“O send forth wisdom, out of thy holy heavens,Even from the throne of thy glory;That being present she may labour with me,That I may know what is pleasing in thy sight!”
“O send forth wisdom, out of thy holy heavens,Even from the throne of thy glory;That being present she may labour with me,That I may know what is pleasing in thy sight!”
“O send forth wisdom, out of thy holy heavens,Even from the throne of thy glory;That being present she may labour with me,That I may know what is pleasing in thy sight!”
“O send forth wisdom, out of thy holy heavens,
Even from the throne of thy glory;
That being present she may labour with me,
That I may know what is pleasing in thy sight!”
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.
WISDOM,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,זאב, in Arabic,zeeb, Gen. xlix, 27; Isa. xi, 6; lxv, 25; Jer. v, 6; Ezek. xxii, 27; Zeph. iii, 3; Hab. i, 8; λύκος, Matt. vii, 15; x, 16; Luke x, 3; John x, 12; Acts xx, 29; Eccles. xiii, 17. M. Majus derives it from the Arabic wordzaabordaaba, “to frighten;” and hence, perhaps, the German worddieb, “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 wordmemra, which signifies “the Word,” in those places where Moses puts the name Jehovah. They say, for example, that it was theMemra, 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 drawnby 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 Λόγος Κυρίου [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 byGod 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 aperson, not anattribute, as many Socinians have said, who have, therefore, sometimes chosen to render itwisdom. 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, butwithGod, 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 thebeginning 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 Wordwas!” It is true, that ἀρχὴ, “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; hewaswhen theybeganto 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 waswithGod, and the Word was God.” What hypothesis but this goes a single step to explain this wonderful language? Arianism, which allows the preëxistence of ChristwithGod, 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.” SeeUnitarians.
WORM, the general name in Scripture for little creeping insects. Several kinds are spoken of: 1. Those that breed in putrefied bodies,רמה, Exod. xvi, 20, 24; Job vii, 5; xvii, 14; xxi, 26; xxiv, 20; xxv, 6; Isa. xiv, 11; σκώληξ, 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,סס, Isa. li, 8; σὴς, Matt. vi, 19, 20; Luke xii, 33. 3. That which, perforating the leaves and bark of trees, causes the little excrescences calledkermes, whence is made a crimson dye,תולע, 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 thepyralis vitanæ, orpyralis fasciana, of Forskal, the vine weevil, a small insect extremely hurtful to the vines.
WORMWOOD,לענה, Deut. xxix, 18; Prov. v, 4; Jer. ix, 15; xxiii, 15; Lam. iii, 15, 19; Amos v, 7; vi, 12; ἄψινθον, 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 theabsinthium 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 theabsinthiumin 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 determinatetimes 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,Rom. 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,araoraltare, 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 θρησκεύσιμοι τοπόι, [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 inbenevolence, 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 theagapæ, 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 thedistractions 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 themilites Christi[soldiers of Christ] on their post by the Christians, who compared their calling to a warfare, themilitia Christi, and they werestationes, and the days on which they took place were calleddies 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 convertedto 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 ἑυρτη τῶν ἐπιφανίων, or τῆς ἐπιφανείας τοῦ Χριϛοῦ, [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 celebratedthe 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 Christianitywas 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 Hebrewsשוטרים, 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,חרות, 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, πίναξ,לוח, 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 writingupon. 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 Latinpergamena, in English parchment, to this day, from the city Pergamus. They are sometimes denominated in Greek, μεμβράνα, 2 Tim. iv, 13. 7. Tables of lead,עפרת, Job xix, 24. 8. Tables of brass, δέλτοι χαλκαὶ. 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, calledדיו, 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 werethe 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 ofsecrecysecrecy, 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 workSur 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 liberalityto 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.