the wondrous emblems and colossal confusions of his visions, there is seen slowly, yet triumphantly, rising, one head and form the form of a man, the head of a prince. It is the Messiah painting himself upon the sky of the future. This vision at once interpenetrates and overtops all the rest. Gathering from former prophets the separate rays of his glory which they saw, Daniel forms them into one kingly shape: this shape he brings before the Ancient of Days-to him assigns the task of defending the holy people-at his feet lays the keys of universal empire, and leaves him judging the quick and the dead. To Daniel, it was permitted to bring forth the first full birth of that great thought, which has ever since been the life of the church and the hope of the world.

ness.

And now, too, must this dignified counselor, this fearless saint, this ardent patriot, this blameless man, this magnificent dreamer, pass away from our page. He was certainly one of the most admirable of Scripture worthies. His character was formed in youth; it was retained in defiance of the seductions and of the terrors of a court. His genius, furnished with every advantage of education, and every variety of Pagan learning, was consecrated to God; the window of his prophecy, like that of his chamber, stood open toward Jerusalem. Over his death, as over that of the former three, there hangs a cloud of darkThe deaths of the patriarchs and the kings are recorded, but the prophets drop suddenly from their airy summits, and we see and hear of them no more. Was Isaiah sawn asunder? We can not tell. Did Jeremiah perish a martyr in Egypt? We can not tell. Did Ezekiel die in youth, crucified on the fiery cross of his own temperament? We can not tell. And how came Daniel, the prince of dreamers, to his end? and full of honors, die amid some happy Sabbath dream? Or did he depart, turning his eyes through his open window toward that beloved city where the hammers of reconstruction were already resounding? We can not tell. No matter: the messages are with us, while the men are away; the messages are certain, while the fate of the men is wrapt in doubt.

Did he, old

This

is in fine keeping with the severe reserve of Scripture, and with the character of its writers. Munificent and modest benefactors, they knocked at the door of the human family at night, threw in inestimable wealth, fled, and the sound of their feet, dying away in the distance, is all the tidings they have given of themselves.

CHAPTER XI.

THE MINOR PROPHETS.

BESIDE the "giant angels" of Hebrew song, appears a series of "stripling cherubs," who are commonly called the minor prophets. They inherit this name, because some, though by no means all of them, flourished at a later date than the others— because their prophecies are shorter-because their genius was of a humbler order, although still that order was high-and because, while their genuineness and inspiration are conceded, they have never bulked so largely in the eye of the Church. If the constellation of large stars described in the former chapter may be compared to the cross of the south, this now in sight reminds us of the Pleiades: it is a mass of minute particles of glory, which may be somewhat difficult to divide asunder.

These smaller predictions have all a fragmentary character, and a great occasional obscurity, which has annoyed translators and verbal critics. What is written in brief space is generally written in brief time; and what is written rapidly is often full of rude boldness, abrupt transitions, and violent inversions. Hence, too, a difficulty which touches our province more closely, the difficulty of defining the peculiarity of each of the prophets. They have left only footprints on that dim old Hebrew soil, and from these we must gather their strength, age, and size. Cuvier's task of inferring a mastodon from a bone, here requires renewal, The very tread, indeed, of some animals, bewrays them; but then, that is either gigantic, as the trample of elephants, or peculiar, as the mark which a rare and solitary bird

leaves upon the sand or snow. But here, many rare and solitary birds have left their prints, close beside each other, and how to distinguish between them?

The order in which the minor prophets appear in our version is not the correct one. We prefer that of Dr. Newcome, who places them according to the respective dates of their lives and predictions. According to his arrangement, the first is

JONAH.

All known about this prophet, besides what is told us in his book, is simply that he lived in or before the reign of Jeroboam the Second, and was born in Gath-hepher, in the tribe of Zebulun.

The story of Jonah, wondrous as it is, seems, like that of Cambuscan and Christabel, only "half told." It breaks off so abruptly, that you almost fancy that a part had been torn away from the close. "Jonah" possesses little pure poetry. That song of deliverance, said, by some absurd mistake of transcribers, to have issued from the whale's belly, instead of, as its every word imports, being sung upon the shore, is the only specimen of the prophet's genius. Although not uttered, it was perhaps conceived in the strangest prison where man ever breathed, fitly called the "belly of hell" (or the grave), where a deep within a deep, a ward within the "innermost main," confined the body without crushing the spirit of the fugitive prophet. It is a sigh of the sea—a "voice from the deeps," audible to this hour. The most expressive word, perhaps, in it all, is the pronoun "thy"-" thy billows and thy waves have passed over me." Think of God's ocean being felt as all pressing against that living dungeon, and demanding, in the thunder of all its surges, the fugitive of Tarshish, and yet, after exciting unspeakable terror and remorse, demanding him in vain! With what a complicated feeling of thankfulness and of reflex terror, he seems to have regarded his danger and his deliverance! And how the strange shrine he had found for groans unheard, vows

unwitnessed, and prayers broken by the lashing of the monster's tail, or by the grinding of his teeth, suggests the far off temple, the privileges of which he had never so much valued, as now, when, seen from the "belly of hell," it seemed the very gate of heaven!

But the poetry of the book of Jonah is not confined to this little strain. Every thing about it

"Suffers a sea change,

Into something rich and strange."

There is, first, the abrupt call to the Jewish prophet, to repair alone, and confront that great city, the name of which was a terror in his native land. It was a task which might have blanched the cheek of Isaiah, and chilled the blood of Ezekiel. They stood afar off as they predicted the destruction and torment of Israel's enemies; but Jonah must draw near, and encounter fierce looks of hatred, if not imprisonment and death. And yet, it was not without a severe struggle that he determined to disobey, for hitherto he had been a faithful servant of God. But, perhaps, some misbegotten dream had crossed his couch, stunned his soul with the noises of Nineveh, lost him amid its vast expanse, terrified him with its seas of faces, and so shaken his courage, that the next day he arose and fled from the breath of the Lord, crying out, If the semblance be so dreadful, what must be the reality? And westward to Joppa, looking not behind him, ran Jonah. While Balaam was the first impious prophet on record, Jonah is the first temporizer and trifler with the gift and mission of God. Irritable in disposition, perhaps indolent, perhaps self-seeking, certainly timid, he permits his temperament to triumph over his inspiration. It is the tale of thousands, who from the voice of the Lord which surrounds them like an eddying wind, and says, " Onward to duty, to danger, to glory, and immortality," flee to the Tarshish of pleasure or to that of business which is not theirs, or to that of selfish inaction, or to that of a not less selfish despair. It is well for them if a storm disturb their course, and drive them