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feelings of others was another remarkable trait in her character. If at any time, in the course of rapid remark, she had placed her words in a position liable to misconstruction, so that the humblest individual present might possibly feel inconvenienced, about nothing was she more anxious than to have an opportunity of repeating her observations, which she would sometimes do at intervals very distant, merely for the purpose of removing the supposed impression. Very seldom did any misunderstanding occur; for her intention to please and profit was always so strongly apparent, that misconstruction was almost impossible. She was thoroughly sincere. All her professions, whether in matters of friendship or religion, were always accordant with her feelings, and consequently might be relied upon with the utmost implicitness. Her affectionateness, which was another leading quality in her character, was one which was of course displayed most in her family, and rendered her removal an event peculiarly distressing. Her excellencies as a wife and mother are topics on which a strain of long and almost unqualified eulogy might be indulged.

Her last long and tedious illness, which commenced in January, 1833, having been a season of unprecedented trial to the writer of this sketch, as well as of indescribable and various suffering to its subject, he is conscious of almost perfect incompetency for unimpassioned description of it. Overwhelming as was the event, the affliction itself was scarcely less complicated and distressing. The direct cause of her death was pulmonary consumption; but the usual accompaniments of that disease were only a small part of her severe and oppressive suffering. Her mind was thrown into a continual state of agitation; and of all this the "accuser of the brethren" was permitted to take the most cruel advantage. She was favoured with frequent, luminous, and cheering manifestations of the Son of God; for she "believed, and her faith was counted to her for righteousness;" but her notions of the comfort which true religion will yield to its possessor were elevated; and as she was not willing to allow any thing, at least in her own case, for the power which weakness and disease possess of depressing the spirits, she was subject to the most distressing anxiety.

It is natural to ask, Why was all this permitted in reference to one whose whole Christian career had been consistent and exemplary to an extent rarely surpassed, and whose whole life, almost from infancy, had been such a career? O God, thou knowest; and thou doest all things well. That a nature made up so principally of the tender passions as was hers, should, in the prospect of so early a separation from her husband and three lovely children,* be wrung with anguish, was to be expected. These remarks, however, are chiefly applicable to the beginning of her

* One, the youngest, died about a month before the mother; and a second, a fine interesting boy, one year and eight months old, was taken to her in little more than another month: so that in the space of two months the same grave was opened no less than three times. "Woes cluster!"

"

illness. Detachment from earth, and maturity for heaven, became so blessedly and delightfully apparent as her life drew to a close, that nothing could be more satisfactory than the evidence which her general state and temper afforded, that she was about to exchange a "suffering church beneath, for a reigning church above." On the day before that on which her spirit escaped to bliss, she exclaimed, in a cheerful tone, "There is my house, and portion fair." On the same day, she said, "Angels! heaven! glory!" with feelings of triumphant joy, as though or a moment the veil had been drawn aside, and she had been allowed a sight of the heaven of which she was in so short a time to become an inhabitant. With a smile, expressive of unutterable things, she said, the following morning, I have no fear of dying now." Her last words, but uttered with great difficulty, were, "Jesus! Jesus! Jesus!" died on Sunday, (the day which she had always prized as "the best of all the seven,") July 7th, 1833, aged twenty-three years.

"So unaffected, so composed a mind,

So firm yet soft, so strong yet so refined,
Heaven, as its purest gold, with torture tried;
The saint sustain'd it, but the woman died."

HAPPINESS IN GOD.

She

WHAT is happiness but the employment of the faculties of our souls upon suitable objects? How great then must be our felicity when our understandings are employed in contemplating Him who is infinite Truth; and our affections in loving Him who is infinite Goodness! What a rational scheme of bliss have the Scriptures therefore marked out to us, when they tell us that, as to our wills and affections, (whom have we in heaven but God, and there is none upon earth that we should desire in comparison with Him? And then, as to our understandings, we "shall know as we are known," and "" light." How see light" in God's " greatly will the understanding be enlightened, when God shall shine forth immediately upon it, in the fulness of his glory; when we shall be as conscious of his presence, as we are of our own existence; as sensible of his approbation, as of the testimony of our own consciences!

O blessed state, when I shall behold face to face; have a direct view of what is infinitely lovely; love what I behold; and be made happy in the enjoyment of what I love,—the first and best of beings; great and marvellous in his works, just and righteous in his ways, but infinite and incomprehensible in his nature!

God hath styled himself " light." And as the whole material creation would be involved in one horrid gloom, if light did not enliven it with its smiles, and beautify it with a rich variety of colours; so would the spiritual creation live in eternal darkness, did not God lift up the light of his countenance upon it; brightening it with the beams of his truth, and cheering it with the influence of his favour.-Seed.

VOL. XIV. Third Series.

DECEMBER, 1835.

30

REMARKS ON ANCIENT LANGUAGES. To the Editor of the Wesleyan-Methodist Magazine. THE principal family of nations, whose abodes were situated, from the earliest dawn of history, in western Asia, were the Elamites, north of the Persian Gulf; the Asshurites of Assyria; the Arphaxadites of Chaldæa; the Ludites of Lydia; and the Aramites of Syria; all of which were connected by an affinity of language, the most ancient Chaldæan, and to whom the learned have of late given the collective name of the Semitic nations, from their great progenitor, the patriarch Shem.

Three of those branches were soon erased from the records of the world; while the Arphaxadites and Aramites seem alone to have been selected by Infinite Wisdom, to give origin to men who should be as the stars for multitude, and as the sand on the ocean's shore for number, viz., the Jews, Syrians, and Arabs, from whom, at present, are derived all the existing Semitic nations.

It is now universally allowed that all families of people, allied to each other by a similarity of speech, proceed from the same source, and have the same origin and if such be the proof, then the consanguinity of the Jews, Syrians, and Arabs, is fully indicated, even without the testimony of history; not only by the mutual analogies of their idiom, but also by their traditions, and patriarchal form of government. That a family of nations was in possession of those countries, extending from the mountains of Persia to the Levant, and from the Euxine to Arabia Felix, is further substantiated by the indisputable authority of Scripture; and again confirmed by the ancient writers of the Greek and Latin schools, who comprehended, under the name of Syrians, all the branches of the holy family of Shem. In the table of the Toldoth Beni Noach, in the book of Genesis, we find that Terah, the father of Abraham, was lineally descended from Arphaxad, the son of Shem; and that, in conformity to some divine admonition, Terah left his native

city, Ur of the Chaldees, and, with his family, travelled toward the west, where he died at Haran, in Mesopotamia, on his way to the Holy Land. Here the call of Abraham was repeated by Jehovah; and Abraham, full of faith, trusting to the directing guidance of his God, emigrated into Aram, or Syria; and afterwards to the maritime parts of the Mediterranean, occupied by the Canaanites; a people subsequently expelled by his posterity, under Joshua. Thus we find the Hebrews were of Chaldæan origin, and, like their Chaldæan ancestors, a pastoral and Semitic race; for the Chaldæans of Babylon were of Cushite descent.

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When Abrahamn thus wandered from his country and his home, it is reasonable to infer that he brought along with him his native tongue, the vernacular language of Ur, in northern Chaldæa, and that spoken by all the generations of Shem; for, had he adopted the idioms of the people among whom he sojourned, viz., the Punic or Phoenician,-" for the Canaanites were then in the land," or that of the Egyptians,— the ancient Hebrew would most probably even now present some resemblance to the speech of those countries: but the contrary is the fact; for the old Hebrew, being identical with the primitive Chaldæan, the parent tongue of the Semitic nations, is perfectly distinct from the dialects of the above people, who are of Hamitic derivation. It must be remarked, that the Semitic languages are a peculiar class, and totally dif ferent from the Japhetic or Hamitic tongues, as the idioms of Europe and Africa are now designated. The descendants of Shem were the first that used alphabetical characters; and it is highly probable that the ancient inscriptions, called Persepolitan or arrow-headed symbols, were the primeval signs of the Semitic family, as they are found in most of the territories colonized by that race. We know, also, that their authentic records extend thousands of years

prior to those of any other nation; I refer to the sacred writings, which were handed down, and preserved by the Israelites, even to the age of Moses.

In the time of Abraham the Semtic nations were nothing more than pastoral nomades, or wandering shepherds, whose riches consisted in their flocks; following the same pursuits, and preserving the same ,primitive manners, as their progeny of the present day, the Bedouin Arabs. This mode of life also prevailed in Palestine, Arabia, and Chaldæa, as well as in Syria Proper, the country of Laban; and in Egypt, which was then governed by its Shepherd Kings.

Although it was in Mesopotamia that the first cities were formed, and the first empires founded, yet they were of Hamitic origin, and the erections of the Cushite posterity of Nimrod,-"that mighty hunter before the Lord;" and, no doubt, consisted of a mixed population, like those of modern Arabia, which has its inhabitants of the cities, and those of the plain.

The true Arabs, through their progenitor Jobab, the son of Joktan, the son of Eber, the son of Arphaxad, the son of Shem, had, with the Hebrew, a common country and ancestry. From them came the Homerite or Rayal Arabs, who were the aboriginal possessors of South Arabia, and with whom the Ishmaelites afterwards united; but the Koreishite Arabs are the offspring of Esau. The Agaaze or Gecze of Ethiopia are also of Arabian Homerite descent, and one of their most ancient colonies in Africa. In Ethiopia, the aboriginal Geeze is still spoken through Tigre, and is a pure and primitive dialect of the old Arabic, nearly allied to its parent tongue, the Hebrew Chaldæan. The most ancient Arabic, terined the Sacred Language, is derived from the same stem as its kindred branches, the Syriac, Hebrew, and Ethiopian, and bears the same affinity to the Chaldæan as the Doric does to the Attic Greek, which clearly evinces

pure and unsophisticated state, it its descent, and proves that, in its must have been the primitive Chaldæan, the original language of the world. The Arabic, like the Hebrew, (into Syria,) was, no doubt, brought by the Beni Joktan from the plains of Shinar into Yemen; as, almost from the time of the deluge, the Homerite Arabs have been in possession of Arabia Felix, and consequently their speech must have been formed long before the time of Esau and Ishmael, the only people that ever mixed with the Homerite or Rayal Arabians. It is now the learned language of Arabia; and, like the Koreishite Arabic, written with the Cufic character; but the ancient monuments found in this peninsula seem to indicate that its original symbols were the Persepolitan.

"To those," says Dr. Clarke, "who understand the Arabic, Chaldee, Syriac, Hebrew, and Ethiopic, the similarity is peculiarly striking, and proves that at some remote time there existed a near affinity of nation and kindred among those widely extended people."

The comparison, indeed, of those correlative dialects, in their construction and phraseology, sufficiently evinces them to be branches of the same stock; hence we must conclude that, antecedent to historical data, but in all probability in the time of Eber, ("for in his day was the earth divided,") one mighty race possessed the countries "beyond the flood,” (that is, the Euphrates,) and only differed then, as now, according to the physical character of the territories they occupied.

We are told that, before the judgment of God upon Babel, "the earth was of one language and one speech; " but what the formation and identity of that language was, except it be preserved in the primitive Chaldæan-Hebrew, we cannot at this period determine: yet, reasoning from the undoubted analogy visible in those primeval dialects, it was most probably the mother or parent Chaldæan; "the sacred language of the peopled earth," and the common idiom of all the fixed

Tigre, a province of Abyssinia, between the Red Sea and the river Tacazze.

and nomadic tribes of Shinar, the great cradle of the Semitic nations. If, however, those ancient tongues cannot claim, through their connexion with the Chaldæan-Hebrew, priority of origin, and the title of primitive idioms, then it is vain to seek for the original language from any other source.

When the Hebrews, for their disobedience and ingratitude, were led away captives to Babel, their holy language was lost as a spoken tongue, being blended with, and corrupted by, the Cushite Babylonish, which is the Rabbinical or modern Hebrew. This also caused the necessity of explaining the Hebrew Scriptures in the Chaldee or Babylonish, which differs considerably from the Chaldæan-Hebrew.

As language can only be extended by oral use, it seems to have been the design of divine Providence to swell each of the Semitic branches into mighty nations, and to spread them, and extend their language into various countries, in order that the family of Shem might continue a holy and a peculiar race, in perfect dependence on Him,) for, already had the rest of mankind perverted his ways, neglected the great truths of Revelation, and forgotten their God,) that, at a subsequent period, by their instrumentality, and in his own good time, the moral and spiritual condition of the world should be renovated, and his saving health spread among all nations.

Sacred history sufficiently proves how repeatedly and constantly the great Jehovah followed their rebellion with pardon, their disobedience with mercy, and their ingratitude with love. But while the Abramic branch of the Semitic family retained the records of unerring truth, the Arabic Shemites progressively departed from the knowledge of the living God, and became the worshippers of the host of heaven, the founders of the Sabæan rites in Arabia; in which state they remained till the age of Mahomet: and it is a remarkable fact, that while the Jews are wanderers and outcasts on the face of the earth, without a country and a home, the rejected and the

despised of men, the Arabs, on the contrary, are in possession of their territory, conquering, but unconquered; and while the Hebrews, His chosen, His holy people, are the scorn of the unconscious Hindoo, and the abhorred of the ignorant Negro, the Arabs have spread their influence, language, and dominion from the shores of the Atlantic to the regions of India, and from the Mediterranean to the banks of the Niger. No language is so universally diffused as theirs, or so generally spoken, while the sacred idiom of Israel is totally lost as a national language, or only used by the learned, and a few insulated Jews. But God's ways are in the whirlwind, and His paths in the storm; and though clouds and darkness are round about Him, yet mercy and justice are the inhabitants of his throne. That some great and beneficent results are to flow from those apparently singular anomalies, is my firm opinion; and if we look to Africa, now the more immediate seat of their operation, a sort of distant prospect breaks upon the historic vision, and sheds a ray of light on the proceedings of Almighty God.

When, I say, we look to Africa, with her millions of inhabitants, now buried, for the most part, in the depths of superstition, and lost to general intercourse by her multitude of tongues, we directly see that, while the Semitic Arabs are breaking down the barriers of gross Polytheism, inculcating the belief of one God, and disseminating through this unhappy continent their beautiful and expressive language, they are but the hewers of wood, and the drawers of water, to a more perfect dispensation; the unconscious agents in His hands of preparing the way of the Lord, and making his paths straight. It is rightly observed that the curse of Babel, and the confusion of tongues, was a more especial visitation on the family of Ham, than on those of Japhet or Shem. This is indeed manifest from the variety of idioms perfectly distinct from those of Europe, Asia, and America, and not in the least

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