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mighty empire of the Chaldeans not a trace of "Chaldee" is to be found. Now, we confidently affirm that this could not have been the case on the vulgar hypothesis that the present Hebrew character is Chaldee. No other Chaldean character than the arrow-headed is known, which ascends into the remotest ages of antiquity-almost to the confusion of tongues at the building of Babel-and comes down to the age of Xerxes, whose name Champollion found written on an agate cup, first in hieroglyphics, then in the arrow-headed characters of Persepolis.

But the mistake is not even yet wholly exposed; for not only do we maintain that the character has been erroneously called "the Chaldean character," but further, that the dialect called Chaldee was not spoken by the Chaldeans, but was merely a corruption of Hebrew, spoken by the Jews alone, and the consequence of their captivity. Chaldee is not a distinct language; it is merely vulgar Hebrew: it is just that clipping of some words, and lengthening of others; that slurring over of difficult utterances, and giving wrong emphasis to others; which is practised by the common people in all languages. For this reason the decrees of Artaxerxes and Nebuchadnezzar, and certain other portions of Daniel and Ezra, and a single verse in Jeremiah (x. 11), are given in Chaldee, for the sake of the captive Jews; but all the other chapters of Daniel and Ezra, and the whole of Ezekiel and the later Prophets, are pure Hebrew. Even the book of Nehemiah is in Hebrew; and he explains how Ezra led the people back to the pure Hebrew of Scripture, by himself reading from day to day from the book of the Law, and appointing certain Levites to explain its meaning, and cause the people to understand (Neh. viii.) But when Ezra had thus read and taught the law, where was the need of transferring the whole Bible into the Chaldee character? It was elementary teaching they wanted they were as ignorant of writing in one character as in another. The explanation given by the Levites was probably just such a paraphrase as the Chaldee of Jonathan-nearly such an explanation as a missionary would give to slaves. But Jonathan's Paraphrase would not supersede the Scriptures; nor would the missionary's explanation make the Bible less precious; and Ezra's zeal was directed to bringing the people back to the standard of God's law: never would he have debased that standard in accommodation to the ignorance or corruptions of the people they must be raised to it, not it sunk to them.

Every Christian believes, that as by the Word of God all things were made, so by the same Word they are kept in being, and made to work together for the glory of God; and that this word is not merely the utterance of his will, but carries with it the power of God; who hath said, "My Word shall not return unto me void, but shall accomplish that which I please; and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it." And every

believer in a God, though not a Christian, must acknowledge, that, inasmuch as he is God, "the Most High ruleth, and doeth according to his will in the army of heaven, and among the inhabitants of the earth; and none can stay his hand, or say unto him, What doest thou?" That the Providence of God, in short, is the handmaid to his Word, and that not a sparrow falleth to the ground but by his permission. Let us apply this doctrine to the present question.

It is granted that God is the doer of all, and that he doeth all for the glory of his own great name. It is granted, in the present question, that the Jews were carried into captivity in fulfilment of the word of the Lord: "that in the land of the Chaldeans he set his eyes upon them for good" (Jer. xxiv. 6); "that when his own word was accomplished in their seventy years' captivity" (Jer. xxv. 11, 12), he moved the hearts of their oppressors to let them go and brought them back again, according to his word. And when all these wonders were wrought for the verification of the word of God, would he not take care of the word itself? The mighty works done in attestation of the word imply the sacredness of that for which they were wrought; imply its inviolable purity, and the knowledge of that purity among the people; that, comparing the declarations of God with his dealings towards them, they might see that not one jot or tittle of his word had failed of its accomplishment. But the common hypothesis, which we are combating, asserts that every jot and tittle of the word is gone; that Ezra changed the whole Bible into Chaldee;-asserts it without a shadow of proof, and in the teeth of so many facts and arguments such as we have stated. Assertions confidently made, few persons have knowledge and boldness enough to question: an hypothesis often repeated becomes prejudice difficult to remove: and the change of the Hebrew character by Ezra has been asserted by divines of great authority, and inculcated in almost all elementary works, from Prideaux down to Horne's Introduction; and by commentators of almost all schools-such as Mant, Adam Clarke, and Scott;-but the thing is incredible, is impossible.

The dangerous tendency of this hypothesis-of a change in the Scripture made by Ezra-is too much overlooked: its tendency is wholly to subvert the authority of the word of God, by cutting it off from the Inspired source; which is as effectually done by one removal as by many, by one translation as by twenty. And though good men evade this objection, and quiet their consciences by saying that Ezra was guided by the Holy Spirit in his translation, this is but begging the question; first assuming that such a transcript was made, and then presuming that it was made by Inspiration. We have given cogent reasons for believing that no change was made by Ezra; and, if any.

remain unconvinced by those arguments, we require them to produce some command from God to authorize Ezra to change the language of Inspiration. God is very jealous of his word: he hath declared, that heaven and earth shall pass away rather than one jot or tittle of his word shall fail: and, before we admit that the holy Ezra, who was so zealous for the law of God, changed, not jots and tittles only, but every letter of the word of God; before we admit this, we demand some proof of it, and some command to sanction it; and till these are produced we hold such a charge to be slanderous to the pious Ezra. There is no authority in Scripture warranting this change in the language of inspiration; and those who maintain that such a change was made, do, in fact, reduce the Hebrew Scriptures to the level of the Vulgate. The Papists assert that Jerome was inspired to make the Vulgate translation; we demand proof of this, and, in default of proof, call it Jerome's Latin version-a good version, but the work of fallible man, and not the inspired word of God. Those who assert that Ezra re-wrote the Scriptures, are precisely in the same position; and their charge against the Papists recoils upon themselves: they are appealing to a version of Ezra, the work of fallible man; not to the word of God.

The unbroken continuity of the Hebrew language, from the Creation to the present time, is demonstrable to every scholar from the internal character of the language. The Hebrew words are not merely conventional sounds, arbitrarily imposed for distinction, as is the case in other languages; but all its words are significant; and each word, by various forms of inflection and punctuation, is rendered capable of expressing all the various limitations, extensions, and modifications of meaning, which conversation or reasoning may require. The radical and primary words in Hebrew are fewer than in any other language; but, from the variety of meanings which each word is capable of receiving, the language becomes sufficiently copious for every purpose, without losing sight of the simple meaning of the original word. The words Hosea, Joshua, Jesus, Saviour, Saved-ones, Salvation, &c.; as also the words Kinsman, Avenger, Redeemer, Redeemed, Redemption, &c.-and so every other class in the language-flow each from some one root, expressing an act, or state of being, which is included and referred to in all the derivatives. The judgment of the critic is therefore shewn in giving the right meaning to the original word, the root of the derivatives; and the error of the Hutchinsonians lay in the fanciful meanings they gave to the roots, and in often outraging piety and common sense by forcing Scripture in accommodation to their fancies. The radical meaning may, in almost all instances, be positively fixed from Scripture; and in the few instances where this cannot be

done it may be deduced, with almost as much certainty, by a careful comparison of the contexts, where the same, or analogous words occur. The important words Sin, and Sin-offering, which occur so frequently, and in so many forms, in Scripture, have their radical meaning fixed by the slingers (Judges xx. 16) who did not miss the mark; all sin being to miss the mark which God appointed as the end of our being; and its remedy causing Satan to miss his mark in the temptation and fall of man; the stroke of death being turned aside from us by the Great Captain of salvation. Such instances as this pervade the whole Bible, rendering each word, a mine for research, and a treasury of knowledge: it especially pervades the proper names; those of God containing all the depths of the mystery of his own being, so far as it can be revealed to the creature; while the proper names of men and of places record God's acts of grace and of mercy towards man.

Every one who studies the Hebrew will admit that its genius and structure is the same throughout Scripture; with no other difference than that resulting from patriarchal simplicity, and some few Archaisms in Genesis, and those additions which the alteration of clime and circumstances gave rise to, in the times of the later Prophets the language of shepherd tribes cannot express all the thoughts of a polished people. Till the confusion of Babel, the Scriptures declare that the language of mankind was the same: in the sin which occasioned the confusion of tongues, none of the servants of God would join; and they would therefore be exempt from the judgment which was the consequence of the sin-their speech would not be confounded, like that of the builders of Babel. Among these servants of God we must certainly reckon Shem and Eber: Shem, who lived five hundred and two years after the Flood, and who was probably Melchizedek, the priest of the Most High, who blessed Abraham; and Eber, who lived at the time of the Confusion, and named his son Peleg, to commemorate the division of the earth by that confusion; and from whom the language of man, universal before his time, and by him transmitted to his descendants, was called Hebrew. Eber naming his son Peleg proves Hebrew to have been the original language; in the name he commemorated the confusion of tongues in commemorating the division of the earth; and commemorated it in that language which alone remained unconfused, and which was henceforth called, after him in whose line it was preserved, Hebrew.

After the confusion, we find but occasional notices of the languages of the heathen in Scripture; but these are sufficient to shew that the other languages were not slight variations, or as it were dialects, of the Hebrew, but wholly and radically distinct from it. The heathen names shew this; especially those changes of name

which are recorded: as, Joseph, for Zaphnath-paaneah; Daniel, for Belteshazzar, &c. And Joseph spake to his brethren by an interpreter (Gen. xlii. 23); and the Syrian language was unknown to the Jews (2 Kings xviii. 26); and the Jews themselves, by intercourse with the heathen, were continually corrupting their speech-as by marrying wives of Ashdod (Neh. xiii. 24)so that their children spake half in the speech of Ashdod, and could not speak the Jews' language.

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The check upon this tendency to corruption was the word of God, which remained the pure standard of truth and of language, against all the waywardness and inconstancy of man. "The voice said, Cry. And he said, What shall I cry? All flesh is grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of grass: the grass withereth, and the flower thereof falleth away; but the word of the Lord endureth for ever." And this is the word which by the Gospel is preached unto you" (1 Pet. i. 25; Isai. xl. 6—8). When Christ preached the Gospel, he declared that he came not to destroy the Law and the Prophets, but to fulfil; and the Apostles in their preaching continually refer to the Old Testament as the standard of truth, the infallible word of God. The New Testament is also the infallible word of God; differing nothing in its authority from the Old; differing only in the circumstances under which it was promulgated. The Old Testament, being given before the Word was made flesh, came forth as the word of Jehovah to man: the New Testament, being given after the Incarnation, is the Word in flesh, coming forth from man-from Christ himself in the first place, who was the Incarnate Word; from his members in the next place, who are temples of the Holy Ghost. The union of Godhead with Manhood in the person of Christ by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit at the Incarnation, was a new display of the glory of God, and of his love to man: and this, like every other display of his attributes, is not a passing act of a few years, but an abiding, an eternal manifestation.

The indwelling of the Holy Ghost in flesh, which was impossible till realized in the person of Christ, is now realized in all the members of his body, by virtue of their union with him, their risen Head. In him the Spirit dwelt in all fulness; God gave not the Spirit by measure unto him: He was all the fulness of God in a body. But in the members of Christ, though filled with the same Spirit, each according to his several capacity, the fulness of Christ doth not dwell in any one member, but is found only in the whole body; to which fulness each member contributes. In the members "there are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are diversities of operations, but it is the same God that worketh all in all." In Christ dwelt wisdom, and knowledge, and faith, and healing, and miracles,

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