is a brier; the most upright is sharper than a thorn hedge;” to appear before their tribunal, or to have any dealings with them, was to involve one’s self in endless perplexities, and to be exposed to galling disappointments, if not to certain destruction. They resembled those thorny plants which are twisted together, whose spines point in every direction, and are so sharp and strong that they cannot be touched without danger, and so entangling that when the traveller has with much pain and exertion freed himself from one, he is instantly seized by another. “But the sons of Belial,” said the king of Israel, “shall be all of them as thorns thrust away, because they cannot be taken with hands: but the man that shall touch them must be fenced with iron, and the staff of a spear; and they shall be utterly burned with fire in the same place,” 2 Sam. xxiii, 6, 7. Other enclosures had fences of loose stones, or mud walls, some of them very low, which often furnished a retreat to venomous reptiles. To this circumstance the royal preacher alludes, in his observations of wisdom and folly: “He that diggeth a pit, shall fall into it: and whoso breaketh a hedge, a serpent shall bite him,” Eccles. x, 8. The term which our translators render hedge in this passage, they might with more propriety have rendered wall, as they had done in another part of the writings of Solomon: “I went by the field of the slothful, and by the vineyard of the man void of understanding; and lo, it was all grown over with thorns, and nettles had covered the face thereof, and the stone wall thereof was broken down,” Proverbs xxiv, 30.

2. The land of promise has been, from the earliest ages, an unenclosed country, with a few spots defended by a hedge of thorny plants, or a stone wall built without any cement. At Aleppo, most of the vineyards are fenced with stone walls; for in many parts of Syria a hedge would not grow for want of moisture. But, as their various esculent vegetables are now not unfrequently planted in the open fields, both in Syria and Palestine, so Chardin seems to suppose they were often unfenced in ancient times; and, on this account, those lodges and booths, to which Isaiah refers, in the first chapter of his prophecy, were built. In Hindostan they follow the same custom. At the commencement of the rainy season, the peasants plant abundance of melons, cucumbers, and gourds, which are then the principal food of the inhabitants. They are planted in the open fields and extensive plains, and are therefore liable to the depredations of men and beasts. In the centre of the field is an artificial mount, with a hut on the top, sufficiently large to shelter a single person from the inclemency of the weather. There, amid heavy rains and tempestuous winds, a poor solitary being is stationed day and night to protect the crop. From thence he gives an alarm to the nearest village. Few situations can be more unpleasant than a hovel of this kind, exposed for three or four months to wind, lightning, and rain. To such a cheerless station the prophet no doubt alludes, in that passage where he declares the desolations of Judah: “The daughter of Zion is left as a cottage in a vineyard, as a lodge in a garden of cucumbers,” Isa. i, 8. If such watch houses were necessary in those gardens which were defended by walls or hedges, some of which, indeed, it was not difficult to get over, they must have been still more necessary in those which were perfectly open.

3. The oriental garden displays little method, or design; the whole being commonly no more than a confused medley of fruit trees, with beds of esculent plants, and even plots of wheat and barley sometimes interspersed. The garden belonging to the governor of Eleus, a Turkish town on the western border of the Hellespont, which Dr. Chandler visited, consisted only of a very small spot of ground, walled in, and containing only two vines, a fig and a pomegranate tree, and a well of excellent water. And, it would seem, the garden of an ancient Israelite could not boast of greater variety; for the grape, the fig, and the pomegranate, are almost the only fruits which it produced. This fact may perhaps give us some insight into the reason of the sudden and irresistible conviction which flashed on the mind of Nathanael, when our Saviour said to him, “When thou wast under the fig tree, I saw thee.” The good man seems to have been engaged in devotional exercises in a small retired garden, walled in, and concealed from the scrutinizing eyes of men. The place was so small, that he was perfectly certain no man but himself was there; and so completely defended, that none could break through, or look over, the fence; and, by consequence, that no eye was upon him, but the all-seeing eye of God; and, therefore, since Christ saw him there, Nathanael knew he could be no other than the Son of God, and the promised Messiah.

GARLICK, . As this word occurs only in Numbers xi, 5, some doubts have arisen respecting the plant intended. From its being coupled with leeks and onions, there can be but little doubt that the garlick is meant. The Talmudists frequently mention the use of this plant among the Jews, and their fondness for it. That garlicks grew plenteously in Egypt, is asserted by Dioscorides: there they were much esteemed, and were both eaten and worshipped:--

GARMENT. See Habits.

GATE is often used in Scripture to denote a place of public assembly, where justice was administered, Deut. xvii, 5, 8; xxi, 19; xxii, 15; xxv, 6, 7, &c. One instance of these judgments appears in that given at the gate of Bethlehem, between Boaz and a relation of Naomi, on the subject of Ruth, chap. iv, 2; another in Abraham’s purchase of a field to bury Sarah, Gen. xxiii, 10, 18. The gate of judgment is a term still common to the Arabians to express a court of justice, and even introduced by the Saracens into Spain. “I had several times,” says Jacob, “visited the Alhambra, the ancient palace and fortress of the Moorish kings: it is situated on the top of a hill, overlooking the city, and is surrounded by a wall of great height and thickness. The entrance is through an archway, over which is carved a key, the symbol of the Mohammedan monarchs. This gate, called the gate of judgment, according to eastern forms, was the place where the kings administered justice.” In Morocco, the gate is still the place where judgment is held. “All complaints,” says Host, “are brought, in the first instance, to the cadi, or governor, who, for that purpose, passes certain hours of the day in the gate of the city, partly for the sake of the fresh air, and partly to see all those who go out; and, lastly, to observe a custom which has long prevailed, of holding judgment there. The gate is contrived accordingly, being built like a square chamber, with two doors, which are not directly opposite to each other, but on two adjoining sides, with seats on the other sides. In this manner David sat between two gates,” 2 Sam. xviii, 24. Gate sometimes signifies power, dominion, almost in the same sense as the Turkish emperor’s palace is called the Porte. God promises Abraham that his posterity shall possess the gates of their enemies, their towns, their fortresses, Genesis xxii, 17. Jesus Christ says to Peter, “Thou art Peter; and on this rock will I build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it,” Matt. xvi, 18. This may mean either the powers of hell, or invisible spirits; or simply death,--the church shall be replenished by living members from generation to generation, so that death shall never annihilate it.

Solomon says, “He that exalteth his gate seeketh destruction.” The Arabs are accustomed to ride into the houses of those they design to harass. To prevent this, Thevenot tells us that the door of the house in which the French merchants live at Rama was not three feet high, and that all the doors of that town are equally low. Agreeably to this account, the Abbé Mariti, speaking of his admission into a monastery near Jerusalem, says, “The passage is so low, that it will scarcely admit a horse; and it is shut by a gate of iron, strongly secured in the inside. As soon as we entered, it was again made fast with various bolts and bars of iron: a precaution extremely necessary in a desert place, exposed to the incursions, and insolent attacks of the Arabs.” Mr. Drummond says, that in the country about Roudge, in Syria, “the poor miserable Arabs are under the necessity of hewing their houses out of the rock, and cutting very small doors or openings to them, that they may not be made stables for the Turkish horse, as they pass and repass.” And thus, long before him, Sandys, at Gaza, in Palestine: “We lodged under an arch in a little court, together with our asses; the door exceeding low, as are all that belong unto Christians, to withstand the sudden entrance of the insolent Turks.” “To exalt the gate,” would consequently be to court destruction. Morier says, “A poor man’s door is scarcely three feet in height; and this is a precautionary measure to hinder the servants of the great from entering it on horseback; which, when any act of oppression is intended, they would make no scruple to do. But the habitation of a man in power is known by his gate, which is generally elevated in proportion to the vanity of its owner. A lofty gate is one of the insignia of royalty: such is the Allan Capi, at Ispahan, and Bob Homayan, or the Sublime Porte, at Constantinople. It must have been the same in ancient days; the gates of Jerusalem, Zion, &c, are often mentioned in the Scripture, with the same notion of grandeur annexed to them.”

GATH, the fifth of the Philistine cities. It was a place of strength in the time of the prophets Amos and Micah, and is placed by Jerom on the road between Eleutheropolis and Gaza. It appears to have been the extreme boundary of the Philistine territory in one direction, as Ekron was on the other. Hence the expression, “from Ekron even unto Gath,” 1 Sam. vii, 14.

GAULAN, or GOLAN, a city beyond Jordan, from which the small province called Gaulonitis took its name. It was given to the half tribe of Manasseh, on the other side Jordan, Deut. iv, 43; and became a city of refuge, Joshua xxi, 27.

GAZA, a city of the Philistines, made by Joshua part of the tribe of Judah. It was one of the five principalities of the Philistines, situated toward the southern extremity of the promised land, 1 Sam. vi, 17, between Raphia and Askelon. The advantageous situation of Gaza was the cause of the numerous revolutions which it underwent. It first of all belonged to the Philistines, and then to the Hebrews. It recovered its liberty in the reigns of Jotham and Ahaz, and was reconquered by Hezekiah, 2 Kings xviii, 8. It was subject to the Chaldeans, who conquered Syria and Phenicia. Afterward, it fell into the hands of the Persians. It must have been a place of considerable strength. For two months it baffled all the efforts of Alexander the Great, who was repeatedly repulsed, and wounded in the siege; which he afterward revenged in a most infamous manner on the person of the gallant defender Betis, whom, while yet alive, having ordered his ankles to be bored, he dragged round the walls, tied to his chariot wheels, in the barbarous parade of imitating the less 400savage treatment of the corpse of Hector by Achilles.

Dr. Wittman gives the following description of his visit to Gaza: “In pursuing our route toward this place, the view became still more interesting and agreeable: the groves of olive trees extending from the place where we had halted to the town, in front of which a fine avenue of these trees was planted. Gaza is situated on an eminence, and is rendered picturesque by the number of fine minarets which rise majestically above the buildings, and by the beautiful date trees which are interspersed. The suburbs of Gaza are composed of wretched mud huts; but within side the town the buildings make a much better appearance than those we had generally met with in Syria. The streets are of a moderate breadth. Many fragments of statues, columns, &c, of marble were seen in the walls and buildings in different parts of the town. The suburbs and environs of Gaza are rendered infinitely agreeable by a number of large gardens, cultivated with the nicest care, which lie in a direction north and south of the town; while others of the same description run to a considerable distance westward. These gardens are filled with a great variety of choice fruit trees, such as the fig, the mulberry, the pomegranate, the apricot, the peach, and the almond; together with a few lemon and orange trees. The numerous plantations of olive and date trees which are interspersed contribute greatly to the picturesque effect of the scene exhibited by the surrounding plains. These, on our arrival, were overspread with flowers, the variegated colours of which displayed every tint and every hue. Among these were the chrysanthemum, scarlet ranunculus, lupin, pheasant-eye, tulip, china-aster, dwarf-iris, lintel, daisy, &c, all of them growing wild and abundantly, with the exception of the lupin, which was cultivated in patches, regularly ploughed and sowed, with a view to collect the seeds, which the inhabitants employ at their meals, more especially to thicken their ragouts. The few corn fields, which lay at a distance, displayed the promise of a rich golden harvest; and the view of the sea, distant about a league, tended to diversify still more the animated features of this luxuriant scene.” This and similar descriptions of modern travellers, which are occasionally introduced into this work, are given both as interesting in themselves, and to show that relics of the ancient beauty and fertility of the Holy Land are still to be found in many parts of it.

GEMARA. This word signifies complement, perfection. The rabbins call the Pentateuch the law, without any addition. Next to this they have the Talmud, which is divided into two parts: the first is only an application of the law to particular cases, with the decision of the ancient rabbins, and is called mishnah, or “second law:” the other part, which is a more extensive application of the same law, is a collection of determinations by rabbins, later than the mishnah. This last is termed gemara, “perfection,” “finishing,” because they consider it as a conclusive explanation of the law, to which no farther additions can be made. There are two gemaras, or two Talmuds, that of Jerusalem, and that of Babylon. The former was compiled, according to the Jews, about the end of the second or third century, by a celebrated rabbin, called Jochanan; but father Morinus maintains that the gemara was not finished till about the seventh century. Dr. Prideaux says that it was completed about A. D. 300. The Jews have little value for this Jerusalem Talmud, on account of its obscurity. The Babylonish gemara is, as the rabbins say, more modern. It was begun by a Jewish doctor, named Asa, and continued by Marmar and Mar, his sons or disciples. The Jews believe that the gemara contains nothing but the word of God, preserved in the tradition of the elders, and transmitted, without alteration, from Moses to rabbi Judah, the holy, and the other compilers of the Talmud; who did not reduce it to writing till they were afraid it would be corrupted by the several transmigrations and persecutions to which their nation was subjected.

GENEALOGY, eeaa, signifies a list of a person’s ancestors. The common Hebrew expression for it is Sepher-Toledoth, “the Book of Generations.” No nation was ever more careful to preserve their genealogies than the Jews. The sacred writings contain genealogies extended three thousand five hundred years backward. The genealogy of our Saviour is deduced by the evangelists from Adam to Joseph and Mary, through a space of four thousand years and upward. The Jewish priests were obliged to produce an exact genealogy of their families, before they were admitted to exercise their function. Wherever placed, the Jews were particularly careful not to marry below themselves; and to prevent this, they kept tables of genealogy in their several families, the originals of which were lodged at Jerusalem, to be occasionally consulted. These authentic monuments, during all their wars and persecutions, were taken great care of, and from time to time renewed. But, since the last destruction of their city, and the dispersion of the people, their ancient genealogies are lost. But to this the Jews reply, that either Elias, or some other inspired priest or prophet, shall come, and restore their genealogical tables before the Messiah’s appearance; a tradition, which they ground on a passage in Nehemiah vii, 64, 65, to this effect: the genealogical register of the families of certain priests being lost, they were not able to make out their lineal descent from Aaron; and therefore, “as polluted, were put from the priesthood;” the “Tirshatha said unto them, that they should not eat of the most holy things, till there stood up a priest with Urim and Thummim.” From hence the Jews conclude, that such a priest will stand up, and restore and complete the genealogies of their families: though others suppose these words to import, that they should never exercise their priesthood any more; and that, “till there shall stand up a priest with Urim and 401Thummim,” amounts to the same as the Roman proverb, ad Græcas calendas, [never,] since the Urim and Thummim were now absolutely and for ever lost.

GENERATION. Beside the common acceptation of this word, as signifying descent, it is used for the history and genealogy of any individual, as “The book of the generations of Adam,” Genesis v, 1, the history of Adam’s creation, and of his posterity. “The generations of the heavens and of the earth,” Genesis ii, 4, is a recital of the creation of heaven and earth. “The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the Son of David,” Matthew i, 1, is the genealogy of Jesus Christ, and the history of his life. The ancients sometimes computed by generations: “In the fourth generation thy descendants shall come hither again,” Genesis xv, 16. “Joseph saw Ephraim’s children of the third generation,” Genesis 1, 23. “A bastard shall not be admitted into the congregation, till the tenth generation,” Deut. xxiii, 2. Among the ancients, when the duration of generations was not exactly described by the age of four men succeeding one another from father to son, it was fixed by some at a hundred years, by others at a hundred and ten, by others at thirty-three, thirty, twenty-five, and even at twenty years; being neither uniform nor settled: only, it is remarked, that a generation is longer as it is more ancient.

GENESIS, a canonical book of the Old Testament, so called from the Greek ees, genesis, or generation, because it contains an account of the origin of all visible things, and of the genealogy of the first patriarchs. In the Hebrew it is called , which signifies, in the beginning, because it begins with that word. See Pentateuch.

GENNESARETH, Land of, or GENNESAR, a small district of Galilee, supposed to have been so called from its pleasantness, and extending about four miles along the north-western shore of the sea of Galilee, or Gennesareth, so called from this same region. It is more probable, however, that Gennesareth is nothing more than a word moulded from Cinnereth, the ancient name of a city and adjoining tract in this very situation, as well as of the lake itself. This part of Galilee is described by Josephus as possessing a singular fertility, with a delightful temperature of the air, and abounding in the fruits of different climates.

GENTILE. The Hebrews called the Gentiles , , the nations, that is, those who have not received the faith or law of God. All who are not Jews, and circumcised, are goiim. Those who were converted, and embraced Judaism, they called proselytes. Since the Gospel, the true religion is not confined to any one nation or country, as heretofore, God, who had promised by his prophets to call the Gentiles to the faith, with a superabundance of grace, has fulfilled his promise; so that the Christian church is now composed principally of Gentile converts; and the Jews, too proud of their particular privileges, and abandoned to their reprobate sense of things, have disowned Jesus Christ, their Messiah and Redeemer, for whom, during so many ages, they had looked so impatiently. In the writings of St. Paul, the Gentiles are generally denoted as Greeks, Rom. i, 14, 16; ii, 9, 10; iii; x, 12; 1 Cor. i, 22–24; Gal. iii, 28. St. Luke, in the Acts, expresses himself in the same manner, Acts vi, 1; xi, 20; xviii, &c.

2. St. Paul is commonly called the Apostle of the Gentiles, 1 Tim. ii, 7, or Greeks; because he, principally, preached Jesus Christ to them; whereas Peter, and the other Apostles, preached generally to the Jews, and are called Apostles of the circumcision, Gal. ii, 8. The prophets declared very particularly the calling of the Gentiles. Jacob foretold that the Messiah, he who was to be sent, the Shiloh, should gather the Gentiles to himself. Solomon, at the dedication of his temple, prays for “the stranger” who should there entreat God. The Psalmist says, that the Lord would give the Gentiles to the Messiah for his inheritance; that Egypt and Babylon shall know him; that Ethiopia shall hasten to bring him presents; that the kings of Tarshish, and of the isles, the kings of Arabia and Sheba, shall be tributary to him, Psalm ii, 8; lxvii, 4; lxxii, 9, 10. Isaiah abounds with prophecies of the like nature, on which account he has justly been distinguished by the name of “the prophet of the Gentiles.”

Gentiles, Court of the. Josephus says there was, in the court of the temple, a wall, or balustrade, breast-high, with pillars at particular distances, and inscriptions on them in Greek and Latin, importing that strangers were forbidden from entering farther; here their offerings were received, and sacrifices were offered for them, they standing at the barrier; but they were not allowed to approach to the altar. Pompey, nevertheless, went even into the sanctuary, but behaved with strict decorum; and the next day he commanded the temple to be purified, and the customary sacrifices to be offered. A little before the last rebellion of the Jews, some mutineers would have persuaded the priests to accept no victim not presented by a Jew; and obliged them to reject those which were offered by command of the emperor, for the Roman people. The wisest in vain remonstrated with them on the danger this would bring on their country; urged that their ancestors had never rejected the presents of Gentiles; and that the temple was mostly adorned with the offerings of such people; at the same time, the most learned priests, who had spent their whole lives in the study of the law, testified that their forefathers had always received the sacrifices of strangers.

From the above particulars, we learn the meaning of what the Apostle Paul calls “the middle wall of partition,” between Jews and Gentiles broken down by the Gospel.

GERAR, a royal city of the Philistines, situate not far from the angle where the south and west sides of Palestine meet.

GERIZIM, a mount near Shechem, in Ephraim, a province of Samaria. Shechem lay at the foot of two mountains, Ebal and 402Gerizim. Gerizim was fruitful, Ebal was barren. God commanded that the Hebrews, after passing the Jordan, should be so divided, that six tribes might be stationed on Mount Gerizim, and six on Mount Ebal. The former was to pronounce blessings on those who observed the law of the Lord; the others, curses against those who should violate it, Deut. xi, 29; xxvii, 12. As to the original of the temple upon Gerizim, we must take Josephus’s relation of it. Manasseh, the grandson of Eliashib, the high priest, and brother to Jaddus, high priest of the Jews, having been driven from Jerusalem in the year of the world 3671, and not enduring patiently to see himself deprived of the honour and advantages of the priesthood, Sanballat, his father-in-law, addressed himself to Alexander the Great, who was then carrying on the siege of Tyre; and having paid him homage for the province of Samaria, whereof he was governor, he farther offered him eight thousand of his best troops, which disposed Alexander to grant what he desired for his son-in-law, and for many other priests, who being married, as well as he, contrary to the law, chose rather to forsake their country than their wives, and had joined Manasseh in Samaria. When Antiochus Epiphanes began to persecute the Jews, A. M. 3836; B. C. 186, the Samaritans entreated him that their temple upon Gerizim, which hitherto had been dedicated to an unknown and nameless god, might be consecrated to Jupiter the Grecian, which was easily consented to by Antiochus. The temple of Gerizim subsisted some time after the worship of Jupiter was introduced into it; but it was destroyed by John Hircanus Maccabæus, and was not rebuilt till Gabinius was governor of Syria; who repaired Samaria, and called it by his own name. It is certain, that, in our Saviour’s time, this temple was in being; and that the true God was worshipped there, since the woman of Samaria, pointing to Gerizim, said to him, “Our fathers worshipped in this mountain, and ye say, that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship,” John iv, 20. We are assured, that Herod the Great, having rebuilt Samaria, and called it Sebaste, in honour of Augustus, would have obliged the Samaritans to worship in the temple which he had erected there, but they constantly refused.

GETHSEMANE. See Olives, Mount of.

GIANT, , Greek, a, a monster, a terrible man, a chief who beats and bears down other men. Scripture speaks of giants before the flood: “Nephilim, mighty men who were of old, men of renown,” Gen. vi, 4. Aquila translates nephilim, ppptte, men who attack, who fall with impetuosity on their enemies, which renders very well the force of the term. Symmachus translates it ßa, violent men, cruel, whose only rule of action is violence. Scripture sometimes calls giants Rephaim: Chedorlaomer beat the Rephaim at Ashteroth-Karnaim. The Emim, ancient inhabitants of Moab, were of a gigantic stature, that is, Rephaim. The Rephaim and the Perizzites are connected as old inhabitants of Canaan. The Rephaim in some parts of Scripture signify spirits in the invisible world, in a state of misery. Job says that the ancient Rephaim groan under the waters; and Solomon, that the ways of a loose woman lead to the Rephaim; that he who deviates from the ways of wisdom, shall dwell in the assembly of Rephaim, that is, in hell, Prov. ii, 18; iv, 18; xxi, 16, &c; Gen. xiv, 5; Deut. ii, 11, 20; iii, 11, 13; Joshua xii, 4; xiii, 12; Job xxvi, 5. The Anakim, or the sons of Anak, were the most famous giants of Palestine. They dwelt at Hebron and thereabouts. The Israelites sent to view the promised land reported, that, in comparison, they themselves were but grasshoppers, Num. xiii, 33.

2. As to the existence of giants, several writers, both ancient and modern, have thought that the giants of Scripture were men famous for violence and crime, rather than for strength or stature. But it cannot be denied, that there have been races of men of a stature much above that common at present; although their size has often been absurdly magnified. The ancients considered persons whose stature exceeded seven feet as gigantic. Living giants have certainly been seen who were somewhat taller; but the existence of those who greatly surpassed it, or were double the height, has been inferred only from remains discovered in the earth, but not from the ocular testimony of credible witnesses. Were we to admit what has been reported on the subject, there would be no bounds to the dimensions of giants; the earth would seem unsuitable for them to tread upon. History, however, acquaints us that, in the reign of Claudius, a giant named Galbara, ten feet high was brought to Rome from the coast of Africa. An instance is cited by Goropius, an author with whom we are otherwise unacquainted, of a female of equal stature. A certain Greek sophist, Proæresius, is said to have been nine feet in height. Julius Capitolinus affirms that Maximinian, the Roman emperor was eight feet and a half; there was a Swede, one of the life guards of Frederick the Great, of that size. M. Le Cat speaks of a giant exhibited at Rouen, measuring eight feet and some inches; and we believe some have been seen in this country, within the last thirty years, whose stature was not inferior. In Plott’s “History of Staffordshire,” there is an instance of a man of seven feet and a half high, and another, in Thoresby’s account of Leeds, of seven feet five inches high. Examples may be found elsewhere of several individuals seven feet in height, below which, after the opinion of the ancients, we may cease to consider men gigantic. Entire families sometimes, though rarely, occur of six feet four, or six feet six inches high. From all this we may conclude, that there may have possibly been seen some solitary instances of men who were ten feet in height; that those of eight feet are extremely uncommon, and that even six feet and a half far exceeds the height of men in Europe. We may reasonably understand that the gigantic nations of Canaan were above the average size of other people, with 403instances among them of several families of gigantic stature. This is all that is necessary to suppose, in order to explain the account of Moses; but the notion that men have gradually degenerated in size has no foundation. There is no evidence whatever, that the modern tribes of mankind have thus degenerated. The catacombs of ancient Egypt and Palestine; the cenotaph, if it be truly such, in the great pyramid; the tomb of Alexander the Great, are all calculated for bodies of ordinary dimensions. The truth is still more satisfactorily established from the mummies which are yet withdrawn from their receptacles in Egypt, and the caverns of the Canary Islands. In the most ancient sepulchres of Britain, those apparently anterior to the introduction of Christianity, no remains are discovered which indicate the larger stature of the inhabitants than our own. In every part of the world domestic implements and personal ornaments, many centuries old, are obtained from tombs, from bogs and mosses, or those cities overwhelmed by volcanic eruptions, which would be ill adapted to a gigantic race of ancestors.

GIBEON, the capital city of the Gibeonites, who took advantage of the oaths of Joshua, and of the elders of Israel, procured by an artful representation of their belonging to a very remote country, Joshua ix. Joshua and the elders had not the precaution to consult God on this affair, but inconsiderately made a league with these people. They soon discovered their mistake, and, without revoking their promise of saving their lives, they condemned them to labour in carrying wood and water for the tabernacle; and to other works, as slaves and captives; in which state of servitude they remained, till the entire dispersion of the Jewish nation, A. M. 2553; B. C. 1451. Three days after the Gibeonites had surrendered to the Hebrews, the kings of Canaan being informed of it, five of them came and besieged the city of Gibeon. The Gibeonites sent to Joshua, and desired speedy help. Joshua attacked the five kings early in the morning, put them to flight, and pursued them to Bethoron, Josh. x, 3, &c. The Gibeonites were descended from the Hivites, the old inhabitants of the country, and possessed four cities: Cephirah, Beeroth, Kirjath-jearim, and Gibeon, their capital; all afterward given to Benjamin, except Kirjath-jearim, which fell to Judah. The Gibeonites continued subject to those burdens which Joshua imposed on them, and were very faithful to the Israelites. Nevertheless, Saul destroyed a great number of them, 2 Sam. xxi, 1; but God, in the reign of David, sent a great famine, which lasted three years, A. M. 2983; B. C. 1021; and the prophets told David that this calamity would continue while Saul’s cruelty remained unavenged. David asked the Gibeonites what satisfaction they desired. They answered, “Seven of Saul’s sons we will put to death, to avenge the blood of our brethren.” The Gibeonites crucified them. From this time there is no mention of the Gibeonites as a distinct people. But they were probably included among the Nethinim, appointed for the service of the temple, 1 Chron. ix, 2. Afterward, those of the Canaanites who were subdued, and had their lives spared, were added to the Gibeonites. We see in Ezra viii, 20; ii, 58; 1 Kings ix, 20, 21, that David, Solomon, and the princes of Judah, gave many such to the Lord; these Nethinim being carried into captivity with Judah and the Levites, many of them returned with Ezra, Zerubbabel, and Nehemiah, and continued, as before, in the service of the temple, under the priests and Levites. We neither know when, nor by whom, nor on what occasion, the tabernacle and altar of burnt sacrifices, made by Moses in the wilderness, were removed to Gibeon; but this we certainly know, that, toward the end of David’s reign, and in the beginning of Solomon’s, they were there, 1 Chron. xxi, 29, 30. David, seeing an angel of the Lord at Araunah’s threshing floor, was so terrified, that he had not time or strength to go so far as Gibeon to offer sacrifice; but Solomon, being seated on the throne, went to sacrifice at Gibeon, 1 Kings iii, 4.

GIDEON, the son of Joash, of the tribe of Manasseh; the same with Jerubbaal, the seventh judge of Israel. He dwelt in the city of Ophra, and was chosen by God in a very extraordinary manner to deliver the Israelites from the oppression of the Midianites, under which they had laboured for the space of seven years. See Judges vi, 14–27; viii, 1–24, &c.

GIER EAGLE, , Lev. xi, 18; Deut. xiv, 17. As the root of this word signifies tenderness and affection, it is supposed to refer to some bird remarkable for its attachment to its young; hence some have thought that the pelican is to be understood; and Bochart endeavours to prove that the golden vulture is meant; but there can be no doubt that it is the percnopterus of the ancients, the ach-bobba of the Arabians, particularly described by Bruce under the name of rachamah. He says, “We know from Horus Apollo, that the rachma, or she vulture, was sacred to Isis, and adorned the statue of the goddess; that it was the emblem of parental affection; and that it was the hieroglyphic for an affectionate mother.” He farther says, that “this female vulture, having hatched her young ones, continues with them one hundred and twenty days, providing them with all necessaries; and, when the stock of food fails them, she tears off the fleshy part of her thigh, and feeds them with that and the blood which flows from the wound.”

Hasselquist thus describes the Egyptian vulture: “The appearance of the bird is as horrid as can well be imagined. The face is naked and wrinkled, the eyes are large and black, the beak black and crooked, the talons large, and extended ready for prey, and the whole body polluted with filth. These are qualities enough to make the beholder shudder with horror. Notwithstanding this, the inhabitants of Egypt cannot be enough thankful to Providence for this bird. All the places round Cairo are filled with the dead bodies of asses and camels; and thousands of these birds fly about and devour the carcasses, before they 404putrify and fill the air with noxious exhalations.” No wonder that such an animal should be deemed unclean.

GIFT OF TONGUES, an ability given to the Apostles and others of readily and intelligibly speaking a variety of languages which they had never learned. This was a glorious and decisive attestation to the Gospel, as well as a suitable, and, indeed, in their circumstances, a necessary qualification for the mission for which the Apostles and their coadjutors were designed. Nor is there any reason, with Dr. Middleton, to understand it as merely an occasional gift, so that a person might speak a language most fluently one hour, and be entirely ignorant of it the next; which neither agrees with what is said of the abuse of it, nor would it have been sufficient to answer the end proposed, Acts ii. Some appear to have been gifted with one tongue, others with more. To St. Paul this endowment was vouchsafed in a more liberal degree, than to many others; for, as to the Corinthians, who had received the gift of tongues, he says, “that he spake with tongues more than they all.”

GIFTS. The practice of making presents is very common in oriental countries. The custom probably had its origin among those men who first sustained the office of kings or rulers, and who, from the novelty and perhaps the weakness attached to their situation, chose, rather than make the hazardous attempt of exacting taxes, to content themselves with receiving those presents which might be freely offered, 1 Sam. x, 27. Hence it passed into a custom, that whoever approached the king should come with a gift. This was the practice and the expectation. The custom of presenting gifts was subsequently extended to other great men; to men who were inferior to the king, but who were, nevertheless, men of influence and rank; it was also extended to those who were equals, when they were visited, Proverbs xviii, 16. Kings themselves were in the habit of making presents, probably in reference to the custom in question and the feelings connected with it, to those individuals, their inferiors in point of rank, whom they wished to honour, and also to those who, like themselves, were clothed with the royal authority. These presents, namely, such as were presented by the king as a token of the royal esteem and honour, are almost invariably denominated in the Hebrew, and , 1 Kings xv, 19; 2 Kings xvi, 8; xviii, 14; Isaiah xxxvi, 16. The more ancient prophets did not deem it discreditable to them to receive presents, nor unbecoming their sacred calling, except when, as was sometimes the case, they refused by way of expressing their dissatisfaction or indignation, 2 Kings v, 15; viii, 9. In later times, when false prophets, in order to obtain money, prophesied without truth and without authority, the true prophets, for the purpose of keeping the line of distinction as broad as possible, rejected every thing that looked like reward. Gifts of this kind, that have now been described, are not to be confounded with those which are called , and which were presented to judges, not as a mark of esteem and honour, but for purposes of bribery and corruption. The former was considered an honour to the giver, but a gift of the latter kind has been justly reprobated in every age, Exod. xxii, 8; Deut. x, 17; xvi, 19; xxvii, 25; Psalm xv, 5; xxvi, 10; Isaiah i, 23; v, 23; xxxiii, 15. The giver was not restricted as to the kind of present which he should make. He might present not only silver and gold, but clothes and arms, also different kinds of food, in a word any thing which could be of benefit to the recipient, Gen. xliii, 11; 1 Sam. ix, 7; xvi, 20; Job xiii, 11. It was the custom anciently, as it is at the present time in the east, for an individual when visiting a person of high rank, to make some presents of small value to the servants or domestics of the person visited, 1 Sam. xxv, 27. It was the usual practice among kings and princes to present to their favourite officers in the government, to ambassadors from foreign courts, to foreigners of distinction, and to men eminent for their learning, garments of greater or less value, Genesis xiv, 22, 23; Esther viii, 15. The royal wardrobe, in which a large number of such garments was kept, is denominated in Hebrew 2 Chronicles xxxiv, 22. It was considered an honour of the highest kind, if a king or any person in high authority thought it proper, as a manifestation of his favour, to give away to another the garment which he had previously worn himself, 1 Sam. xviii, 4. In the east, at the present day, it is expected, that every one who has received a garment from the king will immediately clothe himself in it, and promptly present himself and render his homage to the giver; otherwise he runs the hazard of exciting the king’s displeasure, Matt. xxii, 11, 12. It was sometimes the case, that the king, when he made a feast, presented vestments to all the guests who were invited, with which they clothed themselves before they sat down to it, 2 Kings x, 22; Gen. xlv, 22; Rev. iii, 5. In oriental countries, the presents which are made to kings and princes are to this day carried on beasts of burden, are attended with a body of men, and are escorted with much pomp. It matters not how light or how small the present may be, it must either be carried on the back of a beast of burden, or by a man, who must support it with both his hands, Judges iii, 18; 2 Kings viii, 9.

GIHON, the name of one of the four rivers the source of which was in paradise, Genesis ii, 13. (See Eden.) Reland, Calmet, &c, think that Gihon is the Araxes, which has its source, as well as the Tigris and Euphrates, in the mountains of Armenia, and, running with almost incredible rapidity, falls into the Caspian Sea. Gihon was also the name of a fountain to the west of Jerusalem, at which Solomon was anointed king by the high priest Zadok, and the Prophet Nathan, 1 Kings i, 33.

GILBOA, Mount, a ridge of mountains on the north of Bethshan, or Scythopolis, forming in that part the boundary of the plain of Jordan to the west. It is memorable from the defeat of Saul by the Philistines; when his 405three sons were slain, and he himself died by his own hand, his armourbearer refusing to kill him, 1 Sam. xxxi.

GILEAD, the name given to the monument erected by Laban and Jacob, in testimony of a mutual covenant and agreement, Gen. xxxi, 47, 48. Hence the hill upon which it was erected, was called Mount Gilead, Cant. iv, 1; vi, 5; Jer. 1, 19. The mountains of Gilead were part of that ridge of mountains which extend from Mount Lebanon southward, on the east of the Holy land; they gave their name to the whole country which lies on the east of the sea of Galilee, and included the mountainous region called in the New Testament Trachonitis. The Scripture speaks of the balm of Gilead, Jer. viii, 22; xlvi, 11; li, 8. The merchants who bought Joseph came from Gilead, and were carrying balm into Egypt, Gen. xxxvii, 25. See Balm.

GILGAL, a celebrated place situated on the west of Jordan, where the Israelites encamped some time after their passage over that river, and where Joshua pitched twelve stones taken out of Jordan as a memorial. A considerable city was afterward built there, which became renowned for many events recorded in the history of the Jews. Gilgal was about a league from Jordan, and at an equal distance from Jericho. It received its name from the circumstance of the Hebrews being there circumcised; for when by divine command that rite had been performed upon them, the Lord said, “This day have I rolled away from off you the reproach of Egypt,” Joshua v, 2–4, &c.--The word Gilgal signifies rolling. Here the ark was long stationed, and consequently the place was much resorted to by the Israelites. It seems to have been the place in which Jeroboam or some of the kings of Israel instituted idolatrous worship; and hence the allusions to it by the prophets, Hosea iv, 15; Amos iv, 4. It is probable that there were idols at Gilgal as early as the days of Ehud, who was one of the judges; for it is said that, having delivered his presents to the king, “Ehud went away, but returned again from the quarries that were by Gilgal,” Judges iii, 19. The margin of our Bibles reads, “the graven images,” or idols set up by the Moabites, the viewing of which, it is thought, stirred up Ehud to revenge the affront thereby offered to the God of Israel. At this same place, the people met to confirm the kingdom to Saul, 1 Sam. xi, 14, 15. It was at Gilgal, too, that Saul incurred the divine displeasure, in offering sacrifice before Samuel arrived, 1 Sam. xiii; and there also it was that he received the sentence of his rejection for disobeying the divine command, and sparing the king of Amalek with the spoils which he had reserved, 1 Sam. xv.

It has been supposed that the setting up of stones, as at Gilgal and other places, gave rise to the rude stone circular temples of the Druids, and other Heathens. The idea, however, appears fanciful, and there is an essential difference between stones erected for memorials, and those used to mark sacred, or supposed sacred, places for worship.

GIRDLE. The girdle is an indispensable article in the dress of an oriental: it has various uses; but the principal one is to tuck up their long flowing vestments, that they may not incommode them in their work, or on a journey. The Jews, according to some writers, wore a double girdle, one of greater breadth, with which they girded their tunic when they prepared for active exertions: the other they wore under their shirt, around their loins. This under girdle they reckon necessary to distinguish between the heart and the less honourable parts of the human frame. The upper girdle was sometimes made of leather, the material of which the girdle of John the Baptist was made; but it was more commonly fabricated of worsted, often very artfully woven into a variety of figures, and made to fold several times about the body; one end of which being doubled back, and sewn along the edges, serves them for a purse, agreeably to the acceptation of , in the Scriptures, which is translated purse, in several places of the New Testament, Matt. x, 9; Mark vi, 8. The ancient Romans, in this, as in many other things, imitated the orientals; for their soldiers, and probably all classes of the citizens, used to carry their money in their girdles. Whence, in Horace, qui zonam perdidit, means one who had lost his purse; and Aulus Gellius, C. Gracchus is introduced, saying, “Those girdles which I carried out full of money when I went from Rome, I have, at my return from the province, brought again empty.” The Turks make a farther use of these girdles, by fixing their knives and poinards in them; while the writers and secretaries suspend in them their ink-horns; a custom as old as the Prophet Ezekiel, who mentions “a person clothed in white linen, with an ink-horn upon his loins,” Ezek. ix, 2. That part of the ink-holder which passes between the girdle and the tunic, and receives their pens, is long and flat; but the vessel for the ink, which rests upon the girdle, is square, with a lid to clasp over it.

2. To loose the girdle and give it to another was, among the orientals, a token of great confidence and affection. Thus, to ratify the covenant which Jonathan made with David, and to express his cordial regard for his friend, among other things, he gave him his girdle. A girdle curiously and richly wrought was among the ancient Hebrews a mark of honour, and sometimes bestowed as a reward of merit; for this was the recompense which Joab declared he meant to bestow on the man who put Absalom to death: “Why didst thou not smite him there to the ground and I would have given thee ten shekels of silver, and a girdle,” 2 Samuel xviii, 11. The reward was certainly meant to correspond with the importance of the service which he expected him to perform, and the dignity of his own station as commander in chief: we may, therefore, suppose that the girdle promised was not a common one of leather, or plain worsted, but of costly materials and richly adorned; for people of rank and fashion in the east wear very broad girdles, all of silk, and superbly 406ornamented with gold and silver, and precious stones, of which they are extremely proud, regarding them as the tokens of their superior station and the proof of their riches. “To gird up the loins” is to bring the flowing robe within the girdle, and so to prepare for a journey, or for some vigorous exercise.

GLASS, a. This word occurs Rev. xxi, 18, 21; and the adjective , Rev. iv, 6; xv, 2. Parkhurst says that in the later Greek writers, and in the New Testament, a denotes the artificial substance, glass; and that we may either with Mintert derive it from , splendour, or immediately from the Hebrew , to shine. There seems to be no reference to glass in the Old Testament. The art of making it was not known. Our translators have rendered the Hebrew word , in Exodus xxxviii, 8, and Job xxxvii, 18, “looking-glass.” But the making mirrors of glass coated with quicksilver, is an invention quite modern. The word looking-glass occurs in our version of Ecclesiasticus xii, 11, “Never trust thine enemy; for like as iron rusteth, so is his wickedness. Though he humble himself, and go crouching, yet take good heed and beware of him, and thou shalt be unto him as if thou hadst washed a looking-glass, and thou shalt know that his rust hath not been altogether wiped away.” This passage proves, by its mention of rust, that mirrors were then made of polished metal. The word spt, or mirror, occurs in 1 Cor. xiii, 12, and James i, 23. Dr. Pearce thinks that in the former place it signifies any of those transparent substances which the ancients used in their windows, and through which they saw external objects obscurely. But others are of opinion that the word denotes a mirror of polished metal; as this, however, was liable to many imperfections, so that the object before it was not seen clearly or fully, the meaning of the Apostle is, that we see things as it were by images reflected from a mirror, which shows them very obscurely and indistinctly. In the latter place, a mirror undoubtedly is meant; “For if any be a hearer of the word, and not a doer, he is like unto a man beholding his natural face in a glass: for he beholdeth himself, and goeth his way, and straightway he forgetteth what manner of man he was:” but in the former, 1 Cor. xiii, 12, semi-transparent glass such as that which we see in the ancient glass vases of the Romans is obviously intended. Specimens of Roman glass may be seen in collections of antiquities, and some have been dug up at Pompeii; but in all it is cloudy and dull, and objects can only be seen through it with indistinctness. From this we may fully perceive the force of the Apostle’s words, “now we see through a glass darkly.”

GLEAN. To glean is properly to gather ears of corn, or grapes, left by the reapers, &c. The Jews were not allowed to glean their fields, but were to leave this to the poor, Lev. xix, 10; xxiii, 22; Deut. xxiv, 21; Ruth ii, 3.

GLORIFY, to make glorious or honourable, or to cause to appear so, John xii, 28; xiii, 31, 32; xv, 8; xvii, 4, 5; xxi, 19; Acts iii, 13. In this view it particularly refers to the resurrection of Christ, and his ascension to the right hand of God, John vii, 39; xii, 16. It also expresses that change which shall pass upon believers at the general resurrection, and their admission into heaven.

GLORY, splendour, magnificence. The glory of God in the writings of Moses, denotes, generally, the divine presence; as when he appeared on Mount Sinai; or, the bright cloud which declared his presence, and descended on the tabernacle of the congregation, Exod. xxiv, 9, 10, 16, 17. Moses, with Aaron, Nadab, Abihu, and seventy elders of Israel, went up to Mount Sinai, and “saw the glory of the Lord.” Now “the glory of the Lord was, as it were, a burning fire on the mountain; and under his feet was, as it were, the brightness of the sapphire stone, resembling heaven itself in clearness.” The glory of the Lord appeared to Israel in the cloud also, when he gave them manna and quails, Exod. xvi, 7, 10. Moses having earnestly begged of God to show his glory to him, God said, “Thou canst not see my face, for there shall no man see me and live. And the Lord said, There is a place by me, and thou shalt stand upon a rock: and it shall come to pass, while my glory passeth by, that I will put thee in the cleft of the rock, and will cover thee with my hand while I pass by: and I will take away my hand, and thou shalt see my back parts:” (the train, the fainter rays of the glory:) “but my face shall not be seen,” Exod. xxxiii, 18. The ark of God is called the glory of Israel; and the glory of God, 1 Samuel iv, 21, 22; Psalm xxvi, 8. The priestly ornaments are called “garments of glory,” Exod. xxviii, 2, 40; and the sacred vessels, “vessels of glory,” 1 Macc. ii, 9, 12. Solomon “in all his glory,” in all his lustre, in his richest ornaments, was not so beautifully arrayed as a lily, Matt. vi, 29; Luke xii, 27. When the prophets describe the conversion of the Gentiles, they speak of the “glory of the Lord” as filling the earth; that is, his knowledge shall universally prevail, and he shall be every where worshipped and glorified. The term “glory” is used also of the Gospel dispensation by St. Paul; and to express the future felicity of the saints in heaven. When the Hebrews required an oath of any man, they said, “Give glory to God:” confess the truth, give him glory, confess that God knows the most secret thoughts, the very bottom of your hearts, Joshua vii, 19; John ix, 24.

GNAT, , Matt. xxiii, 24, a small-winged insect, comprehending a genus of the order of diptera. In those hot countries, as Servius remarks, speaking of the east, gnats and flies are very apt to fall into wine, if it be not carefully covered; and passing the liquor through a strainer, that no gnat or part of one might remain, became a proverb for exactness about little matters. This may help us to understand that passage, Matt. xxiii, 24, where the proverbial expression of carefully straining out a little fly from the liquor to be drunk, 407and yet swallowing a camel, intimates, that the scribes and Pharisees affected to scruple little things, and yet disregarded those of the greatest moment.

GNOSTICS, from s, “knowledge,” men of science and wisdom, illuminati; men who, from blending the philosophy of the east, or of Greece, with the doctrines of the Gospel, boasted of deeper knowledge in the Scriptures and theology than others. It was, therefore, not so properly a distinct sect as a generic term, comprehending all who, forsaking the simplicity of the Gospel, pretended to be “wise above what is written,” to explain the New Testament by the dogmas of the philosophers, and to derive from the sacred writings mysteries which never were contained in them. The origin of the Gnostic heresy, as it is called, has been variously stated. The principles of this heresy were, however, much older than Christianity; and many of the errors alluded to in the apostolic epistles are doubtless of a character very similar to some branches of the Gnostic system. (See Cabbala.) Cerinthus, against whom St. John wrote his Gospel; the Nicolaitans, mentioned in the Revelation, and the Ebionites, (described under that article,) were all early Gnostics, although the system was not then so completely formed as afterward. Dr. Burton, in his Bampton Lectures, has thus sketched the Gnostic system:--In attempting to give an account of these doctrines, I must begin with observing what we shall see more plainly when we trace the causes of Gnosticism, that it was not by any means a new and distinct philosophy, but made up of selections from almost every system. Thus we find in it the Platonic doctrine of ideas, and the notion that every thing in this lower world has a celestial and immaterial archetype. We find in it evident traces of that mystical and cabalistic jargon which, after their return from captivity, deformed the religion of the Jews; and many Gnostics adopted the oriental notion of two independent coëternal principles, the one the author of good, the other of evil. Lastly, we find the Gnostic theology full of ideas and terms which must have been taken from the Gospel; and Jesus Christ, under some form or other, of æon, emanation, or incorporeal phantom, enters into all their systems, and is the means of communicating to them that knowledge which raised them above all other mortals, and entitled them to their peculiar name. The genius and very soul of Gnosticism was mystery: its end and object was to purify its followers from the corruptions of matter, and to raise them to a higher scale of being, suited only to those who were become perfect by knowledge.

2. We have a key to many parts of their system, when we know that they held matter to be intrinsically evil, of which, consequently, God could not be the author. Hence arose their fundamental tenet, that the creator of the world, or Demiurgus, was not the same with the supreme God, the Author of good, and the Father of Christ. Their system allowed some of them to call the creator God; but the title most usually given to him was Demiurgus. Those who embraced the doctrine of two principles supposed the world to have been produced by the evil principle; and, in most systems, the creator, though not the father of Christ, was looked upon as the God of the Jews, and the author of the Mosaic law. Some, again, believed that angels were employed in creating the world; but all were agreed in maintaining that matter itself was not created, that it was eternal, and remained inactive, till

[Some God, whoever he was, separated and arranged the mass, and reduced it, when separated, into elements.]

The supreme God had dwelt from all eternity in a pleroma of inaccessible light; and beside the name of first Father, or first Principle, they called him also Bythus, as if to denote the unfathomable nature of his perfections. This being, by an operation purely mental, or by acting upon himself, produced two other beings of different sexes, from whom, by a series of descents, more or less numerous according to different schemes, several pairs of beings were formed, who were called æons, from the periods of their existence before time was, or emanations, from the mode of their production. These successive æons or emanations appear to have been inferior each to the preceding; and their existence was indispensable to the Gnostic scheme, that they might account for the creation of the world without making God the author of evil. These æons lived through countless ages with their first father; but the system of emanations seems to have resembled that of concentric circles; and they gradually deteriorated, as they approached nearer and nearer to the extremity of the pleroma. Beyond this pleroma was matter, inert and powerless, though coëternal with the supreme God, and like him without beginning. At length, one of the æons passed the limits of the pleroma, and, meeting with matter, created the world, after the form and model of an ideal world which existed in the pleroma or in the mind of the supreme God. Here it is that inconsistency is added to absurdity in the Gnostic scheme. For, let the intermediate æons be as many as the wildest imagination could devise, still God was the remote, if not the proximate, cause of creation. Added to which, we are to suppose that the Demiurgus formed the world without the knowledge of God; and that, having formed it, he rebelled against him. Here, again, we find a strong resemblance to the oriental doctrine of two principles, good and evil, or light and darkness. The two principles were always at enmity with each other. God must have been conceived to be more powerful than matter, or an emanation from God could not have shaped and moulded it into form: yet God was not able to reduce matter into its primeval chaos, nor to destroy the evil which the Demiurgus had produced. What God could not prevent, he was always endeavouring to cure: and here 408it is that the Gnostics borrowed so largely from the Christian scheme. The names, indeed, of several of their æons were evidently taken from terms which they found in the Gospel. Thus we meet with Logos, Monogenes, Zoe, Ecclesia, all of them successive emanations from the supreme God, and all dwelling in the pleroma. At length, we meet with Christ and the Holy Ghost, as two of the last æons which were put forth. Christ was sent into the world to remedy the evil which the creative æon or Demiurgus had caused. He was to emancipate men from the tyranny of matter, or of the evil principle; and, by revealing to them the true God, who was hitherto unknown, to fit them, by a perfection and sublimity of knowledge, to enter the divine pleroma. To give this knowledge, was the end and object of Christ’s coming upon earth; and hence the inventors and believers of the doctrine assumed to themselves the name of Gnostics. In all their notions concerning Christ, we still find them struggling with the same difficulty of reconciling the author of good with the existence of evil. Christ, as being an emanation from God, could have no real connection with matter: yet, the Christ of the Gnostics was held out to be the same with him who was revealed in the Gospel; and it was notorious that he was revealed as the Son of Mary, who appeared in a human form. The methods which they took to extricate themselves from the difficulty, were principally two: they either denied that Christ had a real body at all, and held that he was an unsubstantial phantom; or, granting that there was a man called Jesus, the son of human parents, they believed that one of the æons, called Christ, quitted the pleroma, and descended upon Jesus at his baptism.

3. We have seen that the God who was the father or progenitor of Christ, was not considered to be the creator of the world. Neither was he the God of the Old Testament, and the giver of the Mosaic law. This notion was supported by the same argument which infidels have often urged, that the God of the Jews is represented as a God of vengeance and of cruelty; but it was also a natural consequence of their fundamental principle, that the author of good cannot in any manner be the author of evil. In accordance with this notion, we find all the Gnostics agreed in rejecting the Jewish Scriptures, or, at least, in treating them with contempt. Since they held that the supreme God was revealed for the first time to mankind by Christ, he could not have been the God who inspired the prophets; and yet, with that strange inconsistency which we have already observed in them, they appealed to these very Scriptures in support of their own doctrines. They believed the prophets to have been inspired by the same creative æon, or the same principle of evil, which acted originally upon matter; and if their writings had come down to us, we should perhaps find them arguing, that, though the prophets were not inspired by the supreme God, they still could not help giving utterance to truth.

4. Their same abhorrence of matter, and their same notion concerning that purity of knowledge which Christ came upon earth to impart, led them to reject the Christian doctrines of a future resurrection and a general judgment. They seem to have understood the Apostles as preaching literally a resurrection of the body; and it is certain that the fathers insisted upon this very strongly as an article of belief. But to imagine that the body, a mass of created and corruptible matter, could ever enter into heaven, into that pleroma which was the dwelling of the supreme God, was a notion which violated the fundamental principle of the Gnostics. According to their scheme, no resurrection was necessary, much less a final judgment. The Gnostic, the man who had attained to perfect knowledge, was gradually emancipated from the grossness of matter; and, by an imperceptible transition, which none but a Gnostic could comprehend, he was raised to be an inhabitant of the divine pleroma. If we would know the effect which the doctrines of the Gnostics had upon their moral conduct, we shall find that the same principle led to two very opposite results. Though the fathers may have exaggerated the errors of their opponents, it seems undeniable, that many Gnostics led profligate lives, and maintained upon principle that such conduct was not unlawful. Others, again, are represented as practising great austerities, and endeavouring, by every means, to mortify the body and its sensual appetites. Both parties were actuated by the same common notion, that matter is inherently evil. The one thought that the body, which is compounded of matter, ought to be kept in subjection; and hence they inculcated self-denial, and the practice of moral virtue: while others, who had persuaded themselves that knowledge was every thing, despised the distinctions of the moral law, which was given, as they said, not by the supreme God, but by an inferior æon, or a principle of evil, who had allied himself with matter.

5. With respect to the origin of this system the same author observes: There is no system of philosophy which has been traced to a greater number of sources than that which we are now discussing; and the variety of opinions seems to have arisen from persons either not observing the very different aspects which Gnosticism assumed, or from wishing to derive it from one exclusive quarter. Thus, some have deduced it from the eastern notion of a good and evil principle, some from the Jewish Cabbala, and others from the doctrines of the later Platonists. Each of these systems is able to support itself by alleging very strong resemblances; and those persons have taken the most natural and probably the truest course, who have concluded that all these opinions contributed to build up the monstrous system, which was known by the name of Gnosticism.

GOAT, . There are other names or appellations given to the goat, as, 1. , 1 Kings xx, 27, which means the ram-goat, or leader of the flock. 2. , a word which 409never occurs but in the plural, and means, the best prepared, or choicest of the flock; and metaphorically princes, as, Zech. x, 3, “I will visit the goats, saith the Lord,” that is, I will begin my vengeance with the princes of the people. “Hell from beneath is moved for thee, to meet thee at thy coming; it stirreth up the dead for thee, even all the great goats of the earth,” Isaiah xiv, 9; all the kings, all the great men. And Jeremiah, speaking of the princes of the Jews, says, “Remove out of the midst of Babylon, and be as the he-goats before the flocks,” Jer. 1, 8. 3. , a name for the goat, of Chaldee origin, and found only in Ezra vi, 17; viii, 35; Daniel viii, 5, 21. 4. , from , a goat, and , to wander about, Leviticus xvi, 8, “the scape-goat.” 5. , hairy, or shaggy, whence , “the shaggy ones.” In Lev. xvii, 7, it is said, “And they shall no more offer their sacrifices unto devils,” (seirim, “hairy ones,”) “after whom they have gone a whoring.” The word here means idolatrous images of goats, worshipped by the Egyptians. It is the same word that is translated satyrs, in Isaiah xiii, 21; where the LXX render it daµa, demons. But here they have µata, to vain things or idols, which comes to the same sense. What gives light to so obscure a passage is what we read in Maimonides, that the Zabian idolaters worshipped demons under the figure of goats, imagining them to appear in that form, whence they called them by the names of seirim; and that this custom, being spread among other nations, gave occasion to this precept. In like manner we learn from Herodotus, that the Egyptians of Mendes held goats to be sacred animals, and represented the god Pan with the legs and head of that animal. From those ancient idolaters the same notion seems to have been derived by the Greeks and Romans, who represented their Pan, their fauns, satyrs, and other idols, in the form of goats: from all which it is highly probable, that the Israelites had learned in Egypt to worship certain demons, or sylvan deities, under the symbolical figure of goats. Though the phrase, “after whom they have gone a whoring,” is equivalent in Scripture to that of committing idolatry, yet we are not to suppose that it is not to be taken in a literal sense in many places, even where it is used in connection with idolatrous acts of worship. It is well known that Baal-peor and Ashtaroth were worshipped with unclean rites, and that public prostitution formed a grand part of the worship of many deities among the Egyptians, Moabites, Canaanites, &c.

The goat was one of the clean beasts which the Israelites might both eat and offer in sacrifice. The kid, is often mentioned as a food, in a way that implies that it was considered as a delicacy. The , or wild goat, mentioned Deut. xiv, 5, and no where else in the Hebrew Bible, is supposed to be the tragelaphus, or “goat-deer.” Schultens conjectures that this animal might have its name, ob fugacitatem, from its shyness, or running away. The word , occurs 1 Sam. xxiv, 3; Job xxxix, 1; Psalm civ, 18; Prov. v, 19: and various have been the sentiments of interpreters on the animal intended by it. Bochart insists that it is the ibex, or “rock-goat.” The root whence the name is derived, signifies to ascend, to mount; and the ibex is famous for clambering, climbing, and leaping, on the most craggy precipices. The Arab writers attribute to the jaal very long horns, bending backward; consequently it cannot be the chamois. The horns of the jaal are reckoned among the valuable articles of traffic, Ezek. xxvii, 15. The ibex is finely shaped, graceful in its motions, and gentle in its manners. The female is particularly celebrated by natural historians for tender affection to her young, and the incessant vigilance with which she watches over their safety; and also for ardent attachment and fidelity to her mate.

GOD, an immaterial, intelligent, and free Being; of perfect goodness, wisdom, and power; who made the universe, and continues to support it, as well as to govern and direct it, by his providence. Philologists have hitherto considered the word God as being of the same signification with good; and this is not denied by M. Hallenberg. But he thinks that both words originally denoted unity; and that the root is , unus; whence the Syriac Chad and Gada; the Arabic Ahd and Gahd; the Persic Choda and Chuda; the Greek a and ; the Teutonic Gud; the German Gott; and our Saxon God. The other names of God, this author thinks, are referable to a similar origin.

2. By his immateriality, intelligence, and freedom, God is distinguished from Fate, Nature, Destiny, Necessity, Chance, Anima Mundi, and from all the other fictitious beings acknowledged by the Stoics, Pantheists, Spinosists, and other sorts of Atheists. The knowledge of God, his nature, attributes, word, and works, with the relations between him and his creatures, makes the subject of the extensive science called theology. In Scripture God is defined by, “I am that I am; Alpha and Omega; the Beginning and End of all things.” Among philosophers, he is defined a Being of infinite perfection; or in whom there is no defect of any thing which we conceive may raise, improve, or exalt his nature. He is the First Cause, the First Being, who has existed from the beginning, has created the world, or who subsists necessarily, or of himself.

3. The plain argument, says Maclaurin, in his “Account of Sir I. Newton’s Philosophical Discoveries,” for the existence of the Deity, obvious to all, and carrying irresistible conviction with it, is from the evident contrivance and fitness of things for one another, which we meet with throughout all parts of the universe. There is no need of nice or subtle reasonings in this matter; a manifest contrivance immediately suggests a contriver. It strikes us like a sensation; and artful reasonings against it may puzzle us, but it is without shaking our belief. No person, for example, that knows the principles of optics, 410and the structure of the eye, can believe that it was formed without skill in that science; or that the ear was formed without the knowledge of sounds; or that the male and female in animals were not formed for each other, and for continuing the species. All our accounts of nature are full of instances of this kind. The admirable and beautiful structure of things for final causes, exalts our idea of the Contriver; the unity of design shows him to be one. The great motions in the system performed with the same facility as the least, suggest his almighty power, which gave motion to the earth and the celestial bodies with equal ease as to the minutest particles. The subtilty of the motions and actions in the internal parts of bodies, shows that his influence penetrates the inmost recesses of things, and that he is equally active and present every where. The simplicity of the laws that prevail in the world, the excellent disposition of things, in order to obtain the best ends, and the beauty which adorns the works of nature, far superior to any thing in art, suggest his consummate wisdom. The usefulness of the whole scheme, so well contrived for the intelligent beings that enjoy it, with the internal disposition and moral structure of these beings themselves, shows his unbounded goodness. These are arguments which are sufficiently open to the views and capacities of the unlearned, while at the same time they acquire new strength and lustre from the discoveries of the learned. The Deity’s acting and interposing in the universe, show that he governs as well as formed it; and the depth of his counsels, even in conducting the material universe, of which a great part surpasses our knowledge, keeps up an inward veneration and awe of this great Being, and disposes us to receive what may be otherwise revealed to us concerning him. It has been justly observed, that some of the laws of nature now known to us must have escaped us if we had wanted the sense of seeing. It may be in his power to bestow upon us other senses, of which we have at present no idea; without which it may be impossible for us to know all his works, or to have more adequate ideas of himself. In our present state, we know enough to be satisfied of our dependency upon him, and of the duty we owe to him, the Lord and Disposer of all things. He is not the object of sense; his essence, and, indeed, that of all other substances, are beyond the reach of all our discoveries; but his attributes clearly appear in his admirable works. We know that the highest conceptions we are able to form of them, are still beneath his real perfections; but his power and dominion over us, and our duty toward him, are manifest.

4. Though God has given us no innate ideas of himself, says Mr. Locke, yet, having furnished us with those faculties our minds are endowed with, he hath not left himself without a witness; since we have sense, perception, and reason, and cannot want a clear proof of him as long as we carry ourselves about us. To show, therefore, that we are capable of knowing, that is, of being certain that there is a God, and how we may come by this certainty, I think we need go no farther than ourselves, and that undoubted knowledge we have of our own existence. I think it is beyond question, that man has a clear perception of his own being; he knows certainly that he exists, and that he is something. In the next place, man knows, by an intuitive certainty, that bare nothing can no more produce any real being, than it can be equal to two right angles. If, therefore, we know there is some real Being, it is an evident demonstration, that from eternity there has been something; since what was not from eternity had a beginning; and what had a beginning must be produced by something else. Next it is evident, that what has its being from another must also have all that which is in, and belongs to, its being from another too; all the powers it has must be owing to, and derived from, the same source. This eternal source, then, of all being must be also the source and original of all power; and so this eternal Being must be also the most powerful. Again: man finds in himself perception and knowledge: we are certain, then, that there is not only some Being, but some knowing, intelligent Being, in the world. There was a time, then, when there was no knowing Being, or else there has been a knowing Being from eternity. If it be said there was a time when that eternal Being had no knowledge, I reply, that then it is impossible there should have ever been any knowledge; it being as impossible that things wholly void of knowledge, and operating blindly, and without any perception, should produce a knowing Being, as it is impossible that a triangle should make itself three angles bigger than two right ones. Thus from the consideration of ourselves, and what we infallibly find in our own constitutions, our reason leads us to the knowledge of this certain and evident truth, that there is an eternal, most powerful, and knowing Being, which, whether any one will call God, it matters not. The thing is evident; and from this idea, duly considered, will easily be deduced all those other attributes we ought to ascribe to this eternal Being. From what has been said, it is plain to me, that we have a more certain knowledge of the existence of a God, than of any thing our senses have not immediately discovered to us. Nay, I presume I may say that we more certainly know that there is a God, than that there is any thing else without us. When I say we know, I mean, there is such a knowledge within our reach, which we cannot miss, if we will but apply our minds to that as we do to several other inquiries. It being then unavoidable for all rational creatures to conclude that something has existed from eternity, let us next see what kind of thing that must be. There are but two sorts of beings in the world that man knows or conceives; such as are purely material without sense or perception, and sensible, perceiving beings, such as we find ourselves to be. These two sorts we shall call cogitative 411and incogitative beings; which to our present purpose are better than material and immaterial. If, then, there must be something eternal, it is very obvious to reason that it must be a cogitative being; because it is as impossible to conceive that bare incogitative matter should ever produce a thinking, intelligent being, as that nothing should of itself produce matter. Let us suppose any parcel of matter eternal, we shall find it in itself unable to produce any thing. Let us suppose its parts firmly at rest together, if there were no other being in the world, must it not eternally remain so, a dead inactive lump Is it possible to conceive that it can add motion to itself, or produce any thing Matter, then, by its own strength cannot produce in itself so much as motion. The motion it has must also be from eternity, or else added to matter by some other being, more powerful than matter. But let us suppose motion eternal too, yet matter, incogitative matter, and motion could never produce thought: knowledge will still be as far beyond the power of nothing to produce. Divide matter into as minute parts as you will, vary its figure and motion as much as you please, it will operate no otherwise upon other bodies of proportionable bulk, than it did before this division. The minutest particles of matter knock, impel, and resist one another, just as the greater do; so that if we suppose nothing eternal, matter can never begin to be; if we suppose bare matter without motion eternal, motion can never begin to be; if we suppose only matter and motion to be eternal, thought can never begin to be; for it is impossible to conceive that matter, either with or without motion, could have originally in and from itself, sense, perception, and knowledge, as is evident from hence, that then sense, perception, and knowledge must be a property eternally inseparable from matter, and every particle of it. Since, therefore, whatsoever is the first eternal Being must necessarily be cogitative; and whatsoever is first of all things must necessarily contain in it, and actually have, at least all the perfections that can ever after exist, it necessarily follows, that the first eternal Being cannot be matter. If, therefore, it be evident that something must necessarily exist from eternity, it is also evident that that something must necessarily be a cogitative Being. For it is as impossible that incogitative matter should produce a cogitative Being, as that nothing, or the negation of all being, should produce a positive Being or matter.

This discovery of the necessary existence of an eternal mind sufficiently leads us to the knowledge of God. For it will hence follow, that all other knowing beings that have a beginning must depend upon him, and have no other ways of knowledge or extent of power than what he gives them; and therefore if he made those, he made also the less excellent pieces of this universe, all inanimate bodies, whereby his omniscience, power, and providence will be established, and from thence all his other attributes necessarily follow.

5. In the Scriptures no attempt is made to prove the existence of a God; such an attempt would have been entirely useless, because the fact was universally admitted. The error of men consisted, not in denying a God, but in admitting too many; and one great object of the Bible is to demonstrate that there is but one. No metaphysical arguments, however, are employed in it for this purpose. The proof rests on facts recorded in the history of the Jews, from which it appears that they were always victorious and prosperous so long as they served the only living and true God, Jehovah, the name by which the Almighty made himself known to them, and uniformly unsuccessful when they revolted from him to serve other gods. What argument could be so effectual to convince them that there was no god in all the earth but the God of Israel The sovereignty and universal providence of the Lord Jehovah are proved by predictions delivered by the Jewish prophets, pointing out the fate of nations and of empires, specifying distinctly their rise, the duration of their power, and the causes of their decline; thus demonstrating that one God ruled among the nations, and made them the unconscious instruments of promoting the purposes of his will. In the same manner, none of the attributes of God are demonstrated in Scripture by reasoning; they are simply affirmed and illustrated by facts; and instead of a regular deduction of doctrines and conclusions from a few admitted principles, we are left to gather them from the recorded feelings and devotional expressions of persons whose hearts were influenced by the fear of God. These circumstances point out a marked singularity in the Scriptures, considered as a repository of religious doctrines. The writers, generally speaking, do not reason, but exhort and remonstrate; they do not attempt to fetter the judgment by the subtleties of argument, but to rouse the feelings by an appeal to palpable facts. This is exactly what might have been expected from teachers acting under a divine commission, and armed with undeniable facts to enforce their admonitions.

6. In three distinct ways do the sacred writers furnish us with information on this great and essential subject, the existence and the character of God; from the names by which he is designated; from the actions ascribed to him; and from the attributes with which he is invested in their invocations and praises; and in those lofty descriptions of his nature which, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, they have recorded for the instruction of the world. These attributes will be considered under their respective heads; but the impression of the general view of the divine character, as thus revealed, is too important to be omitted.

7. The names of God as recorded in Scripture convey at once ideas of overwhelming greatness and glory, mingled with that awful mysteriousness with which, to all finite minds, and especially to the minds of mortals, the divine essence and mode of existence must ever be invested. Though One he is , Elohim, Gods, persons adorable. He is , Jehovah, 412self-existing; , El, strong, powerful; , Ehieh, I am, I will be, self-existence, independency, all-sufficiency, immutability, eternity; , Shaddai, almighty, all-sufficient; , Adon, Supporter, Lord, Judge. These are among the adorable appellatives of God which are scattered throughout the revelation that he has been pleased to make of himself: but on one occasion he was pleased more particularly to declare his name, that is, such of the qualities and attributes of the divine nature as mortals are the most interested in knowing; and to unfold, not only his natural, but also those of his moral attributes by which his conduct toward his creatures is regulated. “And the Lord passed by and proclaimed, The Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, long-suffering, and abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty; visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and upon the children’s children, unto the third and fourth generation,” Exodus xxxiv. This is the most ample and particular description of the character of God, as given by himself in the sacred records; and the import of the several titles by which he has thus in his infinite condescension manifested himself, has been thus exhibited. He is not only Jehovah, self-existent, and El, the strong or mighty God; but he is, says Dr. A. Clarke, “, Rochum, the merciful Being, who is full of tenderness and compassion; , Chanun, the gracious One, he whose nature is goodness itself, the loving God. , Erec Apayim, long-suffering, the Being who, because of his tenderness, is not easily irritated, but suffers long and is kind; Rab, the great or mighty One: , Chesed, the bountiful Being, he who is exuberant in his beneficence; , Emeth, the Truth, or True One, he alone who can neither deceive nor be deceived; , Notser Chesed, the Preserver of bountifulness, he whose beneficence never ends, keeping mercy for thousands of generations, showing compassion and mercy while the world endures; , Nose avon vapesha vechataah, he who bears away iniquity, transgression, and sin; properly the Redeemer, the Pardoner, the Forgiver, the Being whose prerogative it is to forgive sin, and save the soul; , Nakeh lo yinnakeh, the righteous Judge, who distributes justice with an impartial hand; and , Paked avon, &c, he who visits iniquity, he who punishes transgressors, and from whose justice no sinner can escape; the God of retributive and vindictive justice.”

8. The second means by which the Scriptures convey to us the knowledge of God, is by the actions which they ascribe to him. They contain, indeed, the important record of his dealings with men in every age which is comprehended within the limit of the sacred history; and, by prophetic declaration, they also exhibit the principles on which he will govern the world to the end of time: so that the whole course of the divine administration may be considered as exhibiting a singularly illustrative comment upon those attributes of his nature which, in their abstract form, are contained in such declarations as those which have been just quoted. The first act ascribed to God is that of creating the heavens and the earth out of nothing; and by his fiat alone arranging their parts, and peopling them with living creatures. By this were manifested--his eternity and self-existence, as he who creates must be before all creatures, and he who gives being to others can himself derive it from none:--his almighty power, shown both in the act of creation and in the number and vastness of the objects so produced:--his wisdom, in their arrangement, and in their fitness to their respective ends:--and his goodness, as the whole tended to the happiness of sentient beings. The foundations of his natural and moral government are also made manifest by his creative acts. In what he made out of nothing he had an absolute right and prerogative: it awaited his ordering, and was completely at his disposal; so that to alter or destroy his own work, and to prescribe the laws by which the intelligent and rational part of his creatures should be governed, are rights which none can question. Thus on the one hand his character of Lord or Governor is established, and on the other our duty of lowly homage and absolute obedience.

9. Agreeably to this, as soon as man was created, he was placed under a rule of conduct. Obedience was to be followed with the continuance of the divine favour; transgression, with death. The event called forth new manifestations of the character of God. His tender mercy, in the compassion showed to the fallen pair; his justice, in forgiving them only in the view of a satisfaction to be hereafter offered to his justice by an innocent representative of the sinning race; his love to that race, in giving his own Son to become this Redeemer, and in the fulness of time to die for the sins of the whole world; and his holiness, in connecting with this provision for the pardon of man the means of restoring him to a sinless state, and to the obliterated image of God in which he had been created. Exemplifications of the divine mercy are traced from age to age, in his establishing his own worship among men, and remitting the punishment of individual and national offences in answer to prayer offered from penitent hearts, and in dependence upon the typified or actually offered universal sacrifice:--of his condescension, in stooping to the cases of individuals; in his dispensations both of providence and grace, by showing respect to the poor and humble; and, principally, by the incarnation of God in the form of a servant, admitting men into familiar and friendly intercourse with himself, and then entering into heaven to be their patron and advocate, until they should be received unto the same glory, “and so be for ever with the Lord:”--of his strictly righteous government, in the destruction of the old world, the cities of the plain, the nations of Canaan, and all ancient states, upon their “filling up the measure of their iniquities;” and, to show 413that “he will by no means clear the guilty;” in the numerous and severe punishments inflicted even upon the chosen seed of Abraham, because of their transgressions:--of his long-suffering, in frequent warnings, delays, and corrective judgments inflicted upon individuals and nations, before sentence of utter excision and destruction:--of faithfulness and truth, in the fulfilment of promises, often many ages after they were given, as in the promises to Abraham respecting the possession of the land of Canaan by his seed, and in all the “promises made to the fathers” respecting the advent, vicarious death, and illustrious offices of the “Christ,” the Saviour of the world:--of his immutability, in the constant and unchanging laws and principles of his government, which remain to this day precisely the same, in every thing universal, as when first promulgated, and have been the rule of his conduct in all places as well as through all time:--of his prescience of future events, manifested by the predictions of Scripture:--and of the depth and stability of his counsel, as illustrated in that plan and purpose of bringing back a revolted world to obedience and felicity, which we find steadily kept in view in the Scriptural history of the acts of God in former ages; which is still the end toward which all his dispensations bend, however wide and mysterious their sweep; and which they will finally accomplish, as we learn from the prophetic history of the future, contained in the Old and New Testaments.

Thus the course of divine operation in the world has from age to age been a manifestation of the divine character, continually receiving new and stronger illustrations until the completion of the Christian revelation by the ministry of Christ and his inspired followers, and still placing itself in brighter light and more impressive aspects as the scheme of human redemption runs on to its consummation. From all the acts of God as recorded in the Scriptures, we are taught that he alone is God; that he is present every where to sustain and govern all things; that his wisdom is infinite, his counsel settled, and his power irresistible; that he is holy, just, and good; the Lord and the Judge, but the Father and the Friend, of man.

10. More at large do we learn what God is, from the declarations of the inspired writings. As to his substance, that “God is a Spirit.” As to his duration, that “from everlasting to everlasting he is God;” “the King, eternal, immortal, invisible.” That, after all the manifestations he has made of himself, he is, from the infinite perfection and glory of his nature, incomprehensible: “Lo, these are but parts of his ways, and how little a portion is heard of him!” “Touching the Almighty, we cannot find him out.” That he is unchangeable: “The Father of Lights, with whom there is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.” That “he is the fountain of life,” and the only independent Being in the universe: “Who only hath immortality.” That every other being, however exalted, has its existence from him: “For by him were all things created, which are in heaven and in earth, whether they are visible or invisible.” That the existence of every thing is upheld by him, no creature being for a moment independent of his support: “By him all things consist;” “upholding all things by the word of his power.” That he is omnipresent: “Do not I fill heaven and earth with my presence, saith the Lord” That he is omniscient: “All things are naked and open before the eyes of him with whom we have to do.” That he is the absolute Lord and Owner of all things: “The heavens, even the heaven of heavens, are thine, and all the parts of them:” “The earth is thine, and the fulness thereof, the world and them that dwell therein:” “He doeth according to his will in the armies of heaven, and among the inhabitants of the earth.” That his providence extends to the minutest objects: “The hairs of your head are all numbered:” “Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing and one of them shall not fall on the ground without your Father.” That he is a Being of unspotted purity and perfect rectitude: “Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of hosts!” “A God of truth, and in whom is no iniquity:” “Of purer eyes than to behold iniquity.” That he is just in the administration of his government: “Shall not the Judge of the whole earth do right” “Clouds and darkness are round about him; judgment and justice are the habitation of his throne.” That his wisdom is unsearchable: “O the depth of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out!” And, finally, that he is good and merciful: “Thou art good, and thy mercy endureth for ever:” “His tender mercy is over all his works:” “God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us, even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ:” “God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them:” “God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in his Son.”

11. Under these deeply awful but consolatory views, do the Scriptures present to us the supreme object of our worship and trust; and they dwell upon each of the above particulars with inimitable sublimity and beauty of language, and with an inexhaustible variety of illustration. Nor can we compare these views of the divine nature with the conceptions of the most enlightened of Pagans, without feeling how much reason we have for everlasting gratitude, that a revelation so explicit, and so comprehensive, should have been made to us on a subject which only a revelation from God himself could have made known. It is thus that Christian philosophers, even when they do not use the language of the Scriptures, are able to speak on this great and mysterious doctrine, in language so clear, and with conceptions so noble; in a manner too so equable, so different from the sages of antiquity, who, if at any time they approach the truth when speaking of the divine nature, never fail to mingle with it some essentially erroneous or grovelling conception. “By the Word of God,” 414says Dr. Barrow, “we mean a Being of infinite wisdom, goodness, and power, the Creator and the Governor of all things, to whom the great attributes of eternity and independency, omniscience and immensity, perfect holiness and purity, perfect justice and veracity, complete happiness, glorious majesty, and supreme right of dominion belong; and to whom the highest veneration, and most profound submission and obedience are due.” “Our notion of Deity,” says Bishop Pearson, “doth expressly signify a Being or Nature of infinite perfection; and the infinite perfection of a being or nature consists in this, that it be absolutely and essentially necessary; an actual Being of itself; and potential, or causative of all beings beside itself, independent from any other, upon which all things else depend, and by which all things else are governed.” “God is a Being,” says Lawson, “and not any kind of being; but a substance, which is the foundation of other beings. And not only a substance, but perfect. Yet many beings are perfect in their kind, yet limited and finite. But God is absolutely, fully, and every way infinitely perfect; and therefore above spirits, above angels, who are perfect comparatively. God’s infinite perfection includes all the attributes, even the most excellent. It excludes all dependency, borrowed existence, composition, corruption, mortality, contingency, ignorance, unrighteousness, weakness, misery, and all imperfections whatever. It includes necessity of being, independency, perfect unity, simplicity, immensity, eternity, immortality; the most perfect life, knowledge, wisdom, integrity, power, glory, bliss, and all these in the highest degree. We cannot pierce into the secrets of this eternal Being. Our reason comprehends but little of him, and when it can proceed no farther, faith comes in, and we believe far more than we can understand; and this our belief is not contrary to reason; but reason itself dictates unto us, that we must believe far more of God than it can inform us of.” To these we may add an admirable passage from Sir Isaac Newton: “The word God frequently signifies Lord; but every lord is not God; it is the dominion of a spiritual Being or Lord that constitutes God; true dominion, true God; supreme, the Supreme; feigned, the false god. From such true dominion it follows, that the true God is living, intelligent, and powerful; and from his other perfections, that he is supreme, or supremely perfect; he is eternal and infinite; omnipotent and omniscient; that is, he endures from eternity to eternity; and is present from infinity to infinity. He governs all things that exist, and knows all things that are to be known; he is not eternity or infinity, but eternal and infinite; he is not duration or space, but he endures and is present; he endures always, and is present every where; he is omnipresent, not only virtually, but also substantially; for power without substance cannot subsist. All things are contained and move in him, but without any mutual passion; he suffers nothing from the motions of bodies; nor do they undergo any resistance from his omnipresence. It is confessed, that God exists necessarily, and by the same necessity he exists always and every where. Hence also he must be perfectly similar, all eye, all ear, all arm, all the power of perceiving, understanding, and acting; but after a manner not at all corporeal, after a manner not like that of men, after a manner wholly to us unknown. He is destitute of all body, and all bodily shape; and therefore cannot be seen, heard, or touched; nor ought he to be worshipped under the representation of any thing corporeal. We have ideas of the attributes of God, but do not know the substance of even any thing; we see only the figures and colours of bodies, hear only sounds, touch only the outward surfaces, smell only odours, and taste tastes; and do not, cannot, by any sense, or reflex act, know their inward substances; and much less can we have any notion of the substance of God. We know him by his properties and attributes.”

12. Many able works in proof of the existence of God have been written, the arguments of which are too copious for us even to analyze. It must be sufficient to say that they all proceed, as it is logically termed, either à priori, from cause to effect, or, which is the safest and most satisfactory mode, à posteriori, from the effect to the cause. The irresistible argument from the marks of design with which all nature abounds, to one great intelligent, designing Cause, is by no writers brought out in so clear and masterly a manner as by Howe, in his “Living temple,” and Paley, in his “Natural Theology.”

GODS, in the plural, is used of the false deities of the Heathens, many of which were only creatures to whom divine honours and worship were superstitiously paid. The Greeks and Latins, it is observable, did not mean, by the name God, an all-perfect being, whereof eternity, infinity, omnipresence, &c, were essential attributes: with them the word only implied an excellent and superior nature; and, accordingly, they give the appellation gods to all beings of a rank or class, higher or more perfect than that of men, and especially to those who were inferior agents in the divine administration, all subject to the one Supreme. Thus men themselves, according to their system, might become gods after death, inasmuch as their souls might attain to a degree of excellence superior to what they were capable of in life. The first idols, or false gods, that are said to have been adored were the stars, sun, moon, &c, on account of the light, heat, and other benefits which we derive from them. (See Idolatry.) Afterward the earth came to be deified, for furnishing fruits necessary for the subsistence of men and animals: then fire and water became objects of divine worship, for their usefulness to human life. In process of time, and by degrees, gods became multiplied to infinity; and there was scarce any thing but the weakness or caprice of some devotee or other, elevated into the rank of deity: things useless or even destructive not excepted. The principal of the ancient gods, 415whom the Romans called dii majorum gentium, and Cicero celestial gods, Varro select gods, Ovid nobiles deos, others consentes deos, were Jupiter, Juno, Vesta, Minerva, Ceres, Diana, Venus, Mars, Mercury, Neptune, Vulcan, and Apollo. Jupiter is considered as the god of heaven; Neptune, as god of the sea; Mars, as the god of war; Apollo, of eloquence, poetry, and physic; Mercury, of thieves; Bacchus, of wine; Cupid, of love, &c. A second sort of gods, called demi-gods, semi-dii, dii minorum gentium, indigetes, or gods adopted, were men canonized and deified. As the greater gods had possession of heaven by their own right, these secondary deities had it by merit and donation, being translated into heaven because they had lived as gods upon earth.

2. The Heathen gods may be all reduced to the following classes: (1.) Created spirits, angels, or demons, whence good and evil gods; Genii, Lares, Lemures, Typhones, guardian gods, infernal gods, &c. (2.) Heavenly bodies; as, the sun, moon, and other planets; also, the fixed stars, constellations, &c. (3.) Elements; as air, earth, ocean, Ops, Vesta; the rivers, fountains, &c. (4.) Meteors. Thus the Persians adored the wind: thunder and lightning were honoured under the name of Geryon; and several nations of India and America have made themselves gods of the same. Castor, Pollux, Helena, and Iris, have also been preferred from meteors to be gods; and the like has been practised in regard to comets: witness that which appeared at the murder of Cæsar. (5.) They erected minerals or fossils into deities. Such was the Bætylus. The Finlanders adored stones; the Scythians, iron; and many nations, silver and gold. (6.) Plants have been made gods. Thus leeks and onions were deities in Egypt; the Sclavi, Lithuanians, Celtæ, Vandals, and Peruvians, adored trees and forests; the ancient Gauls, Britons, and Druids, paid a particular devotion to the oak; and it was no other than wheat, corn, seed, &c, that the ancients adored under the names of Ceres and Proserpina. (7.) They took themselves gods from among the waters. The Syrians and Egyptians adored fishes; and what were the Tritons, the Nereids, Syrens, &c, but fishes Several nations have adored serpents; particularly the Egyptians, Prussians, LithuaniansLithuanians, Samogitians, &c. (8.) Insects, as flies and ants, had their priests and votaries. (9.) Among birds, the stork, raven, sparrowhawk, ibis, eagle, grisson, and lapwing have had divine honours; the last in Mexico, the rest in Egypt and at Thebes. (10.) Four-footed beasts have had their altars; as the bull, dog, cat, wolf, baboon, lion, and crocodile, in Egypt and elsewhere; the hog in the island of Crete; rats and mice in the Troas, and at Tenedos; weasels at Thebes; and the porcupine throughout all Zoroaster’s school. (11.) Nothing was more common than to place men among the number of deities; and from Belus or Baal, to the Roman emperors before Constantine, the instances of this kind are innumerable: frequently they did not wait so long as their deaths for the apotheosis. Nebuchadnezzar procured his statue to be worshipped while living; and Virgil shows that Augustus had altars and sacrifices offered to him; as we learn from other hands that he had priests called Augustales, and temples at Lyons, Narbona, and several other places, and he must be allowed the first of the Romans in whose behalf idolatry was carried to such a pitch. The Ethiopians deemed all their kings gods: the Velleda of the Germans, the Janus of the Hungarians, and the Thaut, Woden, and Assa of the northern nations, were indisputably men. (12.) Not men only, but every thing that relates to man, has also been deified; as labour, rest, sleep, youth, age, death, virtues, vices, occasion, time, place, numbers, among the Pythagoreans; the generative power, under the name of Priapus. Infancy alone had a cloud of deities; as, Vagetanus, Levana, Rumina, Edufa, Potina, Cuba, Cumina, Carna, Ossilago, Statulinus, Fabulinus, &c. They also adored the gods Health, Fever, Fear, Love, Pain, Indignation, Shame, Impudence, Opinion, Renown, Prudence, Science, Art, Fidelity, Felicity, Calumny, Liberty, Money, War, Peace, Victory, Triumph, &c. Lastly, Nature, the universe, or t , was reputed a great god.

3. Hesiod has a poem under the title of Tea, that is, “The Generation of the Gods,” in which he explains their genealogy and descent, sets forth who was the first and principal, who next descended from him, and what issue each had: the whole making a sort of system of Heathen theology. Beside this popular theology, each philosopher had his system, as may be seen from the “Timæus” of Plato, and Cicero “De Natura Deorum.” Justin Martyr, Tertullian, Arnobius, Minutius Felix, Lactantius, Eusebius, St. Augustine, and Theodoret, show the vanity of the Heathen gods. It is very difficult to discover the real sentiments of the Heathens with respect to their gods: they are exceedingly intricate and confused, and even frequently contradictory. They admitted so many superior and inferior gods, who shared the empire, that every place was full of gods. Varro reckons up no less than thirty thousand adored within a small extent of ground, and yet their number was every day increasing. In modern oriental Paganism they amount to many millions, and are, in fact, innumerable.

4. The name of God, in Hebrew, Elohim, is very ambiguous in Scripture. The true God is often called so, as are sometimes angels, judges, and princes, and sometimes idols and false gods; for example: “God created the heaven and the earth,” Gen. i, 1. The Hebrew Elohim denotes, in this place, the true God. “He who sacrificeth unto any god, (Elohim,) shall be put to death,” Exodus xxii, 20. And again: “Among the gods there is none like unto thee,” Psalm lxxxvi, 8. Princes, magistrates, and great men are called gods in the following passages: “If a slave is desirous to continue with his master, he shall be brought to the judges,” Exod. xxi, 6, in the original, to the gods. Again: “If the thief be not found, then the master of the house shall be brought unto the 416judges,” Exod. xxii, 8, in the original, to the gods; and in the twenty-eighth verse of the same chapter, “Thou shalt not speak evil of the gods;” that is, of the judges or great men. The Psalmist says that the Lord “judgeth among the gods,” Psalm lxxxii, 1. And again, God says to Moses, “I have made thee a god to Pharaoh,” Exod. vii, 1. The pious Israelites had so great an aversion and such an extreme contempt for strange gods, that they scorned even to mention them; they disguised and disfigured their names by substituting in the room of them some term of contempt; for example, instead of Elohim, they called them Elilim, “nothings, gods of no value;” instead of Mephibaal, Meribaal, and Jerubaal, they said “Mephibosheth, Meribosheth, and Jeribosheth.” Baal signifies master, husband; and bosheth, something to be ashamed of, something apt to put one in confusion. God forbade the Israelites to swear by strange gods, and to pronounce the names of them in their oaths, Exod. xxiii, 13.

GODLINESS, strictly taken, signifies right worship, or devotion; but, in general, it imports the whole of practical religion, 1 Tim. iv, 8; 2 Peter i, 6.

GOEL, , the avenger of blood. The inhabitants of the east, it is well known, are now, what they anciently were, exceedingly revengeful. If, therefore, an individual should unfortunately happen to lay violent hands upon another person and kill him, the next of kin is bound to avenge the death of the latter, and to pursue the murderer with unceasing vigilance until he have caught and killed him, either by force or by fraud. The same custom exists in Arabia, and it appears to have been alluded to by Rebecca: when she learned that Esau was threatening to kill his brotherbrother Jacob, she endeavoured to send the latter out of the country, saying, “Why should I be bereft of you both in one day” Gen. xxvii, 15. She could not be afraid of the magistrate for punishing the murderer, for the patriarchs were subject to no superior in Palestine; and Isaac was much too partial to Esau for her to entertain any expectation that he would condemn him to death for it. It would therefore appear that she dreaded lest he should fall by the hand of the blood avenger, perhaps of some Ishmaelite. The office, therefore, of the goel was in use before the time of Moses; and it was probably filled by the nearest of blood to the party killed, as the right of redeeming a mortgage field is given to him. To prevent the unnecessary loss of life through a sanguinary spirit of revenge, the Hebrew legislator made various enactments concerning the blood avenger. In most ages and countries, certain reputed sacred places enjoyed the privileges of being asylums; Moses, therefore, taking it for granted that the murderer would flee to the altar, commanded that when the crime was deliberate and intentional, he should be torn even from the altar, and put to death, Exod. xxi, 14. But in the case of unintentional murder, the man-slayer was enjoined to flee to one of the six cities of refuge, which were appropriated for his residence. The roads to these cities, it was enacted, should be kept in such a state that the unfortunate individual might meet with no impediment whatever in his way, Deut. xix, 3. If the goel overtook the fugitive before he reached an asylum, and put him to death, he was not considered as guilty of blood; but if the man-slayer had reached a place of refuge, he was immediately protected, and an inquiry was instituted whether he had a right to such protection and asylum, that is, whether he had caused his neighbour’s death undesignedly, or was a deliberate murderer. In the latter case he was judicially delivered to the goel, who might put him to death in whatever way he chose; but in the former case the homicide continued in the place of refuge until the high priest’s death, when he might return home in perfect security. If, however, the goel found him without the city, or beyond its suburbs, he might slay him without being guilty of blood, Numbers xxxv, 26, 27. Farther, to guard the life of man, and prevent the perpetration of murder, Moses positively prohibited the receiving of a sum of money from a murderer in the way of compensation, Numbers xxxv, 31. It would seem that if no avenger of blood appeared, or if he were dilatory in the pursuit of the murderer, it became the duty of the magistrate himself to inflict the sentence of the law; and thus we find that David deemed this to be his duty in the case of Joab, and that Solomon, in obedience to his father’s dying entreaty, actually discharged it by putting that murderer to death, 1 Kings ii, 5; vi, 28–34. There is a beautiful allusion to the blood avenger in Heb. vi, 17, 18.

The following extracts will prove how tenaciously the eastern people adhere to the principle of revenging the death of their relations and friends:--“Among the Circassians,” says Pallas, “all the relatives of the murderers are considered as guilty. This customary infatuation to revenge the blood of relations generates most of the feuds, and occasions great bloodshed among all the tribes of Caucasus; for unless pardon be purchased, or obtained by intermarriage between the two families, the principle of revenge is propagated to all succeeding generations. If the thirst of vengeance is quenched by a price paid to the family of the deceased, this tribute is called thlil-uasa, or, ‘the price of blood;’ but neither princes nor usdens accept such compensation, as it is an established law among them to demand blood for blood.” “The Nubians,” observes Light, “possess few traces among them of government, or law, or religion. They know no master, although the cashief claims a nominal command of the country. They look for redress of injuries to their own means of revenge, which, in cases of blood, extends from one generation to another, till blood is repaid by blood. On this account they are obliged to be ever on the watch, and armed: and in this manner even their daily labours are carried on; the very boys are armed.” “If one Nubian,” remarks Burckhardt, “happen to kill another, he is obliged 417to pay the debt of blood to the family of the deceased, and a fine to the governors of six camels, a cow, and seven sheep, or they are taken from his relations. Every wound inflicted has its stated fine, consisting of sheep and dhourra, but varying in quantity, according to the parts of the body wounded.” “When a man or woman is murdered,” says Malcolm, “the moment the person by whom the act was perpetrated is discovered, the heir-at-law to the deceased demands vengeance for the blood. Witnesses are examined, and if the guilt be established, the criminal is delivered into his hands, to deal with as he chooses. It is alike legal for him to forgive him, to accept a sum of money as the price of blood, or to put him to death. It is only a few years ago that the English resident at Abusheher saw three persons delivered into the hands of the relations of those whom they had murdered. They led their victims bound to the burial ground, where they put them to death; but the part of the execution that appeared of the most importance, was to make the infant children of the deceased stab the murderers with knives, and imbrue their little hands in the blood of those who had slain their father. The youngest princes of the blood that could hold a dagger were made to stab the assassins of Aga Mahomed Khan. When they were executed, the successor of Nadir Shah sent one of the murderers of that monarch to the females of his harem, who, we are told, were delighted to become his executioners.”

GOG AND MAGOG. Moses speaks of Magog, son of Japheth, but says nothing of Gog, Gen. x, 2. According to Ezekiel, Gog was prince of Magog, Ezek. xxxviii, 2, 3, &c; xxxix, 1, 2, &c. Magog signifies the country or people, and Gog the king of that country; the general name of the northern nations of Europe and Asia, or the districts north of the Caucasus, or Mount Taurus. The prophecy of Ezekiel, xxxix, 1–22, seems to be revived in the Apocalypse, where the hosts of Gog and Magog are represented as coming to invade “the beloved city,” and perishing with immense slaughter likewise in Armageddon, “the mount of Mageddo,” or Megiddo, Rev. xvi, 14–16; xx, 7–10.

GOLD, , Gen. xxiv, 22, and very frequently in all other parts of the Old Testament; s, Matt. xxiii, 16, 17, &c; the most perfect and valuable of the metals. In Job xxviii, 15–18, 19, gold is mentioned five times, and four of the words are different in the original: 1. , which may mean “gold in the mine,” or “shut up,” as the root signifies, “in the ore.” 2. , kethem, from , catham, “to sign,” “seal,” or “stamp;” gold made current by being coined; standard gold, exhibiting the stamp expressive of its value. 3. , wrought gold, pure, highly polished gold. 4. , denoting solidity, compactness, and strength; probably gold formed into different kinds of plate, or vessels. Jerom, in his comment on Jer. x, 9, writes “Septem dominibus apud Hebræos appellatur aurum.” The seven names, which he does not mention, are as follows, and thus distinguished by the Hebrews: 1. Zahab, gold in general. 2. Zahab tob, good gold, of a more valuable kind, Gen. ii, 12. 3. Zahab Ophir, gold of Ophir, 1 Kings ix, 28, such as was brought by the navy of Solomon. 4. Zahab muphaz, solid gold, pure, wrought gold, translated, 1 Kings x, 18, “the best gold.” 5. Zahab shachut, beaten gold, 2 Chron. ix, 15. 6. Zahab segor, shut up gold; either as mentioned above, gold in the ore, or as the rabbins explain it, “gold shut up in the treasuries,” gold in bullion. 7. Zahab parvaim, 2 Chron. iii, 6. To these Buxtorf adds three others: 1. , pure gold of the circulating medium. 2. , gold in the treasury. 3. , choice, fine gold. Arabia had formerly its golden mines. “The gold of Sheba,” Psalm lxxii, 15, is, in the Septuagint and Arabic versions, “the gold of Arabia.” Sheba was the ancient name of Arabia Felix. Mr. Bruce, however, places it in Africa, at Azab. The gold of Ophir, so often mentioned, must be that which was procured in Arabia, on the coast of the Red Sea. We are assured by Sanchoniathon, as quoted by Eusebius, and by Herodotus, that the Phenicians carried on a considerable traffic with this gold even before the days of Job, who speaks of it, xxii, 24.

GOLIATH, a famous giant of the city of Gath, who was slain by David, 1 Sam. xvii, 4, 5, &c. See Giants.

GOMER, the eldest son of Japheth, by whom a great part of Asia Minor was first peopled, and particularly that extensive tract which was called Phrygia, including the sub-divisions of Mysia, Galatia, Bithynia, Lycaonia, &c. The colonies of Gomer extended into Germany, Gaul, (in both of which traces of the name are preserved,) and Britain, which was undoubtedly peopled from Gaul. Among the descendants of the ancient inhabitants of this island, namely, the Welsh, the words Kumero and Kumeraeg, the names of the people and the language, sufficiently point out their origin. In fact, under the names of Cimmerii, Cimbri, Cymrig, Cumbri, Umbri, and Cambri, the tribes of Gomerians extended themselves from the Euxine to the Atlantic, and from Italy to the Baltic; having added to their original names those of Celts, Gauls, Galatæ, and Gaels, superadded.

GOMORRAH, one of the five cities of the Pentapolis, consumed by fire, Genesis xix, 24, &c. See Dead Sea.

GOSHEN. This was the most fertile pasture ground in the whole of Lower Egypt; thence called Goshen, from gush, in Arabic, signifying “a heart,” or whatsoever is choice or precious. There was also a Goshen in the territory of the tribe of Judah, so called for the same reason, Joshua x, 41. Hence Joseph recommended it to his family as “the best of the land,” Gen. xlvii, 11, and “the fat of the land,” Gen. xlv, 18. The land of Goshen lay along the most easterly branch of the Nile, and on the east side of it; for it is evident that, at the time of the exode, the Israelites did not cross the Nile. In ancient times, the fertile land was considerably more extensive, both in 418length and breadth, than at present, in consequence of the general failure of the eastern branches of the Nile; the main body of the river verging more and more to the west continually, and deepening the channels on that side.

GOSPEL, a history of the life, actions, death, resurrection, ascension, and doctrine of Jesus Christ. The word is Saxon, and of the same import with the Latin term evangelium, or the Greek ea, which signifies “glad tidings,” or “good news;” the history of our Saviour being the best history ever published to mankind. This history is contained in the writings of St. Matthew, St. Mark, St. Luke, and St. John, who from thence are called evangelists. The Christian church never acknowledged any more than these four Gospels as canonical: notwithstanding which, several apocryphal gospels are handed down to us, and others are entirely lost. The four Gospels contain each of them the history of our Saviour’s life and ministry; but we must remember, that no one of the evangelists undertook to give an account of all the miracles which Christ performed, or of all the instructions which he delivered. They are written with different degrees of conciseness; but every one of them is sufficiently full to prove that Jesus was the promised Messiah, the Saviour of the world, who had been predicted by a long succession of prophets, and whose advent was expected at the time of his appearance, both by Jews and Gentiles.

2. That all the books which convey to us the history of events under the New Testament were written and immediately published by persons contemporary with the events, is most fully proved by the testimony of an unbroken series of authors, reaching from the days of the evangelists to the present times; by the concurrent belief of Christians of all denominations; and by the unreserved confession of avowed enemies to the Gospel. In this point of view the writings of the ancient fathers of the Christian church are invaluable. They contain not only frequent references and allusions to the books of the New Testament, but also such numerous professed quotations from them, that it is demonstratively certain that these books existed in their present state a few years after the conclusion of Christ’s ministry upon earth. No unbeliever in the apostolic age, in the age immediately subsequent to it, or, indeed, in any age whatever, was ever able to disprove the facts recorded in these books; and it does not appear that in the early times any such attempt was made. The facts, therefore, related in the New Testament must be admitted to have really happened. But if all the circumstances of the history of Jesus, that is, his miraculous conception in the womb of the virgin, the time at which he was born, the place where he was born, the family from which he was descended, the nature of the doctrines which he preached, the meanness of his condition, his rejection, death, burial, resurrection, and ascension, with many other minute particulars; if all these various circumstances in the history of Jesus exactly accord with the predictions of the Old Testament relative to the promised Messiah, in whom all the nations of the earth were to be blessed, it follows that Jesus was that Messiah. And again: if Jesus really performed the miracles as related in the Gospels, and was perfectly acquainted with the thoughts and designs of men, his divine mission cannot be doubted. Lastly: if he really foretold his own death and resurrection, the descent of the Holy Ghost, its miraculous effects, the sufferings of the Apostles, the call of the Gentiles, and the destruction of Jerusalem, it necessarily follows that he spake by the authority of God himself. These, and many other arguments, founded in the more than human character of Jesus, in the rapid propagation of the Gospel, in the excellence of its precepts and doctrines, and in the constancy, intrepidity, and fortitude of its early professors, incontrovertibly establish the truth and divine origin of the Christian religion, and afford to us, who live in these latter times, the most positive confirmation of the promise of our Lord, that “the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.”

3. The Gospels recount those wonderful and important events with which the Christian religion and its divine Author were introduced into the world, and which have produced so great a change in the principles, the manners, the morals, and the temporal as well as spiritual condition of mankind. They relate the first appearance of Christ upon earth, his extraordinary and miraculous birth, the testimony borne to him by his forerunner, John the Baptist, the temptation in the wilderness, the opening of his divine commission, the pure, the perfect, and sublime morality which he taught, especially in his inimitable sermon on the mount, the infinite superiority which he showed to every other moral teacher, both in the matter and manner of his discourses, more particularly by crushing vice in its very cradle, in the first risings of wicked desires and propensities in the heart, by giving a decided preference to the mild, gentle, passive, conciliating virtues, before that violent, vindictive, high-spirited, unforgiving temper, which has been always too much the favourite character of the world; by requiring us to forgive our very enemies, and to do good to them that hate us; by excluding from our devotions, our alms, and all our virtues, all regard to fame, reputation, and applause; by laying down two great general principles of morality, love to God, and love to mankind, and deducing from thence every other human duty; by conveying his instructions under the easy, familiar, and impressive form of parables; by expressing himself in a tone of dignity and authority unknown before; by exemplifying every virtue that he taught in his own unblemished and perfect life and conversation; and, above all, by adding those awful sanctions, which he alone, of all moral instructers, had the power to hold out, eternal rewards to the virtuous, and eternal punishments to the wicked. The sacred narratives then represent to us the high 419character that he assumed; the claim he made to a divine original; the wonderful miracles he wrought in proof of his divinity; the various prophecies which plainly marked him out as the Messiah, the great Deliverer of the Jews; the declarations he made that he came to offer himself a sacrifice for the sins of all mankind; the cruel indignities, sufferings, and persecutions to which, in consequence of this great design, he was exposed; the accomplishment of it, by the painful and ignominious death to which he submitted, by his resurrection after three days from the grave, by his ascension into heaven, by his sitting there at the right hand of God, and performing the office of a Mediator and Intercessor for the sinful sons of men, till he shall come a second time in his glory to sit in judgment on all mankind, and decide their final doom of happiness or misery for ever. These are the momentous, the interesting, truths on which the Gospels principally dwell.

4. We find in the ancient records a twofold order, in which the evangelists are arranged. They stand either thus, Matthew, John, Luke, Mark; or thus, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John. The first is made with reference to the character and the rank of the persons, according to which the Apostles precede their assistants and attendants (, comitibus.) It is observed in the oldest Latin translations and in the Gothic; sometimes also in the works of Latin teachers; but among all the Greek MSS. only in that at Cambridge. But the other, namely, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, is, in all the old translations of Asia and Africa, in all catalogues of the canonical books, and in Greek MSS. in general, the customary and established one as it regarded not personal circumstances, but as it had respect to chronological; which is to us a plain indication what accounts concerning the succession of the evangelists, the Asiatic, and Greek churches, and also those of Africa, had before them, when the Christian books were arranged in collections. It is a considerable advantage, says Michaëlis, that a history of such importance as that of Jesus Christ has been recorded by the pens of separate and independent writers, who, from the variations which are visible in these accounts, have incontestably proved that they did not unite with a view of imposing a fabulous narrative on mankind. That St. Matthew had never seen the Gospel of St. Luke, nor St. Luke the Gospel of St. Matthew, is evident from a comparison of their writings. The Gospel of St. Mark, which was written later, must likewise have been unknown to St. Luke; and that St. Mark had ever read the Gospel of St. Luke, is at least improbable, because their Gospels so frequently differ. It is a generally received opinion, that St. Mark made use of St. Matthew’s Gospel in the composition of his own; but this is an unfounded hypothesis. The Gospel of St. John, being written after the other three, supplies what they had omitted. Thus have we four distinct and independent writers of one and the same history; and, though trifling variations may seem to exist in their narratives, yet these admit of easy solutions; and in all matters of consequence, whether doctrinal or historical, there is such a manifest agreement between them as is to be found in no other writings whatever. Though we have only four original writers of the life of Jesus, the evidence of the history does not rest on the testimony of four men. Christianity had been propagated in a great part of the world before any of them had written, on the testimony of thousands and tens of thousands, who had been witnesses of the great facts which they have recorded; so that the writing of these particular books is not to be considered as the cause, but rather the effect, of the belief of Christianity; nor could those books have been written and received as they were, namely, as authentic histories, of the subject of which all persons of that age were judges, if the facts they have recorded had not been well known to be true.

5. The term Gospel is often used in Scripture to signify the whole Christian doctrine: hence, “preaching the Gospel” is declaring all the truths, precepts, promises, and threatenings of Christianity. This is termed, “the Gospel of the grace of God,” because it flows from God’s free love and goodness, Acts xx, 24; and when truly and faithfully preached, is accompanied with the influences of the divine Spirit. It is called, “the Gospel of the kingdom,” because it treats of the kingdom of grace, and shows the way to the kingdom of glory. It is styled, “the Gospel of Christ,” because he is the Author and great subject of it, Romans i, 16; and “the Gospel of peace and salvation,” because it publishes peace with God to the penitent and believing, gives, to such, peace of conscience and tranquillity of mind, and is the means of their salvation, present and eternal. As it displays the glory of God and of Christ, and ensures to his true followers eternal glory, it is entitled, “the glorious Gospel,” and, “the everlasting Gospel,” because it commenced from the fall of man, is permanent throughout all time, and produces effects which are everlasting.

GOVERNMENT OF THE HEBREWS. The posterity of Jacob, while remaining in Egypt, maintained, notwithstanding the augmentation of their numbers, that patriarchal form of government which is so prevalent among the nomades. Every father of a family exercised a father’s authority over those of his own household. Every tribe obeyed its own prince, , who was originally the first-born of the founder of the tribe, but who, in process of time, appears to have been elected. As the people increased in numbers, various heads of families united together, and selected some individual from their own body, who was somewhat distinguished, for their leader. Perhaps the choice was made merely by tacit consent; and, without giving him the title of ruler in form, they were willing, while convinced of his virtues, to render submission to his will. Such a union of families was denominated “the house of the father;” and “the house of the father of the families,” 420Num. iii, 24, 30, 35. In other instances, although the number varied, being sometimes more and sometimes less than a thousand, it was denominated, , a thousand. “Now therefore present yourselves before the Lord by your tribes, and by your thousands;” “the thousands of Judah;” “the thousands of Israel,” &c, 1 Sam. x, 19; xxiii, 23; Judges vi, 15; Num. xxvi, 5–50. The heads of these united families were designated “heads of thousands,” Num. i, 16; x, 4. They held themselves in subjection to the “princes of the tribes.” Both the princes and heads of families are mentioned under the common names of , seniors or senators, and heads of tribes. Following the law of reason, and the rules established by custom, they governed with a paternal authority the tribes and united families; and, while they left the minor concerns to the heads of individual families, aimed to superintend and promote the best interests of the community generally. Originally, it fell to the princes of the tribes themselves to keep genealogical tables: subsequently, they employed scribes especially for this purpose, who, in the progress of time, acquired so great authority, that under the name of , translated, in the English version, officers, they were permitted to exercise a share in the government of the nation. It was by magistrates of this description that the Hebrews were governed while they remained in Egypt; and the Egyptian kings made no objection to it, Exod. iii, 16; v, 1, 14, 15, 19.

2. The posterity of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were set apart and destined to the great object of preserving and transmitting the true religion, Gen. xviii, 16–20; xvii, 9–14; xii, 3; xxii, 18; xxviii, 14. Having increased in numbers, it appeared very evident that they could not live among nations given to idolatry without running the hazard of becoming infected with the same evil. They were, therefore, in the providence of God, assigned to a particular country, the extent of which was so small, that they were obliged, if they would live independently of other nations, to give up in a great measure the life of shepherds, and devote themselves to agriculture. Farther: very many of the Hebrews during their residence in Egypt had fallen into idolatrous habits. These were to be brought back again to the knowledge of the true God, and all were to be excited to engage in those undertakings which should be found necessary for the support of the true religion. All the Mosaic institutions aim at the accomplishment of these objects. The fundamental principle, therefore, of those institutions was this,--that the true God, the Creator and Governor of the universe, and none other, ought to be worshipped. To secure this end the more certainly, God became king to the Hebrews. Accordingly, the land of Canaan, which was destined to be occupied by them, was declared to be the land of Jehovah, of which he was to be the king, and the Hebrews merely the hereditary occupants. God promulgated, from the clouds of Mount Sinai, the prominent laws for the government of his people, considered as a religious community, Exod. xx. These laws were afterward more fully developed and illustrated by Moses. The rewards which should accompany the obedient, and the punishments which should be the lot of the transgressor, were at the same time announced, and the Hebrews promised by a solemn oath to obey, Exodus xxi-xxiv; Deut. xxvii-xxx.

3. In order to keep the true nature of the community fully and constantly in view, all the ceremonial institutions had reference to God, not only as the Sovereign of the universe, but as the King of the people. The people were taught to feel that the tabernacle was not only the temple of Jehovah, but the palace of their King; that the priests were the royal servants, and were bound to attend not only to sacred but to secular affairs, and were to receive, as their salary, the first tithes, which the people, as subjects, were led to consider a part of that revenue which was due to God, their immediate Sovereign. Other things of a less prominent and important nature had reference to the same great end. Since, therefore, God was the Sovereign, in a civil point of view as well as others, of Palestine and its inhabitants, the commission of idolatry by any inhabitant of that country, even a foreigner, was a defection from the true King. It was, in fact, treason; was considered a crime equal in aggravation to that of murder; and was, consequently, attended with the severest punishment. Whoever invited or exhorted to idolatry was considered seditious, and was obnoxious to the same punishment. Incantations also, necromancy, and other practices of this nature, were looked upon as arts of a kindred aspect with idolatry itself; and the same punishment was to be inflicted upon the perpetrators of them as upon idolaters. The same rigour of inquiry after the perpetrators of idolatry was enforced, that was exhibited in respect to other crimes of the deepest aggravation; and the person who knew of the commission of idolatry in another was bound by the law to complain of the person thus guilty before the judge, though the criminal sustained the near relationship of a wife or a brother, a daughter or a son.

4. Many things in the administration of the government remained the same under the Mosaic economy, as it had been before. The authority which they had previously possessed, was continued in the time of Moses and after his time, to the princes of the tribes, to the heads of families and combinations of families, and to the genealogists, Num. xi, 16; Deut. xvi, 18; xx, 5; xxxi, 28. Yet Moses, by the advice of Jethro, his father-in-law, increased the number of rulers by the appointment of an additional number of judges; some to judge over ten, some over fifty, some over a hundred, and some over a thousand, men, Exodus xviii, 13–26. These judges were elected by the suffrages of the people from those who, by their authority and rank, might be reckoned among the rulers or princes of the people. The inferior judges, that is, those who superintended 421the judicial concerns of the smaller numbers, were subordinate to the superior judges, or those who judged a larger number; and cases, accordingly, of a difficult nature went up from the inferior to the superior judges. Those of a very difficult character, so much so as to be perplexing to the superior judges, were appealed to Moses himself, and in some cases from Moses to the high priest. The judges, of whom we have now spoken, sustained a civil as well as a judicial authority, and were included in the list of those who are denominated the elders and princes of Israel: that is to say, supposing they were chosen from the elders and princes, they did not forfeit their seat among them by accepting a judicial office; and, on the contrary, the respectability attached to their office, supposing they were not chosen from them, entitled them to be reckoned in their number, Deut. xxxi, 28; Joshua viii, 33; xxiii, 2; xxiv, 1. The various civil officers that have been mentioned, namely, judges, heads of families, genealogists, elders, princes of the tribes, &c, were dispersed, as a matter of course, in different parts of the country. Those of them, accordingly, who dwelt in the same city, or the same neighbourhood, formed the comitia, senate or legislative assembly of their immediate vicinity, Deut. xix, 12; xxv, 8, 9; Judges viii, 14; ix, 3–46; xi, 5; 1 Sam. viii, 4; xvi, 4. When all that dwelt in any particular tribe were convened, they formed the legislative assembly of the tribe; and when they were convened in one body from all the tribes, they formed in like manner the legislative assembly of the nation, and were the representatives of all the people, Joshua xxiii, 1, 2; xxiv, 1. The priests, who were the learned class of the community, and beside were hereditary officers in the state, being set apart for civil as well as religious purposes, had, by the divine command, a right to a sitting in this assembly, Exod. xxxii, 29; Num. xxxvi, 15; viii, 5–26. Being thus called upon to sustain very different and yet very important offices, they became the subjects of that envy which would naturally be excited by the honour and the advantages attached to their situation. In order to confirm them in the duties which devolved upon them, and to throw at the greatest distance the mean and lurking principle just mentioned, God, after the sedition of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram, sanctioned the separation of the whole tribe, which had been previously made to the service of religion and the state, by a most evident and striking miracle, Num. xvi, 1–7.

5. Each tribe was governed by its own rulers, and consequently to a certain extent constituted a civil community, independent of the other tribes, Judges xx, 11–46; 2 Sam. ii, 4; Judges i, 21. If any affair concerned the whole or many of the tribes, it was determined by them in conjunction in the legislative assembly of the nation, Judges xi, 1–11; 1 Chron. v, 10, 18, 19; 2 Sam. iii, 17; 1 Kings xii, 1–24. If one tribe found itself unequal to the execution of any proposed plan, it might connect itself with another, or even a number of the other tribes, Judges i, 1–3, 22; iv, 10; vii, 23, 24; viii, 1–3. But, although in many things each tribe existed by itself, and acted separately, yet in others they were united, and formed but one community: for all the tribes were bound together, so as to form one church and one civil community, not only by their common ancestors, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; not only by the common promises which they had received from those ancestors; not only by the need in which they stood of mutual counsel and assistance; but also by the circumstance that God was their common King, and that they had a common tabernacle for his palace, and a common sacerdotal and Levitical order for his ministers. Accordingly, every tribe exerted a sort of inspection over the others, as respected their observance of the law. If any thing had been neglected, or any wrong had been done, the particular tribe concerned was amenable to the others; and, in case justice could not be secured in any other way, might be punished with war, Joshua xxii, 9–34; Judges xx, 1, &c.

6. When we remember that God was expressly chosen the King of the people, and that he enacted laws and decided litigated points of importance, Numbers xvii, 1–11; xxvii, 1–11; xxxvi, 1–10; when we remember also that he answered and solved questions proposed, Num. xv, 32–41; Joshua vii, 16–22; Judges i, 1, 2; xx, 18, 27, 28; 1 Sam. xiv, 37; xxiii, 9–12; xxx, 8; 2 Sam. ii, 1; that he threatened punishment, and that, in some instances, he actually inflicted it upon the hardened and impenitent, Num. xi, 33–35; xii, 1–15; xvi, 1–50; Lev. xxvi, 3–46; Deut. xxvi-xxx; when, finally, we take into account, that he promised prophets, who were to be, as it were, his ambassadors, Deut. xviii, and afterward sent them according to his promise, and that, in order to preserve the true religion, he governed the whole people by a striking and peculiar providence, we are at liberty to say, that God was, in fact, the Monarch of the people, and that the government was a theocracy. But, although the government of the Jews was a theocracy, it was not destitute of the usual forms which exist in civil governments among men. God, it is true, was the King, and the high priest, if we may be allowed so to speak, was his minister of state; but still the political affairs were in a great measure under the disposal of the elders, princes, &c. It was to them that Moses gave the divine commands, determined expressly their powers; and submitted their requests to the decision of God, Num. xiv, 5; xvi, 4, &c; xxvii, 5; xxxvi, 5, 6. It was in reference to the great power possessed by these men, who formed the legislative assembly of the nation, that Josephus pronounced the government to be aristocratical. But from the circumstance that the people possessed so much influence, as to render it necessary to submit laws to them for their ratification, and that they even took upon themselves sometimes to propose laws or to resist those which were enacted; from the circumstance also that the legislature of the nation had not the power of 422laying taxes, and that the civil code was regulated and enforced by God himself, independently of the legislature, Lowman and Michaëlis are in favour of considering the Hebrew government a democracy. In support of their opinion such passages are exhibited as the following, Exodus xix, 7, 8; xxiv, 3–8; Deut. xxix, 9–14; Joshua ix, 18, 19; xxiii, 1, &c; xxiv, 2, &c; 1 Samuel x, 24; xi, 14, 15; Num. xxvii, 1–8; xxxvi, 1–9. The truth seems to lie between these two opinions. The Hebrew government, putting out of view its theocratical feature, was of a mixed form, in some respects approaching to a democracy, in others assuming more of an aristocratical character.

7. From what has been said, it is clear, that the Ruler and supreme Head of the political community in question was God, who, with the design of promoting the good of his subjects, condescended to exhibit his visible presence in the tabernacle, wherever it travelled and wherever it dwelt. If, in reference to the assertion, that God was the Ruler of the Jewish state, it should be inquired what part was sustained by Moses, the answer is, that God was the Ruler, the people were his subjects, and Moses was the mediator or internuncio between them. But the title most appropriate to Moses, and most descriptive of the part he sustained, is that of legislator of the Israelites and their deliverer from the Egyptians. If the same question should be put in respect to Joshua, the answer would be, that he was not properly the successor of Moses, and that, so far from being the ruler of the state, he was designated by the ruler to sustain the subordinate office of military leader of the Israelites in their conquest of the land of Canaan.

8. But, although the Hebrew state was so constituted, that beside God, the invisible King, and his visible servant, the high priest, there was no other general ruler of the commonwealth, yet it is well known that there were rulers of a high rank, appointed at various times, called , a word which not only signifies a judge in the usual sense of the term, but any governor, or administrator of public affairs, 1 Sam. viii, 20; Isaiah xi, 4; 1 Kings iii, 9. The power lodged in these rulers, who are called judges in the Scriptures, seems to have been in some respects paramount to that of the general comitia of the nation, and we find that they declared war, led armies, concluded peace; and that this was not the whole, if indeed it was the most important part, of their duties. For many of the judges, for instance, Jair, Ibzan, Elon, Abdon, Eli, and Samuel, ruled the nation in peace. They might appropriately enough be called the supreme executive, exercising all the rights of sovereignty, with the exception of enacting laws, and imposing taxes. They were honoured, but they bore no external badges of distinction; they were distinguished, but they enjoyed no special privileges themselves, and communicated none to their posterity. They subserved the public good without emolument, that the state might be prosperous, that religion might be preserved, and that God alone might be King in Israel. It ought to be observed, however, that not all the judges ruled the whole nation: some of them presided over only a few separate tribes.

9. God, in the character of King, had governed the Israelites for sixteen ages. He ruled them, on the terms which he himself, through the agency of Moses, had proposed to them, namely, that if they observed their allegiance to him, they should be prosperous; if not, adversity and misery would be the consequence, Exod. xix, 4, 5; xxiii, 20–33; Lev. xxvi, 3–46; Deut. xxviii-xxx. We may learn from the whole book of Judges, and from the first eight chapters of Samuel, how exactly the result, from the days of Joshua down to the time of Samuel, agreed with these conditions. But in the time of Samuel, the government, in point of form, was changed into a monarchy. The election of king, however, was committed to God, who chose one by lot: so that God was still the Ruler, and the king the vicegerent. The terms of the government, as respected God, were the same as before, and the same duties and principles were inculcated on the Israelites as had been originally, 1 Sam. viii, 7; x, 17–23; xii, 14, 15, 20–22, 24, 25. In consequence of the fact, that Saul did not choose at all times to obey the commands of God, the kingdom was taken from him and given to another, 1 Sam. xiii, 5–14; xv, 1–31. David, through the agency of Samuel, was selected by Jehovah for king, who thus gave a proof that he still retained, and was disposed to exercise, the right of appointing the ruler under him, 1 Samuel xvi, 1–3. David was first made king over Judah; but as he received his appointment from God, and acted under his authority, the other eleven tribes submitted to him, 2 Sam. v, 1–3; 1 Chron. xxviii, 4–6. David expressly acknowledged God as the Sovereign, and, as having a right to appoint the immediate ruler of the people, 1 Chron. xxviii, 7–10; he religiously obeyed his statutes, the people adhered firmly to God, and his reign was prosperous. The paramount authority of God, as the King of the nation, and his right to appoint one who should act in the capacity of his vicegerent, are expressly recognized in the books of Kings and Chronicles.

10. On the subversion of the Babylonian empire by Cyrus, the founder of the Persian monarchy, (B. C. 543,) he authorized the Jews, by an edict, to return into their own country, with full permission to enjoy their laws and religion, and caused the city and temple of Jerusalem to be rebuilt. In the following year, part of the Jews returned under Zerubbabel, and renewed their sacrifices: but the reërection of the city and temple being interrupted for several years by the treachery and hostility of the Samaritans or Cutheans, the avowed enemies of the Jews, the completion and dedication of the temple did not take place until the year B. C. 511, six years after the accession of Cyrus. The rebuilding of Jerusalem was accomplished, and the reformation of their ecclesiastical and civil polity was 423effected, by the two divinely inspired and pious governors, Ezra and Nehemiah; but the theocratic government does not appear to have been restored. The new temple was not, as formerly, God’s palace; and the cloud of his presence did not take possession of it. After their death the Jews were governed by their high priests, in subjection however to the Persian kings, to whom they paid tribute, Ezra iv, 13; vii, 24, but with the full enjoyment of their other magistrates, as well as their liberties, civil and religious. Nearly three centuries of uninterrupted prosperity ensued, until the reign of Antiochus Epiphanes, king of Syria, when they were most cruelly oppressed, and compelled to take up arms in their own defence. Under the able conduct of Judas, surnamed Maccabeus, and his valiant brothers, the Jews maintained a religious war for twenty-six years with five successive kings of Syria; and after destroying upward of two hundred thousand of their best troops, the Maccabees finally established the independence of their own country and the aggrandizement of their family. This illustrious house, whose princes united the regal and pontifical dignity in their own persons, administered the affairs of the Jews during a period of one hundred and twenty-six years; until, disputes arising between Hyrcanus II, and his brother Aristobulus, the latter was defeated by the Romans under Pompey, who captured Jerusalem, and reduced Judea to dependence, B. C. 59.

GOVERNOR. Judea having been reduced into a province by the Romans, they sent governors thither, who were subject not only to the emperors, but also to the governors of Syria, whereof Judea made a part.

GOURD, , Jonah iv, 6, 7, 9, 10. Michaëlis, in his remarks on this subject, says, “Celsius appears to me to have proved that it is the kiki of the Egyptians.” He refers it to the class of the ricinus, the great catapucus. According to Dioscorides, it is of rapid growth, and bears a berry from which an oil is expressed. In the Arabic version of this passage, which is to be found in Avicenna, it is rendered, “from thence is pressed the oil which they call oil of kiki, which is the oil of Alkeroa.” So Herodotus says: “The inhabitants of the marshy grounds in Egypt make use of an oil, which they term the kiki, expressed from the Sillicyprian plant. In Greece this plant springs spontaneously, without any cultivation; but the Egyptians sow it on the banks of the river and of the canals; it there produces fruit in great abundance, but of a very strong odour. When gathered, they obtain from it, either by friction or pressure, an unctuous liquid, which diffuses an offensive smell, but for burning it is equal in quality to the oil of olives.” This plant rises with a strong herbaceous stalk to the height of ten or twelve feet; and is furnished with very large leaves, not unlike those of the plane tree. Rabbi Kimchi says that the people of the east plant them before their shops for the sake of the shade, and to refresh themselves under them. Niebuhr says, “I saw, for the first time at Basra, the plant ei-keroa, mentioned in Michaëlis’s ‘Questions.’ It has the form of a tree. The trunk appeared to me rather to resemble leaves than wood; nevertheless, it is harder than that which bears the Adam’s fig. Each branch of the keroa has but one large leaf, with six or seven foldings in it. This plant was near to a rivulet, which watered it amply. At the end of October, 1765, it had risen in five months’ time about eight feet, and bore at once flowers and fruit, ripe and unripe. Another tree of this species, which had not had so much water, had not grown more in a whole year. The flowers and leaves of it which I gathered withered in a few minutes; as do all plants of a rapid growth. This tree is called at Aleppo, palma Christi. An oil is made from it called oleum de keroa; oleum cicinum; oleum ficus infernalis. The Christians and Jews of Mosul (Nineveh) say, it was not the keroa whose shadow refreshed Jonah, but a sort of gourd, el-kera, which has very large leaves, very large fruit, and lasts but about four months.” The epithet which the prophet uses in speaking of the plant, “son of the night it was, and, as a son of the night it died,” does not compel us to believe that it grew in a single night, but, either by a strong oriental figure that it was of rapid growth, or akin to night in the shade it spread for his repose. The figure is not uncommon in the east, and one of our own poets has called the rose “child of the summer.” Nor are we bound to take the expression “on the morrow,” as strictly importing the very next day, since the word has reference to much more distant time, Exod. xiii, 14; Deut. vi, 20; Joshua iv, 6. It might be simply taken as afterward. But the author of “Scripture Illustrated” justly remarks, “As the history in Jonah expressly says, the Lord prepared this plant, no doubt we may conceive of it as an extraordinary one of its kind, remarkably rapid in its growth, remarkably hard in its stem, remarkably vigorous in its branches, and remarkable for the extensive spread of its leaves and the deep gloom of their shadow; and, after a certain duration, remarkable for a sudden withering, and a total uselessness to the impatient prophet.”

2. We read of the wild gourd in 2 Kings iv, 39; that Elisha, being at Gilgal during a great famine, bade one of his servants prepare something for the entertainment of the prophets who were in that place. The servant, going into the field, found, as our translators render it, some wild gourds, gathered a lapful of them, and, having brought them with him, cut them in pieces and put them into a pot, not knowing what they were. When they were brought to table, the prophets, having tasted them, thought they were mortal poison. Immediately, the man of God called for flour, threw it into the pot, and desired them to eat without any apprehensions. They did so, and perceived nothing of the bitterness whereof they were before sensible. This plant or fruit is called in Hebrew and 424. There have been various opinions about it. Celsius supposes it the colocynth. The leaves of the plant are large, placed alternate; the flowers white, and the fruit of the gourd kind, of the size of a large apple, which, when ripe, is yellow, and of a pleasant and inviting appearance, but, to the taste intolerably bitter, and proves a drastic purgative. It seems that the fruit, whatever it might have been, was early thought proper for an ornament in architecture. It furnished a model for some of the carved work of cedar in Solomon’s temple, 1 Kings vi, 18; vii, 24.

GRACE. This word is understood in several senses: for beauty, graceful form, and agreeableness of person, Prov. i, 9; iii, 22. For favour, friendship, kindness, Gen. vi, 8; xviii, 3; Rom. xi, 6; 2 Tim. i, 9. For pardon, mercy, undeserved remission of offences, Eph. ii, 5; Col. i, 6. For certain gifts of God, which he bestows freely, when, where, and on whom, he pleases; such are the gifts of miracles, prophecy, languages, &c, Rom. xv, 15; 1 Cor. xv, 10; Eph. iii, 8, &c. For the Gospel dispensation, in contradistinction to that of the law, Rom. vi, 14; 1 Peter v, 12. For a liberal and charitable disposition, 2 Cor. viii, 7. For eternal life, or final salvation, 1 Peter i, 13. In theological language grace also signifies divine influence upon the soul; and it derives the name from this being the effect of the great grace or favour of God to mankind. Austin defines inward actual grace to be the inspiration of love, which prompts us to practise according to what we know, out of a religious affection and compliance. He says, likewise, that the grace of God is the blessing of God’s sweet influence, whereby we are induced to take pleasure in that which he commands, to desire and to love it; and that if God does not prevent us with this blessing, what he commands, not only is not perfected, but is not so much as begun in us. Without the inward grace of Jesus Christ, man is not able to do the least thing that is good. He stands in need of this grace to begin, continue, and finish all the good he does, or rather, which God does in him and with him, by his grace. This grace is free; it is not due to us: if it were due to us, it would be no more grace; it would be a debt, Rom. xi, 6; it is in its nature an assistance so powerful and efficacious, that it surmounts the obstinacy of the most rebellious human heart, without destroying human liberty. There is no subject on which Christian doctors have written so largely, as on the several particulars relating to the grace of God. The difficulty consists in reconciling human liberty with the operation of divine grace; the concurrence of man with the influence and assistance of the Almighty. And who is able to set up an accurate boundary between these two things Who can pretend to know how far the privileges of grace extend over the heart of man, and what that man’s liberty exactly is, who is prevented, enlightened, moved, and attracted by grace

GRAPE, , the fruit of the vine. There were fine vineyards and excellent grapes in the promised land. The bunch of grapes which was cut in the valley of Eshcol, and was brought upon a staff between two men to the camp of Israel at Kadeshbarnea, Num. xiii, 23, may give us some idea, of the largeness of the fruit in that country. It would be easy to produce a great number of witnesses to prove that the grapes in those regions grow to a prodigious size. By Calmet, Scheuchzer, and Harmer, this subject has been exhausted. Doubdan assures us, that in the valley of Eshcol were clusters of grapes to be found of ten or twelve pounds. Moses, in the law, commanded that when the Israelites gathered their grapes, they should not be careful to pick up those that fell, nor be so exact as to leave none upon the vines: what fell, and what were left behind, the poor had liberty to glean, Lev. xix, 10; Deut. xxiv, 21, 22. For the same beneficent purpose the second vintage was reserved: this, in those warm countries, was considerable, though never so good nor so plentiful as the former. The wise son of Sirach says, “I waked up last of all, as one that gleaneth after grape gatherers. By the blessing of the Lord, I profited, and filled my wine-press like a gatherer of grapes,” Ecclus. xxxiii, 16. It is frequent in Scripture to describe a total destruction by the similitude of a vine, stripped in such a manner, that there was not a bunch of grapes left forfor those who came to glean. The prophecy, “He shall wash his clothes in wine, and his garments in the blood of the grape,” Gen. xlix, 11, means that he shall reside in a country where grapes were in abundance. The vineyards of Engedi and of Sorek, so famous in Scripture, were in the tribe of Judah; and so was the valley of Eshcol, whence the spies brought those extraordinary clusters. “It appears,” says Manti, “that the cultivation of the vine was never abandoned in this country. The grapes, which are white, and pretty large, are, however, not much superior in size to those of Europe. This peculiarity seems to be confined to those in this neighbourhood; for at the distance of only six miles to the south, is the rivulet and valley called Escohol, celebrated in Scripture for its fertility, and for producing very large grapes. In other parts of Syria, also, I have seen grapes of such an extraordinary size, that a bunch of them would be a sufficient burden for one man. It is not at all surprising, therefore, that when the spies, sent by Moses to reconnoitre the promised land, returned to give him an account of its fertility, it required two of them to carry a bunch of grapes, which they brought with them suspended from a pole placed upon their shoulders.” Many eye witnesses assure us, that in Palestine the vines, and bunches of grapes, are almost of an incredible size. “At Beidtdjin,” says Schultz, a “village near Ptolemais, we took our supper under a large vine, the stem of which was nearly a foot and a half in diameter, the height about thirty feet, and covered with its branches and shoots (for the shoots must be supported) a hut of more than fifty feet long and broad. The bunches of 425these grapes are so large that they weigh from ten to twelve pounds, and the grapes may be compared to our plumbs. Such a bunch is cut off and laid on a board, round which they seat themselves, and each helps himself to as many as he pleases.” Forster, in his Hebrew Dictionary, (under the word Eshcol,) says, that he knew at Nurnburg, a monk of the name of Acacius, who had resided eight years in Palestine, and had also preached at Hebron, where he had seen bunches of grapes which were as much as two men could conveniently carry.

The wild grapes, , are the fruit of the wild or bastard vine; sour and unpalatable, and good for nothing but to make verjuice. In Isaiah v, 2–4, the Lord complains that he had planted his people as a choice vine, excellent as that of Sorek; but that its degeneracy had defeated his purpose, and disappointed his hopes: when he expected that it should bring forth choice fruit, it yielded only such as was bad; not merely useless and unprofitable grapes, but clusters offensive and noxious. By the force and intent of the allegory, says Bishop Lowth, “good grapes” ought to be opposed “to fruit of a dangerous and pernicious quality,” as, in the application of it, to judgment is opposed tyranny, and to righteousness oppression. Hasselquist is inclined to believe that the prophet here means the solanum incanum, “hoary nightshade,” because it is common in Egypt and Palestine, and the Arabian name agrees well with it. The Arabs call it aneb el dib, “wolf’s grapes.” The prophet could not have found a plant more opposite to the vine than this; for it grows much in the vineyards, and is very pernicious to them. It is likewise a vine. Jeremiah uses the same image, and applies it to the same purpose, in an elegant paraphrase of this part of Isaiah’s parable, in his flowing and plaintive manner: “I planted thee a Sorek, a scion perfectly genuine. How then art thou changed, and become to me the degenerate shoot of a strange vine!” Jer. ii, 21. From some sort of poisonous fruits of the grape kind, Moses, Deut. xxxii, 32, 33, has taken those strong and highly poetical images with which he has set forth the future corruption and extreme degeneracy of the Israelites, in an allegory which has a near relation, both in its subject and imagery, to this of Isaiah:--

GRASS, , Gen. i, 11, the well known vegetable upon which flocks and herds feed, and which decks our fields, and refreshes our sight with its grateful verdure. Its feeble frame and transitory duration are mentioned in Scripture as emblematic of the frail condition and fleeting existence of man. The inspired poets draw this picture with such inimitable beauty as the laboured elegies on mortality of ancient and modern times have never surpassed. See Psalm xc, 6, and particularly Isaiah xl, 6–8: “The voice said, Cry! And he said, What shall I cry All flesh is grass, and all the goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field. The grass withereth, the flower fadeth, because the Spirit of the Lord bloweth upon it. Verily this people is grass. The grass withereth, the flower fadeth; but the word of our God shall stand for ever.” As, in their decay, the herbs of the fields strikingly illustrate the shortness of human life, so, in the order of their growth, from seeds dead and buried, they give a natural testimony to the doctrine of a resurrection. The Prophet Isaiah, and the Apostle Peter, both speak of bodies rising from the dead, as of so many seeds springing from the ground to renovated existence and beauty, although they do not, as some have absurdly supposed, consider the resurrection as in any sense analogous to the process of vegetation, Isaiah xxvi, 19; 1 Peter i, 24, 25.

It is a just remark of Grotius, that the Hebrews ranked the whole vegetable system under two classes, , and . The first is rendered , or dd, tree: to express the second, the LXX have adopted t, as their common way to translate one Hebrew word by one Greek word, though not quite proper, rather than by a circumlocution. It is accordingly used in their version of Genesis i, 11, where the distinction first occurs, and in most other places. Nor is it with greater propriety rendered grass in English than t in Greek. The same division occurs in Matt. vi, 30, and Rev. viii, 7, where our translators have in like manner had recourse to the term grass. Dr. Campbell prefers and uses the word herbage, as coming nearer the meaning of the sacred writer. Under the name herb is comprehended every sort of plant which has not, like trees and shrubs, a perennial stalk. That many, if not all, sorts of shrubs were included by the Hebrews under the denomination, tree, is evident from Jotham’s apologue of the trees choosing a king, Judges ix, 7, where the bramble is mentioned as one. See Hay.

GRASSHOPPER, , Lev. xi, 22; Num. xiii, 33; 2 Chron. vii, 13; Eccles. xii, 5; Isaiah xl, 22; 2 Esdras iv, 24; Wisdom xvi, 9; Eccles. xliii, 17. Bochart supposes that this species of the locust has its name from the Arabic verb hajaba, “to veil,” because, when they fly, as they often do, in great swarms, they eclipse even the light of the sun. “But I presume,” says Parkhurst, “this circumstance is not peculiar to any particular kind of locust: I should rather, therefore, think it denotes the cucullated species, so denominated by naturalists from the cucullus, “cowl” or “hood,” with which they are furnished, and which distinguishes them from the other kinds. In Scheuchzer may be seen several of this sort; and it will appear that this species nearly resemble our grasshopper.” Our translators render the Hebrew word locust in the prayer of Solomon at the dedication of the temple, 2 Chron. vii, 13, and with propriety. But it is rendered grasshopper, in Eccles. xii, 5, where Solomon, describing the infelicities of old age, says, “The grasshopper shall be a burden.” “To this insect,” says Dr. Smith, “the preacher compares 426a dry, shrunk, shrivelled, crumpling, craggy old man; his backbone sticking out, his knees projecting forward, his arms backward, his head downward, and the apophyses or bunching parts of the bones in general enlarged. And from this exact likeness, without all doubt, arose the fable of Tithonus, who, living to extreme old age, was at last turned into a grasshopper.” Dr. Hodgson, referring it to the custom of eating locusts, supposes it to imply that luxurious gratification will become insipid; and Bishop Reynolds, that the lightest pressure of so small a creature shall be uncomfortable to the aged, as not being able to bear any weight. Other commentators suppose the reference to the chirping noise of the grasshopper, which must be disagreeable to the aged and infirm, who naturally love quiet, and are commonly unable to bear much noise. It is probable that here, also, a kind of locust is meant; and these creatures are proverbially loquacious. They make a loud, screaking, and disagreeable noise with their wings. If one begins, others join, and the hateful concert becomes universal. A pause then ensues, and, as it were, on a signal given, it again commences; and in this manner they continue squalling for two or three hours without intermission. The Prophet Isaiah contrasts the grandeur and power of God, and every thing reputed great in this world, by a very expressive reference to this insect: Jehovah sitteth on the circle of the earth, and the inhabitants are to him as grasshoppers, Isaiah xl, 22. What atoms and inanities are they all before him, who sitteth on the circle of the immense heavens, and views the potentates of the earth in the light of grasshoppers, those poor insects that wander over the barren heath for sustenance, spend the day in insignificant chirpings, and take up their contemptible lodging at night on a blade of grass! See Locust.

GRECIA, or GREECE, both names occurring in the English Scriptures. The boundaries of the country which received this name differed under the different governments which ruled over it. Thus the Greece of the Old Testament is not exactly the same as that of the New: the former including Macedonia, Thessaly, Epirus, Hellas or Greece Proper, and the Peloponnesus or Morea; while the latter excludes Macedonia, Thessaly, and Epirus. But the Romans, in the time of the Apostles, had, in fact, made two divisions of these countries. The first, which was that of Macedonia, included also Thessaly and Epirus; and the other, that of Achaia, all the rest of Greece, which is, properly speaking, the Greece of the New Testament. But the term Greek admits of a larger interpretation, and applies not only to the inhabitants of Greece Proper, but to those of Asia Minor, Syria, and Egypt, over nearly the whole of the former of which countries, and great part of the two latter, Grecian colonies and the Grecian language had extended themselves. In fact, in the two books of the Maccabees, and in those of the New Testament, the word Greek commonly implies a Gentile.

2. The Scripture has but little reference to Greece till the time of Alexander, whose conquests extended into Asia, where Greece had hitherto been of no importance. Yet that some intercourse was maintained with these countries from Jerusalem, may be inferred from the desire of Baasha to shut up all passage between Jerusalem and Joppa, which was its port, by the building of Ramah; and the anxiety of Asa to counteract his scheme, 1 Kings xv, 2, 17. Greece was certainly intended by the Prophet Daniel under the symbol of the single-horned goat; and it is probable that when he calls Greece Chittim, he spoke the language of the Hebrew nation, rather than that of the Persian court. After the establishment of the Grecian dynasties in Asia, Judea could not but be considerably affected by them; and the books of the Maccabees afford proofs of this. The Roman power, superseding the Grecian establishments, yet left traces of Greek language, customs, &c, to the days of the Herods, when the Gospel history commences. By the activity of the Apostles, and especially by that of St. Paul, the Gospel was propagated in those countries which used the Grecian dialects: hence, we are interested in the study of this language. Moreover as Greece, like all other countries, had its peculiar manners, we are not able to estimate properly an epistle written to those who dwell where they prevailed, without a competent acquaintance with the manners themselves, with the sentiments and reasonings of those who practised them, and with the arguments employed in their defence by those who adhered to them.

GREEK LANGUAGE. It was because of the wide diffusion of this language that the New Testament was written in Greek. Its diction is not, however, that of the classical Greek, but it was chosen, no doubt, with a view to greater usefulness. In the age which succeeded Alexander the Great, the Greek language underwent an internal change of a double nature. In part, a prosaic language of books was formed, daet, which was built on the Attic dialect, but was intermixed with not a few provincialisms; but a language of popular intercourse was also formed, in which the various dialects of the different Grecian tribes, heretofore separate, were more or less mingled together, while the Macedonian dialect was peculiarly prominent. The latter language constitutes the basis of the diction employed by the LXX, the writers of the Apocrypha, and of the New Testament. The style of the New Testament has a considerable affinity with that of the Septuagint version which was executed at Alexandria, although it approaches somewhat nearer to the idiom of the Greek language; but the peculiarities of the Hebrew phraseology are discernible throughout: the language of the New Testament being formed by a mixture of oriental idioms and expressions with those which are properly Greek. Hence it has, by some philologers, been termed Hebraic Greek, and (from the Jews having acquired the Greek 427language, rather by practice than by grammar, among the Greeks, in whose countries they resided in large communities) Hellenistic Greek. The propriety of this appellation was severely contested toward the close of the seventeenth, and in the early part of the eighteenth, century; and numerous publications were written on both sides of the question, with considerable asperity, which, together with the controversy, are now almost forgotten. The dispute, however interesting to the philological antiquarian, is after all a mere “strife of words;” and as the appellation of Hellenistic or Hebraic Greek is sufficiently correct for the purpose of characterizing the language of the New Testament, it is now generally adopted. A large proportion, however, of the phrases and constructions of the New Testament is pure Greek; that is to say, of the same degree of purity as the Greek which was spoken in Macedonia, and that in which Polybius wrote his Roman history. It should farther be noticed, that there occur in the New Testament, words that express both doctrines and practices which were utterly unknown to the Greeks; and also words bearing widely different interpretations from those which are ordinarily found in Greek writers. It contains examples of all the dialects occurring in the Greek language, as the Æolic, Bœtic, Doric, Ionic, and especially of the Attic; which, being most generally in use on account of its elegance, pervades every book of the New Testament.

2. A variety of solutions has been given to the question, why the New Testament was written in Greek. The true reason is, that it was the language most generally understood both by writers and readers; being spoken and written, read and understood, throughout the Roman empire, and particularly in the eastern provinces. To the universality of the Greek language, Cicero, Seneca, and Juvenal bear ample testimony: and the circumstances of the Jews having long had political, civil, and commercial relations with the Greeks, and being dispersed through various parts of the Roman empire, as well as their having cultivated the philosophy of the Greeks, of which we have evidence in the New Testament, all sufficiently account for their being acquainted with the Greek language. And if the eminent Jewish writers, Philo and Josephus, had motives for preferring to write in Greek, there is no reason, at least there is no general presumption, why the first publishers of the Gospel might not use the Greek language. It is indeed probable, that many of the common people were acquainted with it; though it is also certain the Christian churches being in many countries composed chiefly of that class of persons, some did not understand Greek. But in every church, says Macknight, there were persons endowed with the gift of tongues, and of the interpretation of tongues, who could readily turn the Apostles’ Greek epistles into the language of the church to which they were sent. In particular, the president or the spiritual man, who read the Apostle’s Greek letter to the Hebrews in their public assemblies, could without any hesitation render it into the Hebrew language, for the edification of those who did not understand Greek. And with respect to the Jews in the provinces, Greek being the native language of most of them, this epistle was much better calculated for their use, written in the Greek language, than if it had been written in the Hebrew, which few of them understood. Farther, it was proper that all the apostolical epistles should be written in the Greek language, because the different doctrines of the Gospel being delivered and explained in them, the explanation of these doctrines could with more advantage be compared so as to be better understood, being expressed in one language, than if, in the different epistles, they had been expressed in the language of the churches and persons to whom they were sent. Now what should that one language be, in which it was proper to write the Christian revelation, but the Greek, which was then generally understood, and in which there were many books extant; that treated of all kinds of literature, and on that account were likely to be preserved, and by the reading of which Christians, in after ages, would be enabled to understand the Greek of the New Testament This advantage none of the provincial dialects used in the Apostles’ days could pretend to. Being limited to particular countries, they were soon to be disused; and few (if any) books being written in them which merited to be preserved, the meaning of such of the Apostles’ letters as were composed in the provincial languages could not easily have been ascertained.

GREEK CHURCH. As the Gospel spread in the first ages both east and west, the first Christian churches were so denominated. From the languages respectively used in their devotions, they were also called the Greek and Latin or Roman churches. For the first seven centuries these churches preserved a friendly communion with each other, notwithstanding they disagreed as to the time of keeping Easter, and some other points. But about the middle of the eighth century, disputes arose, which terminated in a schism, that continues to this day. It arose out of a controversy respecting the use of images in the churches. It happened that at this time both churches were under prelates equally dogmatical and ambitious. The patriarch of Constantinople insisted on putting down the use of all images and pictures, not only in his own church, but at Rome also, which the pope resented with equal violence and asperity. They mutually excommunicated each other; and the pope of Rome excommunicated not only the patriarch of Constantinople, but the emperor also. The controversy respecting images engendered another, no less bitter, respecting the procession of the Holy Ghost both from the Father and the Son, which the Greeks flatly denied, and charged the Romans with interpolating the word filioque into the ancient creeds. These controversies occupied the eighth and ninth centuries, after which 428some intervals of partial peace occurred; but in the eleventh century, the flame broke out afresh, and a total separation took place. At that time, the Patriarch Michael Cerularius, who was desirous to free himself from the papal authority, published an invective against the Latin church, and accused its members of maintaining various errors. Pope Leo retorted the charge, and sent legates from Rome to Constantinople. The Greek patriarch refused to see them; upon which they excommunicated him and his adherents, publicly, in the church of St. Sophia, A. D. 1054. The Greek patriarch excommunicated those legates, with all their adherents and followers, in a public council; and procured an order of the emperor for burning the act of excommunication which they had pronounced against the Greeks. Thus the separation was completed, and at this day a very considerable part of the world profess the religion of the Greek or eastern church. The Nicene and Athanasian creeds, with the exception of the words above-mentioned, are the symbols of their faith.

2. The principal points which distinguish the Greek church from the Latin, are as follows: they maintain that the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Father only, and not from the Father and Son. They disown the authority of the pope, and deny that the church of Rome is the only true catholic church. They do not affect the character of infallibility, and utterly disallow works of supererogation, and indulgences. They admit of prayers and services for the dead, as an ancient and pious custom; but they will not admit the doctrine of purgatory, nor determine any thing dogmatically concerning the state of departed souls. In baptism they practise triune immersion, or dip three times; but some, as the Georgians, defer the baptism of their children till they are three, four, or more years of age. The chrism, or baptismal unction, immediately follows baptism. This chrism, solemnly consecrated on Maunday Thursday, is called the unction with ointment, and is a mystery peculiar to the Greek communion, holding the place of confirmation in that of the Roman: it is styled, “the seal of the gift of the Holy Ghost.” They administer the Lord’s Supper in both kinds, dipping the bread in the cup of wine, in which a small portion of warm water is also inserted. They give it both to the clergy and laity, and to children after baptism. They exclude confirmation and extreme unction out of the number of sacraments; but they use the holy oil, which is not confined to persons in the close of life, like extreme unction, but is administered, if required, to all sick persons. Three priests, at least, are required to administer this sacrament, each priest, in his turn, anointing the sick person, and praying for his recovery. They deny auricular confession to be a divine command; but practise confession attended with absolution, and sometimes penance. Though they believe in transubstantiation, or rather consubstantiation, they do not worship the elements. They pay a secondary kind of adoration to the virgin and other saints. They do not admit of images or figures in bas-relief, or embossed work; but use paintings and silver shrines. They admit matrimony to be a sacrament, and celebrate it with great formality. Their secular clergy, under the rank of bishops, are allowed to marry once, and laymen twice; but fourth marriages they hold in abomination. They observe a great number of holy days, and keep four fasts in the year more solemn than the rest, of which Good Friday is the chief.

3. The service of the Greek church is too long and complicated to be particularly described in this work; the greater part consists in psalms and hymns. Five orders of priesthood belong to the Greek church; namely, bishops, priests, deacons, sub-deacons, and readers; which last includes singers, &c. The episcopal order is distinguished by the titles of metropolitan, archbishops, and bishops. The head of the Greek church, the patriarch of Constantinople, is elected by twelve bishops, who reside nearest that famous capital. This prelate calls councils by his own authority to govern the church. The other patriarchs are those of Jerusalem, Antioch, and Alexandria, all nominated by the patriarch of Constantinople, who enjoys a most extensive jurisdiction. For the administration of ecclesiastical affairs, a synod, convened monthly, is composed of the heads of the church resident in Constantinople. In this assembly, the patriarch of Constantinople presides, with those of Antioch and Jerusalem, and twelve archbishops. In regard to discipline and worship, the Greek church has the same division of the clergy into regular and secular, the same spiritual jurisdiction of bishops and their officials, the same distinction of ranks and offices, with the church of Rome.

4. The Greek church comprehends a considerable part of Greece, the Grecian isles, Wallachia, Moldavia, Egypt, Abyssinia, Nubia, Lybia, Arabia, Mesopotamia, Syria, Cilicia, and Palestine; Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem; the whole of the Russian empire in Europe; great part of Siberia in Asia, Astrachan, Casan, and Georgia.

GRIND. See Mill.

GROVE. It is proper to observe, that in order the more effectually to guard the Israelites from idolatry, the blessed God, in instituting the rites of his own worship, went directly counter to the practice of the idolatrous nations. Thus, because they worshipped in groves, he expressly forbade “the planting a grove of trees near his altar,” Deut. xvi, 21. Nor would he suffer his people to offer their sacrifices on the tops of hills and mountains, as the Heathens did, but ordered that they should be brought to one altar in the place which he appointed, Deut. xii, 13, 14. And as for the groves, which the Canaanites had planted, and the idols and altars which they had erected on the tops of high mountains and hills for the worship of their gods, the Israelites are commanded utterly to destroy them, Deut. xii, 2, 3. The groves and high places do not seem to have been different, but 429the same places, or groves planted on the tops of hills, probably round an open area, in which the idolatrous worship was performed, as may be inferred from the following words of the Prophet Hosea: “They sacrifice upon the tops of mountains, and burn incense upon the hills, under oaks, and poplars, and elms,” Hosea iv, 13. The use of groves for religious worship is generally supposed to have been as ancient as the patriarchal ages; for we are informed, that “Abraham planted a grove in Beersheba, and called there on the name of the Lord,” Gen. xxi, 33. However, it is not expressly said, nor can it by this passage be proved, that he planted the grove for any religious purpose; it might only be designed to shade his tent. And this circumstance perhaps is recorded to intimate his rural way of living, as well as his religious character; that he dwelt in a tent, under the shade of a grove, or tree, as the word , eshel, may more properly be translated; and in this humble habitation led a very pious and devout life. The reason and origin of planting sacred groves is variously conjectured; some imagining it was only hereby intended to render the service more agreeable to the worshippers, by the pleasantness of the shade; whereas others suppose it was to invite the presence of the gods. The one or the other of these reasons seems to be intimated in the fore-cited passage of Hosea: “They burn incense under oaks, and poplars, and elms, because the shade thereof is good,” Hosea iv, 13. Others conceive their worship was performed in the midst of groves, because the gloom of such a place is apt to strike a religious awe upon the mind; or else, because such dark concealments suited the lewd mysteries of their idolatrous worship. Another conjecture, which seems as probable as any, is, that this practice began with the worship of demons, or departed souls. It was an ancient custom to bury the dead under trees, or in woods. “Deborah was buried under an oak, near Bethel,” Genesis xxxv, 8; and the bones of Saul and Jonathan under a tree at Jabesh, 1 Samuel xxxi, 13. Now an imagination prevailing among the Heathen, that the souls of the deceased hover about their graves, or at least delight to visit their dead bodies, the idolaters, who paid divine honours to the souls of their departed heroes, erected images and altars for their worship in the same groves where they were buried; and from thence it grew into a custom afterward to plant groves, and build temples, near the tombs of departed heroes, 2 Kings xxiii, 15, 16, and to surround their temples and altars with groves and trees; and these sacred groves being constantly furnished with the images of the heroes or gods that were worshipped in them, a grove and an idol came to be used as convertible terms, 2 Kings xxiii, 6.