B.C. 2348.] THE PATRIARCHAL CONSTITUTION.

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he did not shrink from using his authority, even to the extent of a terrible prophetic curse. The same example shows that the patriarch's authority did not cease even when his sons had house holds of their own; for Ham was already the father of Canaan when he incurred his father's censure. And this rule continued throughout the patriarchal age. The first living ancestor had supreme jurisdiction over all the families descended from him; while each family respected also the government of its own immediate head. Thus it was with Abraham, as he dwelt in tents with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs of the promise given to him; but we also see Judah claiming the power of life and death over his daughter-in-law, while Jacob is still alive.

This patriarchal government was religious as well as civil. The patriarch was the priest. In this character Noah offered sacrifice; Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob built altars, and called on the name of the Lord; and both heads of houses and civil rulers are found sacrificing even after the institution of a priesthood. It included also the right of dividing the inheritance, which we find exercised by Noah, in his prophetic blessing and curse on his three sons, by Abraham, by Isaac, and by Jacob, the last going so far as to choose the heir of his own heir in Ephraim, the younger son of Joseph. But in the exercise of this power, there was a customary rule: the inheritance was divided into equal parts, of which the heir received two and the other sons one.

In the Book of Job, which, whatever be its date, preserves the record of primitive patriarchal institutions, we see the system still in action after the establishment of cities. In his own family Job rules over his sons, though they had their own separate households; while, in the city, he sits in the gateway with the other elders, receiving the honour due to his station, and administering justice in his turn. Thus did the pure patriarchal government gradually merge into that of patriarchal elders, the primitive type of aristocracy. But neither this, nor the more artificial forms of civil government, have entirely superseded the patriarchal it still exists where it is suited to the state of society. The Arab descendants of Abraham still live in tents, with the government of the oldest living ancestor scarcely changed; and savage tribes scattered over the earth, especially those in the nomad state, have preserved this relic of their primitive condition.

The incidents of post-diluvian history are few; and these few bear witness to the renewed corruption of mankind. We are not told how long the rescued family lingered among the highlands

of Armenia, before they dispersed themselves over the primeval forests and the alluvial plains, which they had to subdue before they could replenish. Noah began the life of a husbandman, and planted a vineyard; and the righteous man, who had escaped the lusts of the old world, was overcome by shameful intoxication. Then it was proved that in his family, as in that of Adam, there was the distinction between the evil and the good: the wanton insolence of Ham, and the filial piety of Shem and Japheth, received the curse and the blessings which described the destiny of the peoples that have sprung from them. Ham is cursed in the person of his son Canaan,* as the ancestor of the race most hostile to the chosen family, with the doom of servitude to his brethren, and especially to Shem. The inheritance of religious blessing is assigned to Shem; and to Japheth is promised, besides great temporal prosperity, an ultimate share in the privileges of Shem. In this blessing we can clearly see the general outline of the later history of the Hebrew family and the European nations.

Ten generations are enumerated from Noah to Abraham, in the fifth of which (the time of Peleg, about B.c. 2247, Ussher), the earth was divided among its several nations. This division was the result, not of quiet diffusion, but of a violent catastrophe, brought on by the increase of corruption, which took the form of political ambition. A difficulty always exists in the arrangement of events where genealogies are our only guide; but remembering that steps are often omitted in these genealogies, which now become more ethnical than personal, we may not improbably connect the monarchy established at Babel by Nimrod, the son of Cush, the son of Ham, with the attempt to build the city and tower of the same name in the Plain of Shinar. There is at all events an obvious moral connexion in these enterprises. As Ham's outrage upon his father was the first great personal offence against patriarchal authority, so Nimrod's kingdom was the first open revolt from the patriarchal government; and the enterprise of the Babel builders was an organized revolt in the same spirit, defying even the power of God himself.

There can be little doubt that these builders were of the Cushite branch of the family of Ham, and that the Plain of Shinar was the great level of Lower Mesopotamia, or Chaldæa, and the site of the city that spot on the banks of the Euphrates, which has ever since borne the name of Babel or Babylon. Their

This special mention of Canaan is a decisive proof that the prophecy has nothing to do with the slavery of the negro races.

B.C. 2247?] THE CITY AND TOWER OF BABEL.

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very manner of building, with brick and bitumen,* is still seen in the ruins of edifices on the same spot. Dismissing the childish idea that they meant to build a brick tower as a refuge from an inundation, which they must have known would wash it away, we see in their city, with its lofty citadel, the first attempt to establish a great universal empire, in the might of which their impiety aspired to resist God himself, and to prevent the weakness which their dispersion would cause.†

Of the religious aspect of the movement we are told no more than what is implied in the impiety of the design; but there is ground for tracing in it a positive form of idolatry. The towers of Chaldæa, of the same type as that of Babel, seem always to have been temples; and their peculiar construction was adapted to that early form of idolatry called Sabæism, or the worship of the heavenly bodies. The earliest traditions represent Nimrod as an idolater, and the same is positively affirmed in Scripture of the forefathers of the Israelites, when they dwelt in Chaldæa. Perhaps the temple was the first part of the design, and the city grew up around it.

In the fate of this project we see the sentence which God has declared in every age against every attempt at universal monarchy by those acts of providence which form the most conspicuous events in history. The design was frustrated by a confusion of speech among the builders, produced by Divine intervention, which caused them no longer to understand each other, and so forced them to abandon the work; and hence the name of the city, Babel (confusion). The Chaldæans themselves appear to have found the etymology of the name in their own language, as Bab-il, the gate of the god Пl (Kronos or Saturn), and some regard the Hebrew etymology as only a coincidence; but it is unsafe to use etymological arguments concerning a period before languages were cast into their later types. We are not informed what became of the tower. Jewish tradition has tried to make up for the silence of Scripture by relating its miraculous destruction; while antiquarians have sought for its remains in the ruined towers of Chaldæa, both near to and far from its proper site. The Birs Nimroud, which stands at some distance from the right bank of the Euphrates, is now certainly identified with the Temple of Nebo

* This is the most probable interpretation of the word translated slime in our version: but the mud of the alluvial plain was also used for cement.

The motive thus assigned, and their movement from their original seats, prove that the necessity for a dispersion was already obvious even to themselves.

at Borsippa (probably the Chaldæan Barsip, or Tower of Tongues), which the Talmudists identified with the Tower of Babel. This temple of the "Seven Lights of the Earth" was rebuilt by Nebuchadnezzar, who included it within the circuit of Babylon. The dedicatory inscription of that king, lately discovered among the ruins, contains the following passage, as deciphered by Oppert: *"A former king built it (they reckon forty-two ages), but he did not complete its head. Since a remote time, people had abandoned it, without order expressing their words. Since that time the earthquake and the thunder had dispersed its sun-dried clay, the bricks of the casing had been split, and the earth of the interior had been scattered in heaps." This is a proof that the story is no mere Hebrew tradition. The simple statement of the Bible, that they left off building the city, would naturally suggest a break between the original and the later Babylon, during which the brick buildings would have fallen into ruin through neglect. At all events, such a break exists between the earlier and later history of Babylon in our own knowledge.

That there was some connexion between this event and the diversities of human language and the dispersion of the nations, is clearly stated in the sacred narrative; but this is not assigned as their only cause. It is sufficient confirmation of the account, that the languages of the earth do bear traces of a violent dislocation, as well as of a progressive development; and what remains may be left to the inquiries of Comparative Philology and Ethnography.

* See Smith's Dictionary of the Bible, Vol. iii. pp. 1554–5.

COMMON ORIGIN OF MANKIND.

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CHAPTER IV.

THE DIVISION OF NATIONS.

"GOD, that made the world and all things therein, hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation."--ST. PAUL, in Acts, xvii. 24-26.

"We know what modifies form. Change of latitude, climate, sea-level, conditions of subsistence, conditions of clothing, and so forth, do this; all, or nearly all, such changes being physical. We know too, though in a less degree, what modifies language. New wants gratified by objects with new names, new ideas requiring new terms, increased intercourse between man and man, tribe and tribe, nation and nation, island and island, oasis and oasis, country and country, do this. It is our business to learn from history what does all this."-LATHAM, Comparative Philology, p. 708.

THE COMMON ORIGIN OF MANKIND ATTESTED BY THE POSITIVE STATEMENT OF SCRIPTURE-COL LATERAL EVIDENCE OF SCIENCE, ESPECIALLY FROM LANGUAGE-TRIPARTITE ORIGIN OF THE NATIONS-GEOGRAPHICAL SURVEY OF THE LANDS FIRST PEOPLED-CENTRAL POINT IN THE HIGHLANDS OF ARMENIA-THE TRIPLE CONTINENT OF EUROPE, ASIA, AND AFRICA, VIEWED IN ITS PHYSICAL FORMATION-THE NORTHERN PLAIN, THE GREAT DESERT ZONE, THE MOUNTAIN CHAINS, AND THE SUBJACENT COUNTRIES-BASIN OF THE MEDITERRANEAN-OUTLYING PARTS OF THE WORLD-DISTRIBUTION OF THE SEVERAL RACES FROM THE ORIGINAL CENTRE IN ARMENIA-THE MOSAIC HISTORY GIVES ONLY THE COMMENCEMENT OF THE PROCESS— FORM OF THE RECORD ETHNIC RATHER THAN PERSONAL-THE ARYAN AND SEMITIC LANGUAGES AND RACES-CONNECTION OF SHEMITE AND HAMITE RACES-GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION OF THE THREE FAMILIES-JAPHETH-HAM-SHEM-LANGUAGES OF THE RESPECTIVE RACESMODERN CLASSIFICATION BY RACES OR VARIETIES OF MANKIND THE CAUCASIAN-THE TURANIAN-THE NIGRITIAN-THE MALAY-THE AMERICAN-MEANING OF ABORIGINAL TRIBES CONCLUDING REMARKS.

In the age before the Flood, the human race had completed. its first great experiment. It had failed in the attempt to achieve the end of its creation as a single united people. The time was now come for that further step which had been contemplated from the first in the Divine command-to replenish the earth and subdue it. The process by which this was effected is an object of enquiry only second in interest to the origin of the race; and the enquiry must be pursued in accordance with the principles we have laid down. The Scriptural account must be regarded not as an expression of the crude opinions of an age, though early, yet long subsequent to the division of mankind into races, but as an historical record, derived from the testimony of those who witnessed the process. This testimony is independent of any question about inspiration; but when an inspired teacher like St. Paul makes the same statements with a directly religious object, we have the highest authority for accepting the unity of the species as an

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