new beauties in the great edifice, the oneness of lip and the readiness of ear continued. But there were points of discipline and of service to settle; servants to appoint, family interests to be consulted, in apportioning and laying out the city; and then it was that Heaven saw meet to 'divide their tongues in the city,' and 'they were broken into sects over all the earth.'

In the religious character of the union at Babel, and the religious nature of their disputes, we begin to obtain a satisfactory key to the family likeness which subsists between all religious systems throughout the world, as well as to the various shades of difference, of form and opinion, which characterised them at their first scattering, or which afterwards arose, through the influence of climate, customs, and occupations. In the union at Babel, and in the disunion, we also observe some important purposes of Heaven most remarkably subserved. was the determined purpose of Heaven to leave all nations, for a time, to choose their own ways; but it was also a part of that purpose, 'in the fulness of time,' to summon the descendants of the early scattered nations to the bar of revelation; and to condemn them at that bar, of having 'changed the truth of God into a lie,' so that 'every mouth should be stopped and all the world become guilty before God.'

It

It cannot escape observation, that the bringing in afterwards of the verdict of guilty against the world, would lose much of its force, if it could not be demonstrated from revelation, that they had, at

one period, received and acknowledged the truth of God. Else how could they be accused of having changed it? How could it be said, when 'they knew God they glorified him not as God?' We see in this the reason for Divine Wisdom permitting mankind to advance so far with Babel; to give evidence, by this public union for a specific purpose, that there was a period when all mankind were AT ONE on religious matters; when the faith of Shem was confessed in the tabernacles of Japheth, and acknowledged in the tents of Ham: when all the earth was of one lip and of one form of words.'

If heaven did not inadvertently (if the term can be used without profanity-the idea is too common) permit the progress of Babel to a certain point, but allowed it to go on for this specific and important purpose, much more does the interposition against it appear fraught with design. Had mankind been permitted to remain at one, then, however numerous the signs and figures by which the promise was to be foreshadowed, however wonderful, something like connivance might have been presumed-something like a cunningly devised fable have been alleged. But when mankind were not only dispersed into corners, but dispersed under circumstances which indicated the commencement of vain contentions and strifes, of difference of opinion and lip: when they were all allowed, apparently, to go every length in corrupting the truth which had been delivered to them: yet, when the fulness of the time was come, THAT TRUTH was again manifested which they had corrupted—mani

fested differently from what they all anticipated; yet so manifested as to prove itself to be the very truth they had changed-manifested so as to verify the true signs delivered to them; and to prove even their vilest customs and vainest superstitions to have been corruptions of that which now unveiled all their deformity,-the most wonderful evidence was, thereby, publicly afforded, that the manifestation had come forth from the Lord of Hosts, who is wonderful in counsel and excellent in working.'

In the following chapters it is our purpose to follow briefly, in the records of the chosen people, the development and corroboration of the true signs, by which, as we have seen, God instructed the fathers concerning his promises and purposes. Reverting, then, to the plain of Shinar, we shall endeavour to trace the corruptions of those signs which arose there, and their counterparts, or 'resemblances in all the earth.' And if, after that enquiry, we ascertain that a Book found its way to all nations, to the truth of which the very corruptions of the nations bore witness, we may indeed. say that it came to them, and comes to us, with an authority at which the most sceptical may tremble. It brings assurance with it, that, as the truth concerning God himself, in very deed, dwelling with man on the earth, was, and is, the most important truth that ever was made known in heaven or on earth-so the testimony concerning it is accompanied by a body of evidence, such as attends no other fact of which the human mind is cognizable.

CHAPTER XII.

THE PATH OF THE JUST.

ERE proceeding to the enquiry proposed at the conclusion of the last chapter, it may be proper to notice, shortly, the origin of the people called HEBREWS-that chosen race, to whom God revealed himself, as he did to no other nation under heaven; among whose progeny 'the path of the just' was displayed, while the descendants of the other tribes, among whom the earth was divided, were left to choose their own ways.

There occurs, soon after the account of the deluge, this singular genealogical note regarding that people. 'Unto Shem were sons born (he is the father of all the children of Eber, the brethren of Japheth the great).'

This early mention of ALL the children of Eber, or Heber,' distinctly points out the origin of the name of Hebrew, bestowed on Abraham and his descendants. Their close connection with Shem, alluded to in the note, must have been one of profession, rather than of family (for Eber was not

descended of Shem's oldest son); which is confirmed by the meaning of the word Heber, a separatist. This was the peculiar mark and characteristic of all who were afterwards called Hebrews, or children of Heber; they were separatists; they were 'not numbered with the nations.'

As all the names, in the line of the promised seed, were either doctrinal or prophetic, it is remarkable that Eber, who lived about the period of the Babel union, should have had a name given to him expressive of separation; and still more so, that he should have called his son 'Peleg (division), because in his days the earth was divided:' as if he, prophetically, anticipated the division to which the Babel confederacy would ultimately tend.

But the respect in which the note appears chiefly entitled to our notice here is this; that, in the very sentence in which the separation of the chosen people, as descendants of Shem and Heber, is prophetically mentioned, so great care should be taken to remind that people that they were brethren of the Japhethites, or Gentile nations.

In this we see a very plain intimation that the separation of a peculiar people, in whom and to whom the promises were to be specially fulfilled, was a public act of God's providence, for a well understood purpose; and that the call and separation of Abram, for this end, was not an inexplicable proceeding at the time, nor the removal of a true worshipper away from an idolatrous people; but the setting apart of a family for the accomplishment of a generally anticipated design, in the fulfilment