the name of Yezidies. They relate the same abominable stories of the one as of the other. Divrigi-the ancient Tephriceis a city between Sivas and the Euphrates, where they compose the majority of the Mussulmans of the place. It is noticeable that this was the strong fortress and last refuge of the Paulicians, under their general Carbeas, in the year A. D. 870.* The Paulicians grew out of the Manicheans, and these appellations were interchanged for each other in those centuries. I regard it as worthy of notice, that the tombs of their Beys and Sheikhs, which I saw there, resembled, in their pyramidal and fluted structure, those erected to the Yezidi sheikhs at Baasheha. They maintained themselves here in alliance with the Mohammedans for a long period, as late as the twelfth century, and in consideration of the help that these Paulicians or Manicheans gave them against the Christian Greeks, it is probable that the Mohammedans continued to tolerate their existence. The idea that the Yezidies are a corrupt remnant of the Manicheans is not a new one. It was long since conjectured and defended by Beausobre,† but it was denied by Mosheim. From that day to this the question has been little mooted; but the observations of travellers have been collecting in the mean while. At the time Mosheim formed his judgment, he had hardly any materials to aid him, as we have in this day, when so many reports are before us. It was not till the body of this article was completed that I met with the Ashkhara Kirutiun, a universal geography in twelve volumes, printed in Armenian, at Venice, 1806, the author of which was a priest, Lucas Injijiyan, who had travelled much in those countries. He asserts positively that they are descended from the Manicheans. The following extract contains all of importance of the remarks of Father Lucas on this people; and, as being the testimony of an oriental, may properly be appended, even when he contradicts or repeals some of our statements: They are of the Christian religion, and of the sect of the Manicheans; but they have only the appearance of Christianity mingled with other doctrines, since they have neither our baptism nor circumcision. They swear by the name of Jesus, saying, 'bé Isa nourani;' i. e., 'in the name of Jesus the enlightener. After the * Gibbon's Dec. and Fall, Chap. LIV. + Beausobre's Hist. de Manicheisme, Tom. II. same manner, when they drink wine, they drink it in the name of Jesus, saying, Kasi Isa, i. e., 'the cup of Jesus;' and the person who is feasting with him replies, Ashki Isa ; i. e., 'love of Jesus.' Also they have this custom, that when a person is drinking, he must take the glass with both hands, and take care besides that not a drop falls to the ground. They neither fast nor pray, saying that Sheikh Hadi took upon himself in their behalf all their fasts and prayers, and in the day of resurrection he will cause them to enter paradise with an infinite multitude. And the whole of their praying is, when rising in the morning to cross their thumbs; and when the sun's rays strike them, they kiss them, and regard their prayers as thus finished. Every tribe has a married sheikh, who, like their priests, wears next his skin a garment of hair-cloth. When their priests perform their resemblance to the sacrifice of the Lord's Supper, they put on a white robe like a shirt. They then put pieces of bread into a cup of wine, with the head uncovered, and pray in silence for a quarter of an hour without a book. The common people buy from them places in paradise. The chief of the Sinjar sheikhs, once a year, loads a horse with gifts, and goes to El Kosh; where, on bended knees, he receives the blessing of the Nestorian Patriarch. They call Satan the wicked principle, like the Manicheans, but they honor him, that he may not do them harm. And they imagine that although he has now lost favor with God, yet like a servant he shall return to reconciliation with God. * * Some say that in the region of Alashgird they swear by the name of Salté, who they say is the mother of the great demon Satael. They love Christians, and do not avoid their churches. And if they see a lamp lighted before the altar, or before a picture of the virgin Mary, they cross their breasts with the oil. * "They hate the Mohammedans, yet use all their names except that of Mohammed. So great is their enmity to them, that if they can slay one of them they regard it as a sacrifice made to God. And the more to humble them, they strive to slay them by striking the nape of the neck. They then lap up the blood on the reeking sword, or drink a cup of the blood. They keep the laws of marriage-abjuring polygamy. And they execrate sodomy and fornication. They do not regard theft and robbery as sins, and it does not trouble their conscience to despoil travellers and to plunder villages; so that they have but two trades-robbery and agriculture. "It is said by some persons that the Yezidies are descended from the ancient Assyrians, which is confirmed first, from the fact that they are living in that part of Armenia which was called Assyria. Secondly, it is confirmed from the fact that their chief priest goes to the patriarch of the Nestorians, who are Assyrians. Thirdly, although they have no books, yet if a book be found with one of them, it is in the Syrian tongue. With all this, however, it is not unlikely that they merely learned or received their science and religion, if we may call such vain superstitions learning. For, that which opposes the belief that they are Syrians, is that their language is Kurdish, and they in their origin must be regarded as Kurdish people. "They are called Yezidies, because they believe in Yezi; and they swear by his name as to the name of Jesus; and hence are called Yezidies." ARTICLE III. EXPOSITION OF 2 PETER 1: 16-21. By Rev. G. Emlen Hare, Rector of Trinity Church, Princeton, N. J. JESUS of Nazareth did not affect outward grandeur or magnificence. It was notorious and undenied that he had been nursed in a manger; had lived, the most of his earthly days, in an obscure town of Galilee; had died the death of a malefactor. Mankind, who look much to the outside of things, were not easily to be persuaded that such a person, after his death, was in power at the head of the universe; that one so humbled and degraded, was about to revisit the world in superhuman glory, the acknowledged and indisputable Judge of quick and dead. Whence it came to pass that Simon son of Jonas, the man whom the Redeemer had called, upon the lake of Galilee, from a fisherman to be an apostle, found it necessary, when he had grown gray in the service of his Master, and was in constant expectation of the martyrdom preannounced to him by the Redeemer, to put on record for his cotemporaries, and for the men of future time, the solemn protestation, that the tidings his life had been spent in proclaiming, the tidings that the despised man of Galilee was now in power, and to them that looked for him was about to come the second time unto salvation, had been founded upon the sight of his eyes, the witness of his senses; was a message bottomed upon this fact, among others, that, on the Mount of Transfiguration and within Simon Peter's hearing and seeing, Jesus had exemplified his ability to come in glory; a fact which imparted to the prophetical assurance of a Messiah who should make his appearance in superhuman majesty, such sureness, such reliableness or confirmation, as the payment of an instalment imparts to a promise or con tract. Such, with the addition of a warning in relation to the principles upon which the prophetical writings are to be examined, seems to be the amount of the passage now under consideration. In the particular investigation of the paragraph, the first words which require attention, are ἐγνωρίσαμεν ὑμῖν τὴν τοῦ κυρίου ἡμῶν Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ δύναμιν καὶ παρουσίαν. In what views or aspects, had Peter and the other apostles been accustomed to make known the power and coming of the Lord they preached? That the man who had been miraculously born of the blessed Virgin Mary; who, although he possessed a divine nature, had veiled that nature in the flesh of humanity; who had been seized and crucified by wicked men, in entire accordance, however, with his own everlasting purpose; that this being, the man Christ Jesus, had, in his human quality, ascended into heaven, and there sat down at the right hand of God; angels and authorities and powers being made subject to him; the whole universe being committed into his hands;-and that there and thus, as the descendant of David, the man Christ Jesus, he was to continue until he should perfectly accomplish the objects of his incarnation and put all enemies under his feet; capturing man's capturers; overthrowing the kingdom of darkness; and last of all, destroying death by recalling mankind to life,— this undoubtedly was the light or aspect in which Peter and his fellow apostles were accustomed to present to view, the POWER of their Lord Jesus Christ. The philosophy of the thing, why the Son of God did not disrobe himself of his humanity, when it had served the purpose of suffering; why he chose to be caught up to heaven as Jesus, the son of man, the offspring of human nature; why it was proper that, on his ascending up where he was before, he should take a mediatorial or delegated supremacy. Such questions the apostles nowhere answer. Very possibly, the apostles could not have answered such questions. These points may be among the things which the angels desire to look into. As the Old Testament prophets searched what, or what manner of time, the Spirit of Christ which was in them, did signify, when it testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ and the glory which should follow, and had it revealed to them in answer, that it was not unto themselves they were ministering; so, if Peter and his fellow apostles inquired what was the necessity, the connection, or the reasonableness, of the several parts of the mystery of the mediatorial kingdom, it seems altogether probable that to them it was revealed that they were to know in part and prophesy in part; the finishing of the mystery of God, the development of the divine plans, being reserved for the perfected or future stage of man's existence. But it was not only the mysterious empowerment of the man of Nazareth that the apostles preached. Peter and his fellow ambassadors made known unto men "the COMING" as well as "the power" of their Lord Jesus Christ. Was it a past, a bygone coming; the coming or birth which took place at Bethlehem, that they meant by such language? Absurd to suppose it. If this historical fact had been all they intended by the term, they had not needed to make such solemn protestations, to insist that they had not followed cunningly devised fables, to appeal to miraculous proofs. Who denied,-of what unbeliever was it worth the while to deny,-that the Galilean Jesus had, some threescore years before, made appearance in the world? The coming the apostles busied themselves to make known, was a future thing-the fact or doctrine which had been announced by Jesus in the words, "Hereafter shall ye see the Son of Man coming upon the clouds of heaven;" by angels in the message, "This same Jesus shall so come even as ye have seen him go;" by Paul, "As Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many, so to them that look for him shall he appear the second time;" by John, "Behold he cometh in clouds, and every eye shall see him." It is the great fact which makes well nigh the sum and substance of this second Epistle of St. Peter; that, unexpected as a thief in the night to a householder, or as the deluge to the men of the time of Noah, the heavens shall be rent in twain; the same who once stood a culprit before the bar of Pontius Pilate, shall, in radiant glory, and announced by the trump of God, descend from on high the acknowledged Judge of quick and dead; the earth and the sea shall give up their inhabitants, death and hades be cast into the lake of fire, the place of the present sky and earth be supplied by another, a new heaven and a new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness;-all, at the bidding of "the second man, the Lord from heaven," of that mysterious one, the conceived of a Virgin, the tempted by the devil, the crucified on Calvary. Too deep the doctrine for human penetration! The Son of God; the unique issue or emanation of Jehovah; the coequal and coeternal with the Father; veiling his Godhead, putting on humanity, entering with that humanity (with his own blood) into heaven itself, there to appear in the presence of God for us, about to return to earth, that same Jesus and in that same manner, as his apostles saw him depart! I pretend not to fathom or explain. I believe, therefore have I spoken. I marvel; I |