Of Some Singular Passages in This Prophet, and of Certain Ancient Usages.

It is well known that we ought not to judge of ancient usages by modern ones; he that would reform the court of Alcinous in the “Odyssey,” upon the model of the Grand Turk, or Louis XIV., would not meet with a very gentle reception from the learned; he who is disposed to reprehend Virgil for having described King Evander covered with a bear’s skin and accompanied by two dogs at the introduction of ambassadors, is a contemptible critic.

The manners of the ancient Egyptians and Jews are still more different from ours than those of King Alcinous, his daughter Nausicáa, and the worthy Evander. Ezekiel, when in slavery among the Chald?ans, had a vision near the small river Chobar, which falls into the Euphrates.

We ought not to be in the least astonished at his having seen animals with four faces, four wings, and with calves’ feet; or wheels revolving without aid and “instinct with life”; these images are pleasing to the imagination; but many critics have been shocked at the order given him by the Lord to eat, for a period of three hundred and ninety days, bread made of barley, wheat, or millet, covered with human ordure.

The prophet exclaimed in strong disgust, “My soul has not hitherto been polluted”; and the Lord replied, “Well, I will allow you instead of man’s ordure to use that of the cow, and with the latter you shall knead your bread.”

As it is now unusual to eat a preparation of bread of this description, the greater number of men regard the order in question as unworthy of the Divine Majesty. Yet it must be admitted that cow-dung and all the diamonds of the great Mogul are perfectly equal, not only in the eyes of a Divine Being, but in those of a true philosopher; and, with regard to the reasons which God might have for ordering the prophet this repast, we have no right to inquire into them. It is enough for us to see that commands which appear to us very strange, did not appear so to the Jews.

It must be admitted that the synagogue, in the time of St. Jerome, did not suffer “Ezekiel” to be read before the age of thirty; but this was because, in the eighteenth chapter, he says that the son shall not bear the iniquity of his father, and it shall not be any longer said the fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge.

This expression was considered in direct contradiction to Moses, who, in the twenty-eighth chapter of “Numbers,” declares that the children bear the iniquity of the fathers, even to the third and fourth generation.

Ezekiel, again, in the twentieth chapter, makes the Lord say that He has given to the Jews precepts which are not good. Such are the reasons for which the synagogue forbade young people reading an author likely to raise doubts on the irrefragability of the laws of Moses.

The censorious critics of the present day are still more astonished with the sixteenth chapter of Ezekiel. In that chapter he thus takes it upon him to expose the crimes of the city of Jerusalem. He introduces the Lord speaking to a young woman; and the Lord said to her, “When thou wast born, thy navel string was not cut, thou wast not salted, thou wast quite naked, I had pity on thee; thou didst increase in stature, thy breasts were fashioned, thy hair was grown, I passed by thee, I observed thee, I knew that the time of lovers was come, I covered thy shame, I spread my skirt over thee; thou becamest mine; I washed and perfumed thee, and dressed and shod thee well; I gave thee a scarf of linen, and bracelets, and a chain for thy neck; I placed a jewel in thy nose, pendants in thy ears, and a crown upon thy head.”

“Then, confiding in thy beauty, thou didst in the height of thy renown, play the harlot with every passer-by . . . . And thou hast built a high place of profanation . . . . and thou hast prostituted thyself in public places, and opened thy feet to every one that passed . . . . and thou hast committed fornication with the Egyptians . . . . and finally thou hast paid thy lovers and made them presents, that they might lie with thee . . . . and by hiring them, instead of being hired, thou hast done differently from other harlots. . . . . The proverb is, as is the mother, so is the daughter, and that proverb is used of thee,” etc.

Still more are they exasperated on th............