Part 7

"God! There is no God but he; the living, the self-subsisting; neither slumber nor sleep seizeth him; to him belongeth whatsoever is in heaven, and on earth. Who is he that can intercede with him but through his good pleasure? He knoweth that which is past, and that which is to come. His throne is extended over heaven and earth, and the preservation of both is to him no burden. He is the High, the Mighty."

If the above passage contained a single _original_ thought, it might entitle it to higher praise than it can now receive. But as there is no thought expressed, but may be found in the book of Job, or among the inimitable Psalms of David, written from sixteen hundred to two thousand years before Mohammed, and which this pretended prophet had before him--and as we can hardly allow their originality of expression--the only praise that can be bestowed upon its author is, that of having studied the Jewish scriptures pretty closely, a fact that is exhibited throughout his famous production. But while we acknowledge that this is a brilliant passage, it evidently does not surpass, nor even equal, either of the following, selected from our own times.

"Eternal Spirit! God of truth! to whom All things seem as they are. Thou who of old The prophet's eye unsealed, that nightly saw While heavy sleep fell down on other men, In holy vision tranced, the future pass Before him, and to Judah's harp attuned Burdens which make the pagan mountains shake, And Zion's cedars bow,--inspire my song; My eye unscale; me what is substance teach, And shadow what, while I of things to come, As past rehearsing, sing the course of time. --Hold my right hand, Almighty! and me teach To strike the lyre----to notes Which wake the echoes of Eternity."--_Pollok._

In the above extracts there is this remarkable difference: Mohammed, in his description of Deity, has _no thought_ that refers to a _moral perfection_ of God! And indeed gross sensuality, and a destitution of high and spiritual views, characterize his whole work.

But with Pollok, the first thought is SPIRIT--a second, TRUTH. And aside from this peculiarity, although you turn over every leaf of the koran, we affirm that you cannot find so sublime a conception as the following:

"Hold my right hand, Almighty! and me teach To strike the lyre,----to notes That wake the echoes of eternity."

But how infinitely, both in grandeur and simplicity, do all these fall short of the inimitable _original_ of most of these, penned by David of the Old, or Paul of the New Testament.

"O, my God, take me not away in the midst of my days: THY years are throughout all generations. Of old hast THOU laid the foundations of the earth, and the heavens are the work of thine hands. They shall perish, but THOU shalt endure; yea, all of them shall wax old like a garment; as a vesture shalt thou change them, and they shall be changed. BUT THOU ART THE SAME, AND THY YEARS SHALL HAVE NO END."

"Who is the blessed and only Potentate, the King of kings, and the Lord of lords; who only hath IMMORTALITY, dwelling in Light which no man can approach unto,--whom no man hath seen, nor can see!"

Or as in another place, "The King eternal, immortal, invisible,--the only wise God."

In the above specimens, there is a grandeur and simplicity not to be found in any merely human composition.

The following is very fine, from Habakkuk:

"God came from Teman, The Holy One from Mount Paran. His glory covered the heavens, And his praise filled the earth. His brightness was like the sun, Out of his hand [or side] came flashes of lightning, And there was only the veil of his might. Before him walked the pestilence, And burning coals went forth at his feet. He stood, and the earth was moved; He looked, and caused the nations to quake. And the everlasting mountains were broken in pieces, And the perpetual hills did bow. His goings are from everlasting."

We scarcely know which to admire most, the above or the following from the same author:

"The mountains saw THEE and trembled, The overflowing waters passed away. The deep uttered his voice, And lifted up his hands on high. The sun and moon stood still in their habitations. At the shining of thine arrows, (i. e. the lightnings,) they disappeared-- At the brightness of thy glittering spear!"

The following paraphrastic reference may be regarded as barren in some respects, compared with others that might be selected from the same living fountain.

The EYE of the Supreme Being is regarded as so piercing as to pervade heaven, earth and hell, and the awful depths of eternity. His COUNTENANCE is as the sun shining in his strength. The wind, in its endless whirl, is but his breath or breathing. His HAND is represented so immense, that even its "hollow" will "contain the waters of the great deep,"--and, when "spanned," he "measures with it the whole heavens." While "_sitting_ in the circle of the heavens," the earth is represented as the place where his feet rest. So rapid in his motion, that "He _walks_ upon the wings of the wind." Of such awful strength, "that the earth," with its countless inhabitants, are "less than the dust" that accumulates "upon the balance." At one time "He covereth himself with _light_ as with a garment,"--and at another, "He maketh _darkness_ his pavilion, and the thick clouds of the skies."

These however are images all borrowed from sensible objects, and, magnificent as they may be, they fail of throwing upon the mind a full image of Him who hath "no likeness in the heavens above, nor in the earth beneath." And, besides, these glowing pictures present to the mind none of his moral attributes. For a description of these, we must look either to the events of his providence, or a more particular disclosure in the bible. And it may well astonish us, that, after the lapse of more than three thousand years, we may look in vain for a fuller or more perfect description of the Divine Being, in words, than is given by MOSES in that memorable moment upon Mount Sinai--

"Whose grey tops did tremble, when God ordained their laws."

A description that is like the sun rising upon the chaos that surrounded him in the Egyptian mythology, which at that time was so gross that no object in nature was too mean for a deity. But "in the midst of this darkness that might be felt," God was pleased to reveal himself in the following language, at once sufficiently grave and impressive to afford irrefragable proof of its high origin.

~Vay'avor Adonai 'al panav vaykra Adonai Adonai El ra[h.]um ve[h.]anun erekh apayim verav [h.]esed veemeth. Notzer [h.]esed laalafim nose 'avon vafesha ve [h.]atah venakeh lo yinakeh poked 'avon avoth 'al banim ve'al bnei vanim 'al shileshim ve'al ribe'im.~

"And the Lord passed by before him, and proclaimed, The Lord, The Lord God, merciful and gracious, long-suffering, and abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and that will by no means clear _the guilty_; visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and upon the children's children, unto the third and to the fourth generation."

Or, as these striking appellatives of the Divine Being might be translated, without offering any violation to the Hebrew,--the JEHOVAH, the STRONG and MIGHTY GOD, the _merciful_ ONE, the GRACIOUS ONE, the long-suffering ONE, the GREAT and MIGHTY ONE, the BOUNTIFUL BEING, the TRUE ONE, or TRUTH, the Preserver of BOUNTIFULNESS, the REDEEMER, or Pardoner, the Righteous JUDGE, and He who VISITS INIQUITY.

This is a remarkable description indeed to come from one educated in the midst of Egyptian mythology; and the awful names by which the Supreme Being is designated, can only be accounted for, under such circumstances, on the supposition that Moses received them directly from the Almighty himself.

But to close our article. The Divine Being is nowhere so perfectly, so interestingly described as in the CHARACTER OF CHRIST. Here LOVE is unbosomed as it could not be by language. Here heaven drops down to earth; and the otherwise invisible beauties of the invisible God, are made tangible even to the eye. The _arm_ of mercy, outstretched to the sinner--the eye of justice softened by the tear of mercy--the heart of love beating intensely with benignity, as well as every perfection of the divine nature; are all laid open to the view of sinful, helpless man, and we become "eye witness of his glorious majesty." Here the tears of mercy may be seen dropping upon its wretched objects of commiseration; and the most secret emotions of the divine mind, we may behold, heaving in the bosom of the immaculate Jesus. Here indeed "God tabernacles and walks with man." And as a confirmation of the glorious truth, at beholding Him, "the sun stood still in his habitation." "The sea saw him, and was afraid." The earth trembled at his presence, and gave back the dead at his voice. Well indeed might one exclaim, to behold such a personage, "MY LORD AND MY GOD."

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.

By Charles S. Daveis.

Never--since the period that Cæsar conquered Gaul, when the inhabitants enjoyed a barbarian license under their native chiefs and druids, had the voice of liberty been heard in France, till the 14th of July, 1789. Never before did such a note of exultation spread over the vine-covered hills,--and echo among the beautiful valleys, of that fair country. Never perhaps before was there such a burden lifted from the minds of men. In the unwonted consciousness of power, they seemed to tread a new earth. In the intoxication of triumph they burst from the bonds of morality and humanity. So very singular, and strange, indeed, was the position in which the people of France were placed by the revolution, that their vernacular language was found deficient in the appropriate phraseology of freedom; and they were obliged to resort to a foreign idiom, and to the customs of other climes, and the usages of other nations, and to ransack the regions of fancy and invention, for the vocabulary, as well as the drapery, of their new republic.

It is remarkable, that the revolution in France, beginning in fact, with the destruction of the Bastile, should end in the re-establishment of despotism. It was a revolution indeed not more remarkable for the original character of its cause, than its catastrophe; for the astonishing contrast it exhibits between the splendor of its talents and the atrocity of its crimes: for the reverence which it professed for antiquity, and the mischief it produced to posterity; for adopting the most enormous maxims, and enforcing them by the most audacious means; for the use which it made of its own freedom to enslave other nations to its law, for erecting the empire of Rome upon the democracy of Athens, for the adoption of a model of colossal grandeur, and establishing the most tremendous system of policy, that ever convulsed human kind:--a revolution, conspicuous also for the sudden appearance of a race of men springing up from the earth, as though it had been sown with dragons' teeth, and its monstrous fruits produced with hydras' heads and tigers' hearts;--resounding, together, with the tribune, and the guillotine;--not merely remarkable for tearing the priest from the altar, but for rasing the altar likewise to the ground; and distinguished for the successive destruction of some of the most ancient thrones and crowns in Europe;--for the ignominious death of the last in a royal line of seventy sovereigns, who, at any former period of the monarchy, would have been blessed as the father of his people, and canonized as the true descendant of St. Louis,--and the most affecting example on record of an anointed queen, not more famed for her charms than for her sorrows,--her errors more than atoned by her sufferings, perishing without a tear, in a land of ancient renown for chivalry, upon the scaffold! The revolution in France was a scene at which sensibility sinks. It seemed to extinguish the hopes of its friends in the blood of its martyrs; and it was hardly relieved by the virtues of its purest patriot, educated in the schools of America, banished from the air of France, and doomed to breathe the dungeons of despotism.

To what are we indebted again for our escape from that wild turmoil, which involved the elements of society and government in Europe with an overwhelming violence? Why was it, that while the storm, that shook the continent abroad, beat against our iron-bound shore, its fury was expended at our feet; and we heard it howl along our agitated coast and die away at a distance? Why did we enjoy a light, like the children of Israel, in our dwellings, while Egyptian darkness brooded around? Why, in this universal chaos, had we such reason to congratulate ourselves on the good providence of God, in ordaining us to be a world by ourselves?--It was certainly not, that we did not enter into the cause of liberty in France with enthusiasm; for our hearts were in it as warmly as they were in our own. Our sympathy was with it as long as it could be sustained; our regret pursued it in dishonor,--and our affection followed it into misfortune. We lamented to see, that all the results of that amazing movement of the human mind, contemplating the happiness of millions, and looking to the improvement of ages, should follow the fortune of foreign war; and that they should centre in a single individual, carried away into captivity, and doomed to end his days upon a solitary rock. We grieved to behold the beautiful and brilliant star of the French Revolution sink at last into mid-ocean, the mere meteor of military glory.--Feeling all the disappointment of its friends, we cannot but contrast it with the deep repose, which our own illustrious and honored patriots enjoy, in the land which gave them birth, beneath the mighty shadows of our happy political revolution.

Although, as Americans, we cease to cling to the cause of revolutionary liberty in France with the lingering fondness of early affection, we continue to follow its dying light, as though we could not believe it had entirely sunk in darkness and despair. If it be not possible to regard it uninfluenced by its unfortunate termination, if we can borrow nothing from its origin to relieve its mournful catastrophe, it behoves us still to embalm the wounds of liberty with its healing spirit, and it concerns us also, that all its sacrifices and services for the sake of man should not have perished with its victims. The vices of the ancient government rendered it unfit for the happiness of France, without essential alterations; and while we reflect with pain upon the results of the revolution, we must bear in mind that they were the excesses of men like ourselves, transported by hopes excited by our example, and exalted by a more ardent temper, untrained by the same favorable habits and beneficial institutions;--and although its transient violence may shock and repel our sympathy, it ought not to disgust us with its principles, or to alienate our attachment from its rational objects. Let us not fail to perceive, as we shall, if we are attentive to the facts, that what was good was in the cause; and what was evil was the effect of that long oppression by which it was corrupted. In this wonderful dispensation to mankind we may not perhaps pretend to scan the ways of providence; yet in common with the christian world we cannot fail to behold the dealing of a divine and overruling hand. Where the seed of liberty has been sown, and watered with the blood, as well as tears, of patriots, that seed is yet _in_ the earth; and whether it spring up before our eyes or not, it may be the will of Him, to whom no eye is raised in vain, that nothing shall be lost!

MRS. SYKES.

By Nathaniel Deering.

One dark, stormy night in the summer of ---- finding my system had lost much of its _humidum radicale_, or radical moisture, in truth a very alarming premonitory, I directed Mrs. Tonic in preparing my warm _aqua fontana_ to infuse a _quantum sufficit_ of Hollands; of which having taken a somewhat copious draught, I sought my cubiculum. Let no one imagine however, that I give the least countenance to the free use of alcoholic mixtures. They are undoubtedly poisonous, and like other poisons, which hold a high rank in our pharmacopeia, it is only when taken under the direction of those deemed cunning in our art, that they exert a healing power, and as one Shakspeare happily expresses it, "ascend me to the brain." Now as the radical moisture is essential to vitality and as this moisture is promoted in a wonderful degree by potations of Hollands, we of the Faculty hold with Horatius Flaccus "_omnes eodem cogimur_"--we may all _cogue_ it. But to return to my _narratio_ or story as it may be called. I had hardly "steep'd my senses in forgetfulness" as some one quaintly says, when I was effectually aroused by a loud knocking at the window. The blows were so heavy and frequent that Mrs. Tonic though somewhat unadorned, it being her hour for retiring, yet fearful of fractured glass, hurried to the door. I might here mention, in order to show the reason of Mrs. Tonic's fears, that my parlor front-window had been lately beautified with an enlarged sash containing not seven by nine, the size generally used, but eight by ten--panes certainly of a rare and costly size and which Mrs. Tonic had the honor of introducing. The cause of this unseasonable disturbance proved to be a messenger from Deacon Sykes stating that good Mrs. Sykes was alarmingly ill and desiring my immediate attendance. Now in the whole range of my practice there was no one whose call was sooner heeded than Mrs. Sykes's; for besides being an ailing woman and of course a profitable patient, she had much influence in our village as the wife of Deacon Sykes. But I must confess that on this occasion I did feel an unwillingness to resume my habiliments, that night as I before remarked, being uncommonly stormy and myself feeling sensibly the effects of the sudorific I had just taken. Still I should willingly have exposed myself had not Mrs. Tonic gathered from the messenger that it was only a return of Mrs. Sykes's old complaint, that excruciating pain, the colic; for Mrs. Sykes was flatulent. As the medicine I had hitherto prescribed for her in such aliments had been wonderfully blessed, I directed Mrs. Tonic to bring my saddle-bags, from which having prepared a somewhat smart dose of _tinct. rhei._ with _carb. soda_, I gave it to the messenger bidding him return with all speed. In the belief that this would prove efficacious, I again turned to woo the not reluctant Somnus, but scarcely had an hour elapsed when I was again alarmed by repeated blows first at the door and then at the window. In a moment I sat bolt upright, in which attitude I was soon imitated by Mrs. Tonic, on hearing the crash of one of her eight by tens. Through the aperture I now distinctly recognized the voice of Sam Saunders, who had hired with the Deacon, stating that good Mrs. Sykes was absolutely _in extremis_, or as Sam himself expressed it, "at her last gasp." On hearing this, you may be assured I was not long _in naturalibus_; but drawing on my nether integuments, I departed despite the remonstrances of Mrs. Tonic, without my wrapper and without any thing in fact except a renewed draught of my _philo humidum radicale_. My journey to the Deacon's was made with such an accelerated movement that it was accomplished as it were _per saltum_. This was owing to my great anxiety about Mrs. Sykes, though possibly in a small degree I might have dreaded an obstruction of the pores in my own person. Howbeit, on arriving at the Deacon's, I saw at once that she was beyond the healing art. There lay all that remained of Mrs. Sykes--the _disjecta membra_, the _fragmenta_--the casket! But the gem, the _mens divinior_ was gone and forever. There she lay, regardless of the elongated visage of Deacon Sykes on the one side, and of the no less elongated visage of the widow Dobble on the other side, who had been some time visiting there, and who now hung over her departed friend in an agony of woe. "Doctor," cried the Deacon, "is there no hope?" "Is there no hope?" echoed the widow Dobble. I grasped the wrist of Mrs. Sykes, but pulsation had ceased; the eye was glazed and the countenance livid. "_A caput mortuum_, Deacon! _defuncta!_ the wick of vitality is snuffed out." The bereaved husband groaned deeply; the widow Dobble groaned an octave higher.

On my way home my mind was much exercised with this sudden and mysterious dispensation. Had Sam Saunders blundered in his statement of her complaint? Had I myself--good Heavens! it could'nt be possible! I opened my bags--_horresco referens!_ it was but too palpable! Owing either to the agitation of the moment when so suddenly awakened, or to the deep solicitude of Mrs. Tonic, who, in preparing my _philo humidum radicale_, had infused an undue portion of the Hollands--to one of these the lamented Mrs. Sykes might charge her untimely exit; for there was the vial of _tinct. rhei._ full to the stopple, while the vial marked "laudanum," was as dry as a throat in fever. I hesitate not to record that at this discovery, I lost some of that self-possession which has ever been characteristic of the Tonics. I was not only standing on the brow of a precipice, but my centre of gravity seemed a little beyond it. There were rivals in the vicinity jealous of my rising reputation. The sudden death might cause a _post mortem_ examination, and the result would be as fatal to me as was the laudanum to Mrs. Sykes. A thought, occurring, doubtless through a special Providence, suddenly relieved my mind. At break of day I retraced my footsteps to the chamber of the deceased. Accompanied by the Deacon I approached to gaze upon the corpse; when, suddenly starting back, I placed one hand upon my olfactories and grasping with the other the alarmed mourner, I hurried towards the door. "In the name of heaven!" cried the Deacon, "what is the matter?" "The matter!" I replied, "the matter! Deacon, listen. In all cases of mortality where the radical moisture has not been lessened by long disease, putrefaction commences on the cessation of the organic functions and a _miasma_ fatal to the living is in a moment generated. This is the case even in cold weather, and it being now July, I cannot answer for your own life if the burial be deferred; the last sad offices must be at once attended to." Deacon Sykes consented. Not, he remarked, on his own account, for, as to himself, life had lost its charms, but there were others near on whom many were dependent, and he could not think of gratifying his own feelings at their expense--sufficient, says he, for the day is the evil thereof. I hardly need add, that, when my advice to the Deacon got wind, the neighbors with one accord rallied to assist in preparing Mrs. Sykes for her last home; and their labors were not a little quickened by the fumes of tar and vinegar which I directed to be burnt on this melancholy occasion. Much as I cherished Mrs. Sykes, still I confess that my feelings were much akin to those called pleasurable, when I heard the rattle of those terrene particles which covered at the same time my lamented friend and my professional lapsus.