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 counsellor 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. 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 eσri 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?

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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

majesty and insignia of justice. Empires, religions, the history of time, the opening gateways of eternity, are all spanned by those dreams. No wonder that monarchs sprang up trembling and troubled from their sight, and that one of them changed the countenance of the prophet, as years of anguish could not have done.

They are recounted in language grave, solemn, serene. The poetry of Daniel lies rather in the objects presented than in the figures or the language of the description. The vehemence, pathos, or fury, which, in various measures, characterized his brethren, are not found in him. A calm uniform dignity distinguishes all his actions and words. It forsakes not his brow even while he is astonished for one hour in the presence of the monarch. It enters with him as he enters, awful in holiness, into the hall of Belshazzar's feast. It sits over him in the lion's den, like a canopy of state; and it sustains his style to its usual even exalted pitch in describing the session of the Ancient of Days, and the fiery stream which goes forth before him.

Besides those dreams, there are interspersed incidents of the most romantic and poetical character. Indeed, Daniel is the most romantic book of Scripture. There is the burning, fiery furnace, with the fourth Man walking through it, where three only had been cast in; there is the story of Nebuchadnezzar, driven from men, but restored again to his kingdom, and becoming an humble worshipper of the God. of heaven; there is the hall of Belshazzar, with the armless hand and unread letters burning from the wall; and there is the figure of Daniel in the den, swaying the lions by his eye, and his holiness-emblem of a divine philosophy-soothing the savage passions of clay.

Perhaps, after all, the great grandeur of Daniel's prophecy arises from its frequent glimpses of the coming One. Over all the wondrous emblems and colossal confusions of his visions, there is seen slowly, yet triumphantly, rising, one head and form-the form of a man, the head of a prince. It is the Messiah painting himself upon the sky of the fuThis vision at once interpenetrates and overtops all the rest. Gathering from former prophets the separate rays of his glory which they saw, Daniel forms them into one kingly shape this shape he brings before the Ancient of Days-to him assigns the task of defending the holy

ture.

people at his feet lays the keys of universal empire, and leaves him judging the quick and the dead. To Daniel, it was permitted to bring forth the first full birth of that great thought, which has ever since been the life of the church and the hope of the world.

And now, too, must this dignified counsellor, this fearless saint, this ardent patriot, this blameless man, this magnificent dreamer, pass away from our page. He was certainly one of the most admirable of Scripture worthies. His character was formed in youth; it was retained in defiance of the seductions and of the terrors of a court. His genius, furnished with every advantage of education, and every variety of Pagan learning, was consecrated to God; the window of his prophecy, like that of his chamber, stood open toward Jerusalem. Over his death, as over that of the former three, there hangs a cloud of darkness. The deaths of the patriarchs and the kings are recorded, but the prophets drop suddenly from their airy summits, and we see and hear of them no more. Was Isaiah sawn asunder? We cannot

tell. Did Jeremiah perish a martyr in Egypt? We cannot tell. Did Ezekiel die in youth, crucified on the fiery cross of his own temperament? We cannot tell. And how came Daniel, the prince of dreamers, to his end? Did he, old, and full of honors, die amidst some happy Sabbath dream? Or did he depart, turning his eyes through his open window toward that beloved city where the hammers of reconstruction were already resounding? We cannot tell. No matter: the messages are with us, while the men are away; the messages are certain, while the fate of the men is wrapt in doubt. This is in fine keeping with the severe reserve of Scripture, and with the character of its writers. Munificent and modest benefactors, they knocked at the door of the human family at night, threw in inestimable wealth, fled, and the sound of their feet, dying away in the distance, is all the tidings they have given of themselves.

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CHAPTER XI.

THE MINOR PROPHETS.

BESIDE the "giant angels " of Hebrew song, appears a series of "stripling cherubs," who are commonly called the minor prophets. They inherit this name, because some, though by no means all of them, flourished at a later date than the others-because their prophecies are shorter-because their genius was of a humbler order, although still that order was high-and because, while their genuineness and inspiration are conceded, they have never bulked so largely in the eye of the Church. If the constellation of large stars described in the former chapter may be compared to the cross of the south, this now in sight reminds us of the Pleiades: it is a mass of minute particles of glory, which may be somewhat difficult to divide asunder.

These smaller predictions have all a fragmentary character, and a great occasional obscurity, which has annoyed translators and verbal critics. What is written in brief space is generally written in brief time; and what is written rapidly is often full of rude boldness, abrupt transitions, and violent inversions. Hence, too, a difficulty which touches our province more closely, the difficulty of defining the peculiarity of each of the prophets. They have left only footprints on that dim old Hebrew soil, and from these we must gather their strength, age, and size. Cuvier's task of inferring a mastodon from a bone, here requires renewal. The very tread, indeed, of some animals, bewrays them; but then, that is either gigantic, as the trample of elephants, or peculiar as the mark which a rare and solitary bird leaves upon the sand or snow. But here, many rare and solitary birds have left their prints, close beside each other, and how to distinguish between them?

The order in which the minor prophets appear in our version is not the correct one. We prefer that of Dr. Newcome, who classes them according to the respective dates of their lives and predictions. According to his arrangement, the first is