being, as it were, the master-piece of creation: See Acts vii. 20. And agreeably hereto the Ethiopians, to the word Adam, always annex the idea of something perfect and beautiful. Nor is it improbable, that the city Admah or Adamah, before it was destroyed with Sodom and Gomorrah, seated on the banks of Jordan, and compared to the garden of the Lord, was so denominated from the pleasantness of its situation.

Univer. Hist. vol. xvii. p. 509, Note (Y).

1434. [Gen. ii, 6, 7.] All the personages whose histories were so earnestly related in Eastern countries never existed, and are nothing more than the antient symbols personified. See Abbe PLUCHE'S Hist. of the Heavens, vol. i. p. 142.

1435.

The Egyptians, and most of the Eastern nations, be the first inventors of it who they will, bad an allegory or a picture which became famous, and which is every-where met with. It represented hideous figures, or monstrous giants, as springing out of the earth. One of which had many arms; another pulled up the largest oaks; and a third had in his hands the fourth part of a mountain, which he flung against heaven. They were all distinguished by some singular attempt, and by frightful names, the most known of which were Briareus, Othus, Ephialtes, Enceladus, Mimas, Porphyrion, and Ronach or Rochus: all personages which compose so many symbols, or significant characters; as will appear from an interpretation of their singular names. Briareus signifies the loss of serenity: Othus, the diversity of seasons Ephialtes, great gatherings of clouds: Enceladus, the havocks spread by vast overflowing waters: Porphyrion, earthquakes or fractures of the land: Mimas, the great rains: and Rochus, the wind. Thus by the bare recital of these allegorical names, we have a lively picture of those earth-born meteors which constitute the most striking phenomena in nature.

existence which is so strong and natural in the soul of man. For nothing can delight in, or desire eternity, or so much as form a notion of it, or think upon it, or any way reach after it, but that alone which is generated from it, and come out of it. For it is a self-evident Truth, that nothing can look higher, or further back, than into its own original; and therefore, nothing can look or reach back into eternity, but that which came out of it. This is as certain, as that a line reaches, and can reach no further back, than to that point from whence il arose.

See No. 158. Rev. WM. LAW's Appeal to all that doubt the Truths of the Gospel, p. 13.

1446.

See Forbes' Orient. Memoirs, vol. iii. p. 98.

India, or the East Indies (as it is now called), extended over not only a great part of the continent of Asia, but also of the islands of the ocean lying to the south of it. Situated between the 84th and 127th degrees of longitude, and between one degree 12 minutes and 36 degrees of north latitude; it contains in length, from west to east, about 2315 miles, in breadth, from south to north, 2110 miles. Bounded on the north by the countries of Great and Little Thibet; on the south, with the Indian ocean; on the east, with China, and the Chinese sea; and on the west, with Persia and the Indian sea, it is divided into three great regions: the peninsula of India within, or on this side of, the Ganges; the peninsula without, or beyond, the Ganges; and the main land. The two peninsulas contain several potent kingdoms; but the third part is, at present, under one sovereign, called by Europeans the Great Mogul. This is chiefly the part known to the Orientals by the name of India or Hindustân. See No. 296.

Modern Univer. Hist. vol. vi. p. 204.

1447, India, on its most enlarged scale, in which the antients appear to have understood it, comprises an area of nearly forty degrees on each side, including a space almost as large as all Europe; being divided on the west from Persia by the Arachosian mountains, limited on the cast by the Chinese part of the farther peninsula, confined on the north by the wilds of Tartary, and extending to the south as far as the isles of Java. In India the primitive religion and languages of the Hindoos prevail at this day with more or less of their antient purity; and in it

the Nazari letters are still used with more or less deviation from their original form.

1448.

Works of Sir W. JONES, vol. i.p. 22.

Japan is situate on the most eastern verge of Asia, and consists of three large, and a number of smaller islands; its extent is from 30 to 41 degrees of latitude, and from 13 to 147 degrees east longitude: were South and North Britain divided by an arm of the sea, Japan might be most aptly compared to England, Scotland, and Ireland, with their attendant smaller islands, peninsulas, bays, channels, &c. This country is described by the famed Venetian traveller Marco Paolo, under the name of Zipangri, which MARTINI tells us is the same as the Chinese Ge-puen-gin, with the addition of an r, after the Tartaric manner; Ge signifying the sun, Huen the origin or rising, and Gin a man.

1449.

Modern Univer. Hist. vol. ix. p. 2.

It is received by tradition, says ABULFEDA, that the inhabited earth began (to be civilized, and to have its Meridians calculated) at the West, in the Fortunate Islands, or the Canaries as they are now called. Modern Geographers have found by experience, that the needle of the Mariner's Compass, at the Azores, points directly to the North Pole.

1450.

See Dr. Gregory's Description of the Terrestrial Globe, pp. 273, 275.

"In the end," says PLUTARCH (de Iside et Oseride, p. 369), “the evil Genius will fall (never to rise again). Then men will become happy, and their bodies cast no shade." This proves, says VOLNEY, that the equator was considered as the true Paradise. Again: "All the antient opinions of the Egyptian and Grecian theologians are to be found in India (Edeu), and they appear to have been introduced, by means of the commerce of Arabia and the vicinity of Persia, time immemorial.”

1457. [Gen. ii. 7, 19.] All that can be gathered from Mahabharada or Great History of India, written in Malabar verse; and from the catalogues of Indian kings in the Asiatic Researches, is as follows: Meny the First, or Adam, lived 5806 years before the year 1800 of the Christian era. Menu the Second, or Menu Mahusha, the Nochos of the Greeks, and the Noah of the Israelites, lived 4749 years before that period. Under the government of this king happened the Vellapralaya, the deluge. Then comes Hirannyacasipu, perhaps Nimrod, whom the Brahmins class among the wicked dæmons, and who lived 4006 years before the birth of Christ. Bali, or Mahabali, the Belus of the Assyrians, lived 3904; Budha, the Thaut of the Egyptians, and the Hermes of the Greeks, 2827 years before the year 1800.

BARTOLOMEO, by Johnston, p. 303.

1458. [Gen. ii. 8.] Berosus, by birth a Chaldean, gives us a series of ten kings that reigned at Babylon before the flood; exactly answering to the ten generations, which begin with Adam and end in Noah. (See Univer. Hist. b. i. chap. i. sec. v.) — The prophet Isaiah (xxiii. 13) declares that the kingdom of Babylon was of Assyrian origin; as does Ptolemy in his Chronological Canon, which takes date about 747 years before Christ, when Pul made his first appearance on this side the Euphrates in the 23d year of his reign.

The tree of knowledge of good and evil, and the tree of life, must have been emblematic or allegorical. Dr. DARWIN.

1464. [Gen. ii. 9, 10.] The Mythologists of Thibet apply the word Amrita, or Immortal, to a celestial tree bearing ambrosial fruit, and adjoining to four vast rocks, from which as many sacred rivers derive their several streams. See No. 174. Works of Sir W. JONES, vol. i. p. 23.

1465.

The vast region of Tartary, being situ ated under the finest climate in the world, is every-where of an extraordinary goodness and fertility. But although almost all the great rivers of Asia have their springs in the mountains of this country, yet the land being perhaps the highest any-where on earth, it is, in several parts, destitute of water; so that it is inhabitable only near the rivers and lakes. Yet, though the soil be so luxuriant, Great Tartary does not produce a single wood of tall trees, of any kind whatever, excepting in some few places towards the frontiers: all the wood, that is found in the heart of the country, consists in shrubs, which never exceed the height of a pike; and these are very rare.

1466.

See Modern Univer. Hist. vol. iv. pp. 292, 293.

We know from history, that the Scythians, Sarmatians, Huns, Chazers, and Mogols, have been successively the masters of these vast countries, and were

altogether nomadic nations, who lived without agriculture : the country has been without wood since time immemorial, nor could there even spring up any wood whatsoever, since its rambling possessors every spring set fire to the old dry grass, in order to make room for the new grass, which, by the latter end of May, is usually found, near the rivers, the height of an ordinary man's waist.

See Dr. WALLERIUS's Mineralogy, sect. 8.

1407. [Gen. ii. 11, 12.] At Thibet in Tartary, there is gold in large quantities, and frequently very fine. In the form of gold-dust it is found in the beds of rivers, and at their several bendings, generally attached to small pieces of stone, with every appearance of its having been part of a larger mass. They find it sometimes in large masses, lumps, and irregular veins; the adhering stone is generally flint or quartz, and I have sometimes seen, says Mr. ROBERT SAUNDERS, a half-formed, impure sort of precious stone in the mass.

or Egyptians, whom the Persians call Black Indians, conquered and possessed it a long time. Some authors believe, that by Cush on the river Gihon is meant only the antient country of the Scythians on the Araxes.

The Hebrew grammarians derive the word Habascha, which signifies Ethiopia, from Habouscha, which denotes a people raised from a mixture of different nations, originally of different countries. According to D' Herbelot and others, the Abyssinians, Nubians, and Fangi, are all comprehended under the word Habasch. (Univer. Hist. vol. xvii. p. 475, note (B). These different nations or castes were characteristically named by Adam or civilized man, under the appropriate hieroglyphics of the various animals.

1476. The word yinacheh (Hebr.), is so far, when applied to man, from placing or putting him only to work, that it is rather the contrary; it is to place him free from labor or toil, to place him in that sense at rest, to dedicate him. (HUTCHINSON'S Introduc. to Moses's Sine Principio, p. cxlii.) Hence obed (Hebr.) is in all the old languages to be a disciple, to be religious, to serve, to worship, to offer sacrifice, to employ one's faculties, abilities, and substance, to the service of God, &c. as Exod. iii. 12. vii. 16. x. 7. And shemar, to keep, to ob

D

1477. [Gen ii. 16, 17.] There are two ways of coming at any sort of learning, and a moral conduct of life; the one is by instruction in words, the other by practical exercises. Moses, as a legislator directed of God, very carefully joined these two methods of instruction together: he neither left these practical exercises to go on without verbal instruction, nor did he permit the hearing of the law to proceed without the exercises for practice. Beginning immediately from the earliest infancy, and the appointment of every one's diet, he left nothing of the very smallest consequence to be done at the pleasure and disposal of the person himself: accordingly he made a fixed rule of law what sorts of food they should abstain from, and what sorts they should make use of; as also what communion they should have with others, what great diligence they should use in their occupations, and what times of rest should be interposed for the hearing of the law, and learning it exactly, not once or twice, or oftener, but every week.

See No. 99, 108, 185, 187, 324.

1478. [

See JOSEPH. Against Apion, b. ii. § 17, 18.

-19.] Those animals and vegetables, which are useful to man, are from the Lord. But those which are hurtful to man, are from hell, being correspondent forms of the lusts which stream forth from the evil loves of the inhabitants there; and are produced on earth by the same law of permission, as that by which evils themselves flow from thence into men.

1479. The Lord from Himself, through the spiritual world, operates all things which exist in nature. By the spiritual world is meant both heaven and hell. In the first Chapter we had an account of those heavenly productions, which were all very good. Here and in the next Chapter we learn, that there was a secondary creation of things injurious to man. The savage beasts of the field, thorns also and thistles, endowed with evil dispositions and noxious qualities, were produced according to that correcting law of the Divine Providence which makes disobedience or sin punish itself in its own effects and their consequences. That things noxious on earth derive their origin from man's evil, and thus from hell, may be confirmed from the state of the land of Canaan. While the Israelites lived according to the commandments, the earth gave her increase, as did the flocks and herds. But when they lived contrary to the commandments, the earth was barren and accursed. Instead of

harvest, it produced thorns and briars, the flocks and herds miscarried, and there were inroads of wild beasts. See SWEDENBORG, on Divine Love, nn. 339,- 356.

1480. [Gen. ii. 19.] The notion of equivocal generation, says Mr. JOHN LOCKE in a letter to his friend Sir HANS SLOANE, I should quite lay aside as a groundless fancy, if you could resolve me but one instance that puzzles me in that affair; namely, how strange and new creatures can be found in the bodies of men and other animals, which are not reducible to any species of creatures in any country, from which they might derive their origin. Other instances might be mentioned, which I think can hardly be accounted for by univocal generation, according to the ordinary philosophy. See Month. Mag. for October 1815, p. 229.

1482.

See his Geological Facts, as quoted in Bib. Research. vol. i. p. 217.

Beasts of prey are absolutely necessary. But for them, the Earth would be infested with cadaverous substances. There perishes annually by natural death the twentieth part at least of quadrupeds; the tenth part of fowls; and an indefinite number of insects, as most of their species live only one year, some one day, others but a few hours. As the rains convey these spoils of death to the rivers, and thence to the seas, the whole amphibious race seem created expressly for clearing such situations. There also most of the ferocious animals descend by night from the mountains, to hunt for their prey. But it is in hot countries especially, where the effects of corruption are most rapid and most dangerous, that Providence has multiplied the carnivorous animals. Tribes of lions, tigers, leopards, panthers, civet-cats, ounces, jackals, hyenas, condors, &c. resort thither to reinforce those of wolves, foxes, martens, otters, vultures, crows, &c.. Legions of voracious crabs are nestled in their sands; the caimans and the crocodiles lie in ambush among their reeds; shell-fish of innumerable species armed with utensils fit for sucking, piercing, filing, braising, roughen the face of the rocks and pave the borders of their seas; clouds of sea-fowls hover with a loud noise over their shallows, or sail round and round at the discretion of the waves in quest of food; the lamprey, the becune, the carang, and the whole species of cartilaginous fishes, which live only ou flesh, swim there in crowds, constantly employed in devouring the wreck of bodies thrown on the shore. There also, more thau in cooler climes, the insect-legions hasten the consumption of putrifying bodies. The wasps, furnished with scissars, cut asunder the fleshy parts; the flies pump out the fluids; the