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'Imposuistis in cervicibus nostris sempiternum dominum, quem dies et noctes timeremus. Quis enim non timeat omnia providentem, et cogitantem, et animadvertentem, et omnia ad se pertinere putantem, curiosum et plenum negotii, Deum? Hinc vobis exstitit primum illa fatalis necessitas, quam eiuapuévny dicitis, ut, quidquid accidat, id ex æternâ veritate, causarumque continuatione, fluxisse dicatis. Quanti autem hæc philosophia æstimanda est, cui tamquam aniculis, et iis quidem indoctis, fato fieri videantur omnia? Sequitur pavrikỳ vestra, quæ Latine divinatio dicitur, quâ tanta imbueremur superstitione, si vos audire vellemus, ut haruspices, augures, harioli, vates, conjectores nobis essent colendi. His terroribus ab Epicuro soluti, et in libertatem vindicati, nec metuimus eos, quos intelligimus nec sibi fingere ullam molestiam, nec alteri quærere, et piè sanctèque colimus naturam excellentem, atque præstantem."

These were not the opinions of private philosophers merely: long before the time of Lucretius, universal Rome had testified its approbation when the same sentiments were expressed by Ennius.

"Ego Deûm genus esse semper dixi, et dicam cœlitum ;

Sed eos non curare opinor quid agat humanum genus."

Here then was the recoil from superstition to Atheism; and how little republican or imperial Rome gained by the change, we may learn from every page of its history.

Conclusion.

There is a class of men who may be properly described as men of the times in which they live," "the vegetables of their era." These men are essentially contracted in their ideas : bound up in the "ignorant present," they are incapable of deriving lessons from the past, or of using its light to penetrate into the future. They have a plausible knowledge of the hubbub of strange doings, and stranger opinions, which are passing and current before them, but they can never discern the tendency of a doctrine till it is flagrant to all the world; nor attempt to apply a cure, till—

"The doctor called, declares all help to late."

Slaves to the popular views of their day, however superficial, if you ask them to recur to the past for a lesson, they imagine you are sending them back to school. Refer them to Livy, in whose pages the most profound politician of modern times" was content

Cicero, De Nat. Deorum, i., 20.

Macchiavelli's Discorsi sopra la prima deca di T. Livio, contain an admirable collection of the most profound axioms of political philosophy. There is, of course, much which is objectionable in them, but they will always form a valuable study for those who are capable of the requisite discrimination.

to study that art in which he exceeded all other men; and they tell you that an Englishman of the nineteenth century should study politics only in the parliamentary debates,—an opinion which will sufficiently explain many adverse circumstances in our foreign relations of late years.

A very learned judge compared a case, on which he had to decide, to a Banbury cheese. We, copying so eminent an example, might compare the present age also to a Banbury cheese, in an incipient state of decomposition, and the men whom we have described to the smallest of the mites, which are creeping among the inequalities of its surface. It is not, of course, to such authorities as these that we make the proposition of recurring to the age of Pericles, and that of Cicero, for examples of the wretched condition of a people who are in a state of fluctuation between atheism and superstition. Writing for an incomparably more intelligent class of readers, we may safely leave them to draw their own deductions from that picture of the past which we have, however imperfectly, endeavoured to recall to their memories. We shall not therefore attempt, with the detail which might otherwise be necessary, to "point a moral " from the lamentable experiences of the great nations of antiquity. Others, if they please, may compare the semi-Romanists of our time to the polytheists, and their neo-Christian opponents to the Epicureans, of antiquity. We leave it to them to enquire, whether it is more irrational to travel a hundred miles to consult an oracle, or to purchase a papal plenary pardon for all the sins of a life from an Augustinian or Dominican friar, who disposes of these indulgences among the drunkards of a pot-house, and who assures his credulous hearers, that "for twelve pence each, they may redeem the souls of their fathers out of purgatory." We refrain also from examining the doubtful question, whether the atomic theory, or that (warmly applauded in the Essays and Reviews) which makes mice the progenitors of men, is in reality the more supremely absurd. We resign all these discussions to those whose genius inclines them to the task. But what we assume with confidence is, that the English nation has no advantage in wisdom over the Greeks and Romans, and that if the old contest between atheism and superstition is to be renewed, it will produce no better effects now than formerly.

In the seventh and eighth centuries, the amphitheatre of Titus at Rome (then preserved in a comparatively uninjured state), excited so much admiration in the breasts of the Anglo

See the judgment of Bridgman Ch. J. C. P.,-in Rundale v. Eeley and others. (Carter, 171.)

Saxon pilgrims, as to produce among them the proverbial saying, "Quamdiu stabit Colyseus, stabit et Roma: quando cadet Colyseus cadet Roma: quando cadet Roma, cadet et mundus:"

"While stands the Coliseum, Rome shall stand,

When falls the Coliseum, Rome shall fall,

And when Rome falls,-the world." วิน

Are we not justified in believing that our National Church is the Coliseum of England (happily less injured, at the present day, by the outrages of time than its Roman prototype); that with it the national fortunes are inseparably bound; that its fall will be the fall of Albion; and that with Albion the rational freedom of the world will expire?

Trusting that the country may yet be aroused to protect the most valuable of its institutions, we would address it in the words of the Arabian poet :

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Fate has destined thee for great things, if thou couldst comprehend its intentions. Take then good heed of thyself; and wander not with the sheep who have no true pastor." H. C.

HEBREW FESTIVALS:-THE PASSOVER."

THE laws in the Pentateuch relating to the great feasts may be considered in an agrarian or in an historical point of view. Which of these suggests the primitive facts of the case? and how came that kind of intermixture to take place that we now find existing in the records? The most ancient passage relating to the subject is to be found in Exodus xxiii. 14-17, which is

Gibbon's Decline and Fall, c. 71.

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Byron's Childe Harold, iv., 145. * Abû Isma'ŷl Toghrâi,—Lamîyato 'l-'Ajàm, 59.

The following article has been extracted and abridged from the Commentatio de primitiva et vera festorum apud Hebræos ratione ex legum Mosaicarum varietate eruenda. The contributor is a clergyman who is anxious to place the views here advanced before the eye of the English reader, in order to their fuller investigation, and not, we believe, as expressive of his own sentiments. It is needless to say that the original author, Dr. Hupfeld, is one from whom much may be learned, even by those who differ from him on some great questions.-ED. J. S. L.

a portion of the larger section, Exodus xxi.-xxiii. 19. The first of the feasts here mentioned is evidently historical and memorial; the others are agrarian. Both of the last of these festivals refer to the harvest, and the distinction (though other views have been expressed) between the two consists in this, that the one, as the feast of first-fruits (cf. Numb. xxviii. 26; Lev. xxiii. 16), celebrated in one day the consecration of the harvest to Jehovah, whereas the other, that of "ingathering," was an ordinance of festivity having reference to the prosperous termination of the season. The "end of the year" at which this took place refers to an ancient agrarian measurement of time, older than the period of Moses. In this passage the clause, "as I commanded thee," refers us to a law in which the feast of unleavened bread must have been first established. First of all, however, we advert to another copy of our law which is contained in Exodus xxxiv. 18 sqq., and which is expressed in almost the same words.

This chapter treats of the renewal of a covenant between Jehovah and the Israelites after their backsliding, and contains the account of a renewal of the tables and a repetition of the principal laws. There is a general similarity between this passage and the other, and both conclude with the precept, "thou shalt not seethe a kid in her mother's milk." We find however in this passage, for "feast of harvest," "feast of weeks," (cf. Lev. xxiii. 17), and "first-fruits" of thy labours is defined by "fruits of wheat-harvest," which also accords with Lev. xxiii. 17, where wheaten bread is evidently referred to. There are other variations between the two passages, aud it is observable that, which usually signifies a "joyous festival," is here contrary to custom joined with . Having gained no light from this passage, we now turn to other laws respecting the festivals to see if we can find any which appears to explain the connexion between the feast of unleavened bread and the Passover. In our search for a law of this kind, we meet with several not much before this passage in chap. xii. and xiii., which narrate the departure from Egypt, and the events relating to it. And, first, in chap. xiii. we find the feast of unleavened bread established in memory of the Exodus.

Exod. xiii. 3-10.-Here, besides a rather more copious detail in general, we find an interdiction in toto of all leavened bread. There is no mention of the Passover, but there is another rite instituted in remembrance of the event which the Passover also commemorated. For the redemption of the firstlings (verses 11-16) was ordained in remembrance of the slaughter of the first-born of Egypt. There is a double record

of the Exode corresponding with a division of time-the feast of unleavened bread in remembrance of the day in which they went out, and the consecration of the first-born to Jehovah in memory of the destruction of the first-born of the Egyptians on the preceding night: and it was on this very night that the Passover was celebrated. In examining in detail the structure of this passage, we are led by several considerations-the chief of which is a want of proper connexion between the principal parts-to consider this whole passage, the most important and ancient portion of which are verses 1, 2, as somewhat fragmentary.

Since in the third verse Moses is represented as giving commandment, and acting as the interpreter of some previous command of Jehovah, we may still hope to discover the edict of the Deity Himself, which leads us to Exod. xii. 15-20, in which the chief points of the edict of Moses occur again. Other matters are much more exactly defined. The seven days are marked out, not only by the month, but by the number of days, (viz., the fourteenth to the twenty-first). There is to be a holy convocation both on the first and seventh days. The cessation from labour on their holy convocations is to be so entire, that nothing but the participation of food is to be allowed. The prohibition of leavened bread is sanctioned under the penalty of death, and leavened bread is to be removed on the first day. There are great difficulties, however, as to the right interpretation of this passage. Certain things are ordered to be done on the first day, which hardly consist with the perfect repose commanded, as the removing of the leaven out of the way, and the baking of unleavened bread, which could not be done till the leaven was removed. The bread which was to be eaten at the beginning of that day, viz., the evening of the fourteenth, ought to have been ready. Again, according to another law laid down in the same chapter, the Paschal lamb was to be killed and eaten while the destruction of the first-born of the Egyptians was going on, and on the dawn of the following day the departure for Egypt was to take place. It would be inconsistent with the holiness of the Sabbath to suppose that all those things

The institution of unleavened bread is here inserted into the midst of the "consecration of the first-born," which latter is continued again, verses 11-16. In the beginning of the chapter we find Jehovah giving a general command, whereas in verse 11 sqq. the speech, not of Jehovah, but of Moses is continued as from verse 3 in the accustomed formulas. The law in verse 1, 2, is doubtless the most ancient one on the subject, and has probably been brought into a place properly foreign to it. There is the same confusion relating to the precept about the unleavened bread. The formulæ of Deuteronomy are observable in this passage, cf. Deut. v. 15; vi. 8, 21; xxvi. 5 sqq. The plural, verses 3, 4, is suddenly changed in verse 5 into the singular.

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