while the instrumental accompaniment takes up the grand thought now announced, "God is coming," and dwells upon it in a round of jubilate and elevated strains. In an instant his glory has already covered the heavens, and the earth is full of his praise; not the acclamations of its inhabitants rendering praise the effects of the theophany appear first (ver. 6), and these are terror, not praise-but that which is deserving of praise, a synonyme of glory. "And there is brightness like the light," i. e., of the sun. First there was a glory spread over the horizon; next it flashes up over the sky and fills the earth with its radiance; now the concentrated brilliance, from which all this light had proceeded, rises into view. Beams of light, by a frequent oriental figure here called "horns,” stream from him on either hand. "And there," in the midst of his brightness, "is the hiding of his power;" this transcendently glorious appearance is not God himself, but the veil which he has thrown around his omnipotence. "Pestilence and burning diseases" (Eng. ver., marg.), the frequent instruments of his wrath, are here personified as attendants preceding and following the Lord of life and death. Quite a number of interpreters have adopted the notion that all theophanies must be squared to the scheme of an advancing storm; and the one before us has not escaped the same fate, and, as might be expected, the strangest mal-interpretations have followed. Here all is light and brightness, not clouds and tempest. And even in those representations it is never a mere storm that is depicted, but always something extraordinary and supernatural, to which a natural storm bears only a partial analogy. For although nature is itself a revelation of God, yet it becomes so in a more immediate and remarkable manner when God appears for judgment; and nature serves on the one hand as the instrument of his vengeance, while on the other it mirrors forth his majesty or sympathises with what man endures.

Thus far the sun-rise of the theophany, so to speak. The brightness that veils God, though it has risen into view, is yet afar, only filling the world with the beams of its distant glory. Now it comes into closer contact with the earth and its inhabitants. He stands and-not, "measures the earth," though the verb might easily have this sense, whether with reference to the division of Canaan among the tribes, or to a future division of the territory of their enemies among his people, or in the sense of measuring with his eyes, i. e., to survey-but, "shakes the earth," he simply treads upon it and it quivers. He looks and makes the nations quake. Everlasting mountains "not symbols of nations or kings, but in the literal sense -"burst asunder," not as obstacles to be removed out of the way of God's advance, but from fright which they are repre

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sented as sharing in common with man. "Perpetual hills sink," as all that is lofty must before the Almighty. The "everlasting ways" ascribed to him are not mountain-tops, considered as the road over which God comes, but literally "goings of eter nity," or remote antiquity, "are his," he goes forth now as he did when he appeared of old. By the mountains here Delitzsch understands the dark granite mountains of Seir, as those lay nearest the scene of the theophany; and to the epithet "everlasting" he gives the geological sense, which certainly suits Seir very well, of primitive as opposed to stratified mountains, whose formation goes back to the time of the original creation, not the work of subsequent deposition and upheaving. (perhaps the same as Cush or Ethiopia) and Midian, nations bordering on the Red Sea, and in the immediate neighbourhood of this magnificent descent, are singled out in their terror, not by way of contrast to others who do not share it, but as an instance of what is universal.

Cushan

The language now suddenly changes from the form of narration, in which the prophet has been describing what he saw, to that of direct address. The apparition grows more and more distinct. The Lord has come forth from the brilliancy in which he was hid, equipped as a victorious warrior with chariot and horse. The sea and rivers (Delitzsch supposes the Nile and Astaboras of Ethiopia) are seen in fearful agitation (an evident allusion to the miraculous passage opened through the Red Sea and the Jordan). And the prophet, too much excited by his desire to know the object of this terrific display (of which he is not made aware till ver. 13) to remain longer a quiet beholder, earnestly asks if they are the objects against which God's wrath is directed. "Against rivers has there been kindled, O Lord, against the rivers thine anger! against the sea thine wrath, that thou art riding upon thy horses, thy chariots of salvation? Being bared bare is thy bow," he is seen stripping from it its covering that it may be ready for use,- sworn the arrows by thy word," ”*—the command of God has bound them as by oath to execute their commission, they shall not fail to strike wherever they are aimed. This completes the draught of Jehovah as a conquering hero; the singers hush (Selah) while the instruments prolong loud notes of reverential praise. The address begun ver. 8 still continues, "Thou art cleaving the earth with rivers." The

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*This clause, the second of the two before" Selah "in ver. 9, though consisting but three,words is one of the most difficult in the whole book, as may be supposed from its having been interpreted in more than a hundred different ways. Our author's discussion of it, in which we cannot, of course, follow him here, presents an extremely beautiful specimen of exegetical skill. We have given above the translation which he adopts without assuming to decide whether it be absolutely the best. The sense of the English version is that all this God is doing to fulfil his word and oath given to the tribes of Israel.

bursting forth of streams from the bowels of the earth is another accompaniment of that majestic appearance, of which it had been asked if it was in wrath against the sea. All nature is seized with consternation at the sight of the advancing Deity. Mountains writhe distracted, deluging rains sweep by, the ocean roars, its waves dash against the sky, the sun and moon affrighted shrink back from view into their habitation, the same from which they come forth when they rise (Ps. xix. 5), and into which they enter when they set, but into which they now suddenly from the midst of heaven withdraw themselves, not because overpowered with superior brightness, but terror stricken-" at the light of thine arrows that are flying, at the bright flashing of thy spear." The spear and arrows of God are lightnings, not as natural phenomena accompanying a supposed storm, but as the weapons of his wrath. "In indignation thou art marching through the earth, anger thou art threshing the nations." And now the sudden certainty breaks in upon the prophet that this display of fearful majesty, which has filled the world with wild dismay, and before which he has just seen the nations beaten like dust and chaff is not directed against all nations without exception."Thou hast gone forth for the salvation of thy people, to save thy anointed," an epithet not of Judah but of their king, and that not any individual king, as Josiah, Jehoiakim, &c., but the king absolutely; and as the view of the prophet is complex, embracing the full realization of the idea as well as its present imperfect manifestation, Christ the last and most glorious successor of David on the throne is not excluded. That the Davidic king, including even the greatest of David's sons, should be an object of divine assistance, is a representation found elsewhere in the Old Testament (Zech. ix. 9, Ps. xxii.) and need create no difficulty.

The accomplishment of this work of deliverance is now set forth in three distinct figures: First, the house of the wicked is dashed to pieces; head, neck, and foundation are all torn away, and not a vestige is left remaining. Next, the ranks of the enemy are made to turn their arms against each other, and to perish by their own weapons. "Thou hast pierced through with his own darts the head of his hosts" (literally, "inhabitants of villages and unwalled places,") "which come like a whirlwind to scatter me," exulting secure of their prey like a robber lying in wait for some poor defenceless wanderer. The prophet sees the deliverance, but he sees too the danger that must precede it; and this as the nigher more powerfully affects his mind. With a trembling heart he beholds the advancing hosts as they rush on, certain of Israel's destruction ; and the similarity of peril to that in which Israel was when

pursued by Pharaoh and the forces of Egypt, gives rise to the third figure. The enemy follow Israel flying through the sea with its heaped-up waters. God marches after them riding on his horses and chariots of salvation.-(Ver. 8.) That Israel is saved, and that their enemies are destroyed, is not added. Just at the moment of intense expectation the figure is broken off. Israel's peril is seen; his deliverance is certain, but it lies yet in the future, and this leaves room for human despondency. The same fear which oppressed the prophet at the outset (ver. 2), returns again upon him. A distant deliverance does not extinguish his alarm at the approaching calamity. "I heard," -not God's majestic approach, for that was presented to the eye rather than the ear, and was besides, to his people, an occasion, not of terror, but of joyful expectation, because its object was their rescue, but the same that he had heard with similar feelings before (ver. 2), viz., the prediction in chap. i. of a speedy judgment upon Judah-"“I heard and all within me' (both physical and spiritual) "trembled; at the voice my lips quivered; rottenness enters into my bones," (paralysing all my strength,) "and I tremble where I stand, that I must quietly wait for the day of trouble, for his coming up against the people who shall invade them in troops." It is the being obliged to await this righteous inevitable chastisement which gives rise to the feelings just expressed. The next verse expands the idea of the day of trouble by giving the consequences of the invasion. It is a prophetic picture of the desolation of the holy land by the wars with the Chaldeans; and in part also, for the prophet does not chronologically separate them, its mournful condition during the Babylonish exile. But the confidence of faith triumphs over all, and with the exultation of victory the psalın closes.

ART. III.-Course of the History of Modern Philosophy. By M. D. VICTOR COUSIN. Translated by O. WIGHT. New York: Appleton & Co., 1852.

In these volumes is presented for the first time entire, in English dress, the second series of M. Cousin's Lectures on the History of Modern philosophy. The translation is spirited and faithful, and so far as such a thing is possible, it has succeeded in anglicising the peculiar mannerism of this most celebrated of modern lecturers on philosophy. M. Cousin, beyond any writer in his own department, wields a despotic command of all the resources of style and language. Rich in thought,

and luminous to a proverb in the most abstract processes of the understanding, he suffers no films to obscure the medium through which he speaks. His style shapes itself with an easy fluency to the varied movement of his thought,-falling into no misty Germanisms of phraseology, even amid the profoundest reaches of speculation, but every where clear and radiant with the light of his perspicacious intellect. Unlike most writers, in becoming diffuse in statement he does not cease to be precise in meaning; nor with him does redundancy beget weakness or confusion. M. Cousin's first object, as a lecturer, is to communicate to other minds the results of his own processes of investigation; and not merely to dazzle by profuse exhibitions of his resources, or to captivate by finished rhetorical arrangement. And yet he is eloquent, charmingly so. His lectures are worth reading for the glow, and elegance, and animated march of the style. The diction flows along the windings of his theme, marked as the emergency requires-here with a graceful mellow beauty worthy to drape the choicest effusions of the imagination; and there with a muscular vigour and stern severity which tolerate no verbal hindrance to the finest touches of analysis or the most intense compression of logical formulas.

Nor is this show of eloquence, this ready and felicitous adaptation of the word to the idea, the fruit of conscious design or studied effort. It is rather the natural and spontaneous dress of the offspring of his intellect. His style is what it is, so lively and instinct with grace, and yet so vigorous and transparent, simply because it is the direct offshoot of a genuine heart-interest in the most abstruse labours of the understanding the warm and instant gushing forth of an irrepressible enthusiasm felt for all that lies within the domain of philosophy. We know of no writer in this department who exhibits so much feeling in his thinking. M. Cousin, as he tracks his way through the known and the unknown of the shoreless regions of metaphysics, and coasts along its vast unmapped continents of thought, is far from regarding his journey as one of privation and solitude. Not a step taken but he perceives verdure, and fragrance, and beauty. In all his labours, whether engaged upon the mystic and involved speculations of Proclus, or the immortal dialogues of Plato, or the cold, hard pages of Descartes, there is no tiring of the first impulse, no flagging of the original interest. They come from the heart, and are fed by the native bias of his intellect. Over the very fragments of the old philosophies-over the decayed and vanishing wrecks of the ancient mythologies and anthropologies; and even over the muddy, confused issues of the Hindu metaphysics; in short, over all the attempts, from first