ARTICLE VII.

GIBEAH-A LESSON FOR THE TIMES.

"And the people repented them for Benjamin, because that the Lord had made a breach in the tribes of Israel." Judges xxi. 15.

THIS was while Phinehas was high-priest, and therefore during the days of the elders that overlived Joshua," and while Israel yet "served the Lord." Yet idolatry had begun to creep in, and had not been punished, and there was a growing relaxation of manners and morals, which the magistrates did not repress.

A crime, equalled in vileness and atrocity only by that attempted, but not accomplished, in Sodom on the night before its destruction, had been committed in Gibeah. Gibeah was a city of Benjamin, of seven hundred fighting men, and therefore of three or four thousand inhabitants. But a few of them could have been engaged in the crime, or had any knowledge of it when committed.

The principal surviving sufferer, though a conscientious, religious man, of easy temper, was terribly exasperated, and, instead of appealing to the elders of Gibeah, or of Benjamin, whose duty it was to punish the crime, made a most awfully exciting appeal to all Israel against them. The appeal took effect. A mass meeting of four hundred thousand was held at Mizpeh, and Benjamin "heard" of it. The sufferer addressed the meeting, and they swore vengeance against Gibeah. They sent messengers through the whole tribe of Benjamin, charging the tribe, virtually, with connivance at this wickedness, and demanding that the criminals should be delivered up to be punished. Many of the Benjamites, probably, never heard of the crime before, and were incensed at what seemed to them an unjust accusation. The demand, too, was unconstitutional. It was not the duty of Benjamin to deliver up the criminals, but to punish them; and if they had felt as they ought about the crime, they would have punished them, notwithstanding any provocation to the contrary. But instead of that, they thought only of the unjust accusation and unlawful demand,

and prepared to defend their constitutional rights by force of

arms.

Israel, not doubting that God was on their side against such atrocious wickedness, resolved on immediate war, without asking him whether further attempts should be made to procure justice peaceably. They only asked which tribe should go up first. He designated Judah, usually the leading tribe, and the tribe to which the murdered woman belonged. They had vowed a war of extermination, that should not leave man, woman, child, beast, or unburned city. And they devoted to utter destruction every Israelite who hesitated to go the full length with the party. Confident in their overwhelming numbers, they marched "onward to" Gibeah, and, to their astonishment and dismay, were driven back with the loss of twenty-two thousand men. They were not fit to conquer. Their fierce exasperation against one sin, while so careless about other sins, did not secure the favor of God.

They prepared for another battle; but, somewhat humbled and softened, they asked the Lord whether they should again attack Benjamin their "brother." They did not call him their "brother" before. The answer was, "Go up against him." Benjamin had decidedly put himself in the wrong by protecting the criminals, instead of punishing them, and must be punished. They made the second attack, much in the spirit of the first, and were again defeated, with the loss of eighteen thousand

men.

This amount of blood-letting seems to have reduced the fever of their excitement, and they were now sincerely desirous of divine guidance, and even willing to abandon the war, if God should say that it was their duty; but God commanded them to go on with it; and though their spirit was even now but partially right, he promised them victory. No longer rash with selfconfidence, they made prudent strategical arrangements for the third battle, which the Benjamites, elated by two victories, neglected. The result was, a complete victory of the Israelites, followed up with an exterminating fury, which, though they had vowed it, was unjustifiable. None were left of Benjamin, either man, woman, child, or beast, except six hundred fighting men, who escaped to the Rock Rimmon, where they abode four months.

These four months gave the Israelites time for reflection. They were shocked and. distressed at their own horrid work in this fratricidal war. They "repented them for Benjamin their brother," and "because the Lord had made a breach in the tribes of Israel." They could not endure the thought, that even one tribe should be missing from their Union, and set themselves at work earnestly to reconstruct the ruins of Benjamin. In this work, they found themselves painfully embarrassed by the angry vows they had made in their exasperation, and forced to the adoption of measures which could not be justified. But nothing could hinder them from reëstablishing their "brother Benjamin" in his ancient position, as one of the co-equal tribes of Israel. The Benjamites, thoroughly humbled, gladly accepted the kind offices of their brethren. The original dispute seems to have been forgotten by both parties. It does not appear that the criminals were ever delivered up. Very probably, they all fell in battle, or in the indiscriminate butchery which followed; but no inquiry seems to have been made concerning them in the final settlement.

This lesson is too plain to need comment. It contains a prophecy, which has been fulfilled, as yet, only in part; only as far as "BULL RUN."

ARTICLE VIII.

LITERARY NOTICES.

Thomas Paine: New American Cyclopædia, Vol. XII. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1861.

Is history what its compilers choose to make it; or is it that which actually lived and was? Are dictionaries, lexicons, cyclopædias, repositories of facts; or looms in which to weave tissues of fancy and fable? We are reminded of a small bit of authentic history in point. When this New American Cyclopædia began to fill its shelf in our sanctum with its successive instalments, we asked a friend if he in

tended to take it in? With a knowing look he (himself both a fine philosophic and historical scholar), shook his head, affirming that the best of these compilations are only the opinions of their editors, and are no sufficient authority in thorough investigations. We begin to think our friend was right. Much as the work has pleased us in its former general features, we have here struck the pons asinorum, and find it a broken bridge. The life of Thomas Paine is written, leaving out just that which made him Thomas Paine, as much as his christian patriotism made George Washington the rightful owner of all which that name of honor and goodness covers.

It may be well enough, in a work like this, to let the members of a sect or a school tell its own story, if other guards are added to correct partial and unduly apologetic views. Thus, in the old "Encyclopædia Americana," we had the article "Jesuit" first by a member of that order, and then, by a Protestant writer, between which one could "square up the corners," as a bricklaying neighbor of ours is fond of saying. But here the corners are nowhere, and the whole thing leans worse than the campanile of Pisa. Paine was a coarse, licentious, drunken, swearing infidel; untrue to his friends, quarrelsome, and utterly unclean. He wrote the " Age of Reason" as well as the "Common Sense." What "common sense " he had was neither moral or religious, but only political. His " age of reason never came. His name belongs to the catalogue of Cain and Judas, upon whom God may have mercy if he can; but whom men must only pity, not defend or excuse.

This article of a half dozen solid pages is full of perversions and suppressions. It is a piece of special pleading in a very bad cause. It brings in a verdict which the world will not accept, because it knows the judgment is not true. Thomas Paine cannot so be whitewashed into a decent patriot and philanthropist. in a summary like this, a detailed account of so

We would not ask, lost a life. But we

had a right to expect a just resumé of the case; and particularly this, which is the chief lesson of his career that no degree of intellectual power can save the memory of a thoroughly corrupted man from the deserved abhorrence of the ages which come after. What has our cyclopedist done? He glosses over the vulgar infidelity of Paine's writings as being no worse than the current free-thinking of the times (a slander on our fathers); he has a very broad cloak of obviously sympathetic charity to throw over a book which involved its publishers in America and in Britain in criminal prosecutions, on the sole charge of its blasphemies (of all of which this apology is profoundly ignorant); he says nothing about the sense of outraged virtue, in

both these countries, which rose up in righteous indignation against this man as a foe of goodness, when his full-grown vileness of mind and heart became visible but attempts to show that, instead of this, the opposition against him was a Federalist persecution of a Jeffersonian politician; he leaves out his personal dissipations, and domestic infidelities, as if he were a Rechab or a Joseph; and the deathbed scenes detailed by his physician, Dr. Manly, will never startle the wicked with a looking-for of judgment, so far as this oblivious record is concerned. In all of this there is a suppressio veri which, on purely historical as well as moral and Christian grounds, amounts to an aggravated uttering of falsehood.

We speak strongly, for the offence is grievous. This article is not an ephemeral newspaper or magazine affair, nor even a book-biography which one may buy or refuse to buy as he pleases. It is installed in the heart of a serial which is to stand as an authority for years to come; the volumes of which, its purchasers began to procure in good faith that (while it might not agree with many of their opinions) it should be at least historically just and reliable. Several of our periodicals have urged that this obnoxious article be removed from future editions of the volume in question. It is a perfectly right request. We should be glad if the purchasers of the work thus far would refuse to invest a mill in this volume of it, as some we know will do; and let the gap in the set suggest its own explanation, until it can be better filled than with this lucubration of "Mr. Joseph N. Morceau," author of a contemporaneous tract entitled "Testimonials to the merits of Thomas Paine," as an appendix to which this morceau would find a much more appropriate place.

The History of England from the Accession of James II. By LORD MACAULAY. Vol. V. Edited by his Sister, LADY TREVELyan. With Additional Notes to Vols. I., II., III. and IV. A Sketch of Lord Macaulay's Life and Writings. By S. AUSTIN ALLIBONE. And a Complete Index to the Entire Work. Boston: Crosby, Nichols, Lee & Co. 1861. pp. 335.

THE bare printing of this full title-page would be enough to suggest to our readers the value of this volume- the last we are to have from the gifted author. We could bestow no higher praise than to say, that this volume is written with all the brilliancy, research, and power of its predecessors; while its Notes give additional value to them. The Sketch of his Life and Writings is a clear summary of