progress of a Church whose spirit is peace, knowledge, and the diffusion of happiness. At length a yet more formidable trial arose; the evil which had been begun by heresy was consummated by usurpation; Egypt was followed by Rome. The licentious controversies of minds, made insubordinate by the wildness and the calamities of the time, were followed by their appropriate punish ́ment, in the form of a total deprivation of freedom. The birthright of the Faith was seized for the building of the great Babylonian fabric which assumed to be the centre of universal empire. The divine attributes were claimed by a mortal authority. From this period darkness fell upon mankind. The Church existed but in the few scattered hearts which Providence, true to the promise that it should never utterly fail, preserved as the sacred seed of the future. Ignorance and persecution were thenceforth the character and the business of human existence. The earth was silent, but when it echoed the mandate of the Pontiff for the fall or rise of some vassal kingdom; and dark, but when it caught the blaze of some new superstition, flaming from the gorgeous altar of Rome. Thus sank into night the Second Cycle of the world.

THE THIRD CYCLE.

BOOK III.

CHAPTER XLIV.

THE SECOND ADAM.

THE three Cycles perfectly correspond, in their leading facts, and in the order of those facts. But each exhibits a peculiarity, which, however, only gives additional evidence of the nature of the whole, as a providential system.

All the features of the first Cycle are direct appeals to the senses. Its characteristic may be pronounced materiality. Thus, to Adam happiness is represented by an actual garden of luxuriance and loveliness.-His discovery of the absence of mental companionship is by an actual display of the inferior creation-knowledge and immortality are represented by trees-the tempter is known only as a serpent-the sense of sin is nakedness, and forgiveness is clothing by the hand of Heaven-redemption is a combat, in which the

head of the serpent is to be bruised by the heel of his victor. The faith of Cain is tried by an actual sacrifice, the rejection of Cain is an actual banishment-the Divine approval of Enoch is by his actual transfer to the skies-the promise of safety is by an actual ark, the punishment by an actual deluge, the sign of forgiveness and protection by an actual rainbow-the dominion of the earth is by an actual possession. All is visible and tangible.

The second Cycle addresses itself in part to the senses, and in part to the mind. Its characteristic is a combination of materiality and spirituality. The original call to Abraham's obedience is a direct command that he should leave his country; the Divine favour is shown by a gift of offspring; the Divine trial of his faith is a command to sacrifice that offspring; the blessing is by a promise of territory, and a numerous race. Moses is summoned by the visible glory to lead an actual nation, by actual miracles, into the possession of lands and cities. The national homage is embodied in one great temple, with a ceremonial strongly addressed to the senses. The punishment of the nation is by actual wars, chastisements, and captivities. The final withdrawal of the Divine protection is by the actual overthrow of the national government, and total scattering of the people. Thus far, all is visibility. But,

connected with this exterior, there is an interior spirituality. The passage of the Red Sea is a baptism; the Passover a spiritual pledge. The whole Temple bears a spiritual reference to the Messiah-in whom was the was the dwelling of the Its ceremonial has a spiritual

Divine presence.

reference to his acts and qualities. Its High Priest and the lamb that was sacrificed on its altar, have an equal reference to the Great Sacrificer, who offered up himself for the sins of all.

It

The Third Cycle is wholly spiritual. It requires no pilgrimage, or personal hazard. tasks only the obedience of the heart. Temporal possessions are not among its promises of reward. It is destitute of all the established ritual of the two former Cycles. It has neither the sacrifice of the Patriarchal, nor the ceremonial of the Jewish. For all the rites of both, it has but two, sprinkling with water, and tasting bread and wine-Baptism and the Lord's Supper-rites of the highest spiritual efficacy, but externally of the simplest possible kind. The Church itself is but partially an object of the senses. It is not one great commonwealth, compacted under one head, as in the Patriarchal day, nor gathered within one region, as in the Jewish. It is scattered through all nations; without any place of general assemblage, any general temple, any general government. Its only bond is spiritual allegiance; its only

Temple, wherever it can worship; its only law, the precepts of the Scriptures; its only government, the directing power of Heaven.

That three vast series, so strongly distinguished in principle, should coincide, with such perfect exactness of event, is among the finest evidences of Divine design. That the facts of the Christian Cycle fully bear out this coincidence, will require scarcely more than a brief enumeration.

It is to be previously observed, that this result, in the third Cycle, implies a more delicate and difficult contrivance than in the former examples. The Jewish Cycle could refer to but one predecessor. The Christian refers to two, the Jewish and the Patriarchal; and this, not simply by retaining the mere outline, which in both is the same, but by combining their discrepancies, and exhibiting the extraordinary achievement, of a series of events, expressly belonging to the manners, exigencies, and revolutions, of the last eighteen hundred years, and whose principle is spirituality, giving the complete texture of a series of events expressly belonging to the circumstances of two thousand years before, whose principle was a mixture of spirituality and materiality; and at the same time giving the equally complete texture of a series of events, expressly belonging to two thousand years earlier still, the events of a state of society altogether different from any that