they abstain from swine's flesh, because the itch, the disease of that animal, had formerly disgraced their own bodies: their former long and famished condition, they still confess by their frequent fastings; they rest on the seventh day, because that day put an end to their wanderings." After such palpable misrepresentations, in matters of fact, are we to wonder if antient truths suffered in their transmission through the hands of the poet, who, not being tied up by the laws of history, had the modelling of these entirely in. his power, without being troubled with the thought of his being accountable to any ? "At what time," says Lucretius, "you are overcome with the terrific language of the poets, will you seek to be of another opinion from me? Even I myself could frame abundance of dreams, which would disconcert every plan of life. For if men saw a full end of their miseries, they might with the armour of reason make head against the religious restraints and threatenings of the poets; but now there is no possibility of resistance, since the punishments they must fear in death are eternal. Their life is that of a fool, who is troubled with the thoughts of an hereafter. Such fears spring from an austere religion, " which boasts its origin

to be divine."*

* Quæ caput de cæli regionibus ostendebat.

X X

The

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The term Acheron is so evidently of Hebrew ori gin, as to be exactly the same with the Hebrew, to the very letters. It might, like many other terms from the same language, have been imported into Greece through the channel of Phenicia. Acheron, in Hebrew, signifies the last and hereafter, viz. that state which succeeds to death. "All the things," says Lucretius, "which are reported to be in the deeps of Acheron, such as what Tantalus, Tityus, Sisyphus, suffer, are merely figurative descriptions of what daily befals us in life." It is the very spirit of that thing, misnamed philosophy, to rise against truth, and to oppose to her its sceptic brow, whether she comes arrayed in the garb of plainness, or clad in the veil of allegory. These representations, however they may now excite the smile of incredulity, may have then been merely the significant language of symbol, and under this veil transmitted intimations of the most awful truths. These might have been real characters in life, and remarkable each for his particular vice, and preserved on record for a warning to posterity. So Christ in displaying the abodes of the miserable and the happy, presents to us an individual in each, that we may have the more lively view of the certain consequences to which their lives, so diverse, uniformly led. Ixion bound to his wheel, Tantalus in hunger and thirst, Tityus with the vulture

gnawing on his liver, may have been truths antiently reeived from the Hebrew nation, of which, the general lesson they teach is this, "my servants shall eat, but ye shall be hungry; my servants shall drink, but ye shall be thirsty; my servants shall rejoice, but ye shall be ashamed. Their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched." Is. lxv. 13.

When Virgil places at the gates of Hades sorrows, griefs, pale disease, melancholy old age, disgraceful poverty, criminal joys, and the iron chambers of the furies, he has perhaps followed the painter, and translated from the canvass, and which, so far from being fictions, are truths fatally and daily experienced by the unhappy among the children of men.

This belief, in the existence of a future state, however a false philosophy may have laboured to banish from the minds of men, yet it is pleasant to reflect how human wishes struggle to bring it back. None was ever more sceptical or more disposed to reject any account of the invisible world than the celebrated Tacitus; yet even he, when under the meltings of filial affection, for the loss of his father-in-law, Agricola-how does he speak of it?" If there is a region assigned to the spirits of the pious; if, as wise men believe, illustrious souls are not extinguished with the bo

dies, may thy resting be in peace."*

Which

latter phrase is a euphemism, peculiar to the Hebrews.

This influence of the old popular opinion with respect to the distinct abodes of the righteous and the wicked, is strikingly exemplified in the people of Rome, on occasion of the death of Tiberius the Emperor and this is to be viewed as the so much more genuine and undisguised sentiment of their minds, that the disclosure of it was produced by a sudden ebullition of rage against the Emperor for his by past cruelties. When the populace heard he had expired, "some cried, throw him into the Tiber; others supplicated mother Earth, and the infernal powers, not to give the deceased any abode but among the reprobate.t"

We now proceed to mark the agreement between the ideas of the heathen nations and the information afforded by the sacred volume, with respect to the place of spirits departed. In their general notions they entirely coincide with the antient Hebrews, and thereby afford ground for a presumption that they were indebted to them for

* Siquis piorum manibus locus, si, ut sapientibus placet, non cum corpore extinguuntur magnæ animæ: placide quiescas. Agricolæ vita.

+ Pars Tiberium in Tiberim clamitarent, pars Terram Matrem deosque manes orarent ne mortuo, sedem ullam, nisi inter impios darent. Suet.

1

any

Accord

any knowledge they possess that way. ingly learned men have remarked, that the ideas of the antient Greek poets are, with regard to the state of the dead, evidently Phenician. This is to be accounted for by assigning as the cause of this coincidence, the commercial connexion which the people of Phenicia maintained with the different sea ports of Greece. The men of Tyre and Sidon, from their vicinity to Judea, would undoubtedly learn many particulars concerning the state of spirits departed, as at that time taught by the prophets, which they might communicate where ever their commerce extended. This derives credibi lity from there having been a league of amity between King David and Hiram King of Tyre, and from the subjects of the latter having been employed as workmen both by David and Solomon.

As the earliest compositions of antiquity were poetic, it will be necessary to direct our researches among these, in order to discover the opinion of those ages, which are so much the more pure and unadulterated, as they lie nearer to the period marked in the inspired writings. In thus searching for the gold of scripture, in the river beds of the antient poets, we must deem it sufficient if we find it here and there in small particles: in larger masses it is to be met with only it its native soil.

Of