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3. There is yet a third style of prophetical language, characteristically different from tropical, or that sort of figurative language which is to be interpreted by the application of the ordinary rules of rhetoric, viz. SYMBOLICAL LANGUAGE. Symbols are very frequently confounded with ordinary figures, although they have their own peculiar and distinctive traits. Similes state distinctly the resemblance between two things, as when the Psalmist says, the righteous is like an evergreen.* Allegories are extended resemblances. Metaphors are implied resemblances, as when we describe the property of one person or thing, by giving to it the name of another person or thing, in which that property may be particularly conspicuous, calling an eminent statesman a pillar of state, or, as Christ did the Pharisees, "a generation of vipers." Symbols are yet more general, and imply more than metaphors. They are things, either of nature or art, used and understood to be the signs or representatives of some intellectual, moral, political, or historical truth. Symbolical language speaks to the mind, as the picture does to the eye. It is rather a language represented by things than by words. The fixed unalterable nature of things, in the various objects presented in the physical world, the prophets have preferred, as furnishing a better means to convey definite and immutable ideas, than even the definitions, which men frame, in the use of alphabetical language.

These remarks will be better understood from a brief and comprehensive account of the origin, use, and nature of symbolical language, in giving which we avail ourselves of the very lucid and valuable

• Psalm, 1.

chapter of Mr. Faber on this subject.* In the infancy of all nations and languages, ideas are much more numerous than words. The few words which men possess, such as the names of animals, and of things around them, are therefore used, not only in their natural and primary sense, but also in an artificial, tropical, or figurative sense. Hence, all infant nations, and half civilized tribes, abound in metaphors, and allegories, and various styles of figurative speech. We hear a great deal about Oriental imagery, and the highly wrought figurative style of the Hebrew prophets, as though there was something peculiar to the East in general, and in the highest degree among the Hebrew prophets; but the Indians of our own forests abound, as much as they do, in the tropes of speech. It is not any peculiar taste for poetry, but sheer necessity, induced by the poverty of language, that leads to this.

The Indian, devoid of language suited to diplomacy, resorts to significant objects and acts, and talks of burying the tomahawk and lighting the pipe, by the very same law of human thought, which made the ancient Hebrew talk of cutting a covenant, or lifting his hand, both alluding to ceremonies well known and understood to be emblematic.

This sort of tropical language is perfectly natural, and the very child soon becomes familiar with it. How natural is it to call warlike and ferocious men, and tribes, lions or tigers, and artful, insidious, malicious persons, vipers, snakes in the grass,—the plodding industrious man an ox,-the cunning knave a fox,-the quick-sighted attorney a lynx,-the vigilant and prowling adventurer a hawk,-the faithful and affectionate

* See Faber's Sacred Calendar of Prophecy, vol. i. chap. 1.

domestic a spaniel, and the like? The names of lion, tiger, panther, great buffalo, bloodhound, &c., given by our savages to their warriors, are in accordance with the fact, that in proportion to the poverty of a language, and to the want of abstract terms,-which is always the case where there is defective civilisa tion, will the language of people become more or less symbolical, that is, they will be disposed to employ things as the representatives of ideas.

Now, supposing that such a people should have occasion to communicate with each other at a distance, of necessity they would revert to pictures,* being as closely analogous as possible to their spoken language The image of a man would be the most natural sign of a man, but if it should be desired to describe some particular properties of that man, the most natural method would be to delineate, in connection with the image of a man, the likeness of some animal or object remarkable for that property, until, presently, the natural object would be used as the shortest and best description,—the picture of a snake, a fox, a lion, or a dog, as the case might be, being substituted for the man. These things would then acquire a permanent meaning, and be used to denote a whole class of men of like properties. Hence originated the hieroglyphical style of writing. Carrying the system out, and applying it to families and nations, in the most natural and easy way, it would lead to what has been called the tropical hieroglyphics of Egypt, and lay the foundation of the whole science of heraldry.

Accordingly we find that it was anciently, and continues still to be, the practice of nations to use symbols, or things, as signs and representatives of their

* See Warburton's Divine Legation, vol. ii. p. 234, &c.

character, the dove being the device of the ancient Assyrian empire,-the lion of the Babylonish,-the ram of the Medo-Persian -the he-goat of the Grecian or Macedonian, and the eagle of the Roman. So at this day, the lion is the device of Great Britain, the bear of Russia, and the spread-eagle of the United States. From such a use of language and style of writing, very naturally arose what is called the fable, or apologue, or parable, in which objects in nature are made to represent persons, and the whole to conceal some moral or historical truth, of which we have a very striking example in the fable or parable of Jotham,* and abundant among other nations than the Hebrews, as the Greek fables of Esop, the Roman fables of Menenius Agrippa, the Arabic fables by Lochman, the Indian fables by Pidpay, and the French fables by Lafontaine. The fable is a speaking hieroglyphic, and if the story of it be delineated, either by the pencil or the chisel, it becomes at once a painted or a sculptured hieroglyphic.

It was on this very same foundation, the poverty of language, that the whole system of the Oneirocritics, as they are called, i.e. interpreters of dreams supposed to be prophetical, was built, of which we have specimens in Jacob's interpretation of Joseph's dreams,t Joseph's interpretation of the baker's and butler's and Pharaoh's dreams,‡ and Daniel's interpretation of Nebuchadnezzar's. The interpretation was not arbitrary or imaginary, according to the whim and caprice of the soothsayer, but proceeded according to fixed and definite rules, founded on the import of symbolic language, so that this branch of divining became a science, which was studied and practised among heathen nations, highly respected and honored in Egypt and * Judges, 9. 8-15. † Gen. 37. 10. § Dan, 2. 31-45,

Gen. 40. 5-20; 42, 1-32,

Babylon, and cultivated by the Hebrews. There is reason to believe, that much of the studies pursued in the school of the prophets, instituted in the days of Samuel, was designed to qualify for the right use and interpretation of symbolic language. The dreams related by Herodotus,† of Astyages, that a vine sprang from the womb of his daughter, and rapidly overspread all Asia, and of Xerxes that he was crowned with the wreath of an olive tree which covered all the earth, but which suddenly and totally disappeared, may have been, for anything we can say to the contrary, as truly from God as those of Pharaoh and Nebuchadnezzar, and capable of being interpreted even by the heathen Oneirocritics correctly, according to the definite and established import of symbols. Mr. Faber has referred to Artemidorus, Astrampsychus, and Achmetes, and the other Oneirocritics, who are mentioned by them, as assuming the general principle, that such and such hieroglyphics bear such and such a meaning; and this point having been laid down, they very readily fabricate their interpretations of dreams accordingly. "Thus," adds he, "because poverty of language had anciently produced such a figurative mode of expression,-heaven, from its exalted situation, having been made the symbol or hieroglyphic of supreme regal power,-if a king dreamed that he ascended into heaven, the ancient Indians and Persians, and Egyptians, as we learn from Achmetes, interpreted his dream to signify, that he would obtain the pre-eminence over all other kings. And thus, an earthquake being, very naturally, for the same reason, made a symbol of a political revolution, if a king dreamed that his capital or his country was shaken by an earthquake, his dream, according to the same writer, * Warburton's Divine Legation, vol. ii. p. 67. Herod. 1. i. c. 108, and 1. vii. c. 19,

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