and the Lamb, surely it is obvious enough that this, like the other affiliated visions, is a vision, by inspired insight, in the present tense, of what is yet to occur in the successive unfolding of the rapid scenes in the great drama of Christ's redemptive work; a prophetic vision of the future, not of what already is. We know that, in Tertullian's time, the idea was entertained by some that Christian martyrs, as a special allotment, should pass at once from their sufferings to heaven, without going, as all others must, into the under-world; but the evidence preponderates with us, upon the whole, that no such doctrine is really implied in the Apocalypse. In the fourteenth chapter, the author describes the hundred and forty-four thousand who were redeemed from among men, as standing with the Lamb on Mount Sion, and hearing a voice from heaven singing a new song, which no man, save the hundred and forty-four thousand, could learn. The probabilities are certainly strongest that this great company of the selected "first-fruits unto God and the Lamb," now standing on the earth, had not yet been in heaven, for they only learn the heavenly song which is sung before the throne by hearing it chanted down from heaven in a voice like multitudinous thunders. Finally, the most convincing proof that the writer did not suppose that the martyrs entered heaven before the second advent of Christ, a proof which, taken by itself, should seem to leave no doubt on the subject, is this. In the famous scene detailed in the twentieth chapter, usually called by commentators the martyr scene, it is said that "the souls of them that were beheaded for the word of God, and which had not worshipped the beast, lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years. This is the first resurrection." Now is it not certain that, if the writer supposed these souls had never been in the underworld, but in heaven, he could not have designated their preliminary descent from above as "the first resurrection," the first rising up? That phrase implies, we think, that all the dead were below; the faithful and chosen ones were to rise first to reign awhile with Jesus, and after that the rest should rise to be judged. After that judgment, which was expected to be on earth before the descended Lamb and his angels, the lost were to be plunged, as we have already seen, into the subterranean pit of torture, the unquenchable lake of fire. But what was to become of the righteous and redeemed? Whether, by the Apocalyptic representation, they were to remain for ever on earth, or to ascend into heaven, is a question which has been zealously debated for seventeen hundred years, and in some theological circles is still warmly discussed. Were the angels who came down to the earth with Christ to the judgment, never to return to their native seats? Were they permanently to transfer their deathless citizenship from the sky to Judæa? Were the constitution of human nature and the essence of human society to be abrogated, and the members of the human family cease enlarging lest they overflow the borders of the world? Was God himself literally to desert his ancient abode, and with the celestial city and all its angelic hierarchy float from the desolated firmament to Mount Zion, there to set up the central eternity of his throne? We cannot believe that such is the meaning which the seer of the Apocalypse wished to convey by his symbolic visions and pictures, any more than we can believe that he means literally to say that he saw "a woman in heaven clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars"; or that there were actually "armies in heaven, seated on white horses, and clothed in fine linen, white and clean, which is the righteousness of saints." Our conviction is, that he expected the Saviour would ascend with his angels and the redeemed into heaven, the vast and glorious habitation of God above the sky. He speaks in one place of the "temple of God in heaven, into which no man could enter until the seven plagues were fulfilled"; — and in another place says that the "great multitude of the redeemed are before the throne of God in heaven, and serve him day and night in his temple ";-and in still another place, he describes two prophets, messengers of God who had been slain, as coming to life," and hearing a great voice from heaven saying to them, Come up hither'; and they ascended up to heaven in a cloud, and their enemies beheld them." De Wette writes: "It is certain that an abstract conception of heavenly blessedness with God duskily hovers over the New Testament eschatology." We think this is true of the book of Revelation. It was a Persian-Jewish idea that the original destina tion of man, had he not sinned, was heaven. The Apostles thought it was a part of the mission of Christ to restore that lost privilege. We think the writer of the Apocalypse shared in that belief. His allusions to a new heaven and a new earth, and to the descent of a New Jerusalem from heaven, and other related particulars, are symbols, neither novel nor violent to Jewish minds, but both familiar and expressive, to denote a purifying glorification of the world, the installation of a Divine kingdom, and the brilliant reign of universal righteousness and happiness among men, as if under the very eyes of the Messiah and the very sceptre of God. The Christians shall reign in Jerusalem, which shall be adorned with indescribable splendors and shall be the centre of a world-wide dominion, the saved nations of the earth surrounding it and "walking in the light of it, their kings bringing their glory and honor into it." "God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death." That is, upon the whole, we understand the scattered hints relevant to the subject to imply, when Christ returns to the Father with his chosen, he will leave a regenerated earth, with Jerusalem for its golden and peerless capital, peopled, and to be peopled, with rejoicing and immortal men, who will keep the commandments, be exempt from ancient evils, hold intimate communion with God and the Lamb, and, from generation to generation, pass up to heaven through that swift and painless change, so explicitly described by Paul, whereby it was intended at the first that sinless man, his corruptible and mortal putting on incorruption and immortality, should be fitted for the companionship of angels in the pure radiance of the celestial world, and be translated thither without tasting the bitterness of death, which was supposed to be the subterranean banishment of the disembodied ghost. W. R. A. as ART. II. SILVIO PELLICO.* EARLY on a January morning of the present year, a small funeral cortége passed from beneath one of the arcades that line so many of the streets of Turin. At that hour they were almost deserted; and the silence made doubly impressive the aspect of the few priests who walked beside the bier, and the little group of mourners that followed it to the tomb. On the summit of the mountain range that girdles the Sardinian capital, masses of snow rested, here and there touched with a glittering hue by the first pale beams of a winter sun; prominent, on one lofty slope, rose the church of La Superga, where the monarchs of the kingdom lie buried; yonder is the street Alfieri, reminding the stranger that here the tragic poet of Italy consumed a miseducated youth, whose trials he has bitterly recorded in the memoir attached to his dramas; near by is the palace within whose walls are so many gems of art; and, not far distant, the new church erected by the Waldenses, so long banished to the valleys of Piedmont, but now allowed "freedom to worship God" in the capital of a reformed and progressive state. From the associations this scene awakens, if one turn to the modest obsequies first noted, they also yield an historical lesson. The body thus unostentatiously carried to the sepulchre is that of one known far beyond these mountains, and whose name is identified with patriotism, with genius, and with suffering, three charms to win and to hold the love of mankind. It is the funeral of Silvio Pellico. "Fra due o tre ore," he said, a little while before his death, "sarò in paradiso. Se ho peccato, ho espiato. Vedete, -quando ho scritto Le Mie Prigioni, ho avuto la vanità de credermi un grand uomo, ma poi ho veduto che non era vero, e mi sono pentito della mio vanità." Thus meekly, yet confident in his faith, he expired; and thus, without public honors, he was buried. But his life was * Opere di SILVIO PELLICO DA SALUZZO. Parigi Baudry. + "In two or three hours I shall be in paradise. If I have sinned, I have also atoned. When I wrote My Prisons,' I had the vanity to believe myself a great man; but then I saw it was not true, and repented of my conceit." too remarkable to be concluded without a glance at its leading facts; and he wrote and suffered in a spirit and to an end which challenge, at least, a grateful reminis cence. Born in Piedmont, in 1788, Silvio Pellico went, in early youth, to Lyons, and returned to Milan to enter upon the career of a man of letters and a teacher of youth. In the former vocation he became favorably known as the author of several tragedies. The example of Alfieri had given a new impulse to this form of literature, and it became the favorite vehicle of patriotic feeling. There is often a winning grace of diction, and a nobility as well as refinement of sentiment, in Pellico's tragedies, but they lack the concise vigor and suggestive intensity of his great prototype. He is evidently subdued by, instead of rising above the trammels of dramatic unity; we but occasionally recognize a perfectly free and glowing utterance; the mould seems too rigid and precise for the thought, and, despite his casual success, it is evident that this was not the legitimate sphere for Pellico's genius. Yet there is much skill, taste, and emotion, as well as scholarship, in his plays. We have been brought into so much nearer contact with his mind through its less studied and artificial expression, that these writings do not appear to do full justice or give entire scope to his powers. The subjects are mainly historical; characterization is secondary to plot and language; of the latter, Pellico had a poetical mastery. The scene of Ester d' Engaddi is laid in the second century, about fifty years after the destruction of Jerusalem; it is elaborated from Hebrew annals and tradition. Iginia d'Asti, which enjoyed, at one time, a considerable degree of popularity, illustrates a local story of the thirteenth century. Eufemio di Messina is founded on the invasion of Sicily by the Saracens in 825. In each drama the story is used as the medium to exhibit some great truth or natural sentiment, and in this respect he resembles Joanna Baillie; thus, Erodiade indicates the moral beauty of a fearless annunciation of truth, Leoniero the misfortunes attendant on civil discord, as shown in the history of the Middle Ages, and the social necessity of human fellowship; in Gismonda is portrayed a woman of magnanimous soul battling with strong pas |