ness at its beginning were to be no obstacle to its ultimately reaching a greatness and beauty suitable to its nature.

The peculiarity of the allegory thus is: 1. That agents and objects in one sphere or relation are used to represent men in another. 2. The agency in the descriptive part is always represented as already exerted. 3. The conditions and acts ascribed to the representatives are in accordance with their nature. A vineyard is cleared of stones, fenced, planted with a vine, and furnished with a winepress and a tower; and on being abandoned because of its yielding wild instead of good grapes, is divested of its hedge, exposed to the incursion of beasts, and overrun with briers and thorns. A cedar is planted by water, grows to a great height, extends its branches on every side, and becomes conspicuous and beautiful; the birds build in its boughs, and the beasts rest in its shade: but when it is delivered to the woodman to be cut down, the beasts withdraw from its shade, and the birds from its branches; it falls with a crash; its boughs are broken, and its leaves scattered to the winds; and it lies a deformed and worthless ruin. 4. It sometimes uses other figures as its auxiliaries in its descriptions. 5. It is preceded or followed by an indication of the persons whom it is employed to represent.

What is the allegory? What is its first characteristic? What is its second? What is its third? What is its fourth? What is its fifth? What are the representatives in the allegory Isaiah v. 1-7? Answer: The beloved, the owner and cultivator of the vineyard; the vineyard itself, with its wine-press, tower, and hedge; the vine; the wild grapes; the wild beasts that plucked the vine, trod it down, and devoured it. Whom does the owner of the vineyard represent? What does the vineyard, or ground devoted to the growth of the vine, stand for? Whom does the vine represent} What do the wild grapes stand for? Whom do the beasts that destroy the vine denote?

What are the representatives of the allegory Ezekiel xxxi.? Whom does the cedar denote! Whom do the other trees stand for? Who are the parties denoted by the beasts and birds? What does the overthrow of the cedar represent?

What are the representatives of men in the parable of the sower? What are the representatives of temptations and obstacles to obedience to the gospel! What likeness is there between the ground that yields good crops, and hearers that receive the word of the gospel into good and honest hearts?

How does Jotham's parable differ from an allegory?

Are other figures ever used in the descriptive parts of the allegory? Give an example.

Are all Christ's parables framed on the principle of the allegory? Specify some that are not. In what respect do those parables differ from the allegory?

LESSONS.

Let the scholar explain the allegory of the eagles Ezekiel xvii. What are the animal representatives? What are the vegetable representatives? Whom do the eagles represent, as explained in

verses 11-21 Whom does the highest branch of the cedar represent? Who are denoted by the vine. What is meant by the plucking up and destruction of the cedar, and the withering of the vine? What analogy is there between transplanting a cedar, vine, and other plants, from one country to another, and the event which it is here employed to represent?

Let the scholar explain the parable of the supper, Luke xiv. 16– 24. What does the supper represent? Who is denoted by the man who made the supper? What does the invitation to the supper signify? Whom do those who refuse the invitation represent! Who, in distinction from them, do the persons next invited denote !

THE IMAGINARY FIGURE OF THE SPIRITUALISTS. 127

CHAPTER XI.

THE IMAGINARY FIGURE OF THE SPIRITUALISTS.

THE comparison, metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche, hyperbole, hypocatastasis, apostrophe, personification, and allegory, are all the tropical forms there are, and all indeed that are possible. There is no conceivable mode besides them in which language can be used by a figure. When affirmations are made of agents, objects, qualities, acts, or conditions that are in accordance with their nature, and expressive of the facts as they appear to our senses and reason, then the language is absolutely literal. When direct and specific statements are made of the resemblances in nature, qualities, acts, conditions, or relations that subsist between different things, the language is always literal also; and the figure lies in the use of the things compared, for the purpose of illustration and ornament. When qualities or acts that are truly proper to agents or

objects are ascribed to them in degrees that exceed the reality, it is by the hyperbole. When natures, properties, conditions, acts, relations, are ascribed to agents and things that do not really belong to them, but only resemble what is proper to them, it is by the transfer to them by the metaphor of terms that are the proper names of differing things. When acts or conditions are ascribed to agents that are proper to them, or within the sphere of their nature, though not actually to take place, but that are, for the purpose of illustration and emphasis, substituted for others to which they bear a resemblance, that are to take place, it is by the hypocatastasis. When persons or things are called by names that are not proper to them, but are the names of things that have an intimate relation to them, it is by metonymy. When a part of a thing is called by the name of the whole, or the whole is called by the name of a part, it is by the synecdoche. When persons or things are directly addressed, in discourses that treat mainly of other subjects, and acts, properties, or conditions ascribed to them that are proper to their nature, it is by the apostrophe. When unintelligent objects are addressed as though they had the faculties and organs of intelligences, and acts or affections ascribed to them that are proper to persons, it is by the prosopopoeia, or per