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plain, unlettered, but honest mind, may draw from scripture, over and above that jejune frame-work of words which it is now the fashion to identify with the whole counsel of God.

Again

"This was his constant admonition to all the brethren who came to him-to believe in the Lord, and to love him; to preserve themselves from evil thoughts and carnal pleasures, &c., as it is written in the Proverbs, not to be seduced by a full meal;' to flee vain-glory; to pray continually; to sing before and after sleep; to say by heart the Scripture commandments, and to remember the lives of the saints; so that the soul, being warned by the one, might shape itself into an imitation of the other......Let every one take daily account of his deeds by day and night; if he has sinned in aught, let him amend; if not, let him not boast, but persevere in what is holy, not be negligent, not condemn his neighbour, nor again acquit himself (as the blessed apostle Paul has said) before the Lord come, who searcheth what is secret. For it often happens, that we do not understand ourselves in what we do; we do not know, but the Lord detects all things."

And, in his last address to the brethren before his death, he says"Keep yourselves pure from them, [the Arians and Meletians,] holding safe the tradition of the fathers; and, above all, that pious faith in our Lord Jesus Christ which ye have learned from the Scriptures, and have often been reminded of by me.”

And as the doctrine of Christ's divinity, so those also of the atonement and of inherent grace are clearly and practically insisted on in Antony's theology, as I have already had opportunity of shewing.

The Romish tenet of purgatory, in its popular acceptation, is plainly, though indirectly, contravened in the second, not to say the first also, of those visions related above.

In his last instructions before his death, we have a clear protest against the practice of preserving relics, which he condemns, be it observed, as in his age not a catholic, but a local custom, taken from heathen Egypt, though, after all, it was there observed more in honour of the dead than to advantage the living. This, however, introduces us to the account of his last illness and death, which follows the extract just made. The address, of which it is part, was spoken when he was on a sort of visitation of his brethren, as it may be called. The narrative proceeds:—

"The brethren, urging him to remain with them, and there breathe his last, he would not hear of it, as for other reasons, which were evident, even though he did not mention them, so especially because of the custom of the Egyptians in respect to the dead. For the bodies of good men, especially of holy martyrs, they delight to enfold in linen cloths; and, instead of burying, to place them upon biers, and keep them within their houses, thinking thus to honour the departed. Antony had ap plied even to bishops on this subject, begging them to admonish their people; and had rebuked laymen, and urged it against women, saying, that the practice was consistent neither with received rule, nor at all with religion. The bodies of patriarchs and prophets are preserved to this day in sepulchres; and the Lord's body itself was laid in a tomb, and a stone at the entrance kept it hidden till he rose the third day.' By such arguments he shewed the impropriety of not burying the dead, however holy; for what can be holier than the Lord's body? And he persuaded many to bury for the future, with thanksgivings to the Lord for such good instruction.

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"Antony then, being aware of all this, and fearing lest the same should be done to himself, bidding farewell to his brethren, made hastily for his customary dwelling; and, after a few months, fell ill. Then calling to him two who lived with him for fifteen years past-that is, since his old age had required assistance, he said to them, I, as it is written, go the way of my fathers; for I perceive I am called by the Lord. You, then, watch and be sober, and do not forfeit the reward of your long

austerities; but as those who have made a beginning, be diligent to hold fast your purpose. I know the assaults of the evil spirits, how fierce they are, yet how powerless. Fear them not; rather breathe the spirit of Christ, and believe in him always. Live as if dying daily; take heed to yourselves, and remember the admonitions you have heard from me. Have no fellowship with the schismatics, nor at all with the heretical Arians...... Be diligent the rather to join yourselves, first of all, to the Lord, next, to the saints, that "after death they may receive you as friends and intimates into the eternal habitations." Such be your thoughts, such your spirit; and, if you have any care for me, remember me as a father. Do not let them carry my body

One of my reasons for com

into Egypt, lest they keep it stored up in their houses. ing to this mountain was to hinder this. You know how I have ever blamed those who have given in to the practice, and charged them to cease from it. Bury, then, my body in the earth, in obedience to my word, so that no one may know the place, except yourselves. In the resurrection of the dead it will be restored to me incorruptible by the Saviour. Distribute my garments as follows:-Let Athanasius, the bishop, have one sheep-skin and the rug I sleep on, which was given me new from him, and has grown old with me. Let Serapion, the bishop, have the other sheepskin. As to the hair-shirt, keep it for yourselves. And now, my children, farewell; Antony is going, and will soon be no more.'

"After these words, they kissed him. Then he stretched himself out on the bed, and seemed to see friends come to him, and to be very joyful at the sight, (to judge from the cheerfulness of his countenance as he lay ;) and so he breathed his last, and was gathered to his fathers. His attendants, as he had bid them, wrapped his body up, and buried it. As to the two friends who were bequeathed a sheep-skin a-piece of the blessed Antony, and his tattered rug, each of them makes much of the memorial, and keeps it safe. For when he looks at it, he thinks he sees Antony; and when he puts it on, he is, as it were, carrying about him his instructions with great joy."

Such was in life and death the first founder of the monastic system; and this example, both as seen, and far more in the narrative of his biographer, was like a fire kindled in Christendom, which "many waters could not quench." Not that I would panegyrize any popular form of religion, considering that its popularity implies some condescension to the weaknesses of human nature; yet, if I must choose between the fashionable doctrines of one age and another, certainly I shall prefer that which requires self-denial, and creates hardihood and contempt of the world, to some of the "persuasions" now in esteem, which rob faith of all its substance, its grace, its nobleness, and its strength, and excuse self-indulgence by the arguments of spiritual pride, self-confidence, and security; which, in short, make it their boast that theirs is much more comfortable than that ancient creed which, together with joy, leads men to continual smiting on the breast, and prayers for pardon, and looking forward to the judgment-day, as to an event really to happen to themselves individually.

The following is the statement afforded by his biographer of the effect produced by Antony in Egypt, even in his life-time; which, rhetorical as it may seem, is, after all, a correct representation of the apparent change in the world wrought by his example, and affords a pleasing hope that, out of so much of outward manifestation, there was much of the substance of religion within.

Among the mountains there were monasteries, as if tabernacles filled with divine choirs, singing, studying, fasting, praying, exulting in the hope of things to come, and working for the purposes of alms, having love and harmony one towards another. And truly it was given one there to see a peculiar country of piety and righteousNeither injurer nor injured was there, nor vexations of the tax-collector; but a multitude of exercised men, whose one feeling was towards holiness. So that

ness.

a stranger, seeing the monasteries and their order, would be led to cry out, How beauteous are thy homes, O Jacob; and thy tabernacles, O Israel, as shady groves, as a garden on a river, as tents which the Lord has pitched, and as cedars by the waters.'"

I cannot conclude more appropriately than by Herbert's lines on the subject. (Church Militant, v. 37-48.)

"To Egypt first she [Religion] came; where they did prove

Wonders of anger once, but now of love.

The Ten Commandments there did flourish, more
Than the ten bitter plagues had done before.

Holy Macarius and great Antony

Made Pharoah, Moses; changing the history.
Goshen was darkness; Egypt, full of lights;
Nilus, for monsters, brought forth Israelites.
Such power hath mighty baptism to produce,
For things mishapen, things of highest use.
How dear to me, O God, thy counsels are!
Who may with thee compare?"

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1 PROCEED now with the sixth day of creation, which includes Cuvier's age of palæotheria and age of mammoths.

6. Age of Palæotheria. On the sixth day "God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle (behemoth) and creeping thing, and beast of the earth (carnivora) after his kind; and it was so." In the strata above the coarse limestone the animal population has a very remarkable character in the abundance and variety of certain genera of pachydermata (behemoth) which are unknown amongst the quadrupeds now existing, and the characteristics of which are more or less nearly related to the tapir, rhinoceros, and camel. The genera, whose discovery is entirely due to me, are (says Cuvier) the palæotheria, the lophiodonta, the anoplotheria, the anthracotheria, the cheropotami, and the adapis; they contain nearly forty species, all of which are now quite extinct. This great number of pachydermata is the more remarkable, as the ruminantia which are now so numerous in the genera of stags and gazelles, and which attain so vast a size in those of oxen, giraffes, and camels, occur but rarely in these strata, and under equivocal circumstances. With the palæotheria we find carnivora, glires, a great variety of birds, crocodiles, and tortoises. The whole of this population, which may be termed that of the middle age-this first great production of mammalia has been entirely destroyed; and, in fact, wherever we discover their remains, there are above them vast marine deposits, so that the sea must have overwhelmed the countries which these races inhabited, and have covered them for a very considerable period.

Age of Mammoths, or rather of ruminantia. When the sea retired again, it yielded vast surfaces to a new population of animals: (this is the third or antediluvian creation, and was contemporary with man.) It consisted of some new kinds of pachydermata (behemoth), the

mammoth, mastodon, elephant, rhinoceros, hippopotamus, accompanied by innumerable horses, and many large carnivora; but the distinguishing characteristic of this period was the prevalence of ruminantia. Ruminating animals (says Cuvier) were now infinitely more numerous than at the epoch of the palæotheria; indeed, their numerical proportion must have differed but little from what it now is, although many of the species were quite different. This alteration in the character of the animals was undoubtedly made in reference to man, who was now created, and required the services of "the beast of the field" or pasture.

The various changes on the earth's surface and in its atmosphere, and the successive manifestations of animal life, are comprehended in a brief and rapid outline (Gen i.); but the creation of man, in the latter part of the sixth period, claims for itself a distinct account (Gen. ii.); the particulars of his history,-how Adam was formed out of the dust of the ground, and Eve taken out of his side, together with the creation of the new animals and vegetation which were more immediately designed for their use,-these particulars are brought under our especial notice and with a formal introduction :

This is the account of the heavens and the earth at their creation,
In the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens :
Even before any shrub of the field was in the earth,

And before any plant of the field sprung up;
When the Lord God rained not on the earth,
And there was not a man to till the ground;
But there went up a mist from the earth,

And watered the whole face of the ground.

Then the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground-And out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food-And out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field and every fowl of the air, and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them; and Adam gave names to all cattle (behemoth, the newer pachydermata), and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field (the numerous ruminantia). The distinction between the two creations of animals on the sixth day will appear more decided if we observe that the cattle (behemoth, or older pachydermata) and the beasts of the earth (carnivora) in the first chapter were created before man; whilst the cattle (behemoth, or more recent pachydermata) and the beasts of the field (or ruminantia) in the second chapter were formed subsequently

to man.

Modern objectors to Scripture assert that the first and second chapters of Genesis give contradictory accounts of the process of creation (Horne's Introduction, vol. i. p. 538); but the remark is wholly irrelevant, if (as I suppose) those chapters contain distinct accounts of different events. Writers also of the Rationalist or Neologistic school of interpretation have applied this diversity of statement to establish their own peculiar views. "The younger Rosenmüller," says Bishop Blomfield, "openly espouses the opinion of Spinoza (in bringing down the Pentateuch to the time of Ezra), and argues, after some authors

whom he quotes, that the book of Genesis is palpably compiled from two distinct documents, a striking example of which, he says, is to be found in the second chapter, where an account is given of the creation of man, entirely different from that which is contained in the first chapter; as if it were credible, that a compiler should have been so careless as to make one account of the creation the sequel to another quite different from it, in a succinct and compendious history, intended to satisfy the curiosity of the Israelites. For my own part, I can see nothing in the second chapter of Genesis, from v. 4 to v. 7 inclusive, which may not justly be considered as a recapitulation of some particulars, and an epexegesis of others." (Tradition of the Promise, p. 123.) For farther observations on these documents, see my "Remarks on the book of Genesis" in the ninth number of this magazine.

Cuvier, speaking geologically, makes no mention of MAN at the era of mammoths (the antediluvian age), because he saw reason for believing that no genuine fossil human bones had yet been discovered. Prof. Buckland also supports this prevalent opinion in his " Reliquiæ Diluviana"; and he objects to the instance in the fissures at Koestritz, because the human bones, though associated with the fossil rhinoceros and hyena, are mixed up with so many species of recent animals, the horse, ox, deer, hare, rabbit, owl, cock, and other birds. But if we allow (vid. Noachic Creation) that only harmless or domestic beasts and fowls were preserved with Noah, the animals mentioned may have been contained in the ark, and therefore claim to be considered both as antediluvian and as recent species. Indeed, this is the only way of accounting for the horse, ox, deer, hare, and rabbit, which are found associated with the fossil hyenas in his own Kirkdale This explanation, which I have derived from Scripture, affords a very simple solution of the whole difficulty. Dr. Buckland, though evidently inclined the other way, seems hardly to have satisfied his mind on the subject: he says "In one quarry (at Koestritz), the human bones were found eight feet below those of the rhinoceros, and twenty-six below the surface. It is highly probable, from the admixture of the bones of so many species of recent animals with the human remains in the gypsum quarries, that both these are of later origin than those in the limestone; they appear, I think, to have been introduced, at a subsequent period, into the diluvial loam, which had before contained the more ancient bones and pebbles; but by what means, or at what precise period of the postdiluvian era, remains yet to be ascertained." (Reliq. Diluv. p. 168.)

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The general convulsions of the earth, with the extinction of whole races of animals at widely distant intervals, though not at all accounted for, may be illustrated by the examples of the deluge and the conflagration. Of the former revolution we have a well authenticated and circumstantial history: "And the Lord said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth; both man, and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth me that I have made them." (Gen. vi. 7.) Of the latter revolution, which will occasion another extinction of all existing races, there is as clear a prophetic account. At that time, man's connexion with the

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