THE CHRISTIAN'S SWORD.

THE WORD OF GOD.

His Sword was in his hand,
Still warm with recent fight;
Ready that moment at command,
Through rock and steel to smite.
It was a two-edged blade,

Of heavenly temper keen ;

And double were the wounds it made,

Where'er it smote between :
'Twas death to sin;-'twas life
To all that mourned for sin;
It kindled, and it silenced strife,
Made war and peace within.

MONTGOMERY

Historical Notice.

THE history of warlike weapons forms a curious and instructive chapter in the history of man. Swords of metal could by no means be the earliest, or one of the earliest, of those weapons which in process of time men devised for the purpose of defending themselves, or offending others. Such an instrument as a Sword cannot well be of anything but metal; and therefore a

considerable advance in civilisation, indicated by the existence of the art of working metals, must have been made before the Sword was invented. Hence it is that Swords and sabres have never been known to any but civilized, or semi-civilized nations; nothing of the kind being ever found among savages. Yet we see this weapon in the most remote ages known in Asia. It is in fact the most early weapon mentioned in Scripture. It was with the Sword that Simeon and Levi did such terrible execution at Shechem; and the patriarch Jacob mentions the Sword and the bow, as the weapons with which he had defeated the Amorites. There is no doubt that the Swords of the most ancient times were of brass, or rather copper. To speak of a copper Sword may seem strange; but it is certain that copper was wrought long before iron, and applied to every domestic, operative, and warlike purpose for which metal was required. That this was the case in the time of Homer, we see from his poems, where we observe brass applied to almost every use. The Iliad, from its great antiquity, and from its frequent descriptions of arms and armour, is our most valuable guide in this class of subjects. We there find that there is no sort of weapon, which is not in some instances, if not always, made of brass; and indeed where the material of a metallic weapon is mentioned at all, we usually find it to be brass. As to Swords, their material is not generally mentioned; but the famous Sword of Achilles himself was of brass, whence we may conclude that they were generally of that metal. Swords were

• Gen. xlviii. 22.

also, at that early time, highly enriched, as we see by the description of Agamemnon's :

"He slung his Sword

Athwart his shoulders; dazzling bright it shone
With gold embossed, and silver was the sheath
Suspended graceful in a belt of gold."

The Swords of the Greeks and Romans continued, in times long subsequent, to be of copper. Specimens also of Swords of this metal, supposed to have belonged to the Phoenicians, and their descendants the Carthaginians, have been dug up in various countries. Specimens found in Ireland, Cornwall, and elsewhere, in countries known to these people, have been found to coincide with others dug up at Cannæ, where the Romans sustained their great overthrow, and which are supposed to have belonged to their conquerors. Such weapons are of peculiar interest in our inquiry, as they may thus, with great probability, be traced to the near neighbours of the Israelites in Canaan, whence we may be allowed to suppose that theirs, after their settlement in that country, were of similar form and material. The general resemblance of these Swords to those in most common use among the Romans, is accounted for, by the fact that they borrowed the shape of the blade from Spain, which country had immemorially been the seat of commercial colonies of the Phoenicians and Carthaginians, and a considerable part of which the latter people ultimately held in military possession. As copper is a soft metal, and easily blunted, it may be asked how it could be adapted to form cutting instruments? Some means must certainly have been resorted to for the purpose of hardening it. Tempering seems

to have been the means most commonly used. The ancient writers themselves say this; and the observations which have been made on Greek and Roman antiquities seem to confirm this account. The Irish weapons were assayed by Mr. Alchorn, who says, "the metal appears to me to be chiefly copper, interspersed with particles of iron, and perhaps, some zinc, but without containing either gold or silver: it seems probable, that the metal was cast in its present state, and afterwards reduced to its proper figure by filing. The iron might either be obtained with the copper from the ore, or added afterward in the fusion, to give the necessary rigidity of a weapon.

As a general remark upon ancient Swords, it may be observed, that the Swords of civilized nations were straight, and those of barbarians curved. The Swords used by cavalry were long; but antiquity had no such thin-bladed narrow Swords as are in use in modern Europe; a guard for the fingers is also usually wanting in the most ancient Swords. The Egyptian Swords seem to have been cutting Swords; one sort is straight, with a curved point, and reminds one of a carvingknife; another resembles a scymitar, or curved razor. There is also a sort of straight, tapering dagger, quite similar to one that is still used in Western Asia, but not so broad in the blade. These Swords and daggers are usually represented with cords and tassels at the hilt. Dr. Meyrick calls these sorts Egyptian-Greek; and does not notice any others. Conceding this point to so high an authority, we are left at liberty to conclude that other Swords, not noticed by him, but which often occur in the Egyptian paintings, are pure

and ancient Egyptian. One of these has a remarkable resemblance to a sickle; and the other looks like a broad-bladed and curved knife. It is interesting to note these forms, from the probability that the weapons of the Israelites in the wilderness were of a similar character. We learn from Scripture that the Israelites had daggers and Swords; some of the latter had two edges, and were "girded upon the thigh." It does not appear that they wore them continually, but only as occasion required. The ancient Persians wore their Swords suspended from a belt on the right side. Herodotus speaks of "golden Swords," as among the spoils taken by the Greeks from the Persians; by which he must probably be understood to mean that the Persians had the art of inlaying with gold the hilts and blades of their Swords, a practice in which that people still excel. Some of the Persian Swords have a resemblance to the Phoenician copper Swords, which we have mentioned; and their straightness would, according to the above-quoted Roman rule, show the civilisation of that people. But the same rule would make the Egyptians, with their curved weapons, "barbarous ;" whereas, in truth, both the Persians and the Egyptians were people at least as civilized as those that applied that degrading epithet to them. The early Greeks wore the Sword under the left arm-pit, so that the pommel touched the nipple of their breast; it hung by a belt, and its length was nearly equal to that of the arm. The scabbard, of the same breadth as the Sword, terminated in a knob like a mushroom. Dr. Meyrick describes different sorts of Greek Swords; but we cannot enter into the account further than to state that