to awaken in the heart holy feelings, aspirations, and hopes. The employment of this symbol is as natural as that already mentioned of the word which signifies wind or breath, in Hebrew and other ancient languages, to signify also spirit. Language having yet no word for spirit, the word signifying wind or breath was employed, and, in this use, may be said to be the suggestion of a symbol, or it may be regarded as implying that the wind or the breath was in some sense an appropriate symbol of that which the word spirit now expresses.

Of symbols employed by men, and certainly not of divine origin, we have an early and beautiful example in the winged human-headed lions and bulls of Nineveh. These do not seem to have been originally, whatever they became afterwards, intended as objects of idolatrous worship, but merely as symbols of the power, extent, and glory of the Assyrian empire. The colossal size of the figures was itself significant of Assyria's greatness; the body of a lion or a bull aptly symbolised strength-the former, perhaps, strength to be exerted for the destruction of enemies, as the lion tears with its claws; the latter strength to resist assaults and to maintain the position acquired. The human head was symbolical of intelligence. The wings were significant, if not of ubiquity, at least of a power to move from place to place, and to employ the forces of the empire against enemies, even in the most distant regions.

The use of symbols was very early introduced in religion; in fact, we must refer it to the time of our first parents, and ascribe it to God himself. Without offering any opinion concerning the Edenic state, or venturing to speak of the symbolic character of the Tree of Life or of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, we may safely say that in the inspired record we find mention of the use of symbols-and these divinely appointed-immediately after the fall. When "Unto Adam and his wife, did the Lord God make coats of skins and clothed them," the best commentators agree that a symbolic representation was made of one of the great truths of religion, of the cover

ing of that nakedness in which man-a sinner-cannot stand before God, in a better righteousness than his own, even that righteousness which is imputed freely and without works, the righteousness of Him who is both God and man, and to whose sacrifice of Himself upon the Cross we owe all our salvation. It is deemed probable that the animals from which the skins were taken, were animals offered in sacrifice. We have no express record of the institution of animal sacrifice, unless we infer it from this text; yet it is certain from what very soon follows in the Mosaic record, as to the divine acceptance of Abel's sacrifice of the firstlings of his flock and the fat thereof, that animal sacrifice was instituted immediately after the Fall. The rite of sacrifice was from the first, and always continued to be, entirely symbolic. However corrupted it became as religion was corrupted, and paganism grew up instead of the worship of the one true and living God, it has always retained, even in the worst forms of paganism, some traces of its origin, and something of its symbolic character. The offering was brought to the altar in order to atonement for sin, and the offerer thereby expressed his sense of sin. and of the necessity of atonement or reconciliation with that God whom he had offended. Not less clearly does the offering of sacrifice speak of the holiness and justice of a sin-hating and sin-punishing God, than it does of God's mercy in forgiving sinners who seek Him in the way of His own appointment. According to the belief of all Jews and Christians, every sacrifice, offered on patriarchal or Jewish altar, represented the great and truly propitiatory sacrifice of Christ, the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world. "It is not possible" we read in the Epistle to the Hebrews (x. 4), "that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins." But we are told that Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many (Heb. ix. 28); and concerning all the rites and ceremonies of the Jewish law, that they were "a figure for the time then present"-the whole system of symbols, concerning many of which the Scriptures leave us no room to doubt

their signification, whilst that of others may be learned from comparison with these, and from the place which they occupied in the general system, considered in its relation to the great scheme of salvation.

As further examples of symbols unquestionably of divine origin, the animal sacrifices of the patriarchs and Jews may be mentioned, the altars on which these sacrifices were offered, and the rites with which the offering was accompanied. The laying of hands on the head of the victim before it was killed, was a symbolic rite intended to signify the transference of guilt to the victim, and consequently the removal of it from the individual sinner or the people, as the case might be, by the propitiatory sacrifice (see Lev. i. 4; iii. 2, 8, 13; iv. 4, 15, 24, 29; also mentioned in this work). The frequency with which this laying of hands on the head of the victim is enjoined in the Mosaic law, shows what importance belonged to it as a symbolic rite. The scape-goat was in like manner symbolic, the sending of it away under charge of a fit person into the wilderness beautifully signifying the removal of sin from the Lord's people, that it should never come into remembrance or be mentioned against them any more; that sin having been first laid upon its head, as well as upon the head of the other goat to be slain in sacrifice, by the ordinary symbolic rite of laying on of hands. Of these and other such symbols further notice will be taken in the part of this work specially devoted to the subject of Jewish rites.

The Jewish sacrifices, and the Jewish rites in general, were not only symbolical but typical, having their antitypes in the sacrifice of Christ and the great spiritual realities of the Christian religion. That they were types, however, does not make them less truly symbols. There is a popular sense of these words, in which type and symbol are synonymous and may be used indifferently. It is not in this sense that they are used here, or anywhere else in this work; but in their strict signification, in which they convey ideas essentially distinct, a symbol being that which

presents to the eye some religious truth or lesson, whilst a type was prophetic of an antitype. But except personal types,-persons who were types of Christ, as Noah, Moses, Joshua, and David,-all the Old Testament types, those both of the patriarchal and the Jewish dispensations, were also symbols, nor is it easy to imagine how they could have served their purposes as types without being so.

To the New Testament dispensation no types belong; and the divinely-appointed Symbols of the Christian religion are few, being those only which appear in the sacraments of Baptism and the Lord's Supper, the washing with water in our sacrament, the eating of bread and drinking of wine in Christian fellowship, and as significant of fellowship with God in the other. Men have added to the number of Christian symbols, as in the use of the sign of the Cross, and of the marriage ring. It would not consist with the purpose or character of the present work, to enter upon the disputed question of the right of the Church to make use of such symbols in divine worship; it is enough to refer to them as examples of symbols, not of divine institution, but devised by men in order to suggest important truths and to impress them upon the mind.

Many symbols were employed by the Jewish prophets when proclaiming to the people the word of the Lord, ---symbols intended to give greater impressiveness to what they were commissioned to speak. These symbols, of course, were all of divine appointment; the prophets devised nothing of this kind; they spake as they were commanded, and did what they were commanded, but no more. These were symbols, however, appointed only for a special occasion, and not for continued or permanent use, like those which belonged to the ritual of the Jewish law. We have an example of this kind of symbol, divinely appointed, but for a special occasion only, in Isaiah's walking naked and barefoot three years, "for a sign and wonder upon Egypt and upon Ethiopia," as recorded in the fourth chapter of the book of Isaiah: "At the same time spake

the Lord by Isaiah, the son of Amoz, saying, Go and loose the sackcloth from off thy loins, and put off thy shoe from thy foot." And he did so, walking naked and barefoot. And the Lord said, "Like as my servant Isaiah hath walked naked and barefoot three years for a sign and a wonder upon Egypt and upon Ethiopia; so shall the king of Assyria lead away the Egyptians prisoners, and the Ethiopians captives, young and old, naked and barefoot, even with their buttocks uncovered, to the shame of Egypt. And they (the Israelites) shall be ashamed of Ethiopia their expectation, and of Egypt their glory" (Is. xx. 2–5). Another instance of the same kind occurs in the nineteenth chapter of the Prophecies of Jeremiah. "Thus saith the Lord: Go and get thee a potter's earthen bottle, and take of the ancients of the people, and of the ancients of the priests; And go forth unto the valley of the son of Hinnom, which is by the entry of the east gate, and proclaim there the words that I shall tell thee. And say: Hear the word of the Lord, O kings of Judah, and inhabitants of Jerusalem; Thus saith the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Behold, I will bring evil upon this place, the which, whosoever heareth, his ears shall tingle. Then thou shalt break the bottle in the sight of the men that go with thee, and shalt say unto them: Thus saith the Lord of hosts, Even so will I break this people, and this city, as one breaketh a potter's vessel, that cannot be made whole again; and they shall bury them in Tophet. till there be no place to bury" (Jer. xix. 1-11). It may be enough to refer, without quotation, to the symbol of bonds and yokes, which Jeremiah was commanded to make, and to put them upon his neck, and to send them. to the kings of Moab, and the Ammonites, and Tyre, and Zidon, in token that their kingdoms were given into the hands of the King of Babylon (see Jer. xxvii. 1–11). And after this it appears that Jeremiah wore a yoke of wood on his neck, as a symbol of the approaching captivity of the Jews (see Jer. xxviii. 10). It seems unnecessary to multiply instances of this kind, and it may be enough