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from a gunshot may arise only from the shortness of the physical pain which accompanies it; for two equally, to all appearance, sudden deaths may involve very unequally prolonged periods of bodily suffering. It is believed by many physicians that death, considered as the annihilation of physical sensations, does not instantly accompany decapitation; and there have not been wanting eminent men who assert that feeling exists for many minutes after the stroke has been given. This would well answer your objections. But you say that the face assumes that serene expression in death. I should rather say, after it; for the shadow, or convulsion, or by whatever name you choose to designate it, that passes over the face in the very article of death is always awful.

THEODORA. I do not comprehend what you said just now of its being unnatural and painful to see a duality of operation in one being.

SOPHRON. I can explain it to you by a very familiar instance. Did you ever see the metamorphosis by which the pupa of the dragon-fly assumes its perfect state?

THEODORA, No.

SOPHRON. Thus it is: the pupa, which is provided with legs, climbs some way up a flag, or other water plant, which it grasps tightly, and then stretches and strains itself in every direction: presently the head bursts, and the antennæ and head of the fly protrude; also its two front

legs. The pupa holds on with its legs: the fly endeavours to extricate itself from the pupa with its own, and finally succeeds, leaving the lifeless husk on the plant which it ascended. But the sight of an apparent struggle between two animals possessing the same body is very unplea

sant.

THEODORA. It is getting late, and we must, I fear, conclude. You will begin, then, to-morrow night with the manner in which external nature symbolizes revealed truth?

SOPHRON. Very willingly.

NIGHT II.

THE SYMBOLISM OF NATURE.

SOPHRON. IT is wonderful that such an age as the last could produce such a book as "Butler's Analogy." His is a method of argument, which, till tried, must have been thought of very slight weight; but, once made proof of,—and proved by such a hand, it possesses a force perfectly overwhelming and crushing. He, of course, did not exhaust it; nay, he probably did not carry it on so far as he would have done in a more believing age. Perhaps, also, the fact that his was not a poetical mind, might have in some cases rendered his details less perfect than his design. But, had he chosen, there are two remarkable instances of analogy in symbolism of external nature, as compared with revealed mystery, which, to any unprejudiced person, must be quite convincing.

EUSEBIA. You refer, of course, to the mystery of the Most Holy Trinity, and of the Sign of the Cross.

SOPHRON. I do. Let us begin with the former; -the instances of which are perhaps less obvious, and probably less striking.

PISTUS. The whole of science, taken in whatever point of view, seems to depend on three original principles. In colour we have three neutrals, black, white, and grey. In acousticks, three primitive sounds, the medient, tonic, and dominant. Form can address itself to the eye but in three ways,-in architecture, painting, and sculpture: the kind of lines which produce form are three, and each of these has three subdivisions; the straight line has three positions,--horizontal, perpendicular, oblique; the crooked has three,-as presenting either a right, acute, or obtuse angle; and the curved has three,—for it may be a portion of a circle, a volute, or an ellipse. Again, every one knows the remarkable properties of the figure three-properties which no other number has, or could have.

SOPHRON. And even in simpler matters than these, the same trinal arrangement is visible. All time must be past, present, and future: every deed must have a beginning, a middle, and an end. Now, it is all very well to say that there is an absolute necessity for this, so that even Omnipotence could not have ordered it otherwise : granting this necessity, whence does it arise? Do we not gain the more abundant confirmation of our position? But it surely is incumbent on others to prove this necessity. It is quite possible

to conceive a state of things in which it should not be the case; it is quite within the range of imagination, that time should have a fourfold division, or that the progress of any event might be capable of being divided into two stages, besides the beginning and the end. There is no essential impossibility in this. If it be possible to conceive a thing which has neither beginning nor end, as eternity; if it be possible to conceive a thing which has beginning, but no end, as the soul of man; we may safely assert the possibility of the conception of something that has four, five, or even more separate stages of existence, intrinsically and essentially. But if this conception be possible with regard to one thing, it is certain that it might be so with regard to every thing; which is enough for us.

PISTUS. Look again at what has so often been brought forward as an illustration of the same mystery, a luminous body like the sun. From the substance itself, light and heat are inseparable. Take again the threefold division of the mind, which so naturally suggests itself; the will, the understanding, the imagination. It is a world, so to speak, of triplicity; and so even heathens seem to have felt, and to have shaped their myths accordingly.

SOPHRON. Why, it even descended to a proverb, -Every three is perfect. The better nature consists of three, says Plutarch. They assign the number three to the highest GOD, says Servius.

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