in the presence of the god of fire, that he may be the witness." The lamps of Gideon's soldiers, (Judges 7. 16,) and those of the wise and foolish virgins, (Matt. 25. 1-10,) were most probably a kind of torch or flambeau, made of iron or earthenware, wrapped about with old linen, and moistened from time to time with oil. Sir John Chardin says that in many parts of the East, instead of torches and flambeaus, they carry a pot of oil in one hand, and a lamp full of oily rags in the other; and Roberts observes, "When the bridegroom goes forth to the house of the bride, or when he returns to his own habitation or to that of his father, he is always accompanied by numerous friends and dependants, who carry lamps and torches. When he approaches either house the inmates rush out to meet him, and greet him with their best wishes and congratulations. The path is covered with 'garments,' and lamps like fire-flies sparkle in every direction. The whole house is illuminated with small lamps; those used out of doors are composed of many pieces of old linen, and squeezed hard one against another in a round figure, and thrust down into a mould of copper. The persons that hold them in one hand, have in the other a bottle of the same metal with the copper mould, which is full of oil, which they take care to pour out from time to time upon the linen, which otherwise gives no light." See MARRIAGE. In Job 5. 15, we read "He that is ready to slip with his feet is as a lamp despised in the thought of him that is at ease." Roberts remarks, "That of a man in India who is much despised, or who is very contemptible, it is said, 'That fellow is like the half-consumed firebrand of the funeral pile.' Job by his enemies was counted as a despised lamp. When a person is sick unto death, it is said, 'His lamp is going out. After death, His lamp has gone out. When a person is indisposed, should a lamp give a dim light, the people of the house will become much alarmed, as they think it a bad sign. A lamp, therefore, which burns dimly (as did that of Job) will be lightly esteemed.' In ch. 29. 2,3, Job says, 'Oh that I were as in months past, as in the days when God preserved me, when his candle shined upon my head, and by his light I walked through darkness. The Hindoos are accustomed to say, 'Alas! alas! his secret is no longer with me; his lamp no longer shines in my heart."" Norden describes a lamp commonly used at Cairo as being made of the palm-tree wood, of the height of twenty-three inches. The glass, that hangs in the middle, is half-filled with water and has oil on the top, about three fingers in depth. The wick is preserved dry at the bottom of the glass, where they have contrived a place for it, and ascends through a pipe. These lamps do not give much light, yet they are very commodious, because they are transported easily from one place to another. With regard to the lanterns, they have pretty nearly the figure of a cage, and are made of reeds. It is a collection of five or six glasses, like to that of the lamp which has just been described. They suspend them by cords in the middle of the streets; when there is any great festival at Cairo, they then put painted paper in the place of reeds. Pococke, speaking of the travelling of the people of Egypt, says, "By night they rarely make use of tents, but lie in the open air, having large lanterns, made like a pocket paper lantern, the bottom and top being of copper tinned over, and instead of paper they are made with linen, which is extended by hoops of wire, so that when it is put together it serves as a candlestick, and they have a contrivance to hang it up abroad by means of three staves." The Jews were accustomed to light lamps at their festivals, and particularly at that instituted by Judas Maccabæus, which is called the Feast of Lamps. (See DEDICATION, FEAST OF.) Herodotus informs us there was an annual sacrifice at Saïs, known by the name of the feast of lamps. The Chinese have a similar festival at the present day. A lamp in figurative language is the symbol of government or a governor. Thus concerning the law of God, the Psalmist says, "Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path," (Psalm 119. 105,) the law being that whereby the king was to be guided, and in 1Kings 11. 36, a lamp signifies the seat or perpetual succession of a kingdom. When lamp is used to signify successor, as in the passage, "I have ordained a lamp for mine anointed," (Psalm 132. 17,) the metaphor is taken from the light being continually kept in by fresh supplies. LAND, Nerets. This word in the Old Testament often denotes emphatically the country of the Israelites; at other times some particular country or district; as the land of Canaan, the land of Egypt, the land of Ashur, the land of Moab. In several places of our authorized version, the phrase "all the earth" is used, when the more restricted phrase "the land" or "all the land" would be more proper. For some account of the cultivation and tenure of land in Palestine, see AGRICULTURE; FARM; GRAIN; HUSBANDRY; PALESTINE. LAND-MARK, giboul. (Deut. 19. 14; 27. 17.) In the above passages a strict command is given to the Israelites not to remove a neighbour's land-mark, "which they of old time have set in thine inheritance, which thou shalt inherit in the land that the Lord thy God giveth thee to possess it." When the Israelites had conquered the Land of Promise, it was by the Divine command surveyed and divided by lot, first among the twelve tribes; then the portion of each tribe was laid out in separate inheritances, according to the number of the families composing the tribe; and thus every man in the nation had his field, which he was directed to cultivate for the support of himself and his family. To prevent mistake and litigation, these fields were marked off by stones set up on the limits, which could not be removed without incurring the wrath of heaven. In Persia, land-marks are still used; in the journey from Arzroum to Amasia, Mr. Morier found the boundaries of each man's possession here and there marked by large stones. Land-marks were used in Greece, at least before the age of Homer; for in describing the combat of Minerva and Mars, the poet states that "the goddess seized, with her powerful hand, a piece of rock, lying in the plain, black, rugged, and large, which ancient men had placed to mark the boundary of the field." Roberts says, "Fields in the East have not fences or hedges as in England, but a ridge, a stone, or a post; and, consequently, it is not very difficult to encroach on the property of another. Should a man not be very careful, his neighbour will take away a little every year, and keep pushing his ridge into the other's ground. Disputes of the most serious nature often occur on this account, and call for the greatest diligence and activity in the authorities. An injured man repeats to his aggressor the proverb, 'The serpent shall bite him who steps over the ridge;' that is, he who goes beyond the land-mark.” See PALESTINE. LAND OF CANAAN. LANE, puun. This word, in the New Testament, (Luke 14. 21,) signifies a lane or alley of a city, in distinction from in area, a street. LANGUAGE. We read in Genesis 11. 1, "And the whole earth was of one language, [ saphah,] and of one speech;" v. 6,7, "And the Lord said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do. Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech." What was the first language taught men is a point which has excited much discussion. The Hebrew, Syriac, Arabic, Chaldee, Phoenician, Egyptian, Ethiopic, Greek, Sanserit, and Chinese, have each had their prior claims ably stated. The weight of evidence, however, is in favour of the Hebrew and the Syriac, which were originally one and the same: (1.) Because the names of the letters and the numeral values assigned to them in Hebrew and Syriac, have been generally adopted by the rest, notwithstanding the dissimilarity of the letters. (2.) The superior antiquity of the Hebrew and Syriac letters, (which had originally but one form,) is demonstrated by the greater simplicity of their shape. (3.) There is strong internal evidence in favour of the sup | position; such as, that words derived from, or identical with Hebrew words, run through the greater number of known languages; that all Oriental proper names of rivers, mountains, cities, persons, &c., are deducible from the Hebrew; that when Abraham “the Hebrew" travelled in Palestine and Egypt, he was everywhere understood. Dr. Adam Clarke remarks, that "As the people had the same language, so they had a unity of design and sentiment. It is very likely that the original language was composed of monosyllables, that each had a distinct ideal meaning, and only one meaning; as different acceptations of the same word would undoubtedly arise, either from compounding terms, or when there were but few words in a language, using them by a different mode of pronunciation to express a variety of things. Where this simple monosyllabic language prevailed, and it must have prevailed in the first ages of the world, men would necessarily have simple ideas, and a corresponding simplicity of manners. The Chinese is exactly such as this; and the Hebrew, if stripped of its vowel points, and its prefixes, suffixes, and postfixes, separated from their combinations, so that they might stand by themselves, would nearly answer to this character even in its present state. I shall not examine how the different languages of the earth were formed. It certainly was not a work of the moment; different climates must have a considerable share in the formation of tongues, by their influence on the organs of speech. The invention of new arts and trades, must give birth to a variety of terms and expressions. Merchandize, commerce, and the cultivation of the sciences, would produce their share; and different forms of government, modes of life, and means of instruction, also contribute their quota. The Arabic, Chaldee, Syriac, and Ethiopic, still bear the most striking resemblance to their parent, the Hebrew. Many others might be reduced to a common source; yet, everywhere there is sufficient evidence of the confusion of tongues. The anomalies even in the most regular languages sufficiently prove this." We have no means of positive knowledge as to what relation existing tongues may bear to the primitive language of the earth, and in the absence of such evidence, we can only arrive at probable conjectures on the subject. In the first place, we must consider that in antediluvian times the numbers of the human race, and their consequent divisions into nations, could not have been nearly so great as in the present day, from the comparatively short period that had elapsed since the creation, and from the comparatively unrefined condition natural to a primitive race of beings, on whom the gift of reason was obviously bestowed by the Creator for the purposes of exertion and of gradual cultivation and improvement. We must not here suppose, however, with too many advocates of an erring philosophy, that man was at first naturally savage, or in the state in which we now find the wild and uncultivated natives of savage countries; or that religion and knowledge were, in the first days, in the debased condition we now too often find them in the remote corners of the earth. The savage state is not natural to man, but, on the contrary, is the result of wandering from the true path of knowledge, in which both Adam and Noah must have brought up their first descendants; and which, in both instances, was communicated in a direct manner from that source of every good which mankind now enjoys. It is highly probable that, as we hear of no diversity of language on the earth until after the Deluge, the whole primitive race was, like the immediate descendants of the survivors of the Deluge, "of one language, and of one speech." The statements of Scripture relative to the social LANGUAGE. state of the Antediluvian world, (see ANTEDILUVIANS,) though brief, are directly opposed to the theory of some infidel philosophers, of Egypt or Ethiopia being covered some myriads of years ago with a horde of speechless savages, gradually improving themselves through the lapse of many centuries, until they had attained a pitch of civilization and refinement which enabled them to meet together and agree upon the sublime harmony of sounds and pictures, which constitutes the language of ancient Egypt. In spite of the constant repetition of such wild fancies, we know that all analogy as well as Scripture is against them. The savage never improves until he comes in contact with the civilized man. Left to himself, his race is steadily sinking to deeper degradration and final extinction. The traditions of all savages are on this point in accordance with the Bible. They all tell of past days of greatness and prosperity, evidently meaning civilization. The savage state then, is not one of nature, but of degradation; and it is in modern rather than in ancient times, that this deplorable consequence of the sin that is in man is to be looked for. The whole history of man since the creation has likewise taught us that, ignorant of the art of writing, he would soon become a savage; for we are not aware that a race of beings entitled to be called civilized ever existed who were destitute of it; and this consideration certainly renders it probable that in this art also man, in his primitive state, was taught of God. With respect to the confusion of tongues at Babel, we have no distinct information as to the extent to which this remarkable event operated on the languages of men; and accordingly, this subject has occasioned much discussion. It is certainly not necessary to suppose that the confusion of languages was then so great as at present. Some, who consider that the present diversity of languages is not greater than would naturally arise in the lapse of ages, and in changes of climate and country by migrations, think the confusion operated very slightly at first, consisting merely in the introduction of various inflections and some new words, which sufficed to make the people misunderstand one another. This is the opinion of those who think that all existing languages are derived from one parent stock. But others, who believe that the existing diversity is too great to allow the doctrine of their being all derived from one common stock, think new languages were formed at the Confusion, to each of which it is possible to trace the various derivative languages which have been formed from it in the lapse of time by removals, intermixtures, and refinements. It is allowed, however, that the formation of two new languages, or strongly marked dialects, for two of the families of Noah, while the other retained the primitive tongue unaltered, would be sufficient to account for all the existing differences. The language of the whole country, Mr. Bryant thinks, was confounded by causing a labial failure, so that the people could not articulate. It was not an aberration in words or language, but a failure and incapacity in labial utterance; for God said, "Go to, let us go down and confound their lip, [DW saphah,] that they may not understand one another's speech." By this their speech was confounded, but not altered; for, as soon as they separated, they recovered the true tenor of pronunciation; and the language of the earth continued for some ages nearly the same. What these original tongues or dialects were is another point, which has excited much debate. Sir William Jones being a high authority in this matter we may give his opinion, as collected by Dr. Hales, from different volumes of the Asiatic Researches. He discovers traces of three primeval languages corresponding to the three grand aboriginal 733 races, which he calls the Arabic, the Sanscrit, and the Sclavonic. (1.) From the Arabic or Chaldee spring the dialects used by the Assyrians, Arabs, and Jews. (2.) From the Sanscrit, which is radically different from the Arabic, spring the Greek, Latin, and Celtic dialects, though blended with another idiom, the Persian, the Armenian, and the old Egyptian or Ethiopic. (3.) From the Sclavonic or Tartarian, which is again radically different both from the Arabic and Sanscrit, spring, (so far as the above eminent authority could venture to pronounce upon so difficult a point,) the various dialects of Northern Asia and North-Eastern Europe. A complete system of the origin and progress of language would be a history of the progress of the human intellect. We are unable always to ascertain, as Dugald Stewart observes, "How men have actually conducted themselves on particular occasions; and we are then led to inquire in what manner they are likely to have proceeded, from the principles of their nature, and the cir cumstances of their external situation. In such inquiries the detached facts which the remains of antiquity or the narrations of travellers afford us, or the external appearances of languages at present, serve as land-marks for our speculations. The steps in the formation of language cannot probably be determined with certainty; yet if we can show the known principles of human nature, how the various parts may naturally have arisen, the mind is not only to a certain degree satisfied, but a check is given to that indolent philosophy which refers to a miracle whatever appearances, either in the natural or moral world, it is unable to explain." It is not necessary to suppose, says Kett, "that the Creator inspired the first parents of mankind with any particular original or primitive language; but that he made them fully sensible of the power with which they were endued of forming articulate sounds, gave them an impulse to exert it, and left the arbitrary imposition of words to their own choice." Mr. Roberts, in his Oriental Illustrations, informs us that the Hindoos believe there were originally eighteen languages, the names of which they have preserved. They have no tradition of a confusion of tongues. The Armenians allege, that as the ark rested in their country, Noah and his children must have remained there a considerable time before the lower and marshy country of Chaldæa could be fit to receive them; and it is therefore reasonable to suppose they left their language there. A native advocate for this opinion thus states his case: "Was the confusion of tongues which took place at Babel confined to those who were engaged in that great work of impiety and rebellion in the plains of Shinar; or was the punishment inflicted on the innocent as well as on the guilty, so as to affect Noah and those of his descendants who remained with the venerable patriarch in Armenia? For if it be acknowledged that the language of Noah remained unchanged, I hope to be able to prove satisfactorily that that language was the Armenian. "The principal argument in favour of the Hebrew being the original language is drawn from the circumstance that most of the proper names of the antediluvian patriarchs retain in the Hebrew the signification imputed to them in the Books of Moses. Now, as Moses was writing by the Divine inspiration, in Hebrew, for the Hebrews, we may reasonably suppose that in rendering a word which was meant to be significant, although a proper name, he would give it in the language which was likely to be understood by the people for whom he derived about the same period from a common origin. Moreover, if it is argued that the language of the Chaldees remained unchanged, I would ask, who were the people whose language was changed at the confusion of Babel? There is no reason for saying it was Noah, and those who were with him in Armenia, because we are told that the miracle was performed at Babel, where the Lord came down to see the city, and the tower which the children of men builded.' (Gen. 11. 5.) Nor can we say it was the language of the Persians, or of the Greeks, or of the Egyptians, because we have no grounds for supposing that Greece, and Persia, and Egypt, were then inhabited. The obvious answer is, that it was the people inhabiting the country in the vicinity of the place where the power of God was made manifest, who, or amongst whom, we have every reason to believe, were those who were subsequently known as the Chaldees; from which it would follow that the present Chaldee, with its cognate dialects, the Arabic, Syriac, Phœnician, &c., must be regarded as one of the great families of languages, the origin of which was at the confusion of Babel. was writing. Thus, when relating the history of Lamech | in some of the languages of Europe which have been. he wished to make known to the children of Israel that that patriarch gave to his son a name expressive of the hopes he entertained at the time of his birth, when he said, 'This shall comfort us concerning our work, and the toil of our hands,' (Gen. 5. 29,) he states that 'he called his name Noah,' a Hebrew word expressive of 'rest or refreshment,' adapted to the comprehension of the Hebrew nation. In like manner, other nations of antiquity, in the records which they have preserved of the same personage, have called him, not by his Hebrew name, Noah, a word insignificant and unintelligible to them, but by other names, as Saturnus, Xisuthrus, &c., words which, in their own language, were expressive of the idea which they wished to express. Thus, in our version of the Books of Moses, where it is rendered in the English, And he called the name of the well Ezek, because they strove with him,' (Gen. 26. 20,) we read, 'He called the name of the well Zercooman;' not that we mean that the well was actually named Zercooman, but we use a word signifying 'deprivation,' to express the idea which is represented in the Hebrew by the Hebrew word Ezek. In like manner Josephus, when he states that the Armenians call the place in which Noah descended from the ark by the name Apobaterion, does not mean that the Armenians actually used a word derived from the Greek, but merely that amongst them the name of the place bears the same meaning as the Greek word Apobaterion, which implies a going forth,' and is represented in the Armenian by the word Nakhijivan, the actual name of the place alluded to. "There are some who contend that the language in which the Books of Moses were written was the language of Adam, because, say they, it is manifest that Moses wrote in the language of Abraham, from whom he was descended; in like manner Abraham used the language of Terah, who used that of Shem, who used that of Noah, which was the language of Adam. This seems to me to be nothing more than begging the question, and hardly deserves the name of an argument, as it might be applied with equal reason in the case of any other of the languages of antiquity. There are, indeed, some who contend that Eber, the ancestor of the Hebrews, did not assist at the building of Babel, and that consequently his language remained unchanged. But the Greek histories which have preserved the story, contradict it in other places, where they say, that it is recorded that Eber was actually the architect who superintended the building of Babel, under Bale, or Nimrod, who exercised a paramount authority over all. In a Greek work called the Smaller Genesis, Syncellus tells us that there was a tradition that an angel appeared to Moses, and told him that he had taught the Hebrew tongue to Abraham the Chaldæan, and that the Hebrew was, therefore, considered as original. But these accounts are evidently as fabulous as they are at variance with each other, and with the records of Scripture. "It cannot be doubted that Abraham spoke the language of the Chaldees. (Gen. 11. 28,31; Judith 5. 6; Acts 7. 4.) Now the Chaldees originally inhabited the country in the immediate vicinity of the land of Shinar, in which the confusion of tongues took place. Whence, then, the argument that the language of the Chaldees remained unchanged? But allowing that it did, we shall find ourselves far from the solution of the question; for the languages of the Phoenicians, Syrians, Arabs, and others are, equally with the Hebrew, cognate dialects of the Chaldæan, differing from each other not in essentials, but only in the degree which may now be perceived in the several dialects of the Armenians, as spoken at Constantinople, at Julpha, and at Angulis, or "There are some, indeed, who assert that the present Chaldee is derived from the Hebrew; an opinion which is not only highly improbable, but which is opposed to the facts recorded in the Holy Scriptures. For it is related by Moses that 'the Lord had said unto Abraham, Get thee out of thy country and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house,' which we are distinctly told was in the land of the Chaldees, from which it is clear that Abraham was a Chaldee; and while history shows us that the Chaldæans never migrated to any great distance from Ur and Haran, where we first find them established, and that they gradually rose to be a most powerful nation, we find that Abraham, with no other of his countrymen, save only those of his own household, 'departed out of Haran,' as the Lord had commanded him; that he went down into the land of Canaan and into Egypt, and that he sojourned till his death in the land of the Canaanites; that his son Isaac also, and Jacob the son of Isaac, spent their lives in the same foreign land, where they dwelt two hundred and fifteen years. The sons of Jacob went down into Egypt, where they and their descendants remained for a further period of two hundred and fifteen years, when they went forth under Moses to possess the land which had been promised by the Lord to Abraham their forefather. It appears, then, that for a space of four hundred and thirty years, the language of the Israelites was confined to one family, who were strangers and sojourners in a foreign land; and as during this time they dwelt upon terms of the closest intercourse with the people amongst whom they dwelt, it is against all experience to suppose that they could possibly have preserved their language as pure as it was originally introduced by Abraham from Chaldæa. We see, moreover, that the language in which the Books of Moses were written, and which we must suppose to have been the language of the Israelites, though allied to the Chaldæan, is nevertheless a separate and distinct language. It has also been shown that there are grounds for supposing that the language of the Chaldees remained unchanged at the confusion of Babel; so that on every side the opinion of those who assert the originality and superior antiquity of the Hebrew language, is not only in the highest degree improbable, but is obviously opposed to any just conclusion to which fair reasoning, and the records of Scripture, are calculated to lead us; and as the arguments of other nations of antiquity in favour of the originality of their own languages are not supported on better grounds than those which have been no LANGUAGE. adduced on the part of the Hebrew, I will proceed to show the arguments upon which it is contended that the language of Noah, and consequently of Adam, has been preserved unchanged amongst the people of Armenia. “We are told in the Holy Scriptures that Noah, in the six hundredth year of his age, entered into the ark, taking with him seven other persons, namely, Noyemzar his wife, (whose name has been preserved amongst the records of the Armenians,) and his three sons, Japheth, Shem, and Ham, with their wives; that the flood came down and continued till every living thing was destroyed, save only those who were preserved in the ark; that the waters prevailed upon the earth for one hundred and fifty days, after which they gradually abated, and the ark at length rested upon the mountains of Ararat. These mountains were certainly in Armenia. In the Syriac and Latin translations of the Bible, the word Ararat' is rendered 'Armenia,' which is also the case in the English version in 2Kings 19. 37, and also in Isaiah 37. 38. Jeremiah also uses Ararat for Armenia. (51. 27.) Josephus also calls Ararat a mountain of Armenia, and states that Berosus, the Chaldæan, called it Mount Cordus, in Armenia, by which name it is called in the Arabic and Chaldæan translations of the Old Testament. Abydenus also, Nicholas of Damascus, and others, agree in placing Ararat in Armenia. The oldest, perhaps, of these early historians, is Maribas of Catene, mentioned by Moses Chorenensis, from whom he writes that the mountain was at first named Masis, from Amasia, our ancestor, whose name is still preserved in the town of Amasia, and that Ararat was the name of the district around it, so called from Aræus, another of our ancestors, and that it is also known by the name of Cordus, the general name of the great chain of mountains to which it belonged. Josephus also mentions, that in his time it was believed that the remnants of the ark were still in existence, which belief was strongly entertained amongst the Armenians so late as the time of St. Jacob, patriarch of Nisibeen, in the year A.D. 340. "These proofs, I trust, will satisfactorily prove, what few, perhaps, will call in question, that the ark rested on a mountain in Armenia; and as there is nothing in the language of Scripture, nor any circumstances which would render it probable that Noah would wander forth in quest of a place wherein to settle, far from the scene of his miraculous preservation, situate as it was in one of the finest countries in the world, we are warranted in assuming that the patriarch, and such of his descendants as remained with him, established themselves in Armenia, speaking the language of the antediluvian world. Now we know, from several examples which abound throughout the Old Testament, that it was customary in those times to fix the names of any new place by some circumstance connected with its early history. Hence it may be inferred that if in the country in which, as has been shown, Noah and his family descended from the ark, and fixed their residence, there are found any names significant of circumstances relating to the history of that early period, the language in which such names are significant, is the actual language which was then in use. Now, according to the history of Moses of Chorene, the ark rested on Mount Masis in Armenia, at the foot of which mountain we find to this day a town and district, called Arnohwote; now this word, in Armenian, signifies 'Noah placed foot,' from Ar, 'placed,' Noh, Noah,' and wote, 'foot. Again, in Genesis 9. 26, it is written, ‘And Noah began to be a husbandman, and planted a vineyard. Now adjoining to Arnohwote is a place called Akhooree, which signifies, in Armenian, 'He planted a vineyard,' from Akh, 'he planted,' and oor, vines.' In the same vicinity is another place called Nakhijivan, 735 which signifies 'first halting place,' while others say it should be called Nakhsivan, which means 'first departing place,' which is evidently, as the traditions of the country set forth, the place from which the first colonies emigrated, and is the place which Josephus calls Apobaterion, in which he tells us was the sepulchre of Noah. "It is moreover stated in Armenian history, that on the death of Noah's wife, Noyemzar, (or Nemzar, as she was called by some writers,) her sons buried her in a place which was consequently called Marant, which signifies in Armenian Mother is there,' which name is still preserved in a town of Armenia. Now, as these places are all actually in existence, bearing, in the present language of Armenia, the singular meaning above assigned to them, they cannot but be regarded as strong proofs in favour of the proposition that the language of Noah, and consequently of Adam, has been preserved among the mountains of Armenia. "It should further be observed that there is nothing whatever in sacred history to which this opinion can be said to be opposed. For even in the account of the confusion at Babel it is stated that the Lord did there confound the language of all the earth.' By there is meant the plains of Shinar, the land of Babel, not that of Armenia. For otherwise the word there would have been superfluous; and it cannot be said that a like reasoning will equally apply to other places as well as Armenia, and give grounds for asserting that the languages of the people of Persia and of Syria must also, in like manner, be supposed to be original, because we have no grounds for assuming that those countries were then inhabited at all, whereas we know that Armenia had been inhabited since the ark rested on the mountains of Ararat. It is nowhere recorded where Noah died, but there is a tradition amongst the Armenians, preserved in a work called Zoowetsa, or The Collection, which states that he was buried with his wife at Marant, to which Syncellus and Cedrenus both bear witness; and Josephus, when recording the death of Noah, states that, after that event, there was an emigration from Armenia, from which it would follow that Noah himself died in Armenia. If it be allowed that the language of Noah was preserved in Armenia till the death of that patriarch, it cannot be said that it has been subsequently changed, because the ancient kings of Armenia were descended in a direct line from Haie, who lived with Noah in Armenia; and although our country has, in later times, been overrun and occupied by foreign powers, the language has not been materially affected, aз may be seen by comparing it with the languages of those nations by whom it has been at different times overrun.” Thus much for the opinion of a native Armenian; the argument is plausible and ingenious, but the question is far too difficult to be decided on such premises. In the infancy of society, ideas were more copious than words. Hence until language enlarged itself, and in thus enlarging itself had acquired a greater degree of precision, men were obliged to employ the few words. which they possessed, not only in their natural and direct sense, but likewise in an artificial and tropical sense. This circumstance has ever caused the phraseology of primitive nations to abound in metaphor and allegory. We are apt to talk of the figurative language of the East, as if it were something peculiar to the Orientals, but such is very far from being the case. A North American chieftain will harangue his tribe in phraseology which is quite as tropical as any that has been used in the East; nor does this, in either instance, arise from any inherent or peculiar taste for poetry. Why is it that a Hebrew denominates a spark of fire |