and when the knowledge of the Lord, having extended itself from the least unto the greatest, blessedness and peace shall adorn the face of the lower world in a manner never known hitherto among the children of men. Had we any doubts of this, Mr. Ellis's book would convince us; and we desire our readers to study it, and judge for themselves, whether it be not calculated to fill the Christian's bosom with joy, and gladden his soul with high and holy contemplations of the speedy coming of the Messiah's kingdom. We are not about here to introduce any thing in the shape of a disquisition upon Missions. The book before us would serve the purpose of advocating them sufficiently, as far beyond any thing we could say, as facts are beyond theories. We therefore hasten to lay some extracts before our readers. Mr. Ellis, it appears, quitted England in January, 1816, in company with a Mr Threlkeld, but did not arrive ultimately at the Georgian Islands until nearly twelve months after. Their detention, however, at New South Wales, afforded Mr. Ellis an opportunity of visiting the chief settlements in that quarter, and beholding several of the rare and interesting animals, and vegetable productions of that important colony. He visited New Zealand also on his way; and as the place is interesting in a Missionary point of view, we shall subjoin here some interesting matter concerning it : "Circumstances detaining us about a week in the Bay of Islands, afforded me the means of becoming more fully acquainted with the Missionaries, making excursions to different parts of the adjacent country, and witnessing many of the singular manners and customs of the people. I visited, in company with the captain of our ship, and Mr. Hall, one or two of the forests which produce the New Zealand pine, recently discovered to be so valuable as spars for vessels. "In one of these excursions, shortly after leaving the Bay of Islands, we reached Kowakowa, where Mr. Hall proposed to land. As we approached the shore, no trace of inhabitants appeared; but we had scarcely landed when we were somewhat surprised by the appearance of Tetoro and a number of his people. The chief ran to meet us, greeting us in English, with "How do you do?" He perceived I was a stranger, and, on hearing my errand and destination, he offered me his hand, and saluted me, according to the custom of his country, by touching my nose with his. He was a tall, fine looking man, about six feet high, and proportionably stout, his limbs firm and muscular, and when dressed in his war-cloak, with all his implements of death appended to his person, he must have appeared formidable to his enemies. When acquainted with our business, he prepared to accompany us; but before we set out, an incident occurred that greatly raised my estimation of his character. In front of the hut sat his wife, and around her played two or three little children. In passing from the hut to the boat, Tetoro struck one of the little ones with his foot; the child cried, and though the chief had his mat on, and his gun in his hand, and was in the act of stepping into the boat where we were waiting for him, he no sooner heard its cries, than he turned back, took the child up in his arms, stroked its little head, dried its tears, and giving it to the mother, hastened to join us. His conversation in the boat, during the remainder of the voyage, indicated no inferiority of intellect nor deficiency of information, as far as he had possessed the means of obtaining it. On reaching Waikadie, about twenty miles from our ship, we were met by Waivea, Tetoro's brother; but his relationship appeared to be almost all that he had possessed in common with him, as he was both in appearance and in conduct entirely a savage. "We accompanied them to the adjacent forests. The earth was completely. covered with thick-spreading and forked roots, brambles, and creeping plants, overgrown with moss, and interwoven so as to form a kind of uneven matting, which rendered travelling exceedingly difficult. The underwood was in many parts thick, and the trunks of the lofty trees rose like clusters of pillars supporting the canopy of interwoven boughs and verdant foliage, through which the sun's rays seldom penetrated. There were no trodden paths, and the wild and dreary solitude of the place was only broken by the voice of some lonely bird, which chirped among the branches of the bushes, or, startled by our intrusion on its retirement, darted across our path. A sensation of solemnity and awe involuntarily arose in the mind, while contemplating a scene of such peculiar character, so unlike the ordinary haunts of man, and so adapted, from the silent grandeur of his works, to elevate the soul with the sublimest conceptions of the Almighty. I was remarkably struck with the gigantic size of many of the trees, some of which appeared to rise nearly one hundred feet, without a branch, while two men with extended arms could not clasp their trunks. About three in the afternoon we left Waikadie, but the darkness of night veiled every object from our view, long before we reached our vessel."-pp. 25, 26, 27. Mr. Ellis's account of his arrival at Otaheite (or Tahiti, to use the improved mode of spelling it,) is interesting, and we shall insert it : "Mid-day was past before we entered Matavai bay. As we sailed into the harbour, we passed near the coral reef, on which Captain Wallis struck on the 19th of June, 1767, when he first entered the bay. His ship remained stationary nearly an hour; and, in consequence of this circumstance, the reef has received the name of the Dolphin rock. As we passed by it, we felt grateful that the winds were fair and the weather calm, and that we had reached our anchorage in safety. Ma-ta-vai, or Port Royal, as it was called by Captain Wallis, is situated in latitude 17°. 36'. S. and longitude 140°. 35'. W. It is rather an open bay, and although screened from the prevailing trade winds, is exposed to the southern and westerly gales, and also to a considerable swell from the sea. The long flat neck of land which forms its northern boundary, was the spot on which Captain Cook erected his tents, and fixed his instruments for observing the transit of Venus. Excepting those parts enclosed as gardens, or plantations, the land near the shore is covered with long grass, or a species of convolvulus, called by the natives pohue; numerous clumps of trees, and waving cocoa-nuts, add much to the beauty of its appearance. A fine stream, rising in the interior mountains, winds through the sinuosities of the head of the valley, and, fertilizing the district of Matavai, flows through the centre of this long neck of land, into the sea. "Such, without much alteration, in all probability, was the appearance of this beautiful bay, when discovered by Captain Wallis, in 1767; and two years after, when first visited by Captain Cook; or when Captain Bligh, in the Bounty, spent six months at anchor bere in 1788 and 1789; when Captain Vancouver arrived in 1792; Captain New, of the Dædalus, in 1793; and Captain Wilson, in the Duff, who anchored in the same bay on the 6th of March, 1797. "It was on the northern shores of this bay, that eighteen of the Missionaries, who left England in the Duff, first landed, upwards of thirty years ago. They were the messengers Of peace, and light, and life, whose eye unsealed Far into bliss. Saw men, immortal men, Wide wandering from the way, eclipsed in night, Dark, moonless, moral nights, living like beasts, Of life to come, unsanctified, unsaved.' To reclaim the inhabitants from error and superstition, to impart to them the truths of revelation, to improve their present condition, and direct them to future blessedness, were the ends at which they aimed; and here they commenced those labours which some of them have continued unto the present time; and which, under the blessing of God, have been productive of the moral change that has since taken place among the inhabitants of this and the adjacent islands. Decisive and extensive as that change has since become, it was long before any salutary effects appeared as the result of their endeavours. And, although the scene before me was now one of loveliness and quietude, cheerful, yet placid as the smooth waters of the bay, that scarcely rippled by the vessel's side, it has often worn a very different aspect. Here the first Missionaries frequently heard the song accompanying the licentious areois dance, the deafening noise of idol worship, and saw the buman victim carried by for sacrifice: here, too, they often heard the startling cry of war, and saw their frightened neighbours fly before the murderous spear and plundering hand of lawless power. The invaders' torch reduced the native hut to ashes, while the lurid flame seared the green foliage of the trees, and clouds of smoke, rising up among their groves, darkened for a time surrounding objects. On such occasions, and they were not infrequent, the contrast between the country, and the inhabitants, must have been most affecting, appearing as if the demons of darkness had lighted up infernal fires, even in the bowers of paradise. "Within sight of the spot where our vessel lay, four of the Missionaries were stripped and maltreated by the natives, two of them nearly assassinated, from the anger of the king, and one of them was murdered. Here the first Missionary dwelling was erected, the first temple for the worship of Jehovah reared, and the first Missionary grave opened; and here, after having been obliged to convert their house into a garrison, and watch night and day in constant expectation of attack, the Missionaries were obliged, almost in hopeless despair, to abandon a field, on which they had bestowed the toil and culture of twelve anxious and eventful years."—pp. 60, 61, 62, 63. (To be continued.) NOTICES OF BOOKS. The History of the Hebrew Commonwealth, from the earliest times to the destruction of Jerusalem, A. D. 72. Translated from the German of John Jahn, D. D., formerly Professor of the Oriental Languages, of Biblical Antiquities, and of Theology, in the University of Vienna; with a continuation to the time of Adrian. 2 vols. 8vo. Hurst, Chance, and Co., London. This work fills up a vacuum in our catalogues of Biblical literature. It VOL. IX. 2 contains a succinct and well arranged luminous, too discursive, and the last too unfinished, to be useful manuals for the student. Basnage, the principal writer upon the latter part of the subject is too long, too excursive, and too loose a writer to serve the purpose, even if there were a modern translation of his highly valuable work; but none exists, except, we believe, one in folio, made above one hundred years ago. We feel, therefore, glad to be able to an nounce this translation from Professor Jahn's original German, and we recommend it as a very important addition to our Scriptural information. It is, perhaps, the book best calculated to give the student correct notions of the history of the remarkable people of whom it treats, and the connexion of that history with the synchronous events of the countries around them; and the appendix translated from Basnage, furnishes much information about their subsequent history. The first book contains a view of the state of society to the time of Moses, and includes the latest researches on the origin of the different nations by whom the Hebrews were surrounded. We perceive that Jahn makes the Hyksos or Shepherd Kings, by whom the Israelites were oppressed in Egypt, Amalekites of the country of Arabia; and that the same country is regarded by him as the Cush or Ethiopia of the books of Genesis and Kings. The second book gives an interesting analysis of the Mosaic institutions considered entirely in a civil point of view. He remarks But "The ancient legislators, that they might secure the reception and authority of the new order of society introduced by them, always pretended that they had been authorised to impose laws by some divinity. These lawgivers, however, did not invent the religious systems of their people, as some have erroneously supposed; but improved the false religions already in existence, and artfully employed them as the means of establishing and perpetuating their civil institutions. Moses did not, (as Strabo and Diodorus Siculus assert,) proceed in the same manner, He did not deceitfully pretend that he received his laws from the god Jao (T); but he proved his mission to be really divine by such supernatural works and wisdom, as no other lawgiver could ever lay claim to. The whole nation heard God himself speak from Sinai. Neither did Moses employ religion to support his political institutions; but he reversed the usual order, and introduced a civil constitution which was designed as a means, and, as the event has proved, was in reality a means of establishing pure religion permanently upon the earth, and of preserving the knowledge and worship of the true God to the latest generations."—Vol. I. pp. 29, 30. It is added He, "The condescending manner in which Jehovah really represented himself to the Hebrews, was yet insufficient to perpetuate the knowledge and worship of the true God among them. therefore, through the intervention of Moses, suffered himself to be elected their king by a voluntary choice. The land of Canaan was considered as the royal possession, of which the Hebrews were to be the hereditary occupants, and from which they were to render to Jehovah a double tithe, as the Egyptians did to their king."-Vol. I. p. 31. This seems to give us a just view of the peculiar government of the Hebrew nation. God was their king; he took up his residence among them; the tabernacle and afterwards the temple were his habitation, the furniture, the throne and all the instruments and attendants of worship, were intended to confirm the same notion, which was maintained in all the civil regulations; so that "The nation, therefore, so long as it had a national existence, could not entirely lose the knowledge, or discontinue the worship, of the true God."— Vol. I. p. 33. It ever follows,naturally, that the laws against idolatry are high treason,though Jahn adds with great judgment : 66 Though coercion for the purpose of preserving the worship of the true God was in this manner sanctioned by the Mosaic law, it was in that age no restraint upon liberty of conscience. According to the universal opinion of the pagans, every people and every country must have its own deities, and pagan religions obligated no man to worship this or that particular deity, much less all deities without exception. Each individual was left at liberty to choose what gods he would worship, and what neglect. The law which required capital punishment for idolatry as treason was not applied to the inward faith, which manifested itself by no external acts, and consequently could not be known or proved by a human tribunal, but solely to the public worship of other gods by adoration, pros tration, kissing, altars, sacrifices, statues, groves, &c. and to the enticing of others to idolatry. He who believed in the existence of many gods, and secretly put his trust in idols, was indeed guilty of impiety; but as his transgression was unknown, how could it be punished with death? This distinction, which arises from the very nature of the case, is everywhere implied by Moses. When he awards capital punishment to the crime of idolatry, he always speaks of the external worship of false gods, and of enticing others to idolatry. On the contrary, when he speaks in the character of a religious teacher, he requires an internal faith in the one true God, and inculcates, in the most decided manner, supreme love, perfect confidence, and constant obedience to God and his laws."-Vol. I. pp. 34, 35. In conformity with this view were the other regulations; the Hebrews were ordered to be separate from Paganism, and guarded against idolatry, but they were not to be the enemies of foreigners, or to indulge national animosities; when they had any necessary transactions with strangers they were to treat them as neighbours; they could even enter into alliance with other states on occasion of the public good, with a few, and but a few, exceptions.* However, the charge against the Hebrew code of harshness and inhospitality is erroneous, the exception is taken for the principle, and in latter ages the spirit of the exception supplanted the principle in the Hebrew mind. In the third and succeeding books, Professor Jahn pursues the theocracy of the Hebrew government; marks how the prosperity or adversity of the commonwealth, coincided accurately with the maintenance of this principle, and the conviction that the real King of Israel was the Lord Jehovah. It is, indeed, a circumstance most signal, as an evidence for the truth of the Sacred Scriptures; that such a people as the Hebrews, so apparently unsocial in their relations, so intolerant in their religion, should yet not merely exist in the neighbourhood and collision of the greatest empires of the world, but exist in comparative splendour, and for a considerable time; nor is it less remarkable that such a people never conspicuous for arts, or science, or literature, never reckoned among the nations that cultivated with success the arts of reasoning, should yet be alone among antiquity, in their knowledge of the unity and spirituality of the Supreme Being; that the secret, hidden from the eyes of Thales and Solon, of Hermes and Zoroaster, of Socrates and Aristotle, was discovered by or to, and maintained in purity by a race of persons, whom the countrymen of Solon or Hermes would have branded as barbarians. If the present state of the Jews be a standing evidence of the truth of prophecy, certainly their former condition was a remarkable proof of the general divine origin of their nation and their Scriptures. One of our correspondents has mentioned that Jahn has embraced the idea that the ten and two tribes were united after the captivity, both in their return to Jerusalem, and subsequently, under the name of Jews. We certainly think on an examination of the evidence, that such must have been the fact; that the children of Israel were in a corporate capacity restored to their own land, under Zerubbabel, Ezra and Nehemiah, and that in Jahn's words "All questions, therefore, and investigations, for the purpose of ascertaining what has become of the ten tribes, and whether it is likely they will ever be discovered, are superfluous and idle." - Vol. 1. p. 184. What bearing this may have upon the interpretation of prophecy, as connected with the anticipated restoration of the Jews, it belongs not to us to say. Jahn pursues from the restoration, the history of the Jews and their neigh *The exceptions were the nations of Canaan who inhabited Palestine, with the Canaanites and Philistines, originally Egyptians from Cyprus; yet even these, though hereditary enemies, remarkable for their profligacy, treachery and idolatry, they seem to have permitted to leave the country if they willed; and even could have made peace with them. The Amalekites or Canaanites of Arabia, the Moabites, Amorites, and Edomites, were not to be admitted to political union; but the Hebrews were forbidden to wage war on them; they, however, in' process of time provoked hostilities, and suffered for it. It may be generally remarked that the return of the Israelites to Canaan was a seeking to regain ancient possessions. |