[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.]
WALDENSES, WALLENSES, or ALBIGENSES, the Vaudois, or inhabitants of the beautiful valleys of the Alps, between Italy and Provence. Many have supposed that they derived their name from Peter Waldo, or Valdo, a merchant of Lyons, in the twelfth century, and one of their leaders and patrons; but their history has been traced considerably farther back, which has led others to suppose that, on the contrary, he derived his name from them, as Peter the Waldensian, or Peter of the Valleys. The learned Dr. Allix, in his “History of the Churches of Piedmont,” gives this account: For three hundred years or more, the bishop of Rome attempted to subjugate the church of Milan under his jurisdiction; and at last the interest of Rome grew too potent for the church of Milan, planted by one of the disciples; insomuch that the bishop and the people, rather than own their jurisdiction, retired to the valleys of Lucerne and Angrogne, and thence were called Vallenses, Wallenses, or, The People in the Valleys. From a confession of their faith, of the early date, A. D. 1120, we extract the following particulars: 1. That the Scriptures teach that there is one God, almighty, all-wise, and all-good, who made all things by his goodness; for he formed Adam in his own image and likeness; but that by the envy of the devil sin entered into the world, and that we are sinners in and by Adam. 2. That Christ was promised to our fathers, who received the law; that so knowing by the law their unrighteousness and insufficiency, they might desire the coming of Christ, to satisfy for their sins, and accomplish the law by himself. 3. That Christ was born in the time appointed by God the Father; that is to say, in the time when all iniquity abounded, that he might show us grace and mercy, as being faithful. 4. That Christ is our life, truth, peace, and righteousness; as also our pastor, advocate, and priest, who died for the salvation of all who believe, and is risen for our justification. 5. That there is no mediator and advocate with God the Father, save Jesus Christ. 6. That after this life there are only two places, the one for the saved, and the other for the damned. 7. That the feasts, the vigils of saints, the water which they call holy, as also to abstain from flesh on certain days, and the like, but especially the masses, are the inventions of men, and ought to be rejected. 8. That the sacraments are signs of the holy thing, visible forms of the invisible grace; and that it is good for the faithful to use those signs or visible forms; but that they are not essential to salvation. 9. That there are no other sacraments but baptism and the Lord’s Supper. 10. That we ought to honour the secular powers by subjection, ready obedience, and paying of tribute. On the subject of infant baptism, they held different opinions, as Christians do in the present day.
For bearing this noble testimony against the church of Rome, these pious people were for many centuries the subjects of a most cruel persecution; and in the thirteenth century the pope instituted a crusade against them, and they were pursued with a fury perfectly diabolical. Their principles, however, continued unsubdued, and at the Reformation their descendants were reckoned among the ProtestantsProtestants, with whom they were in doctrine so congenial; but in the seventeenth century the flames of persecution were again rekindled against them by the cruelty of Louis XIV. At the revocation of the edict of Nantz, about fifteen thousand perished in the prisons of Pignerol, beside great numbers who perished among the mountains. They received, however, the powerful protection and support of England under William III. But still the house of Saxony continued to treat them as heretics, and they were oppressed by a variety of cruel edicts.
When Piedmont was subjected to France in 1800, the French government, Buonaparte being first consul, placed them on the same plan of toleration with the rest of France; but on the return of the king of Sardinia to Genoa, notwithstanding the intercession of Lord William Bentinck, the old persecuting edicts were revived in the end of 1814; and though they have not been subjected to fire and faggot as aforetime, their worship has been restrained, and they were not only stripped of all employments, but, by a most providential circumstance only, saved from a general massacre. Since then they have been visited by some pious and benevolent Englishmen; and the number of Waldenses, or Vaudois, has been taken at nineteen thousand seven hundred and ten, beside about fifty families residing at Turin.
Mr. Milner very properly connects this people with the Cathari, or Paulicians, of the seventh century, who resided chiefly in the 947valleys of Piedmont, and who, in the twelfth century, according to this valuable historian, received a great accession of members from the learned labours and godly zeal of Peter Waldo, a pious man of unusual learning for a layman at that period. His thoughts being turned to divine things by the sudden death of a friend, he applied himself to the study of the Scriptures, and was, according to Mr. Milner, the first who, in the west of Europe, translated the Bible into a modern language. Waldo was rich, and distributed his wealth among the poor, and with it the bread of life, which endeared him to the lower classes; and it was probably the great increase of these pious people, in consequence of his exertions, which brought upon them the horrible crusade in the next century. This was, however, wholly on account of their pretended heresies,--their bitterest enemies bearing testimony to the purity of their life and manners. Thus a pontifical inquisitor, quoted by Usher, says, “These heretics are known by their manners and conversation; for they are orderly and modest in their behaviour and deportment; they avoid all appearance of pride in their dress; they are chaste, temperate, and sober; they seek not to amass riches; they abstain from anger; and, even while at work, are either learning or teaching.” Seysillius, another popish writer, says of them, “Their heresy excepted, they generally live a purer life than other Christians.” Liclenstenius, a Dominican, says, “In morals and life they are good; true in words; unanimous in brotherly love; but their faith is incorrigible and vile, as I have shown you in my treatise.” But most remarkable is the testimony of Reinerus, an inquisitor of the thirteenth century: “Of all the sects which have been, or now exist, none is more injurious to the church, (that is, of Rome,) for three reasons: 1. Because it is more ancient. Some say it has continued from the time of Silvester; others from the time of the Apostles. 2. Because it is more general. There is scarcely any country into which this sect has not crept. 3. Because all other heretics excite horror by the greatness of their blasphemies against God; but these have a great appearance of piety, as they live justly before men, and believe rightly all things concerning God, and all the articles which are contained in the creed.”
WAR, or WARFARE, the attempt to decide a contest or difference between princes, states, or large bodies of people, by resorting to extensive acts of violence, or, as the phrase is, by an appeal to arms. The Hebrews were formerly a very warlike nation. The books that inform us of their wars display neither ignorance nor flattery; but are writings inspired by the Spirit of truth and wisdom. Their warriors were none of those fabulous heroes or professed conquerors, whose business it was to ravage cities and provinces, and to reduce foreign nations under their dominion, merely for the sake of governing, or purchasing a name for themselves. They were commonly wise and valiant generals, raised up by God “to fight the battles of the Lord,” and to exterminate his enemies. Such were Joshua, Caleb, Gideon, Jephthah, Samson, David, Josiah, and the Maccabees, whose names alone are their own sufficient encomiums. Their wars were not undertaken upon slight occasions, or performed with a handful of people. Under Joshua the affair was of no less importance than to make himself master of a vast country which God had given up to him; and to root out several powerful nations that God had devoted to an anathema; and to vindicate an offended Deity, and human nature which had been debased by a wicked and corrupt people, who had filled up the measure of their iniquities. Under the Judges, the matter was to assert their liberty, by shaking off the yoke of powerful tyrants, who kept them in subjection. Under Saul and David the same motives prevailed to undertake war; and to these were added a farther motive, of making a conquest of such provinces as God had promised to his people. Far was it from their intention merely to reduce the power of the Philistines, the Ammonites, the Moabites, the Idumeans, the Arabians, the Syrians, and the several princes that were in possession of those countries. In the later times of the kingdoms of Israel and Judah, we observe their kings bearing the shock of the greatest powers of Asia, of the kings of Assyria and Chaldea, Shalmaneser, Sennacherib, Esarhaddon, and Nebuchadnezzar, who made the whole east tremble. Under the Maccabees a handful of men opposed the whole power of the kings of Syria, and against them maintained the religion of their fathers, and shook off the yoke of their oppressors, who had a design both against their religion and liberty. In still later times, with what courage, intrepidity, and constancy, did they sustain the war against the Romans, who were then masters of the world!
We may distinguish two kinds of wars among the Hebrews: some were of obligation, as being expressly commanded by the Lord; but others were free and voluntary. The first were such as God appointed them to undertake: for example, against the Amalekites and the Canaanites, which were nations devoted to an anathema. The others were undertaken by the captains of the people, to revenge some injuries offered to the nation, to punish some insults or offences, or to defend their allies. Such was that which the Hebrews made against the city of Gibeah, and against the tribe of Benjamin, which would support them in their fault; that which David made against the Ammonites, whose king had affronted his ambassadors; and that of Joshua against the kings of the Canaanites, to protect the Gibeonites. Whatever reasons authorize a nation or a prince to make war against another, obtained, likewise, among the Hebrews; for all the laws of Moses suppose that the Israelites might make war, and might defend themselves, against their enemies. When a war was resolved upon, all the people that were capable of bearing arms were collected together, or only part of them, according as the exigence of the existing case and the necessity and importance 948of the enterprise required. For it does not appear that, before the reign of King David, there were any regular troops or magazines in Israel. A general rendezvous was appointed, a review was made of the people by tribes and by families, and then they marched against the enemy. When Saul, at the beginning of his reign, was informed of the cruel proposal that the Ammonites had made to the men of the city of Jabesh-Gilead, he cut in pieces the oxen belonging to his plough, and sent them through the country, saying, “Whosoever cometh not forth after Saul and Samuel, to the relief of Jabesh-Gilead, so shall it be done unto his oxen,” 1 Sam. xi, 7. In ancient times, those that went to war generally carried their own provisions along with them, or they took them from the enemy. Hence these wars were generally of short continuance; because it was hardly possible to subsist a large body of troops for a long time with such provisions as every one carried along with him. When David, Jesse’s younger son, stayed behind to look after his father’s flocks while his elder brothers went to the wars along with Saul, Jesse sent David to carry provisions to his brothers, 1 Sam. xvii, 13. We suppose that this way of making war prevailed also under Joshua, the Judges, Saul, David at the beginning of his reign, the kings of Judah and Israel who were successors to Rehoboam and Jeroboam, and under the Maccabees, till the time of Simon Maccabæus, prince and high priest of the Jews, who had mercenary troops, that is, soldiers who received pay, 1 Mac. xiv, 32. Every one also provided his own arms for the war. The kings of the Hebrews went to the wars in person, and, in earlier times, fought on foot, as well as the meanest of their soldiers; no horses being used in the armies of Israel before David. The officers of war among the Hebrews were the general of the army, and the princes of the tribes or of the families of Israel, beside other princes or captains, some of a thousand, some of a hundred, some of fifty, and some of ten, men. They had also their scribes, who were a kind of commissaries that kept the muster roll of the troops; and these had others under them who acted by their direction.
Military fortifications were at first nothing more than a trench or ditch, dug round a few cottages on a hill or mountain, together with the mound, which was formed by the sand dug out of it; except, perhaps, there might have sometimes been an elevated scaffolding for the purpose of throwing stones with the greater effect against the enemy. In the age of Moses and Joshua, the walls which surrounded cities were elevated to no inconsiderable height, and were furnished with towers. The art of fortification was encouraged and patronized by the Hebrew kings, and Jerusalem was always well defended, especially Mount Zion. In later times the temple itself was used as a castle. The principal parts of a fortification were, 1. The wall, which, in some instances, was triple and double, 2 Chron. xxxii, 5. Walls were commonly made lofty and broad, so as to be neither readily passed over nor broken through, Jer. li, 58. The main wall terminated at the top in a parapet for the accommodation of the soldiers, which opened at intervals in a sort of embrasures, so as to give them an opportunity of fighting with missile weapons. 2. Towers, which were erected at certain distances from each other on the top of walls, and ascended to a great height, terminated at the top in a flat roof, and were surrounded with a parapet, which exhibited openings similar to those in the parapet of the walls. Towers of this kind were erected, likewise, over the gates of cities. In these towers guards were kept constantly stationed; at least, this was the case in the time of the kings. It was their business to make known any thing that they discovered at a distance; and whenever they noticed an irruption from an enemy, they blew the trumpet, to arouse the citizens, 2 Sam. xiii, 34; xviii, 26, 27; 2 Kings ix, 17–19; Nahum ii, 1; 2 Chron. xvii, 2. Towers, likewise, which were somewhat larger in size, were erected in different parts of the country, particularly on places which were elevated; and these were guarded by a military force, Judges viii, 9,17; ix, 46, 49, 51; Isaiah xxi, 6; Hab. ii, 1; Hosea v, 8; Jer. xxxi, 6. We find, even to this day, that the circular edifices of this sort, which are still erected in the solitudes of Arabia Felix, bear their ancient name of castles or towers. 3. The walls were erected in such a way as to curve inward; the extremities of them, consequently, projected outward, and formed a kind of bastions. The object of forming the walls so as to present such projections, was to enable the inhabitants of the besieged city to attack the assailants in flank. We learn from the history of Tacitus, that the walls of Jerusalem, at the time of its being attacked by the Romans, were built in this manner. These projections were introduced by King Uzziah, B.C. 810, and are subsequently mentioned in Zeph. i, 16. 4. The digging of a fosse put it in the power of the inhabitants of a city to increase the elevation of the walls, and of itself threw a serious difficulty in the way of an enemy’s approach, 2 Sam. xx, 15; Isaiah xxvi, 1; Neh. iii, 8; Psalm xlviii, 13. The fosse, if the situation of the place admitted it, was filled with water. This was the case at Babylon. 5. The gates were at first made of wood, and were small in size. They were constructed in the manner of valve doors, and were secured by means of wooden bars. Subsequently, they were made larger and stronger; and, in order to prevent their being burned, were covered with plates of brass or iron. The bars were covered in the same manner, in order to prevent their being cut asunder; but it was sometimes the case that they were made wholly of iron. The bars were secured by a sort of lock, Psalm cvii, 16; Isaiah xlv, 2.
Previously to commencing war, the Heathen nations consulted oracles, soothsayers, necromancers, and also the lot, which was ascertained by shooting arrows of different colours, 1 Sam. xxviii, 1–10; Isaiah xli, 21–24; Ezek. xxv, 11. The Hebrews, to whom things of this kind were interdicted, were in the habit, 949in the early part of their history, of inquiring of God by means of Urim and Thummim, Judges i, 1; xx, 27, 28; 1 Sam. xxiii, 2; xxviii, 6; xxx, 8. After the time of David, the kings who reigned in Palestine consulted, according to the different characters which they sustained, and the feelings which they exercised, sometimes true prophets, and sometimes false, in respect to the issue of war, 1 Kings xxii, 6–13; 2 Kings xix, 2, &c. Sacrifices were also offered, in reference to which the soldiers were said to consecrate themselves to the war, Isaiah xiii, 3; Jer. vi, 4; li, 27; Joel iii, 9; Obad. 1. There are instances of formal declarations of war, and sometimes of previous negotiations, 2 Kings xiv, 8; 2 Chron. xxv, 27; Judges xi, 12–28; but ceremonies of this kind were not always observed, 2 Sam. x, 1–12. When the enemy made a sudden incursion, or when the war was unexpectedly commenced, the alarm was given to the people by messengers rapidly sent forth, by the sound of warlike trumpets, by standards floating on the loftiest places, by the clamour of many voices on the mountains, that echoed from summit to summit, Judges iii, 27; vi, 34; vii, 22; xix, 29, 30; 1 Sam. xi, 7, 8; Isaiah v, 26; xiii, 2; xviii, 3; xxx, 17; xlix, 2; lxii, 10. Military expeditions commonly commenced in the spring, 2 Sam. xi, 1, and were continued in the summer, but in the winter the soldiers went into quarters. The firm persuasion that God fights for the good against the wicked, discovers itself in the Old Testament, and accounts for the fact, that, not only in the Hebrew, but also in the Arabic, Syriac, and Chaldaic languages, words, which originally signify justice, innocence, or uprightness, signify likewise victory; and that words, whose usual meaning is injustice or wickedness, also mean defeat or overthrow. The same may be said in respect to words which signify help or aid, inasmuch as the nation which conquered received aid from God, and God was its helper, Psalm vii, 9; ix, 9; xx, 6; xxvi, 1; xxxv, 24; xliii, 1; xliv, 5; lxxv, 3; lxxvi, 13; lxxviii, 9; lxxxii, 8; 1 Sam. xiv, 45; 2 Kings v, 1; Isa. lix, 17; Hab. iii, 8.
The attack of the orientals in battle has always been, and is to this day, characterized by vehemence and impetuosity. In case the enemy sustain an unaltered front, they retreat, but it is not long before they return again with renewed ardour. It was the practice of the Roman armies to stand still in the order of battle, and to receive the shock of their opposers. To this practice there are allusions in the following passages: 1 Cor. xvi, 13; Gal. v, 1; Eph. vi, 14; Phil. i, 27; 1 Thess. iii, 8; 2 Thess. ii, 15. The Greeks, while they were yet three or four furlongs distant from the enemy, commenced the song of war; something resembling which occurs in 2 Chron. xx, 21. They then raised a shout, which was also done among the Hebrews, 1 Sam. xvii, 52; Joshua vi, 6; Isa. v, 29, 30; xvii, 12; Jer. iv, 19; xxv, 30. The war shout in Judges vii, 20, was as follows, “The sword of the Lord and of Gideon.” In some instances it seems to have been a mere yell or inarticulate cry. The mere march of armies with their weapons, chariots, and trampling coursers, occasioned a great and confused noise, which is compared by the prophets to the roaring of the ocean, and the dashing of the mountain torrents, Isa. xvii, 12, 13; xxvii, 2. The descriptions of battles in the Bible are very brief; but although there is nothing especially said, in respect to the order in which the battle commenced and was conducted, there is hardly a doubt that the light-armed troops, as was the case in other nations, were the first in the engagement. The main body followed them, and, with their spears extended, made a rapid and impetuous movement upon the enemy. Hence swiftness of foot in a soldier is mentioned as a ground of great commendation, not only in Homer, but in the Bible, 2 Sam. ii, 19–24; 1 Chron. xii, 8; Psalm xviii, 33. Those who obtained the victory were intoxicated with joy; the shout of triumph resounded from mountain to mountain, Isa. xlii, 11; lii, 7, 8; Jer. 1, 2; Ezek. vii, 7; Nahum i, 15. The whole of the people, not excepting the women, went out to meet the returning conquerors with singing and with dancing, Judges xi, 34–37; 1 Sam. xviii, 6, 7. Triumphal songs were uttered for the living, and elegies for the dead, 2 Sam. i, 17, 18; 2 Chron. xxxv, 25; Judges v, 1–31; Exod. xv, 1–21. Monuments in honour of the victory were erected, 2 Sam. viii, 13; Psalm lx, 1; and the arms of the enemy were hung up as trophies in the tabernacle, 1 Sam. xxxi, 10; 2 Kings xi, 10. The soldiers who conducted themselves meritoriously were honoured with presents, and had the opportunity of entering into honourable matrimonial connections, Joshua xiv; 1 Sam. xvii, 25; xxviii, 17; 2 Sam. xviii, 11. See Armies, and Arms.
WATER. In the sacred Scriptures, bread and water are commonly mentioned as the chief supports of human life; and to provide a sufficient quantity of water, to prepare it for use, and to deal it out to the thirsty, are among the principal cares of an oriental householder. The Moabites and Ammonites are reproached for not meeting the Israelites with bread and water; that is, with proper refreshments, Deut. xxxiii, 4. Nabal says in an insulting manner to David’s messengers, “Shall I then take my bread and my water, and my flesh that I have killed for my shearers, and give it unto men whom I know not whence they be” 1 Sam. xxv, 11. To furnish travellers with water is, even in present times, reckoned of so great importance, that many of the eastern philanthropists have been at considerable expense to procure them that enjoyment. The nature of the climate, and the general aspect of the oriental regions, require numerous fountains to excite and sustain the languid powers of vegetation; and the sun, burning with intense heat in a cloudless sky, demands for the fainting inhabitants the verdure, shade, and coolness which vegetation produces. Hence fountains of living water are met with in the towns and villages, in the fields and gardens, and by the sides of the roads and of the beaten tracks on the mountains; and a cup of cold water from these wells is no contemptible present. “Fatigued 950with heat and thirst,” says Carne, “we came to a few cottages in a palm wood, and stopped to drink of a fountain of delicious water. In this northern climate no idea can be formed of the luxury of drinking in Egypt: little appetite for food is felt; but when, after crossing the burning sands, you reach the rich line of woods on the brink of the Nile, and pluck the fresh limes, and, mixing their juice with Egyptian sugar and the soft river water, drink repeated bowls of lemonade, you feel that every other pleasure of the senses must yield to this. One then perceives the beauty and force of those similes in Scripture, where the sweetest emotions of the heart are compared to the assuaging of thirst in a thirsty land.” In Arabia, equal attention is paid, by the wealthy and benevolent, to the refreshment of the traveller. On one of the mountains of Arabia, Niebuhr found three little reservoirs, which are always kept full of fine water for the use of passengers. These reservoirs, which are about two feet and a half square, and from five to seven feet high, are round, or pointed at the top, of mason’s work, having only a small opening in one of the sides, by which they pour water into them. Sometimes he found, near these places of Arab refreshment, a piece of a ground shell, or a little scoop of wood, for lifting the water. The same attention to the comfort of travellers is manifested in Egypt, where public buildings are set apart in some of their cities, the business of whose inhabitants is to supply the passengers with water free of expense. Some of these houses make a very handsome appearance; and the persons appointed to wait on the passengers are required to have some vessels of copper, curiously tinned and filled with water, always ready on the window next the street. Some of the Mohammedan villages in Palestine, not far from Nazareth, brought Mr. Buckingham and his party bread and water, while on horseback, without even being solicited to do so; and when they halted to accept it, both compliments and blessings were mutually interchanged. “Here, as in every other part of Nubia,” says Burckhardt, “the thirsty traveller finds, at short distances, water jars placed by the road side under a low roof. Every village pays a small monthly stipend to some person to fill these jars in the morning, and again toward evening. The same custom prevails in Upper Egypt, but on a larger scale: and there are caravanserais often found near the wells which supply travellers with water.” In India the Hindoos go sometimes a great way to fetch water, and then boil it, that it may not be hurtful to travellers that are hot; and after this stand from morning till night in some great road, where there is neither pit nor rivulet, and offer it in honour of their gods, to be drunk by the passengers. This necessary work of charity in these hot countries seems to have been practised among the more pious and humane Jews; and our Lord assures them, that if they do this in his name, they shall not lose their reward. Hence a cup of water is a present in the east of great value, though there are some other refreshments of a superior quality. It is still the proper business of the females to supply the family with water. From this drudgery, however, the married women are exempted, unless when single women are wanting. The proper time for drawing water in those burning climates is in the morning, or when the sun is going down; then they go forth to perform that humble office adorned with their trinkets, some of which are often of great value. Agreeably to this custom Rebecca went instead of her mother to fetch water from the well, and the servant of Abraham expected to meet an unmarried female there who might prove a suitable match for his master’s son. In the East Indies, the women also draw water at the public wells, as Rebecca did, on that occasion, for travellers, their servants and their cattle; and women of no mean rank literally illustrate the conduct of an unfortunate princess in the Jewish history, by performing the services of a menial, 2 Sam. xiii, 8. The young women of Guzerat daily draw water from the wells, and carry the jars upon the head; but those of high rank carry them upon the shoulder. In the same way Rebecca carried her pitcher; and probably for the same reason, because she was the daughter of an eastern prince, Gen. xxiv, 45.
Water sometimes signifies the element of water, Gen. i, 10; and metaphorically, trouble and afflictions, Psalm lxix, 1. In the language of the prophets, waters often denote a great multitude of people, Isa. viii, 7; Rev. xvii, 15. Water is put for children or posterity, Num. xxiv, 7; Isa. xlviii, 1; for the clouds, Psalm civ, 3. Waters sometimes stand for tears, Jer. ix, 1, 7; for the ordinances of the Gospel, Isa. xii, 3; xxxv, 6, 7; lv, 1; John vii, 37, 38. “Stolen waters” denote unlawful pleasures with strange women, Prov. ix, 17. The Israelites are reproached with having forsaken the fountain of living water, to quench their thirst at broken cisterns, Jer. ii, 13; that is, with having quitted the worship of God for the worship of false and ridiculous deities. Waters of Meribah, or the waters of strife, were so called because of the quarrelling or contention and murmuring of the Israelites against Moses and against God. When they came to Kadesh, and there happened to be in want of water, they made a sedition against him and his brother Aaron, Numbers xx, 1, &c. Upon this occasion Moses committed that great sin with which God was so much displeased, that he deprived him of the honour of introducing his people into the land of promise.
WAX, , Psalm xxii, 14; lxviii, 2; xcvii, 5; Micah i, 4. Thus the LXX. throughout, , and vulgate cera; so there is no room to doubt but this is the true meaning of the word: and the idea of the root appears to be soft, melting, yielding, or the like, which properties are not only well known to belong to wax, but are also intimated in all the passages of Scripture in which this word occurs.
WAYFARING MEN. In the primitive ages of the world there were no public inns or taverns. In those days the voluntary exhibition 951of hospitality to one who stood in need of it was highly honourable. The glory of an open-hearted and generous hospitality continued even after public inns or caravanserais were erected, and continues to this day in the east, Job xxii, 7; xxxi, 17; Gen. xviii, 3–9; xix, 2–10; Exodus ii, 20; Judges xix, 2–10; Acts xvi, 15; xvii, 7; xxviii, 7; Matt. xxv, 35; Mark ix, 41; Rom. xii, 13; 1 Tim. iii, 2; v, 10; Heb. xiii, 2. Buckingham in his “Travels among the Arab Tribes,” says, “A foot passenger could make his way at little or no expense, as travellers and wayfarers of every description halt at the sheikh’s dwelling, where, whatever may be the rank or condition of the stranger, before any questions are asked him as to where he comes from, or whither he is going, coffee is served to him from a large pot always on the fire; and a meal of bread, milk, oil, honey, or butter, is set before him, for which no payment is ever demanded or even expected by the host, who, in this manner, feeds at least twenty persons on an average every day in the year from his own purse; at least, I could not learn that he was remunerated in any manner for this expenditure, though it is considered as a necessary consequence of his situation, as chief of the community, that he should maintain this ancient practice of hospitality to strangers.--We had been directed to the house of Eesa, or Jesus. Our horses were taken into the court yard of the house, and unburdened of their saddles, without a single question being asked on either side; and it was not until we had seated ourselves that our intention to remain here for the night was communicated to the master of the house: so much is it regarded a matter of course, that those who have a house to shelter themselves in, and food to partake of, should share those comforts with wayfarers.” The passage in Isa. xxxv, 8, “The wayfaring men, though fools, shall not err therein,” receives elucidation from some of the accounts of modern travellers. Irwin, speaking of his passing through the deserts on the eastern side of the Nile, in his going from Upper Egypt to Cairo, tells us, that, after leaving a certain valley, which he mentions, their road lay over level ground. “As it would be next to an impossibility to find the way over these stony flats, where the heavy foot of a camel leaves no impression, the different bands of robbers,” wild Arabs, he means, who frequent that desert, “have heaped up stones at unequal distances for their direction through this desert. We have derived great assistance from the robbers in this respect, who are our guides when the marks either fail, or are unintelligible to us.” “It was on the 24th of March,” says Hoste, “that I departed from Alexandria for Rosetta: it was a good day’s journey thither, over a level country, but a perfect desert, so that the wind plays with the sand, and there is no trace of a road. We travel first six leagues along the sea coast; but when we leave this, it is about six leagues more to Rosetta, and from thence to the town there are high stone or bark pillars, in a line, according to which travellers direct their journey.”
WAYS, in Scripture, means conduct: for example: “Make your paths straight.” The paths of the wicked are crooked. To forsake the ways of the Lord, is to forsake his laws. Ways also signifies custom, manners, and way of life: “All flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth,” Gen. vi, 12; xix, 31; Jer. xxxii, 19. The way of the Lord expresses his conduct to us: “My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord,” Isa. lv, 8. We find through the whole of Scripture this kind of expressions: The way of peace, of justice, of iniquity, of truth, of darkness. To go the way of all the earth, Joshua xxiii, 14, signifies dying and the grave. A hard way represents the way of sinners, a way of impiety, Judges ii, 19. Jesus Christ is called the Way, John xiv, 6, because it is by him alone that believers obtain eternal life, and an entrance into heaven. The psalmist says, “Thou wilt show me the path of life,” Psalm xvi, 11; that is, Thou wilt raise my body from death to life, and conduct me to the place and state of everlasting happiness. When a great prince in the east sets out on a journey, it is usual to send a party of men before him, to clear the way. The state of those countries in every age, where roads are almost unknown, and, from the want of cultivation, in many parts overgrown with brambles, and other thorny plants, which renders travelling, especially with a large retinue, very incommodious, requires this precaution. The emperor of Hindostan, in his progress through his dominions, as described in the narrative of Sir Thomas Roe’s embassy to the court of Delhi, was preceded by a very great company, sent before him to cut up the trees and bushes, to level and smooth the road, and prepare their place of encampment. Balin, who swayed the imperial sceptre of India, had five hundred chosen men, in rich livery, with their drawn sabres, who ran before him, proclaiming his approach, and clearing the way. Nor was this honour reserved exclusively for the reigning emperor; it was often shown to persons of royal birth. When an Indian princess made a visit to her father, the roads were directed to be repaired, and made clear for her journey; fruit trees were planted, water vessels placed in the road side, and great illuminations prepared for the occasion. Mr. Bruce gives nearly the same account of a journey, which the king of Abyssinia made through a part of his dominions. The chief magistrate of every district through which he had to pass was, by his office, obliged to have the roads cleared, levelled, and smoothed; and he mentions, that a magistrate of one of the districts, having failed in this part of his duty, was, together with his son, immediately put to death on the spot, where a thorn happened to catch the garment, and interrupt for a moment the progress of his majesty. This custom is easily recognized in that beautiful prediction: “The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a 952highway for our God. Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be brought low; and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain; and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together, for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it,” Isa. xl, 3–5. We shall be able, perhaps, to form a more clear and precise idea, from the account which Diodorus gives of the marches of Semiramis, the celebrated queen of Babylon, into Media and Persia. In her march to Ecbatane, says the historian, she came to the Zarcean mountain, which, extending many furlongs, and being full of craggy precipices and deep hollows, could not be passed without taking a great compass. Being therefore desirous of leaving an everlasting memorial of herself, as well as of shortening the way, she ordered the precipices to be digged down, and the hollows to be filled up; and at great expense she made a shorter and more expeditious road; which to this day is called, from her, the road of Semiramis. Afterward she went into Persia, and all the other countries of Asia subject to her dominion; and wherever she went, she ordered the mountains and the precipices to be levelled, and raised causeways in the plain country, and at a great expense made the ways passable. Whatever may be in this story, the following statement is entitled to the fullest credit: “All eastern potentates have their precursors and a number of pioneers to clear the road, by removing obstacles, and filling up the ravines and the hollow ways in their route. In the days of Mogul splendour, the emperor caused the hills and mountains to be levelled, and the valleys to be filled up for his convenience. This beautifully illustrates the figurative language in the approach of the Prince of Peace, when every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain.”
WEAVING. The combined arts of spinning and weaving are among the first essentials of civilized society, and we find both to be of very ancient origin. The fabulous story of Penelope’s web, and, still more, the frequent allusions to this art in the sacred writings, tend to show that the fabrication of cloth from threads, hair, &c, is a very ancient invention. It has, however, like other useful arts, undergone a vast succession of improvements, both as to the preparation of the materials of which cloth is made, and the apparatus necessary in its construction, as well as in the particular modes of operation by the artist. Weaving, when reduced to its original principle, is nothing more than the interlacing of the weft or cross threads into the parallel threads of the warp, so as to tie them together, and form a web or piece of cloth. This art is doubtless more ancient than that of spinning; and the first cloth was what we now call matting, that is, made by weaving together the shreds of the bark, or fibrous parts of plants, or the stalks, such as rushes and straws. This is still the substitute for cloth among most rude and savage nations. When they have advanced a step farther in civilization than the state of hunters, the skins of animals become scarce, and they require some more artificial substance for clothing, and which they can procure in greater quantities. When it was discovered that the delicate and short fibres which animals and vegetables afford could be so firmly united together by twisting, as to form threads of any required length and strength, the weaving art was placed on a very permanent foundation. By the process of spinning, which was very simple in the origin, the weaver is furnished with threads far superior to any natural vegetable fibres in lightness, strength, and flexibility; and he has only to combine them together in the most advantageous manner. In the beautiful description which is given, in the last chapter of Solomon’s Proverbs, of the domestic economy of the virtuous woman, it is said, “She seeketh wool and flax, and worketh willingly with her hands: she layeth her hands to the spindle, and her hands hold the distaff. She maketh herself coverings of tapestry,” &c. Such is the occupation of females in the east in the present day. Not only do they employ themselves in working rich embroideries, but in making carpets filled with flowers and other pleasing figures. Dr. Shaw gives us an account of the last: “Carpets, which are much coarser than those from Turkey, are made here in great numbers, and of all sizes. But the chief branch of their manufactories is the making of hykes, or blankets, as we should call them. The women alone are employed in this work, (as Andromache and Penelope were of old,) who do not use the shuttle, but conduct every thread of the woof with their fingers.” Hezekiah says, “I have cut off like a weaver my life,” Isa. xxxviii, 12. Mr. Harmer suggests whether the simile here used may not refer to the weaving of a carpet filled with flowers and other ingenious devices; and that the meaning may be, that, just as a weaver, after having wrought many decorations into a piece of carpeting, suddenly cuts it off, while the figures were rising into view fresh and beautiful, and the spectator expecting he would proceed in his work; so, after a variety of pleasing transactions in the course of life, it suddenly and unexpectedly comes to its end.
WEEKS. A period of seven days, under the usual name of a week, , is mentioned as far back as the time of the deluge, Gen. vii, 4, 10; viii, 10, 12; xxix, 27, 28. It must, therefore, be considered a very ancient division of time, especially as the various nations among whom it has been noticed, for instance, the Nigri in Africa, appear to have received it from the sons of Noah. The enumeration of the days of the week commenced at Sunday. Saturday was the last or seventh, and was the Hebrew Sabbath, or day of rest. The Egyptians gave to the days of the week the same names that they assigned to the planets. From the circumstance that the Sabbath was the principal day of the week, the whole period of seven days was likewise called , in Syriac , in the New Testament sat and 953sata. The Jews, accordingly, in designating the successive days of the week, were accustomed to say, the first day of the Sabbath, that is, of the week; the second day of the Sabbath, that is, Sunday, Monday, &c, Mark xvi, 2, 9; Luke xxiv, 1; John xx, i, 19. In addition to the week of days, the Jews had three other seasons, denominated weeks, Lev. xxv, 1–17; Deut. xvi, 9–10: 1. The week of weeks. It was a period of seven weeks or forty-nine days, which was succeeded on the fiftieth day by the feast of pentecost, ets, “fifty,” Deut. xvi, 9, 10. 2. The week of years. This was a period of seven years, during the last of which the land remained untilled, and the people enjoyed a Sabbath or season of rest. 3. The week of seven sabbatical years. It was a period of forty-nine years, and was succeeded by the year of jubilee, Lev. xxv, 1–22; xxvi, 34. See Year.
WEIGHTS. See “Table of Weights and Measures” at the end of the volume.
WELLS. When the pool, the fountain, and the river fail, the oriental shepherd is reduced to the necessity of digging wells; and, in the patriarchal age, the discovery of water was reckoned of sufficient importance to be the subject of a formal report to the master of the flock, who commonly distinguished the spot by an appropriate name. A remarkable instance of this kind is recorded by Moses in these terms: “And Isaac departed thence, and pitched his tent in the valley of Gerar, and dwelt there. And Isaac digged again the wells of water which they had digged in the days of Abraham his father; for the Philistines had stopped them after the death of Abraham; and he called their names after the names by which his father had called them. And Isaac’s servants digged in the valley, and found there a well of springing water. And the herdmen of Gerar did strive with Isaac’s herdmen, saying, The water is ours; and he called the name of the well Ezek, because they strove with him. And they digged another well; and they strove for that also, and he called the name of it Sitnah, (opposition;) and he removed from thence and digged another well: and for that they strove not; and he called the name of it Rehoboth, (room;) and he said, For now the Lord hath made room for us, and we shall be fruitful in the land,” Gen. xxvi, 17, &c. “Strife,” says Dr. Richardson, “between the different villagers and the different herdsmen here, exists still, as it did in the days of Abraham and Lot: the country has often changed masters; but the habits of the natives, both in this and other respects, have been nearly stationary.” So important was the successful operation of sinking a well in Canaan, that the sacred historian remarks in another passage: “And it came to pass the same day, (that Isaac and Abimelech had concluded their treaty,) that Isaac’s servants came and told him concerning the well which they had digged, and said unto him, We have found water; and he called it Shebah, (the oath,) therefore the name of the city is Beershebah unto this day,” Gen. xxvi, 33. To prevent the sand, which is raised from the parched surface of the ground by the winds, from filling up their wells, they were obliged to cover them with a stone. In this manner the well was covered, from which the flocks of Laban were commonly watered: and the shepherds, careful not to leave them open at any time, patiently waited till all the flocks were gathered together, before they removed the covering, and then, having drawn a sufficient quantity of water, they replaced the stone immediately. The extreme scarcity of water in these arid regions, entirely justifies such vigilant and parsimonious care in the management of this precious fluid; and accounts for the fierce contentions about the possession of a well, which so frequently happened between the shepherds of different masters. But after the question of right, or of possession, was decided, it would seem the shepherds were often detected in fraudulently watering their flocks and herds from their neighbour’s well. To prevent this, they secured the cover with a lock, which continued in use so late as the days of Chardin, who frequently saw such precautions used in different parts of Asia, on account of the real scarcity of water there. According to that intelligent traveller, when the wells and cisterns were not locked up, some person was so far the proprietor that no one dared to open a well or cistern but in his presence. This was probably the reason that the shepherds of Padanaram declined the invitation of Jacob to water the flocks, before they were all assembled; either they had not the key of the lock which secured the stone, or, if they had, they durst not open it but in the presence of Rachel, to whose father the well belonged. It is ridiculous to suppose the stone was so heavy that the united strength of several Mesopotamian shepherds could not roll it from the mouth of the well, when Jacob had strength or address to remove it alone; or that, though a stranger, he ventured to break a standing rule for watering the flocks, which the natives did not dare to do, and that without opposition. The oriental shepherds were not on other occasions so passive, as the violent conduct of the men of Gerar sufficiently proves.
Twice in the day they led their flocks to the wells; at noon, and when the sun was going down. To water the flocks was an operation of much labour, and occupied a considerable space of time. It was, therefore, an office of great kindness with which Jacob introduced himself to the notice of his relations, to roll back the stone which lay upon the mouth of the well, and draw water for the flocks which Rachel tended. Some of these wells are furnished with troughs and flights of steps down to the water, and other contrivances to facilitate the labour of watering the cattle. It is evident the well to which Rebekah went to draw water, near the city of Nahor, had some convenience of this kind; for it is written, “Rebekah hasted and emptied her pitcher into the trough, and ran again unto the well to draw water, and drew for all his camels,” Gen. xxiv, 20. A trough was also placed by the 954well, from which the daughters of Jethro watered his flocks, Exod. ii, 16; and, if we may judge from circumstances, was a usual contrivance in every part of the east. In modern times, Mr. Park found a trough near the well, from which the Moors watered their cattle, in the sandy deserts of Sahara. Dr. Shaw, speaking of the occupation of the Moorish women in Barbary, says, “To finish the day, at the time of the evening, even at the time that the women go out to draw water, they are still to fit themselves with a pitcher or goat skin, and tying their sucking children behind them, trudge it in this manner two or three miles to fetch water.” “The women in Persia,” says Morier, “go in troops to draw water for the place. I have seen the elder ones sitting and chatting at the well, and spinning the coarse cotton of the country, while the young girls filled the skins which contain the water, and which they all carry on their backs into the town.” “A public well,” says Forbes, “without the gate of Diamonds, in the city Dhuboy, was a place of great resort: there, most travellers halted for shade and refreshment: the women frequented the fountains and reservoirs morning and evening, to draw water. Many of the Gwzerat wells have steps leading down to the surface of the water; others have not, nor do I recollect any furnished with buckets and ropes for the convenience of a stranger; most travellers are therefore provided with them, and halcarras and religious pilgrims frequently carry a small brass pot affixed to a long string for this purpose.”
WHALE, and , Gen. i, 21; Job vii, 12; Ezek. xxxii, 2; t, Matt. xii, 40; the largest of all the inhabitants of the water. A late author, in a dissertation expressly for the purpose, has proved that the crocodile, and not the whale, is spoken of in Gen. i, 21. The word in Job vii, 12, must also be taken for the crocodile. It must mean some terrible animal, which, but for the watchful care of Divine Providence, would be very destructive. Our translators render it by dragon in Isaiah xxvii, 1, where the prophet gives this name to the king of Egypt: “He shall slay the dragon that is in the sea.” The sea there is the river Nile, and the dragon the crocodile, Ezek. xxxii, 2. On this passage Bochart remarks, ”The is not a whale, as people imagine; for a whale has neither feet nor scales, neither is it to be found in the rivers of Egypt; neither does it ascend therefrom upon the land; neither is it taken in the meshes of a net; all of which properties are ascribed by Ezekiel to the of Egypt. Whence it is plain that it is not a whale that is here spoken of, but the crocodile. Merrick supposes David, in Psalm lxxiv, 13, to speak of the tunnie, a kind of whale, with which he was probably acquainted; and Bochart thinks it has its Greek name thunnos from the Hebrew thanot. The last-mentioned fish is undoubtedly that spoken of in Psalm civ, 26. We are told, that, in order to preserve the Prophet Jonah when he was thrown overboard by the mariners, “the Lord prepared a great fish to swallow him up.” What kind of fish it was, is not specified; but the Greek translators take the liberty to give us the word t, whale; and though St. Matthew, xii, 40, makes use of the same word, we may probably conclude that he did so in a general sense; and that we are not to understand it as an appropriated term, to point out the particular species of fish. It is notorious that sharks are common in the Mediterranean.
WHEAT, , Gen. xxx, 14; Deut. viii, 8; st, Matt. xiii, 25; Luke xvi, 7; 1 Cor. xv, 37; the principal and the most valuable kind of grain for the service of man. (See Barley, and Fitches.) In Lev. ii, directions are given for oblations, which in our translation are called meat-offerings; but as meat means flesh, and all kinds of offerings there specified, were made of wheat, it had been better to render it “wheaten offerings.” Calmet has observed, that there were five kinds of these, simple flour, oven cakes, cakes of the fire plate, cakes of the frying pan, and green ears of corn. The word , translated corn, Gen. xli, 35, and wheat in Jer. xxiii, 28; Joel ii, 24; Amos v, 11, &c, is undoubtedly the burr, or wild corn of the Arabs, mentioned by Forskal.
WHIRLWIND, a wind which rises suddenly from almost every point, is exceedingly impetuous and rapid, and imparts a whirling motion to dust, sand, water, and occasionally to bodies of great weight and bulk, carrying them either upward or downward, and scattering them about in different directions. Whirlwinds and water spouts are supposed to proceed from the same cause; their only difference being, that the latter pass over the water, and the former over the land. Both of them have a progressive as well as a circular motion, generally rise after calms and great heats, and occur most frequently in warm latitudes. The wind blows in every direction from a large surrounding space, both toward the water spout and the whirlwind; and a water spout has been known to pass, in its progressive motion, from sea to land, and, when it has reached the latter, to produce all the phenomena and effects of a whirlwind. There is no doubt, therefore, of their arising from a similar cause, as they are both explicable on the same general principles. In the imagery employed by the sacred writers, these frightful hurricanes are introduced as the immediate instruments of the divine indignation: “He shall take them away as with a whirlwind, both living and in his wrath,” Psalm lviii, 9. “God shall rebuke them, and they shall flee far off, and shall be chased as the chaff of the mountains before the wind, and like a rolling thing before the whirlwind,” Isaiah xvii, 13. “The Lord hath his way in the whirlwind and in the storm, and the clouds are the dust of his feet,” Nahum i, 3. All these are familiar images to the inhabitants of eastern countries, and receive some elucidation from the subjoined descriptions of English travellers. “On the 25th,” says Bruce, “at four o’clock in the afternoon, we set out from the villages of the Nuba, intending to arrive at Basbock, where is the ferry over the Nile; 955but we had scarcely advanced two miles into the plain, when we were enclosed in a violent whirlwind, or what is called at sea the water spout. The plain was red earth, which had been plentifully moistened by a shower in the night time. The unfortunate camel that had been taken by Cohala seemed to be nearly in the centre of its vortex; it was lifted and thrown down at a considerable distance, and several of its ribs broken; although, as far as I could guess, I was not near the centre, it whirled me off my feet, and threw me down upon my face, so as to make my nose gush out with blood: two of the servants, likewise, had the same fate. It plastered us all over with mud, almost as smoothly as could have been done with a trowel. It took away my sense and breathing for an instant; and my mouth and nose were full of mud when I recovered. I guess the sphere of its action to be about two hundred feet. It demolished one half of a small hut, as if it had been cut through with a knife, and dispersed the materials all over the plain, leaving the other half standing.” “When there was a perfect calm,” observes Morier, “partial and strong currents of air would arise, and form whirlwinds, which produced high columns of sand all over the plain. Those that we saw at Shiraz were formed and dissipated in a few minutes: nor is it the nature of this phenomenon to travel far; it being a current of air that takes its way in a capricious and sudden manner, and is dissolved by the very nature of its formation. Whenever one of them took our tents, it generally disturbed them very materially, and frequently threw them down. Their appearance was that of water spouts at sea, and perhaps they are produced in the same manner.” And Burchell remarks: “The hottest days are often the most calm; and at such times the stillness of the atmosphere was sometimes suddenly disturbed in an extraordinary manner. Whirlwinds, raising up columns of dust to a great height in the air, and sweeping over the plains with momentary fury, were no unusual occurrence. As they were always harmless, it was an amusing sight to watch these tall pillars of dust as they rapidly passed by, carrying up every light substance to the height of from one to even three or four hundred feet. The rate at which they travelled varied from five to ten miles in the hour: their form was seldom straight, nor were they quite perpendicular, but uncertain and changing. Whenever they happened to pass over our fire, all the ashes were scattered in an instant, and nothing remained but the heavier sticks and logs. Sometimes they were observed to disappear, and in a minute or two afterward to make their re-appearance at a distance farther on. This occurred whenever they passed over rocky ground, or a surface on which there was no dust, nor other substances sufficiently light to be carried up in the vortex. Sometimes they changed their colour, according to that of the soil or dust which lay in their march; and when they crossed a tract of country where the grass had lately been burned, they assumed a corresponding blackness. But to-day the calm and heat of the air was only the prelude to a violent wind, which commenced as soon as the sun had sunk, and continued during the greater part of the night. The great heat and long-protracted drought of the season had evaporated all moisture from the earth, and rendered the sandy soil excessively light and dusty. Astonishing quantities of the finer particles of this sand were carried up by the wind, and filled the whole atmosphere, where, at a great height, they were borne along by the tempest, and seemed to be real clouds, although of a reddish hue; while the heavier particles, descending again, presented, at a distance, the appearance of mist or driving rains.”
WHITE, a favourite and emblematical colour in Palestine. See Habits.
WIDOW. Among the Hebrews, even before the law, a widow who had no children by her husband was to marry the brother of her deceased spouse, in order to raise up children who might inherit his goods and perpetuate his name and family. We find the practice of this custom before the law in the person of Tamar, who married successively Er and Onan, the sons of Judah, and who was likewise to have married Selah, the third son of this patriarch, after the two former were dead without issue, Gen. xxxviii, 6–11. The law that appoints these marriages is Deut. xxv, 5, &c. Two motives prevailed to the enacting of this law. The first was, the continuation of estates in the same family; and the other was to perpetuate a man’s name in Israel. It was looked upon as a great misfortune for a man to die without an heir, or to see his inheritance pass into another family. This law was not confined to brothers-in-law only, but was extended to more distant relations of the same kind; as we see in the example of Ruth, who married Boaz after she had been refused by a nearer kinsman. See Sandals.
WILL. “In his primitive condition as he came out of the hands of his Creator, man was endowed with such a portion of knowledge, holiness, and power, as enabled him to understand, esteem, consider, will, and to perform the true good, according to the commandment delivered to him: yet none of these acts could he do, except through the assistance of divine grace. But in his lapsed and sinful state, man is not capable, of and by himself, either to think, to will, or to do that which is really good; but it is necessary for him to be regenerated and renewed in his intellect, affections or will, and in all his powers, by God in Christ through the Holy Spirit, that he may be qualified rightly to understand, esteem, consider, will, and perform whatever is truly good. When he is made a partaker of this regeneration, or renovation, since he is delivered from sin, he is capable of thinking, willing, and doing that which is good, but yet not without the continued aids of divine grace.” Such were the sentiments of the often misrepresented Arminius on this subject; to which is only to be added, to complete the Scriptural 956view, that a degree of grace to consider his ways, and to return to God, is through the merit of Christ vouchsafed to every man. Every one must be conscious that he possesses free will, and that he is a free agent; that is, that he is capable of considering and reflecting upon the objects which are presented to his mind, and of acting, in such cases as are possible, according to the determination of his will. And, indeed, without this free agency, actions cannot be morally good or bad; nor can the agents be responsible for their conduct. But the corruption introduced into our nature by the fall of Adam has so weakened our mental powers, has given such force to our passions, and such perverseness to our wills, that a man “cannot turn and prepare himself by his own natural strength and good works to faith and calling upon God.” The most pious of those who lived under the Mosaic dispensation often acknowledged the necessity of extraordinary assistance from God: David prays to God to open his eyes, to guide and direct him; to create in him a clean heart, and renew a right spirit within him, Psalm li, 10; cxix, 18, 33, 35. Even we, whose minds are enlightened by the pure precepts of the Gospel, and urged by the motives which it suggests, must still be convinced of our weakness and depravity, and confess, in the words of the tenth article, that “we have no power to do good works pleasant and acceptable to God, without the grace of God preventing us, that we may have a good will, and working with us when we have that good will.” The necessity of divine grace to strengthen and regulate our wills, and to coöperate with our endeavours after righteousness, is clearly asserted in the New Testament: “They that are in the flesh cannot please God,” Rom. viii, 8. “Abide in me,” says our Saviour, “and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine, no more can ye, except ye abide in me. I am the vine, and ye are the branches: he that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit; for without me ye can do nothing,” John xv, 4, 5. “No man can come to me, except the Father, which hath sent me, draw him.” “It is God that worketh in you, both to will and to do of his good pleasure,” Phil. ii, 13. “Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think any thing as of ourselves, but our sufficiency is of God,” 2 Cor. iii, 5. “We know not what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit helpeth our infirmities,” Rom. viii, 26. We are said to be “led by the Spirit,” and to “walk in the Spirit,” Rom. viii, 14; Gal. v, 16, 25. These texts sufficiently prove that we stand in need both of a prevenient and of a coöperating grace. This doctrine we find asserted in many of the ancient fathers, and particularly in Ambrose, who, in speaking of the effects of the fall, uses these words: “Thence was derived mortality, and no less a multitude of miseries than of crimes. Faith being lost, hope being abandoned, the understanding blinded, and the will made captive, no one found in himself the means of repairing these things. Without the worship of the true God, even that which seems to be virtue is sin; nor can any one please God without God. But whom does he please who does not please God, except himself and Satan The nature therefore, which was good is made bad by habit: man would not return unless God turned him.” And Cyprian says, “We pray day and night that the sanctification and enlivening, which springs from the grace of God, may be preserved by his protection.” Dr. Nicholls, after quoting many authorities to show that the doctrine of divine grace always prevailed in the catholic church, adds, “I have spent, perhaps, more time in these testimonies than was absolutely necessary; but whatever I have done is to show that the doctrine of divine grace is so essential a doctrine of Christianity, that not only the Holy Scriptures and the primitive fathers assert it, but likewise that the Christians could not in any age maintain their religion without it,--it being necessary, not only for the discharge of Christian duties, but for the performance of our ordinary devotions.” And this seems to have been the opinion of the compilers of our excellent liturgy, in many parts of which both a prevenient and a coöperating grace is unequivocally acknowledged; particularly in the second collect for the evening service; in the fourth collect at the end of the communion service; in the collect for Easter day; in the collect for the fifth Sunday after Easter; in the collects for the third, ninth, seventeenth, nineteenth, and twenty-fifth Sundays after Trinity. This assistance of divine grace is not inconsistent with the free agency of men: it does not place them under an irresistible restraint, or compel them to act contrary to their will. Our own exertions are necessary to enable us to work out our salvation; but our sufficiency for that purpose is from God. It is, however, impossible to ascertain the precise boundary between our natural efforts and the divine assistance, whether that assistance be considered as a coöperating or a prevenient grace. Without destroying our character as free and accountable beings, God may be mercifully pleased to counteract the depravity of our hearts by the suggestions of his Spirit; but still it remains with us to choose whether we will listen to those suggestions, or obey the lusts of the flesh. We may rest assured that he will, by the communication of his grace, varied often as to power and distinctness, help our infirmities, invigorate our resolutions, and supply our defects. The promises that if we draw nigh to God, God will draw nigh to us, and pour out his Spirit upon us, James iv, 8; Acts ii, 17, and that he will give his Holy Spirit to every one that asketh him, Luke xi, 13, imply that God is ever ready to work upon our hearts, and to aid our well-doing through the powerful, though invisible, operation of his Spirit: “The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh and whither it goeth; so is every one that is born of the Spirit,” John iii, 8. The joint agency of God and 957man, in the work of human salvation, is pointed out in the following passage: “Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God that worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure,” Phil, ii, 12, 13; and therefore we may assure ourselves that free will and grace are not incompatible, though the mode and degree of their coöperation be utterly inexplicable, and though at different times one may appear for a season to overwhelm the other. This doctrine has, however, been the subject of much dispute among Christians: some sects contend for the irresistible impulses of grace, and others reject the idea of any influence of the divine Spirit upon the human mind. The former opinion seems irreconcilable with the free agency of man, if held as the constant unvarying mode in which he carries on his work in the soul of man, and the latter contradicts the authority of Scripture; “and therefore,” says Veneer, “let us neither ascribe nothing to free will, nor too much; let us not, with the defenders of irresistible grace, deny free will, or make it of no effect, not only before, but even under, grace; nor let us suffer the efficacy of saving grace, on the other hand, to be swallowed up in the strength and freedom of our wills; but, allowing the government or superiority to the grace of God, let the will of man be admitted to be its handmaid, but such a one as is free, and freely obeys; by which, when it is freely excited by the admonitions of prevenient grace, when it is prepared as to its affections, strengthened and assisted as to its powers and faculties, a man freely and willingly coöperates with God, that the grace of God be not received in vain.” “All men are also to be admonished,” observes Cranmer, in his “Necessary Doctrine,” “and chiefly preachers, that in this high matter they, looking on both sides, so temper and moderate themselves, that they neither so preach the grace of God that they take away thereby free will, nor on the other side so extol free will, that injury be done to the grace of God.” And Jortin remarks: “Thus do the doctrine of divine grace and the doctrine of free will or human liberty unite and conspire, in a friendly manner, to our everlasting good. The first is adapted to excite in us gratitude, faith, and humility; the second, to awaken our caution and quicken our diligence.”
Many, indeed, relying on mere abstract arguments, deny free will, in the strict meaning of the term, altogether, and define the mental faculties of man according to their various fancies. But the existence and nature of our moral and rational powers are and ought to be, in true philosophy, the subject of mental observation, not the sport of hypothesis. Those who love metaphysical abstractions may people the worlds of their imagination with beings of whatsoever character they prefer; but the nature and capabilities of man, as he really is, must be determined not by speculation but by experience. It is true that this experience is the object of consciousness, not of the senses; and, accordingly, each man is, in some respect, the judge in his own case, and may, if he chooses, deny his own freedom and his power of self control, or of using those means which God hath appointed to lead to this result. But this is seldom done in ordinary life, except by those abandoned individuals who seek, in such a statement, an excuse for capricious or unprincipled conduct,--an excuse which is never admitted by the majority of reasoning persons, much less by the truly pious. The latter, indeed, will always be found attributing any thing good they achieve to the coöperating efficacy of superior assistance. But they will, with equal sincerity, blame themselves for what they have done amiss; or, in other words, acknowledge that they should and might have willed and acted otherwise; and this is exactly the practical question, the very turning point, on which the whole controversy hinges. The only competent judges in such a question, says Dr. R. H. Graves, are those who have made it the subject of mental observation, exertion, and pursuit; or, in other words, those who have sought after righteousness, under whatever dispensation, Acts x, 35; Romans ii, 7, 10. And surely the confessions, the prayers, the repentance, and the sacrifices, of the humble and pious of all ages show that they felt, not only that they were themselves to blame for their actions, and therefore that they might have done otherwise, that is, they had a free will, but that, to make this will operative in spiritual matters, they required an aid beyond the reach of mere human attainment. Some may fancy this statement inconsistent in itself; and I allow that it cannot satisfy the mere speculative supporters either of free will or its opponents. But to me it seems the testimony of conscience and experience, which, in natural religion, must, as I conceive, be preferred to abstract hypothesis. The inquiry is not how the mind may be, but how it is actually, constituted. This surely is a question of fact, not of conjecture, and must therefore be decided by an appeal to common sense and experience, not by random speculation. Again: even those who in theory contend for the doctrine of necessity, yet in all the affairs of life where their interests, comforts, or gratifications are concerned, both speak and act as if they disbelieved it, and as if they really imagined themselves capable of such self determination and self control, as to improve their talents, their opportunities, and their acquirements, and so to exercise a material influence on their worldly fortunes. But suppose the assertions of individuals, as to their consciousness in this particular, to disagree. It is then evident, that, the question being as to the nature of man in general, it must be determined by the voice of preponderating testimony. But how, it may be asked, are the suffrages to be collected Since the judgment of each individual must in this scheme be considered as a separate fact, how is a sufficiently extensive induction to be made In answer, it may be asserted, that in every civilized nation the induction has been already made, the suffrages have been taken, the case has been tried, and the decision is on record. And the verdict is the most impartial 958that can be looked for in such a case, because given without any reference to the controversy in dispute. All human laws, forbidding, condemning, and punishing vicious actions, are grounded on the acknowledged supposition that man is possessed of a self control, a self determining power, by which he could, both in will and in deed, have avoided the very actions for which he is condemned, and in the very circumstances in which he has committed them. Nor would it be easy to find a case where the criminal has deceived himself, or hoped to deceive his judges, by pleading that he laboured under a fatal necessity, which rendered his crimes unavoidable, and therefore excusable. The justice of all legislative enactments evidently and essentially depends on the principle, that the things prohibited can be avoided, or, in other words, might have been done otherwise than they were done; and this is the very turning point of the controversy. Accordingly, in whatever instances such freedom of will is not presupposed, (as in the cases of idiots and madmen,) the operation of such enactments is suspended. All nations, therefore, who consent to frame and abide by such laws, do thereby testify their deliberate and solemn assent to the truth of this principle, and, consequently, to the existence of free will in man; and do certify the sincerity of their conviction by staking upon it their properties, their liberties, and their lives. Numberless other instances might be adduced in which the practice of mankind implies their belief in this principle. And so conscious of this are the opponents of free will, that they generally deprecate appeals to common sense and experience, and resort to metaphysical arguments to examine what is in truth a matter of truth, not of conjecture; or, in other words, to determine, not what man is, but what they imagine he must be. In their reasonings they differ, as might have been expected, as much from each other as they do from truth and reality. But the experience of common sense and conscience will always decide, that no man can conscientiously make this excuse for his crimes, that he could not have willed or acted otherwise than he did. The existence of the above faculties in the human mind once acknowledged leads, by necessary inference, to the admission, that there exists in the great First Cause a power to create them. Not, indeed, that these faculties themselves exist in him in the same manner as in us, but the power of originating and producing them in all possible variety. We can indeed conclude, that having created all these in us, his nature must be so perfect that we cannot attribute to him any line of conduct inconsistent with whatever is excellent in the exercise of these faculties in ourselves. And therefore we cannot ascribe to him, as his special act, any thing we should perceive to be unworthy of any just or merciful, any wise or upright, being. But this furnishes no clue whatever to a knowledge of the real constitution of his nature, or of the manner in which his divine attributes exist together. In truth, we no more comprehend how he wills than how he acts, and therefore we have no better right to assert that he wills evil than that he does evil. Again: we as little understand how he knows as how he sees, and therefore might as well argue that all things exist in consequence of his beholding them, as that all events arise in consequence of his foreknowing them. In short, all that can be inferred by reason concerning the intrinsic nature of the invisible, unsearchable Deity, must be admitted by the candid inquirer to be no better than conjecture. And he who should hope from such doubtful support as his fancied insight into the unknown operations of the divine mind to suspend a system of irrespective decrees, embracing the moral government of the world, would but too much resemble him who should imagine the material globe adequately sustained if upheld by a chain whose highest links were wrapped in clouds and darkness. Thus our affirmative knowledge of the Deity, as derived from this part of our inquiry, consists in the certainty, (though his nature is unknown to us,) that he is the creative source of all that is great, glorious, and good in heaven or in earth; while we may negatively conclude, that his moral government shall, on the whole, be conducted in a manner not inconsistent with whatever is excellent in the exercise of power and wisdom, justice and mercy, goodness and truth. Nor is it a little important, as connected with the present inquiry, to keep in mind this distinction between our affirmative and negative knowledge in this matter. For it shows us that as, on the one side, we cannot pretend to such an insight into the nature and character of the divine knowledge as to deduce therefrom a system of eternal and irrespective decrees; so neither, on the other, can this system of moral government be ascribed to the Deity, because it would be manifestly unworthy, not merely of him who has created all moral excellence, but of any of those beings on whom he has conferred the most ordinary degrees of mercy and justice. The natural benefits or evils arising out of moral or immoral practices are, in fact, so many rewards or punishments, exhibiting the Being who has so constituted our nature as a moral governor. This part of his government may not be so clearly discernible in individual instances, because much of the happiness and unhappiness attending virtue and vice is mental and invisible. In the case of nations, however, considered merely as bodies politic, the internal sanction of an approving or reproaching conscience, of subdued or distracting passions, can have no existence; and therefore the external sanctions are more uniformly enforced. Hence, whoever carefully examines the dealings of Providence with the human race will admit, that national prosperity has ever kept pace with national wisdom and integrity; whereas, the greatest empires, when once corrupted, have soon become the prey of internal strife or foreign domination. Again: man is made for society, and cannot exist without it: consequently, all the regulations which are really conducive to the maintenance of civil policy and social order must be regarded 959as evident consequences of our nature, when enlightened to the rational pursuit of its own advantage; and therefore should be considered as intimations of a moral government, carried on through their intervention. In addition to which, it ought to be observed, that these laws may be regarded in another point of view,--as a most important class of moral phenomena; inasmuch as they virtually exhibit the most unexceptionable declarations of reason on this subject, because they are collected from the common consent of mankind, and therefore rendered, in a great measure, independent of the obliquities of individual intellect, the errors of private judgment, and the partial views of self interest, prejudice, or passion. But all the laws of civilized nations, both in their enactment and administration, not only presuppose certain notions concerning the freedom and accountableness of man, the merit and demerit of human actions, and the inseparable connection of virtue and vice with rewards and punishments, but greatly contribute to fix and perpetuate these notions. It is therefore evidently the intention of that part of the moral government with which we are acquainted, to impress these principles deeply on the human mind, and to induce the human race to regulate their conduct accordingly. The laws, then, of this moral government under which we find ourselves placed, and from which we cannot escape, correspond with and corroborate the conclusions deduced from the observation of mental phenomena. And from both we conclude that similar principles of government will be adopted, (so far, at least, as man is concerned,) in other worlds and in future ages; only more developed, and therefore more evidently free from its present apparent imperfections. Upon this account we look, in another life, for some such general disclosure and consummation of the ways and wisdom of Providence as shall vindicate, even in the minor details, the grand principles upon which, generally speaking, the government of God is at present obviously conducted. How this may be done, with many questions connected therewith, reason without revelation could, as I conceive, do little more than form plausible conjectures. Though now that it has pleased God in Christ to bring “life and immortality to light through the Gospel,” it is possible for reason to estimate the beauty and the mercy and the wisdom of the dispensation by which it has been effected.
WIND. The Hebrews, like us, acknowledge four principal winds, Ezek. xiii, 16–18: the east wind, the north wind, the south wind, and the west wind, or that from the Mediterranean sea. See Whirlwind.
WINDOWS. The method of building both in Barbary and the Levant seems to have continued the same from the earliest ages. All the windows open into private courts, if we except sometimes a latticed window or balcony toward the street. It is only during the celebration of some zeenah, or public festival, that these houses and their latticed windows are left open; for this being a time of great liberty, revelling, and extravagance, each family is ambitious of adorning both the inside and outside of their houses with the richest part of their furniture; while crowds of both sexes, dressed out in their best apparel, and laying aside all ceremony and restraint, go in and out where they please. The account we have, 2 Kings ix, 30, of Jezebel’s painting her face, tiring her head, and looking out at a window upon Jehu’s public entry into Jezreel, gives us a lively idea of an eastern lady at one of those solemnities.
WINE, , Gen. xix, 32, , Matt. ix, 17, a liquor expressed from grapes. The art of refining wine upon the lees was known to the Jews. The particular process, as it is now practised in the island of Cyprus, is described in Mariti’s Travels. The wine is put immediately from the vat into large vases of potters’ ware, pointed at the bottom, till they are nearly full, when they are covered tight and buried. At the end of a year what is designed for sale is drawn into wooden casks. The dregs in the vases are put into wooden casks destined to receive wine, with as much of the liquor as is necessary to prevent them from becoming dry before use. Casks thus prepared are very valuable. When the wine a year old is put in, the dregs rise, and make it appear muddy, but afterward they subside and carry down all the other feculences. The dregs are so much valued that they are not sold with the wine in the vase, unless particularly mentioned.
The “new wine,” or “must,” is mentioned, Isa. xlix, 26; Joel i, 5; iii, 18; and Amos ix, 13, under the name . The “mixed wine,” , Prov. xxiii, 30, and in Isaiah lxv, 11 rendered “drink-offering,” may mean wine made stronger and more inebriating by the addition of higher and more powerful ingredients, such as honey, spices, defrutum, or wine inspissated by boiling it down, myrrh, mandragora, and other strong drugs. Thus the drunkard is properly described as one that seeketh “mixed wine,” Prov. xxiii, 30, and is mighty to “mingle strong drink,” Isa. v, 22; and hence the psalmist took that highly poetical and sublime image of the cup of God’s wrath, called by Isaiah, li, 17, “the cup of trembling,” containing, as St. John expresses it, Rev. xiv, 10, pure wine made yet stronger by a mixture of powerful ingredients: “In the hand of Jehovah is a cup, and the wine is turbid; it is full of a mixed liquor, and he poureth out of it,” or rather, “he poureth it out of one vessel into another,” to mix it perfectly; “verily the dregs thereof,” the thickest sediment of the strong ingredients mingled with it, “all the ungodly of the earth shall wring them out, and drink them.” “Spiced wine,” Cant. viii, 2, was wine rendered more palatable and fragrantfragrant with aromatics. This was considered as a great delicacy. Spiced wines were not peculiar to the Jews; Hafiz speaks of wines “richly bitter, richly sweet.” The Romans lined their vessels, amphoræ, with odorous gums, to give the wine a warm bitter flavour: and the orientals now use the admixture of spices to give their wines a favourite relish. The “wine of Helbon,” 960Ezek. xxvii, 18, was an excellent kind of wine, known to the ancients by the name of chalibonium vinum. It was made at Damascus; the Persians had planted vineyards there on purpose, says Posidosius, quoted by Athenæus. This author says that the kings of Persia used no other wine. Hosea, xiv, 7, mentions the wine of Lebanon. The wines from the vineyards on that mount are even to this day in repute; but some think that this may mean a sweet-scented wine, or wine flavoured with fragrant gums.
WINE PRESS. The vintage in Syria commences about the middle of September, and continues till the middle of November. But grapes in Palestine, we are informed, were ripe sometimes even in June or July, which arose perhaps from a triple pruning, in which case there was also a third vintage. The first vintage was in August, the second in September, and the third in October. The grapes when not gathered were sometimes found on the vines until November and December. The Hebrews were required to leave gleanings for the poor, Lev. xix, 10. The season of vintage was a most joyful one, Judges ix, 27; Isaiah xvi, 10; Jer. xxv, 30; xlviii, 33. With shoutings on all sides, the grapes were plucked off and carried to the wine press, , , , which was in the vineyard, Isa. liii, 3; Zech. xiv, 10; Haggai ii, 16; Matt. xxi, 33; Rev. xiv, 19, 20. The presses consisted of two receptacles, which were either built of stones and covered with plaster, or hewn out of a large rock. The upper receptacle, called , as it is constructed at the present time in Persia, is nearly eight feet square and four feet high. Into this the grapes are thrown and trodden out by five men. The juice flows out into the lower receptacle, through a grated aperture, which is made in the side near the bottom of the upper one. The treading of the wine press was laborious, and not very favourable to cleanliness; the garments of the persons thus employed were stained with the red juice, and yet the employment was a joyful one. It was performed with singing, accompanied with musical instruments; and the treaders, as they jumped, exclaimed, , Isa. xvi, 9, 10; Jer. xxv, 30; xlviii, 32, 33. Figuratively, vintage, gleaning, and treading the wine press, signified battles and great slaughters, Isa. xvii, 6; lxiii, 1–3; Jer. xlix, 9; Lam. i, 15. The must, as is customary in the east at the present day, was preserved in large firkins, which were buried in the earth. The wine cellars were not subterranean, but built upon the earth. When deposited in these, the firkins, as is done at the present time in Persia, were sometimes buried in the ground, and sometimes left standing upon it. Formerly, also, new wine or must was preserved in leathern bottles; and, lest they should be broken by fermentation, the people were very careful that the bottles should be new, Job xxxii, 19; Matt. ix, 17; Mark ii, 22. Sometimes the must was boiled and made into syrup, which is comprehended under the term , although it is commonly rendered “honey,” Gen. xliii, 11; 2 Chron. xxxi, 5. Sometimes the grapes were dried in the sun and preserved in masses, which were called “bunches or clusters of raisins,” 1 Sam. xxv, 18; 2 Sam. xvi, 1; 1 Chron. xii, 40; Hosea iii, 1. From these dried grapes, when soaked in wine and pressed a second time, was manufactured sweet wine, which is also called new wine, e, Acts ii, 13.
WISDOM is put for that prudence and discretion which enables a man to perceive that which is fit to be done, according to the circumstances of time, place, persons, manners, and end of doing, Eccles. ii, 13, 14. It was this sort of wisdom that Solomon intreated of God with so much earnestness, and which God granted him with such divine liberality, 1 Kings iii, 9, 12, 28. It also signifies quickness of invention, and dexterity in the execution of several works, which require not so much strength of body, as industry, and labour of the mind. For example, God told Moses, Exod. xxxi, 3, that he had filled Bezaleel and Aholiab with wisdom, and understanding, and knowledge, to invent and perform several sorts of work for completing the tabernacle. It is used for craft, cunning, and stratagem, and that whether good or evil. Thus it is said by Moses, that Pharaoh dealt wisely with the Israelites, when he opposed them in Egypt, Exodus i, 10: it is observed of Jonadab, the friend of Ammon, and nephew of David, that he was very wise, that is, very subtle and crafty, 2 Sam. xiii, 3; and Job, v, 13, says, that God “taketh the wise in their own craftiness.” Wisdom means also doctrine, learning, and experience: “With the ancient is wisdom, and in length of days understanding,” Job xii, 12. It is put for true piety, or the fear of God, which is spiritual wisdom: “So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom,” Psalm xc, 12; “The fear of the Lord that is wisdom,” Job xxvii, 28. Wisdom is put for the eternal Wisdom, the Word of God. It was by wisdom that God established the heavens, and founded the earth, Prov. iii, 19. How magnificently does Solomon describe the primeval birth of the eternal Son of God, under the character of Wisdom personified; to which so many references and allusions are to be found in the Old and New Testament! “The Lord possessed me in the beginning of his way, before his works of old. I was set up from everlasting, from the beginning, or ever the earth was. When there were no depths, I was brought forth; when there were no fountains abounding with water. Before the mountains were settled, before the hills was I brought forth,” Prov. viii, 22–25. The apocryphal book of Wisdom introduces, by a reference to this passage, the following admirable invocation, Wisdom ix, 9, 10:--
And our Lord assumes the title of Wisdom, Luke xi, 49; Matt. xxiii, 34; and declares that “wisdom shall be justified of all her children,” Matt. xi, 19; Luke vii, 35.
961WISDOM, Book of, an apocryphal book of Scripture, so called on account of the wise maxims contained in it. This book has been commonly ascribed to Solomon, either because the author imitated that king’s manner of writing, or because he sometimes speaks in his name. But it is certain Solomon was not the author of it; for it was not written in Hebrew, nor was it inserted in the Jewish canon, nor is the style like that of Solomon; and therefore St. Jerom observes justly that it smells strong of the Grecian eloquence; that it is composed with art and method, after the manner of the Greek philosophers, very different from that noble simplicity so full of life and energy to be found in the Hebrew books. It has been ascribed by many of the ancients to Philo.
WOLF, , in Arabic, zeeb, Gen. xlix, 27; Isa. xi, 6; lxv, 25; Jer. v, 6; Ezek. xxii, 27; Zeph. iii, 3; Hab. i, 8; , Matt. vii, 15; x, 16; Luke x, 3; John x, 12; Acts xx, 29; Eccles. xiii, 17. M. Majus derives it from the Arabic word zaab or daaba, “to frighten;” and hence, perhaps, the German word dieb, “a thief.” The wolf is a fierce, strong, cunning, mischievous, and carnivorous quadruped; externally and internally so nearly resembling the dog, that they seem modelled alike, yet have a perfect antipathy to each other. The Scripture observes of the wolf, that it lives upon rapine; is violent, bloody, cruel, voracious, and greedy; goes abroad by night to seek its prey, and is a great enemy to flocks of sheep. Indeed, this animal is fierce without cause, kills without remorse, and by its indiscriminate slaughter seems to satisfy its malignity rather than its hunger. The wolf is weaker than the lion or the bear, and less courageous than the leopard; but he scarcely yields to them in cruelty and rapaciousness. His ravenous temper prompts him to destructive and sanguinary depredations; and these are perpetrated principally in the night. This circumstance is expressly mentioned in several passages of Scripture. “The great men have altogether broken the yoke and burst the bonds; wherefore, a lion out of the forest shall slay them, and a wolf of the evenings shall spoil them,” Jer. v, 6. The rapacious and cruel conduct of the princes of Israel is compared by Ezekiel, xxii, 27, to the mischievous inroads of the same animal: “Her princes in the midst thereof are like wolves ravening the prey, to shed blood, to destroy lives, to get dishonest gain;” and Zephaniah, iii, 3, says, “Her princes within her are roaring lions, her judges are evening wolves: they gnaw not the bones till the morrow.” Instead of protecting the innocent and restraining the evil doer, or punishing him according to the demerit of his crimes, they delight in violence and oppression, in blood and rapine; and so insatiable is their cupidity, that, like the evening wolf, they destroy more than they are able to possess. The dispositions of the wolf to attack the weaker animals, especially those which are under the protection of man, is alluded to by our Saviour in the parable of the hireling shepherd: “The wolf catcheth them, and scattereth the flock,” Matt. vii, 15. And the Apostle Paul, in his address to the elders of Ephesus, gives the name of this insidious and cruel animal to the false teachers who disturbed the peace and perverted the faith of their people: “I know this, that after my departing shall grievous wolves enter in among you, not sparing the flock,” Acts xx, 29.
WORD. Sometimes the Scripture ascribes to the word of God certain supernatural effects, and often represents it as animated and active: “He sent his word and healed them,” Psalm cvii, 20. It also signifies what is written in the sacred books of the Old and New Testament, Luke xi, 28; James i, 22; the divine law which teaches and commands good things, and forbids evil, Psalm cxix, 101; and is used to express every promise of God, Psalm cxix, 25, &c, and prophecy or vision, Isaiah, ii, 1. This term is likewise consecrated and appropriated to signify the only Son of the Father, the uncreated Wisdom, the second Person of the most holy Trinity, equal to and consubstantial with the Father. St. John the evangelist, more expressly than any other, has opened to us the mystery of the Word of God, when he tells us, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him, and without him was not any thing made that was made,” John i, 1–3. The Chaldee paraphrasts, the most ancient Jewish writers extant, generally make use of the word memra, which signifies “the Word,” in those places where Moses puts the name Jehovah. They say, for example, that it was the Memra, or the Word, which created the world, which appeared to Moses on Mount Sinai, which gave him the law, which spoke to him face to face, which brought Israel out of Egypt, which marched before the people, and which wrought all those miracles that are recorded in Exodus. It was the same Word that appeared to Abraham in the plain of Mamre, that was seen of Jacob at Bethel, to whom Jacob made his vow, and acknowledged as God, saying, “If God will be with me, and will keep me in this way that I go, then shall the Lord be my God,” Gen. xxviii, 20, 21. The manner in which St. John commences his Gospel is strikingly different from the introductions to the histories of Christ by the other evangelists; and no less striking and peculiar is the title under which he announces him--“the Word.” It has therefore been a subject of much inquiry and discussion, from whence this evangelist drew the use of this appellation, and what reasons led him, as though intending to solicit particular attention, to place it at the very head of his Gospel. That it was for the purpose of establishing an express opinion, as to the personal character of him it is used to designate, is made more than probable from the predominant character of the whole Gospel, which is more copiously doctrinal, and contains a record more full of what Jesus “said” than the others. As to the source from which the term Logos was drawn 962by the Apostle, some have held it to be taken from the Jewish Scriptures; others, from the Chaldee paraphrases; others, from Philo and the Hellenizing Jews. The most natural conclusion certainly appears to be, that, as St. John was a plain, “unlearned” man, chiefly conversant in the Holy Scriptures, he derived this term from the sacred books of his own nation, in which the Hebrew phrase, Dabar Jehovah, “the Word of Jehovah,” frequently occurs in passages which must be understood to speak of a personal Word, and which phrase is rendered [the word of the Lord] by the Septuagint interpreters. Certainly, there is not the least evidence in his writings, or in his traditional history, that he ever acquainted himself with Philo or with Plato; and none, therefore, that he borrowed the term from them, or used it in any sense approaching to or suggested by these refinements:--in the writings of St. Paul there are allusions to poets and philosophers; in those of St. John, none, except to the rising sects afterward known under the appellation of Gnostics. The Hebrew Scriptures contain frequent intimations of a distinction of Persons in the Godhead; one of these Divine Persons is called Jehovah; and, though manifestly represented as existing distinct from the Father, is yet arrayed with attributes of divinity, and was acknowledged by the ancient Jews to be, in the highest sense, “their God,” the God with whom, through all their history, they chiefly “had to do.” This Divine Person is proved to have been spoken of by the prophets as the future Christ; the evangelists and Apostles represent Jesus as that Divine Person of the prophets; and if, in the writings of the Old Testament, he is also called the Word, the application of this term to our Lord is naturally accounted for. It will then appear to be a theological, not a philosophic appellation, and one which, previously even to the time of the Apostle, had been stamped with the authority of inspiration.
Celebrated as this title of the Logos was in the Jewish theology, it is not, however, the appellation by which the Spirit of inspiration has chosen that our Saviour should be principally designated. It occurs but a very few times, and principally and emphatically in the introduction to St. John’s Gospel. A cogent reason can be given why this Apostle adopts it; and we are not without a probable reason why, in the New Testament, the title “Son of God” should have been preferred, which is a frequent title of the Logos in the writings also of Philo. Originating from the spiritual principle of connection, between the first and the second Being in the Godhead; marking this, by a spiritual idea of connection; and considering it to be as close and as necessary as the Word is to the energetic mind of God, which cannot bury its intellectual energies in silence, but must put them forth in speech; it is too spiritual in itself, to be addressed to the faith of the multitude. If with so full a reference to our bodily ideas, and so positive a filiation of the second Being to the first, we have seen the attempts of Arian criticism endeavouring to resolve the doctrine into the mere dust of a figure; how much more ready would it have been to do so, if we had only such a spiritual denomination as this for the second! This would certainly have been considered by it as too unsubstantial for distinct personality, and therefore too evanescent for equal divinity. One of the first teachers of this system was Cerinthus. We have not any particular account of all the branches of his system; and it is possible that we may ascribe to him some of those tenets by which later sects of Gnostics were discriminated. But we have authority for saying, that the general principle of the Gnostic scheme was openly taught by Cerinthus before the publication of the Gospel of St. John. The authority is that of Irenæus, a bishop who lived in the second century, who in his youth had heard Polycarp, the disciple of the Apostle John, and who retained the discourses of Polycarp in his memory till his death. There are yet extant of the works of Irenæus, five books which he wrote against heresies, one of the most authentic and valuable monuments of theological erudition. In one place of that work he says, that Cerinthus taught in Asia that the world was not made by the Supreme God, but by a certain power very separate and far removed from the Sovereign of the universe, and ignorant of his nature. In another place, he says that John the Apostle wished, by his Gospel, to extirpate the error which had been spread among men by Cerinthus; and Jerom, who lived in the fourth century, says that St. John wrote his Gospel, at the desire of the bishops of Asia, against Cerinthus and other heretics, and chiefly against the doctrines of the Ebionites, then springing up, who said that Christ did not exist before he was born of Mary.
“It appears,” says Dr. Hill, “to have been the tradition of the Christian church, that St. John, who lived to a great age, and who resided at Ephesus, in Proconsular Asia, was moved by the growth of the Gnostic heresies, and by the solicitations of the Christian teachers, to bear his testimony to the truth in writing, and particularly to recollect those discourses and actions of our Lord, which might furnish the clearest refutation of the persons who denied his preëxistence. This tradition is a key to a great part of his Gospel. Matthew, Mark, and Luke had given a detail of those actions of Jesus which are the evidences of his divine mission; of those events in his life upon earth which are most interesting to the human race; and of those moral discourses in which the wisdom, the grace, and the sanctity of the Teacher shine with united lustre. Their whole narration implies that Jesus was more than man. But as it is distinguished by a beautiful simplicity, which adds very much to their credit as historians, they have not, with the exception of a few incidental expressions, formally stated the conclusion that Jesus was more than man; but have left the Christian world to draw it for themselves from the facts narrated, or to receive it by the teaching and the writings of the Apostles. St. John, who was preserved by 963God to see this conclusion, which had been drawn by the great body of Christians, and had been established in the epistles, denied by different heretics, brings forward, in the form of a history of Jesus, a view of his exalted character, and draws our attention particularly to the truth of that which had been denied. When you come to analyze the Gospel of St. John, you will find that the first eighteen verses contain the positions laid down by the Apostle, in order to meet the errors of Cerinthus; that these positions, which are merely affirmed in the introduction, are proved in the progress of the Gospel, by the testimony of John the Baptist, and by the words and the actions of our Lord; and that after the proof is concluded by the declaration of Thomas, who, upon being convinced that Jesus had risen, said to him, ‘My Lord, and my God,’ St. John sums up the amount of his Gospel in these few words: ‘These are written that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God;’ that is, that Jesus and the Christ are not distinct persons, and that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. The Apostle does not condescend to mention the name of Cerinthus, because that would have preserved, as long as the world lasts, the memory of a name which might otherwise be forgotten. But, although there is dignity and propriety in omitting the mention of his name, it was necessary, in laying down the positions that were to meet his errors, to adopt some of his words, because the Christians of those days would not so readily have applied the doctrine of the Apostle to the refutation of those heresies which Cerinthus was spreading among them, if they had not found in the exposition of that doctrine some of the terms in which the heresy was delivered; and as the chief of these terms, Logos, which Cerinthus applied to an inferior spirit, was equivalent to a phrase in common use among the Jews, ‘the Word of Jehovah,’ and was probably borrowed from thence, John by his use of Logos rescues it from the degraded use of Cerinthus, and restores it to a sense corresponding to the dignity of the Jewish phrase.”
The Logos was no fanciful term, merely invented by St. John, pro re natâ, [according to circumstances,] or even suggested by the Holy Spirit, as a suitable title for a prophet by whom God chose to reveal himself or his Word. It was a term diversely understood in the world before St. John began his Gospel. Is it possible, therefore, that he should have used the term without some express allusion to these prevailing opinions Had he contradicted them all, it would, of course, have been a plain proof, that they were all equally fabulous and fanciful; but by adopting the term, he certainly meant to show, that the error did not consist in believing that there was a Logos, or Word of God, but in thinking amiss of it. We might, indeed, have wondered much had he decidedly adopted the Platonic or Gnostic notions, in preference to the Jewish; but that he should harmonize with the latter, is by no means surprising; first, because he was a Jew himself; and, secondly, because Christianity was plainly to be shown to be connected with, and, as it were, regularly to have sprung out of, Judaism. It is certainly, then, in the highest degree consistent with all we could reasonably expect, to find St. John and others of the sacred writers expressing themselves in terms not only familiar to the Jews under the old covenant, but, in such as might tend, by a perfect revelation of the truth, to give instruction to all parties; correcting the errors of the Platonic and oriental systems, and confirming, in the clearest manner, the hopes and expectations of the Jews.
While the reasons for the use of this term by St. John are obvious, the argument from it is irresistible; for, first, the Logos of the evangelist is a person, not an attribute, as many Socinians have said, who have, therefore, sometimes chosen to render it wisdom. For if it be an attribute, it were a mere truism to say, that “it was in the beginning with God;” because God could never be without his attributes. The Apostle also declares, that the Logos was the Light; but that John Baptist was not the light. Here is a kind of parallel supposed, and it presumes, also, that it was possible that the same character might be erroneously ascribed to both. Between person and person this may, undoubtedly, be the case; but what species of parallel can exist between man and an attribute Nor will the difficulty be obviated by suggesting, that wisdom here means not the attribute itself, but him whom that attribute inspired, the man Jesus Christ, because the name of our Saviour has not yet been mentioned; because that rule of interpretation must be inadmissible, which at one time would explain the term Logos by an attribute, at another by a man, as best suits the convenience of hypothesis; and because, if it be, in this instance, conceived to indicate our Saviour, it must follow, that our Saviour created the world, (which the Unitarians will by no means admit,) for the Logos, who was that which John the Baptist was not, the true Light, is expressly declared to have made the world. Again: the Logos was made flesh, that is, became man; but in what possible sense could an attribute become man The Logos is “the only begotten of the Father;” but it would be uncouth to say of any attribute, that it is begotten; and, if that were passed over, it would follow, from this notion, either that God has only one attribute, or that wisdom is not his only begotten attribute. Farther: St. John uses terms decisively personal, as that he is God, not divine as an attribute, but God personally; not that he was in God, which would properly have been said of an attribute, but with God, which he could only say of a person; that “all things were made by him;” that he was “in the world;” that “he came to his own;” that he was “in the bosom of the Father;” and that “he hath declared the Father.” The absurdity of representing the Logos of St. John as an attribute seems, at length, to have been perceived by the Socinians themselves, and their new version accordingly regards it as a personal term.
If the Logos be a person, then is he Divine; for, first, eternity is ascribed to him: “In the 964beginning was the Word.” The Unitarian comment is, “from the beginning of his ministry,” or “the commencement of the Gospel dispensation;” which makes St. John use another trifling truism, and solemnly tell his readers, that our Saviour, when he began his ministry, was in existence! “in the beginning of his ministry the Word was!” It is true, that , “the beginning,” is used for the beginning of Christ’s ministry, when he says that the Apostles had been with him from the beginning; and it may be used for the beginning of any thing whatever. It is a term which must be determined in its meaning by the context; and the question, therefore, is, how the connection here determines it. Almost immediately it is added, “All things were made by him;” which can only mean the creation of universal nature. He, then, who made all things was prior to all created things; he was when they began to be, and before they began to be; and, if he existed before all created things, he was not himself created, and was, therefore, eternal. Secondly, he is expressly called God; and, thirdly, he is as explicitly said to be the Creator of all things. The two last particulars have often been largely established, and nothing need be added, except, as another proof that the Scriptures can only be fairly explained by the doctrine of a distinction of divine Persons in the Godhead, the declaration of St. John may be adduced, that “the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” What hypothesis but this goes a single step to explain this wonderful language Arianism, which allows the preëxistence of Christ with God, accords with the first clause, but contradicts the second. Sabellianism, which reduces the personal to an official, and therefore a temporal, distinction, accords with the second clause, but contradicts the first; for Christ, according to this theory, was not with God in the beginning, that is in eternity. Socinianism contradicts both clauses; for on that scheme Christ was neither with God in the beginning, nor was he God. “The faith of God’s elect” agrees with both clauses, and by both it is established: “The Word was with God, and the Word was God.” See Unitarians.
WORM, the general name in Scripture for little creeping insects. Several kinds are spoken of: 1. Those that breed in putrefied bodies, , Exod. xvi, 20, 24; Job vii, 5; xvii, 14; xxi, 26; xxiv, 20; xxv, 6; Isa. xiv, 11; s, Ecclus. vii, 17; x, 11; 1 Mac. ii, 62; 2 Mac. ix, 9; Judith xvi, 17; Mark ix, 44, 46, 48; Acts xii, 23. 2. That which eats woollen garments, , Isa. li, 8; s, Matt. vi, 19, 20; Luke xii, 33. 3. That which, perforating the leaves and bark of trees, causes the little excrescences called kermes, whence is made a crimson dye, , Deut. xxviii, 39; Job xxv, 6; Psalm xxii, 6; Isa. xiv, 11; xii, 14; lxvi, 24; Exod. xvi, 20; Jonah iv, 7. 4. The worm destructive of the vines, referred to in Deut. xxviii, 39; which was the pyralis vitanæ, or pyralis fasciana, of Forskal, the vine weevil, a small insect extremely hurtful to the vines.
WORMWOOD, , Deut. xxix, 18; Prov. v, 4; Jer. ix, 15; xxiii, 15; Lam. iii, 15, 19; Amos v, 7; vi, 12; , Rev. viii, 11. In the Septuagint the original word is variously rendered, and generally by terms expressive of its figurative sense, for what is offensive, odious, or deleterious; but in the Syriac and Arabic versions, and in the Latin Vulgate, it is rendered “wormwood;” and this is adopted by Celsius, who names it the absinthium santonicum Judaicum, [bitter wormwood of Judea.] From the passages of Scripture, however, where this plant is mentioned, something more than the bitterness of its qualities seems to be intimated, and effects are attributed to it greater than can be produced by the wormwood of Europe. The Chaldee paraphrase gives it even the character of “the wormwood of death.” It may therefore mean a plant allied, perhaps, to the absinthium in appearance and in taste, but possessing more nauseous, hurtful, and formidable properties.
WORSHIP. The Scriptural obligation of public worship is partly founded upon example, and partly upon precept; so that no person who admits that authority, can question this great duty without manifest and criminal inconsistency. The institution of public worship under the law, and the practice of synagogue worship among the Jews, from at least the time of Ezra, cannot be questioned; both of which were sanctioned by the practice of our Lord and his Apostles. The preceptive authority for our regular attendance upon public worship, is either inferential or direct. The command to publish the Gospel includes the obligation of assembling to hear it; the name by which a Christian society is designated in Scripture is a church; which signifies an assembly for the transaction of business; and, in the case of a Christian assembly, that business must necessarily be spiritual, and include the sacred exercises of prayer, praise, and hearing the Scriptures. But we have more direct precepts, although the practice was obviously continued from Judaism, and was therefore consuetudinary. Some of the epistles of St. Paul are commanded to be read in the churches. The singing of psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs is enjoined as an act of solemn worship to the Lord; and St. Paul cautions the Hebrews that they “forsake not the assembling of themselves together.” The practice of the primitive age is also manifest from the epistles of St. Paul. The Lord’s Supper was celebrated by the body of believers collectively; and this Apostle prescribes to the Corinthians regulations for the exercises of prayer and prophesyings, “when they came together in the church,”--the assembly. The statedness and order of these holy offices in the primitive church, appear also from the apostolical epistle of St. Clement: “We ought also, looking into the depths of the divine knowledge, to do all things in order, whatsoever the Lord hath commanded to be done. We ought to make our oblations, and perform our holy offices, at their appointed seasons; for these he hath commanded to be done, not irregularly or by chance, but at determinate 965times and hours; as he hath likewise ordained by his supreme will, where, and by what persons, they shall be performed; that so all things being done according to his pleasure, may be acceptable in his sight.” This passage is remarkable for urging a divine authority for the public services of the church, by which St. Clement, no doubt, means the authority of the inspired directions of the Apostles. The ends of the institution of public worship are of such obvious importance, that it must ever be considered as one of the most condescending and gracious dispensations of God to man. By this his church confesses his name before the world; by this the public teaching of his word is associated with acts calculated to affect the mind with that solemnity which is the best preparation for hearing it to edification. It is thus that the ignorant and the vicious are collected together, and instructed and warned; the invitations of mercy are published to the guilty, and the sorrowful and afflicted are comforted. In these assemblies God, by his Holy Spirit, diffuses his vital and sanctifying influence, and takes the devout into a fellowship with himself, from which they derive strength to do and to suffer his will in the various scenes of life, while he there affords them a foretaste of the deep and hallowed pleasures which are reserved for them at his right hand for evermore. Prayers and intercessions are offered for national and public interests; and while the benefit of these exercises descends upon a country, all are kept sensible of the dependence of every public and personal interest upon God. Praise calls forth the grateful emotions, and gives cheerfulness to piety; and that instruction in righteousness which is so perpetually repeated, diffuses the principles of morality and religion throughout society; enlightens and gives activity to conscience; raises the standard of morals; attaches shame to vice, and praise to virtue; and thus exerts a powerfully purifying influence upon mankind. Laws thus receive a force, which, in other circumstances, they could not acquire, even were they enacted in as great perfection; and the administration of justice is aided by the strongest possible obligation and sanction being given to legal oaths. The domestic relations are rendered more strong and interesting by the very habit of the attendance of families upon the sacred services of the sanctuary of the Lord; and the rich and the poor meeting together, and standing on the same common ground as sinners before God, equally dependent upon him, and equally suing for his mercy, has a powerful, though often an insensible, influence in humbling the pride which is nourished by superior rank, and in raising the lower classes above abjectness of spirit, without injuring their humility. Piety, benevolence, and patriotism are equally dependent for their purity and vigour upon the regular and devout worship of God in the simplicity of the Christian dispensation.
The following is an abridgment of Dr. Neander’s account of the mode of conducting public worship among the primitive Christians, which, though questionable on some points, is upon the whole just and interesting:--Since the religion of the New Testament did not admit of any peculiar outward priesthood, similar to that of the Old, the same outward kind of worship, dependent on certain places, times, and outward actions and demeanours, would also have no place in its composition. The kingdom of God, the temple of the Lord, were to be present, not in this or that place, but in every place where Christ himself is active in the Spirit, and where through him the worship of God in spirit and in truth is established. Every Christian in particular, and every church in general, were to represent a spiritual temple of the Lord; the true worship of God was to be only in the inward heart, and the whole life proceeding from such inward disposition, sanctified by faith, was to be a continued spiritual service; this is the great fundamental idea of the Gospel, which prevails throughout the New Testament, by which the whole outward appearance of religion was to assume a different form, and all that once was carnal was to be converted into spiritual, and ennobled. This notion came forward most strongly in the original inward life of the first Christians, particularly when contrasted with Judaism, and still more so when contrasted with Heathenism; a contrast which taught the Christians to avoid all pomp that caught the eye, and all multiplication of means of devotion addressed to the senses, while it made them hold fast the simple, spiritual character of the Christian worship of God. It was this which always struck the Heathen so much in the Christian worship; namely, that nothing was found among them of the outward pomp of all other religions; no temples, no altars, no images. This reproach was made to the Christians by Celsus, and answered thus by Origen: “In the highest sense the temple and image of God are in the human nature of Christ; and hence, also, in all the faithful, who are animated by the Spirit of Christ,--living images! with which no statue of Jove by Phidias is fit to be compared.” Christianity impelled men frequently to seek for the stillness of the inward sanctuary, and here to pour forth their heart to God, who dwells in such temples; but then the flames of love were also lighted in their hearts, which sought communion in order to strengthen each other mutually, and to unite themselves into one holy flame which pointed toward heaven. The communion of prayer and devotion was thought a source of sanctification, inasmuch as men knew that the Lord was present by his Spirit among those who were gathered together in his name; but then they were far from ascribing any peculiar sacredness and sanctity to the place of assembly. Such an idea would appear to partake of Heathenism; and men were at first in less danger of being seduced into such an idea, because the first general places of assembly of the Christians were only common rooms in private houses, just according as it happened that any member of the church had sufficient accommodation for the purpose. Thus Gaius of Corinth, 966Rom. xvi, is called the host of the church, because the church was in the habit of assembling in a room of his house. Origen says, “The place where believers come together to pray has something agreeable and useful about it;” but then he only says this in respect to that spiritual communion. Man, we must avow, is very easily led to fall away from the worship of God in spirit and in truth, and to connect the religion of the Spirit with outward and earthly things; as the Apostle says, “Having begun in the Spirit, to wish to end in the flesh.” Watchfulness on this point was constantly needed, lest the Jewish or the Heathen notions should here intrude themselves on those of the Gospel, which was likely enough to happen as soon as the Old and the New Testament notions of the priesthood had been confused. Even in the time of Clemens of Alexandria he found himself obliged to combat the notion, which allowed the essentials of a Christian life to be of one kind in, and of another out of, the church. “The disciples of Christ,” he says, “must form the whole course of their life and conduct on the model which they assume in the churches, for the sake of propriety; they must be such, and not merely seem so; as mild, as pious, and as charitable. But now, I know not how it is, they change their habits and their manners with the change of place, as the polypus, they say, changes its colour, and becomes like the rock on which it hangs. They lay aside the spiritual habit which they had assumed in the church, as soon as they have left the church, and assimilate themselves to the multitude among whom they live. I should rather say, that they convict themselves of hypocrisy, and show what they really are in their inward nature, by laying aside the mask of piety which they had assumed; and while they honour the word of God, they leave it behind them in the place where they heard it.”
The Christian places of assembly were, at first, in the rooms of private houses; it may perhaps be the case, that in large towns, where the number of Christians was soon considerable, and no member of the church had any room in his house sufficient to contain all his brethren, or in places where men did not fear any prejudicial consequences from large assemblies, the church divided itself into different sections, according to the habitations of its members, of which each section held its assemblies in one particular chamber of the house of some wealthy member of the church; or, perhaps, while it was usual to unite on Sundays in one general assembly, yet each individual part of the church met together daily in the rooms which lay the most convenient to it. Perhaps the passages in St. Paul’s epistles, which speak of churches in the houses of particular persons, are thus to be understood. The answer of Justin Martyr to the question of the prefect, “Where do you assemble” exactly corresponds to the genuine Christian spirit on this point. This answer was, “Where each one can and will. You believe, no doubt, that we all meet together in one place; but it is not so, for the God of the Christians is not shut up in a room, but, being invisible, he fills both heaven and earth, and is honoured every where by the faithful.” Justin adds, that when he came to Rome, he was accustomed to dwell in one particular spot, and that those Christians who were instructed by him, and wished to hear his discourses, assembled at his house. He had not visited any other congregations of the church. The arrangements which the peculiarities of the Christian worship required, were gradually made in these places of assembly, such as an elevated seat for the purpose of reading the Scriptures and preaching, a table for the distribution of the sacrament, to which as early as the time of Tertullian the name of altar, ara or altare, was given, and perhaps not without some mixture of the unevangelical Old Testament notion of a sacrifice; or at least this idea might easily attach itself to this name. When the churches increased, and their circumstances improved, there were, during the course of the third century, already separate church buildings for the Christians, as the name sesµ tp, [religious places,] of the Christians occurs in the edict of Gallienus. In the time of the external prosperity of the church, during the reign of Diocletian, many handsome churches arose in the great towns. The use of images was originally quite foreign to the Christian worship and churches, and it remained so during this whole period. The intermixture of art and religion, and the use of images for the latter, appeared to the first Christians a Heathenish practice. As in Heathenism the divine becomes desecrated and tarnished by intermixture with the natural; and as men have often paid homage to the beauties of nature, with injury to the cause of holiness, the first warmth of Christian zeal, which opposed the idolatry of nature, so common to Heathenism, and sought to maintain the divine in all its purity and elevation, was inclined rather to set holiness in the strongest contrast with what is beautiful by nature, than to endeavour to grace it by lending it a beautiful form. Men were more inclined in general to carry into extremes the idea of the appearance of the Divinity in the form of a servant, which suited the oppressed condition of the church in these centuries than to throw it into the back ground, and overwhelm it under the predominance of their æsthetic dispositions, and their love of art. This is peculiarly shown by the general belief of the early church, that Christ had clothed his inward divine glory in a mean outward form, which was in direct contradiction to it; a conclusion which was drawn from interpreting the prophecy of the Messiah in Isa. liii, 2, too literally. Thus, Clemens of Alexandria warns the Christians, from the example of Christ, not to attribute too much value to outward beauty: “The Lord himself was mean in outward form; and who is better than the Lord But he revealed himself not in the beauty of the body, perceptible to our senses, but in the true beauty of the soul as well as of the body; the beauty of the soul consisting in 967benevolence, and that of the body in immortality!” Fathers of entirely opposite habits of mind, the adherents of two different systems of conceiving divine things, were nevertheless united on this point by their common opposition to the mixture of the natural and the divine in Heathenism, and by the endeavour to maintain the devotion to God, in spirit and in truth, pure and undefiled. Clemens of Alexandria is as little favourable as Tertullian to the use of images. Heathens, who, like Alexander Severus, saw something divine in Christ’s personal form, and sects which mixed Heathenism and Christianity together, were the first who made use of images of Christ; as, for instance, the Gnostic sect of the followers of Carpocratian, who put his image beside those of Plato and Aristotle. The use of religious images among the Christians did not proceed from their ecclesiastical but from their domestic life. In the intercourse of daily life, the Christians saw themselves every where surrounded by objects of Heathen mythology, or by such as shocked their moral and Christian feelings. Similar objects adorned the walls of chambers, the drinking vessels, and the signet rings, (on which the Heathen had constantly idolatrous images,) to which, whenever they pleased, they could address their devotions; and the Christians naturally felt themselves obliged to replace these objects, which wounded their moral and religious feelings, with others more suited to those feelings. Therefore, they gladly put the likeness of a shepherd carrying a lamb upon his shoulders, on their cups, as a symbol of the Redeemer, who saves the sinners that return to him, according to the parable in the Gospel. And Clemens of Alexandria says, in reference to the signet rings of the Christians, “Let our signet rings consist of a dove,” the emblem of the Holy Ghost, “or a fish, or a ship sailing toward heaven,” the emblem of the Christian church, or of individual Christian souls, “or a lyre,” the emblem of Christian joy, “or an anchor,” the emblem of Christian hope; “and he who is a fisherman, let him remember the Apostle, and the children who were dragged out from the water; for those men ought not to engrave idolatrous forms, to whom the use of them is forbidden; those can engrave no sword and no bow, who seek for peace; the friends of temperance cannot engrave drinking cups.” And yet, perhaps, religious images made their way from domestic life into the churches as early as the end of the third century, and the walls of the churches were painted in the same way. The council of Elvira set itself against this innovation as an abuse, for it made the following order: “Objects of reverence and worship shall not be painted on the walls.” It is probable that the visible representation of the cross found its way very early into domestic and ecclesiastical life. This token was remarkably common among them; it was used to consecrate their rising and their going to bed, their going out and their coming in, and all the actions of daily life; it was the sign which Christians made involuntarily whenever any thing of a fearful nature surprised them. This was a mode of expressing, by means perceptible to the senses, the purely Christian idea, that all the actions of Christians, as well as the whole course of their life, must be sanctified by faith in the crucified Jesus, and by dependence upon him; and that this faith is the most powerful means of conquering all evil, and preserving oneself against it. But here also, again, men were too apt to confuse the idea and the token which represented it; and they attributed the effects of faith in the crucified Redeemer to the outward sign, to which they ascribed a supernatural, sanctifying, and preservative power; an error of which we find traces as early as the third century.
We now pass from the consideration of the places of public worship, to that of the seasons of worship, and the festivals of the early Christians. It is here shown again, that the Gospel, as it remodelled the former conceptions of the priesthood, of worship in general, and of holy places, also entirely changed the then views of sacred seasons. And here again, also, the character of the theocracy of the New Testament revealed itself, a theocracy spiritualized, ennobled, and freed from its outward garb of sense, and from the limits which bounded its generalization. The Jewish laws relating to their festivals were not merely abrogated by the Gospel, in such a manner as to transfer these festivals to different seasons; but they were entirely abolished, as far as fixing religious worship to particular times is concerned. St. Paul expressly declares all sanctifying of certain seasons, as far as men deduced this from the divine command, to be Jewish and unevangelical, and to be like returning to the slavery of the law, and to captivity to outward precepts. Such was the opinion of the early church. At first the churches assembled every day; as, for instance, the first church of Jerusalem, which assembled daily for prayer in common, and for the public consideration of the divine word, for the common celebration of the Lord’s Supper and the agapæ, as well as to maintain the connection between the common head of the spiritual body of the church and themselves, and between one another as members of this body. Traces of this are also found in later times in the daily assembling of the churches for the purpose of hearing the Scriptures read, and of celebrating the communion. Although, in order to meet the wants of human nature generally, consisting as it does of sense as well as soul, and those of a large body of Christians in particular, who were only in a state of education, and were to be brought up to the ripeness of Christian manhood, men soon selected definite times [beside the authorized Christian Sabbath, the first day of the week] for religious admonitions, and to consecrate them to a fuller occupation with religious things, as well as to public devotion, with the intention, that the influence of these definite times should animate and sanctify the rest of their lives, and that Christians who withdrew themselves from the 968distractions of business on these days, and collected their hearts before God in the stillness of solitude, as well as in public devotion, might make these seasons of service to the other parts of their life; yet this was in itself, and of itself, nothing unevangelical. It was only a dropping down from the purely spiritual point of view, on which even the Christian, as he still carries about two natures in himself, cannot always maintain himself, to the carnal; a dropping down which became constantly more necessary, the more the fire of the first animation and the warmth of the first love of the Christians died away. It was no more unevangelic than the gradual limitation of the exercise of many rights, belonging to the common priesthood of all Christians, to a certain class in the church, which circumstances rendered necessary. But just as the unevangelic made its appearance, men supposed certain days distinguished from others, and hallowed by divine right, when they introduced a distinction between holy and common days into the life of the Christian, and in this distinction forgot his calling to sanctify all days alike. When the Montanists wished to introduce and make imperative new fasts, which were fixed to certain days, the Epistle to the Galatians was very properly brought to oppose them; but Tertullian, who stood on the boundary between the original pure evangelic times and those when the intermixture of Jewish and Christian notions first took place, confuses here the views of the two religions, because he makes the evangelical to consist, not in a wholly different method of considering festivals altogether, but in the celebration of different particular festivals; and he makes the Judaizing, which the Apostle condemns, to consist only in the observation of the Jewish instead of the peculiarly Christian festivals. The weekly and the yearly festivals originally arose from the self-same fundamental idea, which was the centre point of the whole Christian life; the idea of imitating Christ, the crucified and the risen; to follow him in his death, by appropriating to ourselves, in penitence and faith, the effects of his death, by dying to ourselves and to the world; to follow him in his resurrection, by rising again with him, by faith in him and by his power, to a new and holy life, devoted to God, which, beginning here below in the seed, is matured in heaven. Hence the festival of joy was the festival of the resurrection; and the preparation for it, the remembrance of the sufferings of Christ, with mortification and crucifixion of the flesh, was the day of fasting and penitence. Thus in the week the Sunday was the joyful festival; and the preparation for it was a day of penitence and prayer, consecrated to remembrance of the sufferings of Christ and the preparations for them, and this was celebrated on the Friday; and thus also the yearly festivals were to celebrate the resurrection of Christ, and the operations of the Redeemer after he had risen again; the preparation for this day was in commemoration of the sufferings and fastings of our Saviour. Allusion is made to Sunday under the character of a festival, as a symbol of a new life, consecrated to the Lord in opposition to the old Sabbath, in the epistle of Ignatius to the Magnesians: “If they who were brought up under the Old Testament have attained to a new hope, and no longer keep [Jewish] Sabbaths holy, but have consecrated their life to the day of the Lord, on which also our life rose up in him, how shall we be able to live without him” Sunday was distinguished as a day of joy by the circumstances, that men did not fast upon it, and that they prayed standing up and not kneeling, as Christ had raised up fallen man to heaven again through his resurrection. And farther: two other days in the week, Friday and Wednesday, particularly the former, were consecrated to the remembrance of the sufferings of Christ, and of the circumstances preparatory to them; congregations were held on them, and a fast till three o’clock in the afternoon, but nothing was positively appointed concerning them; in respect to joining in these solemnities every one consulted his own convenience or inclination. Such fasts, joined with prayer, were considered as the watches of the milites Christi [soldiers of Christ] on their post by the Christians, who compared their calling to a warfare, the militia Christi, and they were stationes, and the days on which they took place were called dies stationum, [day of their stations.] The churches, which were a graft of a Christian on a Jewish spirit, although they received the Sunday, retained also that of the Sabbath; and from them the custom spread abroad in the oriental church, of distinguishing this day, as well as the Sunday, by not fasting and by praying in an erect posture; in the western churches, particularly the Roman, where opposition to Judaism was the prevailing tendency, this very opposition produced the custom of celebrating the Saturday in particular as a fast day. This difference in customs would of course be striking, where members of the oriental church spent their Sabbath day in the western church. It was only too soon that men lost sight of the principle of the apostolic church, which retained the unity of faith and spirit in the bond of love, but allowed all kinds of difference in external things; and then they began to require uniformity in these things. The first yearly festivals of the Christians proceeded from similar views; and at first the contrast which had in early times the most powerful influence on the developement as well of the churchly life, as of the doctrines of Christianity, is peculiarly prominent; I mean the contrast between the Jewish churches and those of the Gentile converts. The former retained all the Jewish festivals as well as the whole ceremonial law; although by degrees they introduced into them a Christian meaning which spontaneously offered itself. On the contrary, there was probably no yearly festival at all, from the beginning, among the Heathen converts; for no trace of any thing of the sort is found in the whole of the New Testament. The passover of the Old Testament was easily ennobled and converted 969to a passover which suited the New Testament, by merely substituting the idea of deliverance from spiritual bondage, that is, from the slavery of sin, for that of deliverance from earthly bondage. The paschal lamb was a type of Christ, by whom that deliverance was wrought. These representations went on the supposition, that Christ had partaken his last meal with his disciples, as a proper passover, at the very time that the Jews were celebrating theirs. This passover was, therefore, always celebrated on the night between the fourteenth and fifteenth of the Jewish month Nisan, as a remembrance at the same time of the last supper of Christ. This was the fundamental notion of the whole Jewish Christian passover, on which all the rest was built. The day following this passover was consecrated to the remembrance of the sufferings of Christ, and the third day from it to the remembrance of his resurrection. On the contrary, in the greater number of Heathen churches, as soon as men began to celebrate yearly festivals, (a time which cannot be determined very precisely,) they followed the method observed in the weekly festivals. They appointed one Sunday in the year for the festival of the resurrection, and one Friday as a day of penitence and fasting preparatory to this Sunday, in remembrance of the sufferings of Christ; and they gradually lengthened this time of penitence and fasting, as a preparation for that high and joyful festival. In these churches they were more inclined to take up a kind of antithetical turn against the Jewish festivals, than to graft Christian ones upon them. It was far from their notions to think of observing a yearly passover with the Jews. The following was the view which they took of the matter: “Every typical feast has lost its true meaning by the realization of that which is typified; in the sacrifice of Christ, the Lord’s Supper, as the new covenant, has taken the place of that of the old covenant.” This difference of outward customs between the Jewish Christian churches and the churches allied to them on the one hand, and the Heathen Christian churches founded by St. Paul on the other, existed at first without its being supposed that external things of this nature were of importance enough to lead to a controversy. A fast formed the introduction to the passover; and this was the only fast formally established by the church. The necessity of this fast was deduced from Matthew ix, 15; but it was by a carnal interpretation of the passage, and an application of it quite contrary to its real sense. For it does not relate to the time of Christ’s suffering, but to the time when he should be with his disciples no more. As long as they enjoyed his society they were to give themselves up to joy, and to be disturbed in it by no forced asceticism. But a time of sorrow was to follow this time of joy, although only for a season, after which a time of higher and imperishable joy, in invisible communion with him, was to follow, John xvi, 22. The duration of this fast, however, was not determined; the imitation of the temptation of our Lord for forty days introduced the custom of fasting forty hours in some places, which afterward was extended to forty days; and thus the fast of forty days, the quadrigesimal fast, arose. The festival of pentecost, Whitsuntide, was closely connected with that of the resurrection; and this was dedicated to commemorating the first visible effects of the operations of the glorified Christ upon human nature, now also ennobled by him, the lively proofs of his resurrection and reception into glory; and therefore Origen joins the festivals of the resurrection and of pentecost together as one whole. The means of transition from an Old Testament festival to one befitting the New Testament, were here near at hand. The first fruits of harvest in the kingdom of nature; the first fruits of harvest in the kingdom of grace; the law of the letter from Mount Sinai--the law of the Spirit from the heavenly Jerusalem. This festival originally embraced the whole season of fifty days from Easter, and was celebrated like a Sunday, that is to say, no fasts were kept during the whole of it, and men prayed standing, and not kneeling; and perhaps also in some places assemblies of the church were held, and the communion was celebrated every day. Afterward, two peculiar points of time, the ascension of Christ and the effusion of the Holy Spirit, were selected from this whole interval. These were the only festivals generally celebrated at that time, as the passage cited from Origen proves. The fundamental notion of the whole Christian life, which referred every thing to the suffering, the resurrection, and the glorification of Christ, as well as the adherence, or, on the other hand, the opposition, to the Jewish celebration of festivals, were the cause that these were the only general festivals. The notion of a birth-day festival was far from the ideas of the Christians of this period in general; they looked upon the second birth as the true birth of men. The case must have been somewhat different with the birth of the Redeemer; human nature was to be sanctified by him from its first developement; but then this last notion could not at first come so prominently forward among the early Christians, because so many of them were first converted to Christianity when well advanced in years, after some decisive excitement of their life; but then it may have entered generally into domestic life, though at first gradually. Nevertheless, we find in this period apparently one trace of Christmas as a festival. Its history is intimately connected with the history of a kindred festival; the festival of the manifestation of Jesus in his character of Messiah, his consecration to the office of Messiah by the baptism of John, and the beginning of his public ministry as the Messiah, which was afterward called Epiphany, the t t pfa, or t pfaea t , [the festival of Epiphany, or of the appearance of Christ.] We find in later times that these festivals extended themselves in opposite directions, that of Christmas spreading from west to east, and the other from east to west. Clemens of Alexandria merely relates, that the Gnostic sect of the Basilidians celebrated 970the festival of the Epiphany at Alexandria in his time. We can hardly suppose that this sect invented the festival, although they may have had some dogmatical reason for celebrating it; for it is highly improbable that the catholic church should have afterward received a festival from the Gnostics; and these Gnostics most probably received it from the Jewish Christian churches in Palestine or Syria. For this time of our Saviour’s life would appear the most important to the notions of the Jewish Christians; and the Gnostics would afterward explain it according to their own ideas.
The character of a spiritual worship of God distinguished the Christian worship from that of other religions, which consisted in symbolical pageantry and lifeless ceremonies. As a general elevation of spirit and sanctification of heart was the object of every thing in this religion, instruction and edification, through a common study of the divine word, and through prayer in common, were the leading features in the Christian worship. And in this respect it might in its form adhere to the arrangements made about the congregations in the Jewish synagogues, in which also the element of a spiritual religious worship was the prevailing ingredient. As the reading of portions of the Old Testament had formed the ground work of religious instruction in the Jewish synagogues, this custom also passed into the Christian congregations. First the Old Testament, and especially the prophetic parts of it, were read as things that pointed to the Messiah; then followed the Gospels, and after that the epistles of the Apostles. The reading of the Scriptures was of still greater consequence then, because it was desirable that every Christian should be acquainted with them; and yet, by reason of the rarity and dearness of manuscripts, and the poverty of a great proportion of the Christians, or perhaps also because all were not able to read, the Bible itself could not be put into the hands of all. Frequent hearing was therefore with many to supply the place of their own reading. The Scriptures were therefore read in the language which all could understand, and that was, in most parts of the Roman empire, the Greek or the Latin. In very early times different translations of the Bible into Latin were in existence; as every one who knew a little of Greek, found it needful to have his own Bible in his own mother tongue. In places where the Greek or the Latin language was understood only by a part of the church, that is to say, by the educated classes, while the rest understood only their native language, as was the case in many Egyptian and Syrian towns, church interpreters were appointed, as in the Jewish synagogues, and they immediately translated what had been read into the language of the country, so that it might be intelligible to all. After the reading of the Scripture there followed, as there had previously in the Jewish synagogues, short, and at first very simple, addresses in familiar language, the momentary effusions of the heart, which contained an explanation and application of what had just been read. Justin Martyr expresses himself thus on the subject: “After the reading of the Scriptures, the president instructs the people in a discourse, and incites them to the imitation of these good examples.” Among the Greeks, where the taste was more rhetorical, the sermon from the very earliest times was of a more lengthened kind, and formed a very important part of the service. Singing also passed from the Jewish service into that of the Christian church. St. Paul exhorts the early churches to sing spiritual songs. What was used for this purpose were partly the Psalms of the Old Testament, and partly songs composed with this very object, especially songs of praise and thanks to God and Christ; and these, we know, Pliny found to be customary among the Christians. In the controversies with the Unitarians, about the end of the second century, and the beginning of the third, the hymns, in which from early times Christ had been honoured as a God, were appealed to. The power of church singing over the heart was soon recognized; and hence those who wished to propagate any peculiar opinions, like Bardasanes, or Paul of Samosata, endeavoured to spread them by means of hymns. In compliance with the infirmities of human nature, composed as it is of sense and spirit, the divine Founder of the church, beside his word, ordained two outward signs, as symbols of the invisible communion which existed between him, the Head of the spiritual body, and the faithful, its members; and also of the connection of these members, as with him, so also with one another. These were visible means to represent the invisible, heavenly benefits to be bestowed on the members of this body through him; and while man received in faith the sign presented to his senses, the enjoyment of that heavenly communion and those heavenly advantages was to gladden his inward heart. As nothing in all Christianity and in the whole Christian life stands isolated, but all forms one whole, proceeding from one centre, therefore, also, that which this outward sign represented must be something which should continue through the whole of the inward Christian life, something which, spreading itself forth from this one moment over the whole Christian life, should be capable of being especially excited again and promoted in return, by the influence of isolated moments. Thus, baptism was to be the sign of a first entrance into communion with the Redeemer, and with the church, the first appropriation of those advantages which Christ has bestowed on man, namely, of the forgiveness of sins and the inward union of life, which proceeds from it, as well as of the participation in a sanctifying divine Spirit of life. And the Lord’s Supper was to be the sign of a constant continuance in this communion, in the appropriation and enjoyment of these advantages; and thus were represented the essentials of the whole inward Christian life, in its earliest rise and its continued progress. The whole peculiar spirit of Christianity 971was particularly stamped in the mode in which these external things were administered; and the mode of their administration in return exerted a powerful influence on the whole nature of the Christian worship. The connection of the moments, represented by these signs, with the whole Christian life, the connection of inward and divine things with the outward act was present to the lively Christian feelings of the first Christians.
WRITING. In regard to alphabetic writing, all the ancient writers attribute the invention of it to some very early age, and some country of the east; but they do not pretend to designate precisely either the time or the place. They say, farther, that Cadmus introduced letters from Phenicia into Greece, if we may credit the Parisian Chronicle, B. C. 1519, that is, forty-five years after the death of Moses. Anticlides asserts, and attempts to prove, that letters were invented in Egypt fifteen years before Phoroneus, the most ancient king of Greece; that is, four hundred and nine years after the deluge, and in the one hundred and seventeenth year of Abraham. On this it may be remarked that they might have been introduced into Egypt at this time, but they had been previously invented by the Phenicians. Epigenes, who, in the estimation of Pliny, is weighty authority, informs us that observations, made upon the heavenly bodies for seven hundred and twenty years at Babylon, were written down upon baked tiles; but Berosus and Critodemus, also referred to by Pliny, make the number of years four hundred and eighty. Pliny from these statements draws the conclusion that the use of letters, as he expresses it, must have been eternal, that is, beyond all records. Simplicius, who lived in the fifth century, states, on the authority of Porphyry, an acute historian, that Callisthenes, the companion of Alexander, found at Babylon a record of observations on the heavenly bodies for one thousand nine hundred and three years. Of course the record must have been begun B. C. 2234, that is, the eighty-ninth year of Abraham. This statement receives some confirmation from the fact that the month of March is called Adar in the Chaldaic dialect; and at the time mentioned, namely, the eighty-ninth year of Abraham, the sun, during the whole month of March, was in the sign of the zodiac called Aries, or the Ram. The word Adar means the same with Aries. But, as letters would be unquestionably first used for the purposes of general intercourse, they must have been known long before they were employed to transmit the motions of the stars. Of this we have an evidence in the bill of sale, which, as we have reason to suppose from the expressions used in Gen. xxiii, 20, was given to Abraham by the sons of Heth. Hence it is not at all wonderful that books and writings are spoken of in the time of Moses, as if well known, Exodus xvii, 14; xxiv, 4; xxviii, 9–11; xxxii, 32; xxxiv, 27, 28; Numbers xxxiii, 2; Deut. xxvii, 8. Nor is it a matter of surprise that long before his time there had been public scribes, who kept written genealogies: they were called by the Hebrews , Exod. v, 14; Deut. xx, 5–9. Even in the time of Jacob, seals, upon which names are engraved in the east, were in use, Gen. xxxviii, 18; xii, 42; which is another probable testimony to the great antiquity of letters.
Letters, which had thus become known at the earliest period, were communicated by means of the Phenician merchants and colonies, and subsequently by Egyptian emigrants, through all the east and the west. A strong evidence of this is to be found in the different alphabets themselves, which betray by their resemblance a common origin. That the posterity of the Hebrew patriarchs preserved a knowledge of alphabetical writing during their abode in Egypt, where essentially the same alphabet was in use, is evident from the fact, that the Hebrews while remaining there always had public genealogists. The law, also, was ordered to be inscribed on stones; a fact which implies a knowledge of alphabetical writing. The writing thus engraven upon stones is designated by its appropriate name, namely, , Exodus xxxii, 16, 32. Not a few of the Hebrews might be unable to read and write, Judges viii, 14; but those who were capable of writing wrote for others, when necessary. Such persons were commonly priests, who, as they do to this day in the east, bear an inkhorn in their girdle, Ezek. x, 2, 3, 11. In the inkhorn were the materials for writing, and a knife for sharpening the pen, Jer. xxxvi, 23. The rich and noble had scribes of their own, and readers also; whence there is more frequent mention made of hearing than of reading, 1 Kings iv, 3; 2 Kings xii, 10; Isa. xxix, 18; Jer. xxxvi, 4; Rom. ii, 13; James v, 11; Rev. i, 3. The scribes took youth under their care, who learned from them the art of writing. Some of the scribes seem to have held public schools for instruction; some of which, under the care of Samuel and other prophets, became in time quite illustrious, and were called the schools of the prophets, 1 Sam. xix, 16, &c; 2 Kings ii, 3, 5; iv, 38; vi, 1. The disciples in these schools were not children or boys, but young men, who inhabited separate edifices, as is the case in the Persian academies. They were taught music and singing, and without doubt writing also, the Mosaic law and poetry. They were denominated, in reference to their instructers, the sons of the prophets; teachers and prophets being sometimes called fathers. After the captivity there were schools for instruction either near the synagogues or in them.
The materials and instruments of writing were, 1. The leaves of trees. 2. The bark of trees, from which, in the process of time, a sort of paper was manufactured. 3. A table of wood, pa, , Deut. ix, 9; Ezek. xxxvii, 5; Luke i, 63. In the east, these tables were not covered with wax as they were in the west; or at any rate very rarely so. 4. Linen was first used for the object in question at Rome. Linen books are mentioned by Livy. Cotton cloth also, which was used for the bandages of Egyptian mummies, and inscribed with hieroglyphics, was one of the materials for writing 972upon. 5. The paper made from the reed papyrus, which, as Pliny has shown, was used before the Trojan war. 6. The skins of various animals; but they were poorly prepared for the purpose, until some improved methods of manufacture were invented at Pergamus, during the reign of Eumenes, about B. C. 300. Hence the skins of animals, prepared for writing, are called in Latin pergamena, in English parchment, to this day, from the city Pergamus. They are sometimes denominated in Greek, µeµßa, 2 Tim. iv, 13. 7. Tables of lead, , Job xix, 24. 8. Tables of brass, dt aa. Of all the materials, brass was considered among the most durable, and was employed for those inscriptions which were designed to last the longest, 1 Macc. viii, 22; xiv, 20–27. 9. Stones or rocks, upon which public laws, &c, were written. Sometimes the letters engraved were filled up with lime, Exod. xxiv, 12; xxxi, 18; xxxii, 19; xxxiv, 1; Deut. xxvii, 1–9; Joshua viii, 32; Job xix, 24. 10. Tiles. The inscriptions were made upon the tiles first, and afterward they were baked in the fire. They are yet to be found in the ruins of Babylon; others of later origin are to be found in many countries in the east. 11. The sand of the earth, in which the children in India to this day learn the art of writing, and in which Archimedes himself delineated his mathematical figures, John viii, 1–8. If in Ezekiel iii, 1, and in Revelation x, 9, we are informed that books were eaten, we must remember that the descriptions are figurative, and that they were eaten in vision; and consequently we are not at liberty to draw the conclusion from these passages, that any substance was used as materials for writing upon, which was at the same time used for food. The representations alluded to are symbolic, introduced to denote a communication or revelation from God.
As to the instruments used in writing, when it was necessary to write upon hard materials, as tables of stone and brass, the style was made of iron, and sometimes tipped with diamond, Jer. xvii. 1. The letters were formed upon tablets of wood, (when they were covered with wax,) with a style sharpened at one end, broad and smooth at the other; by means of which the letters, when badly written, might be rubbed out and the wax smoothed down. 2. Wax, however, was but rarely used for the purpose of covering writing tables in warm regions. When this was not the case, the letters were painted on the wood with black tincture or ink. 3. On linen, cotton cloth, paper, skins, and parchment, the letters were painted with a very small brush, afterward with a reed, which was split. The orientals use this elegant instrument to the present day instead of a pen. Ink, called , is spoken of in Num. v, 23, as well known and common, Jer. xxxvi, 18, and was prepared in various ways, which are related by Pliny. The most simple, and consequently the most ancient, method of preparation was a mixture of water with coals broken to pieces, or with soot, with an addition of gum. The ancients used other tinctures also; particularly, if we may credit Cicero and Persius, the ink extracted from the cuttle fish, although their assertion is in opposition to Pliny. The Hebrews went so far as to write their sacred books in gold, as we may learn from Josephus compared with Pliny.
Hieroglyphics, that is, sacred sculptures or engravings, received that appellation, because it was once, and indeed till very lately, thought, that they were used only to express, in a manner hidden from the vulgar, what was exclusively religious; and which it was thought proper to conceal from all but the learned. The fact, however, is, that the hieroglyphic was a kind of picture writing, which passed through various modifications, and was applied alike to sacred and to civil purposes; to the emblazonment of the attributes of idols, the exploits of warriors, and the events of illustrious history. Rudiments of the same art have been found among almost all savages. Among the semi-civilized Mexicans history was pictorial: and in Ceylon and Continental India the same vehicle of instruction is made use of on the walls of their temples, to convey moral lessons, or to indicate the character and exploits of their deities. In Egypt, however, the art was carried into a more perfect system, and was more ostensibly set before the public eye on the massive and almost eternal monuments which cover the country. There, too, it ascends to ages of the world with which the Scriptures have made us familiar, and stands associated with royal dynasties, and vicissitudes of conquest, more intimately blended with that stream of civil history, along the margin of which European education conducts us. These mystic characters have acquired an adventitious interest also, from the circumstance that the key to them was for so many ages lost. This knowledge perished among that people themselves, the records of whose kings and conquests lay hid under the inexplicable symbol, or the fanciful representation of letters and sounds which were still familiar to the lips of those to whom the signs had become wholly unmeaning. Age after age they were gazed at by the curious; conjectures respecting their nature and use were offered by the learned, some absurd and some approaching the truth, but all failing to throw light upon a mystery, which at length was surrendered, by common consent, to the receptacle of lost and irrecoverable knowledge. Whether the hieroglyphics were symbols only, or words, or picturesque alphabetical characters, or expressed the popular tongue, or one known only to the priests, were questions answered at random by the prompt and dogmatic; and even the more modest and probable solutions of the cautious had so little collateral evidence to support them, that they led to no result. As to their intent, one thought that they involved the mysteries of magic; another, that they were a form of the Chinese language; a third, that they veiled the doctrines of the true patriarchal religion; a fourth, that they enveloped the dogmatic arcana of the Egyptian priesthood. The great point, however, to be determined was, whether the hieroglyphics were 973the signs of a language; that is, of the sounds of any language; and, if so, whether the language was now known, or knowable, from books still extant. Each of these points was of equal importance; for in vain would it have been ascertained that these signs represented the sounds of a tongue once spoken, if that tongue had perished from the earth. Clement of Alexandria, who lived about the end of the second century, asserted that the Egyptians had three modes of writing,--the epistolographic, or common characters; the hieratic, or sacerdotal, employed chiefly by the priesthood in writing books; and the hieroglyphic, used on public monuments. The symbolical he again distributes into imitative, which represent the plain figure of an object, as a circle to express the sun, and a half circle the moon; tropical,--which have recourse to analogy for the representation of the object; and enigmatical,--as “a serpent, to signify the oblique course of the stars.” This writer could not so accurately have expressed the truth of the case, unless he had known much more than he has written; and we may presume, that if he had been more liberal in his communications, the present age would not have had the honour of throwing open the gate to this branch of ancient learning. The notion which has generally prevailed, that by whatever rule the hieroglyphics were composed, they were invented by the Egyptian priests to conceal their wisdom from the vulgar, was combated by Bishop Warburton, with his usual acuteness. According to him, the first kind of hieroglyphics were mere pictures; because the most natural way of communicating our conceptions by marks or figures was, to trace out the images of things. But the hieroglyphics invented by the Egyptians were an improvement on this rude and inconvenient essay toward writing; for they contrived to make them both pictures and characters. He proceeds to other observations, which have lost their interest in consequence of the recent discoveries; but he argues conclusively, that hieroglyphics could not, in a vast number of cases, have been resorted to for purposes of secrecysecrecy, since they were employed to record openly and plainly their laws, history, and all kinds of civil matters. This, as a general view, has been proved to be correct; but still no key to the reading of these characters was found. The figures of deities might, in many instances, be deciphered by their attributes; other symbols were not difficult to explain, as they spoke a universal language. Thus two hands, one holding a bow, and another a shield, suggested a battle; an eye and a sceptre, a monarch of intelligence and vigilance; a ship and a pilot, the governor of a state if associated with a man, the ruler of the universe if associated with a deity. A lion was a natural emblem of strength and courage; a bullock, of agriculture; a horse, of liberty; a sphynx, of subtlety. But still those hieroglyphics were in the greatest number which appeared to represent letters; and many might prove, at the same time, both emblematic and alphabetical. Approaches to the truth of the case had been, indeed, made. Warburton, from an attentive perusal of what Clemens Alexandrinus had said on the subject, had, in fact, concluded, in a way highly creditable to his acuteness, that hieroglyphics were a real written language, applicable to the purposes of history and common life, as well as to those of religion; and that, among the different sorts of hieroglyphics, the Egyptians possessed those which were used phonetically, or alphabetically, as letters; but, till recently, the means of following out this ingenious and correct conjecture were wanting to the learned. The first effectual step was taken by M. Quattermere, who proved, in his work Sur la Langue et Littérature de l’Egypte, [Concerning the Language and Literature of Egypt,] that the Coptic, a language of easy attainment, at least to a considerable extent, was the language of the ancient Egyptians. The second favouring circumstance of modern times was, the publication of the researches made as to the monuments of Egypt by the literary men and artists who accompanied the French expedition to that country. Previous to this, the specimens which had been brought to Europe were few, and the impressions and the fac similes of them incorrect. Some, too, were imitations, and others spurious. In the works published in France after this expedition, the representations of Egyptian monuments were numerous; and the inscriptions were given with perfect exactness and fidelity. Still, however, those would have remained as unintelligible as the originals but for the discovery of the Rosetta stone, now among the Egyptian antiquities in the gallery of the British museum. This stone was dug up by the French, near Rosetta, and contained an inscription in three sets of characters: one in hieroglyphics; a second in a sort of running hand, called enchorial, that is, in the common characters of the country; and a third in Greek. The latter appearing, from the disposition of the whole, to be a translation of the enchorial inscription, as that was of the hieroglyphic, the importance of this stone was at once seen by the French savans; but by the fortune of war, it was taken, with other valuables, by the British troops, and was sent to this country. The Antiquarian Society had it immediately engraved; and the fac similes, which were circulated through Europe attracted great attention. Dr. Young has, however, the honour of being the discoverer of the nature and use of the hieroglyphical inscription. M. de Sacy, and more especially Mr. Ackerblad, a Danish gentleman, made some progress in identifying the sense of several parts of the second inscription, or that in demotic or enchorial characters, but made no progress in the hieroglyphics; and it was left for British industry to convert to permanent profit a monument which had been a useless, though a glorious, monument of British valour. The inscription upon this celebrated stone proved to be a decree of the Egyptian priests, solemnly assembled in the temple, to record upon a monument, as a public expression of their gratitude, all the events of the reign of Ptolemy Epiphanes; his liberality 974to the temples and to the gods; his success against his rebellious subjects; his clemency toward some of the traitors; his measures against the fatal consequences of excessive inundations of the Nile; and his munificence toward the college of the priests, by remitting the arrears of several years’ payment of taxes. It was an important circumstance, that the whole concludes by ordering that this decree “shall be engraved on a hard stone in sacred characters, in common characters, and in Greek.” By this it was ascertained that the second and third inscriptions were translations of the first; and that the second inscription was in the common character of the country. It was this that led Ackerblad to the investigation of the enchorial text, in order to discover its alphabet; in which he partially succeeded. His labours were, however, for some time unnoticed; but in 1814, Dr. Young published, in the Archæologia, an improvement on the alphabet of Ackerblad, and a translation of the Egyptian inscription. Difficulties of no ordinary kind, beside those arising from the mutilated state of the stone, presented themselves to all who had applied to make out even the second, or enchorial inscription.
“The method,” says the Marquis Spineto, “pursued by our learned men in this Herculean task of deciphering the Rosetta stone, deserves to be noticed; it may serve to give you a proper idea of the infinite labour to which they have been obliged to submit; a labour which at first seemed calculated to deter the most indefatigable scholar. Figure to yourself, for a moment, the fashion introduced of writing the English language with the omission of most of its vowels, and then suppose our alphabet to be entirely lost or forgotten, a new mode of writing introduced, letters totally different from those we use, and then conceive what our labour would be, if, after the lapse of fifteen hundred years, when the English language, by the operation of ages, and the intercourse with foreigners, was much altered from what it now is, we should be required, by the help of a Greek translation, to decipher a bill of parliament written in this old, forgotten, and persecuted alphabet, in every word of which we should find, and even this not always, the regular number of consonants, but most of the vowels left out. And yet this is precisely what our learned antiquarians have been obliged to do. The Egyptians, like most of the orientals, left out many of the vowels in writing. The enchorial, or demotic alphabet, which they used, has been laid aside since the second or third century of our era. From that time to this, that is, for nearly sixteen hundred years, the Coptic alphabet has been used; and yet in this Coptic language, and in these very enchorial or demotic characters, was engraved on the Rosetta stone the inscription which they have deciphered.”
The steps of this interesting process are given by Dr. Young, in the Supplement to the Encyclopædia Britannica. The substance is as follows: “As the demotic characters showed something like the shape of letters, it was shrewdly suspected that they might have been used as an alphabet. By comparing, therefore, its different parts with each other, and with the Greek, it was observed that the two groups in the fourth and seventeenth lines of the Greek inscription, in which Alexander and Alexandria occur, corresponded with two other groups in the second and the tenth line of the demotic inscription. These two groups, therefore, were considered as representing these two names, and thus not less than seven characters, or letters, were ascertained. Again: it was observed that a small group of character occurs very often in almost every line. At first it was supposed that this group was either a termination, or some very common particle; and after some words had been identified, it was found to mean the conjunction and. It was then observed, that the next remarkable collection of characters was repeated twenty-nine or thirty times in the enchorial inscription; and nothing found to occur so often in the Greek, except the word king, which with its compounds, is repeated about thirty-seven times. A fourth assemblage of characters was found fourteen times in the enchorial inscription, agreeing sufficiently well in frequency with the name of Ptolemy, which occurs eleven times in the Greek, and generally in passages corresponding to those of the enchorial text, in their relative situation; and, by a similar comparison, the name of Egypt was identified. Having thus obtained a sufficient number of common points of subdivision, the next step was to write the Greek text over the enchorial, in such a manner that the passages ascertained should coincide as nearly as possible; taking, however, a proper care to observe that the lines of the demotic or enchorial inscription are written from right to left, while those of the Greek run in a contrary direction from left to right. At first sight this difficulty seemed very great; but it was conquered by proper attention and practice; because, after some trouble, the division of the several words and phrases plainly indicated the direction in which they were to be read. Thus it was obvious that the intermediate parts of each inscription stood then very near to the corresponding passages of the other.”
By means of the process above mentioned, Ackerblad, De Sacy, and Dr. Young, among whom a correspondence had been carried on, obtained a sort of alphabet from the enchorial characters, which might aid them in future researches. This result was published by Dr. Young in 1814. The examination of another stone at Menoup, containing an inscription in enchorial and in Greek characters, enabled Dr. Young to confirm the accuracy of former discoveries, and to add several new characters to the enchorial or demotic alphabet. Dr. Young next turned his attention to the hieroglyphics; and, though not with equal success, yet so as to demonstrate that they were phonetic or alphabetical, and to spell several proper names. The difficulty here, indeed, was how to begin; but his success opened a certain way to future progress; and it was upon Dr. Young’s discovery that Champollion afterward engrafted his system, 975and was enabled to carry his researches into Egyptian antiquities and Egyptian hieroglyphics, to an extent which is now deeply engaging the attention of the literary world.
Two practical ends appear to have been answered already by the deciphering of the mystic monuments of Egypt. The first is, that the inscriptions which have been read by Champollion, afford assistance in settling some questions of ancient chronology; the other is, that important collateral proof has been afforded of the historical accuracy of the Old Testament, and the antiquity of its books. It is presumptive in favour of the genuineness and antiquity of the writings of Moses, that such proper Egyptian names as are found in no other ancient writings beside his own, such as On, and Rameses, and Potipherah, and Asenath, should now be read in hieroglyphic characters on monuments still standing in the same country. But the confirmatory evidence goes still farther. In one inscription the names of two of the Pharaohs, Osorgon and Scheschonk, are exhibited. Of the characters which compose this legend some are phonetic, some figurative, and some symbolic. The whole reading in Coptic, is, “Ouab an Amon-re soten annenoute Osorchon pri (or pre) ce or ci an ouab an Amon-re Souten Scheschonk-re Soten Nebto, (Amonmai Osorchon,)” &c. The meaning of which is, “The pure by Amon-re, king of the gods, Osorchon deceased, son of the pure, by Amon-re, king of the gods, Scheschonk deceased, son of king of the world, (beloved by Amon-re, Osorchon,) imparting life, like the sun, for ever.” This Osorchon seems to have been the Zarah, or Zarach, the king of Ethiopia, recorded in the Second Book of Chronicles, who, with a host of a thousand thousand and three hundred chariots, came to make war against Asa, the grandson of Jeroboam, and was defeated at Mareshah. Although the Greek historians have never mentioned either the name or exploits of Osorchon, this fact is attested by an hieroglyphical manuscript, published by Denon. It is a funeral legend, loaded with figures, on and round which there are several hieroglyphical inscriptions. With respect to the other Pharaoh, Champollion, speaking of the temple of Karnac, says, “In this marvellous place I saw the portraits of most of the ancient Pharaohs, known by their great actions. They are real portraits, represented a hundred times on the basso-relievos of the outer and inner walls. Each of them has his peculiar physiognomy, different from that of his predecessors and successors. Thus, in colossal representations, the sculpture of which is lively, grand, and heroic, more perfect than can be believed in Europe, we see the Pharaoh Mandouei combating the nations hostile to Egypt, and returning triumphant to his country. Farther on, the campaigns of Rhamses Sesostris; elsewhere Sesonchis, or Shishak, dragging to the feet of the Theban Trinity, Ammon, Mouth, and Khous, the chiefs of thirty conquered nations, among which is found, written in letters at full length, the word Joudahamalek, that is, the kingdom of the Jews, or the kingdom of Judah. This is a commentary on the fourteenth chapter of the First Book of Kings, which relates the arrival of Shishak at Jerusalem, and his success there. Thus the identity between the Egyptian Sheschonk, the Sesonchis of Manetho, and the Sesac, or Schischak of the Bible, is confirmed in the most satisfactory manner.”