"The founder of that name was Christ, who suffered death in the reign of Tiberius, during the governorship of Pontius Pilate. This pernicious superstition spread not only over Judæa, where the evil originated, but through Rome also, whither every thing bad on earth finds its way, and is practised. Some who confessed to being Christians were first seized, and afterwards, by their information, a vast multitude (ingens eorum multitudo) were apprehended, who were convicted, not so much of the crime of burning Rome, as of hatred to mankind. Their sufferings were aggravated by insult and mockery; for some were disguised in the skins of wild beasts, and worried to death by dogs; some were crucified; while others were wrapped in shirts covered over in pitch, and set on fire when the day closed, that they might serve as lights during the night. These cruelties caused the sufferers to be pitied; and though they were criminals and deserving the severest punishments, yet they were considered as having been sacrificed not so much to the public good, as to gratify the cruelty of one man." 2

From the evidence afforded by this famous heathen historian, we may conclude without doubt these several things.

1. That the Founder of the Christian religion was put to death in Judæa by its governor, Pontius Pilate, during the reign of Tiberius Cæsar.

2. That in the country in which Christ was put to death, the religion which He founded spread with such wonderful rapidity, that in less than 40 years after His death a very large number of its adherents were found within the walls of the capital of the civilized world.

Such testimony on the part of a distinguished heathen historian, and a pronounced foe to the Christian religion, is most valuable evidence, not only respecting the fact of the rapid spread of the Gospel, but also in reference to those very predictions which Christ declared to His disciples before being put to death by Pontius Pilate, viz., that He would rise from the grave, after having been entombed for "three days and three nights;" and that His Gospel would be preached as a witness to the truth of His religion among all nations, which it has been with more or less zeal during the last eighteen and a half centuries, and continues so to be preached with more vigour and success than ever even to the present day.

2 Tacitus, Annals, lib. xv., c. 45.

10

CHAPTER II.

THE SUPREMACY OF JAPHETH.

THE chief subjects of prophecy set forth in Scripture may be summarily described under these several heads.

1. The Messianic prophecies relating to the promised Deliverer, made to man directly after Adam had fallen from that high estate in which he was originally created, “after the image and likeness of God."

2. The supremacy of Japheth in accordance with the prophecy of Noah, which reads in Genesis ix. 27, "God shall enlarge Japheth, and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant.

3. The condition of the children of Israel or the Jewish race at the present time throughout the world, as foretold by Moses in the 28th chapter of Deuteronomy, and other Hebrew prophets.

4. The treading down of Jerusalem as predicted by Christ"Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled."

5. The rise of a great ecclesiastical power, described by Daniel under the metaphor of a "little horn;" by St. Paul as "the man of sin," "the lawless one," and "the head of the apostasy;" by St. John as "the great whore that sitteth upon many waters,' and "Babylon the Great, the Mother of Harlots and Abominations of the Earth."

6. Signs of the "perilous times in the last days," mentioned in the Pastoral Epistles of St. Paul; and in the Apocalypse of St. John.

7. Special prophecies relating to Nineveh, Babylon, Tyre, and Egypt; and their condition in the present day.

Reserving the prophecies relating to the Messiah, I propose to notice in this chapter the second subject of prophecy in the above list, which treats of the supremacy of the Japhetic race, as is so strikingly manifest in the world's history during the last 2000 years.

We may safely assume the correctness of the Mosaic record respecting the tripartite division of the human race, as descended from the three sons of Noah, which has been confirmed by modern research in comparative philology as well as in ethnology. The celebrated Oriental scholar, Sir William Jones, in his Asiatic Researches, has discovered traces of three primeval languages, corresponding to the three grand aboriginal races, which he calls the Arabic, the Sanscrit, and the Sclavonic, into which all others resolve themselves. And Profesor Max Müller says

"These two points comparative philology has gained. Nothing necessitates the admission of different independent beginnings for the material or the formal elements of the Turanian (Ham), Semitic (Shem), and Aryan (Japheth) branches of speech; nay, it is possible even now to point out radicals, which, under various changes and disguises, have been current in these three branches ever since their first separation." 3

Therefore we see in this conclusion from comparative philology that confirmation of the Mosaic record which reduces all languages and three distinct stocks, and primarily before Babel to the time when "the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech." 4

Even independent of the question of inspiration, no ancient author has ever produced a work on ethnology to be compared for value to the Mosaic account of the origin of nations, as recorded in the 10th chapter of the book of Genesis. Of modern authors, while on the one hand we have Cuvier, perhaps the highest authority in the matter, dividing mankind into three races; on the other hand, we find many writers, who, disdaining to recognise the value of the Mosaic record, speculate in a variety of ways regarding the number of races in which the

3 Max Müller in Bunsen's Christianity and Mankind, vol. iii., p. 479. 4 Gen. xi. 1.

human family ought in their estimation to be divided. Blumenbach numbers 5; Lesson, 6; Fisher, 7; Bory de St. Vincent, 15; Desmoulius, 16; Morten, 32 families; while his disciples Nott and Gliddon run the number up to 115!!!5

The Authorized Version reads Noah's prophecy thus, "Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren. God shall enlarge Japheth, and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant." 6 There is apparently an omission in the text, else how are we to explain the fact that the name of Ham, who committed the offence, is not mentioned, but Canaan's substituted instead? Origen mentions a tradition amongst the Jews, which was subsequently adopted by Jewish and Christian writers, such as Aben Ezra, Theodoret and others, that Canaan first saw his grandfather uncovered, and informed his father Ham, who did not reprove him as he ought to have done. The expression in the context, "his younger son," seems to support this view, as the term literally rendered reads, his "little son," pointing rather to his grandson Canaan, than his son Ham. Hence the Arabic version, and one copy, if not more, of the Septuagint reads the whole prophecy in the following way, which seems to accord with the metre of the Hebrew :

"Cursed be Ham, the father of Canaan ;

A servant of servants shall he be to his brethren.

Blessed be Jehovah, the God of Shem;

And Ham, the father of Canaan, shall be his servant.

God shall enlarge Japheth,

And he shall dwell in the tents of Shem;

And Canaan shall be his servant."

The Targum of Onkelos, Philo and some others understand "he" to refer to GOD as dwelling in the tents of Shem; but the Targum of the pseudo-Jonathan and the greater number of Christian interpreters consider Japheth to be the subject of the proposition, as indeed seems to be the far more probable meaning of the Patriarch's prediction. And this is seen in two "See Genesis and Science, by Dr. John Arnold, p. 105. 6 Gen. ix. 25-27.

different ways. First, as regards religion; secondly, in respect to worldly power: the first, the spiritual sense; the second, the literal. As Isaiah expresses it, "Gentiles shall come to thy light, and kings to the brightness of thy rising: the abundance of the sea shall be converted unto thee, the forces of the Gentiles shall come unto thee" (lx. 3, 5). Nearly all those nations whose history and language prove them to be of the Japhetic stock, have been converted to a belief in the religion of the God of Shem; and as regards the political supremacy of Japheth in modern times, as the learned Bochart two and a half centuries ago well observed

"To the descendants of Japheth belonged all Europe and Lesser Asia, Media, Iberia, Albania, part of Armenia, and all those vast countries to the North, which formerly the Scythians and now the Tartars inhabit: not to say anything of the new world (America), into which the Scythians might have passed through the straits of Anian." "

ד

Thus it may be safely affirmed that the prophecy of the patriarch Noah teaches us the following particulars.

1. That the world should be divided among the descendants of Noah, but that Japheth should have the most important portion for his inheritance.

2. That the descendants of Shem should preserve the knowledge of the true God by the revelation made to Abraham and Moses, until the time when the Gospel was preached to mankind.

3. "That the descendants of Ham and Canaan should be depressed, and reduced to a condition of servitude.

Speaking generally, it may be assumed that the descendants of Shem have colonized Asia; of Ham, Africa; and of Japheth, Europe and America. The following commentary on the 10th chapter of Genesis is given by Abulfaragi, an Armenian physician of the 13th century, who subsequently became a bishop and primate of the East, in his History of the Dynasties :

"In the 140th year of Phaleg, the earth was divided among the sons of Noah. To the sons of SHEM was allotted the middle of the earth; viz., Palestine, Syria, Assyria, Babel, Persia and Arabia. To the sons of

7 Bochart's Phaley, iii., c. 1, col. 149,