deceitfulness of riches; now I happen to be the richest man in the parishthen he told us a few Sundays after wards not to be proud of our usefulness; and in the very week that preceded his discourse, I had sent a hedge-breaker and seven poachers to the county gaol; and in the following month he admonished his hearers not to set up as judges of what they were not qualified to decide upon, meaning, as I fully believe, to intimate to the people that I was not competent to form any opinion about his sermons because I had not taken my degrees at the university. Various other testimonies of the same kind gradually strengthened my conjectures; when at last comes that scandalous discourse which I have named, and turned them all into certainties. Sir, I acknowledge that I am passionately fond of all sports of the field; and if that fondness be not highly laudable I am much mistaken. Did not Hercules gain his glory by killing lions, and Bacchus by harnessing tigers to his chariot? Why are these and similar stories unremittingly driven into us at school, but to teach us how meritorious it is to subdue the wild inhabitants of the woods? And if we are obliged here to make war on foxes and hares instead of lions and tigers, the fault is not in us, but in the country which breeds no better objects of the chase. As for myself, when I read in the newspapers the account of the tiger which had escaped from the shewman into a tract of woodland, I declare that I longed to join in the pursuit of it; and if the wolf had been turned up, as was proposed, on the Yorkshire Wolds, I had resolved to set out with four of my stoutest greyhounds for the spot. But to return to Nimrod. The rector thought proper to write a flaming discourse upon the character of this emperor; and after describing him as a great tyrant, and I know not what else that was wicked, pronounced him to have been, among other things, a mighty hunter. There was not a sensible man, woman, or child in the church but must know, if they would confess it, that he meant me. I felt my face as hot as fire, and could scarcely keep my seat. Then he had the cunning, while he was talking about the mighty hunter, never to turn his face towards my pew, which slyness convinced me more and more CHRIST. OBSERV, No. 26. that he meant me. To crown all, he had the impudence to say that the name Nimrod signified, in Greek or Latin, I forget which, a rchel. This assertion, Sir, was intended to hold me up as a jacobin. I could'have torn him out of the pulpit; bot, considering his cloth, I managed to curb myself, and resolved to proceed by indictment; and the moment the service was over, I ran to two of my friends, whom I saw in the Churchi, and fixed upon as my evidences, to desire them to put down the words while still fresh in their memories. Here, however, I was disappointed. One of them I found, through the fogginess of the day, and the heat of a crowded Church (which used to be so cool and comfortable in the old Doctor's days), had been asleep during the whole sermon; and the other, having happened to begin to think, just when the text was given out, about the most eligible mode of draining a swampy meadow which he had recently purchased (a plan which I hope he will not adopt, as I never cross that meadow without getting three or four shots at snipes), had continued to think about it so closely that he had not heard a syllable of the discourse. This is the more unlucky, because, though the parson's meaning was so plain, I find it difficult to get evidence in other quarters. Many people in the parish are so bewitched by him, that they are as fond of him as if he was their father. Others I find unwilling to speak out, though I am certain that they understood him. Others pretend that they do not exactly remember what he said. But never fear, Sir, I shall unkennel him yet; and when once I have unkennelled him, I will forfeit all my character for perseverance if I do not chase him through every court in the kingdom. Now, Mr. Editor, my reason for addressing this letter to you is to desire your opinion; or, if you do not chuse to favour me with it, that of some of your correspondents. But do not misunderstand me: I do not want your opinion, or that of any man, as to the manner in which I shall treat this rector. I am the guardian of my own honour; and shall not trust it out of my own hands. The point on which I wish the sentiments of yourself and your friends to be decidedly expressed, is the scandalous practice of preaching at people. Do not imagine that I am the only person on whom our rector has thus vented his malice. I protest that often, when he has been preaching, I have seen half the congregation hanging down their heads, and looking as if they thought what he was saying was an exact description of themselves; and I understand that many individuals have at different times said, that they were absolutely sure that the parson could not have described their case with such accuracy, if he had not purposely intended to do so; but they have added, with a degree of folly which is to me utterly unaccountable, that they were exceedingly indebted to him for what he had done; and some of these block-, heads, I am told, have actually been meanspirited enough to go and thank him for his pains. Sir, the good old Doctor, whom I regret more and more every day, used to exclaim in the strongest language of abhorrence against preaching sermons which were aimed at any persons or sets of persons. He did not scruple to aver, that it was a species of blasphemy; and was accustomed to enlarge in private, with great satisfaction, on his conscientious and successful care to avoid so great a sin. He told my uncle and myself repeatedly, being naturally anxious for his character on a point of such importance, that in speaking of sin, he always made it a rule to use the most general expres sions which he could find (except in preaching against poachers, whom he justly considered as a set of outlaws, with whom no terms were to be kept), in order that no person might think himself intended more than others, or fancy himself in any way worse than his neighbours; and for the same reason he studiously shunned an abominable custom which prevailed, as. I am informed, among our ignorant old divines, and is the delight of the present clergyman, that of tacking a tail to a sermon and calling it an upplication. I should be glad to see rules to this effect printed by order of the bench of bishops, and pasted up as a memento in every pulpit in Great Britain. Sir, a clergyman ought always to preach about man in the abstract. He would then be almost in as little danger of the people taking his sermon to themselves, as he would be if he preached about elephants in the abstract. He should always preach in the third person; or if now and then he chances to meet with a particularly unmanageable sentence he may speak in the first person, as thus "We all have our faults. '-"We are not so good as we should be;”— or more commonly in the singular number, thus-" My brethren, I am a very great sinner!" This would shew humility. To set up himself as an oracle, and say, "You must do this," and " you must do that," is insufferable. It makes people immediately fancy that he means them. And in these days of jacobinism he should never seem to lower the rich or impute faults to the higher classes. Let him teach the poor what benefits they derive from the rich living among them; assure them that the rich would never come near the country if it were not for diversions; and thunder against. the wickedness of curtailing their amusements by depredations on their manors. If he must now and then. touch on their foibles, lest he should be thought partial, let him do it very delicately, with due qualifications and apologies; and with an abundant mixture of hard words unintelligible to. the common people, which will prevent mischief and raise their opinion. of his learning. I trust, Mr. Editor,. that you will vigorously enforce these observations on all your readers; and that you will expose, with merited indignation and contempt, the pretences of those who vindicate preaching at people, by saying, that if the hearer puts the cap on his own head and finds it fit, that is not the fault of the parson,, who did not particularly intend it for him. Sir, the parson did. intend it for him; or if he did not it. is the same thing. Sir, our rector says, and in that I think he is right, that other people know us better than we know ourselves. Then if he draws my picture, and I see the likeness, other people will see it still stronger, and will be sure that he meant me. What is this but preaching at me? SIR, Your humble servant, S. T. REVIEW OF NEW PUBLICATIONS. CXXXVII. Bryant's Observations, &c. dences are the barbarous versions of (Continued from p. 46.) Or the third part of this work, which contains "observations upon the passage in Joshua concerning the sun's standing still in Gibeon," we cannot speak in the same tone of commendation which we have used in examining the preceding disquisitions. The history which Mr. Bryant here undertakes to explain and relieve of its difficulties is to be found in Joshua x. 5-40, particularly 12-14 But he has chosen rather 40 cut the knot than to untie it. His hypothesis, however, is singular; and we have no doubt that he is entitled to the full credit of being its original inventor. The command of Joshua to the sun and moon to stand still, and their obedience to his command, Mr. Bryant understands, not of the celestial luminaries themselves, but of the idolatrous worship of the Gibeonites, of which these luminaries were the objects. And the command given them to stand still he interprets of an authoritative suppression of the idolatry in question, p. 169 and 179, &c. Two difficulties were to be surmounted to render this interpretation practicable. In the first place, the verb , which in our version is translated "stand still," must be proved not only to admit, but in some degree to require, as preferable, the signification of an authoritative pression. The truth is, the word, or rather, signifies cessation, whether applied to speech, to motion, or to mere existence; and conveys the notion of silence, rest, or destruction. We have examined all the passages specified by Taylor in his Hebrew Concordance for the use of this word; and can find none in which it is applied to the suppression of idolatry, although we do not deny that such an application is admissible. To this point, however, as one of the principal pillars of his hy pothesis, Mr. Bryant feels himself concerned to give all the strength he is able. He exerts himself accordingly to this purpose from p. 176 to p. 179; and here his principal evi sup Arias, Montanus, and Aquila, who both render the word in question in the sense of silence. But could it even be proved, that these translators mean to exclude the supposition.of an actual arrest of the two great luminaries, their authority would weigh nothing against the unanimous rendering of the other versions*. Mr. Bryant endeavours to magnify the variation in the mode of translating to be found in these versions; but we see no greater variation than may be naturally accounted for upon the supposition of the independence of the translators. Nor could even the two translators first mentioned, consistently with their admission of the authenticity of the whole history under consideration, intend to invalidate the supposition that the sun and moon literally stood still; for the verses immediately following the command of Joshua (13 and 14), by the admission of Mr. Bryant himself, expressly and incontrovertibly affirm the fact; and this is the second difficulty which our author has to overcome, and he feels it to militate so directly and so strongly against his hypothesis, that he has no choice left but either to abandon that hypothesis or boldly to pronounce the hostile verses an interpolation. He has chosen the latter, pp. 162, 163. He supposes them to be a quotation from the Book of Jasher, inserted into the text by some foreign hand, and of no authority. What this Book of Jasher, on the Upright, or the Law (as the Chaldee has it,) was, cannot be determined at the present day. At all events, however, the passage purporting to be quoted from it contains a very antient testimony in favour of the literal sense of the passage in dispute. A second testimony, and an important one to the same *The high authority of the two antient versions, the Septuagint and the Chaldee Paraphrase, confers peculiar strength on the literal and generally received sense of the passage. The latter version has expecta, in the place of; and Castel, in his Lex. Hept. explains the word 778 pro longavit, extendit, prorogutus est, expectavit, moratus est. purpose, is Ecclus. xlvi. 4, which is no ways impaired by the exceptions of Mr. Bryant. This miracle, for on our author's interpretation it is none, is recognised by an apocryphal work of considerable antiquity, the psalms of Solomon*. Josephus is not less decisive t; and the unanimous suffrage of all the Hebrew MSS. hitherto examined, and of all the versions, forms together a body of evidence in favour of the passage which Mr. Bryant's hypothesis requires him to expunge, sufficient to establish the genuineness of any passage whatever, to which no greater objections can be opposed than such as this author has adduced. We have so much confidence in the piety of the writer, whose reasonings we are now impugning, as to be convinced that he had before his eyes none of the injurious consequences to which the expedient he has adopted naturally lead; but as, in some degree, directors of the public opinion, we conceive it a duty to enter our warm and decisive protest against such rash and ungrounded charges of interpolation as are brought against the sacred text in the present instance. And we are content to have employed our time and labour to no other purpose than that of reinstating the transaction in question in its original difficulties; difficulties which Mr. Bryant has not only displayed in all their force, but, as might be expect ed, considerably magnified. The arguments by which our author endeavours directly to support his hypothesis, are without doubt ingenious; but the threshold was first to be passed, the objections which blocked up his way were to be removed before he could legally enter upon the process of direct and positive evidence. In the attempt to do this we think our readers are convinced, as we are, that Mr. Bryant has not succeeded. They will, probably, with us, be as little satisfied with two other elaborate attempts to extricate the history, under consideration, from the difficulties with which it is embarrassed. We will, however, refer to them. But although we cannot prevail up*They were originally at the end of the Alexandrine MS. and the reference to the miracle of Joshua is to be found in the last verse of the last psalm. See Fabric. Cod. Pseudepig. p. 972. ↑ Ant. l. v. c. i. § 17. on ourselves to adopt the solution of Mr. Bryant, we think we can arrive at his general conclusion in another and a less exceptionable way; and that too, by assuming a part of his hypothesis. The worship which prevailed at Gibeon and Ajalon, and from which they are supposed to derive their names, was, he contends, that of the sun and the moon. This being allowed, the visible and miraculous controul of these luminaries in their wonted course, would furnish, in our opinion, a much more decisive and august display of the superiority of Jehovah over every object of idolatrous veneration, than the mere suppression of the idolatry in question, by whatever circumstances attended or sanctioned. The God of Israel, by such an act, exhibited his power as sovereign of the universe in the sight, and to the confusion, of those who honoured the creature more than the creator. The circumstances, however, of this miracle, and the manner in which it was performed, we leave, as was before observed, in their original difficulties. All the solutions that have hitherto been attempted, appear to us either evasive or inadequate; and that of Mr. B. we feel ourselves called upon to condemn in the strongest terms. One remark seems to be necessary upon the conclusion to which we have been brought in canvassing this part of Mr. Bryant's work. Christians are no more called upon to account for every difficulty in the system which they embrace, than men, with respect to the animal part of their composition, are called upon to explain the contribution of every particle of their food to the support of their bodily frame. Why a principle, uniformly admitted by infidels in one case, should be renounced in the other, they have to explain. We now proceed to the "observations upon the history of Jonah," where we shall have a less irksome office to perform. Mr. B. insists, that this history must be taken entire and in its literal sense; there is no room for evasion. The prophet he supposes to have been of dubious character, which he, in part, accounts for, from his residence in the northern extremity of the Jewish nation Fragments subjoined to the last edition of Auticut Uu. Hist. vol. iii. pp. 464-474, Calmet's Dict. of the Bible, No. cliv. immediately bordering upon the territories of the Gentiles, and debased by an intermixture of heathens. Mr. Bryant supposes that Jonah, by chusing the port of Joppa, from which to embark in his flight to Tarshish, put himself under the protection of the deity of the place. This he did virtually, but whether intentionally, is not necessary to the main argument of our author. Now the deity here worshipped was, as Pliny the naturalist vouches, the fabulous Ceto-fabulosa Ceto; and the Ceto, or Cetus, was, according to Hesychius, a sea fish of an immense size, p. 213. Mr. Bryant thence takes occasion to enter into a long examination of the principal deities of the Philistines, and particularly of Derceto, the same as the Ceto just mentioned, the deity of Joppa, and the Venus Marina of the western mythology; and the particular province of that goddess he proves to have been the sea, pp. 220, &c. The religious veneration paid to doves (the prophet's name was ) and their constant association with Venus is then enlarged upon; and it is shewn that the term, or dove, in many countries, denoted a priest, pp. 224, &c.* Our author brings his detached observations to a point by a conjecture which we apprehend to be entirely new; that the Philistines had obtained possession of several cities in the country of Jonah, and particularly of GathHepher, so denominated to distinguish it from the more famous Gath in Philistine; that Jonah was accordingly infected with their idolatry, and derived his name from the office of priest, which he is supposed to have borne. There was certainly a Bethdagon in this neighbourhood, a name which strongly savours of the Philistine superstition. Some other arguments are derived from the circumstances of the defeat of Saul, pp. 230, &c. Having thus endeavoured to account for the predilection of Jonah for the deity of Joppa, Mr. B. proceeds to the more immediate consideration of the history of this prophet, which he illustrates with much ingenuity; and observes, in allusion to the great antitype of Jonah, when the safety of the whole crew required that the author of their distress should be thrown * See more to this purpose in Selden, de Düis Syris, pp. 261-279. into the sea- "Thus one was made a sacrifice for all," pp. 235-238+. The fugitive, but detected prophet was swallowed up by a Ceto, or whale, which the Lord had prepared for that purpose; and after three days and three nights residence in its belly he was, as a noted tradition affords ground to believe, disgorged on the very shore from which he embarked, and in the view of the very representa tive Ceto, which was worshipped there, p. 239. The immense bones of a sea-monster were preserved to a very remote age on the shore of Joppa; and the fable of Perseus and Andromeda was grafted upon it. Our author then observes, that fishes of the magnitude of the whale are never seen in the seas with which the history of Jonah is connected; he therefore brings the whale which swallowed up this prophet from the north sea, and concludes, that no doctrine of chances will account for the extraordinary concurrence of circumstances which the history under consideration exhibits§. +Mr. Bryant remarks the particular coincidence between Jonab ii. 6. and Ps. xvi. 10. p. 209. The superstition of antient mariners, with respect to the characillustrated from Theophrastus and Eschyters of those with whom they sailed, is well lus, p. 256. Cyrus, we are told, preferred a connection with persons of piety, dow οἱ πλειν αιρεμένοι μετά των ευσεβών μάλλον η μετά των ήσέθηκεναι τι δοκόντων. Xen. Cy rop. p. 437. Hutchinson's note contains some other passages to the same purpose. + This fable is celebrated by eastern as well as western mythologists. See Asiat Res. vol. iii. pp. 214-225. ed. 8vo. We must not, however,dissemble, that Josephus affirms the prophet to have been discharged from the whale's belly on some shore in the Pontus Euxnius. Ant. 1. ix. c. x. § 2. And in this supposition he is followed by many writers. The Jewish historian, it is probable, had no authority for his assertion but his own conjecture. It is, however, a curious coincidence that, in the time of the Emperor Justinian, a large fish should be said to have been destroyed in the Pontus Euxinus, after having been the terror of that sea for fifty years. And this fact is produced by. Mr. Bryant him self. pp. 245, 246. met's Dict. has attempted to explain the §. The editor of the last edition of CalCeto or whale, in this history, of a ship; but, in our opinion, with very little success. To this purpose he has proposed a number of queries, among which stands the following:-" "Is the testimony of Hesychius |