GENERAL BELIEF IN MINISTERING SPIRITS. 249 the most civilised and philosophical nations, bore the broadest stamps of demonism in immorality and blood. Yet, in every nation, however scientific or however sunk in ignorance, spiritualism maintained its faith. They might be devils whom they worshipped as gods, but they thought them gods and from them they received oracles and dreams assuring them by their agreement with the subsequent events, that there was a spiritual world ruling this world. No nation can become a nation of atheists, atheism is only the disease of exceptional minds. No nation ever gave up the belief in the existence of spirits acting with them and for them. The nearness of the spirit-world maintained its consciousness imperishably in the human soul. The numerous oracles throughout the pagan world could not have maintained their credit without a large infusion of supernatural knowledge in their answers. The reliance on the oracles, and their reliability as the cause of it, seems a direct inference from the universal use of them. Cicero had much the same notion as the Apostles, that all spirits are ministering spirits to men. "God distributing gods to all the parts of the world, did, as it were, sow some gods in the earth, some in the moon,' &c. (On Plato's Timæus, c. xiii.) And he says in his De Natura Deorum,' lib. i., Curius and Fabricius had never been such men as they were, but for the cooperation of God: and in De Divinatione,' i. 1, Did Greece ever send colonies into Ætolia, Ionia, Asia, Sicily or Italy without having first consulted about every circumstance relative to them, either at Delphi, or Dodona, or at the oracle of Ammon?' Lucian, Astrolog. v. i. p. 993, says the same. People would not venture to build cities, nor even to raise the walls, till they had made proper enquiry among those who were prophetically gifted about the success. of their operations. So, too, Callimachus in his hymn to Apollo: 'Tis through Apollo's tutelary aid That men go forth to regions far remote, Pausanias i, 7, says at Patræ in Achaia, there is a temple, and before the temple is the fountain of Demeter, and in the temple an oracle which is never known to fail:—μavteîov dè ἐνταῦθα ἐστιν ἀψευδές. But it will be asked-Did the devils speak truth through all these oracles? Perhaps they did out of good policy, for their influence and worship depended on it, and devils, we are taught to believe, are very politic. But, probably, God who says He never left men without a witness of Him, condescended to hear and answer their well-intended rather than well-directed prayers. At all events, truth came to the pagan world through oracles, dreams, apparitions, and other supernatural means, or all ancient history is a lie. I have thus gone at more length than my space warrants into the origin, nature, chief features, principles, and system of pagan mythology in general, to clear it all away, and leave me at liberty to state the facts of the supernatural amongst all these nations, without perpetual necessity of reference to their individual notions. CHAPTER X. THE SUPERNATURAL IN ASSYRIA, CHALDEA, AND PERSIA. When he found any who could not satisfy themselves with the knowledge that lay within the reach of human wisdom, Socrates advised them to apply diligently to the study of divination; asserting that whoever was acquainted with those mediums which the gods made use of when they communicated anything to man, need never be left destitute of divine counsel.-XENOPHON, Memoirs of Socrates, iv. F the Assyrians very little is known, except as they appear in the Bible and from the scanty mention of them in the fragments of Berosus and Sanconiatho. We are told that Nimrod, the son of Cush, the son of Ham, commenced the kingdom of Babel, afterwards Babylon. These Cuthites or Cushites, Jacob Bryant regards as the ancestors of the Goths or Cuths; and if so, we Europeans have a strong strain of Ham in us. The Goths, who succeeded in their wave of emigration the sons of Gomer, the son of Japheth, the Gomerians, Cymmerians, or Cambri, Cumbri, or Cumbrians, in the Scandinavians and Normans, presented themselves as that domineering race which constitutes the ruling or aristocratic class wherever they have settled. According to this theory, our aristocracy as well as the Negroes, are descendants of Ham. It would seem, however, as if the sons of Shem and Ham were dwelling together in the early times; for though Nimrod established Babel, we are told in the tenth chapter of Genesis that Out of that land went Asshur, and builded Nineveh, and the city of Rehoboth, and Calah, and Resen, between Nineveh and Calah: the same is a great city.' Thus the empire of Assyria was founded by them, though it would appear afterwards to have been absorbed into the Cuthite kingdom of Babylon. Ninus, according to Herodotus, founded the Assyrian empire—that is, he extended it, and made a more martial kingdom of it than it was under the descendants of Asshur. It, according to his statement, continued 520 years. The Bible mentions none of his dynasty except Pul, who was, probably, the father of Sardanapalus. This monarch, celebrated for his effeminacy, has become celebrated for burning himself in his palace, rather than surrender to the invader. He was the last of the dynasty of Ninus or of Belus, the ancestor of Ninus. In the year A.M. 3257, Arbaces the Mede paid a visit to Sardanapalus, and despising him for his vice and luxurious corruption, conspired with Belesis, the governor of Babylonia, to conquer Nineveh. Diodorus Siculus says that Sardanapalus laughed at them, assured by an ancient prophecy that Nineveh could never be taken by force, till the river became the city's enemy. Thus it is clear that the Assyrians were confirmed spiritualists at that day, and put full faith in supernatural communications and oracles. In fact, the few historic traces that we have of them, make them, as well as the Babylonians, devoted to astronomy, astrology, and soothsaying. They had become idolaters, but they had an unshaken belief in the presence and communication of the spirits of the higher world. Trusting in the prophecy, Sardanapalus maintained the siege for upwards of two years, and in the third the prophecy was fulfilled in a manner, like many other prophecies, wholly unexpected. From excessive rains the Euphrates overflowed its banks, and threw down twenty furlongs of the city wall, by which the enemy entered. Belesis had had much difficulty to keep Arbaces to the prosecution of the siege, but being himself a priest and soothsayer, as well as general, he lay out in the open fields all night to watch the stars, and receive, through them, ASSYRIAN SUPERNATURALISM. 253 divine communication, and he then confidently announced that they would receive such succours as would render them victorious. The succours came in the shape of an inundation, and the prognostic was verified. Sardanapalus, seeing the prophecy thus fulfilled, set fire to his palace, and burnt himself, his wives, concubines, and eunuchs, with all his treasures in it. The fall of Sardanapalus, however, did not extinguish the Assyrian empire. Arbaces reigned over Media, and Belesis at Babylon, and we find a succession of Babylonian kings reigning in Nineveh from Tiglath-Pileser, to Sennacherib and Esar-haddon. These monarchs, as the Israelites became wicked and idolatrous, began to harass them. We find Tiglath Pileser, King of Assyria, coming up into Israel in the days of Pekah, King of Israel, about 770 years before Christ, and carrying the inhabitants of various cities away captive. Ahaz, King of Judah, afraid of the Israelites and Syrians uniting against him, sent to this Tiglath Pileser, and bribed him by the plunder of the house of the Lord, to make an alliance with him. Again Shalmaneser went up and took Samaria, the capital of the Ten Tribes, and carried them away into Halah and Habor, and the cities of the Medes, and brought men from Babylon (for it seems Assyria was at that time master of Babylon too) and from Cutha, and many other places, and peopled the lands of the Ten Tribes with them. In the days of Hezekiah, King of Judah, the King of Assyria sent three generals, Tartan, and Rabsaris, and Rabshakeh, against Jerusalem, and made very violent demands on Hezekiah, but God sent a rumour and a blast' against them, and they fled back to Assyria. After that Sennacherib, the king himself, went up to besiege Jerusalem; but God gave him a most amazing proof of spirit-power, for he sent his angel and smote, in the camp of the Assyrians, a hundred and four score thousand of them, and when it was morning, behold, they were all dead corpses. Esar-haddon, the son of this Sennacherib, conquered Babylon, and the Assyrians reigned there for three reigns, when Nabopolassar, |