not existing in heaven above, in the earth beneath, or in the water under the earth. It may be so; and yet, although such creatures might be non-existent taken as a whole, they were composed of parts which, separately, represented real existences. And this argument, if pressed, would go to sanction the dogheaded and hawk-headed idols of Egypt, seeing that they represented creatures existing only in separate parts; and, in fact, exhibited that very form of idolatry to which the Israelites, when fresh from Egypt, would be particularly prone.

But it is time to ask, What was the form of these cherubim ? In the first chapter of his prophecy, Ezekiel, a captive in Assyria, describes certain living creatures' that he beheld in a vision. He does not say there that they were the temple cherubim ; but they certainly were so; for in another vision, narrated in the tenth chapter, he is transported in the spirit to Jerusalem, and is set down in the precincts of the temple, then still standing. There he beheld, among other objects, the same 'living creatures,' and the throne previously described, standing in the inner court. 'Then,' he adds, "the glory of the Lord (the Shekinah that rested above the cherubim in the inner sanctuary) departed from off the threshold of the house, and stood over the cherubim; and the cherubim lifted up their wings, and mounted up from the earth in my sight.

This is the living creature that I saw (in the former vision) under the God of Israel by the river of Chebar; and I KNEW THAT THEY WERE THE CHERUBIM.' He then gives a description of them in conformity with his previous account, but somewhat less particular. It is clear that he did not at first recognise the temple cherubim in the living creatures he beheld in the first vision; but now, from the position of the same creatures in the temple, he knows that the figures he had previously seen were the cherubim. Let us therefore turn back to his description. There were four of them, and they all had the likeness of a man. And every one had four faces, and every one had four wings. And their feet were straight feet; and the sole of their feet was like the sole of a calf's foot and they sparkled like the colour of burnished brass.

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And they had the hands of a man under their wings on their four sides; and they four had their faces and their wings. Their wings were joined one to another; they turned not when they went, they went every one straight forward. As for the likeness of their faces, they four had the face of a man and the face of a lion on the right side; and they four had the face of an ox on the left side; they four also had the face of an eagle. Thus were their faces: and their wings were stretched upwards; two wings of every one were joined one to another, and two covered their bodies.'

This information respecting the figures of the cherubim throws light upon what has seemed a difficulty to many-the introduction of the figures of oxen and lions in the temple court, as supporters of the brazen sea, and on the lavers. The heads of these animals being combined in one figure in the cherubim, Solomon might feel that there could be no impropriety in employing separately creatures composing that figure. They were therefore separate parts of the cherubic figure, and as such lawful, although representations of living objects. Solomon may have felt some scruple about using the entire compound figure anywhere but within the temple itself, and therefore thus embodied the parts separately. The connection between them and the cherubim, though not at the first view obvious to us, must have been clear to the Israelites, and this could not but tend to obviate that danger of idolatry which might have existed in the absence of any such connection.

This is not the only instance of the separation of the cherubim into their component parts; for there can be no question that, as the four 'living creatures' of Ezekiel are identical with the cherubim, so are the 'four beasts' which make so eminent a figure in John's apocalyptic vision. 'Before the throne there was a sea of glass, like unto crystal and in the midst of the throne, and round about the throne, were four beasts, full of eyes before and behind. And the first beast was like a lion, and the second beast like a calf, and the third beast had a face as a man, and the fourth beast was like a flying

eagle. And the four beasts had each of them six wings about him; and they were full of eyes within, and they rest not day and night, saying, Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty, which was, and is, and is to come.' Here we have a winged lion, a winged ox, a winged man, and a winged eagle. In the figure of the cherubim we have the four combined-that is all the difference. Yet not all; for each of these figures has six wings, whereas the cherubim have but four. We may reach the reason for this difference, by recollecting that of the four cherubic wings, two were for flying, and the other two for dress, forming a kind of screen or skirt for the lower part of the

figure-as in Isaiah's six-winged seraphim (which were also essentially cherubic), with twain he covered his face, with twain he covered his feet, and with twain he did fly.' The two additional wings may therefore be meant to denote, that as the cherubim in this view are nearer the throne and the incumbent majesty than in the other, it was proper that their persons should be more completely veiled from the glance of that Holy One, in whose sight the heavens are not clean.

It will, no doubt, be recollected that figures more or less

analogous to the cherubim have been found in Egypt, and among all the nations of south-western Asia-in Assyria, in Persia, and in Asia Minor. Some exhibit the same combination as in the temple cherubim ; but we have also the separate parts of the same, just as they were separable even under the Hebrew symbolization. Symbols the cherubim assuredly were, and not representations; and the heathen figures doubtless belonged to the same system of symbolization, if they did not symbolize the same things,-which may partly have been the case, if all were founded on dim traditions, common to all the races of men, of the cherubim stationed to keep the way of man's lost paradise.

We are at once reminded of the winged human figures of Egypt, Babylon, Nineveh, and Persia,-of which the last were remarkable, as known to be representations of disembodied souls. The engraving placed below (p. 81), to the left, is a figure of the great Cyrus, winged, to show that he is no more of this world-a fact to which there will be occasion to refer. Opposite to it we place a figure, analogous in form, from the sculptures recently discovered at Nineveh. There are others of the same kind, as elaborately carved in the wings and raiment, and all holding what appears like a fir cone in the right hand, and a sort of basket in the left. They are little distinguished from each other, except one, which, upon the winged body, exhibits the head of an eagle. The import of these

Assyrian images has not yet been determined; but will probably prove to be the same as that of the Persian figures of the like kind. The Babylonian figure placed in the middle between

Still more does the figure of the cherubim bring to mind the human heads attached to the bodies of winged lions and oxen in the sculptures of the same countries and Assyria, as in the

VOL. IV.

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