hope that the true heavenly philosophy (ἔκ τινος θείας ἐπιπ- νοίας ἀληθινὴ φιλοσοφία), and a people in possession of it as a gift from above, either had existed in the immense past time, or might now exist in some obscure part of the Barbarian or Oriental land-(ἔν τινι βαρβαρικῷ τόπῳ πόρρω που ὄντι τῆς ἡμετέρας ἐπόψεως), or might at some future period be revealed to the rest of the human race. Lib. vi., 499, B. Can we suppose that he would have preferred his myths and his traditions, had he known assuredly that just such a people, with just such a Heaven-inspired philosophy, then existed in the mountains of the barbarian Judea, and that it had been most solemnly declared, even then, that "A Law should go forth from Zion, and the Word of the Lord from Jerusalem.”*

Without fearing at all for our Protestantism, we may indeed admit, as Plato says, that it is a most important matter to establish new religious rites, or to attempt a change in religious doctrines or modes of worship which have long prevailed, and which, even when most erroneous, can seldom be suddenly and violently taken away without danger, to say the least, of tearing up something which may be vital to the soul. The sentiment of Plato may have some truth, even in reference to times and countries possessing a permanent revelation from God, and to which resort may be had in bringing men back from those deviations from it which are the natural results of human depravity. Admitting that there are such seasons when doctrine and worship must be reformed, and when private men under the general, if not special, revelation may be regarded as lawfully call. ed to engage in this most responsible work, still may we say, with Plato, that it does, indeed, require no ordinary intelligence. Such occasions call for souls of the highest order—τῆς μεγίστης διανοίας—and no vulgar instrument,

* Isaiah, ii., 3.

no brawling, fanatical reformer should be regarded as Heaven's agent in so solemn an undertaking. When such men as Luther and Calvin arise, it is not easy to mistake the evidences of their peculiar mission, or their fitness for the great work to which they are called.

LXXV.

Belief in Apparitions, Ghosts, Spectres, Dreams, &c., the same in all Ages.

PAGE 82, LINE 2. ἔν τε φάσμασιν ἐγρηγορότας διὰ φόbovs kaì ¿v ỏvɛípois—“ Startled, when awake, by apparitions, and in sleep by dreams." Nothing would present a more interesting subject of investigation than the nature and extent of the ancient belief in ghosts and apparitions. That it prevailed extensively, that it was most deeply rooted, and that it had existed from the most remote antiquity, is beyond all doubt. If ever there was a doctrine of which it could be said that it was held semper, ubique, et ab omnibus, this is one. There can be no greater mistake than to suppose that this is a consequence of Christianity, and that its revelations of the spiritual world have quickened the imagination to impressions and terrors unknown to the ancient times. The belief in ghosts and supernatural appearances is as old as the belief in a hell, or in any existence after death, and all of them may be traced back to a period where profane history wholly fails us. It was the creed alike of Jew and Gentile, of the East and the West, of Greek, Chaldean, and Idumean. The account of Saul and the Witch of Endor incidentally discloses the extent and depth of the common Jewish belief in the ghostly world, and that, too, much more strongly than would have been done by any express declarations. Whatever may be thought of the silence of the Old Testament in other parts, the fact of a nu

merous and well-known class of persons, whose profession it was to maintain intercourse with the dead, whether such intercourse was deceptive or not, does prove, beyond all cavil, that the ancient Israelites were no Sadducees, and that, if they did not get their belief in a spiritual world from Moses, they must have derived it from some still more ancient source common to all mankind.

That it existed as a part of the patriarchal religion, we have direct evidence from the vision of Eliphaz, Job, iv., 13: A spirit (a páoμa) stood before my face. The manner in which the appearance of this ghost is described, bears a striking resemblance to all representations of the kind in ancient or in modern times. The pάopa, or shadowy appearance under which the mind is always led to contemplate the departed yet restless soul-the changing and flitting motion, so admirably expressed by the Hebrew the formless form, the silence, and the voice, present the same marked features that are to be found in almost all ghostly narrations. It is not spoken of as a phenomenon until then unknown, but as something in the possibility of which all his hearers are supposed to believe. It is no answer to say it was a dream. How came the nightly world of the imagination to be peopled with representations from an unseen state, if a belief did not universally prevail which brought such representations before the soul? As an example far less sublime than this, but with many of the same points of resemblance, we may cite the apparition of the shade of Patroclus to Achilles, as described in the twenty-third book of the Iliad, v. 100:

ψυχὴ δὲ κατὰ χθονός, ήΰτε καπνός, ᾤχετο τετριγυῖα. ταφὼν δ' ἀνόρουσεν Αχιλλεύς, χερσί τε συμπλατάγησεν, ἔπος δ ̓ ὀλοφυδνὸν ἔειπεν· Ω πόποι, ἡ ῥά τίς ἐστι καὶ εἶν ̓Αίδαο δόμοισιν. ψυχὴ καὶ εἴδωλον· ἀτὰρ φρένες οὐκ ἔνι πάμπαν.

We may sometimes find ancient accounts of this kind

The

that may compare with any of the narratives of the Middle Ages. Take, for example, Plato's myth at the end of the tenth book of the Republic. His wild and fiery beings (ǎypioi kai diáπvupo), that torment the wicked, one might almost suppose had been copied from some saint's legend. When Socrates tells us, in the Phædon, of the ghosts that haunt the tombs and monuments — σκιοειδῆ φαντάσματα οἷα παρέχονται τοιαῦται ψυχαὶ εἴδωλα, αἱ μὴ καθαρῶς ἀποAvoɛioat-the shades of the impure departed-we might almost fancy it the language of some German ballad. story of the apparition which so solemnly summoned Brutus to his last meeting at Philippi presents another striking instance of the same kind. A still more remarkable case is recorded by the younger Pliny (Epistolæ, lib. vii., 27), of a frightful spectre which appeared in a certain house at Athens. The details are given with such an air of truth and sobriety, that we cannot help thinking that the writer, materialist as he was, did really believe it, or, at least, was seriously affected by the account. It is, however, mainly interesting, by reason of its presenting features so very much resembling some of those that are to be found in the ghost stories of modern times. The old, spacious, deserted, and suspected house; the clanking of chains, first faintly heard at a distance, and becoming louder and louder as the spectre approaches at the dread hour of midnight; the silent and fixed position; the waving of the hand; the pointing with the finger; the motion to follow; the solemn tread with which the apparition leads the spectator through the lonely passages of the building until it finally disappears in the courtyard, and the result, which the reader of modern legends can almost anticipate, namely, the finding the bones of a murdered man, as they are dug up in the very spot where it had vanished-all these are of such a nature as to make us feel for a moment as though, instead of reading Pliny and a story of the ancient Athens, we had actu

ally been occupied with some of the wild creations of Shakspeare's fancy in Hamlet or King Richard the Third. Whatever may be thought of its truth, it is of value as showing that the imagination, in all ages of the world, has been filled with the same images, and that there must be some deep ground of reality to which all such incidents, however deceptive in outward appearances, are to be referred.

How much even the Epicurean age of Horace was affected by these preternatural terrors, may be learned from the great variety of frightful names he presents in two lines of one of his Epistles, in which he would describe a mind raised above the superstitious imaginings of the multitude; although, from some evidences he has left us, it was not a state to which he himself could lay claim:

Caret mortis formidine et ira?

Somnia, terrores magicos, miracula, sagas,

Nocturnos lemures, portentaque Thessala, rides ?

Hor., Epist., lib. ii., 2, 206.

Φάσμα is nearly, if not quite, synonymous with φάντασ pa. The latter term is the one employed in the New Testament, Matthew, xiv., 26; Mark, vi., 49. In another passage, to express the same idea, the word πvεvua is used; as where Christ says, A spirit hath not flesh and bones, as yé see me have. Although he asserts that he himself appears in his risen body, yet, at the same time, he seems clearly to sanction the belief in the existence of ghosts or spirits, and to treat it as a well-known fact. We cannot bear, in this passage, the doctrine of accommodation. Let any one think for a moment of those solemn circumstances which so strongly demanded the utmost sincerity and truth on this very point. Would Christ have used such language to his anxiously-inquiring disciples, after having himself just returned from the world of spirits, if their belief had been a mere popular delusion? Would he thus have trifled with