And I put a

lets upon thy hands, and a chain on thy neck. jewel on thy forehead, and ear-rings in thine ears, and a beautiful crown upon thine head. Thus wast thou decked with gold and silver, and thy raiment was of fine linen, and silk, and broidered work; thou didst eat fine flour, and honey, and oil and thou wast exceeding beautiful, and thou didst prosper into a kingdom. And thy renown went forth among the heathen for thy beauty: for it was perfect through my comeliness, which I had put upon thee, saith the Lord God." This seems a fragment of Solomon's Song; it is a jewel dropped from the forehead of his "spouse," and acts as a foil to the fearful minuteness of description which characterizes the rest of the chapter. In this point of his genius, Ezekiel resembles Dante. Like Dante, he loves the terrible ; but, like Dante too, the beautiful seems to love him.

Sprinkled, besides, amidst the frequent grandeurs and rare beauties of his book, are practical appeals, of close and cogent force. Such, for instance, are his picture of a watchman's duty, his parable of sour grapes, his addresses at various times to the shepherds, to the elders, and to the people of Israel. From dim imaginative heights, he comes down, like Moses from the darkness of Sinai, with face shining and foot stamping out indignation against a guilty people, who thought him lost upon his aerial altitudes. He is at once the most poetical and practical of preachers. This paradox has not unfrequently been exemplified in the history of preaching, as the names of Chrysostom, Taylor, Howe, Hall, and Chalmers, can testify. He who is able to fly upwards, is able to return, and with tenfold impetus, from his flight. The poet, too, has an intuitive knowledge of the springs of human nature which no study and no experience can fully supply, and which enables him, when he turns from his visions to the task, to pierce to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, of the joints and marrow," and to become a "discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart." In Ezekiel's prophecy, we find visions and practical exhortations almost equally blended-the dark and the clear alternate, and produce a fine chiaro-scuro, like

66

"That beautiful uncertain weather,

Where gloom and glory meet together."

On the range of prophetic mountains, overlooking the

He

Pagan lands, Ezekiel, like his brethren, has a summit, and a dark and high summit it is. The fire which he flings abroad from it comes from a "furnace heated seven times hotter" than that of the rest. He dallies with the destruction of Israel's foes; he "rolls it as a sweet morsel under his tongue;" he protracts the fierce luxury; he throws it out into numerous imaginative shapes, that he may multiply his pleasure. sings in the ear of one proud oppressor the fate of a former, as the forerunner of his own. He mingles a bitter irony with his denunciations. He utters, for example, a lamentation over Egypt; and such a lamentation-a lamentation without sorrow, nay, full of exulting and trampling gladness. And at last, opening. the wide mouth of Hades, he throws in-"heaps upon heaps"-all Israel's enemies-Pharaoh, Elam, Meshech, Tubal, Edom, the Zidonians, in "ruin reconciled"—and with a shout of laughter leaves them massed together in one midnight of common destruction.

Ezekiel was a priest as well as a prophet, and alludes more frequently than any of the prophets to the ceremonial institutes of the temple. He was every inch a Jew; and none of the prophets possessed more attachment to their country, more zeal for their law, and more hatred to its foes. It is not enough for him to predict the ruin of Zion's present enemies; he must spring forward into the future, organize and bring up from the far north a shadowy army of enemies, Gog and Magog, against the mountains of Israel, and please his insatiate spirit of patriotism, by whelming them also in a vaster and a final doom. And leaving them to their "seven months' burial," he hurries away, in the hand of God, to the very high mountain, where, in place of the fallen temple and deserted streets of Jerusalem, the new city, the new temple, and the new country of the prince appear before his view, and comfort him under the darkness of the present, by the transcendent glories of the future hovering over the history of his beloved people.

Such a being was Ezekiel-among men, but not of them -detained in the company of flesh, his feet on earth, his soul floating amid the cherubim. We have tried to describe him; but perhaps it had been our wisdom to have said only, as he heard it said to an object representing well the swiftness, strength, and impetuosity of his own spirit" O wheel !"

Amplification is asserted, by Eichhorn and others, to be the peculiarity of Ezekiel. It was as truly asserted by Hall, to be the differentia of Burke. He no doubt describes minutely the objects before him; but this because, more than other prophets, he had objects visually presented, complicated and minute to describe. But his description of them is always terse and succinct; indeed, the stern literality with which he paints ideal and spiritual figures is one cause of his obscurity. He never deals with his visions artistically or by selection, but seems simply to turn his soul out before us, to daguerreotype the dimmest of his dreams. Thus, too, Burke, from the vividness of his imagination, seems often to be rhetorically expanding and exaggerating, while, in fact, he is but severely copying from the large pictures which have arisen before his view.

We know little of this prophet's history: it is marked chiefly by the procession of his predictions, as during twentyone years they marched onwards to the mountain-top, where they were abruptly closed. But we cannot successfully check our fancy, as she seeks to represent to us the face and figure of this our favorite prophet. We see him young, slender, long-locked, stooping, as if under the burden of the Lord-with a visible fire in his eye and cheek, and an invisible fire about his motions and gestures, earnest purpose pursuing him like a ghost, a wild beauty hanging around him, like the blossom on the thorn-tree, and the air of early death adding a supernatural age and dignity to his youthful aspect. We see him, as he moved through the land, a sungilded storm, followed by looks of admiration, wonder, and fear; and, like the hero of " Excelsior," untouched by the love of maidens, unterrified by the counsel of elders, undismayed by danger or by death, climbing straight to his object. We see him, at last, on the Mount of Vision-the Pisgah of prophecy-first, with rapturous wonder, saluting the spectacle of that mystic city and those holy waters-then crying out, "Lord, now let thy servant depart in peace, for mine eyes have seen thy salvation"-and at last, behold, the burning soul exhales through the burning eyes, and the wearied body falls down in his own solitary chamber—for it had been indeed a "dream," but a dream as true as are the future reign of Jesus and the future glory of the city and church of God.

DANIEL.

We require almost to apologize for introducing Daniel into the same cluster of prophets with Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel. And this not because it is rich enough without him, still less that he is not worthy of the conjunction, but that he seems at first to belong to a different order of men. They were prophets, and little else. He was a chief coun

sellor in a great empire. They seem to have been poor, solitary, and wandering men, despised and rejected; he was the favorite of monarchs. Their predictions exposed them to danger and shame; his "dreams" drew him aloft to riches and honor. They were admitted now and then among princes, because they were prophets; but his power of prophecy made him a prince. Their predictions came generally naked to their waking eyes-they were day-dreams; but his were often softened and shaded by the mist of sleep. And yet we do feel justified in putting the well-conditioned and gold-hung Daniel beside the gaunt, hungry, and wild-eyed sons of the prophets we have just been picturing. Souls, and dark piercing eyes expressing similar souls, are kindred, whether they burn 'neath the brows of beggars or of kings.

66 Sleep on," said an unhappy literary man, over the dust of Bunyan, in Bunhillfields, "thou prince of dreamers." Prince the third he was; for, while Joseph is the first, Daniel is the second monarch in this dim dynasty. His pillow was at times a throne-the throne of his genius, the throne of empires, and of all future ages. His imagination, fettered during the day by the cares of state, launched out at night into the sea of futurity, and brought home, from its remotest shores, spoils of which we are only yet learning the value and the meaning. It was by understanding the cipher of his own dreams, that he learned to expound that of othAs the poet is the best, nay, only true critic of poetry -as the painter can best understand pictures-and the orator best appreciate, whoever else may feel, eloquence-the dreamer alone can expound dreams.

ers.

Ovap eσti Alos—"a dream is from God," is one of the earliest, shortest, and truest of sentences. Strange, stuttering, imperfect, but real and direct messengers from the Infinite, are our dreams. Like worn-out couriers, dying with

their news at the threshold of the door, dreams seem sometimes unable to utter their tidings. Or is it rather that we do not yet understand their language, and must often thus lay missives aside, which contain at once our duty and our destiny? No theory of dreams as yet seems entirely satisfactory; but most imperfect are those theories which deny in them any preternatural and prophetic element. What man for years watches his dreams-ranges them each morning round his couch-compares them with each other," spiritual things with spiritual"-compares them with events— without the profound conviction that a superhuman power is "floating, mingling, interweaving," with those shapeless shades-that in dreams he often converses with the dead, meets with the loosened spirits of the sleeping upon common ground, exerts powers unknown to his waking moments, recalls the past though perished, sees the present though distant, and descries many a clear spot through the mist of the future? The dreaming world as the regions where all elements are mingled, all contradictions reconciled, all tenses lost in one--supplies us with the only faint conception we have of that awful Now, in which the Eternal dwells. In every dream does not the soul, like a stream, sink transiently into the deep abyss, whence it came, and where it is to merge at death, and are not the confusion and incoherence of dreams just the hubbub, the foam, and the struggle, with which the river weds the ocean?

But all dreams, which ever waved rapture over the brow of youthful genius, dreaming of love or heaven, or which ever distilled poison on the drugged and desperate repose of unhappy bard or philosopher, who has experienced the "pains of sleep," or cried aloud, as he awoke in struggles"I shall sleep no more," must yield, in magnitude, grandeur, and comprehensiveness, to the dreams which Daniel expounded or saw. They are all colossal in size, as befitted dreams dreamed in the palaces of Babylon. No ears of corn, blasted or flourishing-no kine, fat or lean-appear to Daniel; but here stands up a great image, with head of gold, breast of silver, belly of brass, and feet of iron, mingled with mire clay; and there waves a tree, tall as heaven, and broad as earth. Here, again, as the four winds are striving upon the ocean, four monstrous forms emerge, and there appears the throne of the Ancient of Days, with all its appurtenances of