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sion or restriction of the rambling latitude he had given it, we can assure him it is always safest when inquiring after truth. Or if he does not wish to trouble his friends who are competent to such investigation, a few books, that are in every reader's way, may throw sufficient light on it; as, first, Josephus, in the passage to which Mr. H. himself before referred, says, that "in the books laid up in the temple," from which he takes all his history, and which he calls, in another place, "the Jewish Scriptures," he finds this account of the sun and moon standing still, &c. Aha! was it there in the time of Josephus? and received by the Jewish nation as a part of their sacred Scriptures, which were kept by them with such peculiar care as to render it almost impossible that they should have become adulterated? Poor monk's book! it must forego the honor of originality!

Another it appears that he sometimes reads Dr. Clarke. Let him turn to 2 Samuel, chap. i, and he will see, on the authority of that commentator, that Jasher was in the text in that place when the Targum of Jonathan was written-which was probably about the time of Christ. But we have said enough. He would hardly need to call for further light on such a question.

We have, then, these conclusions:

1. The fact of such a miracle is attested by profane tradition; and, that fact admitted, Mr. H. admits the passage.

2. That Habakkuk did refer to this act of the Almighty, we think but one man doubts; and he, because he has doubted.

3. This passage was in the text in the time of Josephus; but our objector's basis, and only support to his theory is, that the idea of such a miracle was first invented, and the words first written, by some vagrant monk some time in the dark

ages.

If he had stated that proposition in the first place, we should never have lifted a pen to expose an absurdity so puerile. But he

It will be remembered that the school of the Masorites arose several centuries before Christ-a body of men who devoted their lives to the labor of examining and guarding the purity of the sacred text; descending to the painful minutia of testing the correctness of every new manuscript, by counting the divisions, and even the letters, and marking the slightest variation in a vowel point or accent, or the form or size of a letter: whence it has been justly concluded to be impossible that any material corruption could have crept into the Hebrew text after they commenced their labors. In the sixth century after Christ, the doctors of this school published a complete body of the notes that had accumulated by the study of these men so superstitiously scrupulous for a period of about a thousand years. It was in the midst of this period that Josephus lived, and the Targums were written; and before the close of it, copies and versions were everywhere multiplied.

had evidently no such idea when he wrote his first article; and we hugely suspect that the same big Jasher, "with its chapters and verses," which, he says, is now at hand, is as much a novelty to him as he modestly (!) fancied it would be to his readers.

What was the Book of Jasher?

This "Sepher Hajasher"-" Correct Record," as Mr. Hopkins translates it-what was it? We cannot tell. We are frank, notwithstanding Mr. H. thinks it "somewhat amusing"-these are his words-" and instructive to see our antagonist taking refuge in the obscurity, which he says [we say] hangs over the whole subject of said book." To him it seems clear. He asserted, first, that it was an ancient book of miscellaneous poems. This we doubted; and he now abandons. He now claims it to be nothing more or less than this thing of absurdities, born of monkish folly during the dark ages. Very clear! He further concludes, by a logic peculiar to himself, that inasmuch as this smutty monk's book is now extant, and called Jasher's Book, there could not have been an ancient writing bearing the same title. If he had reasoned thus: had there been no ancient, genuine Jasher, there would have been no modern spurious Jasher—that were more probable.

But what was the book of Jasher? We have already seen that there were certain documents referred to by the men appointed and inspired of God to write out such portions of the known history of his people, as he chose to preserve as sacred for the instruction of future ages, by the title of "the Chronicles of the Kings;" which documents, we suppose, to be the official records of the transactions of the government. We also learn from many passages, that, under the regal government, there was an officer appointed to the special charge of making such records. See 2 Sam. viii, 16; 2 Kings xviii, 18; 1 Chron. xviii, 15; 2 Chron. xxxiv, 8. That the term chronicles, or, as the Hebrew is, "the words of the days," that is, journals, designates documents of the character we have supposed, seems placed beyond a doubt by the use of it elsewhere in the Hebrew writers. Thus, when the conspiracy against the life of Ahasuerus was detected, and the conspirators executed, the sacred historian says, "It was written in the book of the chronicles before the king." Esther ii, 23. And some time after, during that sleepless night of his, the king "commanded to bring the book of records of the chronicles; and they were read before the king." Esther vi, 1.

Further we have never known, and can hardly conceive of, a

regular government carried on without such records. Did the Jews have such during the rule of the Judges? They must have had. And do the historians of those times ever refer to them as the subsequent ones do to the regal state documents? and by what title? We think they do; and that this is the very thing meant by the "book of the Just," or, as Mr. H. translates the Sepher Hajasher, "Correct Record."

In this view of the subject, then, inasmuch as the book of Joshua was not composed till some time subsequent to the events, it is in nowise marvelous that the author should refer to this record, acknowledged by the Jews to be authentic and correct, or the work of a just and true man. Nay, it is one of the most natural things we have seen. Far more so than that St. Paul when setting forth to the Athenians that God is the common father of us all, should add, for their better persuasion, "as certain also of your own poets have said, 'For we are also his offspring.""

In this opinion we are not peculiar. We think it is the more common view of the subject, certainly of scholars. Such is Dr. Robinson's-a man whose authority, we hope, has some weight with Mr. H. Dr. Horne, in one place, albeit quite contrary to what he says in another, teaches the same thing.t Dr. Glassius, in his Philologia Sacra, gives a compilation of various opinions, and decides in favor of this same.‡

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Let it suffice to have said thus much respecting the miracle and the author quoted. Quite distinct from this, and will ever remain distinct, is the historical, or rather geographical, difficulty in verse fifteenth. We recur to it to show another specimen of the accuracy of this rectifier of the Bible for us. He says (p. 294) that we have put forth a conjecture, "that verse 15 should read, And Joshua returned, and all Israel with him, to the camp at Makkedah,' instead of Gilgal." And continues, "The Hebrew letters in 'Hagilgalah,' he thinks, are so nearly like those which are combined to form the name 'Makkedah,' that some early, careless transcriber mistook the one for the other."

And, on the next page, he puts in quotation marks as being said by us-Hagilgalah, "in the Hebrew character, 'is formed of letters so nearly resembling those in Makkedah, as to be easily mistaken, the one for the other.'" Listen, thou reverend man, to our reply. We have not written one syllable of all that. We have never made such a conjecture. We have never uttered such † Vol. iv, p. 1, chap. ii, sec. 2.

* See in Calmet, art. Bible.

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a thought. We have said nothing, in any way, like it. We did not write that which could, by any possibility of mistake, (adept as he is in the art,) be understood to mean that. It is sheer fabrication or conjecture, every word of it. Other and great men have entertained that conjecture, and we do not see but it is about as probable as any; but we did not refer to that opinion at all. Our conjectures-they are two are recorded on page 523 of the Methodist Quarterly Review for October, 1845.

We have been not a little affected with pity to see the miserable work of one whom we at first supposed to be candidly seeking the truth, and to whom we kindly proffered our aid; but we confess that, at the present moment, our pity is mingled with a stronger feeling of disgust than we love to harbor-that a man should dare to use, in the presence of a just God, such utter disregard of truth. and common honesty! His quibblings, and distortions, and perversions, and evasions throughout, (for we have not noticed the half of them,) we call petty beyond ordinary pettiness. But such things as these are fearful. We did not intend to urge him to desperation. We supposed him to be inquiring after truth, and that he would be thankful to have his errors corrected. And we did not wish to do that in an unkind spirit. We certainly did not. Nor in an unkind manner. If we did so, we were wrong; and ask his forgiveness of our weakness. We exhort him to review with candor the whole subject, and see if he does not find reason to abandon his notion as a chimera.

We have done. We have submitted to notice the strange rejoinder of Mr. H., because of the highly respectable character of the Review in which it appeared.

Errata to Art. II. in the Meth. Quart. Review, for Oct., 1845.

Page 504, line 21, for Joshua, read Jasher.

504, last line, for Jasher, read Joshua.

505, line 14, for or, read and.

508, line 9, for these, read three.

508, line 10, for by, read into.

509, line 20, for any, read none.

513, line 13, for warfare, read carnage.

513, line 11, from bottom, omit own.

513, line 5, from bottom, before passage, insert other.

514, line 22, for forms, read poems.

515, note, for Theol. Soc., read Phil. Sac.

Page 516, line 10 from bottom, before the text, insert in. 518, line 5, for Homer, read Horne.

518, line 9, for strongest, read strangest.

521, line 9, from bottom, for unpardonable, read unpronounceable.

522, line 3, from bottom, before verse, insert in.

523, line 2, after which, insert we.

523, line 5, for Mannedah, read Makkedah.

523, line 19, for sense, read verse.

523, last line, before ten, insert these.

ART. VI.-1. Philosophical Essays and Correspondence of BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. Philadelphia: 1808.

2. Eloge Historique D'Alexandre Volta, par M. ARAGO, Secretaire Perpetuel de l'Academie des Sciences, lu ála séance publique du 26 Juillet, 1831.

3. History of the Inductive Sciences, from the earliest to the present Times. By the Rev. WM. WHEWELL, M. A. 3 vols., 8vo. London. 1837.

4. Popular Lectures on Science and Art; delivered in the principal Cities and Towns in the United States, by DIONYSIUS LARDNER. 2 vols. 8vo. New-York: Greeley & M'Elrath. 1846. THE literary and scientific fame of its children is part of a nation's glory; and if the renown obtained by martial achievements be regarded as a common inheritance, which a people is bound to preserve and transmit, so should the more fruitful renown which genius confers upon the land of its birth be guarded with an eye no less vigilant, and defended with a spirit no less determined. To say that America has gleaned but a few slender sheaves in the harvest-field of scientific discovery is a poor reason for robbing her of those few; and to assert that her genius is practical and utilitarian, prompt to appropriate the labors of others, skillful in imitative arts, ingenious in applying new discoveries by new inventions, is a still poorer reason for denying her the ability to comprehend the scientific principles on which those arts and inventions are founded. We believe that America can point. to her philosophical, as well as to her economical, industrial, and political heroes; and the life and deeds of Benjamin Franklin will attest that all these species of heroism have been combined VOL. VII.-7

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