THE METHODIST

NEW CONNEXION MAGAZINE.

JULY, 1858.

ESSAYS, &c., ON THEOLOGY AND GENERAL LITERATURE.

THE ORIGIN OF THE CHERUBIC FORMS MENTIONED IN THE HOLY SCRIPTURES,

CONSIDERED IN CONNECTION WITH SOME OF THE DISCOVERIES OF LAYARD AT NINEVEH.

THE discoveries of Layard form an era in literature. The startling ideas they have given birth to, the historical associations they have formed, and the solutions of numerous enigmas which they afford, will be appreciated with increasing interest, as they are more earnestly studied and their various bearings more accurately deciphered. The symbols which lie scattered amongst the other remnants of ancient literature, or seem to be scattered from our imperfect knowledge, are shown in a collective form; and although their explications are even yet obscure, still their concentration furnishes us with a more original source than any we had before possessed.

It is asserted by an ancient author that the Ninevites had obtained their polished manners from an anterior race; and without any such authority it is a matter even of itself of the highest probability. But however they may have borrowed from others, they themselves were evidently the originators of powerful influences upon other portions of the globe. Passing by other points, they evidently possessed symbolical emblemry in a more connected system than the nations which afterwards separated and remodelled the very same emblemry according to the caprices of their different superstitions. To the moderns it appears very strange that men in the ancient world should have been so guided by type and symbol; and consequently the expression of their sentiments in this manner wears even a grotesque appearance. For instance, the frequent occurrence amid the ruins of ancient nations of monstrous unions between figures not only of every species of bird and beast, but also of man. Again, when the utter folly of mankind led them so far to abuse this mode of representation as to worship the symbols themselves, we wonder at our fellow mortals having fallen down to worship an ox, an eagle, and animals of still lower grade; and our wonder increases at their veneration for images, the absurdity of whose composition remains still for modern inspection. But, on the other hand, if these representations had been restrained within the bounds of hieroglyphical instruction,

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such mode would not only appear natural and interesting, but, while it was inferior in many respects to alphabetical writing, it contained some points of marked superiority; for example, it is more calculated to arouse the faculties of reasoning, by filling the mind with images and by exciting comparison, illation, and deduction. Such training would also strengthen the memory and stimulate the imagination. To men accustomed to such modes of communication, the solution of enigmas and parabolic illustration would not only be suitable, but far more congenial than any other method. Plutarch, in his very interesting history of Isis and Osiris, amongst others furnishes the following examples. The Egyptians affirmed that the sun and moon pursued their courses, not as the Greeks described, in chariots, but in ships, to betoken that all nature was sustained by the genial influences of these luminaries upon the collection of waters. That Sirius, the dog-star, was so named because at its rising was the time also for the rising of the Nile; the star thus giving timely notice, just as the useful domestic animal gives notice of the approach of any novel visitor. Osiris, the great Lord, is depicted by an eye and a sceptre, to express omnipresence and omnipotence. Heaven, on account of its activity and eternity, is depicted by a heart, whose pulsations are kept up perpetually by a hearth containing a glowing fire. At Thebes, images of judges were represented without hands, and with their eyes fixed on the ground, to show that those who administer justice should not have hands which will receive bribes, or eyes which will be allured from the truth. Beetles represent soldiers, because the Egyptians believed that females were not to be found among that species of insect. The symbolical figures discovered at Nineveh were prior to most of the representations of the same class in other countries; and if not to be considered as originals, were assuredly nearly the common sources of all. The whole routine of circumstances connected with the representations of fireworship, the human-headed bulls and lions, the eagle-headed characters displayed in the sculptures of Nineveh, reveal a centre whence has flowed the main emblemry of all known mythologies. The symbol of the ox was universal, which is thus given in a very startling generalization by Fred. von Schlegel:-"The Indian and Persian word gau, with which the German kuh (cow) perfectly coincides, quite agrees with the Greek word for earth in the old Doric form of ya; the Latin bos (ox), in its inflections bovis or bove, belongs to a whole family of Sanscrit words, such as bhu, bhuva, bhumi, which signify the earth, earthy, or whatever is remotely connected therewith. So originally in this language, one and the same word served to denote the earth and the bull. Comparisons of this sort, when not strained by etymological subtlety, but founded on matter of fact and clear self-evident deductions, may offer much curious illustration of the state of opinion and the nature and connection of ideas in the primitive and mythic ages, or may serve at least to give us a clearer and more lively insight into the secret operations of the human mind, and into the modes of thinking prevalent among ancient nations."

This proves the universal prevalency of the veneration for the ox throughout India, Egypt, and indeed the whole ancient world. The Indians conceived the bull the best representative of creative energy, and described Siva riding on the bull Nandi. The Apis of the Egyptians

received divine honours for the same reason. Through all Pagan mythology the lion and the bull are the emblems respectively of royalty and power; and these animals are consequently of frequent occurrence, either singly or conjointly, among almost all the ancient structures of Persia. India, along the whole course of her extended history to the present day, displays her unwavering reverence for the ox as one of her principal symbols. The next great scene in which the world's civilization was advanced, namely, from the banks of the Euphrates to the Ægean Sea, revealed as ardent a devotion to the same symbol. Baal, the chief deity of this mythology, was represented under the ox-form partially or wholly. Nimrod, who either was Baal or his prototype, has firmly established his name and pretensions throughout this part of the East; and its writers, according to the authors of the "Universal History," make him not only the first king of Babylon, but of all the world; and they affirm that he was the first who wore a crown, the model of which he took from one he had seen in the sky; for being pleased with the appearance, he immediately sent for an artist and had a crown of gold cast in the same form, which he placed upon his head, whence his subjects took occasion to say that it came down to him from heaven. The Orientals make Nimrod the author of the sect of the Magi, or worshippers of fire. They tell us that, accidentally seeing fire rise out of the earth at a distance from him in the east, he worshipped it, and appointed one Andeshan to attend the fire and throwing frankincense upon it. "There is a pretty constant tradition extant (says Vaux) that Nimrod taught the adoration of fire as one of the simple elements, or as the symbol of the divine Majesty, a faith we have abundant proof was from very early times common in many parts of the East, and is even now, after the lapse of 4000 years, not altogether extinct." His name, arising from a consideration of his deity, was Bel, Pul, or Baal, words of different sound but the same in sense, signifying Lord or Chief, and as such was acknowledged very generally through the Semetic and Celtic races. Tyre, Sidon, and Carthage, although their own records have perished, have yet left indelible proofs of their intimate adherence to the religion of their Eastern progenitors in the names of their greatest worthies, Ethbaal, Annibal, Asdrubal, Amilcar. Nay, at the very present time, in the middle of the nineteenth century, Ireland retains customs and names plainly showing that some of her ancestors at least must have come from the land of the "mighty hunter." O'Halloran affords one remarkable instance of the knowledge possessed by the ancient Irish in astronomy, shown by the Druidical name for the year in the Celtic language; and a more scientific one could not be found, since it is elegantly expressive of the course of the sun through the astronomical course of the zodiac; the word is Bliaghan, from Baal the sun, and ain a circle.

Another talented Irishman, Dr. John England, R.C. Bishop of Charlestown, in a speech delivered in an American society for the relief of Irish orphans in that country, thus refers to the primitive history of his native country:-"Rome never gave her deities to Ireland; but while that proud people dictated to a subject world, Ireland preserved even her idolatry unchanged. Her deities were of Eastern origin, and her rites of worship were of Asiatic institution; not those of the Brahmin, but those of the Phoenician. Baal was her chief deity, and he was