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From these considerations, then, it is highly probable that Abraham was not born in the 70th year of his father's life, and that he was the youngest of the three sons: a conclusion that is fatal to the Samaritan reading of Gen. xi. 32, proposed by Mr. Hamilton.

II. The second objection will not continue to have much force after the first has been disposed of. It must be allowed that if Sarai was barren (Gen. xi. 30.) until she was 90 years old, there would have been something sufficiently remarkable in Abraham's faith respecting the birth of Isaac, even though it were common, at that period, for children to be born when their parents were beyond the age of 100.

That Abraham's question (Gen. xvii. 17.) refers chiefly or primarily to the circumstance of Sarah's barrenness, rather than to his own age, appears from Gen. xxv, where we have a record of the marriage of Abraham with Keturah, and the names of several of his children; this event, according to the order in which it is related by the sacred historian, has been placed by chronologers after the marriage of Isaac and Rebekah, i. e. about 40 years after the birth of Isaac, or in the 140th year of Abraham. Some, indeed, influenced by the consideration here advanced by Mr. Hamilton, have been of opinion that Abraham's marriage with Keturah took place before the birth of Isaac, during the interval between the birth of Ishmael and of Isaac; but besides the unnatural dislocation of the text that this would suppose, the language of the original

ויסף אברהם ויקה אשה

"And Abraham added, and took a wife," appears to militate against it.

If, then, there was any miracle in Isaac having been born to Abraham in his 100th year, there must have been a greater miracle in the birth of Keturah's children, when he was upwards of 140 years old or we may consider it as a continuation of the same miracle, and a part of the fulfilment of the promise that his seed should be as the stars of the heavens, and as the sand which is upon the sea shore. In this view of the subject, we must look to another circumstance in the history of Abraham, for the meaning of his question Gen. xvii. 17.

In Gen. xv. 1-3, we find Abraham complaining to the Lord that he had no children-" LORD God, what wilt thou give me, seeing I go childless?"-" Behold to me thou hast given no seed." From chap. xvi. 3, it is probable that this was about nine or ten years after the call of Abraham, and consequently, if Abraham was 75 years old when he left Haran, (Gen. xii. 3.) it will follow that he had no children in his 84th or 85th year. In his 86th year Ishmael was born, (Gen. xvi. 16.) and then we have no account of his having had any children till the birth of Isaac, in his 100th year. And thus it would appear that when Abraham said, "Shall a child be born unto one that is a hundred years old ?" his surprise

ut Gen. xxviii. 5. 1 Chr. iii. 5. Mat. i. 1. raro solet conjungere, ut Gen. x. 1. xi. 27.

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Atque has duas causas Scriptura non (Junius & Tremellius in Gen. v. 32.

was occasioned not only by the barrenness of Sarah, but by the circumstance of his having been himself so long without children.

Enough has however been said to make it clear that the reasoning in support of this reading is by no means sufficiently cogent to warrant an alteration of the sacred text, even though it be derived from the high authority of the Samaritan Pentateuch.

The difficulty respecting the date of Abraham's birth, has been long a subject of discussion with chronologers, in consequence of the supposition, which existed till the time of Usher, that Abraham was the eldest of Terah's sons, and consequently was born in the 70th year of Terah's age. Origen and Jerome cut the knot by supposing that Abraham was in reality 135 years old when he left Haran, but that in Scripture he is said to have been only 75 years old, because the first 60 years of his life being spent in idolatry, are not counted by the sacred historian. This proves at least that Origen and Jerome had no suspicion of the reading "two hundred and five," in Gen. xi. 32, in the text of their day-although their mode of solving the difficulty does not appear very satisfactory.*

Should the reading of the Samaritan Pentateuch be ultimately found to be correct, the chronological systems of Usher, Hales, Patrick, Wells, Marsham, and Kennedy, must inevitably fall to the ground, or at least must receive considerable modification.

Trinity College.

REVIEW.

The Epicurean; a Tale.-By Thomas Moore.-Fourth Edition, 12mo. pp. 332. London: 1827.

From the title of this work we had been led to consider it so entirely unsuited to the objects of our miscellany, and to our own taste and habits of reading, that we allowed it to remain unopened upon our shelves, till the advertisement of a third edition awakened our attention to its popularity, and consequently (whatever might be its intrinsic value or worthlessness) to its importance. We had seen an outline of the story, and thought that if well executed, it might afford a rational, if not a moral or religious lesson, of the insufficiency of all sensual enjoyments to satisfy the desires, and fill the capacities of a reasonable and immortal soul. We expected to find the distinction of matter and spirit, (evinced as it is by

* Another solution of the difficulty has been proposed, viz. that Abraham left Haran sixty years before his father's death: and therefore was 135 years old when Terah died; but this opinion, besides being obviously framed for the hypothesis that Abraham was the eldest of Terah's sons, does not seem to be very clearly reconciled with Acts vii. 4.-Vid. Poole's Synopsis in Act vii. 4.

the struggle of conscience and passion in every individual) illustrated by the exhibition of an ardent and intelligent character, disgusted with the satiety of pleasures, in the evanescent nature of which he finds the emblem of his own mortality, labouring with the consciousness of powers and faculties for which he has yet found no adequate object, and shrinking from the prospect of an annihilation, which the dull and weary sensualist might welcome as a dreamless sleep, but which the man of feeling, and talent, and science, must deprecate as abhorrent to his nature, and disbelieve as inconsistent with all the analogies of a creation where nothing is useless-and where, of all the varieties of animated being, he alone is found to possess those powers of abstraction and anticipation, which indicate a spiritual, and promise a future existence. We expected to find, in a writer acquainted with the literature of Greece, and rather ostentatious in the display of his reading in every direction, some infusion of the rational and reflective power exhibited in the discussion of this interesting subject: some reference to the arguments which a learned Epicurean might have found in the sounder philosophy schools, and some acknowledgment of that void in the soul which leaves it still unsatisfied, though in the full and unrestrained enjoyment of every animal gratification. In forming these expectations, we forgot to take into account that mixture of sensualism and sophistry which marks the former productions of Mr. Moore, and which (we may say this without offence, as he will probably regard it as the jargon of superstition,) it will require a coal from the altar to purify, and a ray from the sun of righteousness to clear.

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If Mr. Moore had undertaken only to describe the "longing after immortality" implanted in every human breast, and to argue from thence, or from any other merely rational premises, the certainty or probability of a future life, we should not have felt ourselves called upon again to introduce his name into our pages:the defects of his tale, and the flimsiness of his reasoning, we should have left to the dissection of other critics, and to the mature judgment of the public, when the attraction of novelty shall have passed away; while we silently mourned over the perverted taste which could give so wide, though still we trust, but a temporary currency, to the sparkling prettinesses of a literary epicurism. By the introduction of religion into this little work, Mr. Moore has assumed a new attitude before the world, and entered upon new and holy ground. And here it is our duty to arrest him and examine his passports, before we recommend him to the notice and confidence of young and unsuspicious readers.

So far as our inquiry respects the writer himself, it is possible that we are giving his tale more importance and extent in its design and conception, than either his judgment or his vanity contemplated; and that he meant only to produce a fanciful and amusing story, in which the gorgeous but grotesque mythology of Egypt might afford scope for his descriptive and imaginative powers, and the sublime simplicity of the Christian faith might furnish at once an effective and striking contrast to add interest to the piece, and

a vehicle for some redeeming hints of the Author's religious improvement. We can hardly suppose Mr. Moore so intoxicated with his success in the fields of fiction, as to fancy himself qualified to triumph in the lists of theology, or to construct from the very slender materials of desultory and evidently recent information, of which the Gospel seems to have contributed no share, a scheme of Christian doctrine. If he intended the serious part of this volume as a profession of his own faith, and an amende honorable to the religion and morality which his former writings have done too much to undermine, we shall rejoice at even this glimmering of a purer light, upon a mind gifted with powers to reach a high point of literary eminence: but we cannot suffer him to assume the Christian teacher's chair, while he is yet unfit for the lowest form, nor to mislead by his crude and superficial dogmatism, those who are younger and less informed than himself.

The hero of this tale is, as the name imports, an Epicurean of that late and degenerate period, when the sect had lost all pretension to the name of philosophy, and professed no higher pursuit than the cultivation of pleasure. He is introduced to us as the newly elected chief of this luxurious school, presiding at a festival in honour of its founder, and, as the guiding genius of the scene, giving life, as he says, to all around him, and seeing his own happiness reflected in that of others. But pleasure must have its intervals; and in the lassitude of recent festivity this gay voluptuary feels the nothingness of those joys which perish in the using, and sinks under the anticipation of the moment which must terminate for ever all his delights, and extinguish all his capacities, which must blot him from the book of living and sentient existence, and consign him to mingle with the dust upon which he treads, in a companionship at which his heart shudders, as if instinctively repelling the gross and absurd fallacy, which the creed of his sect would impose on him. His reflections in this still and lonely hour turn naturally on those involuntary anticipations which embitter the richest cup of earthly pleasure; and, though bearing no trace of those higher aspirations of the mind, in which a better philosophy might have found evidence of the immortality it sought and longed for, these reflections are useful, as pointing out the sting lodged in the infidel bosom, even under the fairest aspect of prosperity, and in the full possession of enjoyments, on which conscience has placed no check, and into which satiety is supposed not yet to have infused its vapidness :

"The festival was over: the sounds of the song and the dance had ceased, and I was left in these luxurious gardens alone. Though so ardent and active a votary of pleasure, I had, by nature, a disposition full of melancholy; an imagination that presented sad thoughts even in the midst of mirth and happiness, and threw the shadow of the future over the gayest illusions of the present. Melancholy was, indeed, twin-born in my soul with passion; and not even in the fullest fervour of the latter were separated. From the first moment that I was conscious of thought and feeling, the same dark thread had run across the web; and images of death and annihilation mingled themselves with the most smiling scenes through which my career of enjoyment led me. My very passion for pleasure but deepened those gloomy

fancies: for, shut out as I was, by my creed, from a future life, and having no hope beyond the narrow horizon of this, every moment of delight assumed a mournful preciousness in my eyes, and, like the flower of the cemetery, grew but more luxuriant from the neighbourhood.

"This very night my triumph, my happiness, had been complete. I had been the presiding genius of that voluptuous scene. Both my ambition and my love of pleasure had drunk deep of the cup for which they thirsted. Looked up to by the learned, and loved by the beautiful and the young, I had seen in every eye that met mine, either the acknowledgment of triumphs already won, or the promise of others, still brighter, that awaited me. Yet, even in the midst of this, the same dark thoughts had presented themselves; and the perishableness of myself and all around me every instant recurred to my mind.-All, all, I felt were but a mockery of the moment, and would leave nothing eternal but the silence of their dust!"

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Full of these gloomy cogitations, our hero raises his eyes to heaven, and "fixing them sadly and intently upon the stars," asks 'why it is that man alone must perish, while they, less wonderful, less glorious than he, live on in light unchangeable and for ever?" This is a very absurd question for a philosopher who has already convinced himself that man is nothing but a heap of dust, differing from his fellow animals and vegetables only in a somewhat finer organization. If his creed be true, the reason of his mortality is obvious and he has no right to arrogate to himself the first rank in a system, where the harmonies of inanimate and irrational nature declare the prospective wisdom of its Author, and man alone appears to be an anomaly, formed without a plan or purpose. But we must leave Mr. Moore's philosophy as we find it; agreeing with him, however, in the fact, that if in this life only we have hope, man is of all creatures the most miserable.

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Following this train of thought, Alciphron (the Epicurean) sinks down asleep at the foot of a statue of Venus, the only idol, he says, he had ever worshipped; and in a dream is directed to the shores of the Nile for the solution of his difficulties. He believes in dreams, though rejecting all faith in Providence, (an inconsistency of which we have many examples in more modern professors of his creed,) and is haunted by this vision till he determines to follow the suggestion, and seek rest for his mind in the certainty of disappointment: for of success his philosophy forbade all hope.The desagremens of a voyage are, of course, alarming to his delicate perceptions, as they might be to travellers less fastidious; but the wind is fair, the impulse is urgent, and to Egypt he proceeds. In the modern but beautiful city of Alexandria his mysterious purpose is still suspended: the luxuries and delights which such a city promises, exclude all other subjects from his mind; "the very forms of the architecture call up to his epicurean imagination images of living grace, and even the dim seclusion of the temples and groves speaks only of tender mysteries" to his mind. In the congenial

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• We must observe here, that in this, as well as in his other works, "the very forms" of Mr. Moore's expression are so thoroughly Epicurean, that it is not easy to quote them in a review without wounding the purity of the youthful mind. We shall therefore suppress such extracts, as far as we can, in the remainder of this artiVOL. VI.

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