In the year 1666, Sabatei Sevi, born at Aleppo, called himself the Messiah foretold by the Zeiglers. He began with preaching on the highways and in the fields, the Turks laughing at him, while his disciples admired him. It appears that he did not gain over the mass of the Jewish nation at first; for the chiefs of the synagogue of Smyrna passed sentence of death against him; but he escaped with the fear only, and with banishment.

He contracted three marriages, of which it is asserted he did not consummate one, saying that it was beneath him so to do. He took into partnership one Nathan Levi, the latter personated the prophet Elias, who was to go before the Messiah. They repaired to Jerusalem, and Nathan there announced Sabatei Sevi as the deliverer of nations. The Jewish populace declared for them, but such as had anything to lose anathematized them.

To avoid the storm, Sevi fled to Constantinople, and from thence to Smyrna, whither Nathan Levi sent to him four ambassadors, who acknowledged and publicly saluted him as the Messiah. This embassy imposed on the people, and also on some of the doctors, who declared Sabetei Sevi to be the Messiah, and king of the Hebrews. But the synagogue of Smyrna condemned its king to be impaled.

Sabatei put himself under the protection of the cadi of Smyrna, and soon had the whole Jewish people on his side; he had two thrones prepared, one for himself, the other for his favourite wife; he took the title of king of kings, and gave to his brother, Joseph Sevi, that of king of Judah. He promised the Jews the certain conquest of the Ottoman empire; and even carried his insolence so far as to have the emperor's name struck out of the Jewish liturgy, and his own substituted.

He was thrown into prison at the Dardanelles; and the Jews gave out that his life was spared only because the Turks well knew he was immortal.

The governor of the Dardanelles grew rich by the presents which the Jews lavished, in order to visit their

king, their imprisoned Messiah, who, though in irons, retained all his dignity, and made them kiss his feet.

Meanwhile the sultan, who was holding his court at Adrianople, resolved to put an end to this farce: he sent for Sevi, and told him that if he was the Messiah he must be invulnerable; to which Sevi assented. The Grand Signor then had him placed as a mark for the arrows of his icoglans: The Messiah confessed that he was not invulnerable, and protested that God sent him only to bear testimony to the holy Mussulman religion. Being beaten by the ministers of the law he turned Mahometan; he lived and died equally despised by the Jews and Mussulmans; which cast such discredit on the profession of false Messiah, that Sevi was the last that appeared.*

METAMORPHOSIS.

Ir may very naturally be supposed, that the metamorphoses with which our earth abounds, suggested the imagination to the orientals, (who have imagined everything,) that the souls of men passed from one body to another. An almost imperceptible point becomes a grub, and that grub becomes a butterfly; an acorn is transformed into an oak; an egg into a bird; water becomes cloud and thunder; wood is changed into fire and ashes; everything, in short, in nature appears to be metamorphosed. What was thus obviously and distinctly perceivable in grosser bodies, was soon conceived to take place with respect to souls, which were considered slight, shadowy, and scarcely material figures. The idea of metempsychosis is perhaps the most ancient dogma of the known world, and prevails still in a great part of India and of China.

It is highly probable again, that the various metamorphoses which we witness in nature, produced those ancient fables which Ovid has collected and embellished in his admirable work. Even the Jews had their

See the "Essai sur les Mœurs et l'Esprit des Nations," tom. iv. p. 196, where Sevi's history is given more in detail.

metamorphoses. If Niobe was changed into a stone, Edith, the wife of Lot, was changed into a statue of salt. If Euridyce remained in hell for having looked behind her, it was for precisely the same indiscretion that this wife of Lot was deprived of her human nature. The village in which Baucis and Philemon resided in Phrygia, is changed into a lake; the same event occurs to Sodom. The daughters of Anius converted water into oil; we have in scripture a metamorphosis very similar, but more true and more sacred. Cadmus was changed into a serpent; the rod of Aaron becomes a serpent also.

The gods frequently change themselves into men; the Jews never saw angels but in the form of men; angels ate with Abraham. Paul, in his second epistle to the Corinthians, says that an angel of Satan has buffetted him: "Angelus Satanæ me colaphizet."

METAPHYSICS.

"TRANS naturam,"-beyond nature. But what is that which is beyond nature? By nature it is to be presumed, is meant matter, and metaphysics relate to that which is not matter.

For example; to your reasoning, which is neither long, nor wide, nor high, nor solid, nor pointed. Your soul, to yourself unknown, which produces your reasoning.

Spirits, which the world has always talked of, and to which mankind appropriated, for a long period, a body so attenuated and shadowy, that it could scarcely be called body; but from which, at length, they have removed every shadow of body, without knowing what it was that was left.

The manner in which these spirits perceive, without any embarrassment, from the five senses; in which they think, without a head; and in which they communicate their thoughts, without words and signs.

Finally, God, whom we know by his works, but whom our pride impels us to define; God, whose

power we feel to be immense; God, between whom and ourselves exists the abyss of infinity, and yet whose nature we dare attempt to fathom.

These are the objects of metaphysics.

.. We might further add to these the principles of pure mathematics, points without extension, lines without width, superficies without thickness, units infinitely divisible, &c.

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Bayle himself considered these objects as those which were denominated "entia rationis," beings of reason; they are however, in fact, only material things considered in their masses, their superficies, their simple lengths and breadths, and the extremities of these simple lengths and breadths. All measures are precise and demonstrated. Metaphysics have nothing to do with geometry.

Thusa ma n may be a metaphysician without being a geometrician. Metaphysics are more entertaining: they constitute often the romance of the mind. In geometry, on the contrary, we must calculate and measure; this is a perpetual trouble, and most minds had rather dream pleasantly than fatigue themselves with hard work.

MIND (LIMITS OF THE HUMAN).

NEWTON was one day asked, why he stepped forward when he was so inclined; and from what cause his arm and his hand obeyed his will? He honestly replied, that he knew nothing about the matter. But at least, said they to him, you who are so well acquainted with the gravitation of planets, will tell us why they turn one way sooner than another? Newton still avowed his ignorance.

Those who teach, that the ocean was salted for fear it should corrupt, and that the tides were created to conduct our ships into port, were a little ashamed when told that the Mediterranean has ports and no tide. Muschembrock himself has fallen into this error.

Who has ever been able to determine precisely how

a billet of wood is changed into red hot charcoal, and by what mechanism lime is heated by cold. water?

The first motion of the heart in animals-is that accounted for? Has it been exactly discovered how the business of generation is arranged? Has any one divined the cause of sensation, ideas, and memory ? We know no more of the essence of matter than the children who touch its superficies.

Who will instruct us in the mechanism by which the grain of corn, which we cast into the earth, disposes itself to produce a stalk surmounted with an ear; or why the sun produces an apple on one tree and a chesnut on the next to it? Many doctors have said, what know I not? Montaigne said, what know I?

Unbending decider! pedagogue in phrases! furred reasoner! thou inquirest after the limits of the human mind: they are at the end of thy nose.

MIRACLES.

SECTION I.

A MIRACLE, according to the true meaning of the word, is something admirable; and agreeably to this, all is miracle. The stupendous order of nature, the revolution of a hundred millions of worlds round a million of suns, the activity of light, the life of animals, all are grand and perpetual miracles.

According to common acceptation, we call a miracle the violation of these divine and eternal laws. A solar eclipse at the time of the full moon, or a dead man walking two leagues and carrying his head in his arms, we denominate a miracle.

Many natural philosophers maintain, that in this sense there are no miracles; and advance the following arguments.

A miracle is the violation of mathematical, divine, immutable, eternal laws. By the very exposition itself, a miracle is a contradiction in terms: a law cannot at the same time be immutable and violated.