that mocketh at his father, and despiseth to obey his mother, the ravens of the valley shall pick it out.' We have more than once seen the ravens thus attack a newly-dropped kid.” 1

"Like all feeders on carrion, it is wonderfully quick in detecting a dead or dying animal, and rivals the vulture itself in the sharpness of its vision. If any one who is passing over a part of the country where ravens still survive, should wish. to see one of the birds, he has only to lie flat on the ground, and keep his eyes nearly shut, so as only to see through the lashes. Should there be a raven within many miles, it is sure to discover the apparently dead body, and to alight at no great distance, walking round and round, with its peculiar sidelong gait, and, if it be not checked in time, will make a dash at the eye of the prostrate individual, and probably blind him for life. This habit of pecking at the eye is inherent in all the crow tribe." 2

With little beauty in their blue-black coats and no music in their voices, they present to us images

1 Nat. Hist. of Bible.

2 Bible Animals

of those who are ignorant and superstitious, not knowing very clearly the difference between good and evil, but loving to think and chatter about spiritual things from appearances, seeing in them signs and omens. "the bird of Odin;" the ancient Greeks also drew auguries from his doings, supposed to reveal his intuitions of future events. "Natural men," Swedenborg says they signify, “who, concerning divine truths, are in darkest lumen from fallacies, in which have been many of the gentiles." 1

The Scandinavians called the raven

In the Scriptures, the raven stands sometimes for those who hold tenaciously to the falsities of ignorance, and sometimes simply for the densely ignorant gentiles, who yet are cared for by God, and may afterwards be instructed. In the former sense, it is said that when the waters of the flood began to subside, Noah "sent forth a raven, which went forth to and fro until the waters were dried up from off the earth" (Gen. viii. 7); signifying

1 A. E. 650.

1

that after the falsities which destroyed the most ancient Church began to diminish, the fallacies of ignorance still caused confusion. In the same sense it is said of Edom, "The owl also and the raven shall dwell in it." (Isa. xxxiv. 11).

In the better sense, it is related that when Elijah fled from Ahab, "he went and dwelt by the brook Cherith, that is before Jordan. And the ravens brought him bread and flesh in the morning, and bread and flesh in the evening; and he drank of the brook." (1 Kings xvii. 5, 6.) By Elijah is represented the literal precepts of the Word: his persecution by Ahab represents the hatred of those precepts by those who are in the evil delights of self-love; and his maintenance, under the providence of the Lord, by the ravens, represents the preservation of such precepts by those who were in simple gentile ignorance.

In the passage, "He giveth to the beast his food, and to the young ravens which cry" (Ps. cxlvii. 9), they are meant who are in fallacies of

1 A. C. 864.

ignorance, and desire instruction. Again, the Lord says, "Consider the ravens ; for they neither sow nor reap; which neither have storehouse nor barn; and God feedeth them." (Luke xii. 24.) The ravens are here put for the "fowls of the heavens," which signify affections for thinking truth, which do not labor for the production of it, neither lay it up. Of these the ravens represent the most ignorant. Yet even for them provision is made by the Lord of some knowledge of religion and morality, by traditions and derivations from others, by which a capacity for heaven may be formed in them.

FISHES.

LIKE birds of a grosser atmosphere, fishes

swim in the sea. They have eyes which

are typical of dulness, rude ears, adapted only to the coarsest discrimination of sounds; for wings they have fins, and their feathers are horny scales. They are exceedingly prolific; but when they have deposited their eggs in suitable places they rarely take further thought for their young. They are mostly carnivorous and voracious, feeding upon insects, mollusks, little fishes, and any living creatures which they can swallow.

The water in which fishes live is a representative of a natural atmosphere of thought relating to the world and to practical life in it. The air, called in ancient languages by the same name as the spirit, corresponds to truth concerning spiritual life, the spiritual states of men, the spiritual world, and the