ADVERTISEMENT TO THE AMERICAN EDITION. (continued 38)

It has been observed that the religion of Thibet is the counterpart of the Roman Catholic, since the inhabitants of that country use holy water, and a singing service. They also offer alms, prayers, and sacrifices for the dead. They have a vast number of convents filled with monks and friars, amounting to thirty thousand, and confessors chosen by their superiors. They use beads, wear the mitre, like the bishops; and their delai lama is nearly the same among them as the sovereign pontiff was formerly, in the zenith of his power, among 567the Roman Catholics. So complete is the resemblance, that, when one of the first Romish missionaries penetrated Thibet, he came to the conclusion that the devil had set up there an imitation of the rites of the Catholic church, in order the more effectually to destroy the souls of men. Captain Turner, speaking of the religion of Thibet, says, It seems to be the schismatical offspring of the religion of the Hindoos, deriving its origin from one of the followers of that faith, a disciple of Bouddhu, who first broached the doctrine which now prevails over the wide extent of Tartary. It is reported to have received its earliest admission in that part of Tibet, or Thibet, bordering upon India, which from hence became the seat of the sovereign lamas, to have traversed over Mantchieux Tartary, and to have been ultimately disseminated over China and Japan. Though it differs from the Hindoo in many of its outward forms, yet it still bears a very close affinity with the religion of Brumha in many important particulars. The principal idol in the temples of Tibet, or Thibet, is Muha-Moonee, the Booddhu of Bengal, who is worshipped under these and various other epithets, throughout the great extent of Tartary, and among all nations to the eastward of the Brumhapootru. In the wide-extended space over which this faith prevails, the same object of veneration is acknowledged under numerous titles: among others, he is styled Godumu, or Gotumu, in Assam and Ava, Shumunu in Siam, Amida Buth in Japan, Fohi in China,” &c.

LAMBETH ARTICLES. See Predestination.

LAMECH, a descendant of Cain, the son of Mathusael, and father of Jabal, Jubal, Tubal-Cain, and Naamah, Gen. iv, 18–20, &c. He stands branded as the father of polygamy, the first who dared to violate the sacred command, Gen. ii, 24; giving way to his unbridled passion, and thus overleaping the divine mound raised by the wisdom of our great Creator; which restraint is enforced by the laws of nature herself, who peoples the earth with an equal number of males and females, and thereby teaches foolish man that polygamy is incompatible with her wise regulations. He married Adah and Zillah: the former was the mother of Jabal and Jubal, and the latter of Tubal-Cain and Naamah, his sister.

2. Lamech, the son of Methuselah, and father of Noah. He lived a hundred fourscore and two years before the birth of Noah, Gen. v, 25, 31; after which he lived five hundred and ninety-five years longer: thus the whole term of his life was seven hundred and seventy-seven years.

LAMENTATIONS OF JEREMIAH. This book was formerly annexed to his prophecies, though it now forms a separate book. Josephus, and several other learned men, have referred them to the death of Josiah; but the more common opinion is, that they were applicable only to some period subsequent to the destruction of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar. But though it be allowed that the Lamentations were primarily intended as a pathetic description of present calamities, yet while Jeremiah mourns the desolation of Judah and Jerusalem during the Babylonian captivity, he may be considered as prophetically painting the still greater miseries they were to suffer at some future time: this seems plainly indicated by his referring to the time when the punishmentpunishment of their iniquity shall be accomplished, and they shall no more be carried into captivity, Lam. iv, 22. The Lamentations are written in metre, and consist of a number of plaintive effusions, composed after the manner of funeral dirges. They seem to have been originally written by their author as they arose in his mind, and to have been afterward joined together as one poem. There is no regular arrangement of the subject, or disposition of the parts: the same thought is frequently repeated with different imagery, or expressed in different words. There is, however, no wild incoherency, or abrupt transition; the whole appears to have been dictated by the feelings of real grief. Tenderness and sorrow form the general character of these elegies; and an attentive reader will find great beauty in many of the images, and great energy in some of the expressions. This book of Lamentations is divided into five chapters; in the first, second, and fourth, the prophet speaks in his own person, or by an elegant and interesting personification introduces the city of Jerusalem as lamenting her calamities, and confessing her sins; in the third chapter a single Jew, speaking in the name of a chorus of his countrymen, like the Coryphæus of the Greeks, describes the punishment inflicted upon him by God, but still acknowledges his mercy, and expresses some hope of deliverance; and in the fifth chapter, the whole nation of the Jews pour forth their united complaints and supplications to almighty God.

Every chapter, with the exception of the third, contains twenty-two verses, corresponding in number with the letters of the Hebrew alphabet; and each verse commences with a different letter, the first with aleph, the second with beth, the third with gimel, &c. The third chapter, consisting of sixty-six verses, has three verses together beginning with the same letter, the following three with the next letter, &c. This peculiarity may be seen in Psalm cxix; the first eight verses in which commence with aleph, the next eight with beth, &c, till the whole alphabet has been consecutively taken. This mode of versification, which has some distant resemblance to the modern acrostic style, seems to have been employed by the Hebrews in some of their elegiac poetry, perhaps to assist the memory.

LAMP, λαμπας. There is frequent mention of lamps in Scripture, and the word is often used figuratively. The houses in the east were, from the remotest antiquity, lighted with lamps; and hence it is so common in Scripture to call every thing which enlightens the body or mind, which guides or refreshes, by the name of a lamp. These lamps were sustained by a large candlestick set upon the ground. The houses of Egypt, in modern 568times, are never without lights: they burn lamps all the night long, and in every occupied apartment. So requisite to the comfort of a family is this custom reckoned, or so imperious is the power which it exercises, that the poorest people would rather retrench part of their food than neglect it. As this custom no doubt prevailed in Egypt and the adjacent regions of Arabia and Palestine in former times, it imparts a beauty and force to some passages of Scripture which have been little observed. Thus, in the language of Jeremiah, to extinguish the light in an apartment is a convertible phrase for total destruction; and nothing can more properly and emphatically represent the total destruction of a city than the extinction of the lights: I will take from them the light of a candle, and this whole land shall be a desolation and an astonishment.” Job describes the destruction of a family among the Arabs, and the desolation of their dwellings, in the very language of the prophet: How oft is the candle of the wicked put out, and how oft cometh their destruction upon them!” Job xxi, 17. Bildad expresses the same idea in the following beautiful passage: Yea, the light of the wicked shall be put out, and the spark of his fire shall not shine. The light shall be dark in his tabernacle, and his candle shall be put out with him,” Job xviii, 5, 6. A burning lamp is, on the other hand, the chosen symbol of prosperity, a beautiful instance of which occurs in the complaint of Job: O that I were as in months past, as in the days when God preserved me; when his candle shined upon my head, and when by his light I walked through darkness,” Job xxix, 2, 3. When the ten tribes were taken from Rehoboam, and given to his rival, Jehovah promised to reserve one tribe, and assigns this reason: That David my servant may have a light always before me in Jerusalem,” 1 Kings xi, 36. In many parts of the east, and in particular in the Indies, instead of torches and flambeaux, they carry a pot of oil in one hand, and a lamp full of oily rags in the other.

LANGUAGE, the faculty of human speech, concerning the origin of which there have been entertained different opinions among philosophers and learned men. The Mosaic history, which gives us an account of the formation and first occupations of man, represents him as being immediately capable of conversing with his Maker; of giving names to the various tribes and classes of animals; and of reasoning consecutively, and in perfectly appropriate terms, concerning his own situation, and the relation he stood in to the other creatures. As in man’s first attempt at speech, according to this account, there appear no crudeness of conception, no barrenness of ideas, and no inexpressive or unappropriate terms, we must certainly infer, that God who made and endued him with corporeal and mental powers perfectly suited to his state and condition in life, endued him, also, not only with the faculty of speech, but with speech or language itself; which latter was as necessary to his comfort, and to the perfection and end of his being, as any other power or faculty which his Creator thought proper to bestow upon him.

Among the antediluvians there was but one language; and even now the indications that the various languages of the earth have had one common source are very convincing. Whether this primitive language was the same with any of the languages of which we have still any remains, has been a subject of much dispute. That the primitive language continued at least till the dispersion of mankind, consequent upon the building of Babel, there seems little reason to doubt. When, by an immediate interposition of divine power, the language of men was confounded, we are not informed to what extent this confusion of tongues prevailed. Under the article Confusion of Tongues some reasons are given to show that the primitive language was not lost at that event, but continued in the form of the Hebrew.

There are, however, other opinions on the oft disputed subject as to the primitive language. The Armenians allege, that as the ark rested in their country, Noah and his children must have remained there a considerable time, before the lower and marshy country of Chaldea could be fit to receive them; and it is therefore reasonable to suppose they left their language there, which was probably the very same that Adam spoke. Some have fancied the Greek the most ancient tongue, because of its extent and copiousness. The Teutonic, or that dialect of it which is spoken in the Lower Germany and Brabant, has found a strenuous patron in Geropius Becanus, who endeavours to derive even the Hebrew itself from that tongue. The pretensions of the Chinese to this honour have been allowed by several Europeans. The patrons of this opinion endeavour to support it, partly, by the great antiquity of the Chinese, and their having preserved themselves so many ages from any considerable mixture or intercourse with other nations. It is a notion advanced by Dr. Allix, and maintained by Mr. Whiston, with his usual tenacity and fervour, that the Chinese are the posterity of Noah, by his children born after the flood; and that Fohi, the first king of China, was Noah. As for those which are called the oriental languages, they have each their partisans. The generality of eastern writers allow the preference to the Syriac, except the Jews, who assert the antiquity of the Hebrew with the greatest warmth; and with them several Christian writers agree, particularly Chrysostom, Austin, Origen, and Jerome, among the ancients; and among the moderns, Bochart, Heidegger, Selden, and Buxtorf. The Sanscrit has also put in its claims; and some have thought that the Pali bears the character of the highest antiquity. All these are however useless speculations. The only point worth contending for is, that language was conveyed at once to the first pair in sufficient degree for intellectual intercourse with each other, and devotional 569intercourse with God; and that man was not left, as infidel writers have been pleased to say, to form it for himself out of rude and instinctive sounds. On this subject the remarks of Delaney are conclusive: “That God made man a sociable creature, does not need to be proved; and that when he made him such, he withheld nothing from him that was in any wise necessary for his well being in society, is a clear consequence from the wisdom and goodness of God; and if he withheld nothing any way necessary to his well being, much less would he withhold from him that which is the instrument of the greatest happiness a reasonable creature is capable of in this world. If the Lord God made ‘Adam a help meet for him,’ because ‘it was not good for man to be alone,’ can we imagine he would leave him unfurnished with the means to make that help useful and delightful to him? If it was not good for him to be alone, certainly neither was it good for him to have a companion to whom he could not readily communicate his thoughts, with whom he could neither ease his anxieties, nor divide or double his joys, by a kind, a friendly, a reasonable, a religious conversation; and how he could do this in any degree of perfection, or to any height of rational happiness, is utterly inconceivable without the use of speech.

“If it be said, that the human organs being admirably fitted for the formation of articulate sounds, these, with the help of reason, might in time lead men to the use of language. I own it imaginable that they might: but still, till that end were attained in perfection, which possibly might not be in a series of many generations, it must be owned that brutes were better dealt by, and could better attain all the ends of their creation. And if that be absurd to be supposed, certainly the other is not less absurd to be believed. Nay, I think it justly doubtful, whether, without inspiration from God in this point, man could ever attain the true ends of his being; at least, if we may judge in this case, by the example of those nations who, being destitute of the advantages of a perfect language, are, in all probability, from the misfortune of that sole defect, sunk into the lowest condition of barbarism and brutality. And as to the perfection in which the human organs are framed and fitted for the formation of articulate sounds, this is clearly an argument for believing that God immediately blessed man with the use of speech, and gave him wherewithal to exert those organs to their proper ends; for this is surely as credible, as that when he gave him an appetite for food, and proper organs to eat and to digest it, he did not leave him to seek painfully for a necessary supply, (till his offence had made such a search his curse and punishment,) but placed him at once in the midst of abundant plenty. The consequence from all which is, that the perfection and felicity of man, and the wisdom and goodness of God, necessarily required that Adam should be supernaturally endowed with the knowledge and use of language. And therefore, as certain as it can be, that man was made perfect and happy, and that God is wise and good; so certain is it, that, when Adam and Eve were formed, they were immediately enabled by God to converse and communicate their thoughts, in all the perfection of language necessary to all the ends of their creation. And as this was the conduct most becoming the goodness of God, so we are assured from Moses, that it was that to which his infinite wisdom determined him; for we find that Adam gave names to all the creatures before Eve was formed; and, consequently, before necessity taught him the use of speech.”

It is true that many languages bear marks of being raised to their improved state from rude and imperfect elements, and that all are capable of being enriched and rendered more exact; and it is this which has given some colour to those theories which trace all language itself up from elemental sounds, as the necessities of men, their increasing knowledge, and their imagination led to the invention of new words and combinations. All this is, however, consistent with the Scripture fact, that language was taught at first by God to our first parents. The dispersion of mankind carried many tribes to great distances, and wars still farther scattered them, and often into wide regions where they were farther dispersed to live chiefly by the chase, by fishing, or at best but an imperfect agriculture. In various degrees we know they lost useful arts; and for the same reasons they would lose much of their original language; those terms being chiefly retained which their immediate necessities, and the common affairs of a gross life, kept in use. But when civilization again overtook these portions of mankind, and kingdoms and empires were founded among them, or they became integral parts of the old empires, then their intercourse with each other becoming more rapid, and artificial, and intellectual, their language was put into a new process of improvement, and to the eye of the critic would exhibit the various stages of advancement; and in many it would be pushed beyond that perfection which it had when it first began to deteriorate. See Letters.

LANTERN. The word occurs, John xviii, 3: μετὰ φανῶν καὶ λαμπάδων: with torches and lanterns:” but both terms appear to signify torches; the former of a ruder kind than the latter, being formed of split laths bound into bundles, throwing around a strong glare of light. They came thus furnished to apprehend our Lord, lest he should escape through the darkness of the night.

LAODICEA. There were several cities of this name, but the Scripture speaks only of that in Phrygia, upon the river Lycus, near Colosse. Its ancient name was Diospolis: it was afterward called Rhoas. Lastly, Antiochus, the son of Stratonice, rebuilt it, and called it Laodicea, from the name of his wife Laodice. It became the mother church of sixteen bishoprics. Its three theatres, and the immense circus, which was capable of containing 570upward of thirty thousand spectators, the spacious remains of which (with other ruins buried under ruins) are yet to be seen, give proof of the greatness of its ancient wealth and population; and indicate too strongly that in that city where Christians were rebuked, without exception, for their lukewarmness, there were multitudes who were lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God. The amphitheatre was built after the Apocalypse was written, and the warning of the Spirit had been given to the church of the Laodiceans to be zealous and repent. There are no sights of grandeur, nor scenes of temptation around it now. Its own tragedy may be briefly told. It was lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot; and therefore it was loathsome in the sight of God. And it has been blotted from the world. It is now as desolate as its inhabitants were destitute of the fear and love of God. It is, as described in his Travels by Dr. Smith, utterly desolated, and without any inhabitant except wolves, and jackals, and foxes.” It can boast of no human inhabitants, except occasionally when wandering Turcomans pitch their tents in its spacious amphitheatre. The finest sculptured fragments are to be seen at a considerable depth, in excavations which have been made among the ruins. And Colonel Lake observes, There are few ancient cities more likely than Laodicea to preserve many curious remains of antiquity beneath the surface of the soil. Its opulence, and the earthquakes to which it was subject, render it probable that valuable works of art were often there buried beneath the ruins of the public and private edifices.”

LAPWING, דוכיפת, Levit. xi, 19; Deut. xiv, 18. The bird intended by the Hebrew name in these places is undoubtedly the hoopoe; a very beautiful, but most unclean and filthy, species of birds. The Septuagint renders it ἔποπα; and the Vulgate, upupa; which is the same with the Arabian interpreters. The Egyptian name of the bird is kukuphah; and the Syrian, kikuphah; which approach the Hebrew dukiphath. It may have its name from the noise or cry it makes, which is very remarkable, and may be heard a great way.

LATITUDINARIANS, a term applied to those divines who, in the seventeenth century, attempted to bring Episcopalians, Presbyterians, and Independents, into one communion, by compromising the differences between them. The chief leaders of this party were the great Chillingworth and John Hales; to whom may be added More, Cudworth, Gale, Tillotson, and Whitchcot. They were zealously attached to the church of England, but did not look upon episcopacy as indispensable to the constitution of the Christian church. Hence they maintained that those who adopted other forms of government and worship, were not on that account to be excluded from the communion, or to forfeit the title of brethren. They reduced the fundamental doctrines of Christianity to a few points. By this way of proceeding, they endeavoured to show that neither the Episcopalians, who, generally speaking, were then Arminians, nor the Presbyterians and Independents, who as generally adopted the doctrines of Calvin, had any reason to oppose each other with such animosity and bitterness; since the subjects of their debates were matters non-essential to salvation, and might be variously explained and understood without prejudice to their eternal interests. This plan failing, through the violence of the bishops on one hand, (though sanctioned by the Lord Chancellor Clarendon,) and by the jealousy of the more rigid on the other, the name Latitudinarian became a term of reproach, as implying an indifferency to all religions, and has been generally so used ever since.

LAVER. Between the altar and the tabernacle, a little to the south, stood a circular laver, which, together with its base, was made of the brazen ornaments which the women had presented for the use of the tabernacle, and was thence called כור נחשת, Exodus xxx, 18; xl, 7. The priests, when about to perform their duties, washed their hands in this laver.

LAW, a rule of action; a precept or command, coming from a superior authority, which an inferior is bound to obey. The manner in which God governs rational creatures is by a law, as the rule of their obedience to him, and this is what we call God’s moral government of the world. The term, however, is used in Scripture with considerable latitude of meaning; and to ascertain its precise import in any particular place, it is necessary to regard the scope and connection of the passage in which it occurs. Thus, for instance, sometimes it denotes the whole revealed will of God as communicated to us in his word. In this sense it is generally used in the book of Psalms, i, 2; xix, 7; cxix; Isaiah viii, 20; xlii, 21. Sometimes it is taken for the Mosaical institution distinguished from the Gospel, John i, 17; Matt. xi, 13; xii, 5; Acts xxv, 8. Hence we frequently read of the law of Moses as expressive of the whole religion of the Jews, Heb. ix, 19; x, 28. Sometimes, in a more restricted sense, for the ritual or ceremonial observances of the Jewish religion. In this sense the Apostle speaks of the law of commandments contained in ordinances,” Eph. ii, 15; Heb. x, 1; and which, being only a shadow of good things to come,” Christ Jesus abolished by his death, and so in effect destroyed the ancient distinction between Jew and Gentile, Gal. iii, 17. Very frequently it is used to signify the decalogue, or ten precepts which were delivered to the Israelites from Mount Sinai. It is in this acceptation of the term that the Lord Jesus declares he came not to destroy the law, but to fulfil it,” Matt. v, 17; and he explains its import as requiring perfect love to God and man, Luke x, 27. It is in reference to this view that St. Paul affirms, By the deeds of the law shall no flesh living be justified; for by the law is the knowledge of sin,” Rom. iii, 20. The language of this law is, The soul that sinneth it shall die,” and Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things that are written,” or required, in the book of the law, to do 571them,” Gal. iii, 10. To deliver man from this penalty, Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being himself made a curse for us,” Gal. iii, 13. The law, in this sense, was not given that men should obtain righteousness or justification by it, but to convince them of sin, to show them their need of a Saviour, to shut them up, as it were, from all hopes of salvation from that source, and to recommend the Gospel of divine grace to their acceptance, Gal. iii, 19–25. Again, the law often denotes the rule of good and evil, or of right and wrong, revealed by the Creator and inscribed on man’s conscience, even at his creation, and consequently binding upon him by divine authority; and in this respect it is in substance the same with the decalogue. That such a law was connate with, and, as it were, implanted in, man, appears from its traces, which, like the ruins of some noble building, are still extant in every man. It is from those common notions, handed down by tradition, though often imperfect and perverted, that the Heathens themselves distinguished right from wrong, by which they were a law unto themselves, showing the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience bearing witness,” Rom. ii, 12–15, although they had no express revelation.

The term law, is, however, eminently given to the Mosaic law; on the principles and spirit of which, a few general remarks may be offered. The right consideration of this divine institute, says Dr. Graves, will surround it with a glory of truth and holiness, not only worthy of its claims, but which has continued to be the light of the world on theological and moral subjects, and often on great political principles, to this day. If we examine the Jewish law, to discover the principle on which the whole system depends, the primary truth, to inculcate and illustrate which is its leading object, we find it to be that great basis of all religion, both natural and revealed, the self-existence, essential unity, perfections, and providence of the supreme Jehovah, the Creator of heaven and earth. The first line of the Mosaic writings inculcates this great truth: In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” When the lawgiver begins to recapitulate the statutes and judgments he had enjoined to his nation, it is with this declaration: Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord,” Deut. vi, 4; or, as it might be more closely expressed, Jehovah our Elohim, or God, is one Jehovah. And at the commencement of that sublime hymn, delivered by Moses immediately before his death, in which this illustrious prophet sums up the doctrines he had taught, the wonders by which they had been confirmed, and the denunciations by which they were enforced, he declares this great tenet with the sublimity of eastern poetry, but at the same time with the precision of philosophic truth: Give ear,” says he, O ye heavens, and I will speak: and hear, O earth, the words of my mouth. My doctrine shall drop rain: my speech shall distil as the dew, as the small rain upon the tender herb, and as the showers upon the grass,” Deut. xxxii, 1, &c. What, is that doctrine so awful, that the whole universe is thus invoked to attend to it? so salutary as to be compared with the principle whose operation diffuses beauty and fertility over the vegetable world? Hear the answer: Because I will publish the name of Jehovah; ascribe ye greatness unto our God. He is the rock, his work is perfect: a God of truth, and without iniquity, just and right is he.”

This, then, is one great leading doctrine of the Jewish code. But the manner in which this doctrine is taught displays such wise accommodation to the capacity and character of the nation to whom it is addressed, as deserves to be carefully remarked. That character by which the supreme Being is most clearly distinguished from every other, however exalted; that character from which the acutest reasoners have endeavoured demonstratively to deduce, as from their source, all the divine attributes, is self-existence. Is it not then highly remarkable, that it is under this character the Divinity is described on his first manifestation to the Jewish lawgiver? The Deity at first reveals himself unto him as the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob; and therefore the peculiar national and guardian God of the Jewish race. Moses, conscious of the degeneracy of the Israelites, their ignorance of, or their inattention to, the true God, and the difficulty and danger of any attempt to recall them to his exclusive worship, and to withdraw them from Egypt, seems to decline the task; but when absolutely commanded to undertake it, he said unto God, Behold, when I come unto the children of Israel, and shall say unto them, The God of your fathers hath sent me unto you; and they shall say to me, What is his name? what shall I say unto them? And God said unto Moses, I am that I am: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I Am hath sent me unto you,” Exod. iii, 13, 14. Here we observe, according to the constant method of the divine wisdom, when it condescends to the prejudices of men, how in the very instance of indulgence it corrects their superstition. The religion of names arose from an idolatrous polytheism; and the name given here directly opposes this error, and in the ignorance of that dark and corrupted period establishes that great truth, to which the most enlightened philosophy can add no new lustre, and on which all the most refined speculations on the divine nature ultimately rest, the self-existence, and, by consequence, the eternity and immutability, of the one great Jehovah.

But though the self-existence of the Deity was a fact too abstract to require its being frequently inculcated, his essential unity was a practical principle, the sure foundation on which to erect the structure of true religion, and form a barrier against the encroachments of idolatry: for this commenced not so frequently in denying the existence, or even the supremacy, of the one true God, as in associating with him for objects of adoration inferior intermediate beings, who were supposed to be 572more directly employed in the administration of human affairs. To confute and resist this false principle was, therefore, one great object of the Jewish scheme. Hence the unity of God is inculcated with perpetual solicitude; it stands at the head of the system of moral law promulgated to the Jews from Sinai by the divine voice, heard by the assembled nation, and issuing from the divine glory, with every circumstance which could impress the deepest awe upon even the dullest minds: I am the Lord thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage; thou shalt have no other gods beside me,” Exod. xx, 2, 3. And in the recapitulation of the divine laws in Deuteronomy, it is repeatedly enforced with the most solemn earnestness: Hear, O Israel, The Lord our God is one Lord,” Deut. vi, 4. And again: Unto thee it was showed, that thou mightest know that the Lord he is God; there is none else beside him. Know, therefore, this day, and consider it in thine heart, that the Lord he is God in heaven above, and in the earth beneath: there is none else,” Deut. iv, 35, 39.

This self-existent, supreme and only God is moreover described as possessed of every perfection which can be ascribed to the Divinity: Ye shall be holy,” says the Lord to the people of the Jews; for I the Lord your God am holy,” Lev. xix, 2. Ascribe ye,” says the legislator, greatness unto our God; he is the rock; his work is perfect; a God of truth, and without iniquity, just and right is he,” Deut. xxxii, 4. And in the hymn of thanksgiving on the miraculous escape of the Israelites at the Red Sea, this is its burden: Who is like unto thee, O Lord, among the gods? who is like unto thee, glorious in holiness, fearful in praises, doing wonders?” Exod. xv, 11. And when the Lord delivered to Moses the two tables of the moral law, he is described as descending in the cloud, and proclaiming the name of the Lord: And the Lord passed by before him, and proclaimed, The Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, long-suffering, and abundant in goodness, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty,” Exod. xxxiv, 6, 7.

But to teach the self-existence, the unity, the wisdom, and the power of the Deity, nay, even his moral perfections of mercy, justice, and truth, would have been insufficient to arrest the attention, and command the obedience of a nation, the majority of which looked no farther than mere present objects, and at that early period cherished scarcely any hopes higher than those of a temporal kind,--if, in addition to all this, care had not been taken to represent the providence of God as not only directing the government of the universe by general laws, but also perpetually superintending the conduct and determining the fortune of every nation, of every family, nay, of every individual. It was the disbelief or the neglect of this great truth which gave spirit and energy, plausibility and attraction, to the whole system of idolatry. While men believed that the supreme God and Lord of all was too exalted in his dignity, too remote from this sublunary scene, to regard its vicissitudes with an attentive eye, and too constantly engaged in the contemplation of his own perfections, and the enjoyment of his own independent and all-perfect happiness, to interfere in the regulation of human affairs, they regarded with indifference that supreme Divinity who seemed to take no concern in their conduct, and not to interfere as to their happiness. However exalted and perfect such a Being might appear to abstract speculation, he was to the generality of mankind as if he did not exist; as their happiness or misery were not supposed to be influenced by his power, they referred not their conduct to his direction. If he delegated to inferior beings the regulation of this inferior world; if all its concerns were conducted by their immediate agency, and all its blessings or calamities distributed by their immediate determination; it seemed rational, and even necessary, to supplicate their favour and submit to their authority; and neither unwise nor unsafe to neglect that Being, who, though all-perfect and supreme, would, on this supposition appear, with respect to mankind, altogether inoperative. In truth, this fact of the perpetual providence of God extending even to the minutest events, is inseparably connected with every motive which is offered to sway the conduct of the Jews, and forcibly inculcated by every event of their history. This had been manifested in the appointment of the land of Canaan for the future settlement of the chosen people on the first covenant which God entered into with the Patriarch Abraham; in the prophecy, that for four hundred years they should be afflicted in Egypt, and afterward be thence delivered; in the increase of their nation, under circumstances of extreme oppression, and their supernatural deliverance from that oppression. The same providence was displayed in the destruction of the Egyptians in the Red Sea; the travels of the thousands of Israel through the wilderness, sustained by food from heaven; and in their subsequent settlement in the promised land by means entirely distinct from their own strength. Reliance on the same providence was the foundation of their civil government, the spirit and the principle of their constitution. On this only could they be commanded to keep the sabbatic year without tilling their land, or even gathering its spontaneous produce; confiding in the promise, that God would send his blessing on the sixth year, so that it should bring forth fruit for three years, Lev. xxv, 21. The same faith in Divine Providence alone could prevail on them to leave their properties and families exposed to the attack of their surrounding enemies; while all the males of the nation assembled at Jerusalem to celebrate the three great festivals, enjoined by divine command, with the assurance that no man should desire their land when they went up to appear before the Lord their God thrice in the year, Exodus xxxiv, 24. And, finally, it is most evident, that, contrary to all 573other lawgivers, the Jewish legislator renders his civil institutions entirely subordinate to his religious; and announces to his nation that their temporal adversity or prosperity would entirely depend, not on their observance of their political regulations; not on their preserving a military spirit, or acquiring commercial wealth, or strengthening themselves by powerful alliances; but on their continuing to worship the one true God according to the religious rites and ceremonies by him prescribed, and preserving their piety and morals untainted by the corruptions and vices which idolatry tended to introduce.

Such was the theology of the Jewish religion, at a period when the whole world was deeply infected with idolatry; when all knowledge of the one true God, all reverence for his sacred name, all reliance on his providence, all obedience to his laws, were nearly banished from the earth; when the severest chastisements had been tried in vain; when no hope of reformation appeared from the refinements of civilization or the researches of philosophy; for the most civilized and enlightened nations adopted with the greatest eagerness, and disseminated with the greatest activity, the absurdities, impieties, and pollutions of idolatry. Then was the Jewish law promulgated to a nation, who, to mere human judgment, might have appeared incapable of inventing or receiving such a high degree of intellectual and moral improvement; for they had been long enslaved to the Egyptians, the authors and supporters of the grossest idolatry; they had been weighed down by the severest bondage, perpetually harassed by the most incessant manual labours; for the Egyptians made their lives bitter with hard bondage, in mortar, and in brick, and in all manner of service in the field,” Exod. i, 14. At this time, and in this nation, was the Mosaic law promulgated, teaching the great principles of true religion, the self-existence, the unity, the perfections, and the providence of the one great Jehovah; reprobating all false gods, all image worship, all the absurdities and profanations of idolatry. At this time, and in this nation, was a system of government framed, which had for its basis the reception of, and steady adherence to, this system of true religion; and establishing many regulations, which would be in the highest degree irrational, and could never hope to be received, except from a general and thorough reliance on the superintendence of Divine Providence, controlling the course of nature, and directing every event, so as to proportion the prosperity of the Hebrew people, according to their obedience to that law which they had received as divine.

It is an obvious, but it is not therefore a less important remark, that to the Jewish religion we owe that admirable summary of moral duty, contained in the ten commandments. All fair reasoners will admit that each of these must be understood to condemn, not merely the extreme crime which it expressly prohibits, but every inferior offence of the same kind, and every mode of conduct leading to such transgression; and, on the contrary, to enjoin opposite conduct, and the cultivation of opposite dispositions. Thus, the command, Thou shalt not kill,” condemns not merely the single crime of deliberate murder, but every kind of violence, and every indulgence of passion and resentment, which tends either to excite such violence, or to produce that malignant disposition of mind, in which the guilt of murder principally consists: and similarly of the rest. In this extensive interpretation of the commandments, we are warranted, not merely by the deductions of reason, but by the letter of the law itself. For the addition of the last, Thou shalt not covet,” proves clearly that in all, the dispositions of the heart, as much as the immediate outward act, is the object of the divine Legislator; and thus it forms a comment on the meaning, as well as a guard for the observance, of all the preceding commands. Interpreted in this natural and rational latitude, how comprehensive and important is this summary of moral duty! It inculcates the adoration of the one true God, who made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is;” who must, therefore, be infinite in power, and wisdom, and goodness; the object of exclusive adoration; of gratitude for every blessing we enjoy; of fear, for he is a jealous God; of hope, for he is merciful. It prohibits every species of idolatry; whether by associating false gods with the true, or worshipping the true by symbols and images. Commanding not to take the name of God in vain, it enjoins the observance of all outward respect for the divine authority, as well as the cultivation of inward sentiments and feelings suited to this outward reverence; and it establishes the obligation of oaths, and, by consequence, of all compacts and deliberate promises; a principle, without which the administration of laws would be impracticable, and the bonds of society must be dissolved. By commanding to keep holy the Sabbath, as the memorial of the creation, it establishes the necessity of public worship, and of a stated and outward profession of the truths of religion, as well as of the cultivation of suitable feelings; and it enforces this by a motive which is equally applicable to all mankind, and which should have taught the Jew that he ought to consider all nations as equally creatures of that Jehovah whom he himself adored; equally subject to his government, and, if sincerely obedient, entitled to all the privileges his favour could bestow. It is also remarkable, that this commandment, requiring that the rest of the Sabbath should include the man-servant, and the maid-servant, and the stranger that was within their gates, nay, even their cattle, proved that the Creator of the universe extended his attention to all his creatures; that the humblest of mankind were the objects of his paternal love; that no accidental differences, which so often create alienation among different nations, would alienate any from the divine regard; and that even the brute creation shared the benevolence of their Creator, and ought to be treated by men with gentleness and humanity.

574When we proceed to the second table, comprehending more expressly our social duties, we find all the most important principles on which they depend clearly enforced. The commandment which enjoins, Honour thy father and mother,” sanctions the principles, not merely of filial obedience, but of all those duties which arise from our domestic relations; and, while it requires not so much any one specific act, as the general disposition which should regulate our whole course of conduct in this instance, it impresses the important conviction, that the entire law proceeds from a Legislator able to search and judge the heart of man. The subsequent commands coincide with the clear dictates of reason, and prohibit crimes which human laws in general have prohibited as plainly destructive of social happiness. But it was of infinite importance to rest the prohibitions, Thou shalt not kill,” Thou shalt not commit adultery,” Thou shalt not steal,” Thou shalt not bear false witness,” not merely on the deductions of reason, but also on the weight of a divine authority. How often have false ideas of public good in some places, depraved passions in others, and the delusions of idolatry in still more, established a law of reputation contrary to the dictates of reason, and the real interests of society. In one country we see theft allowed, if perpetrated with address; in others, piracy and rapine honoured, if conducted with intrepidity. Sometimes we perceive adultery permitted, the most unnatural crimes committed without remorse or shame; nay, every species of impurity enjoined and consecrated as a part of divine worship. In others, we find revenge honoured as spirit, and death inflicted at its impulse with ferocious triumph. Again, we see every feeling of nature outraged, and parents exposing their helpless children to perish for deformity of body or weakness of mind; or, what is still more dreadful, from mercenary or political views; and this inhuman practice familiarized by custom, and authorized by law. And, to close the horrid catalogue, we see false religions leading their deluded votaries to heap the altars of their idols with human victims; the master butchers his slave, the conqueror his captive; nay, dreadful to relate, the parent sacrifices his children, and, while they shriek amidst the tortures of the flames, or in the agonies of death, he drowns their cries by the clangour of cymbals and the yells of fanaticism. Yet these abominations, separate or combined, have disgraced ages and nations which we are accustomed to admire and celebrate as civilized and enlightened,--Babylon and Egypt, Phenicia and Carthage, Greece and Rome. Many of these crimes legislators have enjoined, or philosophers defended. What, indeed, could be hoped from legislators and philosophers, when we recollect the institutions of Lycurgus, especially as to purity of manners, and the regulations of Plato on the same subject, in his model of a perfect republic; when we consider the sensuality of the Epicureans, and immodesty of the Cynics; when we find suicide applauded by the Stoics, and the murderous combats of gladiators defended by Cicero, and exhibited by Trajan? Such variation and inconstancy in the rule and practice of moral duty, as established by the feeble or fluctuating authority of human opinion, demonstrates the utility of a clear divine interposition, to impress these important prohibitions; and it is difficult for any sagacity to calculate how far such an interposition was necessary, and what effect it may have produced by influencing human opinions and regulating human conduct, when we recollect that the Mosaic code was probably the first written law ever delivered to any nation; and that it must have been generally known in those eastern countries, from which the most ancient and celebrated legislators and sages derived the models of their laws and the principles of their philosophy.

But the Jewish religion promoted the interests of moral virtue, not merely by the positive injunctions of the decalogue; it also inculcated clearly and authoritatively the two great principles on which all piety and virtue depend, and which our blessed Lord recognised as the commandments on which hang the law and the prophets,--the principles of love to God and love to our neighbour. The love of God is every where enjoined in the Mosaic law, as the ruling disposition of the heart, from which all obedience should spring, and in which it ought to terminate. With what solemnity does the Jewish lawgiver impress it at the commencement of his recapitulation of the divine law: Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God is one Lord: And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might,” Deut. vi, 4, 5. And again: And now, Israel, what doth the Lord thy God require of thee, but to fear the Lord thy God, to walk in all his ways, and to love him, and to serve the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul?” Deut. x, 12. Nor is the love of our neighbour less explicitly enforced: Thou shalt not,” says the law, avenge, nor bear any grudge against the children of thy people, but thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself: I am the Lord,” Lev. xix, 18. The operation of this benevolence, thus solemnly required, was not to be confined to their own countrymen; it was to extend to the stranger, who, having renounced idolatry, was permitted to live among them, worshipping the true God, though without submitting to circumcision or the other ceremonial parts of the Mosaic law: If a stranger,” says the law, sojourn with thee in your land, ye shall not vex him. But the stranger that dwelleth with you shall be unto you as one born among you, and thou shalt love him as thyself; for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord thy God,” Lev. xix, 33, 34.

Thus, on a review of the topics we have discussed, it appears that the Jewish law promulgated the great principles of moral duty in the decalogue, with a solemnity suited to their high preëminence; that it enjoined love to God with the most unceasing solicitude, and love 575to our neighbour, as extensively and forcibly, as the peculiar design of the Jewish economy, and the peculiar character of the Jewish people, would permit; that it impressed the deepest conviction of God’s requiring, not mere external observances, but heart-felt piety, well regulated desires, and active benevolence; that it taught sacrifice could not obtain pardon without repentance, or repentance without reformation and restitution; that it described circumcision itself, and, by consequence, every other legal rite, as designed to typify and inculcate internal holiness, which alone could render men acceptable to God; that it represented the love of God as designed to act as a practical principle, stimulating to the constant and sincere cultivation of purity, mercy, and truth; and that it enforced all these principles and precepts by sanctions the most likely to operate powerfully on minds unaccustomed to abstract speculations and remote views, even by temporal rewards and punishments; the assurance of which was confirmed from the immediate experience of similar rewards and punishments, dispensed to their enemies and to themselves by that supernatural Power which had delivered the Hebrew nation out of Egypt, conducted them through the wilderness, planted them in the land of Canaan, regulated their government, distributed their possessions, and to which alone they could look to obtain new blessings, or secure those already enjoyed. From all this we derive another presumptive argument for the divine authority of the Mosaic code; and it may be contended, that a moral system thus perfect, promulgated at so early a period, to such a people, and enforced by such sanctions as no human power could undertake to execute, strongly bespeaks a divine original.

2. The moral law is sometimes called the Mosaic law, because it was one great branch of those injunctions which, under divine authority, Moses enjoined upon the Israelites when they were gathered into a political community under the theocracy. But it existed previously as the law of all mankind; and it has been taken up into the Christian system, and there more fully illustrated. As the obligation of the moral law upon Christians has, however, been disputed by some perverters of the Christian faith, or held by others on loose and fallacious grounds, this subject ought to be clearly understood. It is, nevertheless, to be noticed, that the morals of the New Testament are not proposed to us in the form of a regular code. Even in the books of Moses, which have the legislative form to a great extent, not all the principles and duties which constituted the full character of godliness,” under that dispensation, are made the subjects of formal injunction by particular precepts. They are partly infolded in general principles, or often take the form of injunction in an apparently incidental manner, or are matters of obvious inference. A preceding code of traditionary moral law is all along supposed in the writings of Moses and the prophets, as well as a consuetudinary ritual and a doctrinal theology, both transmitted from the patriarchs. This, too, is eminently the case with Christianity. It supposes that all who believed in Christ admitted the divine authority of the Old Testament; and it assumes the perpetual authority of its morals, as well as the truth of its fundamental theology. The constant allusions in the New Testament to the moral rules of the Jews and patriarchs, either expressly as precepts, or as the data of argument, sufficiently guard us against the notion, that what has not in so many words been re-enacted] by Christ and his Apostles is of no authority among Christians. In a great number of instances, however, the form of injunction is directly preceptive, so as to have all the explicitness and force of a regular code of law, and is, as much as a regular code could be, a declaration of the sovereign will of Christ, enforced by the sanctions of eternal life and death. This, however, is a point on which a few confirmatory observations may be usefully adduced. No part of the preceding dispensation, designated generally by the appellation of the law,” is repealed in the New Testament, but what is obviously ceremonial, typical, and incapable of coëxisting with Christianity. Our Lord, in his discourse with the Samaritan woman, declares, that the hour of the abolition of the temple worship was come; the Apostle Paul, in the Epistle to the Hebrews, teaches us that the Levitical services were but shadows, the substance and end of which is Christ; and the ancient visible church, as constituted upon the ground of natural descent from Abraham, was abolished by the establishment of a spiritual body of believers to take its place. No precepts of a purely political nature, that is, which respect the civil subjection of the Jews to their theocracy, are, therefore, of any force to us as laws, although they may have, in many cases, the greatest authority as principles. No ceremonial precepts can be binding, since they were restrained to a period terminating with the death and resurrection of Christ; nor are even the patriarchal rites of circumcision and the passover obligatory upon Christians, since we have sufficient evidence that they were of an adumbrative character, and were laid aside by the first inspired teachers of Christianity.

With the moral precepts which abound in the Old Testament the case is very different, as sufficiently appears from the different, and even contrary, manner in which they are always spoken of by Christ and his Apostles. When our Lord, in his sermon on the mount, says, Think not that I am come to destroy the law or the prophets; I am not come to destroy the law, but to fulfil;” that is, to confirm or establish it; the entire scope of his discourse shows that he is speaking exclusively of the moral precepts of the law,” eminently so called, and of the moral injunctions of the prophets founded upon them, and to which he thus gives an equal authority. And in so solemn a manner does he enforce this, that he adds, doubtless as foreseeing that attempts would be made by deceiving or deceived men 576professing his religion, to lessen the authority of the moral law, Whosoever, therefore, shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven;” that is, as St. Chrysostom interprets, He shall be the farthest from attaining heaven and happiness, which imports that he shall not attain it at all.” In like manner St. Paul, after having strenuously maintained the doctrine of justification by faith alone, anticipates an objection by asking, Do we then make void the law through faith?” and subjoins, God forbid: yea, we establish the law;” meaning by the law,” as the context and his argument clearly show, the moral and not the ceremonial law.

After such declarations, it is worse than trifling for any to contend that, in order to establish the authority of the moral law of the Jews over Christians, it ought to have been formally reënacted. To this we may, however, farther reply, not only that many important moral principles and rules found in the Old Testament were never formally enacted among the Jews; were traditional from an earlier age; and received at different times the more indirect authority of inspired recognition; but, to put the matter in a stronger light, that all the leading moral precepts of the Jewish Scriptures are, in point of fact, proposed in the New Testament in a manner which has the full force of formal reënactment, as the laws of the Christian church. This argument, from the want of formal reënactment, will therefore have no weight. The summary of the law and the prophets, which is to love God with all our heart, and to serve him with all our strength, and to love our neighbour as ourselves, is unquestionably enjoined, and even reënacted by the Christian lawgiver. When our Lord is explicitly asked by one who came unto him and said, Good Master, what good thing shall I do, that I may have eternal life?” the answer given shows that the moral law contained in the decalogue is so in force under the Christian dispensation, that obedience to it is necessary to final salvation:--“If thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments.” And that nothing ceremonial is intended by this term, is manifest from what follows: He saith unto him, Which? Jesus said, Thou shalt do no murder. Thou shalt not commit adultery. Thou shalt not steal,” &c. Matt. xix, 17–19. Here, also, we have all the force of a formal reënactment of the decalogue, a part of it being evidently put for the whole. Nor were it difficult to produce passages from the discourses of Christ and the writings of the Apostles, which enjoin all the precepts of this law taken separately, by their authority, as indispensable parts of Christian duty, and that, too, under their original sanctions of life and death; so that the two circumstances which form the true character of a law in its highest sense, divine authority and penal sanctions, are found as truly in the New Testament as in the Old. It will not, for instance, be contended, that the New Testament does not enjoin the acknowledgment and worship of one God alone; nor that it does not prohibit idolatry; nor that it does not level its maledictions against false and profane swearing; nor that the Apostle Paul does not use the very words of the fifth commandment preceptively, when he says, Honour thy father and mother, which is the first commandment with promise,” Eph. vi, 2; nor that murder, adultery, theft, false witness, and covetousness are not all prohibited under pain of exclusion from the kingdom of God. Thus, then, we have the whole decalogue brought into the Christian code of morals, by a distinct injunction of its separate precepts, and by their recognition as of permanent and unchangeable obligation; the fourth commandment, respecting the Sabbath only, being so far excepted, that its injunction is not so expressly marked. This, however, is no exception in fact; for beside that its original place in the two tables sufficiently distinguishes it from all positive, ceremonial, and typical precepts, and gives it a moral character, in respect to its ends, which are, first, mercy to servants and cattle, and, second, the worship of almighty God, undisturbed by worldly interruptions and cares, it is necessarily included in that law” which our Lord declares he came not to destroy, or abrogate; in that law” which St. Paul declares to be established by faith,” and among those commandments” which our Lord declares must be kept,” if any one would enter into life.” To this, also, the practice of the Apostles is to be added, who did not cease themselves from keeping one day in seven holy, nor teach others so to do; but gave to “the Lord’s day” that eminence and sanctity in the Christian church which the seventh day had in the Jewish, by consecrating it to holy uses; an alteration not affecting the precept at all, except in an unessential circumstance, (if indeed in that,) and in which we may suppose them to have acted under divine suggestion.

Thus, then, we have the obligation of the whole decalogue as fully established in the New Testament as in the Old, as if it had been formally reënacted; and that no formal reënactment of it took place, is itself a presumptive proof that it was never regarded by the lawgiver as temporary, which the formality of republication might have supposed. It is important to remark, however, that, although the moral laws of the Mosaic dispensation pass into the Christian code, they stand there in other and higher circumstances; so that the New Testament is a more perfect dispensation of the knowledge of the moral will of God than the Old. In particular, (1.) They are more expressly extended to the heart, as by our Lord, in his sermon on the mount; who teaches us that the thought and inward purpose of any offence is a violation of the law prohibiting its external and visible commission. (2.) The principles on which they are founded are carried out in the New Testament into a greater variety of duties, which, by embracing more perfectly the social 577and civil relations of life, are of a more universal character. (3.) There is a much more enlarged injunction of positive and particular virtues, especially those which constitute the Christian temper. (4.) By all overt acts being inseparably connected with corresponding principles in the heart, in order to constitute acceptable obedience, which principles suppose the regeneration of the soul by the Holy Ghost. This moral renovation is, therefore, held out as necessary to our salvation, and promised as a part of the grace of our redemption by Christ. (5.) By being connected with promises of divine assistance, which is peculiar to a law connected with evangelical provisions. (6.) By their having a living illustration in the perfect and practical example of Christ. (7.) By the higher sanctions derived from the clearer revelation of a future state, and the more explicit promises of eternal life, and threatenings of eternal punishment. It follows from this, that we have in the Gospel the most complete and perfect revelation of moral law ever given to men; and a more exact manifestation of the brightness, perfection, and glory of that law, under which angels and our progenitors in paradise were placed, and which it is at once the delight and the interest of the most perfect and happy beings to obey.

LAZARUS, brother to Martha and Mary. He dwelt at Bethany with his sisters, near Jerusalem; and the Lord Jesus did him the honour sometimes of lodging at his house when he visited the city. See the account of his resurrection related at large in John xi, 5, &c.

LEAD, עפרתעפרת, Exod. xv, 10; Num. xxxi, 22; Job xix, 24; Jer. vi, 29; Ezek. xxii, 18; xxvii, 12; Zech. v, 7, 8; a mineral of a bluish white colour. It is the softest next to gold, but has no great tenacity, and is not in the least sonorous. It is mentioned with five other species of metal, Num. xxxi, 22; and there is no doubt but that this is the meaning of the word; so the Septuagint render it throughout, μόλιϐδος or μόλιϐος.

LEAVEN. The Hebrews were forbidden by the law to eat leavened bread, or a food with leaven in it, during the seven days of the passover, Exod. xii, 15–19; Lev. ii, 11. They were very careful in purifying their houses from all leaven before this feast began. God forbad either leaven or honey to be offered to him in his temple; that is, in cakes or in any baked meats. But on other occasions they might offer leavened bread or honey. St. Paul, 1 Cor. v, 7, 8, expresses his desire that the faithful should celebrate the Christian passover with unleavened bread; which, figuratively, signifies sincerity and truth. In this he teaches us two things; first, that the law which obliged the Jews to a literal observance of the passover is no longer in force; and, secondly, that by unleavened bread, truth and purity of heart were denoted. The same Apostle alludes to the ceremony used at the passover, when he says, A little leaven leaveneth the whole lump;” that is, a small portion of leaven, in a quantity of bread or paste, corrupts the whole, and renders it unclean. Our Saviour, in the Gospel, Matthew xvi, 11, warns his Apostles to beware of the leaven of the Herodians and Pharisees; meaning their doctrines.

LEBANON, or LIBANUS, signifying white, from its snows,--the most elevated mountain or mountain chain in Syria, celebrated in all ages for its cedars; which, as is well known, furnished the wood for Solomon’s temple. This mountain is the centre, or nucleus, of all the mountain ridges which, from the north, the south, and the east, converge toward this point; but it overtops them all. This configuration of the mountains, and the superiority of Lebanon, are particularly striking to the traveller approaching both from the Mediterranean on the west, and the desert on the east. On either side, he first discovers, at a great distance, a clouded ridge, stretching from north to south, as far as the eye can see; the central summits of which are capped with clouds, or tipped with snow. This is Lebanon, which is often referred to in Holy Writ for its streams, its timber, and its wines; and at the present day the seat of the only portion of freedom of which Syria can boast.

The altitude of Lebanon is so considerable, that it appears from the reports of travellers to have snow on its highest eminences all the year round. Volney says, that it thus remains toward the north-east, where it is sheltered from the sea winds and the rays of the sun. Maundrell found that part of the mountain which he crossed, and which in all probability was by no means the highest, covered with deep snow in the month of May. Dr. E. D. Clarke, in the month of July, saw some of the eastern summits of Lebanon, or Anti-Libanus, near Damascus, covered with snow, not lying in patches, as is common in the summer season with mountains which border on the line of perpetual congelation, but do not quite reach it, but with that perfect white, smooth, and velvetlike appearance, which snow only exhibits when it is very deep,--a striking spectacle in such a climate, where the beholder, seeking protection from a burning sun, almost considers the firmament to be on fire. At the time this observation was made, the thermometer, in an elevated situation near the sea of Tiberias, stood at 102½° in the shade. Sir Frederic Henniker passed over snow in July; and Ali Bey describes the same eastern ridge as covered with snow in September. Of the noble cedars which once adorned the upper parts of this mountain but few now remain, and those much decayed. Burckhardt, who crossed Mount Libanus in 1810, counted about thirty-six large ones, fifty of middle size, and about three hundred smaller and young ones: but more might exist in other parts of the mountain. The wine, especially that made about the convent of Canobin, still preserves its ancient celebrity; and is reported by travellers, more particularly by Rauwolff, Le Bruyn, and De la Roque, to be of the most exquisite kind for flavour and fragrance. The rains which fall in the lower regions of Lebanon, and the melting of the 578snow in the upper ones, furnish an abundance of perennial streams, which are alluded to by Solomon, Cant. iv, 15. On the declivities of the mountain grew the vines which furnished the rich and fragrant wine which Hosea celebrated, xiv, 7, and which may still be obtained by proper culture.

The cedar of Lebanon has, in all ages, been reckoned as an object of unrivalled grandeur and beauty in the vegetable kingdom. It is, accordingly, one of the natural images which frequently occur in the poetical style of the Hebrew prophets; and is appropriated to denote kings, princes, and potentates of the highest rank. Thus, the Prophet Isaiah, whose writings abound with metaphors and allegories of this kind, in denouncing the judgments of God upon the proud and arrogant, declares that the day of the Lord of Hosts shall be upon all the cedars of Lebanon that are high and lifted up, and upon all the oaks of Bashan,” Isaiah ii, 13. The king of Israel used the same figure in his reply to the challenge of the king of Judah: The thistle that was in Lebanon sent to the cedar that was in Lebanon, saying, Give thy daughter to my son to wife: and there passed by a wild beast that was in Lebanon, and trod down the thistle,” 2 Kings xiv, 9. The spiritual prosperity of the righteous man is compared by the Psalmist to the same noble plant: The righteous shall flourish as the palm tree; he shall grow as the cedar in Lebanon.” To break the cedars, and shake the enormous mass on which they grow, are the figures that David selects to express the awful majesty and power of Jehovah: The voice of the Lord is powerful; the voice of the Lord is full of majesty. The voice of the Lord breaketh the cedars: yea, the Lord breaketh the cedars of Lebanon. He maketh them also to skip like a calf; Lebanon and Sirion like a young unicorn,” Psalm xxix, 4–6. This description of the divine majesty and power possesses a character of awful sublimity.

The stupendous size, the extensive range, and great elevation of Libanus; its towering summits capped with perpetual snow, or crowned with fragrant cedars; its olive plantations; its vineyards, producing the most delicious wines; its clear fountains, and cold-flowing brooks; its fertile vales, and odoriferous shrubberies,--combine to form in Scripture language, the glory of Lebanon.” But that glory, liable to change, has, by the unanimous consent of modern travellers, suffered a sensible decline. The extensive forests of cedar, which adorned and perfumed the summits and declivities of those mountains, have almost disappeared. Only a small number of these trees of God, planted by his almighty hand,” which, according to the usual import of the phrase, signally displayed the divine power, wisdom, and goodness, now remain. Their countless number in the days of Solomon, and their prodigious bulk, must be recollected, in order to feel the force of that sublime declaration of the prophet: Lebanon is not sufficient to burn, nor the beasts thereof sufficient for a burnt-offering,” Isaiah xl, 16. Though the trembling sinner were to make choice of Lebanon for the altar; were to cut down all its forests to form the pile; though the fragrance of this fuel, with all its odoriferous gums, were the incense; the wine of Lebanon pressed from all its vineyards, the libation; and all its beasts, the propitiatory sacrifice; all would prove insufficient to make atonement for the sins of men; would be regarded as nothing in the eyes of the supreme Judge for the expiation of even one transgression. The just and holy law of God requires a nobler altar, a costlier sacrifice, and a sweeter perfume,--the obedience and death of a divine Person to atone for our sins, and the incense of his continual intercession to secure our acceptance with the Father of mercies, and admission into the mansions of eternal rest. The conversion of the Gentile nations from the worship of idols and the bondage of corruption, to the service and enjoyment of the true God, is foretold in these beautiful and striking terms: The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad for them: and the desert shall rejoice, and blossom as the rose. It shall blossom abundantly, and rejoice even with joy and singing; the glory of Lebanon shall be given unto it, the excellency of Carmel and Sharon: they shall see the glory of the Lord, and the excellency of our God,” Isaiah xxxv, 4.

LEEK, חציר, in Numbers xi, 5, translated leek;” in 1 Kings xviii, 5; 2 Kings xix, 26; Job xl, 15; Psalm xxxvii, 2; xc, 5; ciii, 15; civ, 14; cxxix, 6; cxlvii, 8; Isaiah xxxv, 7; xxxvii, 27; xl, 6, it is rendered grass;” in Job viii, 12, herb;” in Prov. xxvii, 25; Isaiah xv, 6, hay;” and in Isaiah xxxiv, 13, a court.” It is much of the same nature with the onion. The kind called karrat by the Arabians, the allium porrum of Linnæus, Hasselquist says, must certainly have been one of those desired by the children of Israel, as it has been cultivated and esteemed from the earliest times to the present in Egypt. The inhabitants are very fond of eating it raw, as sauce for their roasted meat; and the poor people eat it raw with their bread, especially for breakfast. There is reason, however, to doubt whether this plant is intended in Num. xi, 5, and so differently rendered every where else: it should rather intend such vegetables as grow promiscuously with grass. Ludolphus supposes that it may mean lettuce and sallads in general; and Maillet observes, that the succory and endive are eaten with great relish by the people in Egypt: some or all of these may be meant.

LEGION. The Roman legions were composed each of ten cohorts; a cohort, of fifty maniples; a maniple, of fifteen men; consequently, a full legion contained six thousand soldiers. Jesus cured one who called himself legion,” as if possessed by a legion of devils, Mark v, 9. He also said to Peter, who drew his sword to defend him in the olive garden: Thinkest thou that I cannot now pray to my Father, who shall presently give me 579more than twelve legions of angels?” Matt. xxvi, 53.

LEMUEL. See Agur.

LENTIL, עדשים, Gen. xxv, 34; 2 Sam. xvii, 28; xxiii, 11; Ezek. iv, 9, a sort of pulse; in the Septuagint φακὸς, and Vulgate lens. The lentils of Egypt were very much esteemed among the ancients. St. Austin says, they grow abundantly in Egypt, are much used as a food there, and those of Alexandria are considered particularly valuable. Dr. Shaw says, beans, lentils, kidney beans, and garvancos are the chief of their pulse kind. Beans, when boiled and stewed with oil and garlic, are the principal food of persons of all distinctions. Lentils are dressed in the same manner as beans, dissolving easily into a mass, and making a pottage of a chocolate colour. This, we find, was the red pottage” which Esau, from thence called Edom, exchanged for his birthright.

LEOPARD, נמר, Cant. iv, 8; Isaiah xi, 6; Jer. v, 6; xiii, 23; Hosea xiii, 7; Hab. i, 8; Dan. vii, 6; ϖάρδαλις, Rev. xiii, 2; Ecclus. xxviii, 23. There can be no doubt that the pard or leopard is the animal mentioned. Bochart shows that the name is similar in the Chaldee, Syriac, Arabic, and Ethiopic. The LXX uniformly render it by ϖάρδαλις; and Jerom, pardus. Probably, these animals were numerous in Palestine; as we find places with a name intimating their having been the haunts of leopards: Nimrah, Num. xxxii, 3; Beth-Nimrah, Num. xxxii, 36; Joshua xiii, 27; and waters of Nimrim,” Isa. xv, 6; Jer. xlviii, 34; and mountains of leopards,” Cant. iv, 8. Nimrod might have his name from this animal: He was a mighty hunter before the Lord; wherefore it is said, Even as Nimrod the mighty hunter before the Lord,” Gen. x, 9. It is supposed, however, that his predations were not confined to the brute creation. Dr. Geddes remarks, that the word hunter” expresses too little. He was a freebooter, in the worst sense of the word; a lawless despot:

Proud Nimrod first the bloody chase began,

A mighty hunter, and his prey was man.

Isaiah, describing the happy state of the reign of Messiah, says, The leopard shall lie down with the kid,” Isaiah xi, 6. Even animals shall lose their fierceness and cruelty, and become gentle and tame. Jeremiah, v, 6, mentions the artful ambuscades of this animal; and in xiii, 23, alludes to his spots: Can a Cushite change his skin; or a leopard his spots? Then may ye prevail with them to do good who are habituated to do evil;” and Habakkuk, i, 8, refers to its alertness.

LEPROSY. See Diseases.

LETTERS, marks for the purpose of expressing sounds, used in writing. Few subjects have given rise to more discussion than the origin of alphabetic characters. If they are of human invention, they must be considered as one of the most admirable efforts of the ingenuity of man. So wonderful is the facility which they afford for recording human thought; so ingenious, and at the same time so simple, is the analysis which they furnish for the sounds of articulate speech, and for all the possible variety of words; that we might expect the author of this happy invention to have been immortalized by the grateful homage of succeeding ages, and his name delivered down to posterity with the ample honours it so justly merited. But the author and the era of this discovery, if such it be, are both lost in the darkness of remote antiquity. Even the nation to which the invention is due cannot now be ascertained. The Egyptians, the Assyrians, the Phenicians, the Persians, the Indians, have all laid claim to the honour of it; and each has named its inventor among the remote, and probably fabulous, personages that figure in the earlier ages of their history. In consequence of this uncertainty respecting the author of alphabetic writing, and the high value and extreme difficulty of the invention itself, many have been inclined to attribute this art to an immediate revelation from the Deity; contending that it was communicated with other invaluable gifts from above, in remote ages, to the descendants of Abraham, and probably to the Patriarch Moses, who was the author of the most ancient compositions in alphabetical writing that we at present possess. The arguments which are brought in support of the divine revelation of the alphabet, are chiefly these: 1. The high antiquity of the use of letters; the Hebrew characters having existed in a perfect state when Moses composed the Pentateuch, the most ancient writing now known to be extant. 2. The similarity between the various alphabets of different nations, which, for the most part, are the same, in the order, power, and even form, of their letters with the Hebrew. 3. The complete want of alphabetic characters among those nations, which have been cut off from all communication with the ancient civilized world, as the aboriginal Americans; or that part of the human race which had no opportunity of borrowing the system of written characters revealed to the Hebrews, as China.

Had man been left to himself, the first and most natural way of making his thoughts visible to the eye would be by pictorial representations. The second step would, for convenience’ sake, be to invent an abbreviated form of these pictures, sufficiently legible to call to mind the original picture in full, and yet so reduced and intermixed with a few easily remembered arbitrary characters, or symbols, as to be more extensively useful. The next and most difficult step would be the alphabet so formed as to express all the sounds of the language, by convenient combination. The Egyptian monuments show specimens of each; the hieroglyph, the mixed and abbreviated, and the alphabetical. The magnificent ruins of Persepolis, the capital of ancient Persia, exhibit also the pure pictorial style, and tablets of abbreviated emblems. The characters on the bricks dug up from the ruins of ancient Babylon have characters, which are supposed to be, not alphabetic, but abbreviated symbols, and therefore suppose the existence of the larger picture writing, whether the people 580possessed a proper alphabet or not. All the savage tribes of America had their picture writings, and this style was carried to great perfection by the Mexicans. The latter had, likewise, abbreviated marks, which were used as symbols; and thus made an approach to letters, although they never reached this discovery. It is a curious fact, that in our day a Cherokee chief has actually invented an alphabet, and that in the process he commenced with a pictorial representation of animals which uttered sounds somewhat like those of his own tongue; which thought seems not to have entered into the picture writing of the ancients, whose delineations spoke wholly to the eye, and not at all to the ear. Finding this method imperfect and cumbersome, he at last hit upon the expedient of arbitrary characters, which he gradually reduced in number, and so perfected, that, with a few European improvements, books are now printed in them for the use of his nation. In China the language is a complete system of abbreviated pictures, emblems, or symbols; and there is no proper alphabet to this day.

These facts are urged as direct proofs or strong presumptions that all alphabetical characters have been preceded by picture or imitative characters; and that as the whole is within the compass of human ingenuity, the notion of a divine suggestion of letters, or of the important art of alphabetical writing, is bringing in the divine agency without necessity. But the assumption that alphabets have in all cases been formed through this process, is wholly hypothetic. Certain it is that we can prove from the Scriptures that literal writing was in use at an earlier period than can be assigned to any picture writing whatever. Writing and reading were familiar to Moses and the Israelites when the law was given, and must have long previously existed among them, and, probably, among the Egyptians of the same age too; which is much earlier than any of those monuments bearing hieroglyphical characters reach. We have given sufficient reason to conclude that Job lived at an earlier period still, and as he expresses a wish that his words should be written in a book, and engraven on the rock, the knowledge of reading as well as writing must have been pretty general in his country, or the book and the inscription could not have been a testimony of his faith and hope to his countrymen, as he passionately desired it to be. Here, too, it is to be observed, that in the early Mosaic history we have not the least intimation of writing by pictures or symbols, nor any that the art of writing had been revealed from heaven in the days of Moses, preparatory to the giving of a written law and the introduction of inspired books for the religious instruction of the people. We must trace it up higher; though whether of divine revelation, or human invention, cannot certainly be determined. Its importance was assuredly worthy of the former; and if this was not done by particular revelation, doubtless we may reasonably and piously ascribe it to a divine suggestion.

It may, indeed, be asked, How then is it that in other nations we can so accurately trace the progress from the picture to the symbol, and thence on to the alphabet; as for instance in Egypt? We answer, that if this were allowed, still it might be, and probably was, a part of the divine procedure with reference to the preservation of the true religion, that the knowledge of letters should be early given to the Abrahamic family, or, at least, preserved among them, while many others of the more dispersed branches of the human race becoming barbarous, as stated under the article Language, might lose it; because picture writing was easily convertible to idolatrous purposes, and in reality was greatly encouraged from that source. The same care would be exerted to prevent pictorial representations of spiritual beings and things as the forming of images; and the race of true worshippers of God was never therefore placed under the necessity of thus expressing their thoughts by such delineations. But it is, in fact, far from being proved, that the hieroglyph, or picture writing, of Egypt for example, was more ancient among that people than alphabetic writing. One of the most recent writers on this side is the Marquis Spineto, in his Lectures on Egyptian Hieroglyphics.” His theory is, in fact, that of Warburton; and he thinks that the recent discoveries as to the hieroglyphics of Egypt fully establish it. The opinion of this learned prelate was, that the primitive mode of writing among the Egyptians was by figurative delineations or hieroglyphics; that this becoming too tedious and voluminous, by degrees they perfected another character, which he calls the running-hand of hieroglyphics, resembling the Chinese characters; which being at first formed only by the outlines of figures, became at length a kind of marks; and at last led to the compendious use of letters by an alphabet. His argument against the knowledge of letters by the immediate descendants of Noah is as follows: For, if the invention of the alphabet had preceded the dispersion, we should have found the use of it generally established among mankind, and hieroglyphics and picture writing entirely lain aside. But this is not the case. The Mexicans and the Peruvians, up to the fifteenth century, and, to this day, the Chinese, have no knowledge of the alphabet. They all, like the Egyptians, made use of hieroglyphics, more or less abridged, more or less symbolical, or, if you please, more or less arbitrary; but they had no knowledge of the alphabet. The invention of letters, therefore, must have happened after the dispersion, at a time when picture or hieroglyphical writing was generally used; it was thus imported into the respective countries, by the primitive inhabitants, as they separated themselves from the common society, carrying in their migrations those partly true and partly false notions of the Deity, and of the great event which had submerged the world; notions which, in fact, are to be found in the theology and ritual of all the nations in the universe, although more or less disfigured and altered.”

581But as the running-hand hieroglyphics, spoken of by Warburton, were no more alphabetical than the hieroglyphics themselves, still we are left to make the inquiry, Who was the inventor of the Egyptian alphabet? This is supposed by the Marquis on the authority of a passage in Plato, to be a secretary of one of the kings of Egypt. This king is called Thamus; who forbade his ingenius secretary, Thouth, or Theuth, to make the invention public; lest the people should no longer pay attention to the hieroglyphics, which would then be soon forgotten. The secret, however, soon escaped; and as it diminished to a prodigious degree the difficulty of writing, it was generally adopted by the Egyptians, and from them passed into other nations. The first,” says the Marquis, who seem to have got a knowledge of this system, were the Phenicians; they imparted it to the Arabians, to the Jews, and carried it over to Greece. From that country it was exported to the several islands, carried to the continent, and reached the northern nations. The Chinese alone refused to adopt the valuable discovery; proud of the antiquity of their social establishment, believing themselves superior to the rest of mankind, they still adhered to their ancient mode of writing. This, as I have already observed, though originally the same with that used by the Egyptians, became, in process of time, materially different, being made up of arbitrary marks, which are for the most part ideographical. With the discovery of the alphabet, however, a very material change took place in regard to hieroglyphics. Originally, as we have seen, they had been the common, nay, the sole mode of writing, employed by the nation at large, in all the transactions of life, and through the policy of King Thamus, the alphabetical letters were kept secret: but, as soon as this discovery became known, the contrary happened; alphabetical writing became common, and hieroglyphics mysterious, not because they were purposely hidden in mystery, but simply because they required greater application and greater trouble. They indeed still continued to be used in matters of religion, funerals, public monuments, and the like; but in all business, and common transactions, the alphabetical writing was employed. This was a necessary consequence of the general use of hieroglyphics in their primitive state; for although the Egyptians might, and, in fact, did, give the preference to the alphabet, yet they did not think it necessary to erase the old hieroglyphical characters from their temples, from their obelisks, from their tombs, and religious vases. The priests, therefore, still continued to study and preserve the knowledge of hieroglyphics; and these, partly by their showy nature, partly by the continuation of the old custom, continued still to be used in public monuments of a votive and funeral nature. To distinguish them, therefore, from the alphabetical letters newly invented, they obtained the name of sacred, on the score of their being employed only in matters of religion. The priests, however, who had already invented a new set of arbitrary marks, as a shorter way of hieroglyphical writing, which they employed exclusively in transactions which concerned their body and their pursuits, after the invention of the alphabet turned these marks into letters, and thus they formed another set of characters, or mode of writing, to which they gave the appellation of hieratic, as belonging exclusively to their order. In these characters they wrote all historical, political, and religious transactions. And as the common, or demotic letters were employed in all the common business of life, and hieroglyphics confined to public monuments, and funereal and votive ceremonies, the Egyptians became possessed of at least three different modes of writing, or sets of characters, which were hieroglyphic, demotic, and hieratic. Whether the priests had invented another set of characters, unknown to the people, and in which they concealed their doctrine and their knowledge, is a question which cannot be solved at present. The want of monuments disables us from saying any thing of a decisive nature on this subject. One thing alone we can suppose with certainty, that if such a mode of writing did ever exist, and for the purpose for which it is supposed to have existed, the knowledge of it must have been confined to the priests only, and the records so written concealed with the greatest care from the eye of the nation. If, therefore, such records exist, they must be sought for in the dwelling of the hierophant, in the most recondite places of the temples; perhaps in those subterraneous passages which now lie hidden under mountains of sand, and in which no one but the priests were ever permitted to enter.”

The whole of this account, we may however observe, is far from being satisfactory. Whether the early Egyptians wrote hieroglyphics at all, no monuments yet discovered are so ancient as to prove; since all such characters now known must have been written subsequently to the advancement of the kingdom into great power, and after considerable progress had been made in architecture and other arts. The passage, too, in Plato, on which the argument is made to depend, may just as well refer to the running-hand or abridged hieroglyphical signs, as to alphabetical writing; and the supposition, that the priests gave an alphabetical character to this kind of abridged pictorial writing after the discovery of the real alphabet, (and alphabetical Ackerblad and Dr. Young have proved it to be,) is quite hypothetic. We think it more probable that alphabetical writing is much older than the hieroglyphics; that the phonetic hieroglyphics were fanciful representations of the alphabetic characters, intermingled with those symbols which idolatry and the natural peculiarities of Egypt would suggest; that the whole was originally easy to be deciphered by those who knew letters at all; and that the leading motive of fixing them on public monuments in preference to literal inscriptions, was the taste of the day, which custom, 582and antiquity, and superstition at length consecrated. We have thus an easy way of accounting for the alphabetical, though obscure, character of the hieroglyphic running-hand, or hieratic writing, so much used in manuscripts. As an abridged form of the hieroglyphical outline, it would at least be phonetic wherever the hieroglyphic was so; and where that was symbolical, it would naturally present greater difficulty in deciphering, which, in fact, has been proved to be the case, by modern students in the art. It is, indeed, acknowledged by those who advocate the priority of the hieroglyphic to the alphabetic signs, that the number of ideas which could thus be expressed is few; and this the Marquis Spineto considers as a presumptive proof of his theory. In these early ages, the position of mankind after the flood,” he observes, was such as to preclude the possibility of supposing that they had many ideas and many wants; therefore we may reasonably conclude, that their language consisted of words only which were intended to express the things most necessary to life, and consequently contained a small number of words.” We know, indeed, that it is the notion of many infidel writers, that the original race or races of mankind were a sort of savages; and that a state of society gradually increased the ideas, and enriched the language of those who at first were capable of uttering but a few simple articulate sounds; but that any person should talk in a similar strain, who professes to receive the Mosaic history, is absurd. The antediluvians had surely much knowledge. Many arts were invented before the flood; and the ark itself is a vast monument of mechanical skill. Arts, science, morals, legislation, theology, were all known before the flood; and were all transmitted from the old world to the new, by Noah and his sons. These were not men of few ideas,” nor was the pastoral mode of life incompatible with great moral knowledge, eloquence, and the highest and richest poetry, as we see in the book of Job. Men were not then, as many moderns have supposed, a race of babies, able only to ask for what they needed to eat and drink, or childishly to play with; and we may therefore rest assured that they had a language so copious, and enunciations of ideas so various in their respective tongues, that picture writing neither was nor could be adequate to their full expression. The true origin of hieroglyphic writing is still unexplained; and will, after all, probably, remain inexplicable: but it has little claim to be considered as the first mode of expressing the sounds of language. As for the Chinese language, it is evident that it cannot be urged in proof of alphabetical writing having in all cases passed through the process above mentioned; for to this day the Chinese have no alphabet. As a language it is indeed peculiar, as being wholly monosyllabic; and we must be better acquainted with the early circumstances of that people before we can account for either. See Writing.