God. Thou art worthy at all times to be praised by holy voices, Son of God, who givest life: wherefore the world glorifies thee.'

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Rowth, from whose text we translate this, quotes various early authorities to prove the primitive use of the doxology to the Holy Trinity, as in the "Te Deum."

In the ordinary Greek text of the Apostolical Constitutions there are three thanksgivings or hymns which deserve to be noticed. The first of these is the well-known morning hymn of the Greeks, which occurs with some variations in the Communion service, where it appears in the following form :

men.

Glory be to God on high, and in earth peace, good will towards We praise thee, we bless thee, we worship thee, we glorify thee, we give thanks to thee for thy great glory, O Lord God, heavenly King, God the Father Almighty.

"O Lord, the only-begotten Son Jesu Christ; O Lord God, Lamb of God, Son of the Father, that takest away the sins of the world, have mercy upon us. Thou that takest away the sins of the world, have mercy Thou that takest away the sins of the world, receive our prayer. Thou that sittest at the right hand of God the Father, have mercy upon us.

upon us.

"For thou only art holy; thou only art the Lord; thou only, O Christ, with the Holy Ghost, art most high in the glory of God the Father. Amen."

The copy of this in the Constitutions is without the concluding doxology to the Trinity, and is also without some of the other clauses, but that it is the same there can be no doubt. Nor is it much more doubtful that it supplied some of the materials for the "Te Deum." We shall have to return to this, but in the meantime we give the evening hymn from the Constitutions, with the exception of the Nunc dimittis by which it is followed:

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Young men, praise ye the Lord, praise the name of the Lord. We praise thee, we hymn thee, we bless thee for thy great glory. O Lord the King, the Father of Christ the spotless Lamb, who taketh away the sin of the world, praise becometh thee, the hymn becometh thee, glory becometh thee the God and Father, through the Son, in the most Holy Ghost, world without end. Amen."

In the next place we will give the morning hymn from the Constitutions, in order to place the whole before the eyes of the reader :

Glory to God in the highest, and upon earth peace, among men good will. We praise thee, we hymn thee, we bless thee, we glorify thee, we worship thee, through the great High Priest, thee who art God the one unbegotten, the only inaccessible, for thy great glory, O Lord the

heavenly King, God the Father Almighty; Lord God the Father of Christ the spotless Lamb, who taketh away the sin of the world, receive our prayer; thou who sittest upon the cherubim; for thou alone art holy; thou alone art the Lord Jesus Christ of the God of every born creature, our King; through whom be glory to thee, honour and worship."

The Greek morning hymn in the Codex Alexandrinus belongs to these, and, indeed, with slight verbal variations, the former part is so like the one already given from the Communion service that it need not be repeated. The doxology is followed by a series of miscellaneous ejaculations exactly as in the "Te Deum." The doxology itself ends with "Amen," and the hymn then proceeds :

"Every day will I bless thee, and I will praise thy name for ever, and world without end. Vouchsafe, O Lord, that we may be kept this day also without sin. Blessed art thou O Lord the God of our fathers, and thy name is to be praised and glorified for ever. Amen.

"Blessed art thou O Lord, teach me thy judgments; blessed art thou O Lord, teach me thy judgments; blessed art thou O Lord, teach me thy judgments. O Lord thou art a refuge unto us from generation to generation. I said, Lord have mercy upon me, heal my soul for I have sinned against thee. O Lord, to thee have I fled for refuge; teach me to do thy will, for thou art my God, for with thee is the fountain of life; in thy light shall we see light. Extend thy mercy to them that know thee."

The gradual development of these hymns from the simplest elements to the more elaborate construction is apparent. Any one who will compare them with one another will see what we mean. Those who will compare the last of them with the "Te Deum" will not fail to trace the same order of thought and structure, and some of the very same expressions. Where, except here, did the writer of the "Te Deum" find the expression, "vouchsafe, O Lord, to keep us this day without sin ?" Why, except because he had this hymn before his eyes, did he insert the doxology to the Trinity where it now stands? And it stands there because it was originally the conclusion of a shorter hymn. The copy of the Greek hymn is found in a MS. written long before the "Te Deum" is heard of.

SACRED TREES.

In the second chapter of the book of Genesis, the wise legislator of the Jews, having, in sacred characters, given a cosmographical sketch of the fundamental truths touching the creation of the world and of the human race, as preliminary to the history of a particular people, and to an especial dispensation, states that in a garden planted by the Lord for man's reception, grew every tree that was pleasant to the sight, and good for food, and that in the midst of this garden grew two other trees, specified as "the tree of life," and the "tree of the knowledge of good and evil."

The sacred records take no further notice of the latter tree after man's reported expulsion from this garden; but they mention the former tree as still furnishing the support of immortality in the paradise of righteous souls.

Thus in the Apocalypse ii. 7, St. John, writing of what the Spirit of the Lord said unto him in his vision, has these words, "To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the tree of life, which is in the midst of the paradise of God." And in another place (xxii. 2), speaking of the paradise and of the river of the water of life proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb, he says, on either side of the river was there the tree of life, which bare twelve manner of fruits, and yielded her fruit every month, and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations," and again, a little further on (xxii. 14), the same Spirit of the Lord declares, "Blessed are they who do his commandments, that they may have right to the tree of life."

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The fact of a certain tree of life being introduced at the commencement of the sacred records by one who had been carefully educated in all the learning of the Egyptians, would, a priori, lead one to suppose that the Egyptians themselves possessed a knowledge of such a tree, possibly as a part of the primitive credence of mankind, symbolically expressed, and that traces of it might be found on their monuments, and probably also on those of other nations; while the signification given to it at the close of the second canon, by one who, more than any other of our Lord's disciples, treasured up his figurative philosophical and psychological phrases, would tend to confirm this conjecture, by shewing the enlarged application of the meaning.

On the sacred monuments of the ancient Egyptians we do find a tree of life having a relation to the life in paradise, and furnishing therein the required support of immortality. The monuments of the ancient Assyrians also shew a sacred tree, NEW SERIES.-VOL. I., NO. II.

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symbolical of the divine influence of the life-giving Deity. So also do those of the ancient Persians; and it was preserved by them, almost as represented on the Assyrian monuments, until the invasion of the Arabs.

The Hebrews had a sacred tree which figured in their temple architecture along with the cherubim, it was the same sort of tree as that which had previously been in use among the Egyptians, and was subsequently, in a conventional form, adopted by the Assyrians and Persians, and eventually by the Christians, who introduced it in the mosaics of their early churches associated with their most sacred rites. This tree, which occurs also as a religious symbol on Etruscan remains, and was abbreviated by the Greeks into a familiar ornament of their temple architecture, was the date palm, phoenix dactylifera.

But although the earliest known form of the tree of life on Egyptian monuments is the date palm, at a subsequent period the sycomore tree, the ficus sycomorus, was represented instead, and eventually even this disappeared, at least in some instances, and a female personification came in its place; but the meaning was the same, the form only was altered.

Besides the monumental evidence thus furnished of a sacred tree, a tree of life, there is an historical and traditional evidence of the same thing, found in the early literature of various nations, in their customs, and popular usages.

For although in the migrations of the human race, the sacred tree underwent, in accordance with new localities, changes; yet the meaning of it, and the religious notions associated with it, retained their primitive character; so much so, that even in recent times, and in Christian countries, it has been difficult entirely to eradicate from the popular mind the devotional feeling associated with it.

Thus the sacred tree became the oak, the ash, the fig tree, the plane tree, the pine; and in the veneration paid to trees, both in Europe and in Asia, under the supposition that those of beautiful growth were more especially the favourites of deity, and the haunts of blessed spirits, or even of God himself, which notion the Bible in some places countenances, any tree preeminently distinguished by its majesty and grace became the object of religious reverence.

There might be an innate appreciation of the beautiful and the grand in this impression, conjoined with the conception of a more sublime truth, and the first principles of a natural theology; but, in most instances, it would appear rather to have been the result of an ancient and primitive symbolical worship, at one time universally prevalent.

The most generally received symbol of life is a tree, as also the most appropriate; and as we recognize two different forms of life, a spiritual life, the life of the soul, and a physical life, the life of the body, so these may be represented either by two trees, as sometimes found, or in reference to universal life, by one tree alone.

On the zodiac of Dendera, preserved in the national library at Paris, are two symbolical trees placed opposite to each other, phonetically they stand for the west and the east, but symbolically they appear to signify much more. The west was regarded as the land of truth and of civilized religion; it was Egypt in contradistinction to India and China, where a worship of the vital force, as manifested in nature, had taken the place of a more spiritual doctrine. In the first of these symbols we have the palm tree, the early sacred tree of Egypt, surmounted by the ostrich feather, the symbol of truth; in the second we have a tree putting forth a pair of leaves, and surmounted by the conventional Siva symbols, indicating the generative force of nature manifested in the life of animals and plants."

THE SACRED ASH.

As a symbolical tree of universal life, the ash yggdrasill, the mundane tree of the Scandinavian mythology, claims the preeminence. It is described in the Eddas, as the greatest and best of trees. Its triple root reaches to the mythic regions of the frost-giants and the Æsir, and penetrates to the nebulous Niflheim. Its majestic stem overtops the heavens, and its branches fill the world. It is sprinkled with the purest water, whence is the dew that falls in the dales, and its life-giving energy, is diffused throughout all nature.

At its foot is the undar fountain, where sit the three noons, or fates, time past, time present, and time to come; these give runic characters and laws to men, and fix their destinies. Here is the most holy of all places where the gods assemble daily in council, with All-Father at their head.

These three noons have a certain analogy to the three mythic Persian destinies seated by the fountain of perennial life; and the tree itself is evidently a symbol of that inscrutable power which is the life of all things; thus representing under an arborescent form the most ancient theory of nature, analogous to that personified in the Indian Parvati, the goddess of life and reproduction, in the Egyptian Isis, and in the figure so

a These symbols, as here represented, are a crescent-shaped cavity resting on a rectangular base, and from which rises an elongated cone.