and easy Saxon, scarcely ever using a word of towering derivation. Thus the great truths of salvation were presented clearly and experimentally to the consciences of those who hung on his lips. The church at Mossley, in his removal to heaven, has lost one of her strongest pillars-in the pulpit, one of her best practical expositors. The social means he often conducted with great animation, unction, and profit to the people. In meetings for church business he always evinced a calm, clear, and discriminating judgment. He was above personal and petty feeling. He cherished broad and Christian sympathies towards all. He was a man, a Christian, and a good plain teacher of Christ's holy gospel."

The Rev. Thomas Mills, our beloved superintendent, also writes: "Having read your memoir of your late excellent father-in-law, I beg to add the following lines. At the memorable Conference of 1841, I first became acquainted with the late Thomas Halkyard. Even then he wore a somewhat venerable aspect, and had such a calm, quiet dignity in his manners as impressed all around him in his favour. He had partaken of the intense popular feeling which then prevailed at Mossley in favour of a profoundly selfish, artful, and heretical minister, whose professions of an almost super-human piety and philanthropy were calculated to deceive the very elect; and he was deputed by the misguided people of that circuit to aid and defend the sanctimonious deceiver, when he was arraigned before the representatives of the Connexion and before God. But though he was strongly prepossessed in his favour when the trial began, he had so much discernment and soundness of judgment as to appreciate the evidence by which that minister's heresies and duplicity were laid bare, and so much candour and integrity of conscience as publicly to express his concurrence in the vote of condemnation and excision. Upon returning home, he had to encounter the consequences of his sagacity and honesty. A loud clamour of exasperation arose around him; and great numbers of mistaken people cut themselves off from the church which had been the instrument of their conversion, and whose doctrines and principles had been so faithfully clung to by the Conference, and abandoned the large and beautiful house which they had but recently helped to build. But Mr. Halkyard and his family, together with other wise and worthy men, stood firmly by the truth in the long period of adversity which followed, and never once faltered in principle or feeling. They had now to wend their way to public worship, in the face of great numbers of people, who, turning their backs upon the church of their childhood, and of their fathers, went another way; and the faithful few did not always meet with common courtesy on the public road from those who had formerly been their fellow-worshippers and affectionate friends. But he, and the excellent men and their families who nobly stood by the church and by the gospel, lived to see prosperity return to that church, and to enjoy that gospel as before; and to see some of the deluded ones return to the fold and pastures they had forsaken: while some of the obstinately erring proceeded from a lower depth to a lower still, until they have become Socinians, if not even worse.

"During my residence at Mossley, I lived in such intimacy with Mr. Halkyard as enabled me to judge correctly of his spirit and character. He was peculiarly exempt from evil. I never heard one angry word

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from him, nor witnessed one symptom of an angry temper. This equanimity was remarkable. His whole manner of life was calculated to disarm enmity, and to win friendship and esteem. He had been a founder of our Sunday school, and never ceased to be a faithful teacher while he lived; yet he never assumed airs of mastership in the school. How interesting it was to see that patriarchal-looking man, who had been a leader and local preacher for half a century, who was a greatgrandfather, and whose hoary head was a crown of glory,' labouring in a Sunday school, not as a conductor, but as a teacher of a class, and wealthy manufacturers, one of whom was a county magistrate, pursuing the same humble toil in classes close by! In the church he was a venerable elder, in character as well as in years. During a long life he had rendered most valuable services in every office. He was always and everywhere welcomed as a preacher, and was surpassed by none as a counsellor and as a worker. Yet he was of so modest and excellent a spirit, that it was pleasant to every one to sit with him in deliberation, and to toil in harness by his side. He was a man of plain manners, and of practical sagacity and judgment. He made it a rule never to speak the worst of any man. His sermons and speeches were, like his own character, simple, full of good sense, calm, earnest, benevolent, and prepossessing. I always loved to see him, and to be in his company. He belonged to a generation which is nearly all passed away. He was one of the last flowers of his season; and he bloomed in moral beauty, and gave forth sweetness, to the end. In earlier life he must have been somewhat Herculean in appearance, from the height and breadth of his person; and in later life, as years accumulated over him, until he was nearly fourscore years, he bore the burden as few men can. His character increased in mellowness to the end, until he was gathered like a shock of ripe corn into the garner. His memory is now embalmed in universal esteem. His name on the earth is without a blemish. May God our Saviour graciously permit us to go whither he is gone."

The Saviour condescended to say to his true followers, "Ye are the light of the world." He has spoken of them as "a city set on a hill that cannot be hid." In the death of my dear father-in-law a bright star has disappeared from the spiritual firmament of Mossley, not by being extinguished, but by elevation to a higher sphere, far beyond mortal vision, there to shine with celestial brightness for ever and ever. A great man has fallen in Israel. O may his mantle rest upon those who still remain to "fight the battles of the Lord!" May the holy fire that burned so steadily and so long on the altar of his heart burn more intensely in ours, to go no more out.

His last affliction was a very merciful one. It was very painful, indeed, but it was short in its duration, and was truly sanctified by Divine grace. The patience and resignation he manifested; the peace and holy joy he experienced throughout, by night and by day, were not only gratifying, but full of comfort and encouragement to us all. A few nights before his death he said to me" I don't think that my illness will be a long one at this time." As the weary hours of night passed over he was frequently engaged in prayer. To one of his daughters he spoke at some length on the subject of "The great atonement;" and manifested a tender and earnest solicitude on behalf of

her only son, that he should know Christ and be found in him. May his prayers for that son be answered. At one time he said, "Feed me, feed me." "With what, father?" "With truth and righteousness." A very short time before his death his daughter Mary said to him, "Father, you will soon know what it is to be there." "Yes," he said, "There! There! There!" These were his last words. They were audibly expressed; and shortly after "he fell asleep," calmly as the setting sun descends below the horizon in a tranquil sky. "Mark the perfect man, behold the upright, for the end of that man is peace."

ESSAYS, &c., ON THEOLOGY AND GENERAL LITERATURE.

"THE GODS OF THE KINGS OF ASSYRIA."

ASSUR, NERGAL, NEBO, BAAL, AND DAGON.

IT has often grieved us to watch the inquiring and puzzled air with which the multitudes who stream three days in the week into the Assyrian saloons of the British Museum gaze at the massive picture tablets and strange inscriptions there to be found, for want of a simple introduction to their meaning. Their eyes are resting on the very forms which certainly were once beheld by Jonah, Ezekiel, and Daniel. These curious stone-pictures have been, doubtless, given of God to England for no less a purpose than to draw the attention of this generation to the truth of the histories of his written word. They are the sculptures of the ancient heathen, but they are also God's galleries of illustration to the dark sayings of his own prophets. They tell a story with relation to our sacred books, which high and low, rich and poor, learned and unlearned, old and young, are concerned to hear; they read lessons which are not to be locked up in learned libraries, but are perfectly plain for the common people, and, as the first mission of the Bible is to the heart and understanding of every individual reader, it is truly within our province to gather up all that casts light on its earlier pages, on the world in which Israel lived and moved during her captivity; and with this world we are now being admitted into more intimate intercourse every day. A book named "NINEVEH AND PERSEPOLIS," by W. S. W. Vaux, Esq., Assistant in the Department of Antiquities, British Museum, is the best compendium of the story of Ancient Assyria we have seen, and to this we beg to refer our readers, as it is accompanied by numerous pictorial illustrations.

.

Sir Henry Rawlinson, in the lecture he delivered at the Scriptural Museum, told us that many rays of light were being cast, by the discoveries of the last twenty years, on the GODS, the KINGS, the PLACES, and the RACES OF MEN mentioned in the Bible. It will be enough for our present purpose to limit our inquiries to one section of this wide field, and to collect together what particulars we can find of the

* Fourth edition, revised and enlarged.-Arthur Hall and Virtue, 25, Pater noster-row; price 7s. 6d.

"gods,' ," "which," as Hezekiah 66 says, were no gods," and to whom, nevertheless, the chosen people so often "did service," forsaking "the Living and the True God."

If we seek into the origin of the ancient idolatries, whether Egyptian or Assyrian, we find in them the same elements. Idolatry was the departure of man from God, and its sources were three-fold.

It consisted, first, in separating the idea of the One Divinity into that of his various attributes-as a ray of pure light is separated by a prism; and then it invented symbols, and made images of each, severally. Here we perceive the longing of human nature for the visible and the actual.

Idolatry consisted, secondly, in the deification of the powers of nature, especially of the heavenly bodies. They, being seen to move in the clear field of the castern skies, were thought to be living existences, and hence the universal worship of the sun, the moon, and the planets.

To these, thirdly, the deification of ancestors and early kings was added, especially of Noah and his sons, whose history was made familiar by oral tradition, and all three elements were mingled together in a chaos of confusion. Truly, it might be said of the heathen, "They became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and four-footed beasts, and creeping things."(Romans i. 21-23.) When St. Paul thus wrote, such images, as they had been worshipped at Nineveh, lay buried in the sleep of ages beneath the mounds of Chaldea and Assyria; but now, at a distance of 1,800 years from his inspired comment on their memory, they arise before us, according to his description-these mingled forms of man, and bird, and four-footed beast, the heathen rendering of the tradition of the cherubim at the gate of Eden.

ASSUR.

The forms which are certain most to impress the beholder on entering the Nineveh Hall of the British Museum, are the winged colossal lions and bulls (these very cherubim), there restored as they stood in pairs at the entrance of the palace temples; but in our search for the gods we must pass these by, to dwell on what is a far less impressive object to the eyeon a symbol or sign of ASSUR, the supreme god of the Assyrians—a winged half figure within a ring, which floats like a guardian angel over the king's head in very many of the tablets fixed against the wall. From Assur, the country of Assyria takes its name, of which Babylon and Nineveh are the two best known cities. The word Assur is used interchangeably for Assyria in the Scriptures: "Till Assur shall carry thee away captive." (Numbers xxiv. 22.) And with regard to the enemies of Israel:- "Assur also is joined with them." (Psalm lxxxiii. 8) In the 32nd Ezekiel, 22nd and 23rd verses, among those " gone down into the pit," it is said,--" Ashur is there, and all her company his graves are about him: all of them slain, fallen by the sword; whose graves are set in the sides of the pit; and her company is round about her grave, all of them slain, fallen by the sword, which caused terror in the land of the living." In Israel's return to

the Lord her God, the prophet Hosea describes her as saying (chap. xiv. 3),--" Asshur shall not save us; neither will we say

any more to the work of our hands, Ye are our Gods."

Assur appears to be the deification of the Assur of scripture, who went forth and builded Nineveh. (Genesis x. 11.) He is called in the inscriptions on the figure of Sardanapalus, with the altar before it, at the entrance of the first gallery in the Museum, "Ashur, the Supreme Lord; the king of the circle of the twelve great gods." Sennacherib, in his inscriptions, calls him "Ashur, my Lord," and he is described as having always given his aid to the kings of Assyria, but especially against the "heretics." Sennacherib ends an inscription thus:"In after days, under the reigns of the kings, my sons, whom Ashur shall place on the throne; and men shall name their names instead of mine; when this palace shall grow old and decay; the man who shall read the sculptured tablets of my name, and shall restore them to their place, may Ashur bless him, and grant him length of days." According to Sir H. Rawlinson, Ashur is to be identified with Saturn, the father of the gods in the Greek mythology. His symbol, of a winged figure in a circle, was the Ninevite rendering of that winged globe so well known in Egyptian temples, which attendant hieroglyphics, according to Mr. Birch, "explain to be the morning sun," and which was likewise a symbol for the Supreme God. same symbol was afterwards adopted by the Persians to denote ORMUZD, the chief god of their system, and they called it the Feroher, a word denoting spirit. It must be carefully distinguished on the tablets from the flying eagles, who seem to be the companions of the warriors in battle, trained to carnage.

This

There are two passages in Scripture which depict an eagle as the emblem of Assyria, or Assur. In Ezekiel xvii. 3, 4: "A great eagle, with great wings, long-winged, full of feathers, which had divers colours, came unto Lebanon, and took the highest branch of the cedar: he cropped off the top of his young twigs, and carried it into a land of traffic: he set it in a city of merchants," &c.

In the 12th verse of the same chapter, this is defined to refer to the King of Babylon and to Jerusalem :-Again, Habakkuk i. 6-8 :— "The Chaldeans, that bitter and hasty nation," are to "fly as the eagle upon Israel." This emblem was also chosen to picture the power of Egypt. (See Ez. xvii. 7-17.) We know it descended to the Romans; and, in modern days, to the Russians, the Poles, the Austrians, and the French ;-as the crescent of Ashtaroth, the queen of heaven, the moon, who sat by the side of Bel, in Babylon, has been bequeathed to Turkey.

The traditions of the Rabbins identify Nisroch with Saturn, whom we see as above to be the Greek form of Assur. It is surely not an improbable conjecture that the ever-recurring colossal, eagle-headed figure found upon the tablets in the Museum, and which Mr. Layard has taught us to call NISROCH, is the visible form of Assur, or one of his forms, as the Feroher was his symbol.

We have been glad hitherto to think we had realized in this figure the NISROCH of the Bible. (2 Kings xix. 37 and Isaiah xxxvii. 38.) Mr. Layard quotes on the subject a fragment of the Persian oracle, "God (the supreme God) is he that has the head of a hawk." He sets