as near an approach to that as possible, and account, as well as we can, for any discrepancies. It will be observed, that the time-space which lies between the most distant dates is about 170 years. If we suppose that Hiero had reached mature years, -say fifty-eight or so-it will be quite within the range of probability that Hiero, afterwards tyrant of Sicily, who died in 467 B.C., may have conversed with the aged minstrel sage. We must stretch hypothesis even further in the next instance; for we must either reject as fabulous the relation which connects the names of Xenophanes and Empedocles,- -a relation which the loving tradition of ages has hallowed,—or we must suppose that the useful life of Empedocles was prolonged almost as long as that of his master. And why not? These were the days in which

Men lived like gods, with minds secure from care,
Away from toil and misery; then was not
Timid old age, but age in hands and feet;
Equally strong the banquet they enjoyed,
From every ill remote. They died as if

O'ercome with sleep, and all good things were theirs.

In quietness

Their works, 'mongst numerous blessings, they pursued."

Yet we do no violence to probability in this, for we know that the calm philosophic temper is favourable to longevity; that in ancient times men had an aversion to permitting young men to acquire influence in the state or otherwise; and we know that at the date given, this Empedocles was engaged in the planting of the colony of Thurii, on the site of the ancient Sybaris. Let us suppose, then, that Empedocles, a young man of station and means, in his early youth, on his travels, had, led by the fame of the hoary-headed wise man of Elea, visited that city, and held that conversation with the "old man eloquent," from which he for ever after dates the origin of impulses, which ended in his devoting himself to pursuits of a nature higher than even statesmanship. If we regard the visit as paid in the ninety-eighth year of Xenophanes, when the young man had attained his twenty-fifth birthday, we shall make Empedocles about ninetythree years of age at the founding of the Post-Sybaritic colony in 444 B.C. We do not say these things have been; we only assert that they might have been; if they could, we have done all that is requisite in us, viz., to show the possibility of colligating, in a given space, the seemingly contradictory events which had led to such serious differences of opinion among the historians of philosophy,-Meiners, Tüllebom, Eberhard, &c.,and had even bewildered the acute mind of Victor Cousin.

*Hesiod's "Works and Days," v. 112.

We Te may assume, then, that he was born somewhere between the years 617-612; that he was of respectable parentage, well educated, and comfortable as to means. His taste for philosophic poetry seems to have manifested itself early, and his love of virtue and truth seem to have made him perfectly fearless, if not rash. We have fragments of his Elegiac verses preserved, which abundantly prove this. Athenæus quotes a considerable number of lines, apparently the introduction to a Symposiac elegy, in which a festal hall is beautifully described, and the guests are exhorted, after having sung due hymns to the gods, to recite no more the fabulous myths of the Titans, giants, and centaurs, but to chant the praises of the brave and good for the encouragement of youth. In this age Kolophon, which had at one time been distinguished for its almost stoic contempt of luxury and grandeur, had its thousands clothed in purple, their public games, and other haunts of pleasure and pomp, where the rich forget their humanity in pride, and the illusions of the hour are more valued than the high thoughts and noble deeds in which the truest nobility consists. Against these social vices, as they appeared to his eye, Xenophanes protested, in the melodious tones of the poet, and with the clear, logical thought of a sage. We assume, but the assumption has only its plausibility to recommend it, that the poem "On the Founding of Kolophon," mentioned by Diogenes Laertius, belongs to the date of his early manhood, and that the honest, hearty mode in which he had therein attacked the higher classes of society, and the zeal with which he denounced the worship of the ordinary gods, formed the excuse, if not the cause, of his exile: for Diogenes Laertius expressly states that he was banished. He had been married, but his children died in their early youth, and the loving, yet brave-hearted father buried them with his own hands. His home-gods shivered around him, and the outlawry of his birthplace registered against him, before manhood's vigour had departed, he has become a wanderer, almost resourceless, friendless, alone. In this extremity the amusement, probably, of his sunnier hours-poesy-offered him the help his need demanded, and he became a rhapsodist, i. e., a chanter of epic verse. Shall we say this was a woful lot, or shall we rather, acquiescing in the destiny which was allotted him, aver that—

"Each has his functions, his acknowledged post,

In the great scene of life?"

True, the wandering minstrel, even though a Homer, finds but scant provision for his body's grosser wants; but surely there are joys which cannot be expressed, in the impartial providence of Heaven, granted to those who, while the listening throng around them press, and gaze, and think, can feel—

"The glow of thousands centered in their heart."

Could it be altogether chance and changing fate that made him choose the vehicle of verse as that by which he would transmit his thoughts in sounding cadence down the stream of time? Verse is the mnemonics of the vulgar. Homer and Hesiod had filled the mind with errors of profoundest moment. To the forms of their own glowing imaginations they had imparted the life of genius, and the people had accepted the coinage of the poets' thoughts as the spiritual realities of worship. The prosaic utterance of any thesis opposed to such notions would be ineffective as a pointless arrow. These Titan fancies could only be subdued by thunderbolts, moulded in the armoury of the God whose throne they aspired to occupy.

Whither could he turn in such a crisis of his fate, with such a purpose breathing in his soul? Certainly to the newest and freest-minded people he could reach. The Messenians, from 682-596 B.C., had braved the tyranny of Sparta, and, failing to secure in Greece the freedom they loved, had sought an asylum where their diminished numbers might enjoy the birthrights of men "without let or hindrance." This they found in Zancle (Messina), in Sicily, and thitherward the poet-philosopher of Kolophon bent his steps. Of his life at Zancle we know nothing; but if we interpret the following verses, found in Diogenes Laertius, we shall obtain some clue to the time of his entering Zancle. The vesrses are these:

"Since first my doctrine spread abroad thro' Greece,
Threescore and seven years are quite gone by,

And 'twixt that time and when I saw the light,
Six lustres more must surely added be,

If I am right at all about my age,

Which wants but eight years of a century."

From

If we take the time at which he became famous, his thirtieth year, to signify the date of the publication of the poem on Kolophon, and allow due time for his accusation, trial, and sentence, we may say that he entered Zancle about B.C. 580. Zancle he went to Catania, where Hiero, the patron of Pindar, had afterwards his palace. As he wrote a poem "On the Colonization of Elea, in Italy," which took place in consequence of the reduction of Ionia by Persia, 540-530 B.C., we may assert that he, as an Ionian, and likely to take an interest in the fact, must have had a share in, and had a personal knowledge of the causes of, the emigration. Besides, there would be no surer way of gaining the renown, which is the continual object of thirst in noble minds, so ready or so likely to be agreeable to such a spirit of his, as uttering in tuneful lines the deeds of daring which the resistance to Persia excited, and the sacrifice of the patriot's love of country to the man's love of freedom,

which was exhibited in their relinquishment of their lands, rather than their liberties, to the oppressor. About this same period, as we have already seen, Pythagoras had established the Krotoniate, and hence his doctrines must have been well known in the neighbouring cities of Magna Græcia. If we accept the traditions of history, rendered more forceful by the considerations of probability noted above, we shall find him now surrounded by a three-fold philosophy, represented by the names of Homer, Anaximander, and Pythagoras. To all these his intense idealism presented objections; in all he found a tendency to elevate Sense above Reason-Reason in its higher moods companioning with Faith.

Of the manner of his death, as of the manner of his life, we know nothing; but we can think of him under the influence of→ "Old age, that winter drear, which into spring

Breaks never,"

gazing in sadness on the unsolved problem of his whole life, fretting his noble soul that he cannot fly, in thought, beyond the narrow bondage of the earth's confine, and uttering, as he passes away into that sleep of death wherein all mysteries are solved, the mournful record of his long years of toil, so finely conceived by Timon, the Sillograph:

"Oh, that mine were the deep mind, prudent, and looking to both sides! Long, alas! have I strayed on the road of error, beguiled,

And am now hoary of years, yet exposed to doubt and distraction

Of all kinds; for, whenever I turn to consider,

I am adrift between the One and the All."

Death, the Revealer, is with him; and he follows him-Whither? The solution to that query is concealed behind

"That curtain of obdurate woof

Which limits mortal vision; whose dim folds
Perpetually do stir, but never rise."

Can the curtain be to us the picture? Surely, no!

THE DOING TO OTHERS AS OTHERS SHOULD DO TO US.-How are we to behave to our fellow creatures? How must we answer it? What rules shall we lay down? Shall we say we ought to spare the effusion of human blood? How small a matter it is not to hurt him whom we are bound by every obligation to do all the good in our power. A prodigious merit, indeed, if man is kind and gentle to his fellow man! We are all limbs of one great body. Nature produced us with mutual love, and made us social. According to her laws, it is a more wretched thing to do an injury than to suffer death.-Seneca.

DOES GEOLOGY CONFIRM THE MOSAIC ACCOUNT, ETC. 247

Religion.

DOES GEOLOGY CONFIRM THE MOSAIC ACCOUNT OF CREATION ?

AFFIRMATIVE ARTICLE.-I.

TRUTH is one and indivisible, but its apparent inconsistencies have been many. Ever since science began to make any real progress, by exchanging the figments of the fancy for the inductions of a true philosophy, its results have appeared to be antagonistic to the teachings of the Bible. Galileo, and the cardinals of the Inquisition, have been ever-recurring types of the relative positions of science and religion. But true science, though compelled by the stigma of heterodoxy and heresy to retract its assertions, has ever maintained its stand, and continued to advance, until it has compelled all candid minds to an entire, though reluctant, belief. Amid the odium cast upon it by theologians, its watchword has been, "It moves still." Not only astronomy and geology have been supposed to enter the ranks of the opponents of biblical veracity, but ethnology, comparative grammar, and even the revelations of mesmerism and animal magnetism, have been brought forward as tending to invalidate the claims of scripture on our regard as a veritable and divine revelation. But the antagonism in all cases has arisen, either from the imperfect or empirical state of science, or from a too narrow interpretation of the sacred records. Thus, while from the manifold diversities in the various races of mankind it seemed that there must have been more than one original pair of human beings to produce so many varieties, the researches of ethnologists have fully confirmed the biblical statement; geology, by showing the complete extinction of species after species of animals, and the successive creations of new ones, has completely crushed the theory of development of the "Vestiges of Creation," and shown that there is no principle on which man can be considered as a developed ape.

and

To those, indeed, who believe in the inspiration of the scriptures, however they may vary in their modes of reconciliation, there ought to be no question as to the ultimate accordance of science and revelation. Are they not both the manifestations of the same almighty and omniscient Mind? Can his works be inconsistent, or clash with each other? While at present it may be for his glory to conceal much from the mortal gaze, yet even now, in true and established science and just exegesis, we