as to the greater part of them; if one may judge from appearances, the gayeties and follies of life have got as much room in their hearts as before. Yet I cannot but hope, some who have gone unwarrantable lengths in conformity to the world, have the root of the matter in them, and will yet be roused from their present lukewarmness and stupidity. The bulk of these in this congregation, who about six years ago seemed to be planted in the house of the Lord, appear to be growing up and flourishing in his holy courts, and some of them have made very amazing advances in knowledge, faith, and holiness. But alas! no new awakenings are heard of amongst us. You and all who have influence at a throne of grace have need to wrestle for the return of these golden showers amongst us, wch seem now restrained. Sabbath last, my wife was safely delivered, through the mercy of God, of a second son. I hope my family will have at times a share in your prayers. You have, no doubt, heard of the death of Lord Reay, my wife's father. For some time before, his assurance of the love of Jesus had waxed every day stronger and stronger. I desire to pray that you and all every where engaged in the same work, may see Satan as lightening, falling from heaven before them, and the pleasure of the Lord prospering in their hands. I am, Rev. and Dear Brother, Yr most affect and most obliged, JO. ERSKINE. Remember me to Mr. Jenkins. Let me know if you have seen my printed acct. of my dear friend, J. Hall, who was in my opinion one of the most eminent subjects of the late revival. POETRY. wwwwwww THE CRYPT. "The centre aisle is perfect, so far as it extends; and its perspective view would still gratify by its gothic grandeur, were it not intercepted by the coffins which crowd the whole crypt, so as barely to permit the passage of the visitor. -Much surprise was excited by the appearance of an immense spider's web, which, like a vast sheet of dusty drapery, was suspended from the higher coffins to the wall behind, and hung droopingly over those below."-Storer's History of Clerkenwell. "HEAPS upon heaps" might he of Zorah boast His single arm. "Heaps upon heaps!" with this This dreary Could the spacious earth cast off at once Than may suffice to show the common end Lead the dim taper down that gloomy aisle, The light gleams feebly on the faded hue Should mischance occur, darkness in this drear There slumbers, who in heedless youth her heart Resign'd, nor could the boon retrieve, although Her kind regards were met by deeds perverse; Too soon in all its hateful latitude, The penalty upon her weaker sex Imposed, she felt. "Unto thy husband thy Desire shall be, he over thee shall rule." A maiden, and a wife, her peace he broke, And when a mother, ruthless, broke her heart; Ingrate, his adverse purpose still he plies, Down hunts her to the gates of death, and here His persecutions end. O! by the torn And bleeding breasts of parents, sisters, friends, Withhold, ye fair, your strong affections from A selfish churl; -unworthy of your love. "And the angel which I saw stand upon the sea, and upon the earth, lifted up his hand to heaven, and sware by Him that liveth for ever and ever--that there should be Time no longer."-Rev. x. 6. ONE foot was on the sea; upon the earth For ever be, that mighty Angel swore- Airedale College. TO A NIGHT-BLOWING FLOWER. The sun has long since sunk to rest, The busy haunts of men are hush'd, T. R. I. But thy soft odours fill the air, And dissipate night's deepest gloom. Ah! lovely plant, to me unknown, And nought is heard save trouble's sigh. "'Tis thus that true religion's power, The warbling songsters of the grove Night, in her sable mantle clad, When all is still and dubious round, Like some celestial plant that grows SIGMA. REVIEW OF BOOKS. A Hebrew and English Lexicon to the Old Testament; including the Biblical Caldee. Edited, with Improvements, from the German Works of Gesenius, by Josiah W. Gibbs, A. M., of the Theological Seminary, Andover, United States. London: Howell and Stewarts. £1. 5s. 1827. Most sincerely do we congratulate the friends of biblical literature in this country on the appearance of the present invaluable accession to our means of accurately and soberly ascertaining the sense of the Old Testament Scriptures. In no department of sacred learning have the wild vagaries of a playful imagination, or the stubborn hardihood of preconceived opinions, and favourite theological theories, produced greater confusion, and thrown more formidable bugbears in the way of the youthful student, than that of Hebrew philology. The very facts, that some of the documents comprized in the sacred volume are upwards of four thousand years old, and were penned several centuries before the Greeks became acquainted with the use of letters; and, that a period of not fewer than twelve centuries intervened between the composition of the earliest and the most recent of its records, together with the wide difference which is known to exist between the forms and structure of the oriental languages and those of western Europe, present considerations which are of themselves sufficiently intimidating, and calculated to make a begin ner despair of ever acquiring a satisfactory knowledge of the language in which it is written: but when, in addition to these facts, we reflect on the various conflicting systems of Hebrew Grammar and Lexicography, the high-pretending but contradictory hypotheses of divines eminent for their erudition and piety, and the circumstance that few years elapse without some production of novel and original claims being obtruded on the attention of the theological world in reference to this subject, it really cannot be matter of surprise, that numbers, even of those whose sacred engagements would naturally lead them to cultivate the study of Hebrew, are induced to abandon it as altogether unprofitable and vain. re Such as have never particularly directed their attention to the subject, can scarcely form any idea of the widely-diversified views that have been entertained specting the only proper and legitimate methods by which to determine the true meaning of the words constituting the ancient language of the Hebrews. We shall, therefore, here attempt a brief sketch of the different schools of Hebrew philology, in noticing the last of which, we shall naturally be led to advert more particularly to the work before us. 1. The Rabbinical. This school, which is properly indigenous among the Jews, derives its acquaintance with the Hebrew from the tradition of the synagogue; from the Chaldee Targums; from the Talmud; from the Arabic, which was the language of some of the most learned Rabbins; and from conjectural interpretation. In this school, at one of its earlier periods, Jerome acquired his knowledge of the language; and, on the revival of learning, our first Christian Hebraists in the West were also educated in it, having had none but Rabbins for their teachers. In consequence of this, the Jewish system of interpretation was introduced into the Chris-tian Church by Reuchlin, Sebastian Munster, Sanctes Paginus, and the elder Buxtorf; and its principles still continue to exert a powerful and extensive influence through the medium of the grammatical and lexicographical works of the last-mentioned author, and the tinge which they gave to many parts of the biblical translations executed immediately after the Reformation. 2. The Forsterian school, founded about the middle of the sixteenth century, by John Forster, a scholar of Reuchlin's, and Professor in Tubingen and Wittenberg. This author entirely rejected the authority of the Rabbins; and, not being aware of the use to be made of the versions and cognate dialects, laid it down as an incontrovertible principle of Hebrew philology, that a perfect knowledge of the language is to be derived from the sacred text alone, by consulting the connexion, comparing the parallel passages, and transposing and changing the Hebrew letters, especially such as are similar in figure. His system was either wholly adopted and extended, or, in part, followed by Bohl, Gusset, Driessen, Stock, and others, whose lexicons all proceed on this self-interpreting principle; but its insufficiency has been shown by J. D. Michaelis, in his "Investigation of the means to be employed in order to attain to a knowledge of the dead language of the Hebrews," and by Bauer, in his Hermeneut. V. T. 3. The Avenarian school, which proceeds on the principle, that the Hebrew, being the primitive language from which all others have been derived, may be explained by aid of the Greek, Latin, German, English, &c. Its founder, John Avenarius, Professor at Wittenberg, has had but few followers; but among these we may reckon the eccentric Hermann van der Hardt, who attempted to derive the Hebrew from the Greek, which he regarded as the most ancient of all tongues. 4. The Hieroglyphic, or Cabbalistic system, long in vogue among the Jews, but first introduced into Christendom by Caspar Neumann, Professor at Breslau. It consists in attaching certain mystical and hieroglyphical powers to the different letters of the Hebrew alphabet, and determining the signification of the words according to the position occupied by each letter. This ridiculously absurd hypothesis was ably refuted by the learned Christ. Bened. Michaelis, in a Dissertation printed at Halle, 1709, in 4to, and has scarcely had any abettors: but recently it has been revived by a French academician, whose work on the subject exhibits a perfect anomaly in modern literature. Its title is, “La Langue Hebraique Restituée, et la veritable sens des mots Hebreux retabli et prouvé par leur analyse radicale. Par Fabre D'Olivet a Paris, 1815." 4to. According to this author, א is the sign of power and stability ; ב of paternity and virility; a of organic or material development; ។ of divisible divided nature; 1 a most mysterious sign, expressive of the connexion between being and nonentity, &c. The following specimens of M. D'Olivet's own English version, taken at random from the second volume, will fill our readers with astonishment at the perversion they display, no less of the powers of the human mind, than of the true principles of language, and of the Scriptures of truth. or |