me given to the south of Italy was
Hesperia, the "Land of the Evening Star," as if in token of its
exhausted history; and it was regarded as the scene of the fabled
golden age from which Saturn and the ancient deities had been expelled
by Jupiter. But contrary to this pagan instinct, the Cumaean Sibyl
stretched forward to a distant heaven of her aspirations and hopes--to
a nobler future of the world, not sentimental and idyllic, but epic
and heroic. She pictured the blessing or restoration of this earth
itself as distinct from an invisible world of happiness. And in this
respect she is more in sympathy with the Jewish and Christian
religions than with her own. The golden age of the Hebrews was in the
future, and was connected with the coming of the Messiah, who should
restore the kingdom again unto Israel. And the characteristic of the
Christian religion is hope, the expectation of the times of the
restitution of all things, and the realisation of the "one far-off
divine event to which the whole creation moves." It is this hopeful
element pervading them that gives to the lively oracles of Holy
Scripture the triumphant tone which distinguishes them so markedly
from the desponding spirit of all false religions, ancient and modern.

The subject of the Sibyl brings us to the vexed question of the
connection between pagan and Hebrew prophecy. How are we to regard the
vaticinations of the heathen oracle? That the great mass of the
Sibylline books is spurious is glaringly obvious. But there is a
primitive residuum which seems to remind us that the spirit of early
prophecy still retained its hold over human nature amid all the
corruptions of heathendom, and secured for the Sibyl a sacred rank and
authority. We have seen with what reverence the greatest fathers of
the Christian Church regarded her. While there was undoubtedly much
delusion and deception, conscious or unconscious, mixed up with it, we
are constrained at the same time to acknowledge that there was some
reality in this prophetic element of paganism, which cannot be
explained away as the result of mere political or intellectual
foresight or accidental coincidence. It was not all imposture. As a
ray of light is contained in all that shines, so a ray of God's truth
was reflected in what was best in this pagan prophecy. The fulfilment
of many of the ancient oracles cannot be denied without a perversion
of all history. There was no doubt an immense difference between th