The what manner it existed; and they were not possessed of that subtilty of language, which enables men to speak with plausibility on subjects abstruse, and remote from the apprehension of the senses, and to cover their ignorance with learned disputation. condition, the form, the habitation of departed spirits were therefore concealed from the Hebrews equally with the rest of mankind. Nor did revelation afford them the smallest assistance on this subject; not, perhaps, because the divine Providence was disposed to withhold this information from them, but because the present condition of the human mind renders it incapable of receiving it. For, when the understanding contemplates things distinct from body and matter, from the want of just ideas, it is compelled to have recourse to such as are false and fictitious, and to delineate the incorporeal world by things corporeal and terrestrial. Thus, observing that after death the body returned to the earth, and that it was deposited in a sepulchre, after the manner which has just been described, a sort of popular notion prevailed among the Hebrews, as well as among other nations, that the life which M 2 which succeeded the present was to be passed beneath the earth: and to this notion even the sacred prophets were obliged to allude occasionally, if they wished to be understood by the people on this subject. Hence the meaning is evident, when the deceased are said to "descend into the pit ", "to the nether parts of the earth, to the gates and chambers of death, to the stony 66 places, to the sides, to the gates of the " caverns ;" when it is said, that "the grave "has swallowed them up, and closed its "mouth upon them ";" that " 22: they lie "down in the deep 23; immersed in a desert place, in the gulf, in thick darkness, in "the land of darkness and the shadow of "death, wild, hideous, where all is disorder 21 also,שחת 712, or 782, Job, xxxiii. 18. PSAL. XXVIII. 1. & passim. nnnn 178, or ninan 178, Ezek. xxxi. 14. xxxii. 18. & PSAL. passim. yw, Isai. xxxviii. 10. my nin, Job, xxxviii. 17. PSAL. ix. 14. 1, PROV. vii. 27. 71 138, ISAI. xiv. 19. 1 '7', ISAI. xiv. 15. EZEK. Xxxii. 23. Nw 77, Job, xvii. 16. 22, PSAL. cxli. 7. also ISAI. v. 14. 81 'D, Psal. lxix. 16. See 23, PSAL. lxix. 16. lxxxviii. 7. man, JOB, iii. 14 EZEK. xxvi. 20. " and " and darkness: and darkness, as it were, " instead of light diffuseth its beams 24." The poets of other nations, amidst all their fictions, have yet retained a congenial picture of the habitations of the dead: thus the tragic poet has admirably described the deep course of Acheron : Through dreary caves cut in the rugged rock, Where reigns the darkness of perpetual hell 25, But how grand and magnificent a scene is depicted by the Hebrew poets from the same materials, in which their deceased heroes and kings are seen to advance from the earth! Figure to yourselves a vast, dreary, dark, sepulchral cavern, where the kings of the nations lie, each upon his bed of dust "7, the arms of each beside him, his sword under his head 28, and the graves of their numerous 24 I remember, though I cannot refer to the passage, some Arabian writer considers the nocturnal darkness as an emanation from an opaque body, just as the light of day proceeds from the sun. S. H. 25 CIC. Tusc. Quæst. 1. 26 ISAI. xiv. 9, 18. EZEK. Xxxij. 19, 21, &c. 27 ISAI. Įvii. 2. EZEK. xxxii. 25. Jnxn, the cell which receives the sarcophagus. 28 EZEK. Xxxii. 27. See 1 MACC. xiii. 29. M 3 hosts hosts round about them 2: Behold! the king of Babylon is introduced, they all rise and go forth to meet him; and receive him as he approaches ! "Art thou also come down "unto us? Art thou become like unto us? "Art thou cut down and withered in thy "strength, O thou destroyer of the na"tions!"—But I reluctantly refrain.—It is not for me, nor indeed for human ability, to explain these subjects with a becoming dignity. You will see this transcendent imagery, yourselves, better and more completely displayed in that triumphal song which was composed by Isaiah 30 (the first of all poets for sublimity and elegance) previous to the death of the king of Babylon. Ezekiel 3 also has nobly illustrated the same scene, with similar machinery, in the last prophecy concerning the fall of Pharaoh ; that remarkable example of the terrific, which is indeed deservedly accounted the peculiar excellence of this Prophet. 29 EZEK. Xxxii. 22, 23, 24. 30 ISAL. xiv. 4-27. 31 EZEK. Xxxii. 18-32. LECTURE VIII. OF POETIC IMAGERY FROM SACRED TOPICS. Imagery, which is borrowed from the rites and ceremonies of religion, peculiarly liable to obscurity and mistake -Instances of expressions which appear uncommonly harsh; and of others, the principal elegance of which would be lost, unless we adverted to the nature of the sacred rites-The exordium of the hundred and fourth Psalm explained. THE present disquisition concerning the poetical imagery of the Hebrews was undertaken, Gentlemen, principally with a view of guarding you against an error which is apt to mislead those who peruse without sufficient attention and information writings of so old a date; namely, that of accounting vulgar, mean, or obscure, passages which were probably regarded among the most perspicuous and sublime by the people to whom they were addressed. Now, if with respect even to that imagery which is borrowed from objects of nature and of common life (of which we have just been treating), such a caution was proper, it will surely be still more necessary with respect to that which M 4 |