church creed in opposition to a respectable minority, that it should never be attempted but for the gravest reasons. If the existing creed is radically defective, or positively heretical, a change, with all its hazards, may be necessary. But no change, on the mere ground of taste or of personal preference, should ordinarily be attempted, until it can be done without rending the church.

Of the importance, and even necessity, of church creeds I have sufficiently spoken; and the impression of this fact, I hope, may not be lost. It was a stale artifice of those who prepared the way for another gospel among us in the early part of the present century, to reject and denounce confessions of faith. Creeds were represented as useless and of bad influence; as inconsistent with Christian liberty and with the first principle of Protestantism—the sufficiency of scripture. But these charges, we all now understand, were utterly without foundation. Our creeds were never regarded as the ultimate standard of our faith, but only the expression of it. We have never substituted them in the place of scripture, but have merely used them, as a matter of convenience, to set forth what we regarded as the true sense of scripture. And what absurdity to pretend that Christians may not study the scriptures for themselves, gather their opinions from them, express them one to another, reduce them to writing, and thus form a creed, and a church on the basis of it, without incurring the reproach of undervaluing and superseding the use of scripture, and encroaching upon the liberty of others.

That indifference to religious truth and dislike of creeds, which has once brought so much mischief upon us, I have feared was beginning to show itself again. Hence the desire of short and imperfect creeds, and a renewal of the old and oft-refuted objections against them. Now against this spirit, wherever it shows itself, we cannot be too cautiously on our guard. Is it not enough that we have once been caught in this way ? Shall we consent to fall into the same snare again? "In vain," says the wise man, "is the net spread in the sight of any bird."

ARTICLE IX.

HEBREW GRAMMAR AND LEXICOGRAPHY.'

BY REV. GEORGE H. WHITTEMORE, A.M., ROCHESTER THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY.

UNDER the title of this paper it is proposed to notice some features of the publications below which establish their claims to be regarded as real services to the English student of the Hebrew scriptures, and to offer some remarks suggested by the general subject.

It may seem superfluous to commend a Grammar which has been so long before the public, and has so well earned the following encomium of the "British Quarterly Review," in welcoming this new edition: "Its simple and intelligible arrangement of materials, its generally sound conclusions, and its highly convenient form will always make it the favorite text-book in all our schools and colleges, and the companion of every student of the Old Testament scriptures." In America this verdict has been emphasized by the authority of Professor Stuart, who, after six editions of his own Grammar had been published, devoted himself to the translation of Gesenius, whose principles he had always followed, and by that of Dr. Conant, who a little earlier had undertaken the same task, executing it with a fidelity which has so long made it the standard representative of the original work among us. But Dr. Roediger still lives to devote his accumulated experience and unceasing attention to the perfection of the tasks which were his legacy from the great master Gesenius. Twenty editions of the Grammar have appeared in Germany, and the volume before us is declared to be virtually from the twenty-first, and, by his special arrangement and attention, even in English Roediger's own work as much as in German. Dr. Davies brings to his part of this joint undertaking the experience of long service in Hebrew instruction, as well as the ability resulting from foreign study. It will not, then, be amiss to

1 Gesenius's Student's Hebrew Grammar, from the Twentieth German Edition, as revised by E. Roediger, D.D., Professor of Oriental Languages at the University of Berlin. Translated by B. Davies, LL.D. With special Additions and Improvements by Dr. Roediger; and with Reading-Book and Exercises by the Translator. Student's Hebrew Lexicon. A compendious Hebrew and Chaldee Lexicon to the Old Testament, chiefly founded on the works of Gesenius and Fürst, with improvements from Roediger, Dietrich, Ewald, and others. Edited by Benjamin Davies, Ph.D., LL.D., Translator of Roediger's Gesenius, or Student's Hebrew Grammar. London: Asher and Company.

point out some of the new titles to favor possessed by this work so menumental of modern Oriental philology.

In the first pages of the book, preceding a complete collection of paradigms, we meet with a new and fuller Table of Ancient Semitic Alphabets, in the drawing up of which Professor Roediger acknowledges the valuable aid of Dr. M. A. Levy, the learned Professor at Breslau. The facilities and interest of alphabetic research have been promoted by recent discoveries of antique inscriptions; and it may be hoped that, in these days of archaeological zeal, the Moabite stone will not retain its present solitary eminence of age and value as a witness to the Bible and to the paternity of the systems of writing derived from the Greek and the Latin.

In the Introduction, besides the three branches of the Semitic languages heretofore recognized,—the Arabic, the Aramaean, and the Hebrew, with the Canaanitic or Phoenician, as a distinct and fourth chief branch is enumerated the Assyrian (with the old Babylonian), as it appears in the Cuneiform inscriptions; the language of the Elamites and Assyrians, after long doubt, having been proved Semitic.

Of particular value in this part of the book is an addition inserted in the section on an historical survey of the Hebrew language. It indicates the lines of investigation by which an earlier stage of the language than is preserved in the present written documents can be recognized and established. One result of this regressive inquiry consists in the ability to see more clearly how the Old Testament Hebrew acquired its system of sounds and grammatical forms. This is so desirable, that, merely mentioning the first and third of the paths which conduct to this earlier stage of the language,―viz. archaic forms in the Hebrew itself, and comparison with the kindred tongues, especially the Arabic, often conservative of them, a brief notice may be profitably given to the second, viz. retrospective inference from the present lexical forms, in so far as they clearly, in the law and analogy of the letter-changes, point back to such an older form of the language. Here would be included the transitions from hard and rough consonants in the earlier times to smoother ones of the same class, or, while the original consonant was still retained, to a degenerate pronunciation of it; the extensive rejection of consonants at the end of words, to which is owing the present form of so many of the particles especially; and the change of the feminine ending to

Further on in the work attention is called to the fact that the changes which have passed upon the Hebrew language in respect to its sounds have also affected its vowel-system; and examples are cited in English spelling according to Arabic analogy, exhibiting the original forms of words, as Sădăqăt, for 7, righteousness. Here, in § 27, by a few prefatory remarks, the whole subject of the changes of vowels, especially in respect to quantity, has a new light thrown upon it for the patient and diligent student. He is made aware of the fact, more elaborately pre

sented by Hupfeld in his uncompleted fragment of a Hebrew Grammar, of the prevalence of short vowels in the early language; the a sound predominating among these. He is thus better prepared to realize the assertion of all the grammars that the present vowel-system is highly artificial, and exhibits the intoning style of the schools and the synagogue. Every service of this kind is inestimable to the student; for probably two thirds of those who take up the study think it as difficult as did the writer of a recently published reminiscence of Professor Stuart, though it is to be feared that a large number never get even a temporary impetus and beguilement such as he records: Even into the dry, monotonous task of teaching the Hebrew grammar as it was the practice of Professor Stuart to teach it even to beginners,- he would infuse such life and interest that for the time you forgot the difficulties, the almost unintelligible nature of the language, and of the rules you were trying to master."

An improvement of note is the unequivocal substitution of our w as the sound and equivalent of ", instead of the German w, or v. It is surprising that the latter should have been retained so long, especially in view of the correct statement, in every successive edition of the Grammar, that it is of the greatest importance to understand well the old and genuine sound of every consonant; since very many grammatical peculiarities an changes are dependent on, and can be explained only by the nature of the sounds and their pronunciation. To be sure, the real equivalency of and w was stated in the discussion of the peculiarities of ; but, in face of the retention of the v sound, it may be doubted whether in very many cases there was not an inveterate perplexity in the mind of the student, if, passing beyond the laborious memorizing of the AyinWaw verb, he attempted to give an intelligible account of its apparent wide deviations from the normal form. It is not only in morals that the attempt to combine correct theory with doubtful practice is darkening and bewildering in its effects. All, however, becomes easily intelligible, if kāwām, instead of kāvăm, be brought to comparison with kātāl. It must also, on the old practice, have seemed strange that so common a word as "and" should be pronounced now vi, and again û, as in rule. An ancient Hebrew, it may also be confidently affirmed, would have been astounded to be told that he ever discriminated in his utterance of this connective. The apparent anomaly disappears when the true w sound is employed, and it is seen that, though the pointing is different, the difference of sound is very slight in the initial utterance of wihâārětz, and, which, says Dr. Davies, ought probably to be pronounced, wūmälěkh; the retaining its feeble w sound before the Shureq.

The origin of the vowel sounds from the three primary ones is more fully stated and exhibited than heretofore. Fuller, also, and more serviceable are the remarks in the section on the character of the several vowels. For example, Kal and Piel participles become better understood

in their inflection by the statement that short Chireq is sometimes an original lengthened by the tone to e, as in (thy foe), from originally ayibh.

In the treatment of the verb, we find a useful remark prefixed to the Guttural verbs, to the effect that their deviations can only in part be taken for actual weakness, as in the omission of the doubling by Daghesh forte; while, on the contrary, in forms like, the original ǎ of the preformative is kept, which in the corresponding form of the model verb, bp, is weakened into . This, it will be seen, has the same aim as so many of the additions and improvements, some of which have already been specified, the explanation of the present phenomena of the language out of its reconstructed earlier condition. Hupfeld, asserting the accumulation by advanced philological inquiry of sufficient facts to explain with great probability the problem of the vocalization and the historical course of its cultivation, states as one of the main points upon which this explanation is founded, that the vocalization was originally far simpler than now, as is established through a comprehensive analogy of language. It is the valuable office of many a little remark and note to call attention to this early simple vocalization.

The sections which treat of the various participial and infinitive forms of nouns derived from the regular and irregular verbs remain as before. The conviction may here be expressed of the exceeding importance of their careful study to any who would gain such a knowledge of Hebrew as not even the most faithful and extensive memorizing of forms can convey, but which comes from feeling the force of the form as built on a certain plan from the stem-word. Of the word, for example, it may be learned from the lexicon that it is applied to a godly, pious man, as well as to a kind and merciful one. But to the inquirer into the significance of its structural form may there not be suggested the important and beautiful lesson that such a one both receives and exemplifies the grace of God, the source of all grace of character? Hupfeld strongly insists on the proper passive force of the form as a denominative, signifying one who is the object of God's mercy. Certainly it is allied to the passive participle, although the same form occurs with an active signification in intransitive verbs. May not the best conciliation of the etymological indications and the facts of the word's usage come from supposing it a pregnant designation of one in whom inhere the distinctions and the virtues of the "gracious state" of which the old divines speak?

One must seek to have the exact correspondence between certain Hebrew and English terms felt instantly and instinctively. Thus the very appellation of the language may suggest to us that Abraham, from whom it came, was "the Hebrew," not merely as an immigrant into Canaan, but, being such, was called by the native inhabitants of the land, as he came from "the over side" of the Euphrates, the "over-sider," as we say