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the most exemplary ministers, under a paroxysm of this sort, have given way to a torrent of blasphemous imprecation. These of course are extreme cases. Very often a single thought or expression will keep harassing the mind for hours, or at intervals for days and weeks together. Dr. Cheyne (p. 67,) relates a very striking case of a woman "with strong devotional feelings," who, when about to repeat the Lord's prayer, was "impelled from within to say, Our Father which art in HELL,' with such vehemence that she was forced to start up, otherwise she must have yielded to the impulse. Such agony of mind we have seldom witnessed, as the poor young woman endured when she related this affecting incident." All who have read Bunyan's account of himself, in that remarkable work, "Grace abounding to the chief of sinners," will recollect the wasting constancy with which he was persecuted by the phrase, rung in his ears, in relation to the Saviour, "sell him," "sell him" and also the agony of mind which tortured him, after he was driven under the phrenzy of the excitement, to give in for a moment to the traitorous suggestion.

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It has been common to explain such cases, by calling in the agency of evil spirits. These wicked thoughts are supposed to be injected into the mind, these suggestions, so repulsive to the feelings, are deemed the assaults and temptatations of Satan. In venturing to question the universal truth of this hypothesis, we feel that we are treading on delicate ground. Of course we do not mean to intimate the slightest doubt of the reality and tremendous power of the great adversary of souls. We hold the doctrine to be as true, and as evident from experience and history, as when the declaration was first penned, "Your adversary the devil, like a roaring lion, goeth about, seeking whom he may devour." And farther, we see no reason to question, that he may take advantage of certain morbid states of the body, favourable to his purpose, to harass and worry those whom he cannot destroy. But still, we fully believe that many of the phenomena referred to Satanic agency, will admit of a complete explanation, on the grounds of physical disorder. Those who are called upon to deal with such cases, should at least have distinctly in view the possibility that the whole difficulty may proceed from natural causes, and may be curable by natural principles. The case of the young woman given by Dr. Cheyne, as the event proved, was merely the commencement of an attack of pure insanity. And a

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young gentleman who was similarly persecuted by injections (so called) "of wicked thoughts, and articulate promptings of blasphemy," was "delivered from the supposed temptations, by mild purgatives, alkaline bitters, and country air."

The case of Bunyan, already quoted, shows a farther departure from the standard of healthy action. He was harassed not merely with the temptation to sell his master, injected into his mind, but it seemed to be whispered by an articulate voice in his ear. This additional phenomenon is easily explained, without any recourse to spiritual diabolic agency. The imagination which created "THE PILGRIMS' PROGRESS," not yet chastened from the wildness of its early enthusiasm, tinged with melancholy, struggling with the burden of guilt, and goaded by the protracted excitement under which he had evidently laboured, could, without dif ficulty, give the seeming reality of articulate language, to the morbid suggestions of his own fancy. Both voices and visions are by no means uncommon, in the case of nervously excitable and imaginative persons, no matter how sound their minds may be. Every body knows how Luther, (who, like Bunyan, with all his greatness, was the very man for such hallucinations,) in the dim cell of his prison in the Wartburg, saw the devil, and with indignation hurled his inkstand at his head.

That all such phenomena,-unbidden and repulsive thoughts and feelings, and false perceptions, both voices and visions-may be produced by mere morbid physical agency, is unquestionable; because they are frequent accompaniments of pure disease and yield with the disease, to medical treatment. Those, therefore, who are called to counsel persons thus afflicted, should never lose sight of the inquiry whether such may not be the actual origin of what otherwise might be treated as temptations of the devil. That Satan may have the power of injecting his malicious or blasphemous suggestions immediately into the mind, we have not intended at all to controvert. But we are disposed to adopt the principle of Dr. Cheyne; that "if an appeal to him who conquered Satan and who will aid all who come to Him in faith, fails to relieve those who are thus afflicted, they may rest assured, that disease and not the devil is the enemy with which they have to contend," and they must seek relief accordingly.

And if we are pressed beyond this point, with the hypothesis that while disease may be the proximate cause of

these distressing and horrible calamities, yet Satan may be the agent who employs this instrumentality to harass the Christian, we should be inclined to fall back upon the ground thus quaintly maintained by Richard Baxter: "if it were as some fancy, a possession of the devil, it is possible that physic might cast him out. For if you cure the melancholy, (black bile,) his bed is taken away, and the advantage gone by which he worketh; cure the choler (bile) and the choleric operations of the devil will cease: it is by means and humours in us, that he worketh."

We return, in closing, to the remark that, to discriminate cases of real diseased melancholy, from those of spiritual darkness, or satanic temptation is one of the most difficult points in religious casuistry. That the two things are confounded, and the one mistaken for the other, in a great multitude of cases, we have not the slightest doubt. The consequences of this mistake, are often exceedingly disastrous. The unhappy victim of physical disease is directed. to attempt what is just as impossible, as to subdue by an effort of his will, the pain of a diseased tooth, or the excited pulse of a raging fever: and is overwhelmed with discouragement and despair, because he finds himself unsuccessful in the attempt. And on the other hand the sin of unbelief might be sheltered from criminality and the need of repentance by referring it to the irresponsible action of a deranged mind. The treatment in the two cases would be exactly opposite: and yet we are fully persuaded, that we have seen the one mistaken by ministers, for want of a knowledge of physiology; and the other by physicians, inexperienced in the difficulties and conflicts of experimental religion.

That there are marks by which such cases may be clearly discriminated by any one who will take the necessary pains, we think could easily be shown, and we repeat our earnest conviction that the individual who will throw upon this interesting subject, the light of which it is susceptible, will deserve the everlasting gratitude of the Church. no one undertake the investigation?

ART. III.-The Valley of Vision: or the Dry Bones of Israel Revived. An attempted proof (from Ezekiel chap. xxxvii. 1-14) of the Restoration and Conversion of the Jews. By George Bush, Professor of Hebrew, New York City University. New York: Saxton & Miles. 1844. 8vo. pp. 60.

THE Restoration of Israel is an ambiguous expression, which may either denote the spiritual re-union of God's ancient people with the church, or their literal recovery of the Land of Promise. In the present state of opinion and discussion, it may be conveniently restricted to the latter sense, in which Professor Bush employs it, while he expresses the other idea by the word Conversion. The future conversion of the Jews as a nation to the Christian faith is now almost universally regarded as an event explicitly revealed in scripture, the dissent from this interpretation of Paul's language being only occasional and rare. Their Restoration to the Holy Land is also extensively believed and looked for, and this doctrine may be found in combination with a great variety of other tenets not essentially connected with it. While it enters largely into the creed of Millennarians, it is also held by many who dissent from their peculiar doctrines. A belief in the literal Restoration of the Jews has for years been gaining ground in Christendom, and is now regarded with great interest by many who are not yet prepared to acknowledge it as true. In the Church of England it has long been a favourite opinion, and among the Presbyterians of Great Britain a strong impulse has been given to it by the mission of the Scottish Deputation to the Jews, of which we have given some account in the preceding pages. There is something in the doctrine itself, well suited to awaken even a romantic interest, by giving palpable reality to what might else appear intangible and visionary, and by bringing the local associations of the Holy Land, which otherwise belong to ancient history, into intimate connexion with the present and the future. That a subject so interesting in itself, and so extensively regarded as important, is deserving of repeated and deliberate investigation, cannot be disputed. That its investigation has been so frequently conducted in a fanciful manner, and without due regard to the principles of interpretation, is indeed to be lamented, but at the same time makes it the

more proper to receive with all respect, and weigh with all deliberation, such attempts when made by writers of acknowledged learning and ability. Professor Bush is now well known both in Europe and America, not only as a biblical scholar and interpreter of scripture, but as one who has, for many years, devoted his attention, in a special manner, to the subject of prophecy. We have so often had occasion to bring his publications before our readers, and to express our judgment of the author's views on some important subjects, that any statement of his claims to their attention, and any attempt to define his position as a theologian or interpreter, would be equally superfluous. We need only say that in the case before us we are called to sit in judgment not on a flight of fancy or an ignorant exposition of the English text, but on a genuine attempt to lay open the true meaning of the inspired original, by the help of the best means to which the author has had access. Such being the literary character, and such the interesting subject of the pamphlet, nothing more is needed to ensure for its author a candid and respectful hearing.

The immediate subject of Professor Bush's essay is the vision of the dry bones in the thirty-seventh chapter of Ezekiel, one of the most impressive passages of holy writ, even considered merely in a literary point of view. The common English version of the passage is given, followed by several pages of prefatory remarks, in which the author states his strong conviction that the preceding chapter cannot relate to any past event, because, on the one hand, the language is of such a nature as absolutely to forbid any kind of spiritualising interpretation, and on the other, the obvious purport of several of the clauses goes to ascertain the time of the accomplishment as uttterly incompatible with that of the literal return from Babylon under the decree of Cyrus. The connexion between the thirty-sixth and thirty-seventh chapters he explains to be this, that while the one announces the fact of the restoration, the other declares the manner and means of it. To determine the era of the one, therefore, is to determine the era of the other. Of the two visions contained in the thirty-seventh chapter, the author here confines himself to the first, the general sense of which, as a figurative prediction of the restoration of Israel, he thinks so strictly defined by Jehovah himself, that he does not consider it necessary to argue the point, nor even to notice in detail any different interpreta

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