presented to the reader, from his admirable work, "The Demonstration of the Truth of Christianity."

"The name of Peleg, the son of Eber, and an ancestor of Abraham, has a literal significancy worthy of the place which it occupies, and the importance of which may now be appreciated. The Hebrew word Peleg signifies division. And that name was given to him; "for in his days was the earth divided" "among the families of the sons of Noah, after their generations in their nations."* Or, in other words, as modern discoveries or researches show, "all the epochs of primitive kingdoms fall in with Peleg's lifetime," whose name denotes their division.

Coeval with the days of Peleg was the building of Babel; and up to the period when the great family of man was divided into distinct nations, and spread over the earth, may be traced the diversity of tongues. And, combining historic with prophetic truth, the earliest of cities supplies, from the first as to the last, its concurring testimony. While the judgment-stricken Babylon, cut down to the ground because it had striven against the Lord, is spread forth as a tablet on which the spirit of prophecy has set its seal, and has stamped with many indelible impressions, as its own, the name (Babel, or Babylon, i. e., confusiont) yet remains an undecaying memorial of the confusion of tongues. And while the walls of the greatest city on which the sun ever shone have long ceased to be the wonder of the world, except in their being utterly broken, the name of Babel, or Babylon, no longer a terror to the nations, is a proverb to the people, and in all the ends of the earth still bears concurring testimony to the cause of the original dispersion of our race.

The next great event, alike influential on the fate of the world, and calculated ultimately to bring all mankind into one family-the household of the faith-was the call of Abraham, and the covenant of God with the patriarch, whose name is no less renowned than that of Babylon. And like another nail fastened in a sure place, that name was given by the Lord. "God talked with him, saying, As for me, behold my covenant is with thee; and thou shalt be a father of many nations. Neither shall thy name any more be called Abram; but thy name shall be called Abraham; for a father of many nations have I made thee. And I will make thee exceeding fruitful; and I will make nations of thee, and kings shall come out of thee."‡

While the whole history of the Jews, in every age and in every

• Gen. x. 25-32. † Ibid. xi. 9.

+ Ibid. xvii. 4—6.

land, is a perpetual proof of the inspiration of the Scriptures, a still existing progeny, "numerous as the stars of heaven," and scattered over the earth, even as these bespangle the firmament, is an existing proof that none but the Omniscient could, in truth, have given to their primogenitor the name of Abraham, i. e., the father of a multitude. To whom else, since his days, can the name so appropriately pertain, as to him whose descendants peopled Palestine, Edom, and Arabia; and whom the Arabs, with their multitude of tribes, and the Israelites, dispersed throughout the earth, both alike still numbered by millions, have claimed, for more than a hundred generations, as their common father? And whose prophetic name yet awaits its full significancy, till all the families of the earth shall be blessed in his seed, and all nations shall call that man the father of the faithful; to whom the Lord thus spake, "Thy name shall be Abraham; for a father of many nations have I made thee;" and of whom he said, "I am the God of Abraham." Not a word can come in vain from the mouth of the Lord; and as this word has not returned void, but is still proved by millions, or multitudes of the seed of Abraham, so that name itself, literally understood, cannot be repeated without perpetuating the testimony which it bears to the call of Abraham.

But the name of Abraham was not the only patronymic first given on that selfsame day, but to be held in everlasting remembrance. The change of a syllable and of a letter gave a prophetic significancy to the names of Abram and Sarai, and, in their new names, Abraham and Sarah imbodied the promise of the Lord, of which future ages have manifested the fufillment. Nations have called her mother who was then known only as aged and childless: and races of kings in Jerusalem and Samaria, after the lapse of a thousand years, gloried in their pedigree from the venerable pair that pitched their tent in the plain of Mamre many centuries before there was a king in Israel. Prophecies yet unfulfilled speak of their descendants, when finally restored to Zion, as those for whom the isles shall surely wait, unto whom the kings of the Gentiles shall minister, and whom the nations and kingdoms shall serve or be destroyed. But the name of Sarah or princess, as given by the Lord, has received such illustrations of its significancy in ages past, as naturally startled, on their announcement, the faith of Abraham. "And God said unto Abraham, as for Sarai thy wife, thou shalt not call her name Sarai, but Sarah shall her name be. And I will bless her and give thee a son also of her: yea, I will bless her, and she shall be a mother of nations; kings of people shall

in his heart, Shall a child be born unto him that is an hundred years old? and shall Sarah, that is ninety years old, bear ?"* The incredulity of man may ever be overruled for the confirmation of the word that is of God. And while the covenant, which, whether in its observance or its breach on the part of the Israelites or Edomites, has been ratified by blessings and by judgments, such as no other covenant but that made with Adam ever was, has stood for nearly four thousand years, and yet awaits its final and everlasting confirmation, the laughter of Abraham, though he had fallen on his face, and of Sarah who subsequently laughed within herself and denied it with her tongue, has from that hour been commemorated, though unconsciously, in the name of Isaac. "And God said, Sarah thy wife shall bear thee a son indeed; and thou shalt call his name Isaac (i. e. laughter); and I will establish my covenant with him for an everlasting covenant, and with his seed after him."t

Never were names so indelibly affixed to any covenant between man and man, as those which may thus be identified as originating in the covenant of God with Abraham. There was not then another man upon the earth of whose descendants even the existence is now known, or to whom such a promise could, in truth, have been given. And is there a man upon the earth who knows not at sight the Hebrew race? or who may not see from their existence and their number that God alone could have given to Abram the Hebrew name of Abraham? In no country on earth could we search in vain for living commentaries on that name. And there was not then, besides Hagar, another woman upon earth but Sarah only, whom any nation or any individual now calls mother, or of whom it is recorded that kings were descended. But to her unchangable name, when once it was given by the Lord, is attached the unrepealed promise, kings of the nations shall be of her. And if belief be founded on experience, as our enemies maintain, and as Christians may fearlessly concede, millenaries, or thousands of years, go far by their testimony to prove that that covenant was everlasting, the apparent and natural impossibility of the ratification of which, even for a single year, gave rise to the incredulity even in the breast of Abraham, which has yet its memorial in every enunciation of the name of Isaac. It needs no proof that human compacts are dissolved by time, as their seals of wax melt before the fire. The longer that is the declared term of their validity, the more surely, in general, are they ultimately valueless, or pass † Ibid. xvii. 19.

* Gen. xvii. 15-17.