sympathized with portentous events, terrific storms arose immediately after each downfall. Indeed the similarity will surprise any one not accustomed to the perpetual parallels of history. "For very mysterious as the government of God is, yet we may observe throughout that His providences have a tendency to unfold themselves again and again under analogous circumstances and in similar results, and all these going on to further developments in that which is infinite." And this remark of Dr. Isaac Williams is illustrated by the fact that the Israelites went out of Egypt and Christ was put to death on the fifteenth day of the month Nisan-a coincidence not intended by man. (Matt. xxvi. 5.) And the conquest of Judea by Pompey, B.C. 63, was on the very day when the Jews were commemorating its previous capture by Nebuchad

nezzar.

Nor is our brief American history wanting in such parallels. The Fourth of July, 1776, was the birthday of our National Independence. The two most distinguished men in the framing of the Declaration were Thomas Jefferson and John Adams-the only two of the fiftyfive that sustained it who were elected Presidents of the United States. Precisely fifty years after they signed the paper they were taken from this world. This was indeed an extraordinary event in our history; but five years after, another President died on the same day and month of the year; and again on the 4th of July, 1863, a large army, with its fortifications, surrendered, and another army retreated after three days' battle. Let any one count the number of our Presidents, estimate their average age, their probable duration of life from that age, and then calculate the probabilities of two dying on the same day of the year, and another on the same day of another year, and he will find thousands of probabilities against one, and he must conclude that historic days reproduce themselves in their offspring.

Says Disraeli: "The heart of man beats on the same eternal springs; and whether he advances or retrogrades, he cannot

escape out of the march of human thought. Hence in the most extraordinary revolutions we discover that the time and place only are changed; for even when events are not strictly parallel we detect the same conducting principles.

. . . We have discovered the principles of prescience in the necessary dependence of effects on general causes, and we have shown that, impelled by the same motives and circumscribed by the same passions, all human events revolve in a circle, and we have opened the true source of this yet imperfect science of moral and political prediction in an intimate but discriminative knowledge of the past."

It is a curious fact that the most abnormal event of historic times, the French Revolution, "the most astonishing that has happened in the world," affords striking illustration of historic repetition. It flashed across the nations like the comet, with its portentous trail, but, like the comet, it revealed a beauteous and universal law. In the Reflections on the French Revolution, Mr. Burke says: "We do not draw the lessons we ought from history. A great volume is unrolled for our instruction, drawing the materials of future wisdom from the past errors and infirmities of mankind. . . . . . . You would not cure the evil by resolving that there should be no more monarchs, nor ministers of State, nor of the Gospel; no interpreters of the law, no general officers, no public councils. You might change the name, the things in some shape must remain. A certain quantum of power must always exist in the community. Wise men will apply their remedies to vices, not to names; to the causes of evil which are permanent, not to the occasional organs by which they act; otherwise you will be wise historically, a fool in practice. The very same vice assumes a new body; the spirit transmigrates, and, far from losing the principle of life by the change of its appearance, it is renovated in its new organs in juvenile activity. You are terrifying yourself with apparitions while your house is the haunt

of robbers. It is thus with those who, attending to the husk of history, think they are waging war with intolerance, pride, and cruelty, whilst, under color of abhorring the ill principles of antiquated parties, they are feeding the same odious vices in different factions, and, perhaps, worse."

These thoughts suggest the denunciation of those who build the tombs of the prophets and garnish the sepulchres of the righteous, and yet are witnesses that the spirit of their fathers is reproduced in themselves.

Says Disraeli: The French Revolution called our attention to the public and private history of Charles I. and Cromwell, and, taking a wider range, we found that in the governinents of Greece and Rome the events of those times had only been reproduced. The same principles terminated in the same results, and the same personages in the same drama, "A History of the French Revolution, by a Society of Latin Authors," is actually written by the Roman historians themselves.

Mr. Burke illustrates the parallels of history by quoting a sermon of Dr. Price, a sympathizer with the Regicides, who, "viewing from the Pisgah of the pulpit" the free, moral, happy, and glorious condition of France, as in a bird'seye landscape of a promised land, breaks out in the following rapture: "What an eventful period is this! I am thankful that I have lived to it. I could almost say: Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace, for mine eyes have seen Thy salvation. I have lived to see thirty millions of people, indignant and resolute, spurning at slavery and demanding liberty with an irresistible voice, their king led in triumph, and an arbitrary monarch surrendering himself to his subjects." To this rhapsody Mr. Burke replies: "The last century seems to me to have been quite as enlightened as the present. It had, though in a different place, a triumph as memorable as that of Dr. Price, and some of the great preach ers of that period partook of it as eagerly as he has done in the triumph of

France. On the trial of Rev. Hugh Peters for high treason, it was deposed that when King Charles was brought to London for his trial, the apostle of liberty on that day conducted the triumph. 'I saw,' said the witness, 'his majesty in the coach with six horses, and Peters riding before the king triumphing.' Dr. Price only follows a precedent, for, after the commencement of the king's trial, this precursor, the same Dr. Peters, concluding a long prayer at the Royal Chapel, said: 'I have prayed and preached these twenty years, and now I may say, with old Simeon, "Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace, for mine eyes have seen Thy salvation.” Peters had not the fruits of his prayer, for he neither departed as soon as he wished nor in peace."

In the History of France Eyre Crowe observes that up to the hour of Robespierre's sway the popular force had ever prevailed over that of the government, over absolute royalty under the constitutional assembly, over constitutional royalty under the legislature, over legal and organized republicanism in the convention; but now Robespierre made his stand and vanquished the people. Like a diver, the moment he touches the bottom springs rapidly back towards the surface, the Revolution commenced to reascend, passing the same currents which it had traversed in its descent, rising from Jacobinism to Girondism, and from Girondism to Royalism, and at last to absolute power. The descent and ascent filled nearly the same period-the one from 1789 to 1794, the other from 1794 to the ascendancy of Bonaparte in 1799. Says Vergniaud: "I perceive, citizens, that the Revolution, like Saturn, will devour its own children."

History abounds not only in repeated acts; but in personal repetitions, and, what is remarkable, the features of character may disappear for generations, and then come up with the vividness of identity. Physicians observe the same in regard to diseases, which appear to leave the family, and then, after years of exemption, break out in their former intensity.

Grindon on the Law of Rejuvenescence, says that ideas never die; out of fashion for a while, lost perhaps for generations, they bide their time. They revive, as Ovid says, "in nova corpora mutata." What the many are, such is the individual. The parallel is exact between the soul of man and society. "Every man," says Sir Thomas Browne, "is not only himself. There have been many Diogeneses and many Timons, though but few of the name. Men are lived over again; the world is now as in ages past; there was none then, but there has been some one since, that parallels him, and is as it were his revived self."

As a certain state of the atmosphere develops the lightning flash, or a cold degree precipitates the dew, so a certain condition of society brings either the resistance of the many or the despotism of one. Says Demosthenes to the Athenians: "If there were no Philip, your inertness would create one." The hands of time move slowly but surely, and then comes "the hour and the man."

Before the execution of Louis XVI., when Napoleon was unknown, Mr. Burke thus wrote: "In the weakness of one kind of authority, and in the fluctuations of all, the officers of the army will remain mutinous and full of faction, until some popular General who understands the art of conciliating the soldiery, and who possesses the true art of command, shall draw the eyes of men to himself. Armies will obey on his personal account, but the moment when that shall happen the person who commands the army is your master."

The reader will recognize the repetition of Elijah in John the Baptist, and may trace the parallel in many minute surroundings. Indeed, history abounds in such instances, like the sun-gleam repeated in myriad billows. What martyred ecclesiastic resembled Joan of Arc? What political enthusiast? Questions like these, exercising the mind, invest history with fresh interest. It is no longer the sarcophagus of the past, but the living prophet of the futureunfabled Clio.

We see decay stamped on all the works of man. Where is the spirit of the early Greeks? The mountains look on Marathon, seed-time and harvest continue, and these are types of a kingdom that changes not. Hence we understand that History is the writing of a hand that never grows old, the voice that never falters. With such sameness in nature and Providence, what may we expect in God's direct word?

Learned men have investigated parallel texts, and the number which, in 1611, was 6,000, had increased in 1785 to some 66,000. And doubtless further search will find many more hidden resemblances. We remark the same repetitions in the recorded events of the New Testament; Christ, both at the beginning and close of His ministry, expelled the traders from the Temple, the same transaction after an interval of years. A woman that was a sinner anointed his feet, and subsequently Mary, the sister of Lazarus, did the same. Christ fed 5,000 in the wilderness on one occasion, and again 4,000 in the same way-the small loaves handed to the disciples, and the very fragments carefully numbered. Three times did Simon Peter deny Him, and thrice did He ask, "Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou me?"

A distinguished theologian observes that, "after an examination of the text of Scripture for many years, in which every point has been tested at long intervals by frequent reviews, he invariably found that the very style of Scripture is constructed with a view to 'measure, weight, and number;' that as in nature every precious stone has its number which science can ascertain, so in revelation every idea has its arithmetical expression; and whenever any given idea is prominent there, a careful analysis will reveal the proper number of that idea either in its simple form or in some expressive multiple."

With such success in discovering the parallelisms of Holy Scripture, is it not strange that the principle has not been introduced into general history-a polyglot concordance of general events?

Who will introduce such a volume? The beginning would doubtless be imperfect, but increased relationships would be found in ages and events apparently disconnected. There might be the parallelism of events on the same recurring day, the repetition of historical persons-of remarkable epochs, and all this illustrating the reflection of the philosophic king: "The thing that has been shall be."

Let us take some benefactor and we shall find him closely allied to a noble line of ancestry and descendants, numerous relations gladly associating to perpetuate his memory with the wreath immortelle. What cumulative force does a single deed or benefactor derive from such association? What elevation of thought from a lineage commanding universal regard?

In the absence of real history, the human heart creates the imaginary and transfers its feelings to the Deities of Mythology, or to the discoursive animal; and as the mind has, like the body, its identity through all ages, we may expect the fabled creations of the past realized in our midst. Hence Tantalus grasps the delusive viands, Ixion ceaselessly turns the wheel, the Danaidæ draw water in sieves, and Prometheus, sacrilegious, is the vulture's victim; the wolf still seeks pretexts for the lamb's destruction, and the dog loses the substance in the shadow. If fables have such potency, how closely related must the real events of history be to each one's own experience? How nearly do they come home? "The past is a biography; all that Shakespeare says of the king, yonder boy that reads in a corner feels to be true of himself." I understand John Bradford pointing to a criminal and saying, "There goes myself." I am interested in the knock that startled Macbeth, for I have heard the same; and Hamlet convicts the guilty king by representing his own personal history. Why is the mind so capricious in its tastes? I am surrounded with books which for months are as little attractive as though written in Sanscrit. But all at once the slighted volumes become interesting, and I revel in pages which re

cently were my aversion. Why is this? "The mind, like the universe, has its pervading law; and the soul, like the solar system, gravitates according to the plan of balancing forces and returning cycles." I sympathize with the incipient revolution as I feel the oppression of some exacting land-holder. I shrink from such sympathy when a Robespierrian crowd threatens institutions I love. That boy resisting the little tyrant is the village Hampden; or, isolated from human sympathy, in his rough nature he becomes the juvenile Crusoe, until some vessel recognizes his signal and gives him relief. The fellowship of suffering obliterates all time, locality, persons. He is not merely my neighbor; he is myself repeated in the hungry, the sick, and the stranger. "What is the foundation of that interest all men feel in Greek history, letters, art, and poetry, in all its periods, from the Homeric age down to the domestic life of the Athenians and Spartans, four or five centuries later? What but this, that every man passes personally through a Grecian period;" and thus, as the traveller may now go around the world, visiting all climes, so in the revolution of mental periods he may live in all ages, become personally interested in their welfare, and anticipate the rising issues of the future.

We might infer the unity of historical events from that modern miracle-worker, analogy, which has male every advance a stand-point for new discoveries. A German astronomer for thirty years observed the sun spots, and was rewarded by ascertaining that they recurred in periods of eleven years, and, strange to say, that the periods of magnetic disturbance coincide with the recurring solar spots. There is then established a relationship unsuspected, which, prior to long-continued observation, had never entered imagination's range. Now if we examine the events of history we cannot avoid the inference of a connection yet closer than that which has been mentioned, closer to each other and to ourselves, and that because the world is

one.

"There is," says Bishop Butler, "a much more exact correspondence between the natural and moral world than we are apt to take notice of." How closely allied then must the moral events of the same world be? How indestructible the influence of a single historic deed? Its penetrating force may exceed

any physical connection. "It is a personal reminiscence. A man is the whole encyclopædia of facts, the creation of a thousand forests in one acorn."

What an impetus should historic study receive from such considerations! History becomes a life-its various dates resemble the scattered bones of the desert.

Ir has been suspected by students of natural history that some of the inferior animals not only have the five senses common to the human race, often active to a degree unattainable by man, but possess others of which we have no experience. Of course it is as impossible for us to conceive of these unknown senses as for a man blind from his birth to acquire a true idea of light, or a deaf mute to form a right conception of music.

Naturalists tell us, for instance, that ravens, which feed upon noxious and decaying substances, "obtain intimation of the existence of such objects by means of some faculty of which we have little conception. Sight it cannot be, and we know of no fetor escaping from an animal previous to putresas so subtile to call these scavengers of nature from the extremity of one country to that of another; for it is manifest from the height they preserve in their flight, and the haste they are making, that their departure has been from some far distant station, having a remote and urgent object in contemplation."

cence,

Nor can we readily comprehend by what means snails and slugs discover that the maturity of fruit approaches. Before color or smell has revealed to human observers that the plum is ripe, these slow and slimy animals have found it out, and have made their long and gradual journey to the precise spot-endued with what faculty for the purpose of discerning their food from afar, we cannot conceive.

And still more wonderful is the instinct or sense by which the male of certain rare insects finds its female. My children found a large chrysalis one day, and placed it under a common glass tumbler

in their playroom, hoping to see the butterfly emerge from it. But after watching fruitlessly for many days, they almost forgot the thing, and, childlike, went in search of new specimens. One day, however, they came running to me, exclaiming, "Our butterfly has come out! our butterfly has come out! and it fills up all the tumbler !"

Poor thing! it had been born into a sphere too small for it, and its gay wings were bent and crumpled against the confining glass. We took it out gently, and placed it on a leafy spray in a shady part of the garden. It tried in vain to balance itself or fly, and only weakly and with an effort fanned its poor wings gently, as all new-born butterflies do, in order to dry them in the air, and let them grow firm and strong. But, unfortunately, its wings had already dried and stiffened in their cramped and crumpled shape, and never straightened.

The insect was a very large and beautiful moth, of a kind I had never seen before, and have seldom met with since. Before night its destined mate found it out from afar, and came to it in its hidden bower; so our poor spoiled butterfly lived her little life, laid her eggs, and passed away, not without having accomplished all that mother-moths can do, except the spending of a few short hours in floating about on her beautiful wings.

But what told that other moth where

to find her? He could not see her, for she was hidden among the leaves, and there was neither sound nor odor to attract him. By no sense of which we have any knowledge could he have discovered her. He came by chance, you think? But naturalists will tell you that