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the passage reads, not, en to somati. In our judgment the scope of the passage implies, that man is to receive for the things done through or by the body, as the agent or actor, and not that we are to receive our recompense in the body as the place or recipient of reward or chastisement. We apprehend indeed, that were any one to find the same phraseology in a classical writer, or in any other passage of holy writ, where the interests of a theory were not at stake, he would spontaneously render the passage substantially as our translators have rendered it. Though we are far from laying claim to special skill in philology, it seems to us that the mode of rendering this passage which we have thus objected to, is totally indefensible. We have no doubt that the supplied words, or some of like import, are needful to express in our language the idiom of the Greek. On grammatical, on logical, on rhetorical grounds, we are alike constrained to believe that man's appearance before the judgment-seat of Christ, where the perfect award indicated in the passage under examination will be rendered, will take place after this mortal tabernacle is dissolved.

But what are our notions of the judgment thus administered? How are men to appear before the tribunal of Christ? How receive the recompense mentioned in the passage referred to? We answer, man will appear before that tribunal, when his spirit, crossing the threshold of the unseen world, sees that Christ doth in verity reign. The Saviour may or may not have a shining throne set up, like that which the revelator in vision beheld. Outward glory is but the trappings of royalty; the main fact is, that Christ still lives, that he is seen to be a risen Lord, and that he is beheld as the Judge of the living and the dead. While men dwell on earth too many of them have but indistinct conceptions of immortality. Time seems to them every thing; eternity enters but little into account. If not absolutely skeptical as to the resurrection of the dead, their ideas of another life are more shadowy than Ossian's ghosts, and exert but little influence on the life. But when this earthly tabernacle is dropped, man as he enters the invisible world sees that immortality is no dream. He now knows that there is a God. He discovers the ground of those feelings of answerableness which he could not wholly

stifle on earth. He sees that he is accountable. If he has enjoyed great spiritual privileges, and abused them or failed to use them, he will experience the truth of that saying of the Saviour: "And that servant who knew his Lord's will, and prepared not himself, neither did according to his will, shall be beaten with many stripes." If reared in heathenism, and deprived of the priceless blessings of divine revelation, he has yet proved unfaithful to the light he had, he shall be beaten with few stripes. If, at the hour when man enters the presence of the Redeemer, all the recollections, experiences, and deeds of his life, rush simultaneously on his memory, he will regard them, not as he was wont to on earth, with reference to their pleasurableness, but with respect to their allowableness or sinfulness in the sight of a holy God.

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We have put the matter hypothetically in the last remark; but who does not know that the best mental philosophers agree in the belief that no portion of our mental furniture, convictions, or experiences is ever wholly lost? Without troubling the reader with an array of opinions on this point, we are content to refer to the arguments of Sir William Hamilton, of Isaac Taylor in his World of Mind, and of Coleridge. They contend,-and in this they but echo the opinions of scores of other metaphysicians, that the mind is an indivisible substance; what it attains it must needs preserve. Though a large share of our mental impressions lie latent, they are not wholly obliterated; and facts occur from time to time to prove, that, stored away in the secret chambers of memory are thousands of notions, ideas, and recollections, which are liable at any moment to be awakened to consciousness. Some of our readers have read that essay of De Quincey in which he compares the human mind to a palimpsest. As however some one may not have the points of that essay in memory, we will recall the matter to his knowledge. A palimpsest was simply an ancient parchment, from which the characters originally written on it had been erased. Before the invention of paper, materials for writing on were both scarce and dear. In the dark ages the monks, deprived of other resources, often took

7 Luke, xii. 47.

ancient parchments, and erased the old writing. Perhaps an antiquated scroll contained originally a speech of Demosthenes, or a philosophical dissertation by Plato. Some devout Christian, indifferent to the fame of those writers, yet having a just zeal for the word of God, obliterates the old characters, and substitutes therefor a portion of the Gospels, or one of the sacred Epistles. The precious manuscript is deposited in some monastery, and a century or two after, some credulous monk, guiltless of Greek, and ignorant of the treasures which that scroll contains, erases the last-recorded characters, and writes instead some ridiculous legend. Ages roll away, but finally some keen eye, discovers beneath the monkish chronicle traces of an earlier record. The legend is erased, and chemical substances, skilfully employed, bring out the sacred record; that in turn copied, and the characters erased, still other chemical appliances bring out with tolerable distinctness the original record, and the burning sentences of Demosthenes, or flowing periods of Plato, stand before the eyes.

Now, says De Quincey, the human mind is a palimpsest. Of course this mere affirmation, unaccompanied by corroborative facts, is to be deemed the speculation of a lively fancy. But he details curious facts. He narrates incidents in the experience of persons who had come to the very verge of death by drowning. They aver that when they stood almost on the threshold of the unseen world, after the first feeling of an intolerable pressure on the brain had past, they realized the strange sensation of having all the facts of their life-long experience marshalled before them as in a moment. Nor did these matters seem to come in succession, but one remarkable peculiarity was their simultaneousness. Every thought, occurrence, emotion, experience, seemed pictured at once on the vision. We have known of an instance of a somewhat similar character, where a person was in extreme peril of death from another cause. And if such cases warrant the opinion that the soul, having such ability to gather up the sum of its experiences, ere it leaves its earthly tabernacle, will lose nothing which it has ever attained; may we not believe that these recollections will be as distinct, when it has fairly crossed that mysterious border which separates time from eternity? And if so, with what emotions must

the spirit enter the presence of its Lord! It sees its deeds with more than life-like vividness; every sin is beheld with the freshness of its original commission; every falsehood, every mean, cowardly, ignoble act, finds a tongue, and with a louder than trumpet-blast, upbraids the soul. In such a case Christ need not utter a word. A single glance at us, if our lives have been corrupt, may rebuke us, as emphatically as that mournful look of old which wrung from Peter such scalding tears. And if one's life has been pure, his impulses noble, the very consciousness of integrity will be seen reflected from the Saviour's face, and the ear will hear the plaudit, "Well done, good and faithful servant! enter thou into the joy of thy Lord."

With this view of the matter, we are not obliged to think of judgment as delayed to some remote age in the depths of coming eternity, and to be administered at the same period to all mankind. Soul after soul, generation after generation, pass to the unseen world, and stand before the judgmentseat of Christ. To some, as to Paul, and doubtless to the other apostles, and to millions since, it has proved an hour of triumph when they met their Lord. To others it has been an hour of agony. The deepest mortification, the severest mental anguish, experienced on earth, may have been trifling compared with the shame that overwhelms them, when they stand face to face with their Judge. Not, be it remembered, but that this agony will be overruled for good; for it will be the means of leading the sinful and heedless to reformation; but while it lasts it may be more terrible than a thousand deaths. Thank God however, there is no necessity that any man now living on earth should experience its poignancy. Salvation can be obtained here. The Scriptures abound with exhortations to men to obtain it at once. Who has forgotten their emphatic cry,-Behold now is the accepted time; behold now is the day of salvation.

M. G.

ART. VII.

Literary Notices.

1. The History of Herodotus. A new English Version, Edited with copious Notes and Appendices, illustrating the History and Geography of Herodotus, from the most Recent Sources of information; and Embodying the Chief Results, Historical and Ethnographical, which have been obtained in the progress of Cuneiform and Hieroglyphical discovery. By George Rawlinson, M. A., assisted by Col. Sir Henry Rawlinson, K. C. B., and Sir J. G. Wilkinson, F. R. S. Volume I. New York: D. Appleton & Company. 1859. 8vo. pp. 563.

MODERN Scholarship has produced few works of a more inviting nature than this. Especially welcome will it prove to those who would lay a broad and secure foundation for historical learning. The sources of history have not inaptly been compared to those of great rivers difficult of access, laborious to explore, and very perplexing to determine. Herodotus wears the cognomen of the "Father of history"-he is its real source. To understand him, not merely in his facts, but in their accompaniments of locality, date, race, philosophy, religion and government, is to begin at the beginning of history. It is not perhaps too much to say, that modern scholars understand Herodotus better than he understood himself! That is to say, numerous facts which to him were isolated, having only particular significance, are now seen in their relations with other facts not known to him-are now seen to be illustrative of philosophies and general ideas not fully appreciated by him. It hence happens that in the work of Rawlinson, the pages of Herodotus fill comparatively but a small place. In five hundred and sixty-three pages room is found for but one Book of Herodotus, and this embracing but one hundred and fifty-eight pages; and of these, full one-third of the space is filled with foot-notes! In the volume before us, (the whole work is to embrace four volumes), the first three chapters give the life of Herodotus, the sources from which he compiled his history, and his merits and defects as a historian. Then follows the First Book of the History. Eleven essays in smaller type succeed; in which light is thrown on questions of chronology, and physical and political geography, on the ten tribes of Persia, the religion of the Persians, the early history of Babylonia, and the great Assyrian Empire, on the Later Babylonians, of the religion of the two great ancient empires, and on the ethical affinities of the nations of Western Asia. Maps and illustrations

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