have done quite the same in this country, and the same result will follow-He will rise again, and take his proper place between the good and the evil, the tree of life and the tree of death, for the one thief was a good one and the other was a bad one, and they seemed both pretty much alike. Have you any objections to another five, or Pentad of the drama ?"

"None whatever. The more the better, for I never can have enough of evidence."

"Well," said Benjamin, "let us take the Pentateuch, the beginning of the records of our civilisation, the acorn of the oak. The oak is all in it, and the books of Moses are five in number. I call them the play-bill, or programme of the Divine tragedy; which, however, ends in a most admirable comedy in the fifth act. These five books are merely the five hills or five fingers over again; only, as the musicians say, we modulate on a different key. They are Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, or the new law-the second law. Now these five books, I repeat, are merely our old five acts of the Divine drama differently represented or expressed. They constitute a programme or play-bill, and contain a history of the Church, and even of human society, in a nut-shell. I am astonished that it was never before perceived, and yet there cannot be a doubt of it. Take the history of the Jewish Church before the Christian epoch, and you will find that it naturally and inevitably divides itself so as to correspond with these five books. Genesis, its infancy or growth in Egypt, bondage and difficulty. Exodus, its deliverance under Moses, and struggling with its enemies until it found a capital under King David,

Leviticus, the

who was the first that took Jerusalem. building of the Temple and organization of the Levitical priesthood. This era lasts as long as the Temple lasts. Numbers is the fourth; it treats of the division of the land and other temporalities. Now, at the destruction of the Temple the people were scattered over the world, which is the true Land of Promise, and began to deal in merchandise, to cultivate science and philosophy, and amalgamate with the nations. They were never thoroughly reunited as a nation. This lasts till the coming of Christ and the destruction of the city and Temple; when the DeuteroNomy, or second law-the Christian and Roman law-put an end to the old law of the Jews for ever. I say for ever -for they will never live as an isolated little geographical nation again. They are a universal seed, to be incorporated with the Gentiles, thus making the Gentiles Israel by incorporation, whilst the Jews themselves are bodily confounded with the great family of men."

"It is

"The division is most accurate," said Edward. the natural division of the old hemisphere of Church history. I allow that you might make seven divisions by taking the Captivity for one, and the period between Christ and the destruction of the Temple as another. But these would fritter down your idea of the dispersion in the one case, and the combination of the Christian and Roman law as the Deuteronomy in the other. The analysis is complete as as you have given it. Does it hold equally true of the modern hemisphere-that is, the history of the Church since the Christian epoch ?"

Equally," said Benjamin. "The first three centuries

of Christianity constitute the Genesis or infancy of the

Church, during which time it endured much persecution and elaborated its doctrines, making its bricks in the schools of Egypt, especially in Alexandria, the capital of Egypt; but also in all the great cities of the great Roman Egypt. Then comes its Exodus or 'coming out,' under Constantine, the political Moses of the Church, who took it by the hand and led it to the Promised Land, by establishing it and uniting it with, or marrying it to the Church. He did this in Greece too, that is the second of the five nations, making Constantinople the capital of his new Christian Empire. This era lasted two hundred years, during which the Church fought with Paganism and old Romanism, and destroyed both. It closed with the Justinian Reformation of the old Roman law, but not before it had appointed by imperial edict the Pope of Rome, the chief bishop of the Church, and thus commenced the third great era-the Levitical. The Star of Leviticus was then in the ascendancy, and the Roman priesthood flourished for a thousand years, till Luther, Calvin, Knox, and numbers of others, commenced the Numerical era, or the Book of Numbers, by introducing the right of popular judgment into the Church, translating the one Latin Bible into numbers of Vernacular Bibles, and breaking up the unity of the one Levitical Church into numbers of Churches, encouraging reformation and revolution, as well as the cultivation of the material sciences which all belong to the Numerical period. This Numerical era still goes on; for the world has never yet attained to the fifth great act that embraces all four. This fifth act is a new idea in the history of society-a new era, totally distinct from any other era—an era of Universalism or pure Catholicism, of

which the Catholicism hitherto established is merely the dark shadow in which you cannot see the sun. A herald of truth, however, appears before truth itself; a dawn appears before the morn. Men know more about the four acts of the Divine drama than the fifth act. They have had the four represented in an infinite variety of ways, and therefore four, forty, four hundred, &c., are all indicative of times of sorrow, times of fasting, wandering in the wilderness, temptation and affliction. But the fifth act or Fifth Monarchy-the fiftieth or jubilee, the fifth hundred, and fifth thousand-are proverbially known to be a time of deliverance for the world, when the mystery of iniquity which is perpetrated in the four will come to an end, with a winding up that will bring joy to the nations. Some say it will bring joy to some only; but

I

say to all. It is a time of universal salvation, to the poor and the rich; a time of universal amnesty, when sin will be forgiven and remembered no more, when a new law will be promulgated and a right spirit infused into the whole of that portion of the world which receives the truth. A portion will be left out for a season, but even that at last will enjoy the benefit of the fortunate change. Even the dead are not forgotten, for they are all as deeply interested in the fate of the earth as the living. They are not so far off as we imagine."

CHAPTER LXXVIII.

THE DIVINE DRAMA IN DETAIL.

EDWARD and Benjamin continued walking through

the gardens of St. James's Park, occasionally amusing themselves with the aquatic fowls in the ponds or artificial lakes as the little children distributed their bread and biscuit amongst the feathered mendicants, and laughed at the struggle which took place for the prize. The Horse Guards and Whitehall at one end of the park, and her Majesty's palace of Buckingham House at the other, with St. James's old palace, Carlton Terrace, and the Duke of Sutherland's magnificent mansion on one side, and Birdcage Walk on the opposite, form a splendid line of circumvallation around the most beautiful little enclosure which the metropolis contains. The collection of water birds is interesting to the ornithologist, and the numerous varieties of plants, which are all carefully labelled, and many of them rare and valuable, make a useful little school for the student of botany, who, whilst he inhales a breeze from the clear and flowing water of the lakes, and invigorates his limbs with pedestrian exercise, so indispensable for the health of all, but especially of those who live in large and crowded cities, can at the same time amuse and instruct his mind with curious and