wопερ éпádεiv έavr, Phæd., 114, D.), and like the dying swan, to which, in another part of this dialogue, he compares himself, sing this song of immortality more sweetly and more clearly the nearer it approaches that period which is to test the great question forever. Nothing can be more admirable than the tender care which, throughout this discussion, the Athenian is made to exercise towards his supposed youthful disputant. The philosopher knew that very often little direct influence of a moral kind was produced by means of dialectical argument, however excellent it might be as preparatory to the application of other remedies. He knew that, even where it silenced, it not unfrequently hardened the vanquished disputant to a more tenacious hold upon former prejudices. He therefore, in what succeeds, endeavours to make him feel that this is no matter of mere speculation, like any mere scientific theorem, but that he has a deep personal interest in the great arrangements of Providence, and to impress him with the fact, that as a part (although a very small one) of an immense whole, the importance and dignity of his own position, instead of being diminished, is magnified by this very circumstance. See remarks, notes 11 and 12, page 11; also, explanation of the word dvoxepaive, note 3, page 8. XLIX. The Machinery of Physical Events controlled by Invisible Spiritual Agencies. The Doctrine of Plato and of the Bible. PAGE 57, LINE 12. "Apxovтes проσтεтауμévоl. The form and gender of the word äpxovтes will not permit us to regard it as referring to any inanimate influences. It can only mean beings of a higher order than man, to whom the lower parts of the universal administration were thought to be committed. This doctrine, somewhat modified, we believe to be taught in the Holy Scriptures, without supposing that the Jewish writers, any more than Plato, did not firmly hold to that regular and orderly succession of events and phenomena which we style the laws of nature. They manifestly believed in a connexion of cause and effect, extending in a chain from the throne of God to the minutest operations of the visible world;* and yet all along down this golden chain of celestial influences, and in all its vibrations throughout its immense extent, they constantly recognised the control and guidance of supernatural or angelic beings. Besides revealing the doctrine, the Scriptures sometimes, as matters of historical fact, draw aside the veil from the invisible world, and lay open to us this constant supernatural agency; as in the account of the angel who descended * We find this idea in Hosea, ii., 23, which is commonly thus rendered: And it shall come to pass in that day, I will hear, saith the Lord, I will hear the heavens; and the heavens shall hear the earth, and the earth shall hear the corn, and the wine, and the oil; and they shall hear Jezreel. The word, here used, means, in its primary sense, to sing. Hence, secondly, to pronounce with a measured and solemn voice; thirdly, to respond; fourthly, to hear; having, however, no reference to the auricular sensation, which is expressed by another word. It resembles the Greek μéλñш, μéλñоμai, or, rather, àμɛíboμai, and conveys the idea of responsive or choral singing. Hence the passage would be more literally, and at the same time more expressively, rendered thus: And it shall come to pass in that day, I will sing, saith the Lord, I will sing to the heavens; and the heavens shall sing (or respond) to the earth; and the earth shall respond to the corn, and the wine, and the oil; and they shall respond to Jezreel. There seems here a reference to that doctrine of the choral harmony of nature, with which the ancient mind was so filled; as though the touching a chord in heaven, when the great Coryphæus or leader of the universal orchestra gives the starting tone, sounds and vibrates down through all the compass of the notes, until it makes its closing cadence in the end designed to be accomplished. into the pool of Bethesda, or of the destroying angel that appeared with a drawn sword standing over the devoted city of Jerusalem, 2d Samuel, xxiv., 16, 17. In this latter instance, there is no intimation that it differed in any way from the ordinary method by which God sends pestilence upon the earth, except that here the curtain is withdrawn and the supernatural machinery disclosed. No doubt, sec. ond causes were here also at work, and the philosopher of that day, had there been any such to investigate the antecedents and consequents connected with the event, might have bid the Jew Take heart and banish fear; yet still, all this would not change the fact, so clearly revealed, that behind them all, however far they may have extended beyond the utmost bounds of scientific research, there stood the spiritual power of God, and his delegated minister, directing them, without any violation of their visible order, to the production of the decreed result. Let science cease her babble. We all know, the most ignorant as well as the most learned, that second causes are employed in these visitations. The writers of the Bible were no more ignorant of this, as a general principle, than our most scientific savans, although they may have known less of the steps of the process in its minute details. Even here we surpass them only in having traced a few more links in a chain, in which what is yet unknown sinks all differences of the known into insignificance. These links, in the series of natural sequences, may reach back to any extent short of the infinite, and yet leave on the other shore room enough for the supernatural, in perfect consistency with them. We have, therefore, no reason at all for inferring that the Scriptures meant to represent this as a miraculous intervention. In every case of pestilence, they would have us believe that the destroying angel is abroad in the air, but in this one, for special reasons, the eye of man was permitted to behold him.* He maketh his angels winds, his ministers a fiery flame, as the inspired Apostle renders it, Heb., i., 17; and not, as it would be explained by the rationalizing interpreter, he maketh the winds his messengers, and the flaming fire his servants. The angels of the Lord are ever encamped round about the righteous, although we have but one example in the Bible of the glorious vision being revealed to mortal eyes. See 2 Kings, vi., 17. The great objection to this view, as it would present itself to some minds, would spring from the prejudice to which Plato alludes in the Epinomis, 982, D., E., and on which we have remarked, pages 226, 227. Men are so much inclined to associate undeviating regularity and constancy in physical motions with a nature implying the ab. sence of a special will and reason; as though an animated personal agency must necessarily be sometimes freaky and capricious in its operations as evidences of the exercise of a personal volition. One answer to such an objection is furnished at once by maintaining that all such intermediate spiritual powers are under the constant control of the Supreme Will and Reason, producing the regularity of natural sequence, not as though it needed such sequences at all as indispensable helps to itself, but for our sakes, that by means of them, as signs, we might be able to exercise faith in the general constancy of the Divine operations, and regulate our own conduct in accordance with it. When, however, this feeling becomes practical atheism, prevailing to any great extent among mankind, we have reason to believe that God will come forth, as Plato says in the Politicus, from his retired place of observation, break up the long repose of nal 1 * There are also in the Bible intimations that evil supernatural agents, under the dominion of the Prince of the Powers of the Air, are sometimes permitted to exercise a physical influence in the affairs of our globe, and thus to afflict men with disease both of mind and body. See Luke, xiii., 16; Job, i., 12; ii., 6, 7. ural laws, and again astonish the world, as in the early times, by displays of super-natural power. Nemesius, in his treatise on the Nature of Man, alluding to Plato's doctrine of providence, describes it as recognising three divisions. The first province is assigned directly, or without media, to the Deity himself, or, as he styles him, the first God. This has respect to the world of ideas, and the general care of the universe as a whole-πропуоνμévws μὲν τῶν ἰδεῶν ἔπειτα δὲ ξύμπαντος τοῦ καθόλου κόσμου. The second department is given in charge of the second or inferior divinities, and has relation to those things which are said to be under the law of generation and corruptionπάντων τῶν ἐν γενέσει καὶ φθορᾷ-or, in other words, ordinary physical events. The third relates to the conduct of life, and to the distribution of what he styles organic good and evil. Nemesius, De Nat. Hom., p. 345. We know not in what part of Plato's dialogues authority can be found for this precise division, as Nemesius states it, although for the second some warrant may be discovered in the passage which has furnished the ground of this excursus. For farther information on the ancient views in respect to a special providence, we may consult Cicero, De Leg., ii., 7; Plutarch., De Fato, 572, E.; Eusebius, Præp. Evang., 630. L. The Ancient Maxim, De Nihilo Nihil PAGE 58, LINE 2. ὡς γένεσις ἕνεκα ἐκείνου γίγνεται Tãoα Öπws, K. T. 2.—“That all generation, or every generation, takes place for this purpose, and in such a way," &c. This argument would be better accommodated to modern ideas, and, at the same time, lose none of its force or intended meaning in this place, by rendering yéveσis cre |