MONTHS, ירחים, sometimes also called חדשים, new moons, from the circumstance of their commencing with the new moon, anciently had no separate names, with the exception of the first, which was called Abib, that is, the month of the young ears of corn,” Exod. xiii, 4; xxiii, 15; xxxiv, 18; Deut. xvi, 1. During the captivity, the Hebrews adopted the Babylonian names for their months; which were as follows, and they were reckoned thus:--

1. ניסן, Nisan, from the new moonof April, Neh. ii, 1.
2. זיו, Zif or Ziv, also called אייר,of May, 1 Kings vi, 1.
3. סִיוָן, Sivan,of June, Esther viii, 9.
4. תמוז, Tammuz,of July.
5. אב, Ab,of August.
6. אלול, Elul,of September, Neh. vi, 15.
7. תשרי, Tishri, also ירח האתנים,of October, 1 Kings viii, 2.
8. בול, Bul, also מרחשון,of November, 1 Kings vi, 38.
9. כסלו, Kislev,of December, Neh. i, 1.
10. טבת, Tebeth,of January, Esther ii, 16.
11. שבט, Shebat,of February, Zech. i, 7.
12. אדר, Adar,of March, Esther iii, 7.
The first month here mentioned, Nisan, was originally called Abib. The intercalary month is denominated in Hebrew אדר.

MOON. Particular sacrifices were enjoined by Moses at every new moon, which day was also celebrated as a feast. It is promised in Psalm cxxi, 6, The sun shall not smite thee by day, nor the moon by night.” The effect of a coup de soleil, or stroke of the sun, is well known; and in some climates the beams of the moon are reputed hurtful. Anderson, in his Description of the East,” says, One must here (in Batavia) take great care not to sleep in the beams of the moon uncovered. I have seen many people whose neck has become crooked, so that they look more to the side than forward. I will not decide whether it is to be ascribed to the moon, as people imagine here.” In some of the southern parts of Europe the same opinions are entertained of the pernicious influence of the moon beams. An English gentleman walking in the evening in the garden of a Portuguese nobleman at Lisbon, was most seriously admonished by the owner to put on his hat, to protect him from the moon beams. The fishermen in Sicily are said to cover, during the night, the fish which they expose to dry on the sea shore, alleging that the beams of the moon cause them to putrefy.

MORAL OBLIGATION. Different opinions have been held as to the ground of moral obligation. Grotius, Balguy, and Dr. Samuel Clarke, place it in the eternal and necessary fitness of things. To this there are two objections. The first is, that it leaves the distinction between virtue and vice, in a great measure, arbitrary and indefinite, dependent upon our perception of fitness and unfitness, which, in different individuals will greatly differ. The second is, that when a fitness or unfitness is proved, it is no more than the discovery of a natural essential difference or congruity, which alone cannot constitute a moral obligation to choose what is fit, and to reject what is unfit. When we have proved a fitness in a certain course of action, we have not proved that it is obligatory. A second step is necessary before we can reach this conclusion. Cudworth, Butler, Price, and others, maintain, that virtue carries its own obligation in itself; that the understanding at once perceives a certain action to be right, and therefore it ought to be performed. Several objections lie to this notion: 1. It supposes the understandings of men to determine precisely in the same manner concerning all virtuous and vicious actions; which is contrary to fact. 2. It supposes a previous rule, by which the action is determined to be right; but if the revealed will of God is not to be taken into consideration, what common rule exists among men? There is evidently no such rule, and therefore no means of certainly determining what is right. 3. If a common standard were known among men, and if the understandings of men determined in the same manner as to the conformity, or otherwise, of an action to that standard; what renders it a matter of obligation that any one should perform it? The rule must be proved to be binding, or no ground of obligation is established.

An action is obligatory, say others, because it is agreeable to the moral sense. This is the theory of Lord Shaftesbury and Dr. Hutcheson. By moral sense appears to be meant an instinctive approbation of right, and abhorrence of wrong, prior to all reflection on their nature, or their consequences. If any thing else were understood by it, then the moral sense must be the same with conscience, which we know to vary with the judgment, and cannot therefore be the basis of moral obligation. If conscience be not meant, then the moral sense must be considered as instinctive: a notion, certainly, which is disproved by the whole moral history of man. It may, indeed, be conceded, that such is the constitution of the human soul, that when those distinctions between actions, which have been taught by religious tradition or direct revelation, are known in their nature, relations, and consequences, the calm and sober judgments of men will approve of them; and that especially when they are considered abstractedly, that is, as not affecting and controlling their own interests and passions immediately, virtue may command complacency, and vice provoke abhorrence: but that, independent of reflection on their nature or their consequences, there is an instinctive principle in man which abhors evil, and loves good, is contradicted by that variety of opinion and feeling on the vices and virtues, which obtains among all uninstructed nations. We applaud the forgiveness of an injury as magnanimous; a savage despises it as mean. We think it a duty to support and cherish aged parents; many nations, on the contrary, abandon them as useless, and throw them to the beasts of the field. Innumerable instances of this contrariety might be adduced, which are all contrary to the notion of instinctive sentiment. Instincts operate uniformly, but this assumed moral sense does not. Beside, if it be mere matter of feeling, independent of judgment, to love virtue, and abhor vice, the morality of the exercise of this principle is questionable; for it would be difficult to show, that there is any more morality, properly speaking, in the affections and disgusts of instinct than in those of the palate. If judgment, the knowledge and comparison of things, be included, then this principle supposes a uniform and universal individual revelation as to the nature of things to every man, or an intuitive faculty of determining their moral quality; both of which are too absurd to be maintained.

The only satisfactory conclusion on this subject, is that which refers moral obligation to the will of God. Obligation,” says Warburton, necessarily implies an obliger, and the obliger must be different from, and not one and the same with, the obliged. Moral obligation, that is, the obligation of a free agent, farther implies a law, which enjoins and forbids; but a law is the imposition of an intelligent superior, who hath power to exact conformity thereto.” This lawgiver is God; and whatever may be the reasons which have led him to enjoin this, and to prohibit that, it is plain that the obligation to obey lies not merely in the fitness and propriety of a creature obeying an infinitely wise and good Creator, (though such a fitness exists,) but in that obedience being enjoined. For, since the question respects the duty of a created being with reference to his Creator, nothing can be more conclusive than that the Creator has an absolute right to the obedience of his creatures; and that the creature is in duty obliged to obey him from whom it not only has received being, but by whom that being is constantly sustained. It has, indeed, been said, that even if it be admitted, that I am obliged to obey the will of God, the question is still open, Why am I obliged to obey his will?” and that this brings us round to the former answer; because he can only will what is upon the whole best for his creatures. But this is confounding that which may be, and doubtless is, a rule to God in the commands which he issues, with that which really obliges the creature. Now, that which in truth obliges the creature is not the nature of the commands issued by God; but the relation in which the creature itself stands to God. If a creature can have no existence, nor any power or faculty independently of God, it can have no right to employ its faculties independently of him; and if it have no right to employ its faculties in an independent manner, the right to rule its conduct must rest with the Creater alone; and from this results the obligation of absolute and universal obedience.

MORAVIANS, or UNITED BRETHREN. The name of Moravians, or Moravian Brethren, was in England given to the members of a foreign Protestant church, calling itself the Unitas Fratrum, or United Brethren. This church formerly consisted of three branches, the Bohemian, Moravian, and Polish. After its renovation in the year 1722, some of its members came to England in 1728, who being of the Moravian branch, became known by that appellation; and all those who joined them, and adopted their doctrines and discipline, have ever since been called Moravians. Strictly speaking, however, that name is not applicable to them, nor generally admitted, either by themselves, or in any public documents, in which they are called by their proper names, the Unitas Fratrum, or United Brethren.

The few remaining members of the ancient church of the United Brethren in Bohemia, Moravia, and Poland, being much persecuted by the popish clergy, many of them left all their possessions, and fled with their families into Silesia and Saxony. In Saxony they found protection from a Saxon nobleman, Nicholas Lewis, count of Zinzendorff, who gave them some waste land on one of his estates, on which, in 1722, they built a village at the foot of a hill, called the Hut-Berg, or Watch-Hill. This occasioned them to call their settlement Herrnhut, the watch of the Lord.” Hence their enemies designated them in derision by the name of Herrnhuters, which is altogether improper, but by it they are known in some countries abroad. By their own account, the community derive their origin from the ancient Bohemian and Moravian Brethren, who existed as a distinct people ever since the year 1457, when, separating from those who took up arms in defence of their protestations against popish errors, they formed a plan for church fellowship and discipline, agreeable to their insight into the Scriptures, and called themselves at first, Fratres Legis Christi, or Brethren after the Law of Christ; and afterward, on being joined by others of the same persuasion in other places, Unitas Fratrum, or Fratres Unitatis. By degrees, they established congregations in various places, and spread themselves into Moravia and other neighbouring states. Being anxious to preserve among themselves regular episcopal ordination, and, at a synod held at Lhota in 1467, taking into consideration the scarcity of ministers regularly ordained among them, they chose three of their priests ordained by Calixtine bishops, and sent them to Stephen, bishop of the Waldenses, then residing in Austria, by whom they were consecrated bishops; co-bishops and conseniores being appointed from the rest of their presbyters. In 1468 a great persecution arose against them, and many were put to death. In 1481 they were banished from Moravia, when many of them fled as far as Mount Caucasus, and established themselves there, till driven away by subsequent troubles.

In the mean time, disputes respecting points of doctrine, the enmity of the papists, and other causes, raised continual disturbances and great persecutions at various periods, till the Reformation by Luther, when they opened a correspondence with that eminent reformer and his associates, and entered into several negotiations, both with him and Calvin, concerning the extension of the Protestant cause. But their strict adherence to the discipline of their own church, founded, in their view, on that of the primitive churches, and the acknowledged impossibility of its application among the mixed multitude, of which the Lutheran and Calvinist churches consisted, occasioned a cessation of coöperation, and, in the sequel, the Brethren were again left to the mercy of their persecutors, by whom their churches were destroyed, and their ministers banished, till the year 1575, when they obtained an edict from the emperor of Germany, for the public exercise of their religion. This toleration was renewed in 1609, and liberty granted them to erect new churches. But a civil war, which broke out in Bohemia in 1612, and a violent persecution which followed it in 1621, again occasioned the dispersion of their ministers, and brought great distress upon the Brethren in general. Some fled into England, others to Saxony and Brandenburg; while many, overcome by the severity of the persecution, conformed to the rites of the church of Rome.

About the year 1640, by incessant persecution, and the most oppressive measures, this ancient church was brought to so low an ebb, that it appeared nearly extinct. The persecutions which took place at the beginning of the eighteenth century, were the occasion that many of the scattered descendants of the Bohemian and Moravian Brethren at length resolved to quit their native land, and seek liberty of conscience in foreign countries. Some emigrated into Silesia, and others into Upper Lusatia, a province of Saxony, adjoining to Bohemia. The latter, as before observed, found a protector in Nicholas Count Zinzendorff, a pious, zealous man, and a Lutheran by education. He hoped that the religious state of the Lutherans in his neighbourhood would be greatly improved by the conversation and example of these devout emigrants; and he therefore sought to prevail upon the latter to join the Lutheran church altogether. To this the Brethren objected, being unwilling to give up their ancient discipline, and would rather proceed to seek an asylum in another place; when the count, struck with their steadfast adherence to the tenets of their forefathers, began more maturely to examine their pretensions; and being convinced of the justness of them, he procured for the Brethren the renovation of their ancient constitution, and ever after proved a most zealous promoter of their cause. He is, therefore, very justly esteemed by them as the chief instrument, in the hand of God, in restoring the sinking church, and, in general, gratefully remembered for his disinterested and indefatigable labours in promoting the interests of religion, both at home and abroad. In 1735, having been examined and received into the clerical order, by the theological faculty at Tuebingen, in the duchy of Wurtemburg, he was consecrated a bishop of the Brethren’s church.