Sir J. Dawson says of the writer of Genesis:—'* It is interesting to note the strangely unerring instinct with which he seizes the relative importance of different kinds of creative work. He had selected the word Bara, create,' to express. the most absolute and original kind of making in the production of the materials of the heavens and the earth. Hes content with the less emphatic Asa, made,' when he speaks of the expanse, the great lights, and even the lower animals, But he signalises the first appearance of animal life by a repetition of create,' as if to affirm the great gulf which we know separates the Animal from dead matter. Tu fike manner he repeats this great word when he has to deal with the new fact of the rational and moral nature of man. Should man ever be able to produce a living animal from dead matter, or should the spontaneous development of the higher creature of man from the instinct of the brute become a proved fact: of science, we may doubt. his wisdom in the selection of terms, but not till then."
A profound and well-known Hebraist, writing in the Edinburgh Review, says, "The verb seems in the Semitic languages to be connected with the word bar, which means '*a son." Hence the primary meaning is to "bring forth," and he accuses the "Revisers" of the Old Testament of in-traducing an Arian reading, formed" in the Ix (Prov., viii, 22) ektixe me, which he characterises as ''an old heretical gloss." Arius maintained that the doctrine of the eternal generation of the Son was erroneous; that, as God was too perfect to come into communication with matter, yet, having the idea of the world in his mind, it should have some mode of expression, so another being was created to carry out the work. This was the Logos, of Son of God, who is but a creature, ktisma, a created thing. This is the point in the version of the "Revisers" which is objected to, with many more very much of the same sort, calculated to suggest doubts and difficulties to the unlearned reader. The Greeks and Romans in their dest days had not reached the concept of creating, in the sense of originating, producing or bringing forth, or possessing any thing out of nothing. Compare the Latin faber, a "maker," in the limited sense of a "workman," and the Greek demionrgos, a worker for the people," who merely uses, but does not "create" materis The Persians had from Zoroaster the idea that God brought matter or darkness out of the "corner" of infinite space in which Vide N.-C.D. News, and Y.-C. Herald of 14th September. ill then it had lurked. Ramsay, in the Travels of Cyrus," has invested with a decided couleur de rose the religion of the ancient Persians, of which Zoroaster was the great "Reformer." Manes, and Marcion, some time in the 3rd century of our era, produced commentaries and glosses upon him, and moreover made discoveries for themselves. According to Mareion, the good and bad principles (or God with the heavenly powers, and the devil with his angels) had originally each his empire divided by certain bounds; the latter! consisted of five distinct regions, and each was made up of different element, over each of which presided a ruling evil power, with many subordinate bad angels or demons, all under the dominion of the great Prince or the devil. God knew the darkness, but the darkness knew not Him, till by increasing and multiplying, and by an intestine war amongst themselves, the bad angels were driven upon the borders of light, and invaded the happy realms. Light, seeing this attack, framed the First Man, composed of five elements of celestial substance, contrary to those of matter, or and afterwards sent another power, called darkness, and sent him to oppose them
the Living Spirit, to succour him conflict. However, the demons seized a in his part of the heavenly substance, and from that time good and evil are blended in the world; for the Living Spirit v guished the demons and bound them in the air, and of the two substances, good and bad, which then got mixed together, formed the world. OF some of the purer spiritual substance which he was able to separate from the contagion of matter, he made the sun and higher heavens: of that which remained corrupted in a small degree he framed the moon and the lower planets, and what continued too much confounded with matter was employed in framing wh: ever composes the sublunary world, in which everything differs in perfection as more or less of the heavenly substance abides in it. 'Thus Marcion accounted for the origin of evil. He pretended that everything in nature was animated, or had something of a spirit or soul in' it; that angels presided in each star; that the demons of the air were the cause of tempests. Manes taught the Transmigration of Souls, and their purification by being sent up to the sun and moon, or rather first to the moon and then to' the sun, He described categorically the various intelligences which preside over the heavenly bodies; and he composed a series of new hymns, which he and the more ''advanced"" young people substituted for those of David, about Atlas supporting the earth (not the heavens) and another power dispensing the five heavenly elements. Manes was flayed alive, according to some authorities, by one of the predecessors of the present touring Shah, and his skin stuffed with straw, which shews that the ' King of Kings" of those days understood a joke too; but it is to be hoped that the skinning was deferred until after the poor man died. Mareion got off better, and he must have wandered during many a starry night under the blue skies of Iran to discover all the truths he taught. When Ariosto produced the Orlando Furioso" to his patron, and read him some it, the Prince simply asked him,—"Messer Lodovieo, where did you pick all that rubbish?" The Italian potentate did not appreciate the singer who was to "make an epoch with his lyre, And fill the earth with feats of chivalry."
Marcion's "'rubbish," although not endued with all the vitality of Ariosto's, did not die out by any means suddenly.' On the contrary, he was very influential in establishing the sect. St. Augustin—we ought perhaps to say, in the hearing of the Rev. Canon Cheyne, Augustin simply—was in his early "scientific" days an ardent Manichean. Star-lore has attractions for many a one who cannot discourse upon it like Zoroaster or Childe Harold "Ye stars! which are the poetry of heaven! 1 la your bright leaves we would read the Of men and empires,—'tis to be forgiven, That inour aspirations to be great, Our destinies o'erleap their mortal state, And claim a kindred with you; for ye are A beauty and a mystery, and create In us such love and reverence from afar, That fortune, fame, power, life, have named themselves a star."
In the first verse of the rst chapter of Genesis, we read that God created,' bara, the heavens and the earth; Numbers, xvi., 30,—**If the Lord make, bara, someth new," se. the impending Earthquake Ps., Ixxxix, 47, 'Hast thou made, bara, all men?" ' In' Arabic and Persian, bara, baru, mean creating': in Urdoo, bar: hana, 'a brood;° Mongol buri, form,' the Hebrew bar, 'a' son,' forms part of many proper names of men, as Barnabas (the Apostle) son of consolation,' or according to some, son of a prophet Bartholomew, "son of Tolmai in Chaldean, bar-a-holla, child of God.' In Persian, baryat is people in Hebrew, peru, be fruitful,'
and p being interchangeable) compare the Urdoo, partcarish,' gives birth to Latin partis, birth the similarity of the Scotch word bairn,' to the Hebrew bar has been thought to be merely accidental, but it is not so: in Gaelic as in Hebrew, (pronounced barer') means 'a rand the Gael will say bairgean, 'a begotten sou.' Chinese dir, "a son," seems identical with the Irish for,—the Chinese dropping the f, as the Gael does in some of the inflected forms of the word. In Gaelic, as in Hebrew, bar means 'a crop,' also corn? and produce,' as well us 'a gon.' In Urdoo, barkati means fruitful; in Trish, bérach, fruitful' boran, food,' ordi "bread ardnach, alimentary; and cognate with these is the Greek autos, wheaten bread,' (?) apar 'a kind of cake,' bora food,' 'Yorage,' the Basque bar, food the Persian bar, fruit,' iban, the flowers of palm trees,' ibavat, " fecundity; Spanish, barber, to sprout; 'English' here,' "barley,' to bear,' to be born Trish, ber, to bring forth,' also to take conveying the idea of shaving,' "possess in Prov. viii, 22; as is said in having' a son. Compare in Per-"carried," taken away' bari, ping Urdoo bar-i: jahaz, 'a Greek, bared, to load.' The root bar is very far-reaching in the names of things created, i.c., originated, in the sense of growing, being produced, de. as in the Persian besides words already mentioned, bar, "fruits," "flowers," "blossom," a sort of grain, so called, barw, 'a leat,' buraylu, herbs," a number of planta, by name, as barcak, asphodel,"" bardi "dates," bardi, ' papyrus reeds," barzac, "hemp-seed," "basin, "clover," bash, ivy," bartayk, & certain fabulous tree, barayh, a bunch of grapes, baranmuskh, the tamarisk, and in connexion with these, bahar, the spring season, bark at, abun: dance in Arabic, barges, and banzai, certain kinds of herbs, bartarik, veronica, darnuf, an Egyptian tree resembling the medlar, barsiydn, the maiden-hair fern; in Hindostanee, bavhal, a tree so named; in Urdoo, bar, '*fruit," hanna, to *tinerease" "grow," "thrive," bahar, "a flower," bearaan, *fruitfl in Spanish barbechary to "'cultivate;" in Icelandic, barri, the legendary "'green-wood of spring in Irish, barguehd, blossom, duillebar, "foliage," the "bursting of the leaf," ceolabor,' "warbling," an outburst of melody."
But it is to be observed that this tide of primitive language passed from east to west Tong before the Greeks or Romans existed as distinct peoples, leaving but few traces the language which they perfected in later times, but leaving very many vestiges in local names, the meanings: of which, frequently minutely as well as accurately
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.