There appears much reason for making a slight alteration in our version of the sacred text, by rendering the latter part of Gen. xxxii. 28,—“ As a prince thou hast power with God, and thou shalt prevail with men." The latter clause depends upon the former. This promise was fulfilled in his amicable meeting with Esau, whose heart was melted with tenderness by Him who has the hearts of all men in His power. Subsequent events of Jacob's history also show the privileges of a "prince of God." To have the friendship of God was to have the Arbiter of events on his side. Thus, according to promise, he returned to his father, and lived at peace with his brother until Isaac's death; when Esau practically acknowledged that the once-transferred birthright belonged to Jacob, retired from his father's abode, and left his brother in peaceable occupation of the land.

"The Lord God is a sun and shield: the Lord will give grace and glory: no good thing will He withhold from them that walk uprightly." This promise is sure to the believer, and he may rely upon its being fulfilled. Yet he may have marred his inheritance by some previous wickedness, the baneful effects of which cannot be easily counteracted. In this respect, young converts have a great advantage over those of riper age. They have not yet engaged in a course of conduct which, in its natural results, will embitter future years. Nothing has been done to prevent the enjoyment of God's blessing in the ordinary dealings of His providential government. Their voluntary relationships have yet to be formed: the sources of domestic happiness have not been poisoned. God does not promise to alter the hearts of our relatives, when He converts our own; or, by the bestowment of present blessings, to save us from the evil consequences of former follies. In our days of sin and folly, we may do that which we shall have to deplore during the whole of life. This is a strong reason for seeking the Lord in the time of youth. Its force will be apparent in the circumstances of Jacob's subsequent history.

We have seen that deceit was the ruling sin of his nature. His conversion did not take place till most of his family were rising into manhood. His sons, therefore, were early practised in their father's ways of guile. Their first exhibition of this spirit (Gen. xxxiv.) might have proved the destruction of Jacob and his family, had not the Lord prevented. (Gen. xxxv. 5.) Encouraged by success in crime, they afterwards played off their arts against Jacob himself, especially in the case of Joseph; and they caused the Patriarch many years of bitter mourning. When he discovered the wicked action, his conscience must have forcibly told him that it was a just retribution for his own dealing with his father and brother. Sins that are to be punished in another world, may now pass without the visitations of Divine anger; but crimes that are forgiven are not unfrequently followed by the chastisement of a paternal Providence. Thus God's displeasure against iniquity is manifested, and the holiness of His government is vindicated.

The subject of a retributive providence is of deep and serious importance. From the facts of Bible-history, from cases of personal observation, and from reasoning upon the righteousness of the Divine administration, we incline to believe that no sin is allowed to pass without some mark of disapprobation. All Christians allow that unpardoned sin will be punished in the world to come; but many seem to hope that, if a transgression be confessed and forgiven, the matter will end there. We think otherwise. This may be the case with sins committed in secret against God; but not so with public offences against religion or righteousness. Consider Abraham and

Sarah's prevarication,-Lot's covetousness,-Jacob and Laban's treachery, -Esau's profanity, the slaughter of the Egyptian by Moses, and the lawgiver's unadvised language in the wilderness,-Aaron and Miriam's rebellion,-Eli's remissness,-David's sin,-Jonah's unfaithfulness,-and other cases recorded in holy Scripture. In most of these, we know, the sin was forgiven; but a chastisement followed, not in the way of adequate vengeance, but in that of fatherly correction. Thus solemn and ample is the proof that it is "an evil and bitter thing to sin against God."

"At evening time it shall be light." The Lord will not always chide. Hear His own word by the Prophet: "I will not contend for ever, neither will I be always wroth: for the spirit should fail before me, and the souls which I have made. For the iniquity of his covetousness was I wroth, and smote him: I hid me, and was wroth, and he went on frowardly in the way of his heart. I have seen his ways, and will heal him: I will lead him also, and restore comforts unto him and to his mourners.” (Isai. lvii. 16-18.) Jacob did not reason according to this mercy of Jehovah, but thought that his grey hairs would go down with sorrow to the grave: “Joseph is not, and Simeon is not, and ye will take Benjamin away: all these things are against me.' He little thought that God was making them all work together for his good. He little thought of a place of safety and comfort, prepared by these very means, where he might spend the last years of his pilgrimage in peace and pleasure. Happy is the soul that receives instruction, and profits by it. The visitations of Providence seem to have had their due effect upon Jacob and his family; and now the same Providence diverged from its ordinary course, in order to provide them a refuge from the evils that were falling upon the guilty land of Canaan. In Goshen the aged pilgrim passed seventeen years of abounding comfort, before he went to join Abraham and Isaac in their eternal rest,-" the bosom of his Father and his God."

VELOCITY OF LIGHTNING.

THE lightning of the first two classes does not last for more than one-thousandth of a second; but a less duration in passing than onemillionth part of a second is attributed to the light of electricity of high tension. In comparison with this velocity, the most rapid artificial motion that can be produced appears repose. This has been exemplified by Professor Wheatstone in a very beautiful experiment. A wheel, made to revolve with such celerity as to render its spokes invisible, is seen for an instant with all its spokes distinct, as if at rest, when illuminated by a flash of lightning, because the flash has come and gone before the wheel has had time to make a perceptible advance. The colour of lightning is variously orange, white, and blue, verging to violet. Its hue appears to depend on the intensity of electricity, and height in the atmosphere. The more electricity there is passing through the air in a given time, the whiter and more dazzling is the light. Violet and blue coloured lightnings are observed to be discharged from storm-clouds high in the atmosphere, where the air is rarified; and analogously, the electric spark made to pass through the receiver of an air-pump exhibits a blue or violet light in proportion as the vacuum is complete.-Petermann and Milner's Physical Geography.

ON THE THEOLOGY OF HOMER.

BY PROFESSOR BLACKIE.

(ABRIDGED FROM THE CLASSICAL MUSeum, no. xxvI.)

(Concluded from page 503.)

PROPOSITION X.-The gods know all things. This proposition, however, like that respecting the divine omnipotence, must not be pressed curiously, but understood with reference to the practical uses of the divine knowledge in the moral government of the world.

This quality of superhuman knowledge not limited by the vulgar barriers of space and time, though it belongs to all the partakers of an immortal nature, is, with peculiar emphasis, applied to the elemental god, Helios, and to Zeus, the moral governor of the world. It is not to be expected, however, that the sense-bound poet of an early stage of civilisation should be able, on all occasions, to preserve the consistency of this high ideal of the celestial intellect, which he lays down theoretically.

PROPOSITION XI.-The gods are easily offended, wrathful, and jealous. Their hatred is the more to be dreaded in proportion as they are more powerful than mortals; and their high resolves, when once made, are carried out with a relentless pitilessness, that can be appeased only by the greatest possible sacrifices on the part of the guilty or unfortunate offender. Nothing strikes the Christian reader of Homer with more astonishment, and it may be loathing, than the extremely low moral character of the celestial personages who are held up to view as the objects of popular reverence; and the base feelings by which the bosoms of these high persons are continually actuated. One is at times tempted, considering these things, to say of the Homeric gods generally, as Dr. Ihne says of the gods of the Iliad, that they are "worse than the men." What shall we say to all this? Only one thing can be said, that the men who could so conceive, and so picture their gods, were themselves in a very low state of moral development. If Achilles may immolate his thousands, being a mortal, Poseidon, being a god, may swallow up his tens of thousands. We are forced, therefore, if we will have a palliation for this monstrous theology,―to fall back upon this proposition, that, in the Homeric conception of a god, holiness, or moral excellence of any kind, forms no essential element. Superior strength is the characteristic attribute, and fear more the inspiration of their worshippers than love. The gods, in fact, except in the single case of Zeus, as moral governor,-are only incarnations of the powers and forces that we see every where at work around us in nature; and as such it is not to be expected that they should manifest any moral feelings whatever. The wrath of Poseidon, therefore, though represented to us by the poet as the evil passion of a being like to our evil selves, is fundamentally nothing but the violence of the ocean waves, which at the present day rages and roars with as little regard to any moral principle as it did in the age of Homer.

PROPOSITION XII.-The gods are capable of acting falsely, and of deceiving the expectations which they had raised in the breasts of mortals. A wise man should not trust absolutely to a god; but, on suspicious occasions, exact an oath for the greater security.

This proposition contains the culminating point of odious immorality in the character of the Homeric gods as depicted by Homer. In the Odyssey, Ulysses exacts an oath both of Calypso and Circe, because he could not trust them without it; and so much accustomed is he to the idea of deceit on the part of the gods, that even when the benign daughter of Cadmus appears over the rush of waves to save him from a watery death, the first thing he does is to suspect that one of the gods is weaving a wile for his ruin. In the Iliad, the King of men charges the King of gods and men with an evil deceit. But worse remains. Athena, the incarnated wisdom of "the father,"-one of the most perfect characters in Hellenic theology, -on two distinct occasions perpetrates a very gross act of deceit and falsehood, from which every honourable and manly feeling revolts. In the first place, she solicits and obtains from Zeus (the "Opkios, the avenger of violated truth!) the permission to tempt Pandarus to violate the treaty solemnly sworn to by the leaders of the Trojans and the Greeks, which treaty is accordingly broken, and the daughter of Zeus is guilty of tempting a mortal man to commit an act of pure perjury, her father consenting. (I., iv.) In the second place, (what Hermann, in his Latin argument, calls an atrox dolus,) by personating Deiphobus, (П., xxii. 227,) she draws away the unsuspecting Hector into that unequal conflict with the son of Peleus, in which he was to meet his sad fate.-In a warlike and semi-savage nation, cunning and stratagem, lies and deceit of every kind, must ever-of course, within certain recognised bounds-be in high esteem; and Ulysses, no less than Achilles, will find his pattern and his patron in heaven.

PROPOSITION XIII.-The gods, as the givers of all good things, are to be regarded as habitually inspired with a benevolent affection towards the human race; and though, on certain occasions, and against particular persons, their indignation is terrible, and their vengeance not easily satisfied, still their general character, in reference to offending mortals, is placability. The general benevolence of the Homeric gods, notwithstanding the special instances of wrath just mentioned, is to be inferred not so much from a special designation to that effect, as from the general tone of cheerful gratitude with which their goodness is continually acknowledged by the worshippers on all the occasions of common life. Notwithstanding the strong expressions quoted under the previous heads, no person can rise from the perusal of the Homeric poems, with an impression that there is anything stern and forbidding in their habitual aspect, or that fear was the only strong feeling in the minds of their worshippers. Though power is their principal characteristic, it is never supposed that they use that attribute maliciously or wantonly, merely to vex mankind. On the contrary, Zeus, even when in the mid-career of his predestined course, looks down with pity on the mortals whose fate it is to suffer sharp sorrows, that the purposes of the almighty one may be fulfilled; and the prayer of the labouring good man prevails, if not to avert the blow altogether, at least to blunt the point of the weapon which inflicts it. (I., viii. 245.) That the gods, though not easily turned from their purposes, (Od., iii. 147,) are yet to a certain extent, with the single exception of Hades, (Il., ix. 158,) σtpettoì, ["flexible," "placable,”] (Il., ix. 493,) is so much an essential doctrine of Homeric theology, that it is expressly stated as the only ground on which prayers, sacrifices, and other acts of divine worship proceed. And in general we may say, that though the gods of the Greeks, as portrayed by Homer, present many individual traits in common with the lowest theology, or rather demonology, of the most savage nations, their general cha

racter is as mild and beneficent as the necessities of their physical original, and the habitudes of a warlike atmosphere, allowed.

PROPOSITION XIV.—The gods maintain an intercourse with men as part of the ordinary course of their providence; and this intercourse consists principally in revelations of the divine will, and specially of future events, made to men by oracular voices, dreams, and sacred signs, the transmission and interpretation of which belongs generally, though by no means exclusively, to certain persons peculiarly set apart to sacred functions, called soothsayers and priests.

There is no necessity for marshalling an array of passages to prove matters so familiarly known to every reader of Homer as those mentioned in the first part of this proposition. But the second part of it is very important, not only in reference to Homer, but in reference to the whole genius and character of social religion, as exhibited in the history of the ancient Greeks. Priests there are, no doubt, in Homer, as we see in the very opening scene of the first book of the Iliad; but they seem always attached as stationary ministers to some particular temple or shrine. These functionaries are nowhere, in Homer, represented as the only and indispensable mediators between earth and heaven.

PROPOSITION XV.-The gods visit the earth, and often appear in a visible shape to mortals; generally, however, under some human mask, in such a manner that, while their godhead is veiled to the general eye, they are capable of being seen and recognised in their divine character by the opened eye of their pious worshippers.

There are few extensively believed creeds, of which the appearance of the divine Being in a human shape does not form a characteristic element. The important fact with regard to theophany in Homer is, that it is regulated in all respects like the apparition of ghosts in modern demonology. Modern ghosts, like the ancient classical idols, appear always in a human shape; and, like the ancient gods, they appear not at random to any person or all persons, but to certain persons, on special occasions, for special reasons, and for special purposes. One other remark with regard to divine theophany, Nägelsbach makes, which did not occur to me. The mighty Zeus never appears in his own person on the stage of human affairs. Between him and his wise daughter, the nearest to him of the celestial conclave, there is a mighty gulf in this respect. Jove sits apart. In Homer, as in Horace, he has nothing like to him in all the universe, and nothing second:

Nec viget quicquam simile aut secundum.

PROPOSITION XVI.-Worship is due by mortal men to all the gods, with Jove supreme at their head; but more especially to the patron god or goddess of particular places and functions, with whom the worshipper is, under any particular circumstances, brought into more particular connexion. The gods have a special delight in receiving such reverential acknowledgments from men, (Od., iii. 438,) come bodily to receive the sacrifices that we offer to them, (Od., iii. 435,) and remember the pious offerer, rewarding him in due season.

In the Homeric idea of worship by sacrifice, there is something particularly simple and unsophisticated. The share which is given to the gods of the wine that flows, and the flesh that smokes on the festal board, proceeds from a combination of the two ideas, that man owes an acknowledgment of some kind to the powers by whom his existence is sustained; and