TYRANNUS. It is said in Acts xix, 9, that St. Paul being at Ephesus, and seeing that the Jews to whom he preached, instead of being converted, were rather more hardened and obstinate, he withdrew from their society, nor went to preach in their synagogue, but taught every day in the school of one Tyrannus. It is inquired, Who was this Tyrannus? Some think him to have been a prince or great lord, who accommodated the Apostle with his house, in which to receive and instruct his disciples. But the generality conclude, that Tyrannus was a converted Gentile, a friend of St. Paul, to whom he withdrew.
TYRE, or Tyrus, was a famous city of Phenicia. Its Hebrew name is צור or צר, which signifies a rock. The city of Tyre was allotted to the tribe of Asher, Joshua xix, 29, with the other maritime cities of the same coast; but it does not appear that the Asherites ever drove out the Canaanites. Isaiah, xxiii, 12, calls Tyre the daughter of Sidon, that is, a colony from it. Homer never speaks of Tyre, but only of Sidon. Josephus says, that Tyre was built not above two hundred and forty years before the temple of Solomon; which would be in A. M. 2760, two hundred years after Joshua. Tyre was twofold, insular and continental. Insular Tyre was certainly the most ancient; for this it was which was noticed by Joshua: the continental city, however, as being more commodiously situated, first grew into consideration, and assumed the name of Palætyrus, or Old Tyre. Want of sufficient attention to this distinction, has embarrassed both the Tyrian chronology and geography. Insular Tyre was confined to a small rocky island, eight hundred paces long, and four hundred broad, and could never exceed two miles in circumference. But Tyre, on the opposite coast, about half a mile from the sea, was a city of vast extent, since many centuries after its demolition by Nebuchadnezzar, the scattered rains measured nineteen miles round, as we learn from Pliny and Strabo. Of these, the most curious and surprising are, the cisterns of Roselayne, designed to supply the city with water; of which there are three still entire; about one or two furlongs from the sea, so well described by Maundrell, for their curious construction and solid masonry. Old Tyre withstood the mighty Assyrian power, having been besieged in vain, by Shalmaneser, for five years; although he cut off their supplies of water from the cisterns; which they remedied by digging wells within the city. It afterward held out thirteen years against Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, and was at length taken; but not until the Tyrians had removed their effects to the insular town, and left nothing but the bare walls to the victor, which he demolished. What completed the destruction of the city was, that Alexander afterward made use of these materials to build a prodigious causeway, or isthmus, above half a mile long, to the insular city, which revived, as the phœnix, from the ashes of the old, and grew to great power and opulence, as a maritime state; and which he stormed after a most obstinate siege of five months. Pococke observes, that “there are no signs of the ancient city; and as it is a sandy shore, the face of every thing is altered, and the great aqueduct is in many parts almost buried in the sand.” Thus has been fulfilled the prophecy of Ezekiel: “Thou shalt be built no more: though thou be sought for, yet shalt thou never be found again,” Ezek. xxvi, 21. The fate of insular Tyre has been no less remarkable. When Alexander stormed the city, he set fire to it. This circumstance was foretold. “Tyre did build herself a strong hold, and heaped up silver as the dust, and fine gold as the mire of the streets. Behold, the Lord will cast her out, and he will smite her power in the sea, and she shall be devoured with fire,” Zech. ix, 3, 4. After this terrible calamity, Tyre again retrieved her losses. Only eighteen years after, she had recovered such a share of her ancient commerce and opulence, as enabled her to stand a siege of fourteen months against Antigonus, before he could reduce the city; but after this, Tyre fell alternately under the dominion of the kings of Syria and Egypt, and then of the Romans, until it was taken by the Saracens, about A. D. 639, retaken by the Crusaders, A. D. 1124; and at length sacked and razed by the Mamelukes of Egypt, with Sidon, and other strong towns, that they might no longer harbour the Christians, A. D. 1289.
The final desolation of Tyre was thus foretold: “I will scrape her dust from her, and make her like the top of a rock: it shall be a place for the spreading of nets in the midst of the sea: for I have spoken it, saith the Lord God.” “I will make thee like the top of a rock: thou shalt be a place to spread nets upon: thou shalt be built no more; for I the Lord have spoken it, saith the Lord God.” Nothing can be more literally and astonishingly executed than this sentence. Huetius relates of one Hadrianus Parvillerius, that “when he approached the ruins of Tyre, and beheld the rocks stretched forth to the sea, and the great stones scattered up and down on the shore, made clean and smooth by the sun and waves and wind, and useful only for the drying of fishermen’s nets, many of which happened at that time to be spread thereon, it brought to his memory the prophecy of Ezekiel concerning Tyre, that such should be its fate.” Maundrell, who visited the Holy Land, A. D. 1697, describes it thus: “This city, standing in the sea upon a peninsula, promises at a distance, something very magnificent; but when you come to it, you find no similitude of that glory for which it was so renowned in ancient times, and which the Prophet Ezekiel describes, xxvi, xxvii, xxviii. On the north side it has an old Turkish ungarrisoned castle; beside which, you see nothing here but a mere Babel of broken walls, pillars, vaults, &c; there being not so much as one entire house left! Its present inhabitants are only a few poor wretches harbouring themselves in the vaults, and subsisting chiefly by fishing: who seem to be preserved in this place by Divine Providence, as a visible argument how God has fulfilled his word concerning Tyre, namely, that it should be as the top of a rock; a place for fishers to dry their nets upon, Ezek. xxvi, 14.” Hasselquist, who saw it since, in A. D. 1751, observes as follows: “None of those cities which were formerly famous are so totally ruined as Tyre, now called Zur; except Troy. Zur now scarcely can be called a miserable village, though it was formerly Tyre, the queen of the sea. Here are about ten inhabitants, Turks and Christians, who live by fishing.” Bruce, who visited this country about eighty years after Maundrell, says, that “passing by Tyre from curiosity, I came to be a mournful witness of the truth of that prophecy, that Tyre, the queen of nations, should be a rock for fishers to dry their nets on.” Mr. Buckingham, who visited it in 1816, represents it as containing about eight hundred substantial stone-built houses, and from five to eight thousand inhabitants. But Mr. Jowett, on the authority of the Greek archbishop, reduces this number to less than four thousand; namely, one thousand two hundred Greek Catholics, one hundred Maronites, one hundred Greeks, one thousand Montonalis, and one hundred Turks. Mr. Jowett observed numerous and beautiful columns stretched along the beach, or standing in fragments half buried in the sand, that has been accumulating for ages: “the broken aqueduct, and the ruins which appear in its neighbourhood, exist as an affecting monument of the fragile and transitory nature of earthly grandeur.” Mr. Joliffe states, that there now exist scarcely any traces of this once powerful city. “Some miserable cabins, ranged in irregular lines, dignified with the name of streets, and a few buildings of a rather better description, occupied by the officers of government, compose nearly the whole of the town. It still makes, indeed, some languishing efforts at commerce, and contrives to export annually to Alexandria cargoes of silk and tobacco; but the amount merits no consideration. The noble dust of Alexander, traced by the imagination till found stopping a beer barrel, would scarcely afford a stronger contrast of grandeur and debasement, than Tyre, at the period of being besieged by that conqueror, and the modern town of Tsour erected on its ashes.”
As commercial cities, says Mansford, ancient Alexandria and London may be considered as approaching the nearest to Tyre. But Alexandria, during the whole of her prosperous days, was subject to foreign rule; and London, great as are her commerce and her wealth, and possessing as she does almost a monopoly of what has in all ages been the most enviable and most lucrative branch of trade, that with the east, does not centre in herself, as Tyre did, without a rival and without competition, the trade of all nations, and hold an absolute monopoly, not of one, but of every branch of commerce. For the long period of a thousand years, not a single production of the east passed to the west, or of the west to the east, but by the merchants of Tyre. Nor for many ages were any ships found but those of Tyre daring enough to pass the straits of the Red Sea on one side, or of the Mediterranean on the other. While the vessels of other countries were groping along their coasts, clinging to their landmarks, and frightened at a breeze, the ships of Tyre were found from Spain, if not from Britain, on the west, to the coast of Malabar and Sofala on the east and south. No wonder that her merchants were princes, and that they lived in a style of magnificence unknown in any other country in the same age; or that she should be considered a desirable prey by the conquerors of the times. But enterprise and wealth did not alone complete the character of the Tyrians; they had an undoubted claim to valour of no common order. Their city, which possessed scarcely any territory beyond their own walls, maintained a siege of thirteen years (the longest in history except that of Ashdod) against the whole power of Babylon; and another of seven months against Alexander, whose successes had afforded no instance of similar delay. And in neither case had the captors much to boast of, as the Tyrians had shipped off their most valuable property to Carthage; and in the former particularly, as has been already related, they so effectually secured or sacrificed the whole, that the soldiers of Nebuchadnezzar found nothing to reward them for their length of labour, during which, by excessive toil and heat, “their heads were made bald, and their very shoulders peeled,” but vacant streets, and houses already sacked. Carthage, Utica, and Cadiz, are celebrated monuments of the power of Tyre on the Mediterranean, and in the west. She extended her navigation even into the ocean, and carried her commerce beyond England to the north, and the Canaries to the south. Her connections with the east, though less known, were not less considerable; the islands of Tyrus and Aradus, (the modern Barhain,) in the Persian Gulf. The cities of Faran and Phœnicum Oppidum, on the Red Sea, in ruins even in the time of the Greeks, prove that the Tyrians had long frequented the coast of Arabia and the Indian Sea. But, through the vicissitudes of time, Tyre, reduced to a miserable village, has no other trade than the exportation of a few sacks of corn and raw cotton, nor any merchant, says Volney, but a single Greek factor in the service of the French Saide, (Sidon,) who scarcely makes sufficient profit to maintain his family. In allusion to Tyre in her better days, Forbes observes, when speaking of Surat, “The bazars, filled with costly merchandise; picturesque and interesting groups of natives on elephants, camels, horses, and mules; strangers from all parts of the globe, in their respective costume; vessels building on the stocks, others navigating the river; together with Turks, Persians, and Armenians, on Arabian chargers; European ladies in splendid carriages, the Asiatic females in hackeries drawn by oxen; and the motley appearance of the English and nabob’s troops on the fortifications, remind us of the following description of Tyre, “O thou that art situate at the entry of the sea, which art a merchant of the people for many isles,” &c, Ezek. xxvii, 3. This is a true picture of oriental commerce in ancient times; and a very exact description of the port and the bazars of Surat, at the present day.”
Dr. Vincent has given the following able illustration of the trade of Tyre as described in Ezek. xxvii, which must be considered as one of the most ample and early accounts extant. The learned author has rendered the Hebrew names into others better known in the geography of more recent times:--Tyre produced from Hermon, and the mountains near it, fir for planking; and from Libanus, cedars for masts. From Bashan, east of the sea of Galilee, oaks for oars. From Greece, or the Grecian isles, ivory to adorn the benches or the waists of the galleys. From Egypt, linen, ornamented with different colours, for sails, or flags, or ensigns. From Peloponnesus, blue and purple cloths for awnings. From Sidon and Aradus, mariners; but Tyre itself furnished pilots and commanders. From Gebal, or Biblos, on the coast between Tripolis and Berytus, caulkers. From Persia and Africa, mercenary troops. From Aradus, the troops that garrisoned Tyre with the Gamadim. From Tarshish, or by distant voyages toward the west, and toward the east, great wealth, iron, tin, lead, and silver. Tin implies Britain or Spain, or at least a voyage beyond the Straits of Hercules. From Greece, and the countries bordering on Pontus, slaves, and brass ware. From Armenia, horses, horsemen, and mules. From the Gulf of Persia, and the isles within that gulf, horns (tusks) of ivory, and ebony. The export to these isles was the manufacture of Tyre. From Syria, emeralds, purple, broidered work, fine linen, coral, and agate. The exports to Syria were the manufactures of Tyre in great quantities. From Judah and Israel, the finest wheat, honey, oil, and balsam. From Damascus, wine of Chalybon, (the country bordering on the modern Aleppo,) and wool in the fleece. The exports to Damascus were costly and various manufactures. From the tribe of Dan, situated nearest to the Philistines, the produce of Arabia, bright or wrought iron, cassia or cinnamon, and the calamus aramaticus. In conducting the transport of these articles, Dan went to and fro, that is, formed or conducted the caravans. By one interpretation, they are said to come from Uzal; and Uzal is said to be Sana, the capital of Yemen, or Arabia Felix. From the Gulf of Persia, rich cloth for the decoration of chariots or horsemen. From Arabia Petræa and Hedjaz, lambs, and rams, and goats. From Sabea and Oman, the best of spices. From India, gold, and precious stones. From Mesopotamia, from Carrhæ, and Babylonia, the Assyrians brought all sorts of exquisite things; that is, fine manufacture, blue cloth, and broidered work, or fabric of various colours, in chests of cedar bound with cords, containing rich apparel. If these articles were obtained farther from the east, may they not be the fabrics of India, first brought to Assyria by the Gulf of Persia, or by caravans from Karmania and the Indus, and then conveyed by the Assyrians, in other caravans, to Tyre and Syria? In this view, the care of package, the chests of cedar, and the cording of the chests, are all correspondent to the nature of such a transport. From Tarshish the ships came that rejoiced in the markets of Tyre: they replenished the city, and made it glorious in the midst of the sea, Ezek. xxvii, 5–25. Dr. Vincent observes, that from the Tarshish last mentioned the ships returned to the ports in the Red Sea; as from the nineteenth to the twenty-fourth verse every particular relates to the east, while that referred to in the twelfth implies the west--Spain, or beyond. We have here some light thrown on the obscurity which surrounds the situation of this distant and unknown place. There is, indeed, a clear reference to two distinct places, or parts of the world, denominated Tarshish; perhaps from those very circumstances, their distance, and the little that was known respecting them. That one was situated westward, and reached by a passage across the Mediterranean, is certain from other parts of Scripture; that the other was eastward, or southward, on the coast of Arabia, India, or Africa, is equally certain. See [Tarshish], and [Ophir].
UNBELIEF or INFIDELITY is a want of credence in the word of God; or it may be defined, a calling in question the divine veracity, in what God hath either testified, promised, or threatened; and thus it is the opposite of faith, which consists in crediting what God hath said, John iii, 18, 33. It is said that the Jews could not enter into the promised land, “because of their unbelief,” Heb. iii, 18, 19. And the Apostle, teaching the believing Hebrews what instruction they should deduce from that portion of the history of their forefathers, says, as the words literally translated would run, “We are evangelized as well as they were; but the word which they heard did not profit them, not being mixed with faith in them that heard it,” Heb. iv, 2. The meaning is, We Christians are favoured with the good news of the heavenly rest, as well as Israel in the wilderness were with the good news of the earthly rest in Canaan; but the word which they heard concerning that rest did not profit them, because they did not believe it. Hence it appears that faith and unbelief are not confined to the spiritual truths and promises of the Gospel of Christ, but respect any truth which God may reveal, or any promise which he may make even concerning temporal things. It is a crediting or discrediting God in what he says, whatever be the subject. Christ could not do many mighty works in his own country, because of their unbelief, Matt. vi, 5, 6; their mean opinion of him, and contempt of his miracles, rendered them unfit objects to have miracles wrought upon or among them. The Apostles’ distrust of Christ’s promises, of enabling them to cast out devils, rendered them incapable of casting one out, Mark xvii, 16; and St. Peter’s distrust of his Master’s power occasioned his sinking in the water, Matt. xiv, 30, 31. The unbelief for which the Jews were broken off from their being a church was their denial of Christ’s Messiahship, their contempt and refusal of him, and their violent persecution of his cause and members, Rom. xi, 20.
Adverting to the infidelity which prevailed among the educated class of Heathens when Christianity first appeared in the world, Dr. Neander observes:--It was Christianity which first presented religion under the form of objective truth, as a system of doctrines perfectly independent of all individual conceptions of man’s imagination, and calculated to meet the moral and religious wants of man’s nature, and in that nature every where to find some point on which it might attach itself. The religions of antiquity, on the contrary, consist of many elements of various kinds, which, either by the skill of the first promulgator, or, in the length of years, by the impress of national peculiarities, were moulded together into one whole. By the transmission of tales, half mythical, and half historical, by forms and statutes bearing the impress of religious feelings or ideas, mingled with multifarious poems, which showed a powerful imaginative spirit, rugged indeed, or, if animated by the spirit of beauty, at least devoid of that of holiness,--all these varied materials were interwoven so completely into all the characters, customs, and relations of social life, that the religious matter could no longer be separated from the mixed mass, nor be disentangled from the individual nature of the life and political character of each people with which it was interwoven. There was no religion generally adapted to human nature, only religions fitted to each people. The Divinity appeared here, not as free and elevated above nature; not as that which, overruling nature, might form and illuminate the nature of man; but was lowered to the level of nature, and made subservient to it. Through this principle of deifying the powers of nature, by which every exertion of bare power, even though immoral, might be received among the objects of religious veneration, the idea of holiness which beams forth from man’s conscience must continually have been thrown into the back ground and overshadowed. The old lawgivers were well aware how closely the maintenance of an individual state religion depends on the maintenance of the individual character of the people, and their civil and domestic virtues. They were well aware that when once this union is dissolved no power can restore it again. Therefore we find, especially in Rome, where politics were the ruling passion, a watchfulness after the most punctilious observance of traditional religious ceremonies, and a jealous aversion to any innovations in religion. The belief of a divine origin of all existence is a first principle in man’s nature, and he is irresistibly impelled to ascend from many to One. This very feeling showed itself even in the polytheism of national religions, under the idea of a highest God, or a father of the gods. Among those who gave themselves up to the consideration of divine things, and to reflection upon them, this idea of an original unity must have been more clearly recognized, and must have formed the centre point of all their inward religious life and thought. The imagination of the people was to be engaged with the numerous powers and energies flowing forth from that one highest Being, while to the contemplation of that unity, only a small number of exalted spirits, the initiated leaders of the multitude, could elevate themselves. The one God was the God of philosophers alone. The ruling opinion of all the thinking men of antiquity, from which all religious legislation proceeded, was, that pure religious truth could not be proposed to the multitude, but only such a mixture of fiction, poetry, and truth, as would serve to represent religious notions in such a manner that they might make an impression on men, whose only guide was their senses. The principle of a so called fraus pia [pious fraud] was prevalent in all the legislation of antiquity. But how miserable would be the case of mankind, if the higher bond, connecting human affairs with heaven, could only be united by means of lies; if lies were necessary in order to restrain the greater portion of mankind from evil! And what could their religion in such a case effect? It could not impart holy dispositions to the inward heart of man; it could only restrain the open outbreaking of evil that existed in the heart, by the power of fear. Falsehood, which cannot be arbitrarily imposed on human nature, would never have been able to obtain this influence, had not a truth, which is sure to make itself felt by human nature, been working through it,--had not the belief in an unseen God, on whom man universally feels himself dependent, and to whom he feels himself attracted,--had not the impulse toward an invisible world, which is implanted in the human heart,--been able to work also through this covering of superstition. The geographer Strabo thinks that, in the same manner that mythical tales and fables are needful for children, so also they are necessary for the uneducated and uninformed, who are in some sort children, and also for those who are half educated; for even with them reason is not sufficiently powerful, and they are not able to free themselves from the habits they have acquired as children. This is, indeed, a sad condition of humanity, when the seed of holiness, which can develope itself only in the whole course of a life, cannot be strewn in the heart of the child, and when mature reason must destroy that which was planted in the early years of infancy! when holy truth cannot form the foundation of the future developement of life from the earliest dawn of childish consciousness! The thinking Roman statesmen also of the time at which Christianity appeared, as Varro, for instance, distinguish between the theologia philosophica [philosophical theology] and the theologia civilis, [civil theology,] which contradicts the principles of the former, as Cotta in Cicero distinguished between the belief of Cotta, and the belief of the Pontifex. The philosopher required in religion a persuasion grounded on reasoning; the citizen, the statesman, followed the tradition of his ancestors without inquiry. Suppose now this theologia civilis, and this theologia philosophica to proceed together, without a man’s wishing to set the opposition between the two in a very clear light to himself; that the citizen and the statesman, the philosopher and the man, could be united in the same individual with contradictory sentiments, (a division which in the same man is very unnatural,) and then he would perhaps say, “Philosophical reason conducts to a different result from that which is established by the state religion; but the latter has in its favour the good fortune which the state has enjoyed in the exercise of religion handed down from our ancestors. Let us follow experience even where we do not thoroughly understand.” Thus speaks Cotta, and thus also many Romans of education in his time, either more or less explicitly. Or perhaps we may suppose, that men openly expressed this contradiction, and did not scruple to assign the pure truth to the theologia philosophica, and to declare the theologia civilis only a matter of politics. In the east, which is less subject to commotions, where tranquil habits of life were more common, and where a mystical spirit of contemplation, accompanying and spiritualizing the symbolical religion of the people, was more prevalent than an intellectual cultivation opposed to it, and developing itself independently, it was possible that this kind of esoteric and exoteric religion should proceed hand in hand without change for many centuries. But it was otherwise with the more stirring spirits and habits of the west. Here this independently proceeding developement of the intellect must have been at open war with the religion of the people; and as intellectual culture spread itself more widely, so also must a disbelief of the popular religion have been more extensively diffused; and, in consequence of the intercourse between the people and the educated classes, this disbelief must also have found its way at last among the people themselves; more especially since, as this perception of the nothingness of the popular religion spread itself more widely, there would naturally be many who would not, with the precaution of the men of old, hide their new illumination from the multitude, but would think themselves bound to procure for it new adherents, without any regard to the injury of which they might be laying the foundations, without inquiring of themselves, whether they had any thing to offer to the people in the room of that of which they robbed them; in the room of their then source of tranquillity under the storms of life; instead of that which taught them moderation under affliction; and, lastly, in the place of their then counterpoise against the power of wild desires and passions. Men saw, in the religious systems of different nations which then came into contact with each other in the enormous empire of Rome, nothing but utter contradiction and opposition. The philosophical systems also exhibited nothing but opposition of sentiments, and left those who could see in the moral consciousness no criterion of truth to doubt whether there were any such thing or not. In this sense, as representing the opinions of many eminent and cultivated Romans, with a sneer at all desire for truth, Pilate made the sarcastic inquiry, “What is truth?” Many contented themselves with a shallow lifeless deism, which usually takes its rise where the thirst after a living union with heaven is wanting; a system which, although it denies not the existence of a God, yet drives it as far into the back ground as possible; a listless God! who suffers every thing to take its own course, so that all belief in any inward connection between this Divinity and man, any communication of this Divinity to man, would seem to this system fancy and enthusiasm! The world and human nature remain at least free from God. This belief in God, if we can call it a belief, remains dead and fruitless, exercising no influence over the life of man. The belief in God here produced neither the desire after that ideal perfection of holiness, the contemplation of which shows at the same time to man the corruption of his own nature, so opposite to that holiness; nor that consciousness of guilt by which man, contemplating the holiness of God within him, feels himself estranged from God; nor does this belief impart any lively power of sanctification. Man is not struck by the inquiry, “How shall I, unclean as I am, approach the holy God, and stand before him, when he judges me according to the holy law which he has himself engraven on my conscience? What shall I do to become free from the guilt which oppresses me, and again to attain to communion with him?” To make inquiries such as these, this spirit of deism considers as fanaticism; and it casts away from itself all notions of God’s anger, judgments, or punishments, as representations arising only from the limited nature of the human understanding. More lively and penetrating spirits, who felt in the world an infinite Spirit which animated all things, fell into an error of quite an opposite nature to this deism, which removed God too far from the world; namely into a pantheism, which confused God and the world, which was just as little calculated to bestow tranquillity and consolation. They conceived God only as the infinite Being elevated above frail man, and not as being connected with him, attracting him to himself, and lowering himself down to him. It was only the greatness, not the holiness nor the love, of God which filled their souls. Yet the history of all ages proves that man cannot for any length of time disown the desire for religion implanted in his nature. Whenever man, entirely devoted to the world, has for a long time wholly overwhelmed the perception of the Divinity which exists in his nature, and has long entirely estranged himself from divine things, these at last prevail over humanity with greater force. Man feels that something is wanting to his heart, which can be replaced to him by nothing else; he feels a hollowness within him which can never be satisfied by earthly things, and can find satisfaction and blessing suited to his condition in the Divinity alone, and an irresistible desire impels him to seek again his lost connection with Heaven. The times of the dominion of superstition also, as history teaches us, are always times of earthly calamity; for the moral corruption which accompanies superstition necessarily, also, destroys all the foundations of earthly prosperity. Thus the times in which superstition extended itself among the Romans were those of the downfall of civil freedom, and of public suffering under cruel despots. But, however, the consequences of these evils conducted man, also to their remedy; for by distress from without man is brought to the consciousness of his own weakness, and his dependence on a higher than earthly power; and when he is forsaken by human help, he is compelled to seek it here. Man becomes induced to look upon his misfortunes as the punishments of a higher Being, and to seek for means by which he may secure again for himself the favour of that Being. The need of a connection with Heaven, from which man felt himself estranged, and dissatisfaction with the cold and joyless present, obtained a more ready belief for the picture which mythology presented, of a golden age, when gods and men lived together in intimate union; and warm imaginations looked back on such a state with longing and desire. This belief and this desire, it must be owned, were founded on a great truth which man could rightly apprehend only through Christianity; and this desire was a kind of intimation which pointed to Christianity. From the nature of the case, however, it is clear that a fanatical zeal, where the heat of passion concealed from man the hollowness and falsehood of his faith, might be created for a religion, to which man only betook himself as a refuge in his misery, and in his dread of the abyss of unbelief; a religion which no longer served for the developement of man’s nature, and into which, nevertheless, he felt himself driven back from the want of any other; and that men must use every kind of power and art to uphold that which was in danger of falling from its own internal weakness, and to defend that which was unable to defend itself by its own power. Fanaticism was therefore obliged to avail itself of every kind of power in the struggle with Christianity, in order to uphold Heathenism, which was fast sinking by its own weakness. Although the Romans had from the oldest times been noted for their repugnance to all foreign sorts of religious worship, yet this trait of the old Roman character had with many altogether disappeared. Because the old national temples of the Romans had lost their respect, in many dispositions man was inclined to bring in to their assistance foreign modes of worship. Those which obtained the readiest admission were such as consisted of mysterious, symbolical customs, and striking, sounding forms. As is always the case, men looked for some special and higher power in what is dark and mysterious. The very simplicity of Christianity became therefore a ground of hatred to it.
UNICORN, ראם, Num. xxiii, 22; xxiv, 8; Deut. xxxiii, 17; Job xxxix, 9, 10; Psalm xxii, 21; xxix, 6; xcii, 10; Isa. xxxiv, 7. In each of these places it is rendered in the Septuagint μονόκερως, except in Isaiah, where it is ἁδροὶ, the great or mighty ones. Barrow, in his “Travels in Southern Africa,” has given a drawing of the head of the unicorn, “a beast with a single horn projecting from the forehead;” accompanied with such details as, he thinks, offer strong arguments for the existence of such animals in the country of the Bosjesmans. He observes that this creature is represented as a “solid-ungulous animal resembling a horse, with an elegantly shaped body, marked from the shoulders to the flanks with longitudinal stripes or bands.” Still he acknowledges that the animal to which the writer of the book of Job, who was no mean natural historian, makes a poetical allusion, has been supposed, with great plausibility, to be the one-horned rhinoceros; and that Moses also very probably meant the rhinoceros, when he mentions the unicorn as having the strength of God.
“There are two animals,” says Bruce, “named frequently in Scripture, without naturalists being agreed what they are. The one is the behemoth, the other the reem; both mentioned as types of strength, courage, and independence on man; and, as such, exempted from the ordinary lot of beasts, to be subdued by him, or reduced under his dominion. The behemoth, then, I take to be the elephant; his history is well known, and my only business is with the reem, which I suppose to be the rhinoceros. The derivation of this word, both in the Hebrew and Ethiopic, seems to be from erectness, or standing straight. This is certainly no particular quality in the animal itself, which is not more, nor even so much erect as many other quadrupeds, for its knees are rather crooked; but it is from the circumstance and manner in which his horn is placed. The horns of all other animals are inclined to some degree of parallelism with the nose, or os frontis, [front bone.] The horn of the rhinoceros alone is erect and perpendicular to this bone, on which it stands at right angles; thereby possessing a greater purchase or power, as a lever, than any horn could possibly have in any other position. This situation of the horn is very happily alluded to in the sacred writings: ‘My horn shalt thou exalt like the horn of a reem,’[reem,’] Psalm xcii, 10. And the horn here alluded to is not wholly figurative, but was really an ornament worn by great men in the days of victory, preferment, or rejoicing, when they were anointed with new, sweet, or fresh oil; a circumstance which David joins with that of erecting the horn. Balaam, a priest of Midian, and so in the neighbourhood of the haunts of the rhinoceros, and intimately connected with Ethiopia, for they themselves were shepherds of that country, in a transport, from contemplating the strength of Israel, whom he was brought to curse, says, that they had as it were the strength of the reem, Num. xxiii, 22. Job, xxxix, 9, 10, makes frequent allusion to his great strength, ferocity, and indocility. Isaiah, xxxiv, 7, who of all the prophets seems to have known Egypt and Ethiopia the best, when prophesying about the destruction of Idumea, says, that the reem shall come down with the fat cattle: a proof that he knew his habitation was in the neighbourhood. In the same manner as when foretelling the desolation of Egypt, he mentions, as one manner of effecting it, the bringing down the fly from Ethiopia, Isa. vii, 18, 19, to meet the cattle in the desert and among the bushes, and destroy them there, where that insect did not ordinarily come but on command, Exodus viii, 22, and where the cattle fled every year, to save themselves from that insect.
“The rhinoceros in Geez is called arwé harish, and in the Amharic auraris, both which names signify the large wild beast with the horn. This would seem as if applied to the species that had but one horn. The Ethiopic text renders the word reem, arwe harish, and this the Septuagint translates μονόκερως, or unicorn. If the Abyssinian rhinoceros had invariably two horns, it seems to me improbable the Septuagint would call him μονόκερως, especially as they must have seen an animal of this kind exposed at Alexandria in their time, when first mentioned in history, at an exhibition given to Ptolemy Philadelphus, at his accession to the crown, before the death of his father. The principal reason for translating the word reem unicorn, and not rhinoceros, is from a prejudice that he must have but one horn. But this is by no means so well founded, as to be admitted as the only argument for establishing the existence of an animal, which never has appeared after the search of so many ages. Scripture speaks of the horns of the unicorn, Deut. xxxiii, 17; Psalm xxii, 21; so that even from this circumstance the reem may be the rhinoceros as the rhinoceros may be the unicorn.”