my heart; try me, and know my thoughts." And he can scarcely fail to discover what is amiss. While sitting in your pew, and uniting in the several parts of public worship, you may mistake those acts for vital godliness; but if you go to your closet, you will feel that religion is more than a form. In the heat of passion, you may grievously offend your brother, persist in your conduct, and attempt to justify it to men; but if you go to your closet, to ask the forgiveness of your own trespasses, you will not be able to rest till you are reconciled to him. Under the power of strong temptation, you may yield to fraud, to falsehood, to deceit; and the apparent value of the object to be gained, may conceal the nature and the aggravation of your crime; but if you go to your closet, you will see it in another light, and be filled both with astonishment and with grief at the strength of your corruptions. The very exercises of secret religion will bring light to the mind, tenderness to the conscience, and uprightness to the heart. You can hardly act the hypocrite when you are with God alone. The thought that no other eye sees you, no other ear hears you, whilst his eye is full upon you, and his ear is open to your cry, tends to dispel every illusion, to give a searching power to the truth, to quicken the perceptions, and aid the healthful workings of the mind; and he that has been most successful in imposing on himself and others, will, when with God alone, have suspicions, and fears, and alarms, which the business and the tumult of the world might have effectually silenced. Would you then, Christian reader, be free from guile before God; would you know your easily besetting sin; would you be sincere in heart, and upright in character? then, "Enter into your closet, and shut to the door, and pray to your Father who is in secret." Once more, secret prayer is the best preparative for the duties of life, for all its duties; for those which relate to God and to man; for those which arise in prosperity and adversity. For when you go to God alone, what is it you do? You do that which he has said shall secure for you his favour, his powerful protection, his grace, his guidance. You do that which tends to bring your own mind into the best possible state towards him and towards all men. You then speak to God; you address him as your reconciled Father; you take the most delightful and the most encouraging view of his character and promises; and must you not go forth cheerful, happy, contented, to the avocations and intercourse of life? You say, "Lead me not into temptation;" and as you are reminded of the instances in which you have previously failed, you feel and deplore your own weakness, and rely on the Omnipotent arm for strength; and must you not go forth watchful and circumspect, alive to the very approach of danger, and prepared to meet. it? You are reminded by such communion of your privileges as saints, your thoughts are directed to the end of your faith, even the salvation of your souls; you contemplate heaven as yours; and as your hope is elevated and your spirit made glad by the prospect, you ask for faith, for patience, for spiritual strength, to sustain you till you reach your Father's house; and must not the exercise fit you to meet the sorrows, and the disappointments, and troubles, which must happen to you by the way? We must not omit to remark, that ejaculatory prayer is a branch of secret devotion, the habit of which it is of much importance to culti vate. When mercies are unexpectedly vouchsafed,-when dangers are suddenly averted,-when temptations spring up, and vain thoughts occur in a moment, he who possesses the spirit of prayer can look up, though he may be unable to bend the knee. He may be in the senate or in the exchange, in the workshop, or the field; it matters not, for God is there, to him he can lift his heart, and, without moving his lips, implore his aid. Sometimes the mechanic cannot command his retreat, nor the servant secure her hour; how valuable to such is the habit of ejaculatory prayer. It keeps the mind in constant communion with God and dependence upon him; it secures continued supplies of Divine influence; it shuts out injurious thoughts, and brings the antidote to bear on the evil as soon as it arises. Reader! do you pray in secret? Is there a God. with whom you never converse alone? Have you a parent, all indulgent and kind, against whom you have sinned, and yet to whom you never think it worth your while to go to thank him for his goodness, to deprecate his anger, to ask mercy through Jesus Christ his Son? Is it possible? Is it possible? Tell me, if you can, the amount of ingratitude and guilt incurred by such conduct! Christian reader! have you a place of daily and frequent retreat? Are your visits regularly and cheerfully paid? Does the Spirit of prayer rest upon you there? Have you formed an adequate estimate of its value? Are you easily tempted to abridge your private devotions? Do they actually promote your growth in grace? Are you faithful in the closet to your own soul? Is your heart ever enlarged there in behalf of others? Are your services there formal and routine? Or is it the place of weeping as well as of rejoicing; of conflict as well as victory; of temptation as well as triumph? Never neglect it! never desecrate it! Continue there your wrestlings as long as the shades of this life's night are on you, and the day shall soon break, and introduce you to a state of fellowship with God and his Christ, which no weakness can impair, no business interrupt, no guilt or darkness disturb for ever. T. W. THE UNICORN OF THE SACRED SCRIPTURES. Ir may not be amiss to attempt, within a short compass, to ascertain precisely what is the animal which, in the authorised version of the Scriptures, passes under the name of Unicorn. Whatever it may be, it is certainly some animal which must have been well known to the sacred writers, and to those for whom their writings were primarily intended. The original Hebrew word 7, (reem,) though rendered unicorn in our version, μovoképws in the Septuagint, and rhinoceros in the Latin vulgate, conveys no such idea as these words convey. Our translators were, no doubt, influenced in their rendering of this word by the two ancient versions just named. It would, however, have been much better had the original word been left untranslated. The opinions as to what animal it indicates are various. Taylor, in "Calmet's Dictionary;" Good, in his "Commentary on Job;" and Wemyss, in "Job and his Times," contend for the rhinoceros. Wemyss says, "All the older translators consider it (the reem) to mean the rhinoceros, the Arabic name of which is, to this day, the same as the Hebrew term here used."* Umbreit, in his "Version of the Book of Job,"† gives buffalo as the rendering of the Hebrew word, and says, in a note, "It is disputed whether reem means a gazelle, (as Eichorn believes it to be,) or a wild buffalo. The latter is the more suitable meaning, since, in verse 10, there is question of the animal's being yoked in the plough." With this opinion Gesenius concurs-"The species of animal here meant," he says, "is somewhat doubtful; but I do not hesitate to understand, with Shultens and DeWette, the bos bubalus, or buffalo." Gesenius further adds, "The Arabic, indeed, denotes the oryx, a large and fierce species of the antelope, . . . and this sense has therefore been given to the Hebrew word by Bochart, by Rosenmüller, and others. But, whatever they may say, no one will deny that the buffalo is more aptly compared with the ox than the antelope could be. The Arabic usage in this word, therefore, though similar to the Hebrew, is clearly not identical; and in Arabic the larger antelopes appear to have received the appellation of buffaloes, just as in Greek they are called βούβαλος, βουβαλίς, and just as in Arabic animals of the deer genus are called wild oxen.”-Lex. in Voc. The same view is held by Parkhurst, (Heb. Lex.,) Lee, (Heb. Lex.,) and Kitto, the editor of the "Illustrated Commentary." Dr. W. C. Taylor, in his "Scripture Illustrated from the Monuments of Egypt," curious to relate, gives it as his opinion, that the giraffe is the creature intended. This opinion he rests upon the etymology of the word reem, conveying the idea of tallness. Such * P. 355. † Vol. ii. p. 291. Illus. Com. Job. xxxix. a notion one need not stay to examine. It is more curious than wise. Dr. Henderson coincides with the common version, and renders the Hebrew word by unicorn. On Isaiah xxxiv. 7, "With them also shall the unicorns come down," after rejecting most of the opinions above quoted, he says, "There are testimonies from independent witnesses to the existence of such an animal, (as the unicorn,) both in Asia and in Africa, which should make us pause before we reject this ancient interpretation. Not only is the figure of the unicorn represented on the ruins of Persepolis, but it is described by Pliny, in his 'Natural History,' viii. 21; by Ludovico de Bartema, who saw two at Mecca; by several Portuguese; and by Father Lobo, who saw them in Abyssinia; by the Hottentots in South Africa; by the natives at Thibet, where it is called tso'po; by Mr. Hodgson, the British resident in Nepaul, who states that it is a native of Southern Thibet; and by Bishop Bruguères, who is at the head of the Catholic mission in Siam. The animal is described as bearing some resemblance to the horse, has cloven hoofs, a tail shaped like that of a boar, and the horn grows out of the forehead; one of these horns, obtained by Major Latter from the Sachia Lama of Thibet, was twenty inches in length, four inches and a half at the root, tapering towards the point, and nearly straight." Here, then, we have the heraldic unicorn, which, if we can rely on the veracity and discrimination of Dr. Henderson's authorities, is no longer fabulous-a mere creature of the imagination. Dr. Henderson further argues, that it "is unaccountable that the different Greek translators of the Pentateuch, Job, and the Psalms, the result of whose labours we have in the LXX., should have concurred in rendering the term by μovoκépws, i.e. unicorn, if the existence of some such animal had not been familiar to them." This is at once admitted; but the unicorn they had most probably in view was the rhinoceros. And the reason why they made a one-horned animal of the reem seems to be this—the idea that the reem, which is certainly a horned animal, whatever it may be, was introduced in the Book of Job simply on account of its strength, and the knowledge that the rhinoceros is the most powerful horned animal in existence. This might very easily have influenced their translation, as it does, very much, in the present day, the opinion of commentators. Such, however, does not appear to have been the sole design of its introduction into this inspired production. But be the question respecting the existence of the unicorn settled as it may, it does not, in the least, affect the main point of inquiry, namely, Is the reem of the Old Testament the unicorn? The unicorn may exist; it may be like the rhinoceros, or like the heraldic unicorn; or, it may be altogether different: but, however this be, I question whether it be the same with the Hebrew reem. After giving the subject his best attention, the writer of this article is forced, by the evidence of the case, to give in his adherence to the view maintained by Umbreit, Gesenius, and the editor of the "Illustrated Commentary," that the reem is the wild buffalo. The proof of this opinion is rested on a candid examination of the several places of Scripture, where the word occurs. A few of these places may afford us no aid in settling the question, but the rest will. The first time the word occurs is Numbers xxiii. 22, where Balaam says of Israel, "He hath the strength of a unicorn." All we can learn from this passage is, that the reem was noted for its great strength. The same words, in the same application, occur in the next chapter. (xxiv. 8.) The next place where we meet the words is Deut. xxxiii. 17, "The first born of his bullock is his glory; and the horns of the reem his horns; with them shall he push the peoples together, to the ends of the earth; and they (his horns) are the ten thousands of Ephraim; and they are the thousands of Manasseh." This passage throws some welcome light on the subject. Here the fancied unicorn obviously becomes a two-horned animal. The common translation in this place leads the reader into an error. It has unicorns, as if the original word were plural, whereas it is singular. If, then, the unicorn, or, indeed, any one-horned animal were intended, where would be the propriety of speaking of the horns of such an animal?—the horns of a creature that has but one! Dr. Henderson strives to evade, or remove this difficulty, by taking reem as a nomen multitudinis. "It is obvious,"* says he, "that no stress is to be laid on the circumstance, that in Deut. xxxiii. 17, horns are ascribed to the reem, since the word is there used as a noun of multitude."-Com. Isaiah xxxiv. 7. But, with all deference to that profound scholar, we beg to differ with him in respect to this. We humbly conceive, that the word cannot naturally be taken as a noun of multitude. Such a course does violence to language. How would it sound in English, to speak of the horns of a rhinoceros, or the trunks of an elephant, or the heads of a horse? Dr. Henderson, then, appears to be quite astray. True, it is, as he observes, that these horns signify not Ephraim and Manasseh, but the "ten thousands of Ephraim and the thousands of Manasseh;" but these are the two horns of Joseph, who is here likened to the reem-a circumstance, by the way, which shows the utter inadmissibility of Dr. H.'s view, that reem is a noun of multitude. The editor of "Calmet's Dictionary" asserts,† to obviate the argument drawn from this place against his view, that a species of the rhinoceros has two horns. But in this he appears to be in error: a *Com. Isaiah, p. 277. † Art. Unicorn. 3 G N. S. VOL. VII. |