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Therefore I make a decree, That every people, nation, and language, which speak anything amiss against the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego, shall be cut in pieces, and their houses shall be made a dunghill; because there is no other god that can deliver after this sort.

Then the king promoted Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego, in the province of Babylon.

These accounts are not from the Arabian Nights' Entertainments, but from a book which Christendom professes to believe, not only as true, but as in a special sense sacred and divine; they are read in churches, we teach our children to read them; to call them openly in question, has, even in times within the memory of many of our readers, brought down upon the offender not only social obloquy, but legal pains and penalties. And yet, we cannot help asking, incredulously, does Christendom believe these things? Do the men of science-the Professors at the Royal Institution-believe them? Nay, do the members of our churches really and truly believe them, or do they only assent to them in the same sense that Clergymen give their "unfeigned assent and consent" to the Thirty-nine Articles, and to all that is contained in the Book of Common Prayer; that is, with certain reservations and an unlimited latitude of interpretation? Is it all a game of make-believe we are playing-one of the many "shams" against which Mr. Carlyle has not yet thundered?

No doubt popular lecturers at Mechanics' Institutions and elsewhere who know all about the laws of nature, and what can, and what cannot be; who, according to the advice of Professor Faraday, "set out with clear ideas of the naturally possible and impossible," could easily demonstrate (were they but permitted, and had they the necessary courage) that these things never did and never could happen; and would congratulate themselves and their audiences on the superior enlightenment of the present age, consequent upon cheap lectures and penny newspapers. And yet, spite of chemical experiments and the magic lantern, Professor Pepper and the Morning Star, the "monster superstition," stupid, obstinate brute, refuses to be either converted or to "clear the track." He objects to being crushed, and in every age, even down to this "enlightened nineteenth century," when the schoolmaster and the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge are abroad, goes on relating and believing facts "which can't possibly be, you know," to the great disgust of the savans; and very much, indeed, in some respects, as if said savans all this time had been writing, experimenting, demonstrating, orating and perorating to the inhabitants of Jupiter.

Indeed the perpetuity of the belief in spiritual agencies, and the constant recurrence in history of the facts which originate or sustain it, is one of those perplexing phenomena which, among other ends, seem specially designed for the botheration of

philosophers. It has an obstinate vitality; if it seems to die, there is always a resurrection for it. The ghosts will not be laid. Just now, in modern Spiritualism, there is a universal resurrection of the spiritual beliefs of past ages. Those whom "philosophy" supposed herself to have slain have risen to their feet an armed host, and "philosophy" has to "fight her battles o'er again' under greater disadvantages than ever, and with all the odds against her.

To speak now of only one form of this universal belief that of preservation by spiritual agency from the effects of fire. The Scripture narratives we have quoted, if not fully paralleled, yet have their credibility vindicated by facts of corresponding order in later times, and, doubtless, produced by the operation of the same laws. The work of Jamblichus (written in the third century), On the Mysteries of the Egyptians, Chaldeans, and Assyrians, is a compendium of the knowledge of spirit-manifestation and the practice of spirit-communion which existed in the ancient world. In Sect. III, chap. iv., Jamblichus points out "the signs by which those who are rightly possessed by the gods may be known." be known." One of the signs of those who are thus a vehicle or instrument to the inspiring gods," is that "they are not conscious of the state they are in, neither as they were before, nor in any other way; nor in short do they convert to themselves their own intelligence, or assert any knowledge which is peculiarly their own." He tells us, as one indication of this, that "Many through divine inspiration, are not burned when fire is introduced to them, the inspiring influence preventing the fire from touching them. Many, also, though burned, do not apprehend that they are so, because they do not then live an animal life."

Some of the early Christian martyrs gave illustration of their insensibility to the pain of fire to which Jamblichus here alludes, affirming that in the fire they felt no pain, that it was to them as a bed of roses. Polycarp, three days before his martyrdom, had a vision by which he knew his impending fate, and told his friends "I shall be burned alive!" He was not daunted by the prospect. A letter giving an account of his martyrdom and the attending circumstances, was written by the Church of Smyrna, of which he was the Bishop, and was addressed to all sister churches. This letter states that on his way to the place of execution "there came a voice from heaven, saying, Be strong and quit thyself like a man, Polycarp.' Now no one saw who spoke to him, but many of our brethren present heard the voice. Then Polycarp, looking sternly around on the people, shaking his head at them, with a deep groan, and with a mouth but half open, as one who spoke not his own words, but those of

another, and looking up to heaven, said, 'take away the wicked.' Polycarp having then made a full and final confession of Christ, the executioner kindled the fire, and the flame began to blaze to a great height. When, behold, a mighty wonder appeared to us whose lot it was to see it, and who were reserved by heaven to declare to others what we had seen. For the flame, forming a kind of arch, like to the sail of a ship, filled with the wind, encompassed the body of the martyr, as in a circle; who stood in the midst of it, not as flesh, which is burnt, but bread, which is baked, or as gold and silver glowing in a furnace. At length when these wicked men saw that his body could not be consumed by fire, they commanded the executioner to draw near, and to thrust his sword into him."

...

Speaking of others who suffered martyrdom with him, the letter says, "while they were under torments they were absent from the body, or, rather, the Lord Christ stood by them and conversed with them, and revealed things to them inconceivable by man, as if they were no longer men, but already become angels.

The Apostle John is said to have been cast into a cauldron of boiling oil, by order of the Emperor Domitian, and to have come out unhurt. And Strabo tells us that the priestesses of Diana at Castabala, in Cappadocia, were accustomed to walk over burning coal; and at the annual festival held in the temple of Apollo on Mount Soracte, in Etruria, the Hirpi marched over burning coals, and on this account were exempted from military service, and received other privileges from the Roman Senate.

In every nation, says Gibbon, the Deity has been invoked to confirm the truth, or to punish the falsehood, of human testimony. Out of this has grown the practice of "The Ordeal;" a solemn appeal to heaven to establish by some visible sign-by some manifest intervention-the innocence of persons wrongfully accused of some flagrant offence. The practice has prevailed extensively, and is of very high antiquity, and the ordeal has been of various kinds; perhaps the most ancient on record being that of "the water of jealousy," of which the account is given in the 5th chapter of the Book of Numbers. But the chief ordeal seems to have been the purgation by fire. We are not now considering the wisdom or folly, the piety or presumption of this usage; whether in certain conditions of society and under peculiar circumstances it might be justified; or, whether it is to be wholly reprobated in all cases. We refer to it only as evidence of the wide-spread belief that, as a matter of fact, ordinary natural effects have been averted by means of spiritual intervention. It has been a practice alike of the African and the Brahmin, the Pagan and the Christian.

It appears to have been well known to the ancient Greeks; for, in the Antigone of Sophocles, a person suspected by Creon of a misdemeanour, declares himself ready "to handle hot iron and to walk over fire," in order to manifest his innocence; which, the scholiast tells us, was then an usual mode of purgation.

In India, for the fire ordeal an excavation made in the ground is filled with a wood fire: into this the person accused must walk barefooted; and, if his foot be unhurt, he is held blameless; but if it be burned he is held guilty. It is still (or was till recently) in practice when satisfactory information cannot be obtained, among the Gentoos, and is of high antiquity.

Simplicius, Bishop of Autun, in the fourth century, is said to have cleared himself of a charge brought against him by taking up a handful of burning coal and holding it to his breast without injury, in attestation of his innocence; and St. Britius, Bishop of Tours, in the fifth century, is related to have cleared himself from a charge of incontinence in a similar manner.

During the middle ages the purgation by fire was one of the ordeals which prevailed for many centuries: it was a solemn appeal to heaven to vindicate the innocent when innocence could not be otherwise proven; and it was a test by which in England, and in various countries of Europe, that innocence could be legally established.

Blackstone, in his chapter "Of Trial and Conviction," writes:-"Fire-ordeal was performed either by taking up in the hand, unhurt, a piece of red-hot iron, of one, two, or three pounds weight; or else by walking, barefoot and blindfold, over nine red-hot ploughshares, laid lengthwise at unequal distances; and if the party escaped being hurt, he was adjudged innocent; but if it happened otherwise, he was then condemned as guilty. By this method Queen Emma, the mother of Edward the Confessor, is mentioned to have cleared her character when suspected of familiarity with Alwyn, Bishop of Winchester.Rudhouse's Hist. Mag., Winton, Book iv., chap. 1."*

"In the cathedral at Winchester-if we are to believe the ancient annalists and the popular songs of succeeding ages-the widow of the victorious Canute, the celebrated Emma who had been the wife of two kings and was now the mother of a third, passed the fiery ordeal, and walked unhurt over nine red-hot ploughshares. She came thither the preceding day from the Abbey of Wherwell, whither she had retired, and spent the night before the altar in prayer. When the morning broke there came the king, the bishops, and all the multitude of people, to witness this fearful spectacle; and when they saw her walk, supported by two bishops, over the burning metal, not merely unhurt but unconscious of it-thus being cleared by Divine power itself from the breath of calumny-the thousands of spectators made the vaults of the ancient mynstre, and the vault of heaven itself, ring with their acclamations."-Howitt's Visits to Remarkable Places, Vol. i., p. 428.

N.S.-III.

Dr. Henry observes in reference to the ordeals in ancient Britain, that, if we suppose few or none escaped conviction who exposed themselves to those fiery trials, we shall be very much mistaken. "For the histories of those times contain innumerable examples of persons plunging their naked arms into boiling water, handling red-hot balls of iron, and walking upon burning ploughshares without receiving the least injury. Many learned men (he adds) have been much puzzled to account for this, and disposed to think that Providence graciously interposed in a miraculous manner, for the preservation of injured inno

cence."

The ordeal was accompanied with religious service within consecrated walls, and the solemnity with which the Church superintended the appeal to Heaven invested it with a sacred character, and must have been awfully impressive. A form of ritual appointed by ecclesiastical authority has been translated and published from a document found in the charter-chest of an ancient Thuringian monastery, by M. Büsching, a well-known German antiquary. It will be familiar to many readers, from its being given by Sir Walter Scott in the historical Notes to his Fair Maid of Perth. It is here appended :—

A fire was kindled within the church, not far from the great altar. The person about to undergo the ordeal was placed in front of the fire, surrounded by his friends, by all who were in any way interested in the result of the trial, and by the whole clergy of the vicinity. Upon a table near the fire, the coulter over which he was to walk, the bar he was to carry, or, if he were a knight, the steel gloves which, after they had been made red hot, he was to put on his hands, were placed in view of all.

Part of the usual service of the day being performed, a priest advances, and places himself in front of the fire, uttering at the same moment, the following prayer, which is the first Mr. Büsching gives :

"O Lord God, bless this place, that herein there may be health, and holiness, and purity, and sanctification, and victory, and humility, and meekness, fulfilment of the law, and obedience to God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. May thy blessing, O God of purity and justice, be upon this place, and upon all that be therein; for the sake of Christ, the Redeemer of the world."

A second priest now lifts the iron, and bears it towards the fire. A series of prayers follows; all to be repeated ere the iron is laid on the fire.

These are the Prayers to be said over the Fire and the Iron.

"1. Lord God, Almighty Father, Fountain of Light, hear us :-enlighten us, O thou that dwellest in light unapproachable. Bless this fire, O God; and as from the midst of the fire thou didst of old enlighten Moses, so from this flame enlighten and purify our hearts, that we may be worthy, through Christ our Lord, to come unto thee, and unto the life eternal.

"2. Our Father which art in Heaven, &c.

"3. O Lord, save thy servant. Lord God, send him help out of Zion, thy holy hill. Save him, O Lord. Hear us, O Lord. O Lord, be with us.

"4. O God, Holy and Almighty, hear us. By the majesty of thy most holy name, and by the coming of thy dear Son, and by the gift of the comfort of thy holy Spirit, and by the justice of thine eternal seat, hear us, good Lord. Purify this metal, snd sanctify it, that all falsehood and deceit of the devil may be cast out of it, and utterly removed; and that the truth of thy righteous judgment

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