46

THE DRUSES AND THE SAMARITANS.

MR. ELLIOTT, in his late interesting work, has noticed these two sects, of which but very little is known in Europe. Lebanon, and some places to the east and south, and the Hauran, are the seats of their habitations; and Beirut is their principal city. Some derive their origin from Al Durzi; others from Dreux, an apostate French general, in the time of the Crusades. All that Mr. Elliott has collected concerning them may be comprised in the following statement:-that they are Unitarians, and render divine honours to Hakim, who flourished from A. 386 to 411 of the Hejra, and at thirty-six years of age was translated to heaven; that he is expected to return from thence, when his followers will reign with <him, and those who deceived him be punished; that they render divine homage also to the calf, hold the doctrine of the transmigration of souls, and celebrate their mysterious rites every Thursday night.

An Arabic work in our possession gives a much clearer detail; it states that they no longer live in Egypt, their native country; that they are scattered over the whole of Lebanon and anti-Lebanon; that Kesroan is one of their principal residences; that they are in possession of Baalbec, or Heliopolis, and are dispersed over various parts of Syria and Palestine. They were formerly governed by seven Emirs, or petty princes, but are now subjected to the rule of one, though the others have a voice in his council; these have official dwellings at Beirut, but the chief Emir constantly resides at Deir'ul Kamr, on the chain of mountains to the north of Saida. They pay a small and nominal tribute to the Porte.

They are divided into the initiated and the uninitiated; to the latter, the Great Emir, who may not intermeddle in religious affairs, belongs. Many of the former devote themselves to an eremitical life. The latter are not scrupulous in the observance of the laws respecting food, wine, and wives, and are distinguished from the others in their clothing, which consists of a short upper garment of goats' hair, reaching a little above the knee, with stripes of different colours, and a long blue underclothing of linen, which descends very low; a many-coloured fillet, in the form of a turban round the head, and a girdle which confines their clothes and carries their weapons.

The initiated are always dressed in black or white, with a white turban round their heads, and they carry no weapons. They very strictly keep the precepts of their religion, live very frugally, eat with no stranger, voluntarily submit themselves to many hardships, and bear their provisions with them on their journies. They swear no oath, but simply affirm, I HAVE SAID IT: they only marry Drusesses, whereas the others do not confine themselves to their own sect. The Imàm, or religious chief, is chosen from the initiated to him the arrangement of religious affairs and the proclamation of festivals belong; it is his duty to accompany the Emir on his journies, and all, whether initiated or not, do homage to

him by kissing his hand. The women are also divided into these two classes, and are equally distinguished from each other by their dresses: the first class is called that of the intelligent, the other, that of the ignorant. The anchorites amongst them dwell in sacred chapels, which are generally built upon a hill: here the other Druses, on festivals, perform their public worship, or come to see the image of their god Hakim, which is preserved in these chapels in a chest. This is, however, only shewn to the initiated.

The account given of their origin, at the beginning of this article, is contradicted by this Arabian writer, who declares that they received their name from one Drusi, or Druzi, who first preached the divinity and faith of Hakim. Those who have derived them from the Drusicans mentioned by Herodotus (1-128), are as much in error as those who have fixed their origin in the Count de Dreux. For half a century before the latter, Benjamin of Tudela had visited the Druses and described them. Their true history is thus given by Elmakin (i. e., correcting the false reading of Al Durzi, into Al Druzi): viz., that in the year of the Hejra 408, A.D. 1017, a false teacher, called Mohammed Ibn Ismael, and surnamed Al Druzi, came from a foreign land to Egypt. He tried to induce the people to believe that Hakim was God, on which account Hakim heaped vast favours upon him; but the people were displeased, and endeavoured to kill him. A Turk at length killed him, on which a vast uproar arose, and the Turk was put to death. Some time after this, another foreigner, called Hamsah Ibn Ahmed, surnamed Alhadi, appeared, and preached the doctrines of Druzi. He appointed teachers, and permitted all licentiousness to the people, to induce them to become his followers. His party increased, and Hakim being interested in him intermitted the prescribed duties of his religion: thus arose the sect of the Druses.

Hence we perceive that Hakim, a governor of Egypt in the beginning of the eleventh century, is the god adored by the Druses; he was excessively cruel, and died a.H. 411, A.D. 1020, by the hands of assassins, hired by his own sister, Set'ulmoluk. According to the Druse accounts he was removed from the living by a miracle, and hidden in a sardab, or subterranean canal. Those who acknowledged his divinity he caused to be entered in a particular register, and he had in his lifetime sixteen thousand on his list. There are, however, varying accounts; some stating that neither Druzi nor Hamsah declared him to be God during his life, but that Druzi, after his death, proclaimed himself his deputy; others, that Hakim was dead before Hamsah sought converts in his name, and that Hakim was not assassinated.

This religion has in it much of Mohammedanism, and much of perverted Christianity. According to the Druse books, Hakim pre-existed, and was in heaven before he assumed the human form, and wrote the laws called the Testament ere he disappeared. This assertion, manifestly, was borrowed from the Gospel history. Several subsequent appearances are

mentioned, in one of which he traced his origin to the family of Mohammed; in another, he came as Barkhoda, the creator; but whether under this name there is an allusion to Christ's title of the Son of God, or to the impostor Barkokab, is uncertain; in another he was called Ismael. Among the various acts recorded of these appearances, which occurred in very different regions, he is said to have built the harbour of Rashid (Rosetta) and the Pyramids in fact, they merely serve to show that he borrowed parts from different religions. In the Druse catechisms there are many passages taken from the Old and New Testaments and applied to this heresy; and the doctrine that he will re-appear at the general judgment is an evidence that the history of our Saviour was not entirely unknown to the forger of this religion.

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Al Druzi, according to one account, was by birth a Persian; but though he gave his name to this sect, Hamsah was the most celebrated, his titles were the most numerous, and, like Hakim, he had divine epithets, and was asserted to have existed before the creation, and made different appearances. These works assert that he was the Messiah; some at that time giving to him the name of Lazarus; others, that of Soliman, the Persian, "who speaks in the Gospels." In addition to this, it is forged that he sought Jesus, to convert him to the religion of Hakim; that, failing in the attempt, he excited the Jews against him to crucify him, and afterwards stole his body; and that four of the ministers of Hakim appeared with him, in their characters of apostles, as Ishmael, Alkolamah, Ali, and Bahaheddin, in those of evangelists, as Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

Five of the Druse legislators are Scriptural characters, and it is pretended that the one transmigrated into the other successively. Such is this gross corruption of Christianity, about which curiosity is now excited.

With respect to the Samaritans, Mr. Elliott states that, at Nablus, they are reduced to eighty persons, and in their physiognomy exhibit proofs of not being of the same blood as Israel. Yet the remains of Jewish opinions were very discernible in the requisition that a party entering the Temple should take the shoes from their feet, and in their veneration of the burial-place of Jacob and Joseph. Two copies of the Pentateuch were shown to Mr. Elliott; but we have doubts whether the ancient Samaritans, as it is commonly reported, received no other part of the Sacred Books: their strong expectation of the Messiah conveys to us a different idea. If any of the writings of the true Prophets of Israel had survived the deportation of the ten tribes, and were in the possession of the new settlers, we see no cause why they should not have been equally received; nor can we well reconcile to probability the opinion that the Psalms of David, which had been sung in the Tabernacle and the Temple before the schism of the tribes, should have been entirely rejected. To these we may safely refer the knowledge of the Messiah, which prevailed among the Samari

tans; nor will it affect the argument, that the Psalms were compiled and edited at a later period, because there must have been copies of the Temple-service long before the revolt of Jeroboam. Whatever of Truth the ancient Samaritans knew, must have been known to those who were sent back to the land; and thus this knowledge must have become perpetuated. The dove, too, which the Samaritans are said to have worshipped, is far from being well authenticated: Josephus, whose hatred to the Samaritans is evident, says nothing of it. The modern race deny even any traditional knowledge of it. Probably, when Antiochus Epiphanes dedicated the Temple on Gerizim to Jupiter, the Jews wilfully imputed to them the Assyrian idolatry, and the dove probably was no other than Juno, since in Hebrew and Syriac that word means a dove. Yet, if this hypothesis be unfounded, the Samaritan chronicle, which states that the Romans placed a brazen bird upon Gerizim, will give an adequate solution to the tradition, without fixing blame on the Samaritans.

It is clear that in the time of our Saviour they lay under no such imputation, that they professed a knowledge of the Messiah, such as we have supposed to be derived from other books besides the Pentateuch, and that the well of Jacob was then regarded with the same veneration as it now is. That they now receive no other books, or that they received no others in the days of Josephus, avails not the question: for the expectation of the dispensation of the Messiah which the woman of Samaria exhibited, and the Samaritan commentaries on the Pentateuch exhibit still, leads us for its solution back to the times before the deportation of the ten tribes, and to the assumption that they then knew the prophetic books.

ON CHURCH MUSIC.

WHILST, on the one hand, we perceive Papists and Dissenters extending their sway, increasing their numbers, and joining, like those of old, in their cry against the Church, "down with it, down with it, even to the ground!" and on the other, notice our house divided against itself, by a faction, coveting'distinction, which has sprung up amongst us, Jesuitically charging the assailed as the assailants, and, under the pretence of opposing Romanism, translating its hymns, discussing its doctrines, and exhibiting its breviary; nay, seeking a second reformation, or, rather, deterioration, which would bring us nearer to the Church of Rome, and thus occasion the negligent to lapse into it, we feel that every energy should be exerted by those who are still faithful to the cause for which Protestant martyrs sealed their testimony with their lives. The delusion is strong, and an appeal is unfairly made to ecclesiastical writings to justify the scheme. Unfairly, we say, because the puerilities in them are kept out of sight, the conflicting traditions are not displayed, the misquotations of Scripture are

not advanced as prominently as the passages which serve the purpose of these writers, and the various modes of administering some ordinances in different ages are not shown, which should fairly have been brough forward that the readers might be in a condition to form a proper judgment as to the authority of these writings in ecclesiastical matters. In our next number we shall give instances of our assertions.

Unless the Fathers can prove their declarations to have been founded on divine authority, no Church can be expected to make them undeviatingly the models of its practice; nor can portions be allowed to be selected from them as the basis of a second reformation. If one party may make an arbitrary selection from them, dissentients from that party may do the same; and thus the Church of God would become a scene of confusion. Who, in the present day, would tolerate the general congregational kiss, mentioned by Justin Martyr, at the administration of baptism? yet, if we revert to primitive practice, we see not how this, and many other things that would lead to profanation in this age, could be avoided. A reformation on this principle would be absurd; and one accommodated to the Roman services would lead us to Romanism.

But the services of our Church require no reformation. Our Liturgy, as it stands, yields only in perfection to the Scriptures: nor will we permit the walls of our sanctuary to be daubed with the untempered mortar with which modern innovators would overlay them. All our prayers and all our offices are founded on the Word of God, and, therefore, demonstrable by it: piety, without superstition, breathes through every part; and God is addressed in simplicity, with the understanding and the fervent soul, without the mockery of pomp. This, however, is now sought to be added in some churches the reading-desk is abandoned for genuflections at the altar, after the Roman custom, as if He, whose ears are ever open, can only receive supplications from a spot whence, in many churches, they cannot be perfectly heard by the congregation. The schism in our body which has caused these things far more subserves the projects of Romanism than all the aid which Dissenters can afford to them: in proportion to any subversion of our established forms, and any assimilation to the Popish that may be permitted, will be the declension from Protestant principles. The Breviary, of which the Oxford Tracts have delighted to give a specimen, can neither claim an apostolic source, nor one coeval with the commencement of the second century, and many parts of the ancient Liturgies bear evident marks of spuriousness. since, therefore, those parts which are consonant to the Scriptures already have been transferred into our Prayer-book, we can see no necessity for additions, much less such as occur in No. 75 of these Tracts. But even were the whole of the Breviary and of the ancient Liturgies corroborated by the Fathers, their corroboration would be no authority; because it is clear that many of their services were alloyed by inventions subsequent to the apostolic age. For example, Christ gave the bread and the wine as the