'WRITING is an art by which facts or ideas are communicated from one person to another by means of given signs, such as symbols or letters. It has been a generally received and popular opinion that writing was first used and imparted to mankind when God wrote the Ten Command ments on the tables of stone ; but the silence of Scripture upon the subject would rather suggest that so necessary an art had been known long before that time, or otherwise the sacred historian would probably have added this extmordinary and divine revelation to the other parts of his informa tion respecting the transactions on Mount Sinai.
After the gift of langmage (which was indispen sable to rational creatures), it would seem that writing was the most highly beneficial and import ant boon which could be conferred on men pos sessed of intellect and understanding, who from their circumstances must divide and spread over the whole earth, and yet be forced from various neces• sities to maintain intercourse with each other.
In the earliest times families must have sepa rated : the pastoral life required much room for flocks and herds ; and as the wealth of each house hold increased, the space between them must have become greater, and every year would compel more distant migrations from these unfailing causes (Gen. xiii.) But even in the first ages of tbe world it would be requisite not only to preserve unimpaired the knowledge of God, but it would be desirable to have some method of transmitting and receiving intelligence from the scattered communities. of a more certain nature than verbal messages ever can be ; nor is it probable that events wbich were destined to act upon all time should be left to float upon the uncertain stream of tradition, when by the art of writing they might be accurately con veyed without addition or diminution to the latest posterity. It is scarcely possible that the won drous gift of writing was withheld until the world had been twice repeopled, and 2513 years had rolled by.
The working in iron and the construction of musical instruments are recorded in Gen. iv. 21,
22 ; whilst neither before nor after that period is the origin or discovery of writing any more alluded to than is the origin of language itself. Is it then too much to believe that God by revelation imme diately imparted to mankind the power of writing? For it does not appear that any person ever in vented an alphabet who had not previously heard of or seen one ; and every nation which possessed the art always professed to have derived its know ledge from a god. Without writing, no informa tion could have been conveyed to remote nations with accuracy. Few persons repeat a thing in the precise words in which a detail was given to them, and the most trifling change in an expression may throw the whole into error and confusion, or entirely destroy the sense. But such cannot be the case if writing be the means of communication, for whatever is thus definitely stated may be equally well understood by those to whom it is addressed as by those wbo write it God never works un necessary miracles ; but that must have been the case if, for upwards of two thousand years, the memory and speech of various men were alone the depositaiies of 1-ds dealings with mankind.
It was a matter of the utmost consequence that the most exact accounts should have been preserved of the creation, the fall of man, and many prophe cies of deepest interest to unborn generations. The ages and genealogies of the patriarchs ; the mea sures of the ark ; the first kingly government in Assyria ; the history of Abraham and his descend ants for 43o years, including minute circumstances, changes, and conversations, in many different countries ; could scarcely have been perfectly pre served by oral descent for twenty centuries, unless the antediluvians and their immediate posterity did not partake of the failings of Christians in the de fects of forgetfulness and exaggeration ; but allow ing the art of writing to have been given with lan guage, there is no difficulty, and it becomes obvious that each transaction would be recorded and kept exactly as it Nvas either revealed or happened.