the spot which Jacob had impressed with a name so affecting, and where one so dear to the family slept, would in after-times be held in much regard by his descendants. We observe that all the other places to which he gave names, as Bethel, Gilead and Peniel, were faithfully remembered, and it is not likely that this would be forgotten. The preposition y appears to express proximity only, near, beside:' the exact place where Saul was to meet the men being expressed by myyat Zelzah;' unless indeed the LXX. have rendered the last term more correctly by the translation rejoicing greatly:' thou shalt find two men by Rachel's sepulchre, in the border of Benjamin, rejoicing greatly, and they will say unto thee, the asses are found,' etc.

Saul is told that in the next place he should come to the oak of Tabor,' is, where would meet him three men going up to God to Bethel. Now, on passing the grave of Deborah, Saul would pursue the great highway that leads from Shechem to Jerusalem by Bethel, Ramah and Gibeah; and there was nothing more likely than that in this much-frequented path he would meet men going up to Bethel, which he had just passed. This, however, he could not easily do by any other route than has been assigned to him. Of the oak of Tabor, commemorative, doubtless, of some remarkable person or event with which it was associated, we have no account elsewhere in the Scriptures; but in the history of Deborah the prophetess, we are informed that 'she dwelt under the plam-tree of Deborah, between Ramah and Bethel, in Mount Ephraim' (Jud. iv. 5): the very tract which Saul was now travelling; for Ramah of Benjamin lies between Bethel and Gibeah, to which he was journeying. If, therefore, the oak of Tabor had any connection with the palm of Deborah, as seems so very probable, two singular changes had taken place during the bygone two hundred and eighty years since the heroic prophetess sat under its shade; the palm had given place to an oak, and the name of Deborah, by a law to which all languages are subject, had been corrupted into Tabor. On this point, however, we cannot speak authoritatively.

The very law, however, to which we have just adverted, with the recollection that there was a previous Deborah spoken of, may suggest to some mind the doubt whether Allon Tabor' was so far from Bethel as we have supposed it. May it not, after all, be the very oak at Bethel under which the nurse of Rebekah was buried, and which might be called afterwards either Allon Deborah,' or 'Allon Bachuth,' as the speaker chose? The directions of Samuel will undoubtedly bear this construction; he says to Saul, that after he had met the two men at Zelzah, near

to

to the sepulchre, Thou shalt go forward, and further on shalt come to Allon Tabor,' which may imply that he would come to the sepulchre itself, and there, close under the height on which the city stood, he would meet three men going up to Bethel. The only difficulty in this case, as in the former and we are disposed to think it is not a great one-is the change of Deborah into Tabor. The numerous and extraordinary changes which names undergo in the Bible, the influence of provincialism, which we know early distinguished the Ephraimites, and the lapse of seven hundred and eighty years since Jacob visited the spot, may probably account for this. We incline, however, to the former view, as beset with fewer difficulties.

Before closing these remarks, we may be allowed to observe that there is something not quite clear to our mind in the passage which records the death and burial of Deborah, the nurse of Rebekah. How came she to be at this time in the household of Jacob? It is singular that there is no mention of her as accompanying Rachel or Leah in their leaving home, nor how she should be in Padan Aram at all. She might have been sent to Padan Aram by Rebekah, it has been said, to assist in the management of Jacob's family. But the age of Deborah at this time renders such a supposition extremely improbable. If she were fifty years of age when she left the house of Laban with Rebekah-and she could not well have been less-at her death she must have been about one hundred and seventy years of age. To have sent her from Canaan to Mesopotamia, say fifteen years before this, when she might be above one hundred and fifty years old, to undertake duties so arduous, cannot surely be supposed. But she may have returned home, it is again said, after she had conducted Rebekah to Canaan; and now, when Jacob was returning, desired to accompany him, and see her former mistress before she died. But not to say that this was not likely at such a period of life, we would observe that it was contrary to the sentiments and customs of the East for the nurse to have returned home, and left her youthful charge. The nurse in an Eastern family was an important personage, and always held in high esteem. In Syria she is a sort of second parent. She always accompanies the bride to her husband's house, and ever after remains there an honoured character.' The whole circumstances of the case, and especially the excessive sorrow indulged in at her death, would lead us to suspect that there is a confusion of names and persons in the account, and that instead of the nurse of Rebekah the reading should have been

m

the

the nurse of Rachel. If, in fine, that nurse had a name allied to the word Tabor, it would still more closely agree with the facts of the case; or if the place of her sepulture had been familiarly spoken of as np nap the sepulchre of the nurse of Rachel,' the dropping of a single word by the copyist would convert it into the sepulchre of Rachel,' which is the most likely thing imaginable.

We have thrown out these conjectures in the hope that, though they may not entirely remove the difficulty, they may lead to the elucidation of this intricate geographical problem.

D. K.

THE LIFE OF HUGH HEUGH, D.D.

The Life of Hugh Heugh, D.D., with a selection from his Discourses, by his Son-in-law, HAMILTON M'GILL, Minister of the United Presbyterian Church, Montrose-street, Glasgow. In two volumes. Edinburgh. A. Fullarton and Co. 1850. THE biographies of religious persons have often been too exclusively religious; from an anxiety to serve the cause of piety their authors have erroneously supposed that there was no better way of attaining their object, than sedulously to exclude from the narrative whatever related to secular concerns. Owing to this partial exhibition of character, works of this class have been chiefly employed in aiding the exercises of the closet and kindling the flame of private devotion, much in the same way as Thomas à Kempis, or the Sacra Privata of Bishop Wilson, instead of serving as hand-books of instruction to fulfil the duties or cope with the trials of every-day life. The notion has thus been fostered that religion is a mysterious visitant, keeping aloof from every sphere but its own of human activity, or entering other spheres only as a censor or a judge to rebuke and chasten, not to cheer, prompt, and guide; it has been confined to one apartment of the soul, instead of being regarded as a vitalizing principle, an etherial element pervading and modifying the whole nature of man. And of this false view the enemies of Christianity have been very ready to take advantage. In a flippant publication of the modern infidel school, we lately met with the assertion that Christianity does not enter into common life, neither regulating its concerns nor furnishing motives for the discharge of its duties the inference being, of course, that it is a superannuated thing; with an exulting (somewhat premature !) Q. E. D. How

ever flagrantly untrue such an assertion may be, the defect in our religious biographies of older date, to which we have adverted, might tend to give a semblance of support to it. Happily, however, several recent memoirs of Christian worthies (among which those of Fowell Buxton hold a conspicuous place) have been constructed on more enlarged views, and are replete with interesting and captivating illustrations of the salutary influence shed by the religion of Christ over all the relations of humanity.

Perhaps too, the publicity in which most men, whether they would court it, or shun it, are now compelled to live, may have tended to render our biographers less exclusive. Private life is now languishing, if not well nigh extinct. It would seem that the wand of an enchanter has passed over our dwellings and rendered bricks and mortar transparent. Even the adyta of reviewers are no longer involved in that mysterious gloom which imparted such awful solemnity to their decisions; it is as if Rhadamanthus had left the shades, and, like the Orientals, fixed his seat of judgment in the Gate of the City. We cannot wait for death, the great revealer of secrets; his domain on the other side is as undisturbed as ever; his revelations there are secure from all mortal gaze. But here we stay not for his arrival; in some instances, long before that period, those whom the curious public ' delight to honour' have their story told to the present time, and the peculiarities of their personal appearance, their modes of relaxation, or habits of study detailed with the minuteness of an inventory.

We regard the volume before us as one of the most valuable in its class. By far the greater portion of it is from Dr. Heugh's own pen, in the shape of diaries and letters. The editor has executed his part with taste and judgment. His delineation is complete, in the sense of presenting Dr. Heugh's character, not merely in one or two aspects, but such as it appeared in all the relations of life, public and private; and if there are fewer details respecting the latter than we could wish, it must be attributed to a commendable delicacy which in these days is too often violated. Altogether he has compiled a most able and interesting memorial of one of the worthiest of men. Dr. Heugh was fitted to call forth strong personal attachment; so that we are persuaded an estimate of his talents and worth, formed simply from the perusal of his life, must appear to fall far short of the reality to those who were admitted to his intimacy, or who could combine with their recollections of his public addresses and social communications, those looks and tones which gave them so powerful an emphasis. We shall, therefore, not make the attempt, which would at best seem to his admirers (to use Robert Hall's simile) 'like a portrait

that

that has lain long in a damp place; but only notice a few prominent points, accompanied by such specimens as we hope will aid the circulation of the volume.

Hugh Heugh was born in 1782. His grandfather and father were both eminent for piety and talent. The former was a minister in the Established Church of Scotland; but before his decease,' Mr. M'Gill remarks, the General Assembly had adopted a policy which drove some of her best ministers and members to seek that Christian freedom beyond her pale, which they could no longer find within it. Mr. Heugh's most intimate friend, Moncrieff, was one of the Fathers of the Secession, and his daughters were married to seceding ministers. His eldest son died at college, and his youngest, John (an infant at the time of his death), joined the Secession, a step which had the sanction of his father's convictions, as well as of his other relations. While prosecuting his studies, the Breach,' as it was called, took place in the Secession; he adhered to the General Associate or Antiburgher Synod. Before he was twenty, he was appointed teacher of logic and moral philosophy to students who were about to enter the divinity hall, an office which he held for three or four years, till 1752, when he received a call from the congregation at Stirling, among whom he laboured between fifty and sixty years. He was more distinguished for vigorous thinking than for elegance of diction, which gained for him the epithet of the Quarrier," while his friend Professor Moncrieff was called the Mason." The one 'howked,' the other ‘polished.' He had ten children, of whom the subject of the volume before us was the ninth.

6

The first event known to have left any decided impression on Hugh Heugh, was the loss of an elder sister when he was only four years old; her pallid features sinking in death were never effaced from his recollection. At ten years old he entered the grammar-school at Stirling, then under the care of the learned Dr. Doig, who had acquired celebrity from his letters on the savage state, in opposition to Lord Kames. Heugh's character among his school-fellows was that of a vivacious boy, forward in all sports, fond of a practical joke, yet not mischievous. In a class of seventeen or twenty he generally occupied the first place, a sufficient proof that there must have been some illusion in the severe judgment he passed in riper years on his school days, as chiefly furnishing matter of regret for misspent time and lost opportunities. Had a much greater proportion of his time been devoted to books and far less to bodily exercise, in all probability his intellectual attainments would ultimately have been much inferior, his practical energy diminished, and his days either cut short or tormented with valetudinarian infirmities. Yet such

regrets