ruin may be depending on the judgment and activity which I may exercise this day? But here is the supreme interest of your existence. It cannot be safe, you will confess, it cannot, if you will give it no serious attention. But then you are confessing that you have left it but now in peril, and that it is so at this very hour; nay, in greater peril than ever before, as aggravated by the guilt of such wilful neglect, and by the diminution of the term allotted for the attainment of a happy security.-Foster. THE TEMPLE OF GOD. CONSIDER as exemplary, the temper of the royal Psalmist, how he sware, how he vowed, I will not come into the tabernacle of my house, nor go up into my bed; I will not give sleep unto my eye-lids, until I have found out a place for the Lord, a habitation for the mighty God.' Yours is a business of less inquisition, less expense; this temple is to be within you. Lament, O bitterly lament, the common case, that if he may look through a whole world of intelligent creatures, and find every breast, until he opens, shut up against him; all agreeing to exclude their most gracious rightful Lord, choosing rather to live desolate without him. The preparation, or prepared mansion, is a penitent, purged, willing heart. Fall down and adore the most admirable and condescending grace; that the high and lofty one, who inhabits eternity, who, having made a world, and surveying the work of his hands, inquires, 'where shall be my house, and the place of my rest?' and then resolves it himself; the humble, broken, contrite heart, there, there I will dwell.'-Howe. THE WORD WAS MADE FLESH. GOD made himself in a manner visible, by making this visible world; his wisdom, power, and goodness are every where printed, in legible characters, on the whole, and all the parts thereof. The light, how glorious a garment is it! with which he is, as it were, clothed: the heaven of heavens, how majestic a throne is it! upon which he, as it were, sits: the earth, how stately a footstool is it! the thunder, how powerful a voice is it! reaching and roaring over the spacious ocean, rattling and rumbling among the thick clouds, the waters that are above the firmament, making the ears of those which hear the same to tingle. The being, the beauty, the parts, and proportion of this huge frame are a visible appearance of the invisible Being. (Rom. i. 19.) But there was a far more wonderfully-admirable, and knowledge-surmount ing way in which the great God, in the person of the Son, made himself visible, not by manifesting himself in the spiritual nature of angels, but by appearing in the fleshly nature of man, The Word was made flesh,' and we beheld his glory, now visible, and the rays thereof darting through and breaking forth from under the dark and dusky veil of his flesh.-Shirra. THE CROSS OF CHSIST. THE Cross of Christ is an object of such incomparable brightness, that it spreads a glory around it to all the nations of the earth, all the corners of the universe, all the generations of time, and all the ages of eternity. The greatest actions or events that ever happened on earth, filled with their splendour and influence but a moment of time, and a point of space; the splendour of this great object fills immensity and eternity. If we take a right view of its glory, we shall see it, contemplated with attention, spreading influence, aud attracting looks from times past, present, and to come; from heaven, earth, and hell; angels, saints, and devils. We shall see it to be both the object of the deepest admiration of the creatures, and the perfect admiration of the infinite Creator; we shall see the best part of mankind, the Church of God, for four thousand years looking forward to it before it happened; new generations yet unborn rising up to admire and honour it in continual succession, till time shall be no more; innumerable multitudes of angels and saints looking back to it with holy transport, to the remotest ages of eternity. Other glories decay by length of time; if the splendour of this object change, it will be only by increasing. The visible sun will spend his beams in process of time, and, as it were, grow dim with age; this object hath a rich stock of beams which eternity cannot exhaust. If saints and angels grow in knowledge, the splendour of this object will be still increasing.-Maclaurin. FAITH IN THE REDEEMER. LET me charge you, O prisoners of hope, to look out by faith to that speedy and swift salvation of God which is coming to you. That is a broad river which faith may not look over; it is a mighty and a broad sea whose farthest banks and shores cannot be beheld by those of a lively hope. Look over the water; your anchor is fixed within the vail,' whither the forerunner, Christ, is entered for you.' O, but we have short, and narrow, and creeping thoughts of Jesus, and do but shape Christ in our conceptions, according to some created portraiture! Lend us your help, O ye glorified indwellers of earth and heaven, sea and air, that we may set on high the praises of our Lord; let all creature beauty blush before his uncreated beauty! let all created strength stand amazed before the strength of the Lord of Hosts! let all created love be ashamed before the unparalleled love of Heaven! O angel of wisdom, hide thyself before our Lord, whose understanding passeth finding out! Sun, in thy shining beauty, veil thyself in darkness before the brightness of thy Master and Maker! Who can add glory, by doing or suffering, to our never-enough admired and praised Lord! Keep your love to Christ, lay up your faith in Heaven's keeping, and follow the Chief of the house of martyrs, that witnessed a good confession before Pontius Pilate: let faith live, and breathe, and lay hold on the sure salvation of God, when clouds and darkness are about you. Take heed of unbelieving hearts; beware of, Doth his promise fail for evermore?' for it was a man, and not God, that said it, and who dreamed that a promise of God could fail? O sweet and strong word of faith, Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him!' The eyes of faith can see through the clouds, and read God's thoughts of love and peace. Hold fast Christ in the dark; surely ye shall see the salvation of God.Rutherford. TIMELY WARNING. IF you could be made to apprehend the importance and value of religion, that, after so constant and systematic a rejection of the sovereign good, you should not here find a great gulph fixed between it and you,'--on your side of that tremendous chasm, there is still religion accessible to you, in all its blessings of deliverance, peace, and security for hereafter. You are still on the favoured ground, where you are invited by the God of mercy,- -a Redeemer with his atoning sacrifice,—a Divine Spirit with all powers and operations of assistance, to enter yet at last into the possession of that which will be a glorious portion, when all you have been striving with the world to gain, will vanish in dust and smoke. But be warned again that the time is passing, and a very short persistance in your folly may make it too late.-Foster. the statesman in his politics-the labourer in the field-the preacher in the pulpitthe legalist in his righteousness-the hypocrite in his prayers, and in his charitiesare all under the same principle; the language of their hearts to God is, 'Depart from us, we desire not the knowledge of thy ways. What is the Almighty, that we should serve him? and what profit should we have if we pray unto him?' Job xxi. 14, 15. There is something eminently and awfully defective in the best works of man. 'God is not in all his thoughts,' he is a withered branch, separated from the parent tree; more than this, he is a brand burning in the fire, even on this side eternal torment; for where sin is, there is hell in einbryo.Lowels. PENAL EVIL THE NECESSARY CONSE- How astonishing is the quantity of misery in the world! How many thousands are rending the air with the cry of pain and wretchedness! Strange that ever there should be so much, that there should be any suffering, in the creation of a good God! Doubtless there is a cause for it; and if Moses had not told us what it is, we should be for ever in the dark. 'O Adam, what hast thou done!' O man, what art thou always doing! O Jesus, what hast thou not done to relieve guilt and pain; to sweeten adversity; to restore happiness in some degree to the earth, and insure it in eternity!-Adam. WHEN the privations of life have diminished the objects of social happiness; when death has dried up the fountains which run freely from their clear and salutary waters; when pain and disease have altered the character of existence, and and activity, into the scene of suffering, changed the scene of hilarity, buoyancy, inactivity, patience, and abstraction from the previous intercourse of life—then, to closer the ties, that no privation nor suffergo to the throne of grace, and to draw ing, nor vicissitude, can dissolve, this is to connect a time of need' with the best and brightest manifestations of mercy and grace to the soul!-Nocl. THE Soul which is the subject of grace, however meagre its acquirements in earthly knowledge, knows little less than angels know. It is possessed of that knowledge which fills eternity, the knowledge of God, and it is conscious of his omnipresence. THOMAS GRANT, PRINTER, EDINBURGH. THE PHILOSOPHY OF SACRED HISTORY. THE TIMES OF THE MESSIAH.-No. II. The Superstition of the West. THAT portion of the history of the East which precedes the Christian era is marked by many singular providences. The period was like a long evening, the gloom of which was often brightened by events that, like 'God's lightning, enlightened the world, and the earth saw and trembled;' and the silence of which was often disturbed by judgments that pealed over the nations like thunder, awaking in every land the echo, 'Be still, and know that I am God.' During the same period the history of the West was emphatically that of times of ignorance which God winked at;' a night whose deep darkness had no vision, and whose dead slumber had no dream; even the bright stars which arose at the dawn, and whose light is now seen in the most distant climes and times, were then unknown, and shed their lustre like the gems in the caves of ocean, or the flowers in the solitudes of the desert. It may be interesting to the reader to glance at the causes and consequences of that darkness, to notice the dawn of philosophy as it struggles to break through the clouds of superstition, and to mark its eclipse when the world becomes covered with gloom, and man, groping in doubt and sinking in depravity, longs for the light of a better day. The superstition and the philosophy of the West have had such an influence on society, that a brief outline of their nature and tendency is indispensable in any sketch of its progress; these may be forgotten in the civil history of nations, but they cannot be overlooked in the biography of man. We are aware that, however interesting this subject may be to the student of history, it may not be attractive to the general reader, and that, as the former will easily find a better guide, unless we succeed in exciting the curiosity and in engaging the attention of the latter, our efforts will be useless; therefore, any formal attempt to review the poetry of Greece, or to arrange its schools and explain its systems of philosophy, would be equally beyond our capacity and design. We can only notice the effects of its poetry, and some of the speculations of those men who have distingushed themselves by their efforts and discoveries, and left their names like mile-stones in the path of knowledge, to mark its progress and guide and encourage others in the pursuit of wisdom. Our observations must be general, and may be superficial; but if we should only glean a portion of the mere gossip of literature, we hope to No. VI-NEW SERIES. be able to present it in such a light as may be useful in illustrating the necessity and advantages of a revelation. To leave room for any remarks that may be suggested in our progress, we shall divide our observations into three separate articles, beginning with the causes, nature, and consequences of the superstition of the Greeks. The ancient history of Greece is understood to reach back to about 1800 years before Christ, but as the authentic period only begins about the time when the Olympic games were instituted in the year 776 B.C., the history of the first thousand is chiefly fabulous. During this long millennium of romance, there was not only time for the early traditions of the country to multiply, but as these were recited by wandering minstrels the simplest events were magnified into marvellous legends, and fact and fiction became so blended that it is now difficult to say where fact begins, or where fiction ends. Also, as these traditions were full of the chivalrous deeds of their ancestors, it was natural for an enterprising and warlike people to venerate the memory of their most distinguished chiefs; and the transition from veneration to worship being easy, the Greeks were led to believe the minstrels, and to regard their heroes as gods. Thus the mists of tradition, the myths of poetry, and the mysteries of religion, combined to form the hero worship of Greece, and identified it with the traditions, the literature, and the customs of the country. To illustrate this it may be necessary to glance at the writings of their early poets, the chief of whom were Hesiod and Homer. About the year 1000 B.C., Hesiod composed his 'Theogany,' or generation of the gods, in which he professes to give an account of all that were then worshipped or acknowledged as divinities. But though the book begins with the first principles of the heathen system, that chaos-the rude and shapeless mass of matter, composing the yet unformed globe-was the parent of all, and that heaven and earth were the immediate parents of all visible things; yet the philosopher soon sinks in the poet, and the Greeks, instead of being furnished with a system, were only favoured with a song. In his description of the gods he labours so hard to reduce the absurd to the natural, and to elevate the mean to the noble, inventing narratives when he wishes to instruct, and altering and embellishing tradition when he wishes to please, that VOL. I. his light only makes the darkness visible, and the path through the wilderness of tradition is made more wild and uncertain. Hence his works, though quoted by the philosophers, were never popular. It was reserved for his contemporary, Homer, to give the lyre a more certain sound, and as it was his genius which moulded the religion and customs of his country, his works are more worthy of our attention. The principal works of Homer are the Iliad and Odyssey. The first relates the siege of Troy, the second describes the return of Ulysses from the siege. The moral of the former is, that division among the leaders will ruin any enterprise; and that of the latter is, that courage and perseverance will overcome every difficulty. In the Iliad, the lay of the first minstrel worthy of the name, the poet has embalmed the traditions of his country, and preserved for the inspection of every age a specimen of its genius, and a memorial of its faith and customs; and in order to perceive the influence of this celebrated poem, it may be necessary to look at the materials of which it is composed. Paris, the son of Priam, king of Troy, being exposed in his infancy, in consequence of a dream of his mother, becomes a shepherd on mount Ida, where he is chosen to decide on the comparative beauty of Juno, Minerva, and Venus. Having decided in favour of Venus, he was so favoured by that goddess, that he persuaded Helen, the most beautiful woman of her age, and the wife of Menelaus king of Sparta, to elope with him to Troy. The Greek princes, resenting this injury done to one of their number, combine to avenge it, and laid siege to the city, and the adventures arising out of this siege form the principal incidents in the poem. To flatter the Greeks, all their heroes are represented as being descended from the gods; and to explain their extraordinary prowess, each hero is described as being patronized and assisted by the divinity to whom he is related. Thus, during the siege, gods and men mingle in the struggle, so alike in their virtues and vices, that it is difficult to distinguish the divine from the human. The poet may have gifted the one class with a supernatural power, which he has not given to the other; yet the distinction is only like that between the magician and the giant, for earthly passions and feelings are common to both, and discord and division are as frequent in the councils of Jupiter as in the camp of Agamemnon. If required to give a preference, we would prefer the characters of the human per formers in the drama, to those of the divine. Andromache, the tender mother and faithful wife, is a purer being than any goddess in the poem; and Helen sitting at the loom, and weaving the sad story of her life, and moistening with her tears this memorial of her early friends, manifests the elements of a better nature than the jealous and termagant Juno on the throne of heaven. Even Jupiter, the great 'cloud compeller,' himself, when stripped of the glory with which the genius of the poet has surrounded his station, and exhibited as irritated by the cabals of heaven, enraged by the officiousness or seduced by the coquetry of his wife, appears as a being less noble than Milton's Satan, and more vulgar than Byron's Lucifer. One and all of them were 'Gods partial, changeful, passionate, unjust, Whose attributes were rage, revenge, and lust.' Possibly Homer felt that, if he had made the gods more noble, the Greeks would have appeared to less advantage; that his countrymen, flattered by the praise of their ancestors, would be more disposed to learn and practise the moral he wished to impress on them; and that by exhibiting the effects of discord on the affairs of both gods and men, he would teach more effectively the necessity of union and co-operation to secure the common good. But whatever was the design of the poet, it is evident that such a poem must have had a telling effect on the religion of the people. Fletcher of Salton has said, 'Let me but make the ballads of a nation, and I care little who forms its creeds or makes its laws;' and the religion and customs of the Greeks were but a result and proof of the power of popular poetry. The popularity and influence of the Iliad is evident from the following facts in its history. It was first recited to the people, in detached fragments, by wandering minstrels. It was also read at the public games and festivals, and commented on by a class of men called Rhapsodists. Some of these kept schools, and were honoured with the name of sophists, or teachers of wisdom; and so general was its use in these seminaries, that Plutarch says that Alcibiades, when very young, having entered a school in which there was not an Homer, gave the master a box on the ear, as one who was an ignorant fellow, and a disgrace to his profession. Whether the whole poem was or was not the work of Homer, is a point disputed by the learned, and a question which we are neither competent nor called on to decide. It is, however, generally understood that the first entire copy was brought from Iona to Greece by Lycurgus, in the year 886 B.C., who then formed the constitution at Sparta after the model of virtue which the poem exhibits. Another edition was prepared in the year 546 B.C, by the order of Pisistratus, for the benefit of the Athenians; and his son Hipparchus se lected some portions to be sung at the feast of Minerva, the tutelar goddess of the city. In the year 350 B.C., Alexander the Great appointed learned men to correct and revise a new edition; and so highly did he esteem this work, that he kept a copy in his pillow for his daily perusal, and made its heroes the models of his own mad career. The last edition was finished about 60 years after this, by the order of Ptolemy, for the library of Alexandria. Thus the Iliad was the Bible of Greece, the hymn book of its temples, and the class book of its schools; the youth of the country were early baptized into its spirit, and taught to look on war as the chief duty of man. And so powerful was its influence on the minds of the people, that the timid philosophy of the times was afraid to oppose and unable to resist it. The first man who distinguished himself for his opposition to this evil was Xenophanes, who lived about the year 539 B.C., and was the founder of the Elatic school of philosophy. He had taken advantage of the light that had broken in on his times, and believing that there was only one God who was supreme in power, in goodness, and in wisdom, he looked with indignation on the manner in which the divinity was degraded in the common religion of the country. He ridiculed the belief in human gods, declaring, 'as there was but one God, who was the greatest of gods and of mortals, neither resembling mankind in body nor ideas, it was foolish in them to think that the gods were like themselves in either dress, voice, or figure.' To illustrate this folly, he tells them that the Ethiopians painted their gods with flat noses and black skins, while with us they are made with blue eyes and ruddy complexions;' and to give point to his ridicule, he supposes 'that if the lions and oxen had hands and fingers like ours, then would they also fashion gods like themselves.' He had no tolerance for the poetic legends so popular in his day; for though as a poet he was fully alive to the beauty of the Homeric fables, yet as a philosopher he felt more keenly their religious falsehood, and publicly taught that such things were related by Homer and Hesiod of the gods as would be a disgrace to any of mankind-promises broken, and thefts, and deceiving one another.' Thus for more than three quarters of a century did the minstrel of truth wander through many lands, to expose the legends of the minstrel of fiction; and wherever the poet was known or the gods of his poem were worshipped, there also did he utter his wide and loud protest against the falsehood of both, and this not out of envy at the great poet, but solely from reverence to God and truth. The license which the Greeks gave their poets long sheltered the philosophie bard; but their patience was ultimately exhausted, and the earnest old man was banished, and left to mourn out his declining years in unavailing lamentations over his own inability to discover truth or to check error. Aristophanes, the comic poet, was another distinguished reformer, who attacked the scepticism of his day, with the same zeal as Xenophanes had denounced the superstition of a former age, though with a different spirit and result. In his hands the drama assumed the place of the modern press, and he became 'the Thunderer of the Times. No person was too great to be attacked, no vice was too gross to be exposed, and nothing was so sacred as to be spared; and as Homer, to give force to his moral, had introduced the gods to the battle field, he, to give point to his ridicule, brought them on the stage. In one of his comedies the priest of Jupiter determines to quit his service, because the sacrifices were so few; and Mercury is represented as coming, in a starving condition, to seek his fortune on the earth, and offers to serve as a porter or door keeper, rather than return to heaven. In another, the gods are represented as being in want, from the birds having built a city in the air, where their provisions were cut of, and the smoke of the incense and sacrifices prevented from ascending. In their extremity they depute three ambassadors to treat with the birds. The chamber where the three gods are received, is a kitchen well stored with game, where Hercules is so deeply smitten with the smell of roast meat, that he begs leave to remain and assist the cook. In his other comedies, the poet was still more severe on the sceptism of the times, and equally irreverent to the gods, but the wit of his satire was at all times acceptable to an Athenian audience. He lived in a profligate and speculative age, when all religion, morality, and philosophy were disowned, and he strove to arrest the spirit of innovation, and to preserve the traditions and customs of the early times. But so indiscriminating was this stanch conservative, that he confounded the earnest Socrates with the mercenary sophists of the day, and became his bitter reviler and persecutor; and though anxious to restore the respect for the mythology and notions of his fathers, yet as his own mind never rose above the irreverent level of Pagan Greece, he took such liberties with the gods of his country as must have lowered them still further in the estimation of that seeptical age. If the amusements of the theatre were unfavourable to the cultivation of a reli gious feeling, the solemnities of the temple were still more so. These religious festivals were but a commemoration of the |
