the Egyptian, Indian and Persian doctrine. Among these dogmas, the trinity of Plotinus, a little different from that of Plato, would have occupied an important place. But we wish only to speak of what is necessary to show that this philosophy unites all the characteristics of a religion properly so called; and what has been said is enough for this purpose.

The New Platonism established mysterious connections between heaven and earth. It admitted a reciprocal action of the Divinity upon man, and of man upon the Divinity, although the latter was expressed only tacitly, as it always ought to be; for if our hopes have need of believing that we can act upon the gods, our respect has not less need of believing that these gods are impassible. He prescribed, in fine, modes of adoration of a kind more pure and elevated than the sacrifices in use among the vulgar Polytheists, but which tended to the same end and were dictated by the same aspiration of the soul.

Between the gross notion of offerings, which seduce the gods and the sublime notion of the adoration which pleases them and assimilates men to the divine nature, there is only one difference; it is this; in the first case, men wish to leave the gods to their own will, while, in the second case, men wish to bend themselves to the will of the gods. In both cases it is an effort for harmony between the divine and human, and the difference arises only from the difference in the state of knowledge, that is from the epoch.

The new system of religion had-or appeared to have many advantages. It brought together, by means of the names employed to designate the demons or subaltern gods, the belief formerly professed, and the reminiscences of which were associated in many minds with ideas of piety, hope and confidence, that they no longer possessed, but which they regretted, and envied passed ages which had possessed them.

It also contrasted in nothing with notions to which all polytheistic nations were accustomed from time immemorial.

The idea that man could come, in this life, to the contemplation of the Divinity, was not new, although it had put on succes sively different forms. The first Greeks conceived it in the most material sense, admitting the apposition of gods to warriors, divines and heroes. The priests of Egypt boasted of an habitual communication with the Divinity;-the recompense of initiation into the mysteries, was the enjoyment of the presence and of the light of the divine nature.

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Enthusiasm of the New Platonists.

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It was not difficult for the New Platonists to find in Pythagoras and Plato confirmation of their doctrine. What these philosophers had said upon the necessity of repulsing exterior distractions and impressions on the senses, in order to enter deeply into profound meditations, the new philosophers applied to ecstasy. Their doctrine, therefore, was equally conformed to the precepts of the philosophy and the reminiscences of the religion of the Greeks.

The New Platonism was favorable to morality. In the midst of its enthusiasm, it pointed out virtue as a preparation necessary to ecstasy. Ecstasy was the end; virtue the means. More. over this system seemed to be seized upon or admitted the more easily, that, at this epoch of history, the real world had become uninhabitable for souls not entirely degraded. It offered them a refuge in an ideal world, where they found again that of which they were deprived upon earth. In fine, the New Platonism satisfied, as we have seen, many of the principal wants which the human race then experienced, viz. that of abstraction-that of spirituality-that of the marvellous. It appeared therefore perfectly adapted to the epoch in which it appeared.

XVII. The advantages of the New Platonism procured for it some successes, which seemed to promise a complete and durable triumph. No system ever exacted more enthusiasm from its birth to its fall. Hardly had Plotinus commenced teaching, than he was surrounded by auditors who considered him as a divine Rich families appointed him tutor of their sons; pleaders implored his arbitration; women followed him in his retreats and renounced the delights of the capital of Egypt to hasten to the sexagenarian philosopher in solitude. His disciples, taking in a literal sense his maxims of detaching themselves from terrestrial things, abandoned their property, to lead a life purely contemplative. One of them, Rogatian, praetor at Rome, left his house, freed his slaves, gave up all his offices, and wishing no longer to have a fixed habitation, demanded of his friends a shelter each day. Ædesus, disciple of Jamblichus, having formed the project of passing his life in an inaccessible retreat of Cappadocia, a crowd of young people followed him thither, surrounded his house, and after having tried to soften him by their prayers and groans, threatened to tear him to pieces, if he persisted in burying in a desert so much celestial light. Eustathius, disciple of Ædesus, hesitating to go into Greece, the Greeks addressed public prayers to the gods, that they might induce such a man to honor their VOL. II. No. 8.

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country with his presence. Proheresius, in his lessons, so charmed his auditors, that they prostrated themselves before him, to kiss his feet and hands.

We cannot consider the philosophy of an epoch, of which we remark such symptoms, the cause of that disposition of minds, but rather as one of its effects. Even if it is pretended that there was in this enthusiasm something factitious, we must recognize that it was the effort of a corrupt generation (but painfully affected by its own corruption), to raise itself to enthusiasm. No interested motive dictated these exaggerated demonstrations. It was not at the feet of power, that it prostrated itself; and if it did not feel everything it pretended to feel, it attested by these prostrations the desire that it had of experiencing such sensations. It sought to disguise to itself its impotence, to deceive itself concerning its own fall; a manifest proof that this impotence and fall were not its natural state, but an accident, a misfortune against nature.

This

XVIII. In view of this universal enthusiasm, of which we have just cited the proofs, it is doubtless astonishing that the new Platonism has had only an incomplete and transient success. was because, notwithstanding its efforts, it only imperfectly satisfied the tendency towards unity. It offered, indeed, to the mind, a philosophic unity; but the soul did not find in it the religious unity of which it had need.

Because Plotinus spoke of an abstraction, he did not arrive at theism, which could have been made the foundation of a religion, but to Pantheism on which could be founded only a philosophy.

He himself recognizes this in different places. Everything appears, says he, to be at bottom only a single substance, which has differences and divisions, only in our conceptions. We perceive only some parts of it, out of which, through ignorance and our want of power to embrace the whole, we make real beings. The New Platonists, however, approach theism manifestly in their expressions. The one God, or rather the Supreme Being, says Jamblichus, has many names, according to the different functions he exercises. As Creator of all things, we call him Ammon ; as having finished and made them perfect, we call him Phthas; as the author of all that is beautiful and useful, we call him Osiris. But, notwithstanding this formal profession of faith in the first principle of all things, by the New Platonism, in this only really existing being, this universal soul, containing all souls (but being only a single indivisible soul) this matter created by form, and one

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Efforts of the New Platonists illusory.

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with it, and all the other subtilties of this philosophy for maintaining its absolute and complete unity, too strongly approach Pantheism not to end by falling into it; the only difference was in the spirit of the epoch. This Pantheism had conducted Xenophanes to incredulity: it conducted the New Platonists to enthusiasm; but this enthusiasm could only be individual and momentary. Pantheism is not compatible with a public worship, with a popular religion except when it insinuates itself in the train of this religion and in the secret doctrine of the priests. This is what we have seen in India. But when it shows itself openly, in the moment a religion is to be reconstructed, it becomes an obstacle to the establishment of all belief, that no subtilty can surmount.

There must be a God separate from man, in order that the latter may invoke him with confidence. There must be a God separate from the universe, in order that the mind may not confound this God with the necessary rules and mechanical forces of nature, and that the religious sentiment may find, in the object of its adoration, the elements which it demands, hope, respect and love.

The attempt of the New Platonists to render to man a religion by metaphysics was therefore chimerical and illusory. It was vicious at the basis. The subaltern gods, and all the hierarchy of demons, by which this sect believed itself to reänimate Pantheism, and give life to the emanations of its first abstract and inconceivable notion, could not take root in this arid soil. It was like endeavoring to make the branches of a withered tree grow green.

In fact this connection, that the New Platonists wished to establish, between their doctrine and the ancient Polytheisin, far from being useful to the kind of religion that they taught, discredited it all the more, both because it was built upon ruined foundations, and because it was composed of fantastic interpretations of the ancient fables. The recollections of Philosophy and of Polytheism alike injured the New Platonism: the former, because they made it approach Pantheism; the latter, because they made it approach Polytheism.

ARTICLE V.

REMARKS ON THE DIVINE AUTHORITY AND AUTHENTICITY OF THE PENTATEUCH.1

By B. B. Edwards, Professor at Andover.

$6. The Command of God in respect to the Destruction of the Canaanites vindicated.

THERE are many clear indications that the Author of nature, of the human mind and of the Scriptures is one and the same Being. The more profoundly we study the laws which regulate the material universe, the more closely we examine the structure and operations of our own moral and intellectual constitution and the more intimately we become acquainted with the Bible, the more convincing will this unity of authorship in them all appear.

And yet these various revelations which God has made of himself, often seem to come into direct conflict. There appear to be not only apparent discrepancies but positive contradictions. The course of nature apparently runs counter to the written revelation; the law engraven on the tablet of the heart does not accord with that on the tablet of stone.

Sometimes our misgivings can be quieted only by presumptive reasoning. Difficulties once existed which have disappeared; discrepancies which formerly perplexed the Christian student have vanished. The works and word of God, once on various points discordant, are no longer so. Therefore we have confident hope in respect to existing difficulties. Past experience on this subject furnishes presumptive ground for future reliance.

On no topic brought forward in the Pentateuch has greater perplexity been felt by the pious mind, than in relation to the command of God to destroy the inhabitants of Canaan; on none would there seem to be a more startling contrariety between the teachings of our moral nature and those of the Scriptures. Here, too, deism has, in all ages, forged one of its principal weapons. English infidelity, the parent of much of the Continental skepticism, has adduced it as a triumphant argument in its attack on

The following Article was prepared some months since and was intended for publication in connection with an article on the general subject inserted in the May No. of the present vol. of the Bib. Sacra.