will Japhetize Japheth.In the last clause of this verse, the original leaves us in doubt whether the subject of the verb is God or Japheth. Grammatically it might be either-God shall dwell, or Japheth shall dwell, in the tents of Shem. In favor of making Japheth the subject are these considerations:-(a.) The verse preceding gives the prophetic destiny of Shem; this, of Japheth. (b.) The expression is not altogether apposite when applied to God, for although God dwelt in the Hebrew temple and dwells by his Spirit in the bodies of his people, yet he is not elsewhere said to dwell in the tents of his people. The phrase leads the mind to such dwelling as may be said of men but is not said of God.Applied to Japheth it had a most apposite and beautiful fulfillment when the Gentile races of Japheth came in as proselytes to the Hebrew communion, but far more when in the Christian age, the Jews were broken off from the old stock that the Gentiles might be grafted in, and they were; and may be almost said to have taken possession of the deserted tents of Shem as their own through all the Christian centuries to this hour. All Protestant Christendom is this day of Japheth's line, fully at home in the tents of Shem.

A very extraordinary case of the wresting of Scripture to make it justify crime-so great a crime as the enslaving of men-is the attempt to force from this prophecy concerning Canaan a vindication of the enslaving of Africans by Americans. The wresting appears in these two broad facts:-(a.) That the Africans were not Canaanites, and therefore the prophecy said nothing about the negro race. Admitting for argument's sake that it justified the enslaving of Canaanites, it did not in the least justify the enslaving of African negroes.(b.) If the passage had named the African negro instead of the Canaanite, even then a prediction of what shall be might fall very far short of being a command as to what man ought to do. Prophetic predictions of war form not the least justification of war-fall utterly short of a divine command enjoining man's duty. Predictions of the Savior's death could never justify his murderers.

3. The genealogy of the great historic nations.

In Gen. 10 the Bible for once departs from its usual

method and gives a chapter of universal history-the only one. Elsewhere it traces the history of the one nation which had "the oracles of God," and in later ages, of the Christian church, touching the nations of the outside world only as they come into relations to the seed of Abraham or to the kingdom of Christ. But here we see the sons of Noah branching out to people the countries of the great Eastern Continent and to found the old historic nations of the earth.- -Japheth whom Prophecy was to "enlarge" (Gen. 9: 27) furnished the tribes from which grew the great nations of Northern and Eastern Asia and for the whole of Europe. At first they occupied the maritime regions bordering on the Caspian, Black and Mediterranean Seas, spoken of here as the isles of the Gentiles"-conforming to the Hebrew usage which called all maritime countries "isles."

Next we have the sons of Ham, among whom were Nimrod, the builder of Babel; Mizraim with his seven sons who himself gave name to Egypt; Canaan whose posterity long held Palestine, and several names which appear either in the cities or the tribes of the valley of the Euphrates and of Arabia.Shem seems to have shared with Ham the possession of the great fertile basin of the Euphrates and the Tigris-the cradle of the race-together with portions of Arabia and in general of South-western Asia.

It is a matter of some interest to know that this remarkable record of the birth of the great nations of antiquity is perfectly sustained by the universal history of all subsequent ages. Whether Chaldean or Phenician, Egyptian or Arabian, Greek or Roman, Mongol or Tartar, Indo-Germanic, Celtic, Belgic or Briton-all find the germ of their nationality in this wonderful chapter, and all concur to swell and substantiate the proof that the human race sprang from Noah and that we have no occasion to look for pre-Adamic men or for tribes that escaped the flood and have no pedigree among the sons of Noah. While it was never the purpose of divine revelation to give to any great extent the universal history of the race, it is proper to note that what it does give bears the divine stamp of truth. All historic science does it homage. All the light that comes up from the comparative study of the languages of the race helps us still to follow the track of the emi

grating tribes as they diverged from the ancient home of Noah's family. The Science of Ethnography begins with this chapter of inspiration, Gen. 10.

4. Babel and the confusion of tongues.

Gen. 11: 1-9 records a very remarkable event, of far reaching consequences toward the geographical diffusion of the race. Up to this point there was but one language-as the record has it"one lip and one set of words," "lip" being (perhaps) used for the mode of speaking, including pronunciation and possibly inflection; while words are the matter of language, the roots or ground-forms. The fact that the latter have been far less variable than the former, appearing to some extent in all subsequent ages throughout all the diversities of human tongues, favors this distinction.

Migrating from the Armenian hill country where the ark rested, Noah's posterity reached the fertile plain of Shinar, halted there, and set themselves to the building of a magnificent and lofty tower. There being no stone at hand, they prepared brick, not sun-dried after the common Oriental method, but thoroughly burned for greater durability. As both consequence and proof of this durability, the supposed ruins of this great tower, known as "Birs Nimrood" [tower of Nimrod] are still extant within the area of ancient Babylon, silently witnessing alike to the labors of those fathers of the nations before their dispersion, and to the truthfulness of this sacred record.

This tower was not built for safety in case of another flood (as some have supposed) for, with such an object, a high mountain and not a plain would have been chosen for the site; it could at best have saved but few; and more than all, the record gives a very different view of the motive. This motive was consolidation—the aggregation of the masses into one vast nationality or kingdom-a thought due to the ambition of some controlling minds aspiring to power, distinction, fame. Foreseeing the tendency to dispersion they sought to forestall it, to find their own glory in having a multitude under their sway and in building monuments that could not perish. For wise reasons God blasted this scheme. Precisely what divine influence was interposed to confound the language of these men, I

doubt if it is possible for us to know certainly. It is supposable that the many became restive under the domination of the few and the severe labor of this enterprise, so that diverse counsels and dissolving social bonds had some influence in blocking the progress of the work. Misunderstandings sprung up and found expression in diversities of tongue. What could be more natural when harmony gave place to discord? So this huge tower-building was arrested and men scattered abroad as they would.- The new tongues which took their rise here had ample opportunity to diverge more and more widely in subsequent ages. The immense variety in language which the history of the world discloses has been a growth-the product of subtle causes, of segregation and non-intercourse in part, and in part also no doubt of diverse mental traits and various influences of culture.

What the original language was, common to the race up to this point, has been much debated by learned men without arriving at uniform and satisfactory results. Whether it was, as some suppose, the veritable Hebrew tongue; or as others think, the Aramaic, i. e. the Chaldee; or whether it is utterly lost-these are the alternatives; but for the choice between them we can have no very positive data. Those descendants of Noah who best preserved the religious faith of the fathers would stand most aloof from the scenes of Babel, and be naturally least affected by its many-tongued controversies and its resulting confusion of speech. That they escaped these influences altogether is perhaps too much to assume. That the Aramaic (Châldee) tongue, closely allied to the Hebrew, held its place for ages in the valley of the Euphrates, strongly favors its claim to be, if not the very tongue of Noah, at least of the same family. These points suggest probabilities

but fall short of certainty.

CHAPTER X.

ABRAHAM.

ABRAHAM is one of the great men in the world's_religious history. Why he is so can not be well understood and appreciated without at least a brief view of the state of the world religiously considered at the date of his call, and the demand thence resulting for the new religious instrumentalities of which Abraham was in a sort "the head-center."

In the age before the flood religion had never really flourished. We read of a time when "men began to call on the name of the Lord," and something approximating toward system and concentration appears to have been introduced. But the record is silent as to any marked result except so far as it may appear in the piety of individual men, e. g. Enoch and Noah. Apparently the religious element failed even to hold its own against the on-rushing tides of worldliness. Even the sons of godly fathers formed unhallowed marriage connections, and consequently were borne rapidly down the broad current of degeneracy and moral corruption till only one family remained to represent the piety of all that generation. There was a fatal lack of moral forces.The flood was a vigorous moral lesson in itself; and besides this, the race started afresh from the seed of this one pious family. Ten generations bring us to Abraham in Ur of the Chaldees, near the old cradle of the race. The history of religion during this period from Noah to Abraham is exceedingly meager. Gathering up the few fragmentary notices which emerge from the general darkness in the age of Abraham, we find that his father's family in ancient Ur "served other gods" (Josh. 24: 2); that Abraham, journeying toward the south country of Palestine, sojourned awhile in Gerar and was there drawn into grave temptation by the apparent godlessness of the people, since he apologizes on this wise for representing Sarah to be his sister and not his wife: "Because I