history; these being moreover accompanied by oral traditions then extant, and acknowledged to be true by the universal assent of mankind. Whenever these in any respect failed, recourse was then alone had to the figurative emblems, painted perhaps on the walls of a temple, to which, having been committed many ages before, there must necessarily have been afterwards some difference of opinion as to their exact signification. All this materially assisted to confound and render obscure what was at first simple, consistent, and easy to be understood. Under such disadvantageous circumstances therefore, we have every reason to be thankful for that body of traditionary evidence which yet exists, and bears so powerful a testimony to sacred truth.

Another source of confusion has been the similarity observable between some of the distinguishing events of very early ages. Nor is this similarity to be at all wondered at, for under the providential economy of Jehovah, all were but as so many types or figures of one far greater event of overwhelming importance, to which every nation under heaven, in proportion to the light with which it had been favored, was looking forward. Thus, between the first formation of the universe, and the diluvian

era,* the parallel is striking. In the beginning God created out of nothing the chaos, a wild, confused, and undigested mass of matter, with a spirit,† breath, or wind moving upon the face of the waters. Such also was the state of the world during the deluge, as is evident from the history of Moses, and the testimony of the earth's whole surface from the lowest valley to the summit of the highest mountain. Noah and his wife may be said to answer to Adam and Eve, as they were the first pairs of mankind in the antediluvian and postdiluvian worlds. There is an analogy also between their families, both as to the number and natures of their children. Ham, Shem, and Japheth may be compared with the Cain, Abel, and Seth of our first parents. The household of the former, awe-struck with the calamity of the deluge, lived in comparative tranquillity and happiness with their father, before the

* See this further illustrated by Catcott, in his interesting Treatise on the Deluge.

Gen. i. 2. Air in motion, a breeze, breath, wind; sense, vii. The Holy Spirit, or Spirit of God, whose agency in the spiritual world is in Scripture, represented to us by that of the air in the natural.-Parkhurst's Heb. Lex. See John iii. 8. And compare Gen. i. 2. with viii. 1. The word in the Hebrew is the same in both places, 117.

migration of mankind; and in so far as this was the case, their situation answered to the peace and repose which man had once enjoyed in paradise. A similar blessing was pronounced both on Adam and Noah, and before the descendants of the latter multiplied, the fierceness of the wild animals emerging from the ark, was doubtless restrained, or otherwise the eight who were preserved in the same vessel with them, would have presently fallen a sacrifice to their natural rage or hunger. Here, therefore, the parallel is observed again of the harmony between man and the brute creation, existing first in Eden, and afterwards in Armenia, where Noah and his sons settled on the retiring of the waters.†

*It is a very remarkable fact, that there was a town at the foot of Mount Ararat, said to have been built by Noah, called Thamanim or Tshaminim, which name signifies "The Eight." The region round about had the same appellation, as also the mountain on which the ark rested. Ebn Patri

cius writes, "vocatur autem hodie terra Themanim." In another place, he adds, "Cumque egressi essent, urbem extruxerunt, quam Themanim appellarunt, juxta numerum suum, quasi dicas, Nos octo sumus!" vol. i. pp. 40 and 43. vide Calmet. Bochart Geog. Sacra. Phaleg. p. 20.

+ This parallel of one ancient tradition being compared with another, may be carried to a surprising extent. Thus, between the history of Noah and Moses, as there is in some

The

Another cause of perplexity has been from the prevailing practice amongst every nation, of adding to their own native histories, all or many traditions of important events, which regarded equally the whole human race. credit often of these, each separate colony is found to have appropriated to its own more immediate ancestors; and hence it will be seen that accounts of paradise, of Noah, and the deluge, were limited by the heathen to this or that country, without any regard to the actual site of the event, or its history; and very often, as might be fairly expected, these accounts came to be mixed up with foreign and extraneous circumstances, and were varied according to the prejudices of each particular people. Especially is this the case with regard to memorials of paradise, the cherubim, and the creation of the world; which, as they could only come to the knowledge of the postdiluvians through the hands of Noah and his family, we generally find all confounded with the deluge, and described as happening nearly about the same period. The case of the ancient gentile writers

points a great similarity, so the traditions relating to these great characters are proportionably intermixed, and confused.

may be compared to that of the traveller looking back upon a range of mountains, over which he passed during the night: he sees them now, but at a distance, with some rising behind and over the tops of others, but all appearing in the prospect as blended together. Now none, as was observed before, could have instructed the gentiles as to the forms of those mysterious beings who guarded the way to the garden of Eden and the Tree of Life, except those eight persons who had seen what existed previous to the flood, and gave those descriptions of them, which were afterwards handed down from generation to generation of their posterity. Hence, very frequently, compound figures of animals came to be worshipped by idolaters, as types of the Baalim,* who were in fact none

* Particularly winged figures, for these certainly took their rise from corrupted traditions of the Cherubim. A good illustration of this will be found in the Egyptian representations of the god Cneph. Cneph pingebatur ab Egyptiis supra caput habens πτερον βασιλειον-πτερον alam significat. Huet. Dem. Evang. p. 141. The Cherubim were undoubtedly winged, and they dwelt before Eden in a tent or tabernacle, called in the Hebrew, Shechinah; hence IITεpov, Πτερον,

σκηνη.

σknyn. Suidas. The very word Cneph, and its plural, will be found used for the wings of the Cherubim in Exodus xxv. 20. xxxvii. 9. 1 Kings vi. 24. Wings are also attributed in Scripture to the true God, in allusion, doubtless, to