Babylon, burst in all their horror upon mankind; whatever else is acknowledged as belonging to those times of convulsion which precede the dawning of the Sun of Righteousness, is upon the world; but it yet waits for another sign. And, lo! from every part of the earth a common impulse agitates the children of Abraham; preserved distinct, and preserving their property wondrously, so that it can be hastily gathered together, they are ready to move as were their ancestors in Egypt at the Passover. From every country in Europe; from remotest Asia; from America, North and South; from Africa; from the islands of the sea; wherever there is a Jew, the hand of Jehovah is. upon him. They move, as their fathers moved at the three great festivals, from the extremities of the land to Jerusalem. From every part of the habitable earth they gather to the Holy Land; and looking upon Him, whom they pierced, they go mourning, yet rejoicing, the Spirit of grace and of supplications poured out upon them. They speak everywhere, as they journey, of Jesus of Nazareth. Their lips are touched with the fire of heaven. Multitudes believe. An impulse mightier than that of the Crusades sways not Europe only, but mankind. God remembers Abraham, his friend, and his children are permitted to be the heralds of mercy to universal humanity. Jew and Gentile bury all ancient enmity; the lines of sect and party in the Church are obliterated; one visible Catholic unity blesses all the children of our common Father. The Resurrection of the world has come. "For if the casting away of them be the reconciling of the world, what shall the receiving of them be but LIFE FROM THE DEAD."

ARTICLE IV.

Yahveh Christ, or The Memorial Name. By ALEXANDER MACWHORTER, Yale University, &c.*

It is pleasant to read a work written by a discoverer for the purpose of publishing his discovery to the world. He is full of his theme. He writes because he cannot help it. Like the prophet, should he hold his peace, the burning fire shut up in his bones would consume him. The style into which he involuntarily falls, may perhaps be somewhat dogmatic and denunciatory, but then it can hardly fail also to be marked by directness, strength, and earnestness. Whether, therefore, his discovery be real or imaginary, he secures our sympathy and holds our attention, even when we disagree with him. On this account, we have derived not a little enjoyment from the book the title of which is given above.

The book is evidently the work of a discoverer and the record of his discovery. The author has evidently found something which, if it was ever known before, has been lost for at least a thousand years; something, too, the importance of which, in his judgment, can hardly be exaggerated. It is not barely a discovery, but a great, an invaluable discovery. Great and invaluable though it be, however, we must be pardoned for confessing our inability to find it. It is hidden from our eyes. The discoverer is discovered at a glance. The discovery is undiscoverable after the most diligent search.

I. It is true, that, in the first line of the title to the book, we read the odd looking word "Yahveh" in connection with "Christ;" and for a moment we are startled by the suspicion that we hold in our hands an attempt to persuade mankind that the Lord's Anointed is no longer to be sought in Jesus of Nazareth, but in some new avatar of Vishnu, perhaps, or in some remotely Oriental personage recently arisen, and claim

* The Editors have not sufficiently examined the subject of this Article to give a definite opinion in regard to it, but commend the Article to the Christian public, as an interesting one, from a very competent writer.-EDITORS.

ing, like Mohammed, to be the Prophet of God. To the ear of the people, for whose particular benefit it should be premised that this book is written, "Yahveh" can scarcely suggest an origin for itself in any country this side of India or China.

As soon as we open the book, however, we are relieved by finding that this strange name "Yahveh" is only another form of the familiar and yet revered name "Jehovah," the form in which, as Gesenius infers from Theodoret's report of the pronunciation in vogue with the Samaritans, "Jehovah" was written before the superstition of the Jews made it the ineffable name. But granting that "Yahveh" was the orthography of the name by which God made himself known to Moses, "Jehovah" is the spelling by which this name has been written and spoken by Jew and Gentile so long, that "Yahweh" is lost out of tradition itself, and is strictly a reconstruction, like the picture of an extinct animal designed from a few fragments of its bones. Besides, "Yahveh" properly pronounced, a like a in "hat," and e like e in "met," has a short, flat sound, bearing no comparison with "Jehovah," one of the most sonorous and majestic words among all the words of human speech. If superstition indeed changed "Yahveh" to "Jehovah," and did not simply take advantage of the change after it was made, it is one of the very few things for which we are ready to allow that superstition deserves our thanks.

Were anything whatever dependent upon returning to the orthography "Yahveh," anything, especially, of religious importance, we could cheerfully submit to return to it at a far greater sacrifice of euphony in the pronunciation than it demands. But what possible advantage can be anticipated as the result of such an innovation? Mr. MacWhorter writes, professedly, for the multitude. To use his own language, he aims at "a popular presentation of facts known, hitherto, only to scholars." In all sincerity we ask, therefore, if he supposes that the "unlearned" will see any meaning in "Yahveh" not equally visible to them in "Jehovah?" And surely it cannot be necessary to tell the learned that that peculiar significance of this name, upon which he lays so much. stress, is not indicated by its vowels, but by its first conso

nant.

II. Dismissing the question of orthography-the orthography neither being the grand discovery of the book, nor the key to it-we proceed to the question raised by the affirmation in the preface, that the "name 'Jehovah' is the grand central fact upon which, the discussion turns," taken in connection with the announcement, in the first chapter, that, "it is this NAME, long buried, but now risen again in the light of modern investigation, to which we would restore the significance and glory of its ancient meaning," together with a sentence, on page 95, to the effect that "until the discovery"—recent, of course "of the true derivation of Jehovah,' or 'Yahveh,' gave the clue to its meaning," &c. &c.

These and similar expressions are freely used to expose the ignorance of our translators, and of all who preceded them, as far back as the Seventy, compared with the learning of modern scholars, on the subject of the derivation and meaning of the name "Jehovah." It is asserted that in this book are adduced "some facts in the exegesis of this name to which our translators had no access." And then our author proceeds to declare that the word rendered "Jehovah" is the old future of the old root-form HAVAH, equivalent to the later root-form HAYAH, the ordinary form of the Hebrew verb "to be;" that "Jehovah," which ought to be spelled and pronounced "Yahveh,” accordingly means, "He who will be." To this opinion, Gesenius, who at first held to an Egyptian or Greek derivation of "Jehovah," finally came, and in his Thesaurus evinced his candor and scholarship in the memorable decision, "They lose their time and labor who endeavor to refer this name to a foreign origin." Thus one vexed question of ages has been at last and forever settled.

This sort of language, with all that it implies, Anno Domini, 1857, and from under the shadow of Yale University, and introduced to the world by the recommendation-guarded indeed -of the venerable "Dwight Professor of Didactic Theology, Yale Theological Seminary!"

"Jehovah" once

But so well was the derivation of the name known within the precincts of Yale College-the same derivation constantly represented in the book before us as a fresh discovery of modern research-that President Dwight, in one

of his sermons on the Divinity of Christ, says: "It is hardly necessary to remark, that the name I AM has the same import with JEHOVAH," thus showing his perfect, undoubting conviction of their common origin, of course, from HAYAH or HA

VAH.

On this point, the old, standard Hebrew Lexicons bear but one testimony. That, for example, published at Avignon, A. D. 1765, under the patronage of Cardinal Dominico Passionei, places "Jehovah" under " Havah," making no allusion to any other supposed origin of the MEMORIAL NAME. Castell and Cocceius give precisely the same information-no more-no less. And in the valuable dissertation on the Ten Hebrew names of God, prefixed to Robertson's Concordantial Lexicon, London, 1680, under the name "Jehovah," it is written-let modern scholarship take heed-" Derivatur enim à radice vel, (nam utraque in lingua Hebraea est usitata,) esse, existere. Yod ab initio est formativum nominum propriorum desumptum ex tertia persona futuri;" that is, the name "Jehovah" "is derived from the root Hayah or Havah, (for each of these verbs is used in the Hebrew tongue,) to be, to exist. Yodh, the beginning of this name, is a formative of proper names chosen from the third person of the future." Again, under the name Ehyeh, or I Am as our translators rendered it, we read; "Nam ex multorum, et omnium Hebræorum, sententiâ, non est alia inter hoc, et nomen Tetragrammaton, differentia, nisi quod illud est personae primae, hoc tertiæ; et quod Deus de se in prima persona dixit, n, ero, vel sum qui sum; id homines de eo efferunt, in, erit, vel est qui est ;" i. e. "According to the opinion of many, and of all Hebrews, there is no other dif ference between this name, (to wit, Ehyeh,) and Jehovah, except that the former is in the first person, the latter in the third; and that God has said of himself in the first person, Ehyeh, I will be, or I Am who I am; whereas men say of him, Jehovah, He will be, or He is who he is."

The truth is that, with regard to the derivation of the name "Jehovah," there has never been, from the earliest times, a prevalent diversity of opinion either in the Jewish or Christian world. Whoever, from time to time, may have departed from the received faith on this subject, he has not succeeded in