with life. With them science is the mother of virtue, precipitation is the mother of repentance, the soldier is the son of war, the traveller is the son of the road, words are the daughters of the lips, and prudence is the daughter of reflection. Every thing, even down to a letter of introduction, or to the firman of the Sultan, must be in a poetic form.

In the consideration of these subordinate matters, the western student must exercise his taste, or that acquired power which judges of the fitness or congruity of objects. As a reader or interpreter of the Old Testament original, he will have full scope for the exercise both of his imagination and his taste. No ampler or richer field for their development or cultivation could be desired.

Such cultivation and development, moreover, are needed by the youthful evangelical clergymen of our country. In their anxiety to become sound theologians, or skilful logicians, or in the pressure of practical duties, they have too much neglected the province of imagination and taste. In this respect the two denominations more particularly connected with this institution are, unquestionably, inferior to some other denominations of Christians. Consequently, in not a few excellent men, there has been an inability to appreciate and employ all the treasures which are accumulated in God's word. They have not availed themselves of that cultivation of the taste and of the imagination which may be acquired by faithfully studying such compositions as those of David and of Isaiah. There exists, in our community, a class of highly disciplined minds that evangelical clergymen have not been able, in general, to reach. Intellect has not been wanting, nor theology nor piety, but there has been a deficiency in those graces of style, and in that highly cultivated taste which are required to meet the exigencies of the higher circles in society. No man of sense would argue for what are sometimes called tasteful or imaginative preachers. Yet, as the powers of imagination are one of the noblest gifts of God, as their exercise is entirely consistent with a sober judgment and with sound common sense, and as a leading class in the community will not be affected by the truths of the gospel, unless they are presented in acceptable words and enforced in good taste, we are certainly under the highest obligations to develop these powers of imagination and of taste and employ them fully in the service of

our Lord.

5. Another important consideration is the bearing of the study of Hebrew upon the missionary enterprise.

VOL. XII. No. 31.

17

The one hundred and twenty-two ordained missionaries sent out by the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, sixty-nine of whom were educated at this institution, have published, with the aid of their assistants, between fifty and sixty millions of pages, a large proportion of which are parts of the Scriptures. The number of languages employed is twenty-nine, nine of which were first reduced to writing by these missionaries. In all this wide department of labor, augmenting every year, an accurate acquaintance with the original Hebrew is, of course, indispensable. The missionary translator is not to repair to the Vulgate, nor to the Septuagint, but to the fountain head.

In the labors which are to be entered into for the conversion of the five or six millions of Jews, scattered over the world, the necessity of the Hebrew Bible is too obvious to need the briefest allusion. In respect to familiarity with its pages, the missionary himself must become a Jew.

The bearings of the subject upon those who speak the Arabic tongue may justify a moment's consideration. The great problem for the friends of civilization and Christianity to solve is the conversion of the millions who use the Chinese and the Arabic languages. These enlightened and saved, the world, comparatively, is evangelized. Henry Martyn, in speaking of the Arabic translation of the Bible, says: "It will be of more importance than one fourth of all that have ever been made. We can begin to preach to Arabia, Syria, Persia, Tartary, part of India and China, half of Africa, and nearly all the sea coasts of the Mediterranean, including Turkey." According to the tables in the Modern Atlas, this would give upwards of two hundred millions, who would be reached through the Arabic tongue. This calculation may, perhaps, appear extravagant; yet, if we look at the extent of the language, with all its different dialects, the number who use it will fall not far short of one fourth of the population of the globe. Any thing, therefore,

* The written Arabic, or that in which the Koran is composed, was the language of the people inhabiting the vast empire founded by the successors of Mohammed. It is now the religious and literary language of the numerous nations that profess Islamism, extending from the island of Goree in the Atlantic ocean to the eastern extremity of Africa, and from Madagascar to the rivers Oby and Volga in the north of Asia and Europe. The vulgar Arabic is spoken in a great part of Syria, in Mesopotamia, in Khusistan and Fars along the Persian Gulf, on the Coromandel and Malabar coasts in India, in all

which will materially aid us in the acquisition of the Arabic has a value which words cannot express.

What, then, are the relations between the Hebrew and the Arabic? Most intimate and fundamental. The Arabs have a common ancestry with the Jews, partly from Abraham through Ishmael, and partly from Heber through his son Joktan. Some of the Arab tribes most clearly spoke the same language with the Israelites, while Moses was leading the latter through the wilderness. At what time there was a divergence, we are not informed. But in numerous and in important points, the two languages yet remain identical.

Accord

The affinity of languages is sought by one class of philologists in their words; in their grammar, by another class. ing to the former, words are the matter of language, and grammar its form or fashioning; according to the latter, grammar is an essential, inborn element of a language, so that a new grammar cannot be separately imposed upon a people. But whichever of these methods is adopted, in order to determine the affinity of two languages, the result in the case before us is the same. The Hebrew and Arabic are kindred both in words and in grammar, both lexically and grammatically. In an Arabic translation of the Pentateuch, about one half of the words are Hebrew, with the same radical letters. One writer enumerates more than three hundred names of the most common objects in nature which are the same in both, without by any means exhausting the list. The roots in both languages are generally dissyllabic, lying in the verb rather than in the noun. The two languages abound in guttural sounds. The oblique cases of pronouns are appended to the verb, the noun, and to particles. The verb has but two tenses. The gender is only twofold. The cases are designated by means of prepositions. The genitive is expressed by a change in the first noun, not in the second. The noun and the verb do not admit of being compounded. There is a certain simplicity in the syntax, and Egypt, in Nubia along the whole course of the Nile from Egypt to Sennaar, by the Arabs and Moors in all the towns of the Barbary States and by the wandering Bedouins, in a part of Biledulgerid, in Fezzan, in Sahara, in part of the kingdoms of Kordofan, Darfour, and of Bornou Proper, in different States on the coast of Zanguebar, in Socotra, in a great part of Madagascar, in Malta, and in some of the islands of the Indian archipelago. There are various dialects of the vulgar Arabic, but they do not differ greatly from one another. See Balbi's Allas Ethnographique du Globe, Paris, 1826.

the diction is, in the highest degree, unperiodic. In the Hebrew Lexicon which we here daily use, almost every Hebrew root has a corresponding Arabic one, with the same radicals, and generally with the same signification.

In promoting, therefore, the study of Hebrew in this country, we are taking a most direct means to spread the glorious gospel of Christ, not only where the Arabic is the dominant language, but wherever Islamism has penetrated, that is, from Calcutta to Constantinople, and from the Caspian sea to our American colony in Liberia. A thorough knowledge of Hebrew will remove at least one half the difficulty of acquiring the Arabic. It will introduce us to the same modes of writing and of thought, to the same poetic diction, and in part to the same material objects, the same countries-and the same historical associations. In this sense, the Hebrew is not a dead language. By its most intimate connection with the Arabic, and, I may add, with the Syriac, it is still spoken at the foot of Mount Ararat, on the site of old Nineveh, at Carthage, in the ancient Berytus, and where Paul was shipwrecked. It is reviving in Egypt, and the Bible and the Tract Societies are spreading its literature on the wings of every wind.

There are two other points upon which, did the time admit, some remarks might be offered, viz. the light which a critical examination of the Hebrew Scriptures might be expected to throw on the systems of christian theology; and on the pressent increasing tendency in some portions of the church to undervalue the Old Testament and to degrade it from any connection with the New-thus in effect subverting the authority of both; but I forbear.

It is with unfeigned diffidence, and not without fear and trembling, that I enter upon the duties before me. My associations in this place are those of a learner in the presence of venerated teachers both among the living and the dead. The course of study is, indeed, delightful-and fond and ardent hopes might be indulged by one just entering upon it, yet the experience of almost every day warns us that the fairest earthly hopes bloom only for the grave. The work too is one where presumption and ignorance have no place-interpreting the thoughts of Heaven-endeavoring to explain the mind of the Holy Spirit. Yet that Spirit, humbly sought, giveth power to the faint, and to them that have no might, increaseth strength.

ARTICLE VII.

INQUIRY RESPECTING THE ORIGINAL LANGUAGE OF MATTHEW'S GOSPEL, AND THE GENUINENESS OF THE FIRST TWO CHAPTERS OF THE SAME; WITH PARTICULAR REFERENCE TO MR. NORTON'S VIEW OF THESE SUBJECTS AS EXHIBITED IN HIS TREATISE ON THE GENUINENESS OF THE GOSPELS.

By M Stuart, Prof. Sac. Lit. Theol. Sem. Andover.

§ 1. Introductory Remarks.

6

MR. NORTON has so connected these two subjects, in his Treatise, that it is difficult to separate the one from the other, and yet preserve a special regard to what he has advanced respecting them. He supposes that the first two chapters of our present Gospel of Matthew are an interpolation. He admits, indeed, that they have always made a part of our Greek Translation (as he names it) of Matthew; but he supposes 'the original Hebrew copy of Matthew to have been augmented, by the addition of the chapters in question before it was translated. These chapters,' he thinks, may have been a separate document at first; and this being small, and apparently constituting a natural introduction to the Gospel of Matthew, (which originally omitted the genealogy and the history of Jesus' infancy), they were transcribed by some copyist into one or more Mss. of the Hebrew Original, and thus came at length to be blended with it, and to be written in more or less of future copies as belonging to it.' Some one or more of these copies, thus interpolated, came, as he supposes, into the hands of the Greek Translator of Matthew, who gave to this Gospel the form which it now presents; Addit. Notes, p. liii.

In the discussion of the questions before us, I shall begin with that which respects the language in which the Gospel of Matthew was originally written, and then make some remarks on the alleged interpolation of the first two chapters.

Mr. Norton, like Campbell, Olshausen, and some other writers, seems to consider the question so clear in respect to the Hebrew original of Matthew, that he declines even going into