against wind and tide," the figure is confined to the predicate; that is, to the words which express the act of rowing, and its conditions, against wind and tide. 3d. The subject, or nominative of the figure, accordingly, is always used literally. It is the person who is said to be rowing who exerts the analogous act, which rowing against wind and tide is employed to represent; not some other individual not named in the proposition. It is Christ who was not to break the bruised reed, nor quench the smoking flax, who is to exercise that tender and patient providence towards the faintest of his disciples, which the forbearance, denoted by his not breaking and quenching, is employed to represent. 4th. The acts and conditions ascribed to agents by the figure are such as are proper to their nature; not like those used by the metaphor, that are proper only to agents or things of a different order. Thus, persons may actually try to row against a current, make brick without straw, bear a cross, and carry a heavy burden, and may succeed; and so of all other states and forms of agency that are used by the figure. 5. The resemblance on which the simile and metaphor are founded is one of nature or kind; but the acts and conditions used by this figure are in kind wholly unlike those which they are employed to exemplify; and the resem

blance is one of the ease or difficulty with which they are exerted, the strength or weakness, the lightness or burdensomeness, with which they are marked, the advantages or disadvantages that result from them, or other similar characteristics or accompaniments. In the comparison of the sailing of a ship to the flying of a bird, the things compared -which are motions forward in space-are the same; the one produced by the impulse of the wind on the sails, the other by the stroke of the wings on the air; and they resemble each other also in ease and rapidity. But there is no such likeness between the act of attempting to row a boat against a violent current, and trying, for example, against the settled wishes of a people, to accomplish something that depends on their will. The only resemblance they present is in the greatness of the obstacles that are to be overcome, and the hopelessness of the undertaking. In like manner, there is no resemblance in kind between the act of bearing a cross and the performance of a self-denying mental duty, such as abstaining from forbidden pleasures, or enduring reproach for Christ's sake. The likeness they bear to each other is in the strenuous effort they require, and the self-denial they involve. The figure is thus employed in expressing resemblances between the difficulties, the dispositions, the sensations, the

results, or other characteristics that mark acts of different kinds; not, like the simile and metaphor, in exhibiting likenesses of nature that subsist between agents or things themselves, that are the agents or objects of acts.

The hypocatastasis, though one of the most frequent, most expressive, and most beautiful figures of the Scriptures, and of conversation, has been wholly overlooked by rhetoricians, or confounded with the comparison and metaphor. How familiar it was to the Hebrews, and how essential the knowledge of it is to the interpretation of the sacred writings, is seen from the fact, that it is employed over one hundred times in the first ten chapters of Isaiah. Thus (chap. i. 5, 6) the condition of a person faint from bruising and laceration, and left without medical aid, is used to represent the analogous condition of the Israelites under the judgments which God had inflicted on them. "The whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint: from the sole of the foot even unto the head there is no soundness in it, but wounds, and bruises, and putrifying sores: they have not been closed, neither bound up, neither mollified with ointment." That it is the condition of the Israelitish people, not of an individual, which is here meant, is apparent, from the fact that it is Israel of whom the prophet is

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formally speaking, and of whom he inquires immediately before, "Why should ye be stricken any more?" inasmuch as the scourging they had already received had reduced them to the state he here depicts, without effecting their reformation. The inefficacy of an infliction of one kind on the body of an individual, is thus employed to exemplify the inefficacy of judgments of another on the nation. It is not a simile, as there is no formal comparison of the condition of the individual with that of the people; nor is it a metaphor, as nothing is ascribed to the representative person but what is compatible with his nature.

In the expression (chap. i. 22), "Thy silver is become dross, thy wine mixed with water," silver corroded or converted into dross, and wine diluted with water, are used to represent their resembling deterioration or worthlessness as his professed people. Though the things themselves have no resemblance in kind, there is a striking similitude between such a depravation of the most valuable treasure and choicest luxury the people possessed, and the emptiness and debasement of their nominal obedience. It is not a simile, as there is no formal comparison of their state to corroded silver and watered wine. Nor is it a metaphor, as nothing is affirmed of the silver and wine but what may be literally true of them;

but those objects, made valueless by processes of which they are susceptible, are substituted in their place as his people, to represent how depraved and worthless they had become.

Ways and paths are used by the figure as a substitute for modes of life or actions prescribed by law; as (Is. ii. 3), "And many people shall go and say, Come ye, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob, and he will teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his paths." They are not literal highways which God is to teach those who are to go in them. To ascribe such a sense to the term were absurd. Nor are they material paths in which they are to walk; but ways and paths, which are to the body what laws are to the mind, are employed on account of that resemblance, to denote the instructions and commands which God is then to communicate for their guidance; and that accordingly which the people propose to do is, not to walk in a literal path from one place to another, but to pursue the course of conduct which God enjoins on them. Light is used by the figure in the same manner (chap. ii. 5): "0 house of Jacob, come ye, and let us walk in the light of the Lord." This is not a metaphor; as walking in a light flashed from the divine presence, as from the pillar of fire which illuminated the