logically precise in proportion as they are less significant and picturesque. Every religion was in its origin an embryo philosophy, or an attempt to interpret the unknown by mind; it was only when philosophy, which is essentially progress, outgrew its first acquisitions, that religion became a thing apart, cherishing as unalterable dogmas the notions which philosophy had abandoned. Separated from philosophy religion became arrogant and fantastical, professing to have already attained what its more authentic representative was ever pursuing in vain, and discovering through its initiations and mysteries all that to its contracted view seemed wanting to restore the well-being of mankind, the means of purification and expiation, remedies for disease, expedients to cure the disorders of the soul and to propitiate the gods'.

God was first recognised through his power; and when the conscious mind first attempted to communicate with its author, it strove to realize the claim by the exercise of supernatural powers, and by assuming to wield the instrument of its earliest revelation. Hence the general character of ancient religious philosophy was magism or magic, whose origin belongs to that indefinite antiquity which witnessed the feuds of Ninus and Zoroaster, when the gods instructed the Indian devotee how to task them to his purposes, or when Odin discovered the Runes which could chain the elements and awake the dead. Magician and priest were then synonymous terms; in particular the Median and Persian Magi seem to have been a tribe or priestly caste similar to the Israelitish Levites and the Assyrian Chaldæans*. Awful indeed was the man privileged to invoke the

1 Paus. ix. 30. "6

τελεται, καθαρμοί, ιαματα, τροπαι μηνιμάτων θείων.” Plato, Rep. ii. 364. Herod. iv. 35.

2 Arnob. i. 5. Epiphan. Hæres. 1.

Apuleius de Magia, ch. xxv. p. 501, Hildeb. Comp. Porphyr. de Abstin. iv. 16. The Mobeds, or Guebre Priests, are said to be still called Magoi in Pehlvee (Anhang to Zendavesta, 2, 3, p. 17. Lengerke on Daniel, p. 44); the Telchines and Idæi Dactyli also were called γοητες. Schol. Apollon. i. 1129.

Herod. i. 101. Clem. Alex. Strom. i. 305.

gods and perform religious offices'. He was arbiter of weal and woe, of blessings and curses. Aided by credulity in the witnesses, it was easy for the inspired seer to move mountains, to stir up Leviathan, to heal or inflict disease, or, like the prophet Balaam, to destroy an enemy by imprecations. Moses, who with the wisdom of Egypt, was "mighty in word and deed,”' discomfited by a spell the demon nation of the Amalekites, and the hero employed in this eternal warfare was the same before whom the beleaguered walls of Jericho fell down flat at the trumpet sound', which was symbolically the voice of God". Implicit faith was of course essential to success. The magician was unable at the request of the Sultan of Mysore to check the advance of a British army composed of incredulous Europeans, but the Israelites fled in dismay before the enchantments of the king of Moab ", and the formidable curse of the tribune Ateius overshadowed in a distant land the legions of Crassus. The Rig-Veda contains magic formulas adapted to such purposes. Brahmâ is surrounded by the five Devatas, Lightning, Rain, Moon, Sun, and Fire; and as lightning

13

5 "Asivos os brous orßu." Eschyl. Septem. 578. (563, Bothe.) Comp. 2 Kings ii. 24. Isai. lxv. 15. Job iii. 8.

• Gen. xxvii, 27. Numb. xxii. 6. * Called by the Rabbis "the seed spirits," or the "lust of the flesh." Mang. ii. p. 115. Exod. xvii. 11.

9 Exod. xvii. 16.

7 Acts vii. 22.

of the old serpent," the "power of unclean Comp. also Philo de Vit. Mosis, p. 35; or

10 Josh. vi. 20. Clem. Alex. Pæd. ii. 4. 11 Exod. xix. 9. 16. 19. Numb. x. 9. Matt. xxiv. 31. Heb. xii. 19. Rev. i. 10. Baur, in the Tübinger Zeitschrift, f. Theol. 1832, p. 3, compares the taking of the "moon-city" Jericho to the fate of Troy-the scarlet thread, the three days' concealment (occultation?) of the spies, &c., are probably all significant; and it was held by the Rabbis that Rahab, the "harlot," (Luna Crescens ?) was eventually married to Joshua, as Helena, the "many-spoused," to Achilles. Kimchi to Josh. vi. 25. Gen. xxxii. 28. Ezek. xxiii. 14. The symbolical or solar character of Joshua, who remained within the tabernacle (Exod. xxxiii. 11), but disappeared in the darkness (Josh. ii. 5), and was buried at Timnath-Heres (Eclipsis solis), a name afterwards altered to Timnath-Serach, has been often dwelt upon.

12 2 Kings iii. 27.

13 The "Dira Detestatio" of Horace. Comp. the case of Jotham and the Shechemites. Judg. ix. 20. 23.

vanishes in rain, as rain dries up and disappears, as the moon is obscured at its changing, the sun at its setting, and the fire by extinction, so by the pronouncing of appropriate words the enemy would disappear. Magic was founded on the knowledge which unveils nature, and was defined to be the art through which we participate in the power of the Deity1. The distinction of sorcery or black magic, denounced under all its forms as emphatically in the Zendavesta as in the later books attributed to Moses, seems to have arisen out of religious rivalries, and to have been coincident with the time when the divine power became dualistic, and when evil was recognised as emanating from a peculiar cause distinct from the source of good. But though often disgraced by malevolence or craft, magic in its original meaning was neither guess-work nor trickery; it was an attempt to exert power over nature, founded on a real though superficial acquaintance with her processes and constitution. Everything which exercised a natural or artificial influence over body or mind, the real or imaginary properties of animals, plants, or stones, were ranked among its resources. A philtre or lure, for instance, might be made from a bone snatched from a hungry dog, from the mandragora observed to act as a provocative to the elephant, or the excrescence which the dam snatching from the new-born foal seemed to make the pledge of enduring affection for her young 15. Unnatural acts and combinations, such as seething a kid in its mother's milk, or marriage with near relatives, were prohibited as tending to sorcery; since the one was to convert the means of life to its destruction, the other to confound the natural course of development by bending down, as it were, the branches towards the root. All nature appeared as a connected system of sympathies and antipathies, and the various faculties and powers with which the Creator had endowed inferior beings were all reasonably presumed to be available to human skill if properly informed and directed. But magic had still more

14 Philo de Leg. Special.

15 Virg. Æn. iv. 515.

lofty pretensions. God alone is all-powerful, but the human soul has in all ages asserted its claim to be considered as part of the divine. "The purity of the spirit," says Van Helmont, "is shown through energy and efficaciousness of will; God by the agency of an infinite will created the universe, and the same sort of power in an inferior degree, limited more or less by external hindrances, exists in all spiritual beings. The higher we ascend in antiquity, the more does prayer take the form, which it still in a great degree retains 16, that of incantation. Prayer was able to change the purposes of heaven and to make the Deves tremble under the abyss". It exercised a compulsory influence over the gods, and the potency of the means employed by Numa to compel the Deity to descend in fire was proved by the less skilful management of his successor, who brought down the thunderbolt upon his own head 18. Whatever by stimulating the nerves seemed while weakening the bodily to sharpen the inward sense, so as to make it dead to the distractions of the outward world, was thought a means of promoting its reunion with its source. Pliny identifies magic with the art of medicine'; Plato more justly with the religious wisdom of antiquity and the worship expressive of its meaning. The wisdom of antiquity was a sort of inspiration or clairvoyance; its worship the unpremeditated expression of that union with nature which was the aim and essence of its religion. The ancient Greek priest (agning) was named from his office as a person skilled in the art of offering those prayers or invocations" which from existing memorials" appear to have

16 The rites of public worship being considered not merely as an expression of trust or reverence, real spiritual acts the effect of which is looked for only within the mind of the worshipper, but as acts from which some direct outward result is anticipated, the attainment of some desired object of health or wealth, of supernatural gifts for body or soul, of exemption from danger or vengeance upon enemies. 17 Life of Zoroaster, Zendavesta by Kleuker, 3, p. 26.

18 Livy i. 31. Plin. N. H. 2. 54, p. 101, and 27. 19 Plin. N. H. 30. 1.

20 Herod. i. 133; ii. 52.

Such as the Macedonian invocation to the air. (Clem. Alex. Strom. v. 673. Pott.) The Athenian prayers to Zeus or the Seasons for genial weather. (Athenæ. xiv. 656.)

resembled the hymns of the Veda or Yashna, being addresses to the elements for wealth and increase, rain or warmth, in due season; and when Iamblichus 22 describes the execution of the spell by a race of unintelligent and inferior, yet within specific limits, all-powerful genii, we have only to substitute the modern terms "forces" and "processes" for magic rites and supernatural agents, in order to convert the proceeding of an ancient priest into that of a modern natural philosopher. There were diversities of powers, but only one spirit. Prayer promoted the magnetic sympathy of spirit with spirit; and the Hindoo and Persian liturgies, addressed not only to the Deity himself, but to his diversified manifestations, were considered wholesome and necessary iterations of the living or creative word which at first effectuated the divine will, and which from instant to instant supports the universal frame by its eternal repetition 23.

§ 3.

EMANATION THEORY.

The idea or theory on which magism was founded was no other than the ancient pantheism of the East. It amounted to a dogmatic re-assertion of that oneness and intercommunion with God believed in the early ages, and whose reality was never questioned until the memorable æra of the Fall. The hypothesis of a fall, required under some of its modifications in all systems to account for the apparent imperfection in the work of a perfect being, was in Eastern philosophy the unavoidable accompaniment and condition of limited or individual existence; since the soul, considered as a fragment (anоo aoμа or σnaçayμa) of the universal mind, might be said to have lapsed from its pre-eminence when parted from its source, and ceasing to form part of integral perfection. The theory of its reunion was correspondent to the assumed cause of its degrada23 Creuz. S. i. p. 208.

22 Ch. 31.