slaves in Syria, and scattered through every other land, partook of this universal terror.

Accordingly, it does not appear that the Jews were at all astonished when Jesus said to them, according to St. Matthew and St. Luke:* "Heaven and earth shall pass away." He often said to them: "The kingdom of God is at hand." He preached the gospel of the kingdom of God.

St. Peter announces+ that the gospel was preached to them that were dead, and that the end of the world drew near. "We expect," says he, 66 new heavens and a new earth."

St. John, in his first epistle, says, "There are, at present, many Antichrists, which shows that the last hour draws near.'

St. Luke, in much greater detail, predicts the end of the world and the last judgment. These are his words :

“There shall be signs in the moon and in the stars, roarings of the sea and the waves; men's hearts failing them for fear shall look with trembling to the events about to happen. The powers of heaven shall be shaken; and then shall they see the son of man coming in a cloud, with great power and majesty. Verily I say unto you, the present generation shall not pass away till all this be fulfilled."

We do not dissemble that unbelievers upbraid us with this very prediction; they want to make us blush for our faith, when we consider that the world is still in existence. The generation, they say, is passed away, and yet nothing at all of this is fulfilled. Luke, therefore, ascribes language to our Saviour which he never uttered, or we must conclude that Jesus Christ himself was mistaken, which would be blasphemy. But we close the mouth of these impious cavillers by observing, that this prediction, which appears so false in its literal meaning, is true in its spirit; that the whole world meant Judea, and that the end of the world signified the reign of Titus and his successors.

* Matthew, xxiv. Luke, xvi. + John, xvii. 18.

I. Epistle of Peter, iv.

St. Paul expresses himself very strongly on the subject of the end of the world in his epistle to the Thessalonians: "We who survive, and who now address you, shall be taken up into the clouds to meet the Lord in the air."

According to these very words of Jesus and St. Paul, the whole world was to have an end under Tiberius, or at latest under Nero. St. Paul's prediction was fulfilled no more than St. Luke's..

These allegorical predictions were undoubtedly not meant to apply to the times of the evangelists and apostles, but to some future time, which God conceals from all mankind.

Tu ne quæsieris (scire nefas) quem mihi, quem tibi
Finem Dii dederint, Leuconoë, nec Babylonios
Tentaris numeros. Ut melius, quicquid erit, pati!
HORACE, book i. ode xi.

Strive not, Leuconoë, to pry
Into the secret will of fate,
Nor impious magic vainly try

To know our lives uncertain date.

FRANCIS.

It is still perfectly certain that all nations then known entertained the expectation of the end of the world, of a new earth and a new heaven. For more than sixteen centuries, we see that donations to monkish institutions have commenced with these words: "Adventante mundi vespere," &c. "The end of the world being at hand, I, for the good of my soul, and to avoid being one of the number of the goats on the left hand, &c. leave such and such lands to such a convent.' Fear influenced the weak to enrich the cunning.

The Egyptians fixed this grand epoch at the end of thirty-six thousand five hundred years: Orpheus is stated to have fixed it at the distance of a hundred and twenty thousand years.

The historian Flavius Josephus asserts, that Adam, having predicted that the world would be twice destroyed, once by water and next by fire, the children of Seth were desirous of announcing to the future race of men the disastrous catastrophe. They engraved astro

nomical observations on two columns, one made of bricks, which should resist the fire that was to consume the world; the other of stones, which would remain uninjured by the water that was to drown it. But what thought the Romans, when a few slaves talked to them about an Adam and a Seth unknown to all the world besides? They smiled.

Josephus adds, that the column of stones was to be seen in his own time, in Syria.

From all that has been said, we may conclude that we know exceedingly little of past events-that we are but ill acquainted with those present-that we know nothing at all about the future-and that we ought to refer every thing relating to them to God, the master of those three divisions of time and of eternity.

ENTHUSIASM.

THIS Greek word signifies "emotion of the bowels, internal agitation." Was the word invented by the Greeks to express the vibrations experienced by the nerves, the dilation and shrinking of the intestines, the violent contractions of the heart, the precipitous course of those fiery spirits which mount from the viscera to the brain whenever we are strongly and vividly affected?

Or was the term enthusiasm, after painful affection of the bowels, first applied to the contortions of the Pythia, who, on the Delphian tripod, admitted the inspiration of Apollo in a place apparently intended for the receptacle of body rather than of spirit?

What do we understand by enthusiasm? How many shades are there in our affections! Approbation, sensibility, emotion, distress, impulse, passion, transport, insanity, rage, fury. Such are the stages through which the miserable soul of man is liable to pass.

A geometrician attends at the representation of an affecting tragedy. He merely remarks that it is a judicious, well-written performance. A young man who sits next him is so interested by the performance that he makes no remark at all; a lady sheds tears over it; another young man is so transported by the

exhibition, that to his great misfortune he goes home determined to compose a tragedy himself. He has caught the disease of enthusiasm.

The centurion or military tribune, who considers war simply as a profession by which he is to make his fortune, goes to battle coolly, like a tiler ascending the roof of a house. Cæsar wept at seeing the statue of Alexander.

Ovid speaks of love only like one who understood it. Sappho expressed the genuine enthusiasm of the passion; and if it be true that she sacrificed her life to it, her enthusiasm must have advanced to madness.

The spirit of party tends astonishingly to excite enthusiasm; there is no faction that has not its “energumens," its devoted and possessed partisans. An animated speaker, who employs gesture in his addresses, has in his eyes, his voice, his movements, a subtle poison which passes with an arrow's speed into the ears and hearts of his partial hearers. It was on this ground that queen Elizabeth forbade any one to preach, during six months, without an express license under her sign manual, that the peace of her kingdom might be undisturbed.

He

St. Ignatius, who possessed very warm and susceptible feelings, read the lives of the fathers of the desart after being deeply read in romances. He becomes, in consequence, actuated by a double enthusiasm. constitutes himself knight to the virgin Mary; he performed the vigil of arms; he is eager to fight for his lady patroness; he is favoured with visions; the virgin appears and recommends to him her son, and she enjoins him to give no other name to his society than that of the "Society of Jesus."

Ignatius communicates his enthusiasm to another Spaniard, of the name of Xavier. Xavier hastens away to the Indies, of the language of which he is utterly ignorant; thence to Japan, without knowing a word of Japanese. That, however, is of no consequence; the flame of his enthusiasm catches the imagination of some young jesuits, who at length make themselves masters of that language. These disciples,

after Xavier's death, entertain not the shadow of a doubt that he performed more miracles than ever the apostles did, and that he resuscitated seven or eight persons, at the very least. In short, so epidemical and powerful becomes the enthusiasm, that they form in Japan what they denominate a Christendom (une Chretientè). This Christendom ends in a civil war, in which a hundred thousand persons are slaughtered: the enthusiasm then is at its highest point, fanaticism; and fanaticism has become madness.

The young fakir, who fixes his eye on the tip of his nose when saying his prayers, gradually kindles in devotional ardour, until he at length believes that if he burdens himself with chains of fifty pounds weight, the Supreme Being will be obliged and grateful to him. He goes to sleep with an imagination totally absorbed by Bramah, and is sure to have a sight of him in a dream. Occasionally, even in the intermediate state between sleeping and waking, sparks radiate from his eyes; he beholds Bramah resplendent with light; he falls into extacies, and the disease frequently becomes incurable.

What is most rarely to be met with, is the combination of reason with enthusiasm. Reason consists in constantly perceiving things as they really are. He, who under the influence of intoxication, sees objects double, is at the time deprived of reason.

Enthusiasm is precisely like wine, it has the power to excite such a ferment in the blood vessels, and such strong vibrations in the nerves, that reason is completely destroyed by it. But it may also occasion only slight agitations, so as not to convulse the brain but merely to render it more active, as is the case in grand bursts of eloquence, and more especially in sublime poetry. Reasonable enthusiasm is the patrimony' of great poets.

This reasonable enthusiasm is the perfection of their art. It is this which formerly occasioned the belief that poets were inspired by the gods; a notion which was never applied to other artists.

How is reasoning to controul enthusiasm? A poet