of the sportive innocence which appears about it; but what a force was given to the emblem, when it was brought to the altar by a worshipper, who was taught to give it the name of Seh, this is He, or this is the substitute? We recognize the dove as a proper emblem of the Spirit, because the fruit of the Spirit is love; but how much was the aptness of the figure enhanced, when the bird was known by the name (which Adam, with the approbation of God, bestowed upon it) Jonah, rest and peace?

Before, then, proceeding to consider, in the next chapter, the immediate use after the fall of hieroglyphic forms, to preach the truths of God, let us reflect carefully on the evidence we have obtained, that the language in which the first revelations from heaven to man were made, was essentially allegorical; that it was not only drawn from the great operations of nature, in its primary elements, and so fitted to convey by analogy ideas of the great spiritual works of God, which could not otherwise have been made intelligible to flesh and blood; but that, in its application to the objects with which nature was filled, there seems to have been a constant eye to the illustration of the same subjects; and names given to the objects, expressive not only of their natural qualities and uses, but of their use and meaning as illustrators of Divine things. In short, creation seems to have been looked upon as one great temple, filled with objects and guided by laws entirely of an illustrative nature; indicative of some settled purpose, on the part of their Creator, to employ these objects and ordinances to teach,

preach, and illustrate heavenly truth; and they appear to have been looked at, or to have been considered worthy attention, in no respect but as contributing to this grand purpose. Thus, the objects themselves, or representations of them, were the best texts that could be employed to preach the doctrines of the kingdom of heaven. In this manner, as we shall proceed to consider in the next chapter, these representations, figures, or texts were used in the earliest worship of the world. Thus, they found a place in the tabernacle and in the temple. Thus, prophecy became filled with images borrowed from them. Thus, without a parable or allegory, drawn from these very works, our Lord himself never spake of the kingdom of heaven; and thus, little as it may now be attended to, all those beautiful similes, figures, and allegories, by which truth is conveyed to us, in the pages of the Divine Word, had their origin in the inexhaustible store of hieroglyphics, which Divine Wisdom connected, from the first, with that language in which testimony was to be borne to the unsearchable riches of Christ.

CHAPTER VI.

THE CHERUBIM.

WE have endeavoured, in the preceding chapters, from the narrative given by Moses of creation-week, from the brief but interesting notices which are recorded concerning man in Eden, and from various circumstances in the structure of ancient as well as modern languages, to gain some insight into the cause of the prevalence of metaphor and of allegory, in all the early revelations made to man. However imperfectly we may have succeeded in, what all our readers will grant is not an easy task,-combating early impressions, and reasoning against the current of opinion, in matters whereof many notions have been formed, because the facts regarding them have been but little attended to; we feel perfectly satisfied that what our arguments may fail at first to effect, a second consideration of them will accomplish, with many readers. Whoever so far adopts the principles contended for, as to try and to compare patiently, from time to time, as questions arise to his mind, the answers they afford with the solu

tions given, by any other process of reasoning, to the mysteries or figures with which the Divine Economy abounds, will obtain, as he proceeds, confirmation far stronger than any language we can use. As we advanced in our enquiry, we found a solution to the abundance of these figures in their admirable adaptation, as a mode of instruction, to the faculties of man; in their fitness for a testimony concerning things which were of a future or prospective nature; and we were prepared to find natural objects used allegorically, to illustrate Divine truths, from the connexion subsisting between these objects and the language given to man. Accordingly, the first man is introduced to our notice as placed amongst emblems; and as giving such emblematical names to natural objects, as clearly indicated a just perception of the good and the evil,-of the truth and the lie. We have seen him endued with the spirit of prophecy; and we beheld him, after his transgression, comforted and supported by a promise, couched in the language of allegory and of figure. We have now to follow him, on his ejectment from Paradise, to a SCENE which CONFIRMS, in a more striking manner than any reasoning we can employ, the view we have taken of the instruction he had previously received. At the same place, also, we obtain the most satisfactory evidence, that it was by means of hieroglyphics that the truths of God were from the first preached to mankind.

It is narrated in Genesis iii. 24, that when God 'drave out the man, he placed cherubim at the east end of the garden of Eden, and a flaming

sword turning every way to keep the way of the tree of life.'

The vulgar idea connected with this passage. being, that God placed angels, bearing bright or burning weapons, to guard the tree, we shall be pardoned offering one or two remarks on some inadvertencies in the translation, which have partly contributed to this absurd notion. We shall be borne out in the criticisms by every Hebrew lexicon. The word translated placed,' is literally to 'dwell as in a tabernacle-to inhabit.' The word 'cherubim' has, in the original, the definite article 'the' before it. 'Sword' is introduced, while no such weapon as a sword had yet been known: the the phrase is 'the fire of wrath.' A sword being the instrument of wrath, had afterwards the name of wrath applied to it; but in this place the primary idea of the word should be used, because the object to which it was secondarily applied was then unknown. Besides, here, if the word meant sword, the phrase would literally be 'the fire of sword,' which is absurd. Turning every way' is the same word which the translators render in Ezekiel, chapter i., 'infolding itself;' and 'keep,' although properly translated, does not, in the original, mean here to guard, but to keep, in the sense of observe; in the same sense in which it is used in the phrase 'to keep the commandments of the Lord.'

Had the translators of the English Bible, then, not been misled by some idea about a guard around the tree, they would have rendered the verse thus: 'So he drave out the man, And he inhabited (or