In this contrast of the patriarchal and Jewish eras, evidence is obtained, which throws the strongest light on the Divine authority of revelation. The process and the materials are equally plain. The process is that of mere juxta-position; the materials are the facts of common history. The translations of the names are not made for the purpose; but are those familiar to every one acquainted with the original. The dates of the periods are those given in the most common authority on the subject, the chronology used in our Church'. But the conclusion is one of the very highest importance. It is a new and irresistible proof of the particular and constant action of Providence in the affairs of men. The correspondence of the two dispensations is throughout of the most complete order: not founded on a few occasional similarities of action, but close and consecutive, without a single interval, during four thousand years. The parallelism is tried under all conceivable vicissitudes of national character and national fortune. Yet the prophetic names are still true to their purpose; and so true, that

1 No known system of chronology can be relied on for the precise years of the leading events. If a more exact system should hereafter be discovered, it might bring those events still more accurately to the points of time marked in the parallelism; but those minor discrepancies cannot be in question on a scale of thousands of years. The whole periods and their general character are the true objects to be considered.

we might even now adopt them to class those vicissitudes, for the purposes of history.

as

Why those names were ever given to the patriarchal line, had hitherto been a matter of perplexity'. Or, if the names of Cain, Abel, and Seth, might refer to their individual circumstances, and those of Noah and Peleg to the circumstances of the world; what could be the ground for such a succession of epithets, despairing," possessing,' "praising," descending," "devoting," "dying," &c., among the pious and protected sons of the chosen line? Could they be thus given down for their designation of the individual career of a rude and simple race, whose lives have furnished no proof to us that the designation was ever realized; who probably passed from the cradle to the grave in the uniformity and quiet of a small and guarded colony; and of whom we know scarcely more, than that they were born, and died?.

'The names of the direct line of Cain are equally given, but without dates; and the succession is broken off long before the deluge. For the names, the succession, and its fracture, a sufficient reason is discoverable. They are the history of heathenism.

Among the minor yet striking results of the parallelism, is its confirmation of events of such remarkable interest, yet so frequently the subject of rash scepticism, as the division of the earth among the post-diluvian families; the building of Babel; and the confusion of tongues. Their strong correspondence with events in known and accessible history, takes them out of the remoteness and obscurity in which they are necessarily left by the brief narrative of Scripture.

S

CHAPTER XVIII.

THE PATRIARCHAL LINE.

THE exile of Cain and the death of Abel had given the eldership of the family to Seth. By him it was transmitted to his eldest born, Enos. We have no reason to conceive that a name so descriptive of calamity was applicable to either the patriarch or his time. He was probably distinguished for piety; for it is recorded of him that, "in his days men began to call upon the name of the Lord'." To their sacrifices they had

1 This expression, of "calling upon the name of the Lord," has been perplexed by the commentators (Bishop Patrick and others), who, in their reluctance to admit that public worship could have been so long delayed, conceive it to have been merely a declaration on the part of the Sethites, that they were "the sons of God." Yet this would be an act of presumption of which we have no example in religious history. That the Church might subsequently obtain the name from the historian, is a separate question.

But we have no right, for any fancied inconvenience, to stray from the common meaning of Scripture. The phrase of “calling on the name of the Lord," is not unfrequent in Scripture;

now added a new form of approach to the Deity, public prayer. Of the successive heads of the

and it uniformly implies addressing him by some formal acknowledgment of his Being, as in prayer. The original act of homage was sacrifice, an act chiefly connected with the offerer himself, as an atonement for individual sin. There is nothing inconsistent in supposing that the idea of public prayer, as a general acknowledgment of the power and beneficence of the Deity, might be the subsequent offering of minds more awakened to a sense of His spiritual nature. In the patriarchal history, we find the sacrifice, and the worship by prayer, sufficiently contradistinguished. When Abraham sacrificed at Bethel, we are told he also "called on the name of the Lord," (Gen. xii. 8), an act evidently not included in the mention of "sacrifice." When Isaac sacrificed at Gerar, he also "called on the name of the Lord" (Gen. xxvi. 25). Those acts of worship were doubtless public. In the offering of Cain and Abel, we have an example of the sacrifice without the prayer. In the Apostle's definition of the Church, "Those who call upon the name of the Lord" (1 Cor. i. 2), we have an example of the prayer without the sacrifice. The question is of some moment, as showing the conformity of the narrative to nature. Private prayer is almost an instinct; but public prayer, the assembling of many together for the purposes of joint supplication, is naturally the work of a later impression; of a community of thought, produced by an extension of intercourse, by a larger diffusion of religious feeling, by the necessity of preserving the standard of faith, and, probably, by some growing evidence of the necessity of a more distinct testimonial to the faith. All those circumstances would be the natural result of the position of the Sethites. In the beginning, prayer might be solitary; but when their numbers increased, and, of course, separated more widely from the immediate instruction of the patriarch, some substitute might naturally be sought in the

generations, down to Enoch, nothing is recorded, but the years. But of Enoch the two memorable facts transpire, that he prophesied the infliction of the Divine vengeance', and that he passed away from earth without having tasted of the grave.

Methuselah, Lamech, and Noah, complete the series of the ante-diluvian Patriarchs. The name of Noah was given as a declared prediction of events still distant 600 years. Nothing could be less within the limits of human sagacity; for it comprehended universal ruin, the restoration of the world, the sovereignty of the Sethites over that world, the supremacy of religion, and the formation of a totally new frame of society; the general building up of the great commonwealth of the sons of the patriarch, distending into mankind.

It is probable that, in the time of Lamech, the guilt of the earth had greatly increased, for the

instruction given to the whole at regulated intervals, by a form of worship, which brought them all together. The increasing population and profligacy of the Cainite tribes might also render this precaution valuable, at once as an antidote to their example, and a protest against their infidelity.

"Behold, the Lord cometh, with ten thousand of his saints." (Jude, 14.) This has been supposed to be an extract from the Apocryphal book of Enoch. (Sherlock, Lardner, &c.) But we dishonour inspiration by supposing that it could borrow from a work of vulgar fable. Why should not the much more natural circumstance have been the true; that the forger borrowed a fragment of genuine prediction to give credit to his

fable?