ing of it in his decisive religious struggles, and was decided by it in his entire renunciation of the world.

In a short time, still in the lifetime of Anthony, the deserts of Egypt, from Nitria, south of Alexandria and the wilderness of Scetis, to Lybia and the Thebiad, were peopled with anchorets and studded with cells. A mania for monasticism possessed Christendom, and seized the people of all classes like an epidemic. As martyrdom had formerly been, so now monasticism was, the quickest and surest way to renown upon earth and to eternal reward in heaven. This prospect, with which Athanasius concludes his life of Anthony, abundantly recompensed all self-denial, and mightily stimulated pious ambition. The consistent recluse must continually increase his seclusion. No desert was too scorching, no rock too forbidding, no cliff too steep, no cave too dismal for the feet of these world-hating and man-shunning enthusiasts. It has been supposed that in Egypt the number of anchorets and monks equaled the popu lation of the cities! The natural contrast between the desert and the fertile valley of the Nile was reflected in the moral contrast between the monastic life and the world.

It is unnecessary to recount the lives of all the leading anchorets, since the same features, even to unimportant details, repeat themselves in all. But in the fifth century a new and quite original path was broken by SYMEON, the father of the STYLITES, or pillar-saints, who spent long years, day and night, summer and winter, rain and sunshine, frost and heat, standing on high unsheltered pillars in prayer and penances, and made the way to heaven for themselves so passing hard, that one knows not whether to wonder at their unexampled self-denial, or to pity their ignorance of the Gospel salvation. On this giddy height the anchoretic asceticism reached its completion.

ST. SYMEON THE STYLITE, originally a shepherd on the borders of Syria and Cilicia, when a boy of thirteen years was powerfully affected by the beatitudes which he heard read in the church, and betook himself to a cloister. He lay several days without eating or drinking before the threshold, and begged to be admitted as the meanest servant of the house. He accustomed himself to eat only once a week, on Sunday. During Lent he even went through the whole forty days without FOURTH SERIES, VOL. XVI.—3

any food; a fact almost incredible, even for a tropical climate. The first attempt of this kind brought him to the verge of death; but his constitution conformed itself, and when Theodoret visited him he had solemnized six-and-twenty Lent seasons by total abstinence, and thus surpassed Moses, Elias, and even Christ, who never fasted so but once! Another of his extraordinary inflictions was to lace his body so tightly that the cord pressed through to his bones, and could be cut off only with the most terrible pains. This occasioned his dismissal from the cloister.

He afterward spent some time as a hermit upon a mountain with an iron chain upon his feet, and was visited there by admiring and curious throngs.

When this failed to satisfy him, he invented, in 423, a new sort of holiness, and lived some two days' journey (forty miles) east of Antioch, for six-and-thirty years, until his death upon a pillar, which at last was nearly forty cubits high; for the pillar was raised in proportion as he approached heaven and perfection. Here he could never lie or sit, but only stand or lean upon a post, probably a banister, or devoutly bow, in which last position he almost touched his feet with his head, so flexible had his back been made by fasting. A spectator once counted in one day no less than twelve hundred and forty-four such genuflexions of the saint before the Almighty, and then gave up counting. He wore a covering of the skins of beasts, and a chain about his neck. Even the holy sacrament he took upon his pillar. People streamed from afar to witness this standing wonder of the age. He spoke to all classes with the same friendliness, mildness, and love; only women he never suffered to come within the walls which surrounded his pillar.

From this original pulpit, as a mediator between heaven and earth, he preached repentance twice a day to the astonished spectators, settled controversies, vindicated the orthodox faith, extorted laws even from an emperor, healed the sick, wrought miracles, and converted thousands of heathen Ishmaelites, Iberians, Armenians, and Persians to Christianity, or at least to the Christian name.

All this the celebrated Theodoret relates as an eye-witness during the lifetime of the saint. He terms him the great wonder of the world, and compares him to a candle on a candle

stick, and to the sun itself, which sheds its rays on every side. He asks the objector to this mode of life to consider that God often uses very striking means to arouse the negligent, as the history of the prophets show; and concludes his narrative with the remark, "Should the saint live longer he may do yet greater wonders, for he is a universal ornament and honor to religion."

He died in 459, in the sixty-ninth year of his age, of a long-concealed and loathsome ulcer on his leg, and his body was brought in solemn procession to the metropolitan Church of Antioch.

Even before his death Symeon enjoyed the unbounded admiration of Christians and heathens, of the common people, of the kings of Persia, and the emperors Theodosius II., Leo, and Marcian, who begged his blessing and his counsel. No wonder that, with his renowned humility, he had to struggle with the temptations of spiritual pride. Once an angel appeared to him in a vision, with a chariot of fire to convey him, like Elijah, to heaven, because the blessed spirits longed for him. He was already stepping into the chariot with his right foot, which on this occasion he sprained, (as Jacob his thigh,) when the phantom of Satan was chased away by the sign of the cross. Perhaps this incident, which the Acta Sanctorum gives, was afterward invented to account for his sore, and to illustrate the danger of self-conceit. Hence also the pious monk Nilus, with good reason, reminded the ostentatious pillar-saints of the proverb, "He that exalteth himself shall be abased."

Of the later Stylites the most distinguished were Daniel, (died 490,) in the vicinity of Constantinople, and Symeon the Younger, (died 592,) in Syria. The latter is said to have spent sixty-eight years on a pillar. In the East this form of sanctity perpetuated itself, though only in exceptional cases, down to the twelfth century. The West, so far as we know, affords but one example of a Stylite who, according to Gregory of Tours, lived a long time on a pillar near Treves, but came down at the command of the bishop and entered a neighboring cloister,

With all due admiration for the extraordinary moral heroism displayed by these ancient hermits, it is no recommendation to it that it is without any authority in the Scriptures of truth.

Christ and the apostles never enjoined such excesses either by precept or example. On the other hand, the history of ancient and modern. Hindoo asceticism furnish similar phenomena in connection with a false religion. Some of these heathen devotees, we are told by travelers, bury themselves in pits with only small breathing holes at the top; while others, disdaining to touch the vile earth beneath, live in iron cages suspended from trees. Some wear heavy iron collars or fetters, or drag a heavy chain, fastened by one end round their privy parts, to give ostentatious proof of their chastity. Others keep their fists hard shut, until their finger nails grow through the palms of their hands. Some stand perpetually on one leg; others keep their faces turned over one shoulder, until they cannot turn them back again. Some lie on wooden beds, bristling all over with iron spikes; others are fastened for life to the trunk of a tree by a chain, like Symeon to his pillar. Some suspend themselves for half an hour at a time, feet uppermost, or with a hook thrust through their naked backs, over a hot fire. A Jesuit missionary describes a Hindoo saint who had his body inclosed in an iron cage, with his head and feet outside, so that he could walk, but neither sit nor lie down; at night his pious attendants attached a hundred lighted lamps to the outside of the cage, so that their master could exhibit himself walking as the mock-light of the world!

It is impossible to read of these self-imposed penances and sufferings without profound gratitude to Christ, who, in the Gospel, opened to all penitent and believing sinners such a plain and sure road to salvation; and to the Reformers of the sixteenth century, who cleared this road of the many obstructions erected by the pious folly of men in the vain attempt to save themselves.

ART. III.-THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN.

Geological Evidences of the Antiquity of Man. By Sir CHARLES LYELL, F.R.S. Philadelphia: George W. Childs. 1863.

THE recent discoveries of fossil human remains, and the works of human art found in company with the bones of extinct species of animals, and the presentation of these to the public, together with old facts under new views and new relations, have awakened a lively interest in the question of the antiquity of the human race. The long general acquiescence in the chronology which fixed the limits of man's existence upon the earth to less than seven thousand years has been rather rudely startled by the claims made in some cases for a human antiquity that makes the life of man reach vastly and indefinitely beyond the dates agreed upon for the biblical chronology. The extreme men of the high antiquity school are understood as claiming for the duration of the age of man a period of time as measureless in centuries as the great geological ages, and compared with which the earliest dates of the commonly received historic times are but of yesterday. Others, however, more moderate and precise, claim only from ten to thirty thousand years. But in both cases the definite measurement of the years and centuries of primitive history have been effaced, and the origin of man and his early history pushed back so far beyond all precise periods and positive dates that the pre-historic time has become as indefinite in its duration as the Molluscan, Carboniferous, or Reptilian ages. That pre-historic time has passed into the great time-ratios of geological history in which positive times are exchanged for a succession of periods, and the absolute lengths of centuries for mere relative lengths of epochs. The Age of Man has been extended backward, and he himself made cotemporary with extinct races of gigantic quadrupeds that flourished before the New England rivers had scooped their broad river flats into marginal terraces.

These claims demand attention, and should be considered on scientific grounds, and either confirmed, denied, or withheld on scientific evidence, for they are put forward by earnest, sincere men, and men too devoted to somewhat different lines of study.