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proofs of the fact, that this expectation was entertained by the early generations of mankind.

On the birth of her first-born, Eve expressed her gratitude and her hope, in uttering words which have been deemed worthy of being preserved to all ages: "I have obtained a man from Jehovah."* It may not appear an extravagant supposition, that the mother of mankind had respect to the promise of a Deliverer which had been certainly, though in obscure terms, intimated to her immediately after the fall.

Whether there were or not any allusion in this instance to the great object of human hope, it cannot reasonably be doubted that the expectation was kept up in the following ages. While in some cases the tradition was aided and preserved pure by patriarchal piety and by new communications from heaven, in other channels it contracted the impurities of fable and polytheism. There is scarcely a people, ancient or modern, barbarous or cultivated, of which we possess any authentic information, whose traditions do not keep up the memory of a primeval period, a golden age, in which the virtue and happiness of mankind far exceeded those of the following times. Equally extensive appears to have been the hope cherished of a

* Gen. iv. 1. Some, understanding the particle demonstratively, read—" a man the Jehovah." But ns is used in the sense of л in other places; and all the ancient versions so render it here.

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future age, in which vice and misery should be greatly diminished or wholly extirpated, and the interests of the human race advanced to a higher pitch than had been ever attained before.*

By Abulpharaj, an Oriental Christian of the thirteenth century, and by certain Mahometan writers, it has been asserted that the ancient Persians had definite expectations of the Messiah, as the Deliverer from vice and misery, and the Restorer of religion and righteousness: but we cannot repose much confidence in these representations, having no sufficient certainty of the credibility of those prior authorities upon which those writers have made them. †

A more probable, though offensively gross and corrupt, emanation from the primeval expectation of a Divine Saviour, appears in the doctrine of the ancient Hindu books, concerning the avataras, or incarnations of Vishnu, the second power of the Indian Trimurti. "Those incarnations represent the Deity descending in a human shape;

* Besides the well-known passages in Hesiod and Ovid, it appears that the inhabitants of the most inhospitable regions of the earth maintain traditions and expectations of a kind which, though dressed in different imagery, unite in one and the same general signification. See Knappii Scripta Varii Argumenti, tom. i. Comm. i. Hale Sax. 1805: who refers to Prof. Pallas's Travels through Russia, vol. i. § 10; and Steller's Description of Kamptschatka, p. 272.

↑ See Hyde de Religione Vet. Pers. cap. 31.

See Note [A] at the end of this Chapter.

either to accomplish certain awful and important events, as in the instance of the first three ;-to confound blaspheming vice, to subvert gigantic tyranny, and to avenge oppressed innocence, as in the five following; or, finally, as in the ninth, to establish a glorious system of benevolent institutions upon the ruins of a gloomy and sanguinary superstition."* It will not be denied that, under a mass of the most extravagant or puerile fictions, a nucleus of original truth may exist.

Plato represents Socrates as saying; "We must wait then, till one shall teach us our duty to the gods and to men." Alcibiades asks; "When, Socrates, will that time come, and who will be that teacher? Most happy should I be to see this man, whosoever he is." The sage replies; "He is one who is concerned for thee.-He feels for

Maurice's Indian Antiq. vol. v. 91. The more accurate information of M. Dubois makes nine past incarnations, and they are far from being all of the benevolent description which Mr. Maurice has been led, by the earlier and less accurate authorities, to represent. "The Tenth Avatara has not yet taken effect; but the Hindus trust that it will be realized. They expect it with the same ardour as the Jews look forward to their Messiah. This tenth Avatara is to be the most beneficial and the most wonderful of all. The books which announce it, do not assign the period when it will arrive, nor how it will be brought to pass; but the Hindus confide that it will restore the Satya-yuga, or Age of Happiness." Dubois, p. 436. This is, in Mr. Halhed's manner of expressing the Sanscrit words, the Suttee Jogue, or Age of Purity. Halhed's Code of Gentoo Laws, pref. p. xxxvi.

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thee an admirable regard." I can perceive no method of accounting for this language, so rational as to suppose that it is the feeble and distant echo of the early tradition, or of the Hebrew revelation.

To that revelation must unquestionably be attributed the rumour mentioned by Tacitus and Suetonius as having extensively prevailed, supported by the uniform voice of antiquity and the sacred writings, that out of Judea those should arise who should possess the empire of the world.† Nor will the impartial reader of the Pollio think the supposition incredible, that its beautiful descriptions were derived, though remotely, from the predictions and the imagery of the Jewish prophets.

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To those divine oracles, therefore, as the sources of satisfactory and authoritative information, we shall now attend; with a view to ascertain by a 'cautious induction what were to be the characters and attributes of the Messiah, according to the decriptions and prophecies of the Old Testament. But it will be necessary to premise a statement of the principles on which we conceive that the application of particular passages may be justly determined to the expected Messiah.

*Platon. Aleibe Sec. § 12, 13.

+ Tacit. Hist. v. 13. Sueton. Vesp. § 4.

SUPPLEMENTARY NOTE

TO

CHAP. II. ·

Note [A] p. 162.

"The Hindus understand by the word Trimurti, the three principal divinities whom they acknowledge; namely, Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva. It signifies Three Powers, because the three essential energies of Creation, Preservation, and Destruction, severally pertain to these three gods.-These three deities are sometimes represented singly, with their peculiar attributes; and sometimes as blended into one body with three heads. It is in this last state that they obtain the name of Trimurti.—It must be allowed that the fable of the Trimurti, or of the three principal deities being united in one body, is less consistently supported than any other doctrine in the Hindu books." The Abbé Dubois's Description of the Character, Manners, and Institutions of the People of India. 1817. p. 367, 368. A more ample account is furnished by Mr. Ward, in his admirable work, the View of the History, Literature, and Religion, of the Hindoos, vol. i. book i. chap. ii.

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