sources ought in equity to be attended with a corresponding increase in the amount of influence exerted by those who represent the public. Some very substantial advantages would be the consequence of such an arrangement. The managers of good voluntary schools would gain substantial help and a new guarantee for the permanence of those schools. They would retain the power to give the distinctive religious teaching to which they attach the highest importance, and the choice of the teachers would practically remain with them. They would, it is true, no longer be able to leave the entire management in the hands of one man who could claim the institution as 'my school,' and they would be obliged to accept the co-operation of some of their neighbours with whom they had not been accustomed to work, while one or two of these nominees might possibly, though not very probably, be members of other communions than their own. But this would be in some respects a clear advantage, for it would make a larger number of the inhabitants cognisant of the real merits of the school, would help the denominational managers to become better acquainted with the feelings and wishes of the inhabitants, would secure more of the public confidence, and above all would entitle the institution more truly to the name and character of a 'National School.' The condition of a closer and more active co-operation of the State with the churches is not that the State shall make itself more denominational, but that the denominations shall make themselves more national, and shall vie with the School Boards in interpreting the true intellectual needs of the community, in providing generally for the supply of those needs, and in maintaining a high and constantly improving ideal of what a good school ought to be and to do.

The technical difficulty which has arisen in determining the legal status of the higher primary and evening continuation schools will prove to have had salutary effects if it brings into greater prominence the indispensable importance of maintaining those schools by some means or other in unimpaired efficiency, and if it makes Englishmen more conscious of the inadequacy of our present provision for carrying forward the best work of the elementary schools and enabling it to bear its legitimate fruit. We must not, however, rely too confidently on legislative machinery for the attainment of this object. A great step will be taken, it is true, if, after the present lawsuit shall have ended, regulations are made which will legalise the advanced work of the Board Schools, and place it on a stable foundation. But this alone will not suffice. Law and Government can, after all, do little more than give expression to the best public opinion of the time, and become the instruments for giving effect to the highest national ideals. And it is the formation of that public opinion and of those ideals which constitutes the chief task of reformers and philanthropists, of statesmen and public instructors.

The great need of our time is a stronger conviction of the value of trained intelligence in all departments of our social, professional, civic, and national life. The comfortable optimism which leads us to assume that British pluck, British industry, and British patriotism will in the long run carry everything before them has received some rude shocks of late, and will need to be superseded by a truer estimate of ourselves and of our national deficiencies. The theory that brain-power and scientific training are of less practical value than the dogged persistence which enables Englishmen to 'muddle through the problems of life, is not yet extinct among us, although daily experience is doing much to discredit or at least to modify it. We have reached, at the beginning of the twentieth century, a Pisgah height whence we can look across the Jordan of sectarian and political controversy, to the fair land of promise which stretches out beyond it. It is an animating prospect. In it we may descry a great Department of the State, representing all the noblest aspirations of the community, knowing how to take

giving aid and guidance to those who need it, leaving full liberty to those who know how to use it, and placing itself in such relations to churches, municipalities, universities, and voluntary helpers as will co-ordinate their work, prevent confusion of authority and waste of power, and obtain from each of them the best public service it is capable of rendering. And concurrently with improved administration in government, in philanthropy, and in local agencies, we may hope to witness a steady growth in the popular conception of true education-one which will keep ever before parents and teachers the right relation between the pursuit of learning and the claims of active life; so that, without prematurely considering the requirements of a trade or a profession, they shall seek first of all to cultivate the seriousness of purpose, the mental breadth, the strength and beauty of character, and the love of truth which lie at the basis of all real success in trades and professions alike.

It is because the newly devised continuation schools promise to play a very important part in the educational development of the future, and because they are calculated to do eminent service to a class of young persons for whom otherwise little or no provision has hitherto been made, that any question which affects the usefulness and the permanence of these institutions deserves for the moment to be regarded as one of exceptional public interest.

J. G. FITCH.

WHAT WERE THE CHERUBIM?

THE average reader will probably reply with prompt facility, 'A species of singing angel mentioned in the Te Deum.' Those who possess some elementary acquaintance with the Bible will be able to add that they were angelic beings placed at the Gate of Eden to guard it with a flaming sword when the First Pair were expelled from its enclosure. The Biblical scholar, however, will have much more diffidence in answering the question; because he is aware that the nature of the cherubim, their functions, office, and place in the celestial hierarchy, and, above all, their notional origin and development, are subjects that have for centuries engaged the attention of learned men without definite result. They meet us in the opening pages of revelation, are mentioned, it is said, no fewer than eightyfive times in the Old Testament, and are recognisable in the closing book of the New. Though the question before us has had a fascinating influence over inquiring minds, and has given scope for ingenious speculation in which the 'crank' has found it easy to run riot, it is one that has long baffled sober inquiry. Indeed the essays and theses and dissertations which have been written on the cherubim are as appalling in number as they are diversified in the strangeness of their conclusions. Even Josephus, who may have seen their symbolic forms with his own eyes, confesses, 'No one can say, or even conjecture, what kind of beings the cherubim were.'1 It is in fact only of quite recent years that the researches of explorers in the field of archæology, comparative religion, and philology have put us in possession of the information which enables us to formulate anything like a definite and satisfactory theory upon a question so obscure. We shall have to begin our investigation with a glance back into the childhood of religious belief.

(1) How did primeval man first come to form a conception of God? What were the phenomena of the natural world which first woke into consciousness his innate belief in a Spiritual Being other and mightier than himself, because superhuman? We can only conjecture. But we may well suppose that it was some familiar manifestation of a power outside himself, and not human, which was

Antiquities, viii. 3, § 3.

recognised by its wonderful effects, and yet could not be seen by the eyes or grasped by the hands of man-a power mighty in its operation and yet eluding sensible contact.2 Such a manifestation of invisible power is the wind-that marvellous agent which comes we know not whence and goes we know not whither, unfettered in its glorious independence-the most immaterial of material things everywhere felt but nowhere seen-rising in its strength, and then relaxing its efforts-sometimes rippling the tall grass, hissing through the dry reeds, or sporting gently in the whispering tree-tops-sometimes in its resistless course bowing the giants of the forest, or tearing them up by the roots and casting them headlong to the earth, like broken playthings, and even lashing the placid ocean monster into a raging fury. Who can wonder, then, if primeval man recognised in that unseen might the presence of a potent deity? We can almost sympathise with the error of

The poor Indian whose untutored mind
Sees God in clouds, or hears Him in the wind.

One of the native guides of Dr. Berendt through the wilds of Yucatan when the sound of a tropical tornado was heard approaching, exclaimed in awe-struck accents, 'Here comes the mighty wind of the Great Father (Nohoch Tat).' 3

Now the Hebrews themselves in early times seem to have been no exception to the rule that primitive peoples conceive their deity to manifest his presence in the moving, potent, life-giving wind, which walking unseen sways all things earthly at its will. The Christianised Assyrian Tatian quotes an unknown tragic poet as saying:

A breeze is the most honourable chariot of the gods.4

95

It is actually the vehicle in which the earliest theophany or revelation of the Deity to man is made in the pages of Scripture. Adam and his wife 'heard the voice of Yahveh Elôhîm walking in the garden in the wind (ruach) of the day. When He answers Job, it is out of the awe-inspiring storm-wind. In the picturesque imagery of Moses' Song of Triumph over the Egyptians he says to Yahveh, 'With the blast of Thy nostrils the waters were piled up. didst blow with Thy wind [or breath, ruach], the sea covered them.'" The one Hebrew word, as in these passages, is used for the Spirit of God and for the wind, and the two ideas are so closely associated that it sometimes becomes a matter of difficulty to the translator to determine which word in English he should employ. Indeed the

Thou

wind, as we have seen, was regarded as being the mighty breath which proceeded from the mouth of Yahveh.9 'An east wind shall come, the breath of the Lord.' 10 Some scholars even venture to maintain that the name of Yahveh (which we arbitrarily pronounce Jehovah) may be interpreted as meaning the Storm-God, connecting the word through the Hebrew form Yahu with the Assyrian Yahu, Ya-u, and these with the Assyrian ha-u, ha-iv, wind, from the Semitic hawa, to blow or breathe, as in the Arabic.1" Professor Budde 12 notes that the meteorologic character of Yahveh pervades the Old Testament writings. He appears in the storm at the giving of the Law on Sinai.13 He rides on the storm to the Deborah battle.14 He reveals Himself in the storm to Elijah on Horeb 15 after having consumed by His lightning Elijah's sacrifice on Carmel. 16 Poetic descriptions also picture Him as revealing Himself in the storm (for example, Psalm xviii., and Habakkuk iii.). In process of time, however, the ideas of the Hebrews about their God would become exalted and purified, and the wind would no longer be regarded as a part of His essential nature, but rather as the mere vehicle or physical medium which He made use of in descending to earth or in passing onwards to His mountain or chosen sanctuary. In the sublime words of Nahum, 17 Yahveh hath His way in the whirlwind and in the storm, and the clouds are the dust of His feet.'

(2) When man in the mythopœic stage desired to give a visible shape and embodiment to the 'sightless wind,' what symbols from nature would best serve his purpose? The two attributes which he would want to bring into prominence were force and swiftness. To find these qualities conspicuous in one and the same creature he would naturally have recourse for his symbol to the figure of some large and powerful bird, like the vulture or the eagle, which swoops from the sky on airy pinions and carries off its prey with resistless force. Or, otherwise, he might form the ideal figure of some compound creature, such as a winged ox or bull or lion, which would exhibit a combination of the two required attributes of fleetness and power. And this is what poets actually did. Æschylus represents Okeanos as travelling through the æther, borne by a monstrous bird, swift-winged and fourfooted. 18 The centaurs, half men, half horses, the offspring of Nephele (Cloud) and Ixion (Sun), were originally cloud and storm