had ever reached? Whence comes it that the legislative mythology of the Greeks extends itself over the world beyond the tomb --that region towards which all our strongest natural hopes and fears so powerfully impel the mythic imagination-that region from which all other legislative religions evoked the forms of pain and pleasure, in every variety of shape, to threaten vice and encourage virtue? What spell arrested the active fancies which created, as we are told, the Mosaic books, upon the verge of this tempting sphere, and warned them back from limits that have never, in any other case, restrained the adventurous inroads of a faculty that loves best to expatiate in the fields of uncertainty and conjecture? Were the Hebrews cast in such a different mould from all other people upon the face of the whole earth, that they had first to learn from the Prussians to feel concern about their souls, and see some prospect beyond the grave? This would be a solution of the difficulty that one would hardly expect from men calling themselves philosophers-least of all from Hegelian philosophers. What, then, becomes of the identity of human nature? It is obvious, that whatever a nation has, over and above the common original faculties and propensities of mankind, is the result of its peculiar circumstances. Now, what were the peculiar circumstances that thus strangely closed one extensive region of fable against the mystic genius of the early Hebrews? It was not, surely, their Egyptian captivity? The religion of Egypt was, at least, as rich as that of Persia, in circumstantial legends of the state and adventures of the departed. Not the atmosphere of the surrounding nations of Canaan? The strict laws against necromancy, as one of the crimes of their heathen neighbours to which they were likely to be tempted, show sufficiently, if there were nothing else, that the Canaanites had made themselves familiar with the unseen world and its inhabitants. Egypt, the cradle of the Jewish nation, and Canaan, the school of its youth, were full, then, of legends of another life. The Jews were men like other menpartakers of that common nature, which has prompted all other human beings to hope for the indefinite continuance of their existence; yet, what is called their mystic history—the fruit of an imagination (surely not a poor one) prompted by the wants and longings of such a nature, and under such circumstances, is destitute of an essential character to be found in the mythic history of every other people. And our sage critics and philosophers, whose severe induction is to bring all religion under the laws of natural history, while diligent to mark every accidental property of resemblance between the Jewish and the heathen sacred writings, have no eyes to see the essential properties of difference that obstruct the application of their formula.

Let us attend to another point, upon which this natural history

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of the Jewish religion altogether breaks down. The fundamental and ruling idea of the Hebrew mythology, according to Berger (cited by Mr. Parker, vol. ii. p. 24,) was the earnest belief of the Jews, that they were the only favourites with Jehovah, the Creator and Lord of the whole world; and this belief, we are told, was as ancient as the nation itself, though it first received a steady direction from Moses, the founder of the theocratic constitution of the State. We need not stop here to ask the question, how this people ("who never reached a high degree of culture," says the same grave authority, in the same breath) came, nevertheless, to reach the idea, that their tutelary God was "the Creator and Lord of the whole world," an idea which no other nation of antiquity ever reached-for it is peculiar to the mendicant demonstrations of this new science, to beg its postulates, and suppose its axioms. Let us give them, then, their starting point, and see how far they can proceed. Why, truly, from this proceeds the peculiar phenomenon which (as a new science must have new names) we call theocratic religious pragmatism, i. e., the reference of every event immediately to Jehovah. The idea, then, that stirred the mythic fancy of the Hebrews, was that of the immediate presence of the Creator and Lord of the whole world. Now, is this conceivable in itself, or consistent with what we know of the human mind in other cases? In all other cases the mythic element has recoiled with an instinctive antagonism from the idea of the Supreme; so far from making "all other active persons merely his instruments," it has withdrawn their agency from His influence. It has excluded Him, by a painted screen of grotesque shapes of angels and demons, demigods, genii, saints or fairies, beyond which reason, indeed, sometimes looked but fancy never. The mythic imagination has ever stood rebuked in the presence of Jehovah. Legend is silent before the LORD GOD OMNIPOTENT.

It is not the first step, then, here, that is all the difficulty, nor yet the second. Let us allow both, and yet the third is such a stride that the hapless theory bursts in the exertion.

If the theocratic idea were the cause of the theocratic religious pragmatism, the latter should appear most when the former prevailed most. But it appears least in the later books of Scripture. What account is to be given of this? Why, truly, some account must, it seems, be given; and if it cannot be found, natural history must invent it. The new science has handled myths so long, that it has insensibly grown mythic itself by the contagion, and can imagine facts, when needful to supply its requisitions. "The dissolution of the Hebrew nation by the Assyrians and Chaldeans, and their dispersions among many other nations, laid the foundation for a change in their historical views. The bond

of the theocracy became looser; and when a part of the people assembled again, in their old and native land, it could never acquire its former strictness, FOR THE THEOCRACY, in the proper sense, WAS NEVER RESTORED." (Ut Supra, pp. 26, 27.) The extraordinary administration of the Theocracy was indeed never restored; but this, being the thing to be explained, can hardly be the thing meant to explain it. If the administration. of the Theocracy were the fictitious result of the idea of the Theocracy, the question is, Why was it not restored? The only answer Berger can mean to give is, that the fundamental idea of the Theocracy was not restored; but this, as the reader needs not to be told, is directly contrary to plain historical matter of fact. The idea of the Theocracy was never stronger than in the minds of Ezra and Nehemiah. The evidence of this is supplied in every page of their writings. No matter for that-science is peremptory in its demands, and fact must give way to demonstration. The Jews, on account of their outward condition, must mainly have given up their old Theocratic ideas;" it is the necessary result of their condition, despite all evidence to the contrary, that the Jews must have given up the belief of their being the favourites of the Creator and Lord of the whole world.

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But was the theocratic faith in reality so strong before the captivity? It was strong, indeed, in the prophets. But it is not supposed that the prophets made the history. That is too coarse and clumsy an expedient for the refinement of the present age. A national mythology is created by the collective mind of the nation. Was the mind of the nation, then, really theocratic? Here again science must invent facts, if it will have a foundation for its theories. The mind of the people before the captivity, taken in its collective bulk, was in a continual struggle against the idea of the theocracy-the people were continually lapsing into the worship of other gods besides Jehovah-continually, in their worship of Him, forgetting that He was "the Creator and Lord of the whole world." Yet this perverse and intractable people-unscientific themselves, and doomed for ever, (like Nicolai's unruly goblins in Faust), to cross the most certain rules of modern science-created for themselves a mythology founded upon an idea which they never fully or permanently realized! And thus the mythology of the Hebrews is ranked in the same class with all other mythologies, on the ground that it presents all the essential characters of the same category!

It is, to be sure, an afflicting truth for rationalism-but it is a truth the evidence of which cannot be evaded-that, in dealing with the Jewish history, we cannot dispense with miracles. If we will save the stability of the laws of matter, it must be by

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sacrificing those of mind. And this is every day becoming more and more evident, even in Germany. It is every day becoming plainer and plainer, that the biblical literature of Germany, so far as it is infidel in its character, is not progressive, but successive. The discoveries of each generation are not raised upon the discoveries of the preceding, but upon their ruins. The theories, the fruits of a scepticism rich in credulity, wither before they be grown up. They perish absolutely from the face of the earth. They scarcely leave even the relics of corruption to manure the soil on which they have rotted. And it is one of the hopeful signs for Germany, that scholars are beginning to feel the barrenness of their biblical literature in any certain results-to perceive that labours, ceaseless and noisy as those of their own gnomes and cobolds in the caverns of Thuringia, have been as profitless as that vain and fairy toil. It must ever be thus with theories which will not cover the whole of the phenomena. They may keep their credit for a time, while attention is only directed to that part of the phenomena for which they offer a plausible account. But the remainder-though accidental circumstances may for a few years put it out of sight-will, sooner or later, come before men's minds, and then the theory breaks at once, like a bubble, in its weakest part. The Christian religion is no hypothetical theory. It is a fact established upon the proper evidence of facts. But, over and above this, it has the proper evidence of a true theory also; that it is capable of dealing with all the phenomena-not those only which are before the mind of one generation-but with all that are continually resulting, in ever fresh varieties, from new observations and repeated experiment. Where it seems to fail, it is because some human hypothesis has been insensibly mixed with it; and though such a seeming failure may at first throw discredit upon the whole, yet it ultimately tends to its stability and purification, by disembarrassing essential Christianity from the rash additions of human ignorance and folly.

ART. IV.-1. Sibylle, Eine Selbstbiographie (Sibylle, an Autobiography.) Von IDA GRAFIN HAHN HAHN. Berlin, 1846. 2. Gräfin Faustine. Von IDA GRAFIN HAHN HAHN. Berlin, 1845.

3. Zwei Frauen. (The Two Wives.) Von IDA GRAFIN HAHN HAHN. Berlin, 1845.

4. Cecil. Von IDA GRAFIN HAHN HAHN. Berlin, 1844.

5. Sigismund Forster. Von IDA GRAFIN HAHN HAHN. Berlin, 1843.

6. Erinnerungen aus und an Frankreich (Recollections from and of France.) Von IDA GRAFIN HAHN HAHN. Berlin, 1842. 7. Orientalische Briefe. Berlin, 1840.

8. Reisebriefe. Berlin, 1841.

GEOLOGISTS tell us that the present state of the earth's surface is altogether different from that which formerly existed. Productions which would have been impossible in the earlier stages of the earth's development are now abundant on every side; whereas others, of the existence of which we have the most indubitable traces, have long since ceased to be.

Changes pretty nearly analagous seem to have taken place in the intellectual world;-and of one biped in particular, now very abundant, we have failed to discover any organic remains, in the earlier social formations-we mean the literary lady. Poetesses we have had since the age of Sappho; and Madame de Sevigné, we presume, was not the first mother who wrote letters to her daughter sufficiently spirituelles to merit that they should be handed about for perusal in the circle of her friends. But the authoress by premeditation, who coolly enters into a compact with the demon of types, and perpetrates a couple of 8vo. vols. of 300 pages, every twelve or eighteen months, is a being who could have been the result only of the presently existing social condition of the earth's inhabitants. Our narrow-minded ancestors considered the family circle as the proper sphere of female activity; and she to whom nature had been more kind than to her sisters in general, was contented to employ her talents in cheering and adorning her domestic abode. If the influence of her sprightly converse was felt and acknowledged by her husband and her children, she sought no wider range of usefulness, but consoled herself with the reflection, that what her exertions wanted in extent they gained in intensity, and that she did much without travelling far. She played, in short, a woman's