Galilee, are not what are meant; but the analogous self-renunciation and submission to restraint and self-denial which his service involves. In another instance, the restraints to which his disciples are subjected are exemplified by the narrow bounds within which travellers are compressed by a strait gate and narrow way, compared to those who pass through broad gates and open and spacious ways. "Enter ye in at the strait gate; for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat: because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it" (Matt. vii. 13, 14). Here entering a strait gate, and journeying in a narrow way, is put for living the life of self-denial that is to be crowned with eternal salvation; and entering a broad gate, and travelling on a spacious road, are put for living in the lawless way that is to terminate in destruction.

On the other hand, Christ's tenderness towards the weakest of his people is represented by his not crushing a bruised reed, and not quenching smoking flax: "He shall not strive, nor cry, neither shall any man hear his voice in the streets: a bruised reed shall he not break, and smoking flax shall he not quench, till he send forth judgment unto victory" (Matt. xii. 19, 20). His forbearance towards a life

on the point of destruction, and a fire on the verge of extinction, is thus used to represent his patience and forbearance towards his people.

This figure is wholly unlike the simile, metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche, and hyperbole. It is not a formal comparison of the act and its accompaniments which are used as the representatives, with that which they are employed to represent. It is not a direct affirmation, like the metaphor, that that which is represented, is that which is employed to represent it; nor has the one any such intimate connexion with the other as exists between the objects used by metonymy, synecdoche, and hyperbole; but one act, with its condition or accompaniments, is, without a formal notice, put in the place of another, and the hearer and reader is left to see, from the connexion, what it is which the substituted act and condition represents.

Its characteristics are: 1st. It is an artificial use of a thing, not of a word. It is an act, and its accompanying object or condition, that is employed for illustration, not a word applied in an unusual relation. 2d. It is confined to the predicate of the proposition in which it occurs. It is the act, with its conditions, which that proposition expresses, exclusive of the agent to which the act is ascribed. In the expression, for example, "he is rowing

against wind and tide," the figure is confined to the predicate; that is, to the words which express the act of rowing, and its conditions, against wind and tide. 3d. The subject, or nominative of the figure, accordingly, is always used literally. It is the person who is said to be rowing who exerts the analogous act, which rowing against wind and tide is employed to represent; not some other individual not named in the proposition. It is Christ who was not to break the bruised reed, nor quench the smoking flax, who is to exercise that tender and patient providence towards the faintest of his disciples, which the forbearance, denoted by his not breaking and quenching, is employed to represent. 4th. The acts and conditions ascribed to agents by the figure are such as are proper to their nature; not like those used by the metaphor, that are proper only to agents or things of a different order. Thus, persons may actually try to row against a current, make brick without straw, bear a cross, and carry a heavy burden, and may succeed; and so of all other states and forms of agency that are used by the figure. 5. The resemblance on which the simile and metaphor are founded is one of nature or kind; but the acts and conditions used by this figure are in kind wholly unlike those which they are employed to exemplify; and the resem

blance is one of the ease or difficulty with which they are exerted, the strength or weakness, the lightness or burdensomeness, with which they are marked, the advantages or disadvantages that result from them, or other similar characteristics or accompaniments. In the comparison of the sailing of a ship to the flying of a bird, the things compared -which are motions forward in space-are the same; the one produced by the impulse of the wind on the sails, the other by the stroke of the wings on the air; and they resemble each other also in ease and rapidity. But there is no such likeness between the act of attempting to row a boat against a violent current, and trying, for example, against the settled wishes of a people, to accomplish something that depends on their will. The only resemblance they present is in the greatness of the obstacles that are to be overcome, and the hopelessness of the undertaking. In like manner, there is no resemblance in kind between the act of bearing a cross and the performance of a self-denying mental duty, such as abstaining from forbidden pleasures, or enduring reproach for Christ's sake. The likeness they bear to each other is in the strenuous effort they require, and the self-denial they involve. The figure is thus employed in expressing resemblances between the difficulties, the dispositions, the sensations, the

results, or other characteristics that mark acts of different kinds; not, like the simile and metaphor, in exhibiting likenesses of nature that subsist between agents or things themselves, that are the agents or objects of acts.

The hypocatastasis, though one of the most frequent, most expressive, and most beautiful figures of the Scriptures, and of conversation, has been wholly overlooked by rhetoricians, or confounded with the comparison and metaphor. How familiar it was to the Hebrews, and how essential the knowledge of it is to the interpretation of the sacred. writings, is seen from the fact, that it is employed over one hundred times in the first ten chapters of Isaiah. Thus (chap. i. 5, 6) the condition of a person faint from bruising and laceration, and left without medical aid, is used to represent the analogous condition of the Israelites under the judgments which God had inflicted on them. "The whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint: from the sole of the foot even unto the head there is no soundness in it, but wounds, and bruises, and putrifying sores: they have not been closed, neither bound up, neither mollified with ointment." That it is the condition of the Israelitish people, not of an individual, which is here meant, is apparent, from the fact that it is Israel of whom the prophet is